Our theme for October is “Why I Believe.”
As a child, I attended a lot of Bible club—like every school week for twelve years. Along the way, I memorized a lot of scripture (a lot of it sadly gone now).
However, I do remember one verse that I am still particularly fond of—a real scorcher: The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9).
This is delicious language. (KJV FTW!) The heart is, above all things, a swindling scamp, and it’s not just wicked, it’s desperately wicked.
As I kid, I just couldn’t reconcile this vision of the heart with the other more optimistic mantras I heard through a diet of PBS children’s programs and Disney movies. The conventional wisdom offered in these shows is “Follow your heart!” And I’d think,That desperately wicked thing? Or “The heart wants what it wants.” And I’d think, But who can UNDERSTAND IT? And remember the theme song from Arthur (yeah, yeah, a show about an aardvark with a rude little sister)? “Believe in yourself,” the song insisted. Yeah, I’d think, and end up deceived!
With some adult hindsight, I now realize that “believe in yourself” is just another way of saying “have confidence.” But the phrase will always make me uncomfortable. I’m not convinced believing in yourself is really inspirational, motivational, or even plain good advice. So here are two reasons why I don’t believe in believing in myself.
1. Selves (and hearts) cheat and fail us.
Human beings are wired to believe in something. Belief gets us out of the bed in the morning and informs our decisions throughout the day. It is important to believe yourself capable of accomplishing tasks. Confident people get stuff DONE. We all have that one breezily self-assured friend who just knows they can do the job—and then does it.
But what happens when no amount of belief, hard work, or chutzpah brings about change? What happens to “believe in myself,” when I fail “do better next time”? I don’t say I’m sorry, I don’t seek out a rhythm of worship, I lose discipline, I miss a deadline, I retract a promise, I avoid an important conversation, I share just a tad of gossip, I avoid that tough conversation with a friend who needs it, I don’t listen, I don’t ask a question. Selfishness lurks behind every statement of self-belief, and, as they say, the road to hell is paved by good intentions. How can I believe in the inconsistent mush that makes up me.
2. Belief in myself gets boring fast.
If I’m honest, my inner landscape is not much to look at, and it doesn’t take too long to explore because my sights are set in one, inwardly collapsing direction.
The problem with “believe in yourself” is that it’s too small in scope. The self is naturally limited by time, space, and circumstance. This past month, these lines of a hymn were stuck in my head: “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea. There’s a kindness to his justice, which is more than liberty.”
This time, I was struck with the difference between believing in myself rather than the gracious and expansive power of Christ. Belief in Christ is mercifully wide, if we believe that he really is “in all things and that all things are held together in him” (another gem from Bible club).
Too often, I settle for belief in myself, but how nice it would be to constantly adopt a capacious belief in God’s goodness everywhere—to throw on a apron with countless, expanding pockets large enough to contain all the good, true, admirable, beautiful, excellent or praiseworthy things that come my way. I believe we can find those treasures in the most ingenious of places. The possibilities are wider than the sea and certainly wider than the confines of my (sometimes desperately wicked!) heart.
After a trial-by-fire year as public school substitute teacher and fly-by-night freelancer, Julia will shed the tribulations of the work-world to embark on a MA in art history and museum studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. If you are in town, she’ll gladly take you to a local museum. She enjoys walks, leopard print, and good conversation.
