Choosing to Believe

In my previous post, I talked about belief, and how our actions reveal what we truly believe.  One question that was left unanswered, however, is one posed by Richard Dawkins, among others:

Believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy.  At least, it is not something I can decide to do as an act of will.  I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bibles that I believe every word inside them.  But none of that can make me actually believe it if I don't.  Pascal's Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God.  And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he'd see through the deception. [The God Delusion, p.104]

Dawkins makes a good point, one that  I struggled with it for a long time.  I didn't believe, and I knew it.  I really wanted to believe, but couldn't.  What advice would you give someone in this situation?  

For some, the issue really is that they don't want to believe.  For Dawkins, I suspect that he poses the question not out of a genuine desire to believe, but to simply point out that it is truly ridiculous to ask someone to "just believe".  He's right.  We can't just decide to change our beliefs. 

Like my last post, Dallas Willard's book, Renovation of the Heart can shed some light on this (at least it did for me).  Willard agrees with Dawkins:

We do not choose to believe (or not).  Our beliefs and feelings cannot be changed by choice.  We cannot just choose to have different beliefs and feelings...

But Willard continues:

 ...but we do have some liberty to take in different ideas and think about things in different ways. We can choose to take in the Word of God and when we do that beliefs and feelings will be steadily pulled in a Godly direction.

So if Dallas Willard is correct, (and I think he is) then we are not able, in the current moment, to change our beliefs by simply choosing to do so.  But this does not mean that belief is completely out of our control.  Our choices today can (and do) influence the things we believe tomorrow.  So if we choose to read and absorb the Bible and think in ways that will, over time, cause our beliefs to change.

Dawkins was correct when he wrote that:

I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed...

True, he could decide to do that.  But he doesn't.  And of course, he doesn't believe.  I'm not saying that going to church or reciting a creed will help someone believe in God.  I am only saying (mostly from experience) that if one decides that he is going to live like God exists, his life will include things like going to church and reading the Bible.  And these activities, sincerely pursued, will slowly change his beliefs.

So we are responsible for our beliefs, but not in a direct way.  This has great implications for how we present the Gospel.  In Willards words:

One of the worst mistakes that can be made in practical ministry is to think that people can choose to believe and can feel differently.  Following that, we will mistakenly try to generate faith by going through the will, possibly trying to move the will by playing on emotion.  Rather, the will must be moved by insight into truth and reality.  Such insight will evoke emotion, appropriate to a new set of the will.  That is the order of real inward change.

My pastor frequently says things like: 

You're too busy to read your Bible? Well, you see, we make time for the things that are important to us.  So make time to read your Bible.

Is it just me, or does that not make sense at all?  How does that change whether I find it important to read my Bible?  And if what he says is true, I will not begin to read my Bible until I find it relevant to my life.  My will can do nothing (over the long run) to change my habits.  My Bible reading will come through a change in my inner character, which will in turn change my priorities.

 In the same way, no amount of willpower will enable me to believe something that I do not see adequate evidence for.  True belief will come through experience of the truth of God's existence.

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.