Choosing What I Believe
By David W Hall
‘A dingo’s got my baby!’ The desperate cry rang out through the camp ground at Ayers Rock on August 17th, 1980 as the anguished mother screamed for help to rescue her nine-week old infant. In the months that followed that horrible moment, the most appalling miscarriage of justice in Australia’s recent history was to unfold. A plethora of wild claims were being made in the media, and in the courtroom faulty ‘evidence’ was being presented. Public opinion became utterly polarised as discussions and arguments took place in buses and trains, offices and lunchrooms, TV and newspapers. Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion. Finally, the bereaved mother was wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of her baby.
What became clear to me during that time was that community discussion was not being guided by evidence. People simply chose what they would believe! Would they trust the word of the mother, or would they opt for the wild claims that circulated in the media? And, choose, they did!
Throughout history, it has always been the same. Apart from rigorous laboratory research, people generally believe what they choose to believe, and they do so mostly because of their unwitting agendas and predispositions. Emotions play a huge part in our choice of what to believe.
I was sharing the message of Christ with a man who was not a Christian. His sincere response was, ‘I wish I had faith like you, but I cannot believe’. How right yet, at the same time, how wrong he was! He could not believe because he would not believe. Deep inside his heart he knew that if he chose to believe the message of Christ he would be immediately accountable to it. If Jesus was truly the Son of God, then this man’s life would be affected by that reality. Like so many, he was not prepared to entrust himself to someone he could not see with his physical eyes. He preferred the uncertainties and limitations of trying to hold on to control of his own life, rather than soaring freely in the expanse of being a son of God. He needed faith.
When a person says, ‘there is no God’, he chooses this belief because it suits him. Such a person does not usually claim to possess all knowledge. So, in reality, the most he can say is, ‘in my sphere of knowledge I am not aware of God’. However, there are multitudes of people who do have a personal knowledge of God? So why does an atheist say there is no God? Maybe he does not like the implications of God’s existence. Maybe he was betrayed or mistreated by someone who was supposed to represent God or the church. Whatever the reason, it will involve a choice made from within his own heart, not primarily based upon objective evidence, or the lack thereof.
The apostle Paul made a crucial statement when he said, ‘the word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach)’. Rom 10:8. Clearly, faith is much more than a matter of applying one’s mind to evidence. True faith is linked with the heart. It is the state of our heart that dictates what and whom we believe.
The Bible shows us that the innate heart-condition of every human being begins as self-centred, self-defined and fearful. Until faith comes, these elements drive and shape us. They are the enemies of faith.
Faith of which the Bible speaks, is much more than ‘believing’. Satan and his hoards believe that God exists, and they tremble at the thought. But they have no faith! The religious leaders in the time of Christ believed in the existence of God, nevertheless they were alienated from Him. They had no faith. When God’s Son (Whom they had been awaiting for so many generations) arrived among them they did not believe Him or His word, and they crucified Him. They demonstrated clearly that faith is not just believing about God. So, then, what is faith?
Faith is the capacity to trust God Himself and what He says, and being committed to Him in love, trust and obedience. Faith is not ‘informational’ – it is ‘relational’. Faith is a divine element that is sourced in God Himself, and is exercised by each member of the Trinity.
When Jesus gave Himself to die on the cross for the sin of the whole world, He did so in full faith in the Father and the Holy Spirit. His love for the Father, and for you and me, motivated Him while His faith in the Father’s integrity and power held Him through the ordeal. Here was the ultimate demonstration of faith in all its facets. He both believed in the Father Himself and in what the Father said. He embraced what the Father said and believed in it. He believed in the Father’s power, His purpose and His trustworthiness. So He committed Himself unreservedly into the Father’s hand – to the very point of death and beyond. Becoming utterly weak and powerless to save Himself, He was able to break sin’s power over us, and deliver us from enslavement to the fear of death.
Then, His faith was honoured and validated when the Father raised Him from our death and set Him on the throne at His own right hand. He had forged a pathway by which we who trust and believe in Him now have access into the very presence of God Himself, into full and free relationship with Him. His faith now becomes our faith.
How, then, does one receive this divine capacity called ‘faith’?
Recall the man who says, ‘There is no God’. His sphere of knowledge does not contain God. Here is our first point. Faith is not sourced in ourselves or in our own research. We need to receive a word outside ourselves and outside of our own understanding. Remember the religious leaders who believed in God yet crucified His Son? They could not receive a word beyond themselves. Instead, they rejected Christ as God’s messenger to them, considering themselves to be the source of wisdom and knowledge. The Son of God would have to conform to their definition of Him before they would receive Him. Blinded by the sin and arrogance of their own hearts, they had no faith.
Several more points come out of this.
• Believing in a God that we define for ourselves is not faith. God alone defines who He is, and what He does.
• To receive God’s faith we must receive the message and the messenger He sends to us.
• God’s messenger will usually challenge the condition of our hearts.
• Seeking to define and validate ourselves apart from God will make us deaf to God’s word and therefore unable to receive faith.
In contrast to the self-righteous religious leaders of Jesus’ day who had no faith, there have been multitudes who have humbled themselves to receive Christ and His message. They have discovered that the divine element of faith has been generated in them as the Holy Spirit made the word of God’s messengers burn in their hearts. Then, having entrusted their lives to Christ they have found Him to be faithful to His word.
True are the words of the apostle Paul who wrote, ‘faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God’. Rom 10:17.
