It doesn't matter what I believe as long as I'm sincere
Pete Jackson
At first glance this kind of thinking seems kind and sensible and helpful. Kind, because it recognises the validity of different systems of belief, different outlooks and opinions, different ways of seeing the world and understanding it. Kind because it says everybody is right to believe what they want to believe and nobody can say otherwise. Sensible because, after all, who can claim that their opinion, their school of thought, is anything other than just that, opinion? Who can really say that what they believe is better than what anyone else believes? And it seems helpful, because it suggests that believing in something is what really matters.
So, no matter what label your favourite brand goes by, it's just really great that you believe in something. And surely modern men and women who claim to have a faith should agree?
I want to suggest a few reasons why we shouldn't be satisfied with this kind of thinking, whether we are a Christian or not. Everyone believes in something, everyone has a world view, the atheist, the scientist, the agnostic, the humanist, Christian, Buddhist, everyone has a way of looking at the world.
What people believe matters because...
Belief leads to behaviour
What we believe will affect how we live. Our thinking will affect our living.
So it is often what people believe about the value of human life that results in them going into the medical profession. And what they believe about humanity will affect just what sort of Doctor or Nurse they are. And it was what Tony Blair believed about "weapons of mass destruction" resulted in this country going to war in Iraq. We can't pretend that the content of our beliefs are irrelevant because it has an impact for good or bad on how we live, how we relate to one another.
And, as the example of Tony Blair and WMDs shows,
It is possible to be sincerely wrong
In fact, history is littered with examples of those who believed sincerely and passionately in something, and yet, the majority of us would say, were sometimes gravely wrong.
Who would doubt the sincerity of the Nazis, or the suicide bombers in Iraq? Who would doubt the sincerity of those who burned witches in the name of Christianity? In fact, if I was going to be a little bit bold, I would suggest that perhaps our statement only really applies to things that don't matter. We can't really apply it across the board can we? To issues like paedophilia, to murder and theft, to war and justice? In all of these areas it is possible to be sincerely, disastrously wrong in what we believe isn't it?
It seems that when it comes to things that matter, we need something other than sincerity to measure the validity of our beliefs.
Belief is only as good as the thing believed in
If I believe that the car will start when I turn the key, what is it that starts the motor running? My belief or the engine?
And what if the car was totally empty, no petrol. No matter how sincerely I believed that car would start, it wouldn't.
If I sincerely believe I can bungee jump successfully from the top of Egerton Hall using blue tack, that sincerity does me no good as I plummet rapidly towards the tarmac.
Believing is only any good if what we believe in is reliable. Everyone who truly really believes anything passionately knows this. So we need to ask if what we believe in is reliable. Will our worldview do what it says on the tin? Is what we believe in really worth believing in?
I've nearly finished but I wouldn't really be telling you what Christian believe if I didn't add this final remark and then leave it with all of us to think about.
Jesus urged people to believe in him and his message. To believe certain concrete things about himself and about God and the world and the future. In John 14:1-5, He said 'trust me just like you would trust God.' Trust me for what life is really all about. And he offers us his life and death and rising again as evidence that he really is the only one who can talk with any authority about these things.