Christian Convictions and Why Beliefs About God Matter
- Challenge the cultural assumption that faith is mere preference by showing belief in God is personal and relational.
- Recognize why the “many paths up a mountain” idea fails because God is not a place but a person.
- Affirm Jesus’ call to believe in Him, since what you believe shapes love, discipleship, and eternal life.
So does it matter what we believe? Specifically, does it matter what we believe about God? The prevailing assumption in our culture is that no, it doesn’t really matter what we believe. The assumption that exists in much of our culture is that belief in God, religious belief, is really a matter of personal opinion, perhaps a matter of personal preference or feeling.
Belief in God is similar to talking about your favorite pop or your favorite rock band or whatever the case may be. It’s just a personal preference, nothing more and nothing less. So we are encouraged to be spiritual, we’re encouraged many times to believe in God, but we are discouraged from being firm and affirming in particular beliefs about God. That’s regarded as being perhaps judgmental or closed-minded or bigoted.
So the prevailing assumption that we deal with as Christians living in this world is that it doesn’t necessarily matter the particular beliefs that we have about God. One of the ways that this is illustrated often is by imagining that God is the top of a mountain. If you’re scaling the mountain, there are many paths up that same mountain. Some are winding paths, some are rocky paths, some are more direct, but there are all these paths going up to the same mountain.
“The assumption that exists in much of our culture is that belief in God, religious belief, is really a matter of personal opinion, perhaps a matter of personal preference or feeling.”
The illustration basically says every belief system, every religion, every personal conviction is really just our attempt up that same mountain. Each one of us is following a different path perhaps, but we’re all going to end up in the same place. This is a way of flattening out all religious belief and saying that it doesn’t really matter specifically what you believe about God. We’re all going to end up in the same place anyway. 
Now, one of the fundamental flaws with that illustration is that it assumes that God is a place—that God is somewhere we’re going to. If God were a place, then I suppose that illustration would work because, of course, if I’m going to a place, if I’m going to this city or that city, there are multiple different paths that I could take to get there. Some are more efficient than others, some will get me there quicker than others, but there are many paths to that same place.
But of course we don’t believe that God is a place. God is a person, and our belief in him is a personal belief establishing a personal relationship. All throughout the Gospels, but especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus challenges his disciples to have belief—but not just belief in some abstract idea or some abstract notion—belief in him personally. “Whoever believes in me,” he says, “will not perish but have everlasting life.”
“Jesus challenges his disciples to have belief—but not just belief in some abstract idea or some abstract notion—belief in him personally.”
Now, when it comes to belief in a person, those beliefs matter because there are proper ways to believe in a particular person and there are improper ways to believe in a particular person. In Scripture, when it comes to our belief in God, there’s a relationship between belief in God and our love for God. If you think about it in those terms, of course there are appropriate ways to love someone and inappropriate ways to try to love someone, because love is personal.
In the same way, belief is personal. So if Jesus calls us to believe in him, what that then means is that our beliefs, the beliefs that we have about him, certainly matter. Jesus says, “I am the way, I am the truth, and the life. You have the opportunity to come to the Father through me.” So against this prevailing assumption of culture, which says it doesn’t really matter what you believe about God, we affirm that it does matter what we believe because our belief is establishing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ in our discipleship, in our life as we follow him. And because our beliefs are personal, those beliefs matter.
This is Question #1 in Chad Ragsdale’s Christian Convictions: Discerning the Essential, Important, and Personal Elements.
