Just What Have we Come to believe?
Meditation for the week of October 18, 2009
John 6:67-69
Then Jesus said to the twelve, "Do you also want to go away?" But Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
I have been following a conversation on the internet dealing with President Obama’s birth certificate. Some say the one produced in Hawaii is fake and they have the “facts” to prove it. Some say the one produced in Hawaii is authentic and they have the “facts” to prove it. It has become painfully obvious to me that I will probably never know which facts are the correct facts to believe. But it has also become obvious to me that we tend to believe what we want to believe. Those who like President Obama want to believe that the birth certificate is authentic and those who do not like him want to believe that it has been faked.
When we come to Biblical truth, the same problem exists. Some have the “facts” to prove that we are the product of lots of time and chance. They believe “the scientific facts” produced by evolutionary thinking. Then there are those of us who believe that “the fact” that we were designed and didn’t just happen is self evident. Some of us believe that the Bible is the Word of God. Others believe that it was produced by a number of different men over a considerable amount of time and that it is the wisdom of man and not the infallible Word of God. Some of us believe that the Lord died on the cross and was buried and rose again the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). We believe that there were over 500 witnesses to “the fact” that the Lord was alive after His crucifixion (1 Corinthians 15:6). But there are some who still believe that the disciples came by night and stole the body away (Matthew 28:11-15). What should we believe? We don’t want to be wrong, do we?
Ultimately, I believe that we all believe what we want to believe. We come from different backgrounds and different points of view; but because we have the nature of sin or unbelief about us from the day of our birth, we find it hard to just believe God. That is why the Bible says that we must repent in order to believe the Gospel. That is the “facts” as I see them.
Repentance means different things to different people, but to me it just means that we have to admit that God is right and we are wrong when we find ourselves disagreeing with God as He has revealed Himself in the Bible. I do not believe repentance is simply an act of the will. It takes the Holy Spirit using the Word of God to change our minds. However, even the Holy Spirit cannot change our minds unless we are willing to let to Him do that. We must first be willing to believe and that is an act of the will. Then we must let the Holy Spirit show us where we are wrong and convince us of the truth of the facts in order for us to believe. The problem is that we have a lot invested in believing what we believe even if it is wrong. It is hard to be willing and humble enough to admit that we just might be wrong so that God can show us through the Word of God what is right.
I personally feel that there are many good reasons for believing that the Bible is true. I could give you reasons that archaeologists have found. I could show you the miraculous fulfillment of the prophetic Word. I could show you that God knows you better than you know yourself. I could point out that if the Bible is true then nothing else matters and if the Bible isn’t true then nothing matters. However, as much as I wish I could convince people to believe the “facts” as I understand them, I can’t. People believe what they want to believe.
Me, I want to believe God.
Bruce Collins