Deciding What I Believe

To begin this morning's sermon, Arlyn asked us to talk for a few minutes with our neighbor about this question:  How do I decide what I believe?

I had just processed essentially this question with reference to community identity, and so I reiterated these conclusions:

What I believe about our community is partly based on the truth of Scripture.  In other words, when Scripture identifies something as good or bad generally, I see it as being good or bad if I see it in our community.

Another piece of what I believe is what I have personally observed to be true.  Admittedly, this passes through the filter of my biases--a fairly universal experience, I presume.

The third piece of what I believe about our community's identity comes from hearing what others believe (see previous blog post).  In a sense, this is very much like the previous point--about my own observations, since I have on a number of occasions never thought about our community in a certain way until I have heard others say what they thought of our community.

I am not idly curious about our community's identity.  I believe seeing ourselves is a necessary first step in moving toward being who we ought to be.

When I seek the viewpoint of others I am not just crowd-sourcing and not just taking a democratic vote, but engaging in an expanded version of what the Anabaptist Hermeneutics document I cited recently refers to as discovering truth in the context of brotherhood.  This is a concept I hold dear.

I do understand also that hearing what others think of us is fraught with potential for imbalance, especially if the amount of input is small, or if the level of acquaintance is shallow.  Nevertheless, if each of a number of people offer their piece of the picture, we have a better chance of seeing an accurate image emerging.

I don't see myself as the author of our community's identity.  "Compiler" gets a little closer.  "Evaluator/Commentator" might be the most accurate of these three labels.  Even then, I realize that whatever I offer is only one of many possible offerings.  This, again, makes of it an activity consistent with the process of discovering truth in the context of brotherhood.

 So far, the input I solicited in the previous post has arrived via email.  By that means or any other, I'm eager to hear from others.

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My sermon notes are a little sketchy in places, but I'm passing on here some of the questions and comments that followed that initial activity of thinking about how I decide what I believe.  The text was taken from John 3:9-21 (or something close to that).  This passage has multiple references to belief.

Questions:

Do you love what you like?

Do you love the light or do you love what you like?

Are you driven by light or what you like?

Statements:

We choose our beliefs by what we love.  (This makes it particularly dangerous to reflexively love what we merely like.)

We can't choose to believe what we believe to be false, but we can choose to do what we believe to be wrong.

What we do affects what we love.  (When we choose to do wrong, we are probably reflecting what we like, and our love gradually shifts in that direction, and our belief follows.)

In a series of piercing practical-application questions Arlyn asked us "Do you love_____________, or do you love the light?"  In the context of what we had heard earlier, these questions provided  much material for sober reflection.