Believe? Sounds pretty simple...

When I was dealing with the whole atheism thing, one of the things that always bugged me was the concept of belief.  We're always told (and we tell others) that we just need to "believe in Jesus" and we will inherit eternal life.  In the words of D.L. Moody:

Have faith in God! Take Him at His word! Believe what He says!

Is it really that simple?  What if someone really doesn't believe?  Richard Dawkins makes this point by asking the question: 

What if I don't believe? How can I just start believing something that I don't believe? Does God want a bunch of fakers?”  [a paraphrase from The God Delusion]

 Stephen Weinberg, in Dreams of a Final Theory says the same thing, but much more eloquently:

The decision to believe or not is not entirely in our hands. I might be happier if I thought I were descended from the emperors of China, but no effort of will on my part can make me believe it, any more than I can will my heart to stop beating.

So is belief something we have control over, or are we at it's mercy?  Does our will have any control over our beliefs, or are our beliefs completely inaccessible to us, as Dawkins would have us believe?

And what is faith?  Is that the same as belief? Can you have faith and not belief?  Belief and not faith? 

A second aspect to this problem is less semantic and more theological.  Ever since I started reading my Bible seriously, I have been struck by the differences between Jesus and Paul - Especially when they start talking about salvation.  Paul, of course, says over and over again that faith (or belief) alone is what saves us whereas Jesus repeatedly emphasizes that we will be judged based on how we lived our lives. Now, neither Jesus or Paul are completely on one end of the spectrum, and this disparity is not new; it is one of the main causes of the Protestant-Catholic divide.  But I am continually shocked by the efforts my fellow Christians will make to neuter Jesus' words in an effort to reconcile them with Paul's statements on salvation.  

I read something recently that helps make sense of all this.  In his book, Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard discusses what it means for a Christian to "believe":

Gandhi, who had looked closely at Christianity as practiced around him in Great Britain, remarked that if only Christians would live according to their belief in the teachings of Jesus, "we all would become Christians."  We know what he meant, and he was right in that.  But the dismaying truth is that the Christians were living according to their "belief" in the teachings of Jesus.  They didn't believe them!

Moreover, knowing the "right answers" - knowing which ones they are, being able to identify them - does not mean we believe them. To believe them, like believing anything else, means that we are set to act as if they (the right answers) are true and that we will do so in appropriate circumstances.  And acting as if the right answers are true means, in turn, that we intend to obey the example and teachings of Jesus the Anointed.  What else would we intend if we believed he is who his people through the ages have declared him to be?

Perhaps the hardest thing for sincere Christians to come to grips with is the level of real unbelief in their own life:  The unformulated skepticism about Jesus that permeates all dimensions of their being and undermines what efforts they do make toward Christlikeness.

The idea that you can trust Christ and not intend to obey him is an illusion generated by the prevalence of an unbelieving "Christian culture."  In fact, you can no more trust Jesus and not intend to obey him than you could trust you doctor and your auto mechanic and not intend to follow their advice.  If you don't intend to follow their advice, you simply don't trust them.  Period.  (Of course in this case you might well have good reason.)

  

I find that this helps greatly with the questions I pose above.  What is belief?  Belief is that which we are set to act upon.  In other words, we believe something is true if we act as if its true.

This helps answer the second question:  Who was right? Jesus or Paul?  Well, of course, both are right:

In Acts 16, when Paul and Silas were asked by their jailer "What must I do to be saved?" they replied:  "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved."  

This "belief" does not mean that the jailer should state that certain things are true about Jesus; that Jesus died for his sins, or say a special prayer, or even say that he is following Jesus with his life.  For the jailer (and likewise, us) to believe means that the jailer really believes; and real belief will necessarily lead to doing the things that Jesus told us to do.  If he doesn't go obey Jesus, he did not believe.

Likewise, In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats, and describes how, in the end times, people will be separated based on their actions: "[The wicked] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." (Matt. 10:46)  These actions are simply the kinds of things someone would naturally do if they believe.  We will be judged by our actions because our actions are a direct and necessary result of belief, (understood correctly).  

Unfortunately, this doesn't help answer the question:  What must I do to believe?  Richard Dawkins' question is still valid:  "What if I don't believe?"  

I think the answer to that question must have something to do with "faith".  But that is another post.