One of the biggest obstacles preventing me from simply embracing Christianity is that I am not entirely sure what it means to be a Christian. Specifically, I can not wrap my head around what it means to actually believe in Jesus, to the extent that belief becomes faith. By any reading of the New Testament, faith in Jesus Christ is absolutely fundamental to Christianity. But what does it really mean, and how do you know when you have it?
I have no problem with a purely intellectual belief in Jesus Christ. By this I mean that I can see myself thinking that statements like “Jesus existed,” “Jesus died and came back to life,” and even “Jesus was uniquely one with God” are true. But is that all there is to it? If I happen to think that Jesus is God, then I’m a Christian, and I have faith? If I think it a lot? If I think it really strongly? What?
Is the difference between faith and mere belief simply a difference of quantity, or altogether a difference of quality? I don’t know, but my intuition seems to be that it is the latter. Really believing in Jesus has to mean more than simply concluding that Jesus is true. So what is it? It can’t just be thoughts that translate into action, either (i.e., thinking it enough so that I try to change my life), because any thought can lead to action. If I think Borders has the book I want in stock, then I will go to Borders and buy this book. That can’t be the same thing as faith in Jesus Christ, can it?
Similarly, faith can’t just mean thinking something is true even though you do not have proof enough to be sure, since “proof enough to be sure” is basically impossible anyway. You can never be one hundred percent sure about anything–it could always be the case that your perceived reality is a complex delusion and nothing is really what you think it is, like the Matrix or something. So if thinking that Jesus rose form the dead even though I wasn’t there to see it happen is faith, then I also have faith by thinking that I am typing at my computer right now, since I can never be really sure. And that means again that faith in Jesus is really just the same thing as thinking that Jesus is true–mere belief–and not substantively different from any other thing I think.
The problem with mere belief is that mere belief is subject to change for a myriad of reasons. What I think about anything today may or may not be the same as what I think about it tomorrow, depending on a variety of factors. If thinking that Jesus is true is enough, then what happens when tomorrow I change my mind and decide that Jesus is not as plausible as I thought he was yesterday? Does intellectual honesty somehow prevent me from having faith in Jesus? If so, I’m not interested.
Sailing to Byzantium 