No, no. REALLY Believe.
One of the things I do when I have to drive long distances is to listen to evangelical Christian radio on AM stations. I do this sometimes to hear the theology (or lack thereof), or to hear the direction apologetics have taken (apologietics means the arguments in defense of particular positions of faith). I sometimes find them interesting and thought provoking. I mostly find them troubling and find that the "reasonable" arguments they put forward are not quite as strong as they think.
Which, of course, makes me very careful in my own preaching. I don't want to make the same kind of straw man arguments, or to base an argument on "logic" when it is, in fact, based on "tradition" or, worse, "emotion."
So today, as I was listening raptly, I heard the radio teacher say, citing Romans, that the believer is one who "truly believes" in Jesus. (the individual was speaking about Romans 3:21-26 among other passages like Ephesians 2:8). What I found interesting was that the individual speaking then quickly qualified what "belief" meant.
He said that it does not mean "just giving your assent to something." Well, isn't that what believing something is? Isn't belief an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists (vs. faith which is to accept something that may or may not be true in the absence of facts or experience)? Apparently for this individual, giving your assent to belief in Jesus as Christ somehow just wasn't good enough.
So he continued. You have "to really believe."
That's it. That's what I missed. I don't believe until I really believe. There were other conditions, too. Really believing is to also believe in the scriptures fully (and infallibly), believe that Christ died for your sins, believe that this was a gift of God's grace and that this message is for you.
Okay. Really believe that. Don't just believe it. Really believe it.
I have to say, I had a great deal of difficulty with his point. Because I also believe in gravity. I know it to be a fact, I can feel it's effect. But does that change if I really believe it? I believe the sun provides light. If I really believed that, would I see more? Would the light be brighter or somehow more special to me?
I fail to see that you can ascribe degrees to believing in this instance. If you believe in Christ, that is giving your ascent. What the radio teacher would not say but seemed to suggest was that if you really believed, you would be much more like him and attend his church. Perhaps more to the point, the ideas that he smuggled in quickly in his definition of true belief were not lost on me. It was something of a bait and switch.
Do you believe in Christ? Yes. Do you really believe? I thought I just said that.
Because really believing, at least for this individual on the radio, does mean more than "just believing." It means acceptance of a variety of other points - particular views about the bible, and so on.
For example, if you said you believed in Jesus but weren't sure about, say, the virgin birth, then you would be questioned on your true belief. “You don’t believe in the virgin birth? You must be an immoral person who doesn’t believe in Jesus.”
Which, of course, makes me very careful in my own preaching. I don't want to make the same kind of straw man arguments, or to base an argument on "logic" when it is, in fact, based on "tradition" or, worse, "emotion."
So today, as I was listening raptly, I heard the radio teacher say, citing Romans, that the believer is one who "truly believes" in Jesus. (the individual was speaking about Romans 3:21-26 among other passages like Ephesians 2:8). What I found interesting was that the individual speaking then quickly qualified what "belief" meant.
He said that it does not mean "just giving your assent to something." Well, isn't that what believing something is? Isn't belief an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists (vs. faith which is to accept something that may or may not be true in the absence of facts or experience)? Apparently for this individual, giving your assent to belief in Jesus as Christ somehow just wasn't good enough.
So he continued. You have "to really believe."
That's it. That's what I missed. I don't believe until I really believe. There were other conditions, too. Really believing is to also believe in the scriptures fully (and infallibly), believe that Christ died for your sins, believe that this was a gift of God's grace and that this message is for you.
Okay. Really believe that. Don't just believe it. Really believe it.
I have to say, I had a great deal of difficulty with his point. Because I also believe in gravity. I know it to be a fact, I can feel it's effect. But does that change if I really believe it? I believe the sun provides light. If I really believed that, would I see more? Would the light be brighter or somehow more special to me?
I fail to see that you can ascribe degrees to believing in this instance. If you believe in Christ, that is giving your ascent. What the radio teacher would not say but seemed to suggest was that if you really believed, you would be much more like him and attend his church. Perhaps more to the point, the ideas that he smuggled in quickly in his definition of true belief were not lost on me. It was something of a bait and switch.
Do you believe in Christ? Yes. Do you really believe? I thought I just said that.
Because really believing, at least for this individual on the radio, does mean more than "just believing." It means acceptance of a variety of other points - particular views about the bible, and so on.
For example, if you said you believed in Jesus but weren't sure about, say, the virgin birth, then you would be questioned on your true belief. “You don’t believe in the virgin birth? You must be an immoral person who doesn’t believe in Jesus.”
That, of course, is exactly how we smuggle in our
assumptions, values, and definitions.
Especially when we talk about Jesus.
If we find out that the particular assumptions we hold aren’t shared, we
move into a debate of a side issue. That
is because we have often decided that in order to be Christian, you must conform with
a particular given mentality and institutionalized understanding of what it
means to be a Christian.
Dr. Robert Price states the difficulty this way:
Jesus Christ functions, for instance,
in an unnoticed and equivocal way, as shorthand for a vast system of beliefs
and institutions on whose behalf he is invoked.
Put simply, this means that when an evangelist or an apologist invites
you to have faith “in Christ,” he is in fact smuggling in a great number of
other issues. […] Thus for them, to
“accept Christ” means to accept Trinitarianism, biblicism, inerrantism,
creationism, and so on. All this, in
turn, means that “Christ” has become a shorthand designation for this whole
raft of doctrines and opinions, all of which one is to accept “by
faith,” on someone else’s say so. Christ
has become an umbrella for an unquestioning acceptance of what some preacher or
institution tells you to believe.[1]
Likewise, the idea of really believing moves the idea of the passage of Romans out of the context of Romans into a larger context of particular Christian beliefs. Paul, writing in Romans, articulates that faith in Jesus, believing in Jesus, provides salvation. And that's it. That was his point. What he argues next is about the kind of character that person has as a result (not before). He does not articulate any of the later Christian ideas - virgin birth, Trinitarianism, creationism, or any other issue. But that, for this radio teacher, is exactly what really believing means.
Another problem here is that somehow God apparently needs you to believe more than normal for God's grace to really work. If you don't really believe than apparently God doesn't really forgive you of your sins. If you don't really believe, then Jesus didn't really die for the sins of the world - or at least not yours. Does God need you to believe more than just ascent to make Christ and grace apply to your life? Apparently so according to this radio teacher.
So God, then, seems to want more than your ascent. Perhaps if Paul or, more to the point, Jesus had said this, then we might have a more clear understanding of what it means to believe more than just believing. Of course, to recognize this point as being something of a tool of the radio teacher is to recognize that what is happening is instead of learning the truth to be set free, we are being handed an illogical semantic argument in the attempt to make the passage in Romans mean more or less than it did and, thereby, making Jesus and faith and, by default the believer, more controllable.
I do believe. "Nope. You just believe. Pray that you might really believe."
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