What Do You Believe?
By Gene X. Christian
Image Credit: Midjourney
What is your statement of faith? If you had to explain in a few sentences what you believe, what would that look like?
Deconstruction of faith is a process of re-examining belief to see what, if anything, is still a belief to keep or one to discard. Step zero is to answer a simple question: “What do you believe?”
It sounds like a simple question on the surface. To get to the meat of the statement, you have to define your belief well.
Example: “I believe in God.”
This is a good starting point, but it’s far from being definitive. There is a belief in something called “God,” but what does that mean? Is the God you believe in all-knowing (omniscient) and all-seeing (omnipresent)? Is God just one person, multiple entities? Does this God have a name or is it simply a placeholder for a nameless, faceless “supreme being.”
How involved is your God in your life? Does God interact with the day-to-day affairs of people or was everything wound up and set on its course without further interference?
Is God a he, she, they, nothing?
Let’s refine the statement: “I believe in the God of the bible.”
That’s more information to work with. You might assume that everyone knows what you mean when you say “bible,” but that isn’t always the case.
“I believe in the God of the Hebrew Bible” is a different statement than “I believe in the God of the Christian Bible.” Both faiths share a common collection of texts, but the Christian faith is clearly different from Judaism. Islam is different than both Christianity and Judaism, yet share a common human figure in their older history: the character of Abraham.
One more stab at the elevator pitch for faith:
“I believe in the God of the Christian Bible. I believe that God is in complete control of all things; nothing happens without it being His will.
“I believe that the Christian Bible is the perfect word of God, that was written by man but fully inspired by God. The word/bible is without error, is the sole authority, and is fully truth.
“I believe that humans fall short of perfection. When humans go against what God wants for them as defined in the Christian bible, that act is called sin. Sin is anything that is considered immoral against God’s perfect law.
“The only way I can be made right with God is to believe in Jesus Christ. I believe God sent Jesus Christ as His son, to be born, live a sinless life, die, and then come alive again. To believe in Jesus, that he is God’s son, that he lived on Earth as both fully human and fully divine, was killed as a payment for my sin, and the believe that God raised him from the dead, that belief makes me a Christian.”
What do YOU believe?
Are you deconstructing or do you simply want to clarify your position on your statement of faith? Maybe you aren’t sure if you believe anything, so you decide to write it down.
No matter the motivation, going through the process of answering What do you believe? is an important first step. I encourage you to go through the process, and define your belief as succinctly as possible. There have been MANY gods over the course of human history, and clarifying the statement “I believe in God” will help you and others be on the same page when talking about faith. Leave nothing ambiguous.
What do you believe? is only one question, and it’s just the starting point. In the next article we will dig a little deeper. Once you know what you believe, then it is time to answer the second question: Why do I believe it?
Published on 2024-12-22