You Were are Born to Believe

Research and the Bible show that people are born to belief and we learn unbelief. You really were born to believe!

Jesus teaching reveals that children readily believe and that we as adults should become like them - receptive, and ready to trust Him.

“Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3, NKJV)

“Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.” (Mark 10:15, NKJV)

Then in Matthew 11:25, Jesus thanks the Father that these things are “hid from the wise and prudent” and “revealed unto babes.” Evidently, childlike faith outperforms adult reasoning.

Think about your own experience with this – a small child will believe what they are told. They believe in Santa Clause, flying reindeer, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and so on. Later in life they learn that such things aren't true. They learn unbelief.

As I mentioned above, research bears this out. Children have a strong tendency to believe what they are told, even when it is surprising or conflicts with their expectations. Psychologists call this a “bias to trust testimony.”

• Jaswal and colleagues (2010) found that three-year-olds repeatedly trusted an adult’s misleading statements, even while children given misleading visual signals learned to disregard them. www.researchgate.net

• Jaswal (2010) found that toddlers often accepted surprising statements about physical events, although clear contrary evidence or greater confidence in their own judgment reduced that trust. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

• Shtulman and Yoo (2015) found that children’s belief in Santa reflected both adult testimony and their developing understanding of what is physically possible. www.sciencedirect.com

This research shows that small children have a readiness to trust. They believe.

Jesus told us to become like little children. A child readily believes. That’s how we’re to approach God. We can believe what He says.

Research also shows that children learn to distrust or disbelieve through experience.

• Jaswal and Malone (2007), “Turning Believers into Skeptics: 3-Year-Olds’ Sensitivity to Cues to Speaker Credibility.” Across two experiments involving 100 children, three-year-olds were less accepting of surprising claims when the speaker expressed uncertainty. They also became more skeptical when the speaker had previously made an obvious mistake and appeared distracted. An adult’s behavior could reduce children’s willingness to believe the same claim. researchgate.net

• Koenig, Clément, and Harris (2004), “Trust in Testimony: Children’s Use of True and False Statements.” Three- and four-year-olds watched people provide accurate or inaccurate information. Children who recognized which person was reliable subsequently preferred that person’s new information. Their experience with a speaker’s truthfulness shaped whom they believed. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

What this research shows is that children learn from mistakes, misleading statements, or cues that someone may not know what they are talking about.

So, children readily trust, but experience teaches them to doubt. 

I don't know about you but it encourages me to know that I was born to believe. God created me, and you, to believe Him. so just do what you were born to do – believe!

by Rick Porterfield