Belief, a More Nuanced Framework

Preface

I love Jesus. Most of the time I like Jesus. I am learning to love the church again. I am allowing myself to ask questions I never asked before. I don't ask because I want to degrade Jesus, but because I think He is strong enough for my questions. These are thoughts as I continue my faith journey from deconstruction to reconstruction and beyond…

Prayer

God. When I was younger, belief seemed like such a simple concept. But the more I think about belief, the more complicated it gets for me. I always thought I could decide to believe, but now it feels like my ability to believe or not believe is largely outside of my control. It seems like my genetics, personality, and upbringing are very important and I had no control over any of this. Can you help me understand? Thanks, Tom.

Musings

I read recently that evangelical Christianity is primarily defined by beliefs, which seemed obvious. Big Duh. What blew my mind was that not all religions are defined by beliefs. Some are more defined by actions and culture. Having lived in an evangelical bubble forever, I never even considered this distinction.  

This got me thinking more about beliefs. In evangelicalism we like to ask, “Are you a believer?” This is the question that bifurcates the world into the in crowd and out crowd. In evangelicalism people choose to believe and follow Christ. But can we really choose to believe?  

I believe things after evaluating the data I have against my experience, knowledge, and personality. I cannot change my belief after that evaluation any more than I can change the size of my ski jump nose. Until the facts or my knowledge or my experience or my personality change my belief cannot change.  

Furthermore, I do not think belief is a simple, yes or no. I think we can understand belief better representing it by a 2 by 2 matrix consisting of belief and non-belief against want to and do not want to.  

The person that believes and wants to believe is a happy person. I call this person the happy Christian. They feel good believing in Jesus and from their evaluation of the data they do believe Jesus. They are internally in harmony.  

The person that does not believe yet wants to believe is like many of those that are deconstructing their faith. I call this person a sad secularist. Many people grew up in the faith and want it all (or at least the “good” parts) to be true, but the worlds of science and academia make it difficult to believe in all the evangelical claims. But people cannot force themselves to believe any more than I can change Trump into a nice person. And so, they are internally conflicted. I think of a friend with a Christian family and friends. They all want her to believe, and she wants to believe but so far, she does not.  

The person that believes but does not want to has heard certain things so many times they cannot imagine them being false. However, for whatever reason, they do not feel comfortable with those beliefs. Perhaps they are offended by some of their beliefs. So, the people feel trapped in a religious prison. And so, they are internally conflicted as well. I call this person the sad Christian. 

The person that does not believe and does not want to is a happy person. I call this person a happy secularist. They are internally harmonious.  

Faith purports to move people from being a sad secularist to a happy Christian. In faith, the sad secularist tries to override their actual beliefs and change them to match what we want them to be. Since belief is what gets us into the in crowd and belief changes our eternal destiny, there is a lot riding on this faith. For some people, it is a fake it til you make it exercise. The actual belief is not there, but faith can be stirred up, so we believe that we believe, even if we truthfully struggle with the belief. (Sorry about that tongue twister.) Ideally, in that context there is a new experience to show that faith to be well founded, and the actual belief follows as experience has changed. 

Unfortunately, you can easily get into a situation like the emperor's new clothes where many people, somewhere between sad secularist and happy Christian, cannot admit that their faith has not changed their actual beliefs. No one admits this and you think you are the only one struggling. You are isolated because belief is the differentiator, and you do not want to be in the out crowd. 

This reminds me of one of my favorite Bible verses. “Lord I believe. Help me with my unbelief.”  This verse gives words to the struggle many people have, and it is the cry for those sad secularists trying to become happy Christians.  

I feel like I spent a lot of time in this gray middle between sad secularist and happy Christian. I kept pumping up the faith to keep in the happy Christian place pretending my beliefs had followed my faith when in fact some had not and could not. I segregated the mechanical engineer-like critically thinking part of me from the spiritual part of me because I wanted to believe fully and was afraid to let all of me comingle. This is a form of belief management. 

Belief management is used to keep ourselves or someone we care about in the happy Christian part of the matrix. Assuming I am correct that beliefs are only a function of the data in and the nature of the human, belief management is managing the data and the human. Many of us Christians live in a state of fear about this, and so we limit the data we receive, and our loved ones receive in order to help support their belief. Additionally, we home school (which we did), and attend Sunday school, and youth group, and go to Christian College to train ourselves so that our nature processes the data we receive in a way to supports belief. Is that right? Actually, it is not all right or all wrong.  

Since 2016, the bifurcating wall inside me crumbled and since then I’ve be deluged with data and it's confusing, messy, and it challenges my faith. But I think I am a stronger, better person and believer having opened my eyes to the entire world. While not every deconstruction leads to reconstruction, I appreciate that I am no longer living in fear that there is a fact around the corner that will surprise me and steal all my faith. It seems that living in fear, even fear of “losing one’s salvation,” is not a healthy or Christian way to live. Ironically, we speak a lot of trusting Jesus, but one of the things we struggle with is trusting Him with data and our own status as a Christian. 

I come away with these thoughts: 

• We should have a more nuanced understanding of belief so that we can be more authentic with each other and help each other so people do not struggle in isolation 
• Admit we do not have the power to arbitrarily change our beliefs and give the fear of wrong beliefs to God exemplifying the idea, “Lord I believe, help me with my unbelief.” 
• Move away from a life of fear trusting God to connect with us where we are, even if you are a skeptical engineer.