Driving around the other day with my iPod playing thorough the stereo system of my rented car, I was listening to some Matisyahu, and the song Indestructible came on.
The lyrics intrigued me, especially the line, “It seems that you believe in me.” It made me think, does God believe in us? It seems that God, who created us (Genesis 1:27
), who knows every hair of our heads (Matthew 10:30), who knew us even before we were born (Psalm 139:13), would have absolutely no need for belief in us, since He knows us so well. Believe gives at least some indication of putting trust or faith and it really does not seem Scriptural to think of God as trusting or having faith in any of us.
I looked up the definition of believe to see if maybe that would shed some light. Here is the definition from answers.com:
be·lieve /b??liv/
- To have firm faith, especially religious faith.
- To have faith, confidence, or trust: I believe in your ability to solve the problem.
- To have confidence in the truth or value of something: We believe in free speech.
- To have an opinion; think: They have already left, I believe.
I think 2 or 3 would be the type of belief that the song lyrics speak of, so does God have, or need to have faith, confidence or trust in or of the value of us individually? Yahoo Answers had this exact question listed and some of the answers given are interesting, but very few seems to get at the actual question. First of all there are many that do not believe in God at all and thus their answer is tainted by that. Of those that appear to be believers of some sort of faith in Yeshua/Jesus there were some answers that sound good like, “Of course He does. He believed so much in the human race that he sent Christ to be our sacrifice and atone for our sins. And he is seeing us through- those of us who trust Him. Yes he believes in me.” However belief is the wrong word there. Replace belief with the word love and then it all makes better sense. Belief and love are not synonymous. A good answer there was, “A father doesn’t believe in a child. A father simply loves his children.” There were also a response that correctly showed that God is not a respecter of persons (Romans 2:11) and that our righteousness is like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).
Based upon Scripture it appears that God does not believe in Matisyahu or any other person. I think possibly this either speaks to the differences between Orthodox Judaism and Messianic Judaism or that Matisyahu was using a term that does not make sense, but sounds good musically and decided that was more important, and possibly that he felt it conveyed the idea of God loving him which is certainly true.
So, to conclude, God loves us and desires a relationship with us, but that should not be confused with God putting faith or having faith is any of us. I hope this helps, as it was helpful to me to work through this.
B”H
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Matt // Jun 8, 2008 at 4:17 pm
1. Fathers DO believe in their kids…some great examples…a Good father will believe in his son or daughter the first time they step up to the plate in a baseball/softball game or the first time they give a speech in front of a large crowd…He will believe in their ability to be successful in accordance with what the father has taught them…
2. Be careful not to take Romans 2:11
out of context…another version says that God does not show favoritism…this only implied and implies that the Gospel was for everyone and, who you were with respect to your race or religion in this case, didn’t matter to God…
3. Isaiah 64:6
is also a commonly misinterpreted verse…what Isaiah was referring to here was when people would come to God and think they deserved to be saved because they were “good”…they were proclaiming their own self-righteousness and this ‘righteousness’ was gross to God…we have to come knowing that we don’t deserve salvation because we have screwed up and we continue to screw up every day…Jesus Christ is the only way, and God knew that when He sent Jesus to die…
Extra: the new covenant that came when the word became flesh in the form of a savior did not come because God didn’t believe in us…it came because God loved us that much…God still believes in us and He desires to see us fulfill His purpose for our lives…He believes in us as a parent would a child and just as a parent also desires to make it easier for the child, God has done the unthinkable to help us out and make sure that we succeed in life…
2 B Z // Jun 8, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Thanks for the comments Matt. In the months since I originally posted this I do think I have somewhat changed my thoughts on the subject. While I still do not think that God puts a faith in us, He does, as you say love us and entrusts us with certain tasks of service that in a sense show a faith of a kind.
I think your interpretations of the verses is accurate as well. As to the comparison of the father/son relations between us and our kids and between God and us as His children, to me it gets into the question of whom is doing the task. When the child comes to bat, it is them, not the father that is doing the work, however Spiritually there is a great deal of thought that anything we do of service to God is more God working through us and less ourselves, which I basically see. I think that is what lead me to the thought in the first place. If it is God doing the thing through us, then it is not a faith in us, since it is He that is really doing the thing. Kind of a complex thought I guess, but I do see God trust us as the vessel to do His work through, which is an awesome thing. And that is why my thought on it has changed.
I was trying to think of the differences between someone like Matisyahu, and orthodox Jew and Messianic or Christian thought. I would think to the Orthodox Jew the belief would indicate a type of faith, like God just thinks we can do it, instead of knows we can do it, because we were created to do it.
Anyway, thanks again for the thoughtful comment.
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