Challenging My Beliefs

On many occasions, aggressive non-believers have encouraged me to challenge my beliefs. Their reasoning was that if what I believed was true, then there would be no risk in challenging it, right? Of course they were not trying to help me find objective truth, they just wanted me to quit going to church, or to start smoking, or whatever. This was especially common when I was young and didn't have an adequate reply.

Recently I was reading in Malachi and happened upon one of my favorite verses. It's the tithing verse, and it goes like this:

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. (Malachi 3:10)

As I read that verse I had a sudden flash of satisfaction. The reason that I've always liked this verse is God issues a challenge. "Prove me," he says! I never connected the dots between God's challenge and those of my peers.

My challengers have been unwittingly correct. If my beliefs are right, there's nothing to be afraid of. God expects us to challenge his word. The way the challenge works is like this:

1. Follow His instructions.
2. See if you get the results.

This is wonderful. It's the scientific method. You do this over and over until you've built up a sample size and then you draw a conclusion. This is why people who pay tithing love it and people who don't pay tithing hate it. The method is critical because the input is faith, and God blesses us for exercising faith.

So now I see that I've been challenging my beliefs all my life. I've been faithfully keeping commandments to the best of my ability since I was old enough to comprehend them. I've given God countless opportunities not to exist, or at least not to be the being in whom I believe. He has never failed, though. Not only has he rewarded me according to his promises, but he has given me spiritual confirmations from time to time for good measure. Remarkable.

The funny thing about people who invite us to challenge our faith is their proposed method. Their proposal is not to try to prove an affirmative, i.e. "see if God exists by testing his promises." Instead they want us to "think for ourselves" and derive a negative. Imagine applying that to scientific experimentation:

1. Develop a hypothesis.
2. Explore your doubts about the hypothesis.
3. Don't bother with experimentation.
4. Declare the hypothesis wrong.

Absurd, yes? Yet that is what we are asked to do when we are told to "challenge our beliefs." In the future, my response to such challenges will be something like, "Sure, we'll challenge our beliefs together. Now let's talk methodology..."

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