True Belief
Posted at 5:19 PM
I’ve written before on why theology is not dull and irrelevant. In Theology is the Revolution I talked a little about how we do theology – by trying to think Christianly about everything, getting rid of the idols in our hearts and minds, and above all getting to know God better.
There’s a potential pitfall here, and that’s an intellectual-only understanding of truths about God. For example, it’s perfectly possible to have a fully fleshed out view of the atonement, that encompasses propitiation, justification, redemption and reconciliation, without that moving you to love God more and give him the praise he is due for sending Christ to die in our place. James writes:
You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder. (James 2:19)
Even the demons have an intellectual belief in God, but we know Christian belief is different because it results in a changed life. A sign of whether I truly believe something is whether it affects my actions. To take the common and silly example of a chair: if I claim to believe a chair will take my weight, but refuse to sit down on it, then my actions show my lack of belief. James writes later:
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. (James 3:13)
There’s another aspect to true belief too. If our emotions are not engaged, then how can we say we truly believe? If I don’t love Jesus more because of the cross then I’ve not fully grasped the cross, however great my intellectual understanding. If I say I know that God is glorious but that doesn’t delight me, I either don’t truly believe he is glorious, or worse, I’ve no delight in his glory because of my unredeemed nature. Jonathan Edwards said:
He that is spiritually enlightened… does not merely rationally believe that God is glorious, but he has a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart. There is not only a rational belief that God is holy, and that holiness is a good thing, but there is a sense of the loveliness of God’s holiness. (Jonathan Edwards, A Divine and Supernatural Light)
Jesus says to the Pharisees:
Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.’” (Mark 7:6)
It’s possible to say the right things – maybe even do the right things – but still have our hearts far from God. We often say that love is a choice, not a feeling – but that’s not the whole story. John writes: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16) – Christ showed his love for us by dying in our place. The writer to the Hebrews says: “[Jesus,] for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2) – Christ died for us because of the greatness of his resulting joy, having saved a people for himself. John Piper’s famous thesis is that obedience and joy go together; our hearts are warmed when we show our love for God through following him, because that is how we are made. True love is never mere decision; it stems from and flows into our hearts.
So here we have three aspects of true belief: the intellectual side, the emotional side, and the behavioural side. You could call them Doctrine, Behaviour and the Heart. They affect our thinking, our feeling and our doing. True belief must affect all three. They’re like three sides of a triangle, which must go together, otherwise the triangle is distorted.
We might naturally have a tendency towards one or another. For example, the rationalist philosopher might tend towards thinking as ultimate, ruling out emotions and objective tests. The existentialist might concern themselves much more with feelings. Or, perhaps closer to home, the conservative evangelical might expend much effort getting their thinking straight, but not letting what they “know” affect their hearts or change their lives; parts of the church might play down the importance of doctrine as long as we’re doing something (about the environment, the poor, the marginalised); other parts might be tempted to base truth around experience and not Scripture. All have distorted the triangle in some way; all need correction.
When we read the Bible, or a Christian book, it should never remain intellectual only. If what we’re “learning” isn’t changing our lives, we’ve not really learnt it. If it’s not warming our hearts, we don’t truly understand it. God’s truth should change us from the inside out, and not just inform our minds: it must warm our hearts and change our wills, too.
When I open up the Bible, I might read a passage for the umpteenth time and say that I know it – but most of the time my life won’t look like I believe it, and my heart is still cold to its truths. I need to take the chance to refresh my understanding so as to affect more than just my mind.
When I come to theology, it should turn my world upside-down, affecting the way I think, the way I feel, the way I act. It can’t just be limited to one area – it’s got to affect them all. It’s only then that theology will be truly revolutionary.
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