Thoughts On: John 3:31-33
He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true.
John 3:31-33, ESV
In third grade my parents wouldn't let me read the Harry Potter series. At this point there were only four books out, and the church had informed my family that the series was chock full of witchcraft and demons and other such shenanigans, so it was a no-go for the Weiant household. But I, being stubborn and also a book-lover, did not adhere well to the book laws my parents laid down. I came home from school one day, the Sorcerer's Stone tucked under my arm, and upon seeing my mother in the kitchen slammed the book down on the table and said "I will read this book."
Somehow I avoided discipline for this, and we reached a compromise. My dad read us all of the first four Harry Potter books, and I fell in love. I fell in love with the world and with the characters, with the magic and with the way it all made sense.
Up until I turned eighteen, I thought good stories were fiction. I have loved a good fairytale since before I could tie my own shoes, and those stories have riddled my life with drama and nuance and warmth. I love reading old stories and I love reading new stories, but they've always been fiction. The good stories have never been true. And so, for eighteen years, I believed the same thing of the Gospel: God is made up.
The doubt that God was make believe became entrenched in my life. Technically, I got down on my knees and accepted Christ at seven years old. But I barely believed. I'm not sure I really believed at all. But my sister had accepted Christ three years earlier and the clock was ticking, so I did it. It wasn't until eleven years later that the thought popped into my head: maybe God is true.
The idea that God could be true actually wrecked my world. If God was true, then I would have to open up my heart and believe. I would have to have hope in a mostly broken world, and I would have to rest my reality in a vision that only Christ could see. It scared me to think it could all be real, because I didn't want to be let down. It didn't seem safe. But that's the point: The stories I loved were never safe. But they were fresh and free, and they were full of beauty. The Word of God is only dusty when we think it's all make believe. But when we believe, even only begin to believe, that God is true - the Word of God becomes the story we never even dreamed could be our own.