On the difference between mere belief and faith

In our day, belief is almost always limited to a kind of cognitive activity. If I believe something, then something is happening in my mind. So if I say, “I believe that Jesus is Lord” it sounds as if I am saying I believe some fact about Jesus, i.e. that he is Lord. Now there’s nothing wrong with believing such a thing, but the question still remains: Does believing that fact make a difference in how I live?

You see I believe all kinds of things that have very little, if anything, to do with how I live my life. I’ll give you three examples. I believe that Walter Peyton was the greatest running back of all time. I also believe that they grow a lot of corn in Indiana. And, I believe there is only one natural lake in the state of Texas, which would be Caddo Lake. Now, I truly believe those three things with varying degrees of certainty.

I believe they are true. They are part of my “mental furniture” if you will, in my mind. They just kind of sit up there, but they don’t really do anything. They aren’t the sort of beliefs that affect how I live my life (at least not in any significant way). Right? So for instance, believing that Walter Peyton was the greatest running back of all time doesn’t make me a better person.

In the same way, I may very well believe all kinds of things about Jesus Christ. I may believe that he was a divinely inspired teacher, that he healed people, and that he died on a cross and rose again. I may believe that he is the Son of God. But if all I believe is that these things are true, if those beliefs are just part of my mental furniture sitting up there not really doing anything, then it really makes no difference whether I believe them or not. At least, it doesn’t make a difference in how I live.

Now understandably someone might wonder, “How is it possible to believe all those things and yet those things not affect how one lives? Surely, if I believe that Jesus is the Son of God I will worship him and honor him with how I live, right?” No, not necessarily. There are people in the world right now who believe God exists and yet that belief makes no difference in their everyday decisions. That used to be me. I have never been an atheist, but there were years when I paid no attention God, unless I got in trouble. Just because we believe something is true doesn’t mean it affects the way we live. This is exactly the point that James was hitting on when he said, “Even the demons believe…” But, of course, it doesn’t change the fact that they still go around doing demon stuff.

So, when we as Christians talk about “belief” we don’t mean what we might call mere belief. We don’t mean simply believing that something is true. If all the Christian life were about was believing a few facts, then that would be pretty easy, as long as we could swallow some pretty incredible facts. So, that’s belief. What about faith?

I think we, as Christians, intuitively know that faith means something more than mere belief, just believing a few facts. But, what is that something more? Certainly faith includes believing some things are true, but faith also includes trust, and more specifically, trust in a Person. So to give an example, I can believe it is a fact that my friend is trustworthy, but I don’t have faith in my friend until I actually trust my friend with something. I can truly believe my friend is trustworthy, and yet refuse to trust my friend with anything.

There is this mistaken assumption that what Christian do is believe a set of facts about God and Christ. That is kind of a caricature of what it is we try to do. It isn’t that we simply believe the fact that Jesus died and rose again. What we are trying to do, if we are doing it right, is place our trust in the person of Christ who in fact died and rose again. That is a significant difference. Facts don’t love us. Facts don’t die for us. Facts could care less about us, because facts can’t care. Only persons can do those things. And so when we talk about faith, or belief, we mean we are trusting in the person of Christ.

And so what I would say to anyone who is seeking, and yet having trouble believing the truth claims of our faith, is simply: don’t worry about that now. If someone is really seriously considering the Christian faith, then my suggestion would be to focus on trusting the person of Christ. And more generally, trusting God. So, what does that mean? How does one do that? It means praying. Even if you’re unsure anyone is listening, do it anyway. That is an act of trust.

Also, read about this God, this God who claims to love you. And, spend time in Christian community, which means we as Christian need to ensure we are loving. We are the body of Christ in this world. When people are searching and come to our communities we have a huge responsibility to represent the love of God.

You may disagree with me on this, but my position is that faith begins with trust. Ultimately faith is a gift of grace, but that gift includes our trust. I believe that in time, if we trust God as revealed in the person of Christ, we will find this person to be trustworthy. And it is that experience of the trustworthiness of Christ that builds and strengthens our faith. But we will only discover the trustworthiness of Christ if we form a relationship with this person through prayer, through the scriptures, through interaction within a community. What I absolutely do not believe will work, is that the way to faith is to just swallow "whole hog" a bunch of truth claims that seem to us to be extraordinarily difficult to believe. Faith is something that happens in relationships.

You see, although the disciples had a much different experience with the risen Lord than we do; the fact of the matter is that they are very much like us in the most significant ways. What I mean is there came a time, not long after the resurrection appearances, when our Lord returned to his Father in heaven. From that moment on, the disciples had to face each day just like we do, trusting God. In other words they had to have faith just like we do. I think it is important to note that they received the same Holy Spirit that we do. They needed the Spirit’s help with their faith, just as we do.

Here’s the thing, no matter what kind of experience we have, we cannot escape the fact that we will have to have faith. Some people have extraordinary experiences and some people don’t. But everyone who seeks to know and follow Christ must have faith, must trust the person. It’s inescapable, which brings us back to belief.

Do Christians believe certain things about God and Christ and so on? Of course we do. But the key is to understand that we don’t believe isolated beliefs. It’s not that we come to believe Jesus is the Son of God and that’s it. On the contrary, there is a whole framework that one belief is a part of. The resurrection is one brush stroke in a much larger picture about God, the world, and humanity. It takes time to get a grasp of this larger picture. Which means our beliefs, as we understand them, will develop and grow as we understand more and more. These things take time. What I have understood and believed about the resurrection has changed and grown over time. That’s just how it is.

But here is where things get tricky. We, as limited humans, do not have a perfect picture. The picture we have is sufficient for what we need, but it is not an exact representation of God’s point of view. One of the great temptations for Christians is to assume that we have a picture that clearly and exactly represents reality. That is not the case. As long as we walk on this earth we will always see through a glass darkly, as Paul puts it. And as soon as we think we have it all figured out, without fail something will happen to temper our arrogance. And when that happens we will once again hit our knees in faith. We will never become so certain of our belief that we will no longer need faith. I believe, rightly or wrongly, that God has designed it to be exactly this way. We will never escape the need to trust the God who loves us.

What this means, I think, is that it’s important to nurture some humility. We need to understand that we don’t understand it all. This isn’t blind faith, mind you. God has given us good reasons to trust. But God has not given us all the answers either. There are some things that happen that we just don’t understand. Even so, what we can know by faith is that God loves us. This love of God that is revealed in Christ is where faith begins and it is where faith resides until we no longer need faith. That is, we will live by faith in Christ, until we see our risen Lord face to face