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Belief

             Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29)

“I don’t believe in evolution,” a scientist claimed. “It happened.”

“Why do you have to question everything?” someone asked me. “Why can’t you just believe?”

People have strange ideas about belief. Often, it has to do with being divorced from reality. One can only believe something that has not been proven true. One could believe that a building is a figment of one’s imagination, but when one is bruised by trying to walk through the wall, one cannot believe that the building is real, one knows that it is real. It also frequently has to do with not being allowed to question, also known as blind faith.

Part of the problem is that we don’t define belief correctly. It does not refer (at least solely) to what is not known or (worse) what contradicts what is known. Belief is more a case of acting based on what one knows or suspects to be true. Belief isn’t just what’s in your head, it’s what’s in your head plus action. It’s the process of hypothesis, which is “a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.” If an experiment fails - if the hypothesis is not proved correct, it’s silly to throw everything associated with the hypothesis. If we’re wise, we explore why the hypothesis didn’t pan out. It’s not until or unless a hypothesis has been proved worthless that we should reject it.

So, the work of God, according to Jesus, is to live out the Jesus hypothesis - thoroughly. It is living in accordance with what we have learned about Him through Scripture, through others, and on our own. 

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