Why Do We Believe?

 Why Do We Believe? Unlike the Rock of our salvation, foundations across our society are shaky at best. Whether it be a lack of information, too much emotion, or just pure hubris, we can find people holding opinions and taking stances with no logical reason fordoing so. Sometimes, the opinions are so wild and outlandish that we can only think, "Why?" My job has me creating visual aids, usually a collection of various graphs that comprise a dashboard to aid individuals or groups in understanding their data. Believe it or not, going line by line in a million-plus-row spreadsheet is not thebest way to determine the trends of one's business! Creating these graphs is a complex process, which I always try to begin with a "define phase." Whether it takes getting on a call, sending instant messages, or emailing back and forth, the goal is to define the project's or report's requirements as clearly as possible. The big question that drives the entire process is, "Why?" Why isthis metric important? Why does it matter to the bottom line? A boss told me early on that if I was not asking "Why?" at least five times, I was not drilling down to that individual's or business' true needs. I work with a great team, one with, typically, a lot of common sense, and we have healthy conversations to move projects forward efficiently. We have a team chat where we can alert the group about any number of things and have more general discussions.Some people use it to state their thoughts or pose philosophical questions. One coworker likes to do the latter, posting poems or musings on life that some might claim to be profound. I usually avoid these threads, but recently, one sparked my attention. It started with a question on information, asking if, thanks to the Internet, we could be entering an age of radically decreasing corruption. That anyone, especially someone who claims to believe in God, could think this to be true seemed silly to me. We all know corruption exists in abundance and will continue to do so. As sources of corruption are exposed, along with it comes plenty of incorrect and misleading information. Another coworker commentedon what others of us were thinking: that a person can craft his own reality by the media he consumes. This coworker brought up politics as a prime example. At this point, the Bible entered the conversation. My coworker wrote: "The question is do you trust the aggregate of human judgement? I do, I mean, look at the Bible. It's basically the ultimate example of distributed cognition seeking somethingbetter over time." This is where a red flag popped up for me. I replied that the Bible is not a newsletter containing raw human thinking but rather God inspiring those He chose to work through, pointing him to II Timothy 3:14-17: But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. I considered this passage straightforward, but my coworker's response, referring to verse 16, indicates it was not to him: "What does inspired by God mean? Did Abraham [sic] just come up with 'in the beginning was the word' one dayor was it brewing in the collective minds of men for centuries? I tend to believe the latter." His response was a target-rich environment, but I decided to focus on the meaning of the phrase "is given by inspiration of God," which is theopneustos (Strong's #2315), meaning "divinely breathed in." He responded, "My bible starts with 'in the beginning was ChatGPT.'" Needless to say, the conversation stopped there. My biggest takeaway from this exchange was not that he did not truly believe in God's power. I have had too many conversations with people who claimed to believe in God but eventually spoke falsely about Him to be genuinely shocked at this point.For instance, someone once asked me about the Sabbath and completely ignored most of my reply, later telling me he "sabbathed" well on Sunday! What truly stuck with me was the unasked question. My coworker did not put up a fight, but in similar circumstances, most curious people would ask, "Why do you believe that?" How do we respond? My coworker invited me into the conversation. I answered and walked away. But what about responding to a close friend? A family member? A church member? When debating beliefs, how often do we diffuse the situation by simplyasking, "Why?" Of course, we should not ask, "Why?" purely to get people to stop talking. Plenty of ideas and questions blossom in a conversation or healthy debate, and we should want to improve our mutual understanding. Nevertheless, we can diffuse illogicalor frankly stupid ideas with a simple "Why?" "Why do you do this or that?" "Why do you think it is acceptable to do such a thing on the Sabbath?" The response is often something like, "Uh, I don't know." "Why?" is usually enough to make the individual questionwhy they do what they do. While combating falsehoods with truth is vital, we cannot use the Sword of Truth properly without conviction! Why do we believe? What were our reasons for accepting our calling? I am a third-generation Christian. God called my grandfather first in our family, and despite passing away years ago, he still has an impact on how I live my life and try to serve God. The blessings of his example, being raised in the faith,having many believing family members, and being immersed in the church are wonderful, just a small portion of God's endless blessings. But I grew up knowing about and keeping the Sabbath, holy days, food laws, and so on. I was certain I was following the true God. After all, that is what my parents taught me. (Proverbs22:6: "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.") However, each individual is responsible for his or her own faith. Each person must understand why he or she believes. This principle was on my mind in mydiscussion with my coworker. Being multi-generational comes with a difficulty that is probably not considered often enough, and which is not exclusive to multi-generational Christians: becoming complacent about our beliefs. We must remind ourselves that if we cannot maintainour convictions about our calling now, how can we carry them to the end? We cannot afford to let down and stop believing. So, we must occasionally—even frequently—ask ourselves, "Why?" to avoid unbelief. We must remember our responsibility to work to remain convicted and be careful not to be lazy. We need to heed God's warning to the Israelites against forgetfulnessin Deuteronomy 6:10-12: So it shall be, when the LORD your God brings you into the land of which He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, hewn-out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant—when you have eaten and arefull—then beware, lest you forget the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Notice Hebrews 3:16-19: For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? Now with whom was He angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey? So we see that they could not enter in becauseof unbelief. Now Hebrews 3:12-14: Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called "Today," lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end. (Emphasis ours.) The question of why we believe, why we accepted our calling, is foundational to the actions we take on our spiritual journey. Everyone has a "why": a story of a lightbulb moment when everything suddenly made sense or an event or series of eventsthat could only be the result of God orchestrating our lives. The story may not be from before our calling but could be recent, a new reason to believe. God works in our lives every day. Most of us know why we are in God's church, and we believe the Word of God. We believe He inspired Scripture for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. Even so, no matter how experienced or well-versed we are in our faith,we must remember that Satan and his demons are constantly working to undermine us. So, we must continue to ask ourselves, "Why?" Why do we believe? Why do we do what we do? As the apostle writes in II Peter 2:10, we must be diligent in ensuring our calling so that we may continue to grow in truth and righteousness, not stumbling—so that upon Christ's return, He will say to each of us, "Well done, good and faithful servant." - Hunter D. Swanson