Explainer

Belief

Creed

29 May 2023

5 min read

I believe in breadboards: cutting through the meaning of belief

A turn of phrase leads Andrew Steane to consider what we say and what we really mean when we say we believe in something.

Andrew Steane

Andrew Steane has been Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford since 2002, He is the author of Faithful to Science: The Role of Science in Religion.

bread a piece of cutlery rest on a breadboard

Photo by Caio Pezzo on Unsplash.

On holiday with my family around Easter this year, we rented a small cottage and went self-catering. This is a lovely way to enjoy a week, heartily recommended by me, at least.

As anyone who has done it will know, one of the standard experiences of the holiday house is the search of the kitchen for the items you need at mealtime. This year I was looking for a breadboard. You know: a flat wooden board on which to cut a loaf of bread. There did not appear to be one. But there were two marble boards which were plainly cutting boards. I then made a remark to my dear companion and wife Emma, I said,

“I think maybe the owners don’t believe in breadboards”.

This turn of phrase came quite naturally to me. It is a way of speaking that has been common in England for a long time, though it is less prevalent now. As I say, this way of speaking has a long history and it is not about abstract questions of existence. It is about practical questions of usefulness. If someone says:

“I believe in breadboards”

it does not mean

“there is some doubt as to the reality of breadboards, but I think they are real.”

What it means is:

“I think breadboards are useful; I think they help; they are a Good Thing.”

If someone says:

“I don’t believe in breadboards”

it means:

“I don’t think we need breadboards; they don’t help; we can cut bread another way.”

I am interested in this way of speaking because I am interested in what is going on when Christians recite, as many do, the summary statements called creeds, which mostly begin with the phrase “I (or we) believe in God, the Father almighty, creator …”.

I’ll come back to that in a moment. Before I do, let’s note some other ways in which the phrase “believe in” can be used. Sometimes someone may ask “do you believe in ghosts?” The question arises because ghost stories are strange and hard to verify and the very notion of a ghost is questionable, so the question is asking “do you think there is in fact any such thing as a ghost?” It is asking, “are ghosts real?”

And there are other contexts in which statements about belief might be made. Suppose a group of soldiers is cut off after an advance by opposing troops, and they are in doubt as to the way back to their own front line. Maybe the captain is advocating a choice which seems wrong to the private soldiers. They might debate among themselves. In this case, when putting into words his judgement on the matter, a soldier might find himself using the phrase, “I believe in the captain”, or, as the case may be, “I don’t believe in the captain.” Again, it is not a statement about whether there is a captain; it is a statement about whether trust in this particular captain is well-placed.

Now imagine a more homely scenario which has played out in many a household over the years. A daughter is telling her parents about her boyfriend. Perhaps the parents are not quite sure about this young man. They do not know him as well as their daughter does. They want to trust her judgement, but they are hesitating. Is our dear child perhaps a little blinded by infatuation?

What might the daughter say to explain how she feels? Having happily listed the boyfriend’s other good qualities, she might choose to add, “and he believes in me.” What does she mean by that? Is it that there is some doubt as to whether she exists, but the young man thinks she does? Of course not. What she means is that she feels that her friend knows her well enough to see her as she really is, and he affirms what he sees. He affirms that she has something to offer; she herself and not some other person or some other version who is not truly her.

There is a related experience which I have had many times with Emma. When faced with a decision about raising small children (what time should they go to bed? When can they go out on their own? etc.) I have often had the great boon of being able to say to myself “I believe in Emma.” What it means is, I think she has a lot of wisdom and good judgement on this issue, so I don’t need to agonise on it for too long; she has very likely already found a good answer.

Belief is much talked about in life more generally of course. There is the notion (quite dubious I think) that if you “believe” then you can realise whatever hopes and dreams you may have. Sometimes people speak of “belief” when what they really mean is hope. I won’t go into all these usages. The main point of this article is to say that if, in the context of a Christian gathering, you are invited to join in and recite a creed beginning with the phrase “We believe in God” then you do not need to make it function as an abstract statement about reality and existence, the way the question about ghosts functions. This is because “We believe in God” can function much better as a statement about practical helpfulness, like the statement about breadboards.

We Christians believe in God the way we believe in breadboards. We believe in God the way we believe in the good judgement of a close companion. It means we think our life as a community will go better if we pay the right kind of attention to our ultimate context, and the values and possibilities which are held there. We do not use the word “God” to refer to an airy being who might not exist. The word is, rather, a short (arguably too short) way to direct our attention. Our attention is drawn to those aspects of reality which can rightly and properly command the loyalty of a good and wise person. We don’t pretend to completely know what those aspects are. But we want to learn. Our gatherings and our creeds help us to acknowledge and embrace this ultimate context more fully.

Nigeria’s terror survivors share their stories

This violence is not gruesome fiction, it’s reality.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

A Nigerian man looks up towards the camera, behind him is dusty ground

Manga survived an attempted beheading.

Open Doors.

This article contains distressing content.

Something is happening. And nobody is talking about it.

Nigeria, the big and beautiful ‘Giant of Africa’, is becoming a place of increasing terror for the hundred million Christians who call it home. Since 2000, 62,000 people have been killed for having a Christian faith. Eight-thousand people were killed in 2023 alone. These staggering numbers mean that more Christians are being killed in Nigeria than in every other country combined.

The violence is as extreme as it gets. And yet, very few of us know that it’s happening.

When it comes to the Nigerian government and media, the relentlessly brutal attacks are seemingly hidden in plain sight; undeniable and yet somehow unstoppable. While, in the UK, we appear to be entirely unaware. This violence is out of sight, and therefore largely out of mind. The reasons why are admittedly complex, as outlined by Chris Wadibia. Nevertheless, the violence being carried out toward the Nigerian people, particularly those living in the Northern states, surely deserves our attention.

Earlier this year, I took a trip to Northern Nigeria. While I was there, I got to know a group of people who had endured unimaginable trauma, largely because of their Christian faith. Every day, they would bravely tell their stories – who they were and what they had experienced. Every day, I looked into the faces of children who had lost parents, parents who had lost children, husbands who had lost wives, and wives who had lost husbands. All of a sudden, the bewildering statistics were people before me – people who were having to live with the images of their loved ones being ‘butchered’ before their very eyes. Their villages being burnt down. Their lives being turned upside down by militants with assault rifles and machetes.

The only reference I had for stories such as the ones I was hearing were apocalyptic movies. But these things happened. They happened to the people sitting across from me. This violence is not the stuff of gruesome fiction, it’s the stuff of reality.

As she was running, she came across a woman who has hiding herself because she was giving birth to twins. This mother handed the babies to her and begged her to get them to safety...

I met one woman, she was incredibly gentle and kind, and told her story with a composure that’s hard to fathom. She was working on her land along with her husband and mother-in-law, a totally run-of-the-mill day. They were so engrossed with the task at hand, they didn’t notice that their village was being attacked by armed ‘Fulani’ militants (the majority of the violence being carried out in Northern Nigeria is at the hands of Islamic extremist groups such as Fulani militants, Boko Haram and ISWAP - Islamic State in West African Province). She looked up to find herself face-to-face with two attackers and despite their command for her to surrender to them, she ran, as did her husband and mother-in-law. While she was running, she could hear bullets flying past her head and the screams of her mother-in-law. Making it to a neighbouring village, she gathered help and eventually went back to find her husband and mother-in-law. Both of whom were stabbed and killed that day.

The Fulani militants now have control over her village, and she told us how she’s been praying that she would be able to forgive these men for what they’d done, as she is now forced to live alongside them. And so, she felt proud because she had recently been able to respond to one of the men as they greeted her.

There was another woman, she was strong and defiantly compassionate. Her story is laced with horror. She studied at a university – the discrimination she experienced there meant that a course that was supposed to be four years long, took her eight years to complete. In 2014, Boko Haram attacked the university – while she was trying to escape, her friend was shot and ‘hacked at’ while he refused to deny his Christian faith. She recalls how his last words were ‘I’m happy. I’ve saved lives today. And I have Jesus’.

He died and she continued to run. As she was running, she came across a woman who has hiding herself because she was giving birth to twins. This mother handed the babies to her and begged her to get them to safety, as she did so, she heard the mother being shot behind her.

She ran those twins to Cameroon, leaving them in safety, and now lives in a rural Nigerian village where she teaches the local children. Her Christian identity is no secret, and so faces continual danger. Her crops were burnt to the ground and destroyed, twice. And the villagers have tried, repeatedly, to get her to leave. One night, she came face to face with young men with bats and machetes who threatened her life – she told them – ‘you can’t scare me. I have seen the Lord’.

And they left. Remarkably, that village is still her home.

One heart-wrenchingly-young girl told us how, while she sleeping – she was awoken by her father who told her that they needed to run, they were under attack. She ran, hand in hand with her father, while her mother carried her younger brother. While they were fleeing, her dad was shot and killed. Her mother pried her hand out of her father’s and buried both her and her brother in sand, instructing them to stay hidden. The next day, they found that their house, their crops, their entire village had been burnt down.

This is what is happening. This is what we are not seeing.

While we are not seeing this violence, they are not seeing an end to it.

Since my return, I have met with a man who bears the physical scars of his trauma. He thought his house was being pillaged by armed robbers - it was only when they led him, his brother and his father outside, made them kneel with their hands tied behind their backs, and demanded that they denounce their Christian faith that he realised he was being attacked by Boko Haram. It was a regular evening, he was putting together a lesson plan for his class the following day, and now he was kneeling before an executioner. His father refused their demand, and they beheaded him. His brother also refused, and they took a blade to him, too. Then it was his turn, and while his mind was filled with thoughts of death and how much this was about to hurt, he also prayed that these men would be forgiven for what they were doing. Taking after Jesus, who forgave his executioners mid-execution, this man continued to pray as he felt the blade in his neck.

Left to bleed to death, miraculously, both him and his brother survived. Now, his scar tells an astonishing story.

This epidemic of violence seems to reside under our radar. It’s not quite catching our eye, is it? And, as a result, is not quite receiving the force of our outrage nor benefiting from the depths of our compassion. So many of the people that I met expressed a feeling of being neglected – like they’re suffering in deafening silence. While we are not seeing this violence, they are not seeing an end to it.

What’s happening in Nigeria is a crisis, one that we must acknowledge.