What does it mean to believe?

Let's dive deep in to what Christians and the demons believe alike

Do you ever wonder if we’re setting our children up for failure with their Christian worldview with all their childhood beliefs? In my mind I go through this fictional conversation with an imaginary child.

Child: Dad, is there really a Santa Claus?

Dad: No child, there isn’t a Santa Claus. It’s all made up for the purpose of celebrating the birth of Christ and showing your family and friends that you love them through gift giving gifts. 

Child: So, Jesus’s birthday is on December 25th?

Dad: No child. It was originally a pagan Roman holiday where they celebrated the winter solstice and the god Saturn by exchanging gifts. It’s believed in the 4th century when Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the religion of the Romans, he converted the winter solstice festival to a celebration of Jesus Christ’s birthday. Jesus’s birthday is probably really in the Springtime during the time of birth of the sacrificial temple lambs. Its probably around the time we celebrate Easter.

Child: Oh well, speaking of Easter – is the Easter Bunny real?

Dad: No child. That’s made up too.

Child: Then why do we have an Easter egg hunt at church then?

Dad: Well child, its another pagan holiday Christian’s appropriated to get the people to celebrate Christ instead. Along with Christ’s death and resurrection overlapping with the Jewish Passover, the Council of Nicaea in 325 decreed that Easter should be observed on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox.

Child: Well, at least the Tooth Fairy is real. Right Dad?

Dad: Uh ..

You should get the idea of what I am trying to illustrate. In their formative years we get our children to believe in all these things that aren’t necessarily true then pull the rug out from under them when they get older. It’s no wonder so many young people leave the faith when they enter college. They encounter professors and people with contrary worldviews and arguments against their faith that they’ve probably never been challenged to consider. Having your beliefs undermined seems to be just a part of growing up in America.

Here is the flip side of that. If you are a parent and your child has friends, you’ve probably encountered that one child whose parents told him or her that Santa Claus isn’t real. They are typically the most miserable and discontented child who is literally a scrooge during that entire season. They have to go around and tell all the other kids what they believe isn’t true. No parent wants that to be their kid, even though he isn’t wrong. Children want to know what is true and yet we tend to let them believe in all these things that aren’t.

Even in Christianity we teach our kids through traditions things that aren’t necessarily true. Example, the three wise men don’t meet Jesus until He is two years old. But every Christmas we have the three wise men at the birth of Jesus at every kid’s program around the manger. Why? It seems we set them up for failure even within our own faith by propagating things that aren’t true.

How do we keep our children’s faith from being undermined by all these cultural traditions? We secure their faith by teaching them what it means to believe or to have beliefs. Belief is defined by Webster’s as a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing, something that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion, conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence.

I am particularly fond of that last definition. As Christians we don’t talk enough about the evidence for our faith. There is more historical evidence for Jesus Christ as a historical figure than there is for Julius Caesar. The facts of the life of Jesus’s birth, death and resurrection are very well documented. The Bible is looked at by many historians as a reliable historical source. Apart from the spectacular claims of the bible, the martyrdom of Apostles should be greatly stressed to young believers as a testament to what they claimed to have witnessed to be true because no one dies for a lie or a hustle. Regardless historians can’t agree on a naturalistic answer for what happened at the time of resurrection of Jesus Christ. But all will agree that something extraordinary did happen to cause Judaism to split in two and all the people who witnessed those events to believe in the early 30s AD.  

Here is a great objective video on the resurrection of Jesus Christ if you want to really dig deep into the facts versus the fiction.

If you know a little bit about the Bible you are probably thinking, it says the demons believe in Jesus too.

James 2:19 ESV “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.”

There are several biblical accounts of this fact.

Mark 5:1-7 ESV

They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. 2 When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. 3 This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. 4 For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. 6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. 7 He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!

Acts 16:16-17 ESV

As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling. 17 She followed Paul and us, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.”

What does it mean to believe then? It means that you act on what you believe to be true in faith. To the statement of James, there are people who may understand who Jesus is and the morality thereof, but not allow their lives to be changed and guided in faith by the Holy Spirit. Also, you can’t say you believe in Jesus and act contrary to what He teaches.

John 14:15 ESV “If you love me, you will keep my commandments."

What is the difference between the belief of the demons and that of Christian believers?

Satan and his demons cannot act on their belief. They can no more deny who Jesus Christ is no more than the moon can resist reflecting the light of the sun. In Ezekiel 28, it gives the account of the Fall and the nature of Lucifer as the great reflector, and that nature carries over to his demons. In essence, we are similar reflectors as we too are to reflect God’s glory and love in our lives, which part of the reason Satan despises man, but that’s another article for another time. We have that choice of belief or disbelief, to reflect or not. The point is we as believers act on our faith based on the evidence of our beliefs.

We should also teach our children that having doubts doesn’t mean they do not believe. Having questions and doubts are part of believing. Look at Job 38 where God responds to Job about his questions. Look at John the Baptists doubts found in Luke 7.  God had been silent for centuries and upon John baptizing Jesus, he hears the audible words of God, and yet after all that he had doubts while in prison. Everyone has doubts but few really seek the answers to them. Our part in this for our children is to either have the answers or the tools to help them find those answers.

So, what about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, leprechauns, the tooth fairy and all that foolishness?

Long before I ever was married and thought about having children, I worked with a man at the local newspaper who told me about his experiences with his children in this aspect. His daughter came to him and asked him if Santa was real. His response was quite brilliant and as a parent this has always been my go-to strategy. He answered the question with a question. He asked her what she thought about it. It forced her to consider the facts and make determination on her own versus giving her an answer that completely relied on solely trusting in him. She didn’t answer right away but she came back later with something more interesting. After some thought, she concluded that there probably was a Santa Claus otherwise people wouldn’t know what he looked like or what he did. Whether he was still running around and visiting all those houses on Christmas night still seemed fantastical to her but obviously there was something there of value because people held on it. It became a story of legend or tradition rather than of belief.

These fictional and historical traditions that we participate in or share communally probably ought to be taught as no more than that. I don’t think I’ve ever told my children Santa was real. I’ve went along with it over the years because I am not a monster. I do remember conversations along the way about it and asking them what they thought. My children have always had interesting answers, but I think they knew if they expressed too many doubts that they might put their chances of getting presents at risk. In essence, they played along too. Over the years, my children have learned that when Mom or Dad asks a question there had better be a thoughtful answer because more questions would follow. Questions are the beginning of understanding, wisdom and knowledge, not the end.

Answering a question with a question is a strategy often used by Jesus. He answered many of his critics’ questions with questions of his own. The bible is replete with examples from the Pharisees trying to trap him about taxation and the rich young ruler to mention a few classic ones. Even though he used parables to get people to understand the basics of the kingdom of heaven, Jesus still required some mental gymnastics to arrive at some of the greater truths revealed in His word. Why is there suffering? What is the purpose of living? As mentioned in my previous article about parenting, we must give our children a spiritual ontic referent to anchor themselves to and the means to test the strength of that chain of logic.

The point is we need to train our children to be able to think in addition to helping them understand what means to believe and how to wrestle with questions and doubts. In an era of an abundance of information and the means to find it, the answer “because I told you so” no longer holds water. Its dangerous to have your children’s faith in God hanging solely on the trust of your words. Nor can you just trust their Sunday school teachers and or youth leaders to instill them with all this. An untested faith may still be a true faith, but without testing it can become an untrusted faith. Of course, I could be wrong about all of this, but its just my perspective from the bottom end.