Belief

It ain’t what you don’t know that hurts you. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. —Mark Twain

Belief can be defined widely on a sliding scale of commitment and intensity. For the sake of this discussion, bear with me and define belief narrowly, as something we are completely committed to and believe beyond question. Should we have any beliefs that we hold blindly? What about belief in or about God? What happens when I commit to a belief and decide this is the way it is, and it is not necessary, perhaps even dangerous, to reevaluate? The Bible is full of calls to believe in God and Jesus. If we forever withhold commitment, we are unable to make progress. However, if we commit to believing in God and leave it at that, we will also stall out.

Do you think you know everything about God? The only true answer is no. How do we grow and obtain more fruit of the Spirit? By learning more about God, developing relationship with Him, and appropriating His virtue. I can’t learn more about God unless I find an open attitude in questioning my assumptions, realizing how partial my knowledge is and questing for more.

“Convictions are something you die for,” we parrot glibly, meanwhile rapidly changing our ways when we gain new understanding or when pride gets the upper hand. Preferences, now, they could go either way. Convictions should never change.

Conviction is synonymous with belief. Beliefs are our convictions, and they shape our lives. Beliefs dictate actions. We can fool ourselves about what we really believe, but our actions expose the facade. Humans do what they believe. Always. So, one of the most important questions to ask is, “Should our beliefs change, or should they be concrete, unyielding, something to die for?”

Belief is the conviction that something is true, or someone is trustworthy. Our beliefs are largely formed by our exposure and the influence we have been under. When belief meets reason, belief wins. We will never be convinced by reason if we have already firmly established our belief and identify with that belief on an emotional level. This indicates that we should be very careful about which beliefs we form. When we do accept a truth, we should seek and maintain an open attitude to revise and update our positions.

If our values (ideology) are belief-based, we are in danger of holding unreasonable thinking in disregard of truth. This will cascade into life positions and convictions that are not based on reality but on our emotional connection to our beliefs, which are formed and crystallized and nonnegotiable. Our thinking should be based on reason and all our beliefs should be fluid and open to improvement.

Nuance is critical to clean thinking. Seek and hold an attitude that everything is true but partial. In other words, most things have some truth in them, or at least a valid point, if we can walk around the issue far enough to see it from that point of view.

This is true and applicable to less vital issues. Two men by the names of Dunning and Kruger published a paper in 2000 that showed interesting and terrifying results. They gave a group of students a test, then asked each one how they thought they did on the test. When they analyzed the results, they noticed that the ones who did poorly on the test thought they probably did pretty good, above average but not at the top of the class. The ones at the top of the class underestimated how well they did. This became known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The effect asserts that most people are overconfident about their abilities, and the least competent people are the most overconfident. So, if I am incompetent in a given field, I lack the awareness to recognize my own incompetence. In a subject I know nothing about, it is easier to admit that I don’t know. It is when I know just enough about something to believe I have a handle on it that I am the most overconfident. To paraphrase a common saying:

“Knowledge without wisdom is like giving a grenade to a child.” When true expertise is attained through disciplined study and commitment, it brings with it a humility and caution in making assertive statements.

I read somewhere about a professor who was telling his class, “We don’t know what the real cause is.”

A teenage student stood up and argued, “what it obviously is”, etc.

When he was done, the professor said, “Correction, I don’t know what the real cause is!” Maturity brings the ability to know what we don’t know.

I was an impressionable teenager when the twin towers fell and a plane hit the Pentagon and another plane crashed in Pennsylvania. I remember the day clearly, and the gone feeling of the homeland under attack. I also thought I knew everything worth knowing; I had clear, but mostly misguided, opinions about everything. Thanks to stable adults around me, I never questioned the later, proven story about the Al-Qaeda jihadists who infiltrated the system with their macabre goal and actually pulled it off.

Thinking back, I realize how close I was to the counter story of a government-insidebombing- job as a false flag event. If things had been a little different with my education or family culture, I might have bought into that narrative. If I would have heard and accepted this, a few beliefs would germinate.

I mistrust all the main news sites because they are all telling the story of the suicidal extremists, which I know is just a cover-up for the real story I am privy to. Also, it is obvious that there is a hidden group of powerful people controlling everything in government. But wait, all the different countries have the same story. No one is officially blowing the whistle, so they are all in cahoots. This hidden cabal of elitists control the whole world! My beliefs were reinforced when Obama was elected. He is not an American, was born in Kenya, and is a Muslim plant. Facing the end of his second term, he was going to declare martial law and keep the presidency for a third term, which is when he would hand over the country to his Muslim cohorts.

Then thank God, Trump was elected. He was our man in the white house who saw through the deep-state and would expose them. After he lost reelection, I knew that the election was stolen from him by the powerful, and that January 6 was actually a patriotic effort to stop the steal rather than a bunch of dangerous idiots like the news says. Now, I am waiting until Trump, who is actually still in power, to be reinstated and finally drain the swamp.

This is only a partial representation of the delusions that follow a belief set that the news is all lies, and the deep-state controls the world. Unless one confronts and reevaluates, he will never change his mind, and everything that happens will only serve as further proof for his erroneous stance. His contact with reality will continue to diminish.

Let’s get this a little closer to home in Anabaptist culture. Say I grew up in a traditional church that did not allow ball caps. Subconsciously, I start to realize that ball caps are intrinsically worldly and any Christian who wears one must be misguided or carnal. It is not only the designs and logos that are the problem, but it is also the cap itself which is simply worldly in its shape and aura. My conviction against bill caps is now firmly entrenched. I would rather die than wear one. What will keep my children from drifting into the world? At the same time, I am fine with logos on coats because it is culturally acceptable, and coats are not intrinsically worldly.

Eventually, life and age broaden my horizons. One day, I encounter traditional Anabaptists wearing ball caps without thinking about it! They are sliding heedlessly toward a precipice of carnality. When I confront one of them about it, I get a blank stare and sidelong glances at the logo on my coat and my cowboy hat. He doesn’t understand that these ball caps are obvious signs of the world. Separation requires we look different from worldly people!

This may seem foolish to you. Then again, maybe not. Until I step back and reconsider what separation from the world actually is, I will continue my inconsistent, shallow thinking and will spiral into passivity and selfishness.

If I experience an epiphany and break through my resistance to ball caps (substitute any item that comes to mind) and see further into true heart separation, is it then necessary to start wearing ball caps everywhere to exhibit my newfound tolerance? A mark of maturity is the ability to hear and observe valid differences without feeling threatened or pressured to do the same. If my reason for not wearing ball caps is respect for personal family culture, not to avoid the world through outward things—which is a fool’s errand—I can keep doing that and gain a position of personal power that has validity. Respect for family culture is a personal value that can and should be passed on. If in our desire to secure our future we overstate a position, we end up cutting the ground from under our feet. Our young people are not fooled.

False beliefs have damaging impacts on my daily decisions and will lead exactly where I am trying to not go. I don’t want to be duped by the media, so I am fooled by fellow believers or grifters. I don’t want to slide into the world’s ways, but shallow, superficial separation tactics lead there anyway.

I think we need to grow past this idea that conviction should never change. We should be more committed to reasonable, logical awareness that leads to tolerance and unity and enables progress. We should respect real expertise and maintain an awareness that all things, including this essay, are true but partial.