Who taught you to believe?
Was Santa Claus a part of your December traditions growing up? In my first house, we didn’t have a chimney and I was very concerned about how Santa was going to get into the house to leave us presents. My Daddy came up with a clever story about how, since Santa could slide through chimneys, despite his great girth, he was able to shrink himself small enough to fit through the keyhole of our front door. As a child, this sounded wonderful and fantastic. As an adult, creepy. I actually think the whole Santa Claus myth is trash, but that’s a blog post for another day. My point with this story is that my Daddy taught me to believe in things I couldn’t see. He didn’t just teach me about Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and all that, but he also taught me much of my faith. I believe what I believe, in large part, because of my father.
If you’ve been with us this fall, you know we’re talking about what we believe. We’ve explored our beliefs, why we have them, where we learned them, and today, we’re talking about who we learned them from. All of these ideas are pretty interconnected, but I think it’s important to examine them separately for the sake of redundancy (so that you’ll learn) and so that we don’t miss anything. (If you need to catch up, just take a look at the other blog posts with questions for titles.)
So, who taught you to believe? Or, who taught you to believe what you believe?
For most of us, our parents are the ones who taught us to believe. Many parents teach their children the myths, legends, and fairytales that dominate the childhood imagination. Parents also teach their children to believe in things like Santa Claus. Our parents have an important role in our lives for a variety of reasons, but I think this one of belief is critical for our spiritual development. How your parents handled the topics of belief, fantasy, reality, and truth really matters because they are your parents. You trust them, implicitly, from a very young age. Often, even if we have good parents, we don’t realize their flaws and failures until we are adults ourselves. There’s something about being a person that drives us to want to trust our parents, regardless of whether they’re worthy of it or not.
Maybe your relationship with your parents is difficult. Maybe they lied to you about more than Santa Claus (yes, it’s a lie). Maybe they didn’t take good care of you or one or both of them abandoned you. My point here isn’t to talk about your relationship with your parents. It’s to point out that who taught you to believe matters because your beliefs could be based more on who taught you to believe than what they taught you to believe.
Imagine that your father is really great. My Daddy is pretty awesome and, to my knowledge, he didn’t lie to me about anything other than Santa Claus and things of that nature. So, when he tells me something, I believe it. Now, imagine that he stops believing in the things that he taught me to believe regarding my faith. (This scenario, by the way, is part of the reason that I’m against the whole Santa thing.) What kind of an impact do you think that would have on me? What kind of an impact do you think it would have on you, if you were me?
The reverse of this scenario is significant, too. What if the person who taught you to believe always lived according to what they taught you? To the best of their ability, they always acted, spoke, and worked in congruence with the beliefs that they passed on to you? Now, nobody is perfect, but what if they always said they were sorry, acknowledged their failure, and sought to bring things back into line with their beliefs?
Whether the person who taught you to believe maintains those beliefs with the utmost integrity or discards them for one reason or another, it matters. When we trust people and they teach us things, our beliefs are, at least in part, rooted in those people. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but it certainly can be. I’ve seen far too many teachers and leaders “fall from grace” (as if that were possible). What happens after their failure or mistake is usually worse than the failure or mistake itself; though, the fallout isn’t totally their fault. Those who followed them or were really invested in their teaching start to question everything that they believe. They start to doubt themselves and their lives. When the person who they learned from fails or proves to not really believe what they said they believed, people start to fall apart.
Why? Well, that’s a pretty complex question, but I’ll tell you what I think the major piece is: identity. Too often, we place our identity not only in what we believe (which is actually a good thing), but also in who taught us this belief. Read that again: we place our identity not only in what we believe, but also in who taught us this belief. And that, friends, is incredibly dangerous.
People aren’t perfect. People fail. People change their minds. People even grow and learn to believe the truth more fully! We cannot base our beliefs on the person who taught them to us. We can listen to, learn from, respect, and value people, but we cannot base our beliefs or identity on them. That’s a weight they were not created to bear.
Do some honest evaluation: who taught you to believe and what did they teach you? How much of it do you believe now? Do you believe it because of the person who taught it to you or because you’ve found the belief itself to be sound?
If we can base our beliefs on more than our feelings or who taught them to us, then we will be able to reasonably disagree with others. We’ll be able to hear and entertain ideas and worldviews that are different from our own without being shaken to our core. We’ll also be able to weather the storm when our teachers or leaders prove not to be infallible, after all.
Who taught you to believe matters, but don’t stake your life on them.