Sunrise over Australia (Adobe Stock by Christian B.)
By Dr. Jason Heron, OblSB
Christians say and believe many strange things. There’s no harm in admitting it. We believe in one God who is Three Persons. We believe in a carpenter from Nazareth who is fully divine and fully human. We believe there’s someone called the “Holy Spirit” who dwells within us in a unique way after we undergo Baptism. We believe Mary was assumed into heaven at the end of her earthly life. We believe bread and wine can become the body and blood of the carpenter from Nazareth.
It goes on and on.
For 2,000 years, our neighbors have been skeptical about our beliefs. In fact, it seems difficult to find a new question about Christianity. Most of them have already been asked. And yet, we persist in believing these strange things.
Our neighbors today are not crazy to ask us why we believe what we believe. They have serious concerns about whether what we believe is actually true. Here’s how I sort out why and how I believe what I believe to be true.
First, there are true things I can know on my own with very little effort. It took very little intellectual work for me to know that fire is hot, for example.
Second, there are true things I can know on my own with more effort. What it would feel like to live in Australia, for example, is something I can discover on my own, but it’s going to cost me a lot of time, money and effort.
Third, there are true things I can know with my own effort and with the help of others. Learning how to read, how to do algebra and what happened in France in 1789 are types of truth that typically require a combined effort of a bunch of people. In fact, most of my education—the library in my mind—comes from this kind of combined effort. I trusted my teachers when they told me the rules of grammar and algebra. I trusted the authors of the books about the French Revolution. Now, I know about these things.
Fourth, there are truths I can know only if someone chooses to share them with me. This is a form of knowledge that’s more like a gift than an accomplishment.
For example, you have no idea whether I, Jason, have an appendix. There is an answer to the question: I either have one or I don’t. If you wanted to find out solely by your own effort, it would be pretty challenging. You’d have to hunt me down and cut me open. And you’d probably succeed, since I’m neither strong nor swift, but since you are unlikely to chase me with your scalpel in hand, your knowledge of my appendix will depend on my word. And I’m here to tell you, I do not have an appendix. It was removed in the late ’90s and has turned to dust in a plastic bag in a landfill somewhere near Sioux Falls.
Life is filled with such knowledge, much of which is far more important than whether I still have my appendix. Consider: my wife, Hannah, says she loves me. There is no book to read, no scalpel to wield, no experiment to conduct that will prove to me that she is telling the truth. And yet, I would say that I know it’s true that she loves me. I know it’s true because she has revealed it to me. It’s a piece of knowledge—one of the most important in my life—that I could not know outside of my relationship to her.
My knowledge of her love for me depends completely on her. If she had never looked at me the way she does, held my hand the way she does, talked to me and listened to me the way she does, and said, “I love you” the way she does, then I would not be able to know the truth.
I think about my knowledge of Christian truth similarly. Christianity is not a bunch of clever ideas we have devised. It is a response to a God who has chosen not to remain hidden. I believe many things about the Trinity, about the Incarnation of the Son in Jesus of Nazareth, about life in the Spirit, about Mary and about the Eucharist because these truths have been revealed to me in many ways throughout my life. I could not know and love them otherwise. The source of this revelation is the triune Lord, who wishes to express the divine love for all creation directly to me.
But how can the Creator overcome my ignorance, my limited attention span, my distracted mind, my confused ego, my skeptical disposition, my fear and suspicion? Judging by the history of Israel and the Church, the Creator has chosen to overcome these obstacles by communicating to us through our fellow humans and through our circumstances.
The Creator reveals in ways we can understand, in ways we can question, in ways we can argue about. The Creator reveals the way a very good teacher reveals—patiently and generously. The Lord has looked at us in a certain way, held our hands in a certain way, talked to us and listened to us in a certain way, and said, “I love you” in a certain way. Being a Christian is not a feat of intellect; it is my response to the Lord who has given himself to me.
