I Believe that I Believe

We are, many of us, divided in our faith. We believe, and we doubt.

When our lives go unexpectedly well, we (may) attribute it to the providence of God.

When they go unexpectedly poorly, we look for someone to blame, ignoring God's providence altogether. He obviously couldn't have wanted this failure, mishap, catastrophe. We show, once again, that we don't really believe that God is in charge.

And in between the highs and the lows, we pretty much live our own lives, while believing that we believe in an all-powerful God.

I remember an (overweight) college professor of mine saying that he wanted to want to lose weight, but he didn't actually want to lose weight or he would have.

He wanted the benefit of being slimmer, but he didn't want it enough to pay the price of eating less. He wanted to be willing to make the sacrifice, but he wasn't in fact willing. He didn't want to be slim that much.

I wonder whether some of us believe that we believe, but don't actually believe.

We think that being a Christian makes us a better, more admirable, person. We may like the company of other Christians. We want to think of ourselves, and be seen, as Christians.

But we don't actually believe that God is everywhere, always acting to draw all men to himself. If we did we'd act differently.

We don't really believe that Jesus was God in flesh. We don't really believe that he rose from the dead, or that our future life depends entirely on his having been crucified for us. If we did, we'd think about it more; we'd act on it more.

The Christian faith is weighty. It demands something of us.

It demands humility, and that's the last virtue we want. In fact, most of us work pretty hard at winning the approval of others.

It demands that we love and forgive everyone -- not just theoretically, not just the grocery boy who put our bananas at the bottom of the bag, but the people we rub against every day, the people who annoy us every day, the people in our past who have injured us grievously, the people we don't like.

It demands that we stop anxiously trying to control everything and instead tell our desires to God with joy and confidence in his goodness and provision for us.

For most of us, actualy believing in the reality of the triune God would require a radical change in our lives. So we content ourselves with believing that we believe.

It's comfortable, doesn't require us to examine our lives, our hearts, our minds. It just leaves us alone, which is how we like it for now.