The dilemma presented by believing or not believing something you can’t see lies in whether or not you trust the source of information. Let’s look at this story from Jesus’ life about that exact problem. One day, as Jesus was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders came up and said to him, “Tell us by what authority you do these things, or who it is that gave you this authority.” He answered them, “I also will ask you a question. Now tell me, was the baptism of John from heaven or from man?” And they discussed it with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man,’ all the people will stone us to death, for they are convinced that John was a prophet.” So they answered that they did not know where it came from. And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.” (Luke 20:1-8 ESV) The way Jesus leaves the chief priests, elders and scribes hanging is quite interesting. It implies that all is a waste of time if you don’t know what you’re beliefs are. Secondly, Jesus tells them that if they don’t know, he’s not going to continue to confuse them anymore. Yet, he has no problem leaving them to stew in a dilemma they created for themselves by not picking something to believe in– that is to say, these people didn’t really believe in anything and they tended to flip and flop according to public opinion because they didn’t want to look bad for their beliefs and yet didn’t want to appear faithless. For us, it is a question of whether we are willing to keep our faith somewhere hap-hazardously between believing and not believing. Moreover, do we want to live our lives that way? Believing is a commitment and if we don’t commit, where does that leave us? Are we going to allow other people decide what we should or should not believe in for our livelihood? Jesus knew exactly what these people were doing– they were trying to force him into a position of disbelief that they were trapped in. People still do that– trying to trap us into group think and bully us with unsound reasoning to aimlessly question our faith with meandering. Jesus was teaching people the good news of God, these naysayers wanted Jesus and everybody else who needed hope, to question that hope because they don’t want a hopeful people. We fall to that trap every single time. Believing is having “hope” and that hope is what gives us strengths through difficult times, when things are uncertain, when believing is difficult. President Snow from the Hunger Games says it best, “Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear.” Therefore, our dilemma is choosing to believe because we are afraid of where it may take us. Other people are afraid for us and they try to put us in a square. Jesus says otherwise. He wants us to believe because of the convictions we hold from the experience we had. He wants us to believe in him and have hope because it is stronger than the fear that holds us in a perpetual dilemma.
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