I read a blog today from a husband of friend. It was about truth and belief. Here’s a link.

His post made me think. And I’m not writing this as a rebuttal or to pick a fight, it just made me think.

He made the point that truth is truth no matter what you believe. That I agree with. You can’t float away if you stop believing in gravity. And just because you believe in something doesn’t make it true. Believing in Santa Claus doesn’t mean that a fat man come down your chimney every Christmas.

With his post (Matthew, his name is Matthew) , Matthew started me thinking how belief and truth are actually quite related and how important belief is in affecting reality. (I’m departing his context and moving somewhere new).

Belief puts truth into action. It makes truth solid. It can’t change the truth, but it is how you interface with the truth.

Examples: The truth of gravity. If you don’t believe in gravity, you will be living your life in such a way that shows it. Say you’re an engineer and you have to design some sort of machinery. And in that machinery there are parts that need to move up and down. If you did not believe in gravity, you would not only build the machine to push the part up, but you’d have to build the machine to also pull the part back down. You can’t just leave the downward motion to gravity, cause well, it’s been flaky and unreliable. So because of your belief, you suffer (with extra works and costs).

Or take Santa Claus. Your belief in a benevolent entity that really just wants to bring you presents validates you to revel in the fact that something good is coming your way, and it enables you to treat your family well and put in the effort to be on your best behavior. Your belief benefits you and those around you. Your beliefs change your reality (being good = more presents, being bad = less presents) despite the lack of truth backing it.

So, then to bring this back home, how are your beliefs affecting your reality?

My back hurts. That’s my reality. A hardtail mountain bike on rocky trails don’t mesh well with my lower back. Now there are two parts to my reality equation: the truth and my belief.

The truth is I have a God who loves me, and not only can He heal my back, that He WANTS to heal my back.

So why didn’t I get prayer for it earlier tonight when I was with people who know the same truth?

I guess all I’m left with is this: I don’t believe it.

Sounds horrible, I know. I could break it down further and say that I do believe that God wants to heal, but it’s only a little pain and I can deal with it – but that opens me up to things like “I deserve to be hurting” and “God’s too big and important to care about me” which are whole other topics that need to be discussed.

Bottom line is this: belief defines which truths you create your reality from, and which ones you ignore.