The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our Correct Beliefs

by Peter Enns

  In fact the “actions have consequences” idea also explains Israel’s entire national epic—why the Israelites were removed from the Promised Land and taken into exile in Babylon. Over and over again we read how Israel’s disobedience to God’s law led directly to disastrous consequences. The whole scheme is laid out for us in black and white in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 28, where Moses gives the people one last pep talk before entering the land of Canaan. The message is basically this:

  If you obey God, things will go very, very, very well for you in the Promised Land. The fruit of your womb and the fruit of the land will be plenty, you’ll have all the rain you need, and your enemies won’t touch you—you will be blessed.

  But if you disobey, things will go horribly, miserably, badly wrong for you. You’ll face a laundry list of misery: disease, drought, starvation, childlessness, and your enemies will take you captive and others will move into your land—you will be cursed.

  God puts before the Israelites a crucial choice, whether to live a life of obedience or disobedience, and the choice they make will have definite consequences—you can count on it because God says so.

  And so we find Job experiencing some consequence of his own. In fact, one of those consequences is that he has sores “from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (Job 2:7). It doesn’t help Job’s case for innocence that God promises the disobedient Israelites, in Deuteronomy, that he will strike them with boils: “from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head” (Deuteronomy 28:35).

  Let’s put ourselves in the place of Job’s friends who took seriously this biblical view of actions and consequences and of God as someone who treats people according to their actions. They pay their friend Job a visit, see the state he’s in, and draw the only conclusion we can expect—that Job must have done something to incur God’s wrath. Yet Job is perplexed, and Job’s friends are perplexed that he is perplexed.

  Furthermore, as his friends remind him, Job has been benefiting from God’s blessing for a long time. He even used to teach others how the actions-consequences idea works. But now, when he is the one suffering, all of a sudden he has no idea what’s going on? How quickly Job has forgotten! Where is his integrity?

  And so his friends are well within their right—in fact it is their responsibility—to talk some sense into Job by reminding him of all those things he himself already “knows” about how God works.

  Job understands the theory, which is precisely his problem—he has no idea why God has painted a “target” on his back and why God himself has shot him full of “arrows” (see Job 7:20 and 6:4). And so Job is in full crisis mode because he has nowhere to turn, no one who will uphold his innocence before God—no one to confront God with why God is acting so un-Godlike.

  Does it seem good to you to oppress,

  to despise the work of your hands

  and favor the schemes of the wicked?

  Do you have eyes of flesh?

  Do you see as humans see?

  Are your days like the days of mortals,

  or your years like human years,

  that you seek out my iniquity

  and search for my sin,

  although you know that I am not guilty,

  and there is no one to deliver out of your hand?

  (Job 10:3–7)

  In other words, “God, why are you acting like a mere mortal toward me—and an unjust mortal at that—looking for my sins even when you know I am innocent?”

  Just like the book of Ecclesiastes, this long back and forth between Job and his friends isn’t just a lot of filler material to say, “Here’s one big example of what unfaithfulness looks like. Don’t do that.” Rather, the dialogue is drawn out to explore from different angles the very real and common idea we have seen in the Psalms and Ecclesiastes:

  What we know or think we know about God might not be so certain, no matter how absolutely certain we think we are—no matter how certain we might even think we have the right to be.

  And again, that holds true even if our sense of certainty comes from the Bible. Yes, sometimes the biblical writers present God’s ways in absolute black and white. But even if you are able to quote chapter and verse, don’t count on these portraits of God to work everywhere and every time. The Bible isn’t a Christian owner’s manual. God remains shrouded in mystery, inaccessible, beyond our mental reach.

  Which is precisely what God says when he finally inserts himself into the conversation.

  Over the course of the last four chapters (38–42), God makes it clear that he isn’t impressed with longwinded speeches. God lays out the case that he, and only he, is the Creator, and therefore, these mortals are in no position to question him.

  I have to say, I’ve never completely gotten on board with God’s answer. Job wasn’t asking a philosophical question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” or even “Why are bad things happening to me?” Rather, he was asking, as were the authors of the Psalms, “My life is leaking out of me. Why aren’t you true to your own promises? If we have to play by your rules, Oh Lord, why don’t you?”

  God could easily have told Job about the bet with the Accuser. But no—it’s like God doesn’t want Job to know what transpired in that heavenly dialogue. Rather Yahweh gives a rather long-winded speech of his own about how he is the Creator, and since Job isn’t, he has no right to stand there and interrogate God. Job fires back—and these are his last words in the book (42:1–6)—that he knows how great and powerful God is, but he’d still like an answer to the question that has been plaguing him (pun intentional) since chapter 3: “Why is all this happening to me when I didn’t do anything to deserve it?”

  Job does not back down and accept Yahweh’s four-chapter filibuster. He stands firm in his effort to get an answer from Yahweh. It is this resolution of Job’s, to be honest in his confrontation with God rather than take unjust punishment, that leads Yahweh to say to Job’s friend Eliphaz,

  My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. (42:7)

  So after all the “don’t question me because I’m God” business, God tells all who have been rooting for Job what they’ve been waiting to hear: Job was right, and his friends were wrong.

  Job’s friends were technically right if you’re going by the book. They had every reason to feel certain about why Job was suffering. But God says they are wrong.

  Job and his friends were operating under the same assumption that God wants humans to know, and indeed has made known, the basic pattern of reality—that is, what God expects from them and the basic rules for living. Job never denies this way of thinking, which is precisely what causes him so much distress—he can’t square his suffering with his “biblical” view of how God works.

  So here is another book of the Bible that tells us to let go of the need to know—better, of the expectation that we can know the inner workings of God. However sure and true we think our thoughts about God might be, struggling with God in the here and now may never be far away, challenging what we “know”—even if that knowledge comes straight out the Bible, chapter and verse.

  When we come to our own Job-like moments, the way forward isn’t to expect God to give us some additional piece of information to make everything fall into place. The answer that people like Job and his friends want—because they’ve got to “know what they believe”—is precisely the answer God keeps hidden. No special bit of knowledge for you.

  Rather, God exposes the limitations of our thinking. Then we can see the inevitability to letting go of the need to know and trust God instead—as best as we can each moment—because God is God.

  Trust like this is an affront to reason, the control our egos crave. Which is precisely the point. Trust does not work because we have captured God in our minds. It works regardless of the fact that, at the end of the day, we finally learn that we can’t.

  Chapter Five

  Believing in
God: So Easy Even a Demon Can Do It

  And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek you.

  —Psalm 9:10

  Who, Not What

  Some of you might be thinking, Okay, I get it with some psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Job, but those guys are hardly mainstream. They’re even a bit flakey. Isn’t the heart of the Bible big on knowing what you believe? Doesn’t the Bible tell us how important it is to “believe” the right things about God?

  I definitely get where these questions are coming from, and remember: I don’t think “knowing” or seeking to think “correctly” about God is wrong. Not at all. The problem is preoccupation with correct thinking—mistaking our thoughts about God with the real thing, and then to base our faith on holding on to that certainty.

  The Bible is not remotely interested in that preoccupation.

  Which brings me to a little problem with the word believe (and belief).

  Think of how we use the word believe when we talk about our faith: “What do you believe in? Really? I don’t believe in that at all. Here’s what I believe. Boy, what you believe and what I believe are very different. You couldn’t join my church or date my daughter with beliefs like that.”

  “What” and “that.” Almost as a reflex, believing is a “thinking” word, a word to describe the content of our thoughts: I believe that God exists (and atheists don’t believe that), I believe that God created the world (not random chance), I believe that Jesus is God’s Son (and not just another Jewish carpenter), and so on. Church creeds and ten-point statements of faith emphasize content, thoughts about God to be listed and agreed with.

  I’m not against creeds or talking about what I believe. But as it’s used in the Bible, believing doesn’t focus on what someone believes in, but in whom one places his or her trust—namely God.

  Believing is a “who” word.

  If we forget that, we will read into the Bible our own tendency to put what at the heart of belief, which sets us up to be preoccupied with correct thinking. And that misses the point.

  Of course, believing is never empty of content. The Israelites trusted God because of what God had done for them, namely delivering the Israelites from harm (Egyptian slavery and Babylonian captivity being the two big examples). But when we come across the idea of believing in the Bible, the focus isn’t on what but who. Not content of thinking, but trust in a person. That’s the main point I am making here.

  People in biblical times, after all, simply didn’t have the same preoccupation with what to believe as modern people do. For us, any religion, including Christianity, faces intellectual challenges that weren’t on anyone’s radar screens a few millennia ago. Does the heavenly divine realm actually exist? was not a pressing question of the day (though I’m sure skeptics could be found).

  In fact, the divine realm did more than simply exist; it was the ultimate reality by which the mundane here-and-now world was explained. The writer of Ecclesiastes comes close to the exception—his skepticism screwed him into the ground so far he was ready to pack it all in. But, like Job and Psalms, his issue was really why God is no longer trustworthy, or why it even mattered, and not whether or not God and the divine realm are real.

  Today, skepticism and disbelief in a divine realm are common, a live option for many—almost a norm that doesn’t need explaining, at least in Western culture. A bright, college-educated, twentysomething woman said to me not long ago, “The more you know, the harder it is to believe in God.” She meant that our modern world explains things quite compellingly in scientific rather than supernatural means, which makes it harder to believe that God exists—or at least the personal God in the Bible, looking down from a heavenly throne.

  So when we see “belief” or “believe” in the Bible, tempting though it may be, we shouldn’t transport our overly intellectualized meaning onto biblical characters. If we replace these words with trust, we’ll be closer to what the Bible is getting at. And we may be surprised, and encouraged, at what we see.

  Amen

  Early in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, we read of father Abraham, the patriarch of what would become the Israelites. As the story goes, God appears to Abraham (called Abram at this point) in a vision. God promises Abraham that, although childless and getting on in years, he and his wife Sarah (Sarai) would in time have a son (Isaac), and eventually, his descendants would be as uncountable as the stars in the sky.

  We can safely chalk this up to the kind of overstatement we find in the Bible when it comes to numbers, but that’s not the point. We are told that, in response to this promise, Abraham “believed the LORD” (Genesis 15:6)—which is the first place in the Bible where believing comes up.

  Believe in the original Hebrew of this story is ‘aman (ah-MAHN), which has made its way into English, and we all know it as amen—only, it’s not a social cue that we’re done praying, and it’s okay to open our eyes and dig in. Amen as the final word of a prayer is a declaration of trust: “We’re done talking now, Lord. We’ve said our peace and put this matter into your hands. Now we trust you with it.”

  God promised a very old man and his very old and barren wife a lot of kids. And Abraham believed—not simply that God was able to pull it off, but he trusted God to pull it off. Abraham “amened” God to come through. Of course, it’s absolutely fine to say that Abraham “believed,” but only if we control our reflex to push that word into the “what/that” category of our thinking about God and remember it is a “who” word of trust in God.

  “Belief” shows up in the New Testament a lot, and it’s a trust word there, too. Like when a man brought his son, who was convulsing and foaming at the mouth, to Jesus for healing (Mark 9:14–29). Jesus said, “All things can be done for the one who believes” (9:23). To which the father cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

  Of course, as we all know, this suffering father isn’t saying, “Jesus, I am operating on about an 85 percent degree of certainty that you are able to do this, but I’d like you to rev it up to 100 percent.” Rather—as I think most any parent can understand—the father needs help letting go. The situation is out of his control. He needs to trust Jesus with his son. The man says in effect, “Yes, I trust you. I’m trying, at least. I want to. I’m scared. Help me to trust you.”

  Or there’s the story of Jesus arriving too late to heal the daughter of Jairus, a leader of the synagogue (Luke 8:40–56). While Jesus is delayed, word comes to him that the girl has already died and so not to bother coming. Jesus replies, “Do not fear. Only believe, and she will be saved” (8:50). Jesus arrives at the house, but the thought of doing anything to help the girl now was utterly irrational. When Jesus said, “Only believe,” he was clearly asking them, and Jairus especially, to trust him to come through—to entrust his daughter to him.

  The book of James summarizes the idea in one verse: “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder” (James 2:19; emphasis added). Believing that God is x, y, or z has its place, but it is so easy even a demon can do it. Moving from your head to your whole self, however, where your belief is all in—where you trust God—well, that is something else entirely. And that’s the part we can’t lose sight of when we talk about believing.

  Believing is a “who” word—letting go of fear and the burning impulse to act, and trusting God. So when I come across that word in the Bible, I replace it with trust, and it always makes a big difference. I’m challenged to get out of my head, where I’m warm and safe, and feel the risk of trusting God.

  Believing is easy. It gives us wiggle room to think our way out of a tight spot. But trust doesn’t have any wiggle room. It explodes it. Trust is about being all in.

  Faith Isn’t Something in Your Head (or Heart)

  When we say that someone “has faith,” we run into a similar problem as with “belief.” We might say to someone, “Tell me about your faith,” and the answer we get might be something lik
e, “Well, I’m a Christian. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, who died for my sins,” and so on.

  Again, nothing wrong with that. Faith, like belief, includes content—the what—but again, we can’t stay on that level. If we do, we’re going to miss out on a lot. We see “faith” throughout the New Testament, and it’s typically not about the content of what to think. It’s about trusting God—and acting on it.

  Faith is a who word, a trust word. We’ve just seen two examples of it in the stories of the father with the sick son and Jairus’s dead daughter: “I believe; help my unbelief” and “Only believe, and she will be saved.”

  I know these passages say “unbelief” and “believe,” but the Greek word behind it is the same one translated as “faith” elsewhere in the New Testament: pistis (PIS-tis). So even though in English we see two different words, in Greek they are one and the same with two different uses.

  Grammar lesson aside, we just need to be alert to what’s happening when we see “believe” or “faith” in the New Testament: these are about all-in trust, not something we believe about God or Jesus.

  Pistis is also an action word—and here is where things get interesting. When used as an action word, pistis is usually translated as faithful/faithfulness or trustworthy/trustworthiness.

  So what? Well, knowing this will give us a bigger and deeper view of what the New Testament writers are after when they talk about faith. And it’s not so much something we “have,” like the thoughts we “have” in our heads or the feelings we “have” in our hearts.

  Faith describes our whole way of looking at life and how we act on that.

  Faith describes a parent letting go of the fear for his child and handing that child over to Jesus. Faith like that is a conscious decision to trust—and it’s hard to let go of control and do that. Faith is a tough word.

  Faith is not only directed toward God but toward other people. Followers of Jesus are to be pistis toward each other—meaning “faithful” toward each other. As Paul puts it, “. . . the only thing that counts is faith [pistis] working through love” (Galatians 5:6). He isn’t saying, “Listen, we’ve got two things going on here: the faith we have inside and then the love we show toward others.” Replacing “faith” with faithfulness helps us see Paul’s point more clearly. He is saying that faith and love are two sides of the same coin.