Believe and Shudder

“I’ve seen a lot of this universe. I’ve seen fake gods and bad gods and demigods and would-be gods. Out of all that – out of that whole pantheon – if I believe in one thing, just one thing, I believe in her.”

Doctor Who S2 E9 ‘The Satan Pit’ (2006)

 

Thanks to notashamedofthegospel.com for having splayed the sentiment I intend to discuss so artfully across a background. 

Christianity: religion or relationship? I expect you’ve come across the debate. I think I probably first encountered it at Soul Survivor, with Mike Pilivachi determinedly advocating the latter viewpoint¹ – as, indeed, many Christians seem to. ‘Religion’ as a term conjures up images of rules and rituals and authorities that don’t sit at all well with the universal grace offered by the gospel. On the other hand, it’s nigh on impossible to argue that Christianity cannot be categorised under any dictionary definition of ‘religion’:

1) Belief in, worship of, or obedience to a supernatural power or powers considered to be divine or to have control of human destiny

2) Any formal or institutionalised expression of such belief

3) The attitude and feeling of one who believes in a transcendent controlling power or powers²

There are more, but don’t all the above sound suspiciously as if they apply to Christianity? And if denying Christianity’s status as a religion is so clearly untenable, what do people like Mike Pilivachi mean when they do so? I reckon the debate can be resolved something like this: Christianity is both a religion and a relationship – but Christianity the religion can’t save you, while Christianity the relationship can.

“You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe – and shudder!” James 2:19³

Most of us, I would think, would happily agree that it’s perfectly possible to outwardly behave like a Christian – church attendance and charity and ticking the relevant box in the religious-beliefs section of the census – without actually having a relationship with Christ. James, however, goes one step further: it’s perfectly possible to believe Christian doctrine without actually having a relationship with Christ.

Hold on a second, you exclaim. Doesn’t it say in the one Bible verse everyone can cite and recite that “whoever believes in [Jesus] should not perish but have eternal life”?⁴ Indeed it does, O Most Alert Reader. The only plausible conclusion is that there are two different kinds of belief going on here. Even though the same Greek verb – πιστεύω (pisteúō) – is translated as ‘believe’ in both verses, it can as easily be rendered ‘trust’ or ‘put faith in’,⁵ which I think sheds a bit of a different light on our familiar favourite John 3:16. It’s not enough to believe in Jesus the way one might believe in, say, global warming, namely a mere acknowledgement of the existence of the thing in question; as James notes, even the demons do that. One must, rather, believe in him as an act of trust. Think of that dramatic climax of the Doctor Who two-parter I quoted above; the Doctor is saying nothing so bland as that he accepts Rose’s existence as a fact, but rather, boldly and devotedly, that he has faith in her character and abilities. Of course, recognising the fact of Rose’s existence is a prerequisite for placing such faith in her, but it does not, by itself, constitute this faith.

In the same way, some element of ‘religion’, in terms of believing in God – that first of the definitions above – is a prerequisite for a trusting relationship with him. That said, it is the trusting relationship, and not the religious belief, as James makes clear, that brings one into eternal life, hence the whole ‘Christianity is not a religion’ argument. What God offers us is not a worldview with which we might comfort ourselves, but his very own self, as one in whom we might place our faith with total security, as in the closest of friends. I was so struck by this concept, in fact, that I wrote a poem about it, which I have included below in case you should feel at all inclined to read it.⁶

I worship no philosophy,

No clever ideology.

No cause or claim possesses me.

No principle impresses me.

O Argument, O Theory,

O Purpose, can you hear me?

And, when my heart

Just falls apart,

Then can you love me dearly?

And can you know me utterly?

And never once give up on me?

And fight with me? And cry with me?

Can you lose all and die for me?

And would you even try for me?

I worship no morality,

No doctrine, rationale, or creed,

No notion of humanity:

That’s what we call idolatry,

And idols stand there, silently,

Despite the pleas of devotees

Who worship what

Their skills begot

And not the one who gave them these.

Well, some great comfort may it be

In darkness, filth, and misery

Recounting all those grand ideals

Who cannot fathom how it feels:

My God, who can, is very real.

Footnotes

¹ Soul Survivor is a Christian youth festival that takes place each summer in Staffordshire and Somerset – http://soulsurvivor.com/ – and Mike Pilivachi is one of its co-founders.

² Thanks to the Collins English Dictionary on dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion?s=t.

³ Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James%202&version=ESVUK. Go on, you know you want to. Nothing like a little James for feeling massively convicted.

⁴ It’s John 3:16 – but of course you already knew that. Fancy a little context? https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+3&version=ESVUK.

⁵ According to the masterly Liddell-Scott-Jones lexicon: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=pisteuw&la=greek#lexicon.

⁶ Credit for sparking this poem into existence goes to the Word 4U 2Day devotional for the eighteenth of August last year. The magazine is now rebranding itself with the rather more acceptable name of Word For You; the content remains as good as ever: http://www.ucb.co.uk/word4u2day.