I live as though believing something makes it real: as though what I believe about God is true of Him, and has always been true of Him, and when I change my mind, He changes along with it. From one day to another, this feels natural, but when I consider how much my conception of God has changed in the past 24 years, and how much more it will change over a lifetime of seventy or eighty years, it becomes senseless. How could my current understanding of God, or even an understanding of God developed over a lifetime, be more valid than any previously-held belief simply because I now believe it?
How can I say I believe in absolute truth, and yet feel so free to change my mind? If my idea of absolute truth is always changing, doesn’t it become relative?
The only conclusion I can draw is that this is not the point.
Jesus told a story about a man who entrusted his servants with a sum of money while he went away. Each of them was given an amount in accordance with his ability and was expected to manage it well. The first two servants were given different sums of money, but managed them equally well and were commended equally by the man. The third servant was given the least, but he buried it in the ground to keep it safe, and was reprimanded when he had nothing to show at his master’s return. In the end, it wasn’t about the total amount of money the servants earned for their master, but what they did with what they were given.
In the same way, the Holy Spirit entrusts each of us with the things of God, and we are expected to be faithful with what we are given. This includes our beliefs. Would you deny that the Spirit reveals different things to different people? Haven’t you met someone whom you know has a very deep and authentic relationship with Jesus, yet who holds beliefs that are contrary to your own? Does this mean that one of you has ignored the Spirit’s convictions of truth? Two people who truly know God can believe very different things about Him.
It is our diverse beliefs which allow us to do diverse work for the Kingdom. Yet our diverse beliefs also cause tension and arguments amongst ourselves. One person says he can’t accept that humans do not have free will, and another says that he can’t accept that God is not in complete control of every moment of our lives. They will argue passionately with one another because each of them is horrified at the thought of what it would mean for him if he had to accept the other person’s belief. But that horrified reaction is the very reason that he was not entrusted with that belief. The Spirit gives us beliefs according to our ability, and according to what will enable us to do His work most effectively.
As we grow in our relationship with Jesus, the Spirit will develop our beliefs, chiseling away at them like a sculptor. If we are listening to the Spirit, then to change a belief is to submit to His chisel. And it is of far more importance what we do with what we are given: we are not rewarded for being right, but we are given a crown for being faithful.
Even then, it is not for us to say that only one person can be right. We are right if we listen to the Holy Spirit and are faithful with the beliefs that have been entrusted to us. I am not at all advocating a relativistic view of truth—we should always strive for a true understanding of God—but I have a feeling that when all of this is over with, we’ll find that God is much bigger than we could have ever imagined, and such small questions as free will or determinism will evaporate in His radiance.
