What is meant by 'believing'?
It is hardly surprising that people struggle with the idea of belief in God when they see the tragedies and upheavals caused by wars, both now and in the past, which are apparently conducted in the name of God. A couple of weeks ago it was Holocaust Remembrance; did you know that Hitler, in his skewed reasoning, thought that by killing Jews he was doing a service for God?
Yet, asked whether they believe in God, about half of the people in this country answer in the affirmative. What do we mean when we say that we believe in God? Some will mean that they are prepared to acknowledge the existence of something they call God which lies behind the visible world; perhaps an impersonal force or maybe a grandfather-like being. This definition of belief is like when I say that I believe in the existence of the planet Neptune, even though I have neverseen it.
To say that I believe simply in the existence of something falls short of what Christians mean when they say that they believe in God. The Bible has little time for such narrow expressions of belief. ‘So, you believe in the existence of God do you? Big deal, so does the devil and his minions!’ (paraphrase of James 2 verse 19).
First and foremost, Christians believe in a person. If you have a doctor, friend or relative that you trust implicitly, then you might express that trust by declaring, ‘I believe in him (or her) absolutely.’ This is how it is when Christians say that they believe in Jesus – a belief which expresses itself in trust.
‘Hold on,’ someone may say, ‘I thought we were talking about belief in God and now you have switched it to belief in Jesus.’ Yes, that is quite right. Jesus asserts that he is the way to God and that if we will trust him, he is able to sort out and fully satisfy every issue that would cause God to keep his distance from us. This is why God, loving a world made up of people who were ignorant of him, sent his own Son Jesus that we might trust in Him and come to know God as our Father in heaven. This being the case means that trust in Jesus is, at one and the same time, trust in God himself.
So next time you hear or see some news item that tempts you to despair of belief in God, perhaps you will blame man’s ignorance of the true God. You may then wish to consider Jesus who says that he can change our hearts, bring us to God and, step by step, give us renewed thinking.