Why?

Why? That's the question I most like to ask. "Why does that work that way?" "Why do people do that?" "Why do you believe what you believe?"

I was an instructor in the Air Force for several years. All sorts of topics would come up in the "ice breaking" process. Nothing was off limits. We would talk politics, current events, religion, whatever they wanted. Sometimes we shared views and sometimes we didn't. But my favorite question always was "Why?" It didn't matter if I agreed; I simply wanted to know why they believed what they believed.

It was an interesting exercise. I found that most people believed what they believed on whatever they believed because they were told to. "I don't know" was the most common answer. Read "I haven't thought about it." "I learned it in school" or "from my parents" or "from my pastor" or "from someone else" was very common. In a discussion once on evolution I asked, "What would you say is the best reason you would offer for that belief?" The entire class bumbled about for a few minutes and finally ended up with "That's what they told us in school." Once a young Navy troop (I taught all sorts in my classes) declared, "I'm a Christian; I believe in Jesus." I asked him, "Why?" He was lost on the answer. I wasn't asking him to defend himself. I wasn't asking for an apologetics. I simply wanted to know what it was that made him believe what he believed. He didn't know. "I heard it from this preacher, and I believed it."

I wonder how many of us take our stand firmly on someone else's field? How many of us take a bold stance on positions we've never made our own? How many can defend the doctrine of the Trinity from Scripture? Or do you believe it because you were told it and that's good enough? I recently read a response to the doctrine of Election from a young lady who was aghast at the notion. She pulled up all sorts of (standard) arguments against it, arguments that were clearly not her own. You could tell her words versus her plagiarism. (I don't mean that as bad as it may sound.) She found someone that said what she wanted to hear and copied it. She didn't think about it. She didn't analyze it. She didn't internalize it. She simply parroted it.

How many of us do that? Do you know why you believe what you believe? Can you support it with Scripture? The things that you hold as true ... have you realized them, or are they someone else's truths that you've simply latched onto as your own without thought or analysis? Solomon said that there's nothing new under the sun. I suppose that's largely true for truth as well. Most truth is someone else's truth. But before you make it your own, hadn't you better examine it for all it's worth and see if it's true? For instance, can you find it in Scripture, and does it really line up? These things aren't trivial. We ought to do our homework on matters of eternal importance.

Why do you believe what you believe?