I Believe |
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"I believe . . .". These are the opening words of the
Apostles' Creed
Belief comes at many different levels but I have identified three levels of belief that seem relevant to this article. Some things I can believe in simply because I accept them to be facts but they make little or no difference to me personally. My belief in those things does not make them more or less true. There are other things I might believe that will make some difference to me but the difference they would make is of only a temporal nature while there are things I believe that make an eternal difference and that actually demand some kind of response from me.
Obviously other people's lists would be different from mine, but the principle
is clear. I believe in Muhammed and Buddha in as much as I believe them to have
been real people in history as Jesus also was real and Ganesh was not. But my
belief in those men has no life-changing significance for me because they were
not my Saviour. Jesus is Lord and Saviour and that, for me, is life changing
belief.
There is a very dangerous idea that it doesn't matter what we believe as long
as we believe in something. This leads to the false assumption that all
religions lead to God - which would make Jesus a liar. (It would also make
Muhammed a liar since he did not teach that all religions lead to God either.)
You believe that there is one God. We can easily believe a lie - many people do. There are many roads and many religions but Jesus said "No one comes to the Father except through me."
Either Jesus was a liar or there is only one way to God.
It is possible to believe something that is true but for the wrong reasons.
Many people may be "believers" but their belief is based on a superstitious
acceptance of what has been passed down to them by family or priests. This
inevitably leads to a mixture of truth and falsehood. What is worse is that it
does not lead to saving faith. Acceptance of teaching or tradition is not the
same as accepting the salvation offered by Jesus through receiving him. It is
totally possible to know, to recite and to believe the
Creeds
but not to receive Jesus or his salvation.
Over the centuries it has been a sad truth that many people carrying spiritual
authority have misused it, bringing people into submission to "priests" or
"shepherds" or "elders" rather than submission to Christ who is Lord of All.
This has not been confined to any one denomination or movement and has been
just as possible within "free churches" as within "cults" or "priestcraft". As
soon as any person, or group of people, begin to claim that they carry the
responsibility for other people's belief or morals we have an opening for
misused authority. An over-reliance on leaders results in a system which looks
orthodox but leaves people trusting in things or people other than the Lord
Jesus.
In the days when the Bible was not available to most Christians it was necessary to be able to trust priests and preachers for doctrine. Inevitably this led to all kinds of superstitions for often the priests were badly taught or too lazy to check things out for themselves. In the same way we can be equally lazy today in accepting from preachers and teachers whatever doctrines they propound. We might even check out the actual scriptures they quote but fail to look at them in context or compare those texts with other scriptures. Thus we can accept "novel" doctrines and heresies. Most Christians now have access to the Scriptures. Having the Scriptures brings the responsibility to check out all teachings we receive. Acts 17:11 says; Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. So it is necessary for us to get to know the Scriptures - not just set texts to prove doctrines. There are doctrines being taught as true - even used as tests for membership in certain denominations - that can only be found in the Scriptures by using a patchwork of out-of-context verses. Questioning doctrines is not the same as questioning God!
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