.........Being believed in

Most of us know how being believed in makes us feel real.

And according to Marcus Borg, a theologian, our English word believe comes from the middle English word spelled beleve or belieue. It means "to belove." Apparently if you read Shakespeare and Chaucer, and keep on replacing the word “believe” with the word “love”, it almost always works interchangeably.

Until the 17th century, when you beloved, you believed. It was to: "hold dear;" "prize," "love;" "give one's loyalty to;" "give one's self to;" "commit one's self." Belief is a relational term. No wonder then that being believed in can make us feel real.

But following the Enlightenment, the meaning of the word believe shifted and become more about giving your intellectual assent to a proposition. This sort of belief was tested and questionable. No longer was the object of relationship a person; now it was a hypothesis.

I heard someone recently questioning the virgin birth by saying: “Do you believe in the virgin birth?” Now to be sure, I do like questions. But working with the definition of “belief” above, which, remember, is “to belove”, it is one’s relationship with the Virgin Mary which matters, not one’s intellectual assent to a proposition about conception without a sperm cell. (Cloning techniques have already proven it possible anyway, but that’s beside the point!)

It’s a bit like the time I saw comedian Jimmy Carr joking on television. He said that when he was young he used to have an imaginary friend… but then when he grew up, he simply stopped going to Church. It raised a laugh.

But does imaginary always mean unreal?

Religious images are the images of a real presence. This is what makes the image of Jesus different from that of a vivid Dickensian character, or from Harry Potter. As “images” in the human mind, we think of Jesus, a Dickens character and Harry Potter as somehow “imaginary”. But Jesus is the odd one out, because his image is of a living although invisible Being.

In the sense that God is Spirit (Jn 4:24), God is not a physical visible “thing”, so God is “no-thing”. But God is still present, and though no one has seen ever seen God (1 Jn 4:12), Jesus has shown people what God would look like if anyone ever had done. A bit like lightning, which shows people electricity, or like a kite which shows people air, or like someone’s son who is “chip off the old block”, even though they have never seen his Father. Jesus is an image of the invisible. (Col 1:15)

Similarly, when we think about the Virgin Mary, we can go back to the middle English word spelled beleve or belieue, and see how “believing” in her is “holding someone dear”. We are “beloved” by the invisible Being who makes us real in the midst of life and death. As Theresa of Avila said: “All things are passing, God alone is sufficient.” That which is not in a flux, is God, and whoever remains beloved (believed in), remains real.

Fourth century Christian monk Evagrius emphasized the virtue of simplicity when he said that: “one who prays is a theologian”. And in Anglicanism, it is said that the tool used to work out belief is like a ‘three-legged stool’ made of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. As a stool sits best on the floor, I suggest that the floor is Experience.

So may you experience God’s gift as a presence who beloves (believes) in you.