What is belief?

Well, friends. We’ve been on quite a journey together. We’ve thought through the what, where, how, why, who, and when of our beliefs. I hope this has been a meaningful thought journey for you. I hope that you’re leaving this series with a clearer view of who you are and what your life is all about. Before we go, I’d love to offer some final ideas about belief. Specifically, what is it? (And also, what it’s not.)

I’ve asked my friends many times, “What is belief?” Sometimes I ask them about faith, but the answers tend to be similarly vague and non-committal. It’s as if we know what belief and faith are, but we’re scared to say it. Or maybe we don’t know what they are, but we know they’re important and so we’re scared to admit that we don’t understand something so vital. Either way, that’s a little alarming considering the vast implications of belief that we have explored together this fall. I’d love to offer you a few definitions and some conclusions to bless you as you continue your journey towards figuring out what you do, in fact, believe.

Merriam-Webster says that belief is “(1) a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing; (2) something that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion: something believed; (3) conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence”.

Dictionary.com defines the word this way: “(1) something believed; an opinion or conviction; (2) confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof; (3) confidence; faith; trust; (4) a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith”.

Using Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, we learn that the greek word often translated as belief is pisteuo. Then this, “‘to believe,’ also ‘to be persuaded of,’ and hence, ‘to place confidence in, to trust,’ signifies, in this sense of the word, reliance upon, not mere credence”.

I hope you’re noticing some commonalities and also some differences. First, I see the word “confidence” and “trust” quite a lot. Secondly, I see a contrast between evidence and a lack of evidence. Apparently a belief isn’t necessarily susceptible to evidence-based research. It can just be something that you feel in your guts, as it were. Because I’m a nerd, I think the etymology (read: word history and development) of “belief” is important, too. You can trace “belief” all the way back to a proto-indo-european word that means to care, desire, or love. 

I could go on all day with stuff like this, but I’ll spare you. It’s so interesting to me how this word can be applied to things either religious or scientific. It can mean nothing more than a feeling or cognitive assent. You can hold beliefs with no evidence at all or a tremendous amount of evidence. Like everything else we’ve been talking about, how you define belief is going to impact what you do with your beliefs and how you interact with them.

I’m going to offer you a working definition of belief for our purposes here: a guiding principle that you trust in, regardless of the amount of evidence in front of you. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think that evidence is really important in your beliefs, but I also recognize that not everyone agrees with me on this. Some folks don’t want evidence for their beliefs (or they want to ignore the evidence that’s out there). I’m not here to have a conversation about the merits of your beliefs; that’s what I’m urging you to do on your own or with those that you trust and respect. I’m here to ask questions and help you think. So, beliefs are guiding principles that we trust in, regardless of the amount of evidence in front of us. 

What does it mean to trust in something? My favorite illustration is one that I hope you’ve seen before. It involves a person and a chair. When I sit down on a chair, I’m trusting that the chair will hold my weight. If I didn’t trust the chair, then I would tentatively (and uncomfortably, I might add) put half of my weight on it while still maintaining control of my body with my feet. You’ve seen someone do this, right? They kind of ease into a chair hoping that it doesn’t collapse underneath them. As the chair holds, they put more and more of their weight on it until they lift their feet off of the ground and are trusting in the chair to hold them.

Belief is like this. When we really believe in something, we trust in it to guide our lives and help us make decisions. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, if we believe that peanut butter is disgusting, we might not like pad thai. Because beliefs aren’t always based on an overwhelming amount of evidence, though, they sometimes disappoint us. Like a wicker chair that has seen better days, we sometimes trust our beliefs to guide us and they collapse underneath the weight of our life. Perhaps you believed that brussel sprouts were gross only to discover they were delicious or the much worse belief that someone was honorable only to find out that they were a liar. Either way, we live what we believe and, therefore, beliefs have consequences.

Postmodern culture would have us doubt this, to some degree. The dominant cultural narrative is that our spiritual beliefs should remain private and cordoned off from the rest of society, unless they are squishy and “tolerant”. As long as what I believe doesn’t impose on anyone else, then that’s okay in the public square. But if you have beliefs that set you apart and might even call the actions of another “wrong”, then you need to “bottle that noise up” (thank you, Donna Meagle). Postmodern culture wants us to think that our beliefs don’t or shouldn’t have consequences. It wants us to live in a fantasy land where you can believe one thing and I another and those things will never clash and we can all get along merrily just doing whatever we want. I sincerely hope that you see the flaw in this logic: if I believe the sky is green and you believe it’s blue, one of us is wrong. Worse: if I believe that it’s okay to kill someone for harming my friend and you believe that killing is always wrong, then we won’t be able to create a society where we are both “right”.

Regardless of your beliefs, they have consequences. The only way to really tolerate all beliefs is to not really believe in anything at all. If I won’t sit upon my beliefs, like a chair, then I don’t really believe them. If I’m not willing to put the weight of my life on my beliefs then I don’t have a guiding principle that I trust in, regardless of the amount of evidence in front of me. In short, I don’t have any beliefs. I have ideas, notions, or feelings. While these things are important and might contribute to our belief system, unless we’re willing to sit upon them, they’re not beliefs.

Beliefs have consequences. When you sit upon them, they’ll either hold you up or let you fall to the ground. And, want to know the scary part? Everyone has beliefs. You can try to argue with me about this, but you’ll lose because asserting that there are no absolutes is an absolute statement. You cannot escape belief. 

Rather than spending your time trying to come up with a way to avoid putting the weight of your life upon any one set of beliefs, I’d encourage you to spend that time sorting out which beliefs have merit and which don’t. What makes the most sense of the world? What holds you when you sit upon it? I trust that if you really ask these questions and try out a few beliefs, then you’ll learn, in time and with trial and error, which things are suited to hold the weight of your life and which aren’t.

But one final word: don’t do it alone. I’ve enjoyed writing this series for you, but I’d enjoy it more if we were sitting in my couch room with a cup of coffee and some cookies between us. You weren’t meant to live your life alone and we’re better when we bounce our beliefs off of each other and try them out together. Try it, if you don’t believe me. Find some friends/family/people you can trust and start this journey together. I promise that you won’t regret it.

And if you really can’t find anyone, the couch room is waiting and the coffee is hot. The cookies might take a minute.