Why Do You Believe What You Believe?

I was teaching Bethany this morning what Jesus said about servanthood.

While flipping the NT to look for the passage where Jesus washed His disciples' feet (which I finally found in John 13), I was impressed with a sense of how radical and confronting Jesus must have been to the Jews, how He challenged everything they thought they knew about God, and how they tried hard to resist accepting what He said.

I laughed at the parts when the Jews repeatedly said to Jesus, "Tell us plainly if you are the Christ!" and Jesus in exasperation said (as He might have in Singlish), "Tell you already you don't believe, so what for you still ask?"

Isn't that like us too when we refuse to accept what is before us, because to do so would mean giving up cherished beliefs?

Had I been a traditional Jew in the time of Jesus, and had I been brought up to believe the Messiah was still to come, I too might have had difficulty accepting that this miracle maker going around healing the blind and lame and mingling with tax collectors and prostitutes was the Son of God that He claimed to be.

Likewise if someone were to come up to me today and declare himself the Messiah.

What makes someone willing to take another at their word, to the extent of accepting their authority, acknowledging their superior status and being willing to stand or fall with them?

To extrapolate further, how do people come to their respective faiths?

Because of the families and communities they were brought up in, or in spite of them?