Thu 22 May 2008
Do you believe in God?
Posted by leonards under Church , Family , Life and Work , UncategorizedNo Comments
I’ve been working back through a book I read in seminary by Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy. On page 91, he remarks, “I personally have become convinced that many people who believe in Jesus do not actually believe in God. By saying this I do not mean to condemn anyone but to cast light on why the lives of professed believers go as they do, and often quite contrary even to what they sincerely intend.” Wow! That is a strong statement! Can a person believe in Jesus without believing in God?
To grasp Willard’s point, you need a little more context. He is focusing on the reality of the Kingdom of God as it interacts with “real” life. We often think of the kingdom as out there beyond the stars or something that will come to be sometime in the future, but we seldom think of it as a very present reality in the lives and communities of Christians. Our present world is in a “flght from God.” We find little need for “interaction with God” in most of our life. Our books, classes, motivational speeches, jobs, love-lives, families, and whatever-else-you-can-think-of have little apparent need for God, and therefore God seems to have little impact on any of them. “All of us live in such a world, for we live by our competencies. Our souls are, accordingly, soaked in secularity,” writes Willard. He continues,
The “real” world has little room for a God of sparrows and children. To it, Jesus can only seem “otherworldly”–a good-hearted person out of touch with reality…He is a cheerleader who continues to shout, “We are going to win,” though the score is 98 to 3 against us in the last minute of the game.
I don’t know about you, but I find many Christians who view Jesus this way, and it is sadly no different than the way many non-Christians view Jesus. When pressed Christians would never admit to such a description, but practice reveals the substance of their beliefs. Again, Willard writes,
When this cheerleading approach to the “real-world” triumphs among those who profess Christ, they may then have faith in faith but will have little faith in God. For God and his world are just not “real” to them. They may believe in believing but not be able to rely on God–like many in our current culture who love love but in practice are unable to love real people. They may believe in prayer, think it quite a good thing, but be unable to pray believing and so will rarely, if ever, pray at all.
Is this not a warning to us and a call for self-examination? Do I really believe in God? If so, then how does my believing in God change my life? How does faith in Jesus change the way I make love to my wife, discipline my children, pay my bills, do my job, mow my grass, and care for my neighbors? Am I living in the present reality of God’s reign, or am I living in the delusion of the “real world” as though God were not there at all?