The Arrogance of Belief

"May I never boast in anything but the cross..." (Galatians 6:14).

There have been many poor leaders who have lived by the motto "Do what I say, not what I do." In essence, that's the very thing Jesus was saying regarding the teachers of the law and the Pharisees in Matthew chapter 23 which led to his "calling out" some of the gross inconsistencies in their belief and practice. Although his words were about the Pharisees and other religious leaders, he was speaking to the crowds and his followers. He is speaking to us.

Somewhere along the line, we've been handed this idea that to be right with God means believing the right things about God. Believe the creeds or our church's essential doctrines, and you're OK with us -- and by proxy, with God. Believe and submit to what your leaders are teaching you, and you're OK with us and with God. It's not long before the issue becomes more about our "rightness" (and your "wrongness") than it does about living as followers of Christ.

Somewhere after the period of the early church, there was a shift in thinking in the Christian world. How one lives his life in the world as a follower of Christ morphed into simply what one believes about God. Throughout the centuries, there have been those have spoken out for "right living", but many of these groups were labelled as heretics and either dismissed or destroyed. One of the signature marks of the Radical Reformation of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries was this idea of "right belief + right living = right faith". They understood that what a person believes is important, but how that belief is put into practice in daily living is what determines the measure of a person's faith.

When I take a closer look at Jesus, I can't see this "I'm right and you're wrong" approach to the Christian faith making much sense. Neither can I see abandoning the central belief and trust in Christ as being the Way. It has to be somewhere in the middle. Jesus himself said that there will be many who will call him Lord but not enter the Kingdom of God (Matthew 7), and the separation of the sheep from the goats in Matthew 25 seems to center on this idea that what we believe must translate into how we live. James 2:19 even goes so far as to say that even demons believe...but it's hard to image walking the streets of eternity with them. I know what some of you may be thinking...works! works! works! Although I do not agree that belief is enough, I also do not believe that works are enough. That, however, is not the point that I am trying to make in this article...

I am concerned with the arrogance that I see among many Christians because they "believe the right things". It's almost as though our belief legitimizes our separation from the rest of the world (and superiority above it). The patterns of arrogance can be seen everywhere in Christianity -- judgment, the marketing of our subculture, and our sense of entitlement as "children of God" (and all the prosperity bull that comes with it). Our "special insight" or "special authority" makes us feel above and superior, and that belief causes us to look down our noses at all those who do not believe as we do. I wonder how many Christian t-shirts or bumper stickers are donned not so much as a witness but as to say "I'm not like you"?

When Jesus was speaking in Matthew chapter 23, he said these very profound words: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are." There was an arrogance of belief and entitlement among the Pharisees, and Jesus stood in stark contrast to their vanity of belief. With a towel and a cross, Jesus re-defined what it means to be the people of God. Our belief doesn't set us above the crowd but thrusts us into the midst of the "least of these" with love and humility to wash their "mud-caked feet".

Superiority, arrogance, and power is nothing new in a world that lusts for it, but the way of Christ is different -- and transformative. We don't "work on our works" to prove what we believe, but as we seek Christ, he changes us. There is no arrogance there.

"The Holy Spirit indwells the believer, working to bring about a more righteous life and heart. We must be careful, however, not to confuse the indwelling of the Spirit with any deification of the individual. The Spirit is in the believer and works with the believer but does not become the believer." (R.C. Sproul).