A Reflection on Believing in Jesus

As you probably know, I take my reading very seriously during the week, setting aside time every day for study and relaxation. (I'm always surprised by pastors who tell me they don't have time to read. I find it difficult to imagine how they do certain parts of their job effectively.) This week, I came across an interesting passage about what it means to "believe in Jesus" at the end of Marcus J. Borg's book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995):

For those of us who grew up in the church, believing in Jesus was important. For me, what that phrase used to mean, in my childhood and into my early adulthood, was "believing things about Jesus." To believe in Jesus meant to believe what the gospels and the church said about Jesus. That was easy when I was a child, and became more and more difficult as I grew older.

But I now see that believing in Jesus can (and does) mean something very different from that. The change is pointed to by the root meaning of the word believe. Believe did not originally mean believing in a set of doctrines or teachings; in both Greek and Latin its roots mean "to give one's heart to." The "heart" is the self at its deepest level. Believing, therefore, does not consist of giving one's mental assent to something, but involves a much deeper level on one's self. Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him. Rather, it means to give one's heart, one's self at its deepest level, to the post-Easter Jesus who is the living Lord, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit. (136-137)

This is as good a concise explanation of this that I have ever read or heard. Borg shows the progression that most of us grow through as our faith deepens. Early on, it seems that we need to "learn" certain religious facts like we learn things in school: we learn specific vocabulary and we learn how to use it to think about certain things. When we grow old enough -- whether through a confirmation process in some denominations or baptism in ours -- we decide that we believe what we have been taught. If we think it's true, then we believe.

But as we grow in faith, we discover that faith is much richer than that. Believing is not merely an intellectual action, but something more all-encompassing. It is about a developing relationship; it is about a way of life. Sometimes the language trips us up. "Do you believe in Jesus?" we ask. "Yes." Case closed. The bags are packed and another person's place in heaven is secured. But if it's just an intellectual act, believing in Jesus is just like believing a mathematical theorem, like believing (-1) x (-1) = 1.

"Yes, I believe in Jesus. I know he's the son of God. I know he died on a cross and was resurrected. I know he's in heaven, and I'll get to go there too if I believe. So I'm all set. Please get out of my way so I don't have to hurt you while I'm robbing this bank."

Clearly spoken by a Christian -- after all, he politely said, "please." If belief is just an intellectual activity, then what we think of as right and wrong is irrelevant. Believe the right things and how you live doesn't matter. But deep down, we know that's not true. We know that this Christianity thing, what little we understand of it, is supposed to change how we live, not just how we think. Learning is a part of that, but so is acting and being. So is caring and concern. So is love and hope. "To give one's heart to," Borg writes. Or as I know I sometimes say, in a slightly different context: "to give the best of ourselves -- our time, our talents, our treasure."