Why Do We Believe?                                                                                                                                                       Rev. Colin S. Marshall

3^rd January 2010                                                                                                                                   St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Mt. Roskill

Readings: Psalm 104, John 3:1-21, Romans 1:16-32, 1 John 5:1-12

            This morning we are going to begin a small series of sermons, to start the New Year, that will start by focusing on some of the ‘why’ questions and then move to some of the ‘what’ questions.  The reason for doing this is simple. It is critically important that our faith is strong enough to face up to the challenges that life and the world will throw at it.  In the Old Testament the faith of Abraham, of Moses, of Joshua, of Daniel, of Ruth, Esther and Deborah, even of Job was sufficient to get them through the best and worst of times and to overcome even the greatest of their own personal weaknesses and failings.   So too in the New Testament we see that Jesus’ faith and belief were put through the fiercest testing and stood firm.  Likewise, those who followed Jesus, His disciples, men and women alike, demonstrated a faith that was resilient against all that the world was able to throw at them.  If we want to have lives of similar excellence then it will take a faith like this.  We need to know why they believed, what they believed and to understand the outcome of such a faith. Knowledge of itself is not enough.  We also need to comprehend their motivations and understandings so we too can have a bold and resilient faith in today’s increasingly pagan, agnostic, and even atheist world.  And more than that, we will have the confidence to share and defend our faith with those who are unknowingly seeking for God.

            Today our question is ‘Why Do We Believe’?  In the children’s talk I used two simple examples of salt thrown over the shoulder and the traditional building of bridges in NZ to demonstrate how some things that started as simple practical tools in one place over time and distance became far more than what they were intended to be as they became ‘tradition’.  The long term net result was ridiculous. It is important for us, from time to time, to examine the what’s and why’s to determine if we have fallen into a similar situation for all sorts of reasons.  Is faith itself just old-fashioned superstition that is outdated, or is it something more?  Does going to church even just a way of meeting our social needs, to meet friends and have a good time, or is there something inherently important here?  Believe me, God does not mind us asking such questions and we should never be afraid to ask such questions.  God is more than able to address such concerns.  But we desperately need to know the why’s as well as the what’s.

            Let’s begin.   Why do we believe?  At the most fundamental level we have a primal need to have faith.  By that I mean that anthropologically, as part of our very humanness, we have a need to worship, to give honour to that which is not ourselves, to relate at a spiritual level externally.  Anthropologists throughout the world have observed this as basic to every known human culture.  While there are individuals who would deny such a need, they would be the clear exceptions and at odds with their own cultures, and putting it bluntly, also generally display other sociological issues.  People believe because we understand that God has designed us for belief.  That belief may be misplaced, ill-informed, misguided and mis-directed, but the need for such belief is a life struggle for many people.

I remember one example of a person I worked with who was vehemently anti-God and the things I believed in.  But when their partner was caught in a sickening accident and at deaths door they wanted desperately to pray with me.  How many people who want to deny God any role or place in their lives turn to Him as soon as something goes wrong?  Many, many, many do.  We know God is there at the most basic, primitive level.  But many people fear what acknowledging that might mean until they are in real need and then and only then will they humble themselves sufficient to seek Him out.  And that leads to an important point. 

The human counterpoint to faith and belief are pride and self-interest.  While we are born with a desire to know God we are also born with the corruption that is inherent in all people since the fall of Adam and Eve.  When sin corrupted human will it struck at the central core of our being.  We were created with many of God’s attributes, in His image.  We are capable of infinite creativity, love and goodness but sin has also made us prone to greed, to self-interest, to pride and jealousy.  We struggle with belief because in acknowledging God and who God is we also recognize that God’s way will impinge on our self-perceived freedoms.  To acknowledge God is to acknowledge one who is greater than ourselves and who has rights over us. Our strong sense of self and self-interest at the expense of anyone and anything else faced with the implications of who God is and what He might require of us make many people run a mile.  Our internal pride and self-interest play a running war with our instinctive awareness of God.

The second reason we are drawn to belief, or to reject belief, was clearly expounded in today’s reading from Romans.  We might note that Paul begins today’s passage in Romans with an explicit statement that he is not ashamed of the gospel.  He only makes such a statement because, clearly, some people have suggested that they might be.  People are only ashamed of the gospel if they don’t really know it or haven’t truly experienced its power in their lives.  Paul does know it and has seen God’s power demonstrated in his life so he has every confidence – so should we.  In Romans 1:20 we are told that the divine nature of God is revealed.  It is the only time this term is used in the New Testament but it was a favorite one in Greek usage at the time to describe that which was of god-like origin.  In other words Paul was saying – look around and acknowledge a power greater than yourselves – everyone does – we cannot avoid it.

Even if we struggle to acknowledge what which is within us, God has left His fingerprints on the Created Order.  God’s eternal power and His divine nature are revealed in the universe in what He has created.  God has done this deliberately.  In creation His self-revelation is progressive.  The more we discover of the natural order the more we will discover about God.  One of the greatest roles of science, that some scientists acknowledge, is discovering these ‘God fingerprints’ in the created order.  At the very least, in seeing the size and scope of the universe, the infinite variety of life and acknowledging that God created it all with a Word should begin to give us an understanding of the power and awesomeness of God.  The very complexity of the natural world points to a creator.  Increasingly we are becoming aware of the structural elements of the natural order that could not have simply fallen together but suggest that there was a directed creation.  Some complexities cannot be easily explained by natural adaptation.  These revelations have caused great upset in the scientific community over the last decade.  Why?  Because the implications, for intelligent people, for any people, of recognizing the hand of a divine creator at work in creation are profound. 

Whether we want to acknowledge it or not that more we see of the created order – sitting on a mountain top, or rather sitting in a small boat on an angry sea, flying over the earth or studying the stars or peering through a microscope, something inside us cries out ‘there must be more’.  We believe because we have seen and understood that God has created and He has left His fingerprints for us to recognize.

The third reason we believe is because of the nature of God’s revelation.  It isn’t just as if God had placed everything on a plate and then said – there you go – like it or lump it – take it or leave it.  God has realized that humanity can’t actually take it like that.  We have had to develop and understand things progressively.  Over time God has revealed Himself and identified how He would continue to reveal Himself until we have sufficient understanding.  While many people have tended to ignore the importance of prophecy in the life of the church they really shouldn’t.  The Word of God has power and has been recorded historically such that there are hundreds of prophecies of what God would do that are incredibly specific and given in some cases shortly before events and in others many centuries before they would be fulfilled.  What is clear is that (1) when God gives a Word about something He will do He does do it and (2) that having these prophecies, over centuries, recorded in writing prior to their happening gives a powerful witness to the reality of God and His will.

The story of Jesus and Nicodemus that were heard this morning is in part about Jesus frustration with a leading teacher of Israel who had the prophecies but had failed to understand them, or even consider then appropriately.  While he was a teacher is Israel he had missed the point in recognizing the reality of the prophecies.  They weren’t just for entertaining bedtime reading or to fill up the bookshelves.  God’s prophecies were specific pointers to what God was doing in history.  Moreover God’s Word has come to people from different cultures, in diverse places and at different times and irrespective of position or power.  We believe because we have seen how God has lived up to these prophecies time after time in a manner that has no parallel anywhere else in human existence. 

            The final reason we will consider only briefly today.  The fourth and most conclusive reason is Jesus Himself.  Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s revelation for us until such time as God chooses to return to bring to a close the age and the completion of the prophecies as yet unfulfilled.  Jesus is unique in all of human history, not just because of the exemplary life He lived, and that alone would be noteworthy by any standards, but because He fulfilled God’s promise and demonstrated God’s love for us and His divine power in ways that are unmatched, or fully understood, even today.  Jesus, and what He released, is the final answer in God’s argument for faith.  Next week we will look at the question: ‘Why Jesus?’