I seem to remember saying this line years ago to somebody who was simply insisting that I was lying. After giving up on the effort to convince a determined skeptic, you also might walk away saying, "Believe what you will."
Perhaps after God has revealed so much to mankind, through His Word, through nature's obvious declarations about Him, and most importantly, through our own struggling-to-breath consciences, and we still so often "call him a liar"; perhaps God will ultimately give up, saying "Believe what you will."
We can not believe whatever we want to believe. Remember the song "I believe I can fly"? Though well sung and powerful, R Kelly could not. Of course he was speaking figuratively, but what about these lines from the same song?
If I just believe it, there's nothing to it
There are miracles in life I must achieve
But first I know it starts inside of me.
Maybe the truth does not make for good popular lyric, but like spinach, it's better for us than cotton candy. The value of BELIEF comes from the correct application. I might choose to believe that all dogs go to heaven, but is it true? (Not going there, sorry) I might like the idea that there is nothing after death, or that I will come back again as a great chess master, but an idea's comfort level is no match for its truth test.
Zig Ziglar said that "we believe what we tell ourselves". Fair enough. But do not take this to mean that whatever we tell ourselves is true! This proverb is double edged and should give us motivation to be sure that, rather than tell ourselves mythical delights we face up and tell ourselves, and thus believe, the TRUTH.By the way...MILLERWRITES copy is COPYRIGHTED. Why cut and paste when you can simply copy the link?
Great post Mike... sort of reminded me of a quote I posted to my FB wall the other day:
ReplyDelete"If you believe what you like in the Gospels and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe but yourself." --St. Augustine.
I have to say-- that one has stuck with me.
Thanks Jenn! You are right: We can not pick and choose what we want to be true. It just is.
DeleteAlso, what one person believes is not automatically the truth for all. Whatever and however you believe is personal and respect should be given to all forms of belief, not just one set of thoughts, which may or may not be true. None of us will know what is true until we die and find out, so that makes room for every kind of belief to have the possibility of truth, thus all belief is worthy of respect.
ReplyDeleteI respectively disagree with that idea Mojo. In fact, the point of my post was to declare just the opposite. "Belief" is not like a magic wand that, when waved over any claim, makes the claim worthy of anything special, especially respect.
DeleteThat which is actually true is indeed "truth for all". Just like the multiplication table is truth for all; even those who wish and pray that 3 X 9 is 28 because they remember that that is the answer they gave on the math quiz.
The good news is that we can discover and know what is truly true, and have confidence in our rational conclusion. But more on these issues when we get to F is for Faith, S is for Science and T is for Truth!