BELIEF

The first thing about belief is that I am not telling you or anybody what you must or must not believe. I can only tell you what I believe and why: that is, what I have seen or felt or experienced which brings me into that belief. What you do after that is up to you.

For instance, in my teens and twenties I was the very model of a cocky know-it-all unbeliever. I thought I knew what Christianity was about, and was not very much interested: I couldn’t be bothered. It was because someone (i.e. the Lord working through someone) forced me to look my ignorance and prejudice in the face, that I was slowly turned round. When someone asked me if I was a Christian I generally answered with a half-hearted affirmative rather than say ‘No’ outright. But the result of my being brought face-to-face with what turned out to be the Lord was that I suddenly found I was a Christian - which was a very unwelcome discovery because I then had to do something about it.

So I was never in the condition which is so fashionable these days, of thinking myself a Christian whilst not accepting each and every statement of the Creed,  and I find it very hard to understand this position. Many people claim that it is good and right to doubt everything until it is proved; but my doubts were ended for good and all the day I became a Christian, because I became a Christian! Doubt is to me something to be faced and worked through till one comes out the other side, not a principle to be adopted as a way of life.

Bear in mind that when they brought children to Jesus (and his friends objected - well they would, wouldn’t they, wasting the Master’s time like that?) Jesus told his friends that unless they came to him like little children they wouldn’t ever get through the gates of Heaven. Jesus did not mean that we all had to become puking infants again: he did mean that children automatically believe what they hear and see and touch: they don’t demand a scientific proof of 2 x 2 = 4 before they learn the multiplication table. They have faith first - knowledge and experience grow out of it.

And that is what Jesus wants of his followers. Sure, they’ll come a cropper from time to time, but Jesus prefers it that way, and will always support and comfort those who do, and show them the right path out. Whoever would think of entering a marriage based on scientific enquiry and an atmosphere of doubt? That would kill it from the word ‘Go’!

If the unimaginable happened and I suddenly found myself thinking - believing - that the Creed, and therefore the Gospel, was unacceptable to me, I would turn my back on the whole thing - Church, services, hymns and all - and walk away from it. I would never darken the door of a church again. If someone demanded that I stopped accepting the Creed as a statement of fact, I would blow my top in a big way. How DARE anyone tell me to go back to my ignorant disbelief of nearly 50 years ago?

I believe on the best of all grounds - of all those years experience of the presence and grace and gifts of God - that Jesus IS Lord; that what the New Testament tells me about his words and works is true (making allowance for occasional slips of memory which cause differences in the various accounts), and I have already told you why.

The logical consequence of this belief is that I have had to listen to what the Lord tells me and the demands he makes on me and obey, whether I like it or not. Hence where I stand now after 35 years of wearing a dog-collar (and that was certainly never my idea - he twisted my arm good and proper!).

Now if I didn’t believe the Gospel, if I didn’t accept the Creed, there would be nothing left to obey except my reason, which has always been too fallible. There would be no laws: nothing would be forbidden; the only thing to do would be what I pleased. If indeed there is no Resurrection, then Christ is not raised, and if Christ is not raised then the whole thing is a load of codswallop, a confidence trick.  But he IS raised, and I will stick with the Lord and all that he is and does as long as I have breath and beyond!

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