The Ability to Believe in Something is Critical

Do you still believe?

When I was a child (and let's just say I was really young so that I don't seem like a goof when you read this) I believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, ghosts and vampires, but not aliens(probably the only real one on the list).

I believed in the holiday icons because that's what my parents told me. During the Christmas season, we went to the store, saw Santa Claus and I even sat on his lap, which reinforced the idea that he was real. My parents put ashes on the fireplace and boot prints in the ashes to further my belief. Best of all there were presents under and around the tree. Most of them had labels saying they were from Santa so this was added incentive to believe in Santa Claus -there were rewards for it.

I'm a still a big fan of Christmas presents so I have been known to propagate the theory that Santa Claus does indeed exist. Fast forward to parenting:one year we actually had the kids write letters to Santa Claus, we put ashes on them and left them outside for him. We "found" them later and each looked like it had been opened and read. Our children then received letters back from Santa Claus, all of which may have possibly been fake but shaped their beliefs for a while.

We didn't really work as hard on the Easter Bunny because the kids were already doing the hard work of decorated the eggs to put in the basket. The Easter Bunny really wasn't bringing them anything else but chocolate candy and marshmallow peeps. We didn't really have to do a big sales job there as the children had very little motivation to question the source of the candy.

When I was a child I was excited to get that dime or nickel or quarter under my pillow just for the sheer fact that I lost a tooth. Since I only had a small number of baby teeth I didn't really have to believe in the tooth fairy for long. It wasn't worth pulling out any of my permanent teeth just to get a quarter. Fast forward to my kids and now we're looking at paper money to keep them believing in the tooth fairy. My deception became real when I accidentally put a twenty-dollar bill under the pillow instead of a $1 bill. The Tooth Fairy immediately became one of their favorite fantasies to believe in. That was, until he left a dollar the next time lost his luster.

I was a Saturday morning TV kid and after Bugs Bunny and the rest of the cartoons there was often an old black and white movie about monsters, vampires or ghosts. I was easily influenced by these movies because of the lack of someone sitting beside me to tell me they were fake. I began to believe that vampires were real, there could be monsters under my bed and ghosts on the third floor of the church building. I will even today not go alone to the third floor of any church building as a result.

This influenced me for several years, so as an adult recognizing the negative impact of these beliefs, I was much more careful with my kids to let them know that these weren't real. I'm sure if I'd told my parents my feelings about this they would have helped me quickly see these were fake but because I neglected to tell them they didn't know to help me.

Why give you this silly background in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny when we were talking about knowing what you believe? Well, these characters and many others help show me that I was capable of believing in something I could not see. They also demonstrated there were things that I didn't understand that I would just have to take on faith. For example, how did Santa Claus actually get down to the chimney?

In the great Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street, the story features a jaded little girl who didn't believe in Santa Claus because her very sensible mother wanted her to only look at the facts. It was therefore difficult for her to have faith in a sweet old man who said he was Santa Claus because she had no facts to back it up. She still had dreams and she still had wishes but she didn't have any faith that they would come true. A major point of this movie was to demonstrate the idea the faith or belief was a good thing. If you could overcome your skepticism and believe in something, good things will happen and they lived happily ever after.

As I got older the ideas and beliefs in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny faded away because I realized that gifts and the chocolates all came from a very tangible source, the main people in my life who were shaping my beliefs. This realization, however did not destroy my ability or desire to believe in more than I could just see and touch.

Through all of these experiences, my parents were teaching me how to form a belief and follow through on it. They also taught me how to take a belief, no matter how strong, and deal with the credible evidence that it no longer was true. I believe these experiences provided support for my ability to believe in God. We cannot always see everything He does or has done for us, so God expects us to have faith in Him based on the overwhelming evidence of His power. There is so much power in a relationship with God through this belief, and it grows with investigation and experience.

Do you have the ability to believe things you have yet to personally see or experience, based on the words or promises of others? Are you even willing to consider beyond the "facts" just to see what might be available if you do indeed try faith?