What's your belief on believing, huh?

 

Our balcony fig-leaf; just in case.

In an essay I wrote once upon a time, I used an illustration meant to focus on the nature of believing as an act of choice … or as gift.

               Two seven-year-olds are walking home from school when one, Devon, says to the other, Earl, “What is Santa going to bring you for Christmas?”

               “I don’t believe in Santa Clause,” Earl says.

               “Why not?”

               “I can’t. We don’t have a chimney,” Earl replies, and leaves poor Devon to contemplate an existential question that lies well beyond his reach.

               An adult equivalent might take place in a palaeontologists’ laboratory where one Christian scientist, Devon, says to his fellow scientist, Earl, while working on reconstructing a dinosaur spinal cord, “I wonder if this specimen lived in the Garden of Eden?”

               And an adult Earl says, “Impossible. I just carbon dated those vertebrae over there and this guy is somewhere between two and two-and-a-half million years old.”

               And Devon nods and says, “That’s hard to believe when you think about it.”

               “Which is? The Garden of Eden or the two-million years?”

               “Both.”

Now that I’ve insulted your intelligence by posing a couple of rather obvious scenarios, let me propose that the question of believing as choice or gift has significant applications to faith practices. Further, that what happens in the human mind when faced with contradictory evidence—especially when pressures for conformity are brought to bear—is a question highly relevant to religious teaching and practice as well as to ethics studies generally.  

               Let’s dispense with the question of language imprecision first: words are clouds, not pinpoints. You can say, “I believe in God,” but what the hearer understands by that statement, i.e. what you mean by believe, is uncertain. It could be anything from a tentative conviction that there is an outside force that governs the events in the universe, to a permanent-ish conviction that everything stated or implied in your holy book and/or by your cult or denomination’s teachings is indisputably true and reliable. Furthermore, “Do you believe in God?” is an ambiguous question unless both the speaker and hearer are agreed on which god is being talked about. We should all have observed by adulthood that, for instance, the god of the by-now ancient Roman Catholic Church and the god of American Evangelicalism barely resemble each other.

               There is merit in the old saw, “Don’t tell me what you believe; tell me what you do and don’t do, and I’ll know what you actually believe.” If you put cookies and milk out on the hearth on Christmas Eve, your belief  in the existence of the legendary Santa Clause will be confirmed. If a man starts and nourishes a romantic relationship with another man’s wife, he believes that there are exceptions to the concept of fidelity in marriage being inside the will of God. One could add, by the same token, that a person who doesn’t share good fortune with others does not believe that Jesus’ radical wisdom in the Sermon on the Mount is valid, however much this person protests his/her/their belief in discipleship.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 epidemic when it was at its worst, the world saw a rash of conspiracy theories whose enunciation began with, “I believe …” statements. “I believe there’s a hidden, deep-state with an interest in my demise and in their domination over me and people like me.” We all saw how this and other conspiracy theories led to actions like the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. capital and we asked, “Is it possible that they actually believe this?”  And, yes, if actions reveal belief, then they either believed the conspiracies existed, or they pretended to believe it in order to give cover to an anti-social agenda, possibly. And if they really believed it enough to participate in the January 6^th attack, was their belief arrived at through their personal thinking, or was it coerced? Did some believe it a lot, and others believe it a little? What part of a conviction does one arrive at through one’s own logic, and how much responds to a pressure to conform?

               Is belief a choice or a “gift?” And if it’s a gift, and therefore unearned, is it more like a diamond ring or a rape-pregnancy?

               Why spend effort defining a word and our understanding of its use when—some will say—all this is self-evident? It’s not self-evident to me, but I daresay that for those who insist that you either believe or you don’t, it’s much ado about nothing.

               In Christianity, there’s a much-loved thread that’s become an exclusive mantra to much of Christendom. It goes something like this: Because Adam and Eve chose the sin of disobedience, everyone since is born with the taint of their decadence. All, therefor, are condemned to eternal death when in their natural state, except that God sent Jesus to die in our place so that we are henceforth cleansed of all our guilt and are made heirs of an eternal reward … if we believe. It’s no wonder that where that thread becomes the exclusive core of a religion, believing would be deemed to constitute both the “threshold into the church” and the “stumbling block” to those who doubt. This is not to say that that theological thread is in error; Jesus admonition that his hearers “must be born again” in order to enter the kingdom is a paramount first step in order to follow (emulate) him. But seeing the world with new eyes—through Jesus’ eyes—is the threshold to the kingdom, not the end and exit point.

               People often choose their local church by assessing how its beliefs coincide with their own. (Seeking out the most compatible, comfortable pew would be another way of describing that strategy.) But like individuals, church’s beliefs are often suspended from a jello hook, even if they’re listed on paper in creed-like pronouncements. Unless a congregation’s deeds match its faith declaration, one can be assured that its beliefs are a façade, maybe even pretense in a state of denial.

               Both the beliefs that dominate a church’s outlook and the “born again” eyes with which it sees its neighbours and its community members are revealed in what that church does. I remain a participant in a certain church because it does work the gospels admonish it to do. Not perfectly, not always, but the sermons, council discussions, informal dialogue don’t devote precious time to refining doctrines while neighbours near and far are in need. This church has shed the consciousness that only those who line up with its confession can rightly be participants: it accepts that the understanding of what and who we’re talking about when we talk about God can be as varied as there are people in the circle. The telling factor in membership is our ability to work together in service of the ideals set out by Jesus in his teaching. It’s in the sharing of a vision for the peaceable kingdom and the hope that it’s achievable.

               In summary, when we’re looking for a church to attend, let’s not ask, “What do you guys believe?” Ask instead, “What do you guys do?”

               Devons and Earls are everywhere. Truth is, Christmas morning can be the best memory for both if they let it be so. As grown-ups, nothing prevents them from gleefully discovering the secrets of a distant past, whether that past is 6,000 or 2,000,000 years ago.

               “²² Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. ²³ Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴ and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. ²⁵ But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.” (James 1:22-25, NIV)