On Belief

I was having a tremendously interesting conversation last night with some folks in a spirituality group I've been meeting with the last two weeks, and one of the topics that came up was belief: As in, it's hard to go to church, (for example) when you don't believe in God, or at least aren't sure you believe in God.

There's a philosopher/Christian defender from back in the day who argues that you should believe in God because 1. If you do believe in God and God exists, you get rewarded after death (assuming God rewards people for believing) 2. If you believe in God and God doesn't exist, you don't lose anything because you'll be dead then anyway. 3. If you don't believe in God and God does exist--big trouble! and 4. If you don't believe and you're right, well you don't really get anything out of that deal either. So, the result of this whole exposition is: you might as well hedge your bets and believe in God. Right?

Well, there's one big problem: nobody just decides to believe or not believe. It's possible to be convinced, or to change your mind over time, but just wanting to believe something isn't going to flip a magic switch of some kind.

So, two thoughts.

1. The ability to believe, or to have faith, is a gift from God, not something that we have immediate control of for ourselves. There's a quote in the gospels that sums it up very well when a man says to Jesus, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief."

2. Believing particular propositions isn't the most important part of being a Christian. To my mind, how we act is more important. And in fact I think that our actions reinforce our beliefs and even grow and develop them. Reference: Indiana Jones on his way to the holy grail basically has to step out into open air. Who knows whether he believes he'll really land on something solid? But once he hits the stone bridge, he really does believe. So it may be that the order of things gets reversed sometimes--sometimes action comes before belief.