How do we Believe?
What really caught my attention about this gospel was Jesus’ repeated use of the word “believe”. Along with faith, it’s one of Jesus’ favourite words. It appears 9 times in the gospel of Matthew, 18 in Mark, 9 in Luke and 94 in John. In the context of something so utterly unbelievable as a bodily ascension into heaven, I think this deserves a closer look. What exactly does it mean to believe?
To believe means to go beyond the known. It means weighing up what’s in front of you and taking a step into the unknown based on the evidence. So when Isaac told James there was a supermarket in Rathmines selling Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for 2 euros, James believed him, he saw that Isaac had Ben and Jerry’s in his freezer, and he took Isaac for a trustworthy, credible person. He couldn’t be certain but he took a leap and dedicated a whole afternoon to this worthy quest. It was a shame to find out that what Isaac believed to be a 2 euro sign was in fact a sign that said “save 2 euros on Ben and Jerry’s.” But who could blame either of them?
If a person is believable, we say they’re trustworthy, credible, maybe even respectable. A person who gives the impression of believability is one we can trust. If the person is a witness giving testimony, they are in possession of a certain piece of knowledge which the investigators are lacking. Given an assessment of their credibility, the investigators will have to take what is said on belief. So when a young Rory was called into the school office to explain who planted the fish behind the radiator which was giving off such a bad smell, the teacher believed him when he said he didn’t know, because over the years he’d built up a credible butter-wouldn’t-melt persona - regardless of whether or not he was in fact the one who put it there.
What about believability’s related younger cousin, gullibility? Gullibility is a kind of uncritical, undiscerning and blind acceptance of what’s possible. When Niall told Rory that if he pulled his older brother’s finger a song would start playing, he did so at the expense of the surrounding air quality and the condition of his nostrils. Here Rory believed a little too easily. If he had been a bit more discerning, he would have realised there was in fact no possibility of a song suddenly playing, and he would have saved himself a few breaths of air.
Belief, unlike gullibility, includes the present circumference of the known and the knowable. And yet it means being wide-open to the possibility of the unforeseen, it is a furtherance that both transcends and includes what is currently known. For example, when children play make-believe they take the environment and transform it imaginatively into something greater. We think this is cute, fun, a bit silly and at worst slightly annoying. When I was younger the space behind the sofa in our living room was a mountain cave with a vast vantage over a battlefield of encroaching enemies. I might have been a little gullible as a child, but when my sister and I played soldiers, on a lower level of ourselves we knew full-well we were still in the lounge, but when Mum and Dad came in and just saw a sofa they only got half the picture. What we’d done is taken that matter-of-fact reality and furthered it imaginatively into something greater than it could have been on its own. We really believed we were under siege because in some sense we really were. And when Mum called us back to dinner the mountainside shook as the commanding officer sounded a full-scale retreat.
In my experience, to believe in this way is anything but silly, it makes the utmost sense. To believe in Christ means continually re-imagining our idea of God, using the facts of our knowable, day-to-day life to construct the best possible image of God. We’re not called to be gullible, doing this takes a powerful imaginative effort, something which comes naturally to children. I think it’s part of why Jesus so often compared the kingdom of heaven to the lives of children. 2000 years ago the disciples were asked to believe in something even less credible than 2 euro Ben and Jerry’s, and so are we today. Yet with our minds gripped firmly on the ordinary like a closed fist, how can we open ourselves to the unforeseeability of what’s possible, unbelievable and even impossible? To believe in this way is to go with the flow, always operating at the frontier of the possible, wide-open to whim and wind - just not the kind my brother made when I pulled his finger.
To finish I’d like to read a short poem called “The Kingdom of Heaven”, it was written after seeing children playing in a park in Rathmines which, to them, was no longer just a park. It took me back to my days behind the sofa and I think it captures a little more succinctly what I’ve been trying to say.
Something in them caught me off guard,
Their unroofed ease and laughter,
Eyes all gaze and transformation,
Minds open as the playground gate.
