....that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
—Romans 10:9
The eight-year-old in my life has been asking innocent questions about Jesus and his story, and I have been answering with the facts I believe—about Jesus’ life, his death for our sins, and his bodily rise from the tomb.
But something leaves me uncomfortable about what I am telling the child. Something is missing from what I am saying.
The discomfort is enough to lead me to re-examine my own faith. Do I really believe the gospel story?
I do.
However, I have always believed something. Whether I recognized it or not, some framework or another has always been the lens through which I saw the world.
Belief systems already compete for my child’s attention. I don’t necessarily object. We live in a world of ideas. One cause I do find for objection, though, is when conjecture is presented to a child as fact. To give a small example, I think I see a specific case of this in the modern idea that our earth or ecosystem is imperiled. Children hear exaggerated and speculative ideas of environmental calamity presented to them with the same weight as if they were known articles of geography or math. Yet this is a child—someone who trusts adults to provide reliable training about the world. If reasonable causes for doubt are not acknowledged as part of the teaching, then the message is incomplete.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not, technically, conjecture. It is rather an assertion. It is an assertion made by witnesses. I treat the event as fact. I see the supporting evidence for this fact in the imprint of history. Even so, this event is a different kind of fact.
The nature of the difference is made plain in scripture. The resurrection of Jesus cannot be conclusively and analytically “proven,” because God did not construct the event that way. Each of us is significant to the story. Each of us has a vital, personal role to play. We are to make the conscious election of choosing God—and choosing him in our hearts. That is, we are called to believe.
In the Bible, the first to report on the empty tomb were women. The detail is telling. If the story of the resurrection was fabricated, then the fabricator would not have told the story this way. Women, within that culture, would have been too easy to disregard. The gospel account itself makes this plain; the women’s story at first was not taken seriously (Luke 24:11). From the very beginning, in other words, belief required this willingness to accept—this courage to brave the fear of being seen as foolish. From the beginning, there was this need for an exercise of faith.
A young child who hears only the facts of these events from a grown-up is not likely to be building on faith, but instead building on his or her trust in the authority of the grown-up. By itself, that is not enough. The trust in grown-ups won’t always be there—nor should it be. Therefore, though I need to tell my own child the facts about Jesus, I think I also need to say more.
Specifically, I will add to the account that plenty of people reject this story. Plenty of others refuse to care.
I have done both.
The Bible says, “believe in your heart,” and I do. I have chosen this belief for my heart, and I can tell you all the reasons why.
You will get to make the same choice.
You will give your heart to something, because everyone gives their heart to something. Whether they know it or not.
This is a sacred privilege you will exercise—this privilege of making your heart’s choice.
You will get to decide what belief is rich enough to keep you. No one else can choose for you. You will get to go to the belief that is worthy of you. You will get to decide just what belief deserves to have your heart.
—Romans 10:9
The eight-year-old in my life has been asking innocent questions about Jesus and his story, and I have been answering with the facts I believe—about Jesus’ life, his death for our sins, and his bodily rise from the tomb.
But something leaves me uncomfortable about what I am telling the child. Something is missing from what I am saying.
The discomfort is enough to lead me to re-examine my own faith. Do I really believe the gospel story?
I do.
However, I have always believed something. Whether I recognized it or not, some framework or another has always been the lens through which I saw the world.
Belief systems already compete for my child’s attention. I don’t necessarily object. We live in a world of ideas. One cause I do find for objection, though, is when conjecture is presented to a child as fact. To give a small example, I think I see a specific case of this in the modern idea that our earth or ecosystem is imperiled. Children hear exaggerated and speculative ideas of environmental calamity presented to them with the same weight as if they were known articles of geography or math. Yet this is a child—someone who trusts adults to provide reliable training about the world. If reasonable causes for doubt are not acknowledged as part of the teaching, then the message is incomplete.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not, technically, conjecture. It is rather an assertion. It is an assertion made by witnesses. I treat the event as fact. I see the supporting evidence for this fact in the imprint of history. Even so, this event is a different kind of fact.
The nature of the difference is made plain in scripture. The resurrection of Jesus cannot be conclusively and analytically “proven,” because God did not construct the event that way. Each of us is significant to the story. Each of us has a vital, personal role to play. We are to make the conscious election of choosing God—and choosing him in our hearts. That is, we are called to believe.
In the Bible, the first to report on the empty tomb were women. The detail is telling. If the story of the resurrection was fabricated, then the fabricator would not have told the story this way. Women, within that culture, would have been too easy to disregard. The gospel account itself makes this plain; the women’s story at first was not taken seriously (Luke 24:11). From the very beginning, in other words, belief required this willingness to accept—this courage to brave the fear of being seen as foolish. From the beginning, there was this need for an exercise of faith.
A young child who hears only the facts of these events from a grown-up is not likely to be building on faith, but instead building on his or her trust in the authority of the grown-up. By itself, that is not enough. The trust in grown-ups won’t always be there—nor should it be. Therefore, though I need to tell my own child the facts about Jesus, I think I also need to say more.
Specifically, I will add to the account that plenty of people reject this story. Plenty of others refuse to care.
I have done both.
The Bible says, “believe in your heart,” and I do. I have chosen this belief for my heart, and I can tell you all the reasons why.
You will get to make the same choice.
You will give your heart to something, because everyone gives their heart to something. Whether they know it or not.
This is a sacred privilege you will exercise—this privilege of making your heart’s choice.
You will get to decide what belief is rich enough to keep you. No one else can choose for you. You will get to go to the belief that is worthy of you. You will get to decide just what belief deserves to have your heart.
