There is Only One God: Assurance, pt. I

Believing in one only God is one thing, but having an assurance that the God you believe in is that one only God seems to be another. I suppose that’s because everyone thinks of God as the projection of what they believe, because that’s what the secular world tells them faith is. In Christian terminology, though, assurance is something that seems to be presupposed in another way. Everyone should know this one only true God, and know that all other religions are false. No one has an excuse for not knowing this God who has revealed Himself in both the creation and in the Bible. The question is not so much about gaining an assurance of that as it is of continuing in this assurance, of continuing in faithfulness.

In order to see this difference a little more clearly, let’s look at the onus that is on the Christian in holding to his beliefs. He is not confessing his own views or his own set of standards: he is confessing a faith in God’s standards. It is therefore no good to find a refuge in “personal beliefs”, even though that is the kind of faith that is seen as protected by law in our modern way of understanding. According to this modern idea it is not the faith, or the right to pursue the true faith, that is protected; it is the right to believe what one personally holds as the true faith for oneself that is protected. The state, for its part, has no right to interfere with that, even if that belief is sometimes outrageous. This secular idea of a true faith has more to do with whether what is stated as a belief is a true statement of what one believes than whether what one states as a belief is true. And that is because in our modern philosophies no one can judge whether someone else’s belief is true.

The Christian, on the other hand, does not have any such protection. When he confesses a faith he is stating his own submission to another’s way, to God’s way. He is guided by what God thinks is right and true, not what he himself thinks is right and true. He has to correct his beliefs, hold his own beliefs in abeyance, so that he is completely formable and teachable to what is right and true. Anybody can check on him, whether his actions coincide with what God says, and whether what he states as his beliefs is in accord and consistent with God’s teachings. Being in accord is not done overnight, but comes over an entire lifetime of learning. Nor can he stand on his own interpretation of the Bible, for that betrays a double standard. What God teaches is not to be subjected to men’s theories of truth; rather, men are always to hold their own ideas and concepts as secondary to God’s own objective and unerring and revealed standards. To find a refuge in the personal aspect of one’s beliefs according to modern standards is not the Christian way.

For many the popular untouchable character of personal beliefs in the modern social order is a charter protecting their Christian beliefs from being publicly condemned. It is not protected, though, because it is a Christian belief but because it is a personal belief. It may feel secure, but in fact it also has the tendency to cut off from teachable-ness, and from any beneficial effects which public ridicule could have for the believer. For public ridicule is also one of God’s methods of perfecting our faith. If the Christian’s faith includes some ridiculous or contrary claims, or if it is inconsistent with itself, or includes things which cannot be found in God’s Word, then the public has a right to hold that faith accountable. And a Christian ought to be thankful for that. As a matter of fact, the original concept of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience was based upon this very notion: no person has complete knowledge, so all men ought to strive for what is true and right, even to the point of mutual discussion and censure in order to improve oneself. The one true religion is what is in mind here as the ultimate goal. It was the universality of truth that underwrote the original concept of the freedoms we have been bequeathed through our constitutions. Unfortunately it is now the individuality of truth that is new the standard of understanding these freedoms, understandings that are completely alien to the original concepts. A Christian, of all people, who cuts himself off from the mutuality of discussion and censure and hides, not under the shadow of God’s wings but rather behind his personal rights to his opinions, is going contrary to what the Christian means by appealing to faith.

He would be emulating exactly what our secular counterpart means by ‘faith’, but in many ways going the direct opposite way of what the Christian should mean by ‘faith’. The dictionary often defines faith in terms of a lack of proof, of a belief when there is no proof. But this kind of definition neglects that though it may be true that faith is put into practice in particular cases where proofs are not there, it still remains essential that the basis of faith is defined by its grounding in the irrefutability of its’ proofs.  

Most of the meanings used in the New Testament of the word ‘faith’ refer to a continuing in the things that have been assured. That is, the word does not refer to whether you feel assured but rather to the One who assured it to us so that our faith is solidly grounded, so that we might have an assurance. We don’t have it in ourselves, or fabricate it ourselves; it is given to us.  We have to abide in His Word. What the Bible says of itself is that everything that it teaches has been sufficiently proven for all men. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)