The proof is in the pudding

I have met many people who would like to believe (at least that is what they tell me!). But they do not seem able to. But what if there was a way to know? Well actually there is, and the Bible itself tells us how. There are not too many options here, either the Bible is true, or its a bunch of baloney. The Bible challenges us to prove it is true. I should warn you however, that it will cost you everything you are and have, but you can know, and it is worth it. I need to take a small diversion to discuss how we know.

What I want to say is that we can know the Bible is true, we can prove it to ourselves, but it's not a mathematical or a scientific proof. Actually, we have been duped into believing that scientific knowledge is the only real knowledge. But if you think about it even a little, you will know that scientific and/or Mathematical knowledge is not the only way we know. How do people know they are in love? Do you claim we cannot know we are in love? You cannot prove this scientifically (see “I know too much Science to believe in God” – posted June 2010). Or take the law courts. In a law court the testimonies of witnesses are heard and examined and acted upon. Testimony is not scientific proof, but people have been sentenced to death on this kind of proof. We do this in life too. We act on what other people say, and when someone who we know to be reliable tells us something, we act on such knowledge. To say we can only be certain of knowing by scientific proof is absurd, and in any case is totally contrary to the way we operate in life. We act in certainty about all kinds of things, or we would not even get out of bed. I am certain the airlines only allow qualified pilots to pilot their planes. If I did not “know” this, I would not fly. We all live by faith in something. The question is, are our certainties (our trust/belief /faith) reasonable? I will need to say more about “A blind or a reasonable faith.” The Bible tells us that from the inside (after conversion) we can know. We are told “The Spirit of God witnesses to our Spirit that we are children of God” Romans 8:16. It is the testimony of many that you can know and be confident in the reality of this witness. If you think about it, we do know when we are (or are not) loved!

The Bible tells us both the what and the how, or if you like the path to this knowledge we are talking about. There are two verses that say it explicitly. Let's look at them. The first is John 7:17 which, in the NIV, reads “Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” The second is like unto it, it reads “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” (John 14:21). The Amplified Bible expands “manifest Myself” to “I will let Myself be clearly seen by him, and make Myself real to him.”

These two verses can be thought of as encapsulating both a principle and a promise. In terms of it being a promise, like most Biblical promises, there is a condition that needs to be fulfilled before it can be claimed. Our part in the first promise is to choose to do the will of God, and the implication is that you can determine that by reading the book! Our part in the second promise is to have the commandments, and to keep them. So our part is to both know His commandments (and hence His will), and then to put them into practice. In my own journey, when the Holy Spirit began to convict me of sin of righteousness and judgement (John 16:8), I knew that I needed to change, to turn over new leaf. It was in the doing (or rather the attempting) that I discovered how far short I fell of being able to do it. So then it was in trying to do what He commands that I discovered my desperate need of Him to save me. Having tried my best, I know first hand the truth of what lies behind Romans 7:15 - “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do”. When I discovered this, so much more began to make sense, and to fall into place (see also “This book knows me”). And yes I knew it was all true!

But there is also a principle behind the promise. The principle is that what we do, and what we know and believe are not independent realities. In other words knowing/believing and doing are intricately interconnected. I have no clue how the conversation came round to this, but one time in the cafe this young woman said to me “I don't think adultery is wrong.” Without condemnation I looked her in the eye, and said to her very gently 'That's because you want to do it'. She lifted her hand not quite quick enough to hide her “guilty as charged” smile. You see if God says “You must not commit adultery,” and you want to, one of two things has to go. Either your adultery will go, or your belief in God will. How easily we rationalize what we want to do! To me the truth that we suppress truth by unrighteousness (Romans 1:18) is compelling!

One dictionary describes rationalization as the provision of plausible reasons to explain to oneself, or others, behaviour for which one's real motives are different, unknown or unconscious. The Bible knows all about this, but it's more blunt. The full text of the verse just indicated reads “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Romans 1:18). Being a Father helps me to understand why God takes this so seriously. Have you ever seen a mother (or father) angry because someone had hurt their child? This is how God feels about the selfishness and meanness that comes out of His children toward others of His children. And which one of us is exempt? We often don't see it (at least in ourselves), but the fact of the matter is that all unrighteousness is at some level destructive to others and actually in the end to ourselves too.

We don't see it, because we don't want to see it. But even if we do, we will likely excuse, dismiss or marginalize it. Nobody wants to think of themselves as wicked, so that when we are determined to do something wrong, or not to do something we should, we are always quick to find ways to rationalize or to excuse our behaviour. And when we want to do what we want to do, it makes it hard to hear what we need to hear. But until we begin to recognize this in ourselves we will be easily fooled by the deceitfulness of sin. Actually it's worse than just being fooled, because when we follow through it causes a hardening of our hearts (Hebrews 3:13).

So to summarize the principle, it has two sides. Our wrong doing promotes unbelief, and our right doing promotes faith. To put the negative side of this in the language of the last couple of paragraphs, we can say that the appetites that we develop, and the wrong things that we want to do, will if we pursue them be the very things that cause our unbelief. And the converse is true too, that if we follow His teaching then we “will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31, 32). There is much to say about this passage of Scripture and I will come back to it again and again.

So in short, doing and believing (or not believing) go hand in hand. There is no fence, we are either growing in faith or diminishing in faith. Jesus puts it this way “Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them" (Matthew 13:12). Or to put it yet another way, the proof that all of what we have been saying is true, is to be found in the “pudding of doing”.