hughbiquitous

I posted on Thomas Huxley yesterday, including this quote:

Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

What struck me there is that he says this enabled him to enjoy “peace of mind” even though it required him to resolve “at all risks” to pursue it. This suggests he suffered from FUD–fear, uncertainty, and doubt–until he insisted that what he believed in must be trustworthy.

If I were required to believe something that was utterly unbelievable, and at the same time, attempts to investigate the truth of the thing were forbidden, well, I’d lack peace of mind too.

Belief or Blasphemy?

It makes me wonder: do people really trust what they believe?

When Christians are willing to countenance blind faith rather than informed trust, it is blasphemy and a betrayal of the gospel. We ought to trust the resurrection of Christ if and only if it really happened. If the corpse of Christ never quickened, then Jesus is a fraud and worthy of contempt, not worship.

At the same time, if you are willing to trust the resurrection of Christ whether or not it really happened, then you are, to put it mildly, insulting God. The matter under discussion is, as John Piper put it, “the blazing center of the glory of God:” his victory over sin and death, won by the son of God at the cost of his own life for the salvation of worthless sinners. To say it doesn’t matter whether it really happened or not is to make a mockery of it by saying it wasn’t really necessary; that your redemption, if it really was necessary, could have been bought more cheaply; and that God squandered, not sacrificed, his son. In other words, “Dear God: you got suckered!”

If we are willing to let “just believe” suffice, and we consider the truth of the matter as either irrelevant or intimidating, then wouldn’t it follow that Jesus didn’t really need to die for our sins? Wouldn’t it have been sufficient for God to have said, “well, I could ‘go through the motions’ of atoning for the sins of the world, but why bother? Hey, y’all–Just believe!” Or for that matter, when Adam and Eve sinned, couldn’t God have said, “I didn’t see that! Do-over! That one didn’t count!”

Truth Matters

If testing (you might say trusting) your beliefs threatens you, then you need to answer this question: how do you decide what to believe in? Is there any criterion more important than truth? What could possibly make a false belief more trustworthy than a valid one?

It comes down to this: if the substance of an idea does not correspond to reality, then the idea is not worth trusting. If it lines up with reality, then it’s worth trusting. Investigating the truth of the matter will only correct or confirm it.

Maybe you’re like Huxley and you’re keenly aware that it’s risky business to pursue the peace of mind that comes with the truth. The challenge is to be like Huxley and resolve, in the face of those risks, to prefer hard truths over easy fictions and to live like what you believe is actually so.

But don’t take up the challenge merely for the peace of mind that attends a firm foundation, though. Do it because truth matters. If truth doesn’t matter, then that firm foundation your peace of mind is resting on is not so firm after all, and if you listen carefully, you might hear these words: “You got suckered.”