Rails

Beliefs are the rails upon which our lives run.
We almost always act according to what we really believe.
It doesn't matter much what we say we believe or what we want others to think we believe...
That is why behavior is such a good indicator of a person's beliefs.
 - J.P. Moreland

   This made me stop and ask myself: what do I really believe? I know what I want to believe or what I say I believe, but if I look at my actions, what do they say I believe? The answer makes me want to flinch, because if I'm honest with myself, it's more than a little painful.

    If I truly believe a loving God is in complete control, not only of the universe but of my life individually, and if I completely trust him to take care of me and to work for the best in line with his perfect will, then I will be secure in where I am and what I am doing. I will not panic at unexpected circumstances, because I will know that while they were unexpected to me, God was not surprised, and his plan is still working as it should. I will not complain, because I would realize that the best growth comes through hard times and difficult situations, and, of course, that complaining never helped anything anyway. I will not cry out at the unfairness of life or lose myself in self-pity, because I won't be focusing on myself, I'll be looking to God. If I truly believe...

   But I do panic, I do complain, I do spend far too many nights crying because I'm alone, and life just isn't fair---and---and---

   So what do I believe? According to my actions, I believe that God cares about big things and great works, like countries and salvation, but not my every day, individual life. That somehow, in the midst of everything, I was forgotten, because I'm not important enough to merit the kind of attention that say, a missionary or civil rights leader, anyone with a more important calling than mine, would get. That because I'm not where I wanted to be, God must not care.

   And that's wrong. I know it's wrong. If God didn't care about normal, individual people, then none of my faith would make sense at all. It is my fault that my expectations were not where God wanted them to be. My fault and not God's that I was not prepared for my life to end up where it is. My fault that I don't look to him when I need help rather than looking down at the mire and bewailing my unlucky state. But how can I change beliefs that I didn't even know I had? I already know the truth. That isn't the issue. But how do I take what I know is true and make it what my heart (or my kidney, if you want to be Biblically accurate) believes?

   If beliefs are rails, then to change my beliefs, I'm going to have to do some heavy lifting. I'm going to need rails and ties, reason and time and a lot of prayer, and every time I start rolling down the tracks, I'm going to have to consciously move the switch, to say "I believe, help my unbelief!", to remind myself about what I know, until what I know is what I believe, and what I believe is what I do.

1. J.P. Moreland, "Living Smart," in Passionate Conviction: Contemporary Discourses on Christian Apologetics, ed. Paul Copan et al. (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2007), 25.