Believing

Instead of asking yourself whether you believe [in God] or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because He said, Do it, or once abstained because He said, Do not do it. It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything he tells you. –George McDonald

I’ve been spending some a good portion of my time in the book of James lately, and it is impossible for me to read that book in the Bible without questioning the nature of belief.

If you’ve ever heard me speak or lead a Bible study you have probably heard me use the illustration of the man who crossed Niagara falls on a tightrope while pushing a wheelbarrow full of sand. When he returned to the other side he emptied the sand from his wheelbarrow as he ask the crowd that had gathered whether or not they thought he could repeat the feet. When they resoundingly affirmed him he said: “let the man who really believes in me climb in this wheelbarrow.” (I heard this story from Michael Guido).

The story demonstrates that people can mean two different things when they say that they believe in something, and that only our actions can prove to us which kind of belief we are talking about. For example: I claim to not really believe in ghosts, but would I flee up the stairs from a dark basement so quickly if that were truly the case? Our actions can sometimes prove that we are lying to ourselves about what we do or do not believe in.

We say that God judges the heart as if it is a comfort, but I think we are often too optimistic about our hearts. We live our lives by the motto “It’s the thought that counts.” We are under the impression that we have good thoughts and good motives. But what do our actions have to say about what is really going on inside of us? Our fruits prove what kind of tree we really are. You can only know what’s inside of you by seeing what is coming out. 

I can’t read the words of James or Jesus without being confronted by the terrifying truth that people often deceive themselves about who they are and what they believe. So I have to keep asking myself: what do my actions say about the God (god?) I’m worshiping? And who (or what) am I a slave to?

Most of man’s psychological make-up is probably due to his body—when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that he chose, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to good digestion, will fall off some of us; all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see everyone as he really was. There will be surprises. –C.S. Lewis: A Mind Awake

The Real trouble is that ‘kindness’ is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. –C.S. Lewis: The Problem of Pain

How impossible it is to enact the surrender of the self by doing what we like. –C.S. Lewis: The Problem of Pain