We Believe What We Want To Believe

A story on the back page of a recent issue of Good Housekeeping caught Dena's eye and she handed it on to me. ""See what you think of this"" she said. The story was about the author's father, Jim Noonan. Jim was, evidently, not that great of a father and had zero religious convictions. He died. His daughter, Peggy, spent a great deal of time wondering ""Where is dad now?"" On a whim one day, the story related, she went to a Catholic church. A friend had told her that this was a jubilee year for Catholics, meaning she could obtain special favors from God. So she went to St. Patrick's cathedral and asked God to take her father out of purgatory and into heaven. A couple of weeks later she struck up a conversation with some strangers at a restaurant. The man's cell phone rang and he said ""Great to hear from you. You won't believe it, but there's another Noonan here."" He handed the phone to Peggy and said ""Say hello to Jim Noonan."" She spoke for a moment to this man, who lived in a different part of New York city than her dad had and was in a different line of work. Then she handed the phone back over to the stranger.

By now some are surely asking what is the point of all of this? The article went on to relate that Peggy decided that God had placed that call! She told her sister ""I thought Dad wanted us to know he'd just been liberated, that he was in heaven . . . And my sister said she thought so too.""

Now, it may anger some readers and many may think I am an insensitive person to write this, but that is quite simply and entirely, utter nonsense. There is so much theologically wrong with what Peggy Noonan wrote it could fill two issues of Abundant Life, and maybe three. For starters, there is no purgatory (Heb. 9:27). Once dead, one's eternal fate is sealed and cannot be changed (Luke 16:26). The Year of Jubilee was a practice for physical Israel long ago, not people today (Lev. 25:10ff; Gal. 3:24ff).

Yet I did not recount the Noonan story to make some points about Catholicism and life-after-death teaching according to scripture. I am writing about this because the story serves as a powerful reminder that people believe exactly what they want to believe. While the call the man received may have been a coincidence, how many Jim Noonans do you think reside in New York City? Further, the man didn't even claim to be her father. He clearly identified himself as someone very different from her father, living in a different part of the city and involved in a different occupation. He also, we might note, was not dead and thus could talk on a cell phone. Yet Peggy insists that it was her father placing the call to reassure her. How far out can one get? It is not hard to realize that this is really all about Peggy's concerns for her father's soul. She wanted something, anything, to reassure her so she latched on to the lamest set of not-so-remarkable coincidences she could find and pronounced dad ""okay.""

The Bible warns of this kind of thinking. Paul tells us there will be ""those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them a strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness"" (2 Thess. 2:10-12). This passage teaches simply that if one doesn't want to believe the truth God will allow that person to be deceived. Peggy Noonan's story just illustrates how true these verses are.

The worst part of this kind of deception is that it is a self-deception. What could anyone possibly do to convince Peggy she is kidding herself? I expect that if one took the time, he or she could track out phone records and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt who made the call. One could find the Jim Noonan who was talking on the phone that day, bring him to Peggy and say ""There. This is the man you talked to, not your father."" Would it do any good? Probably not. Peggy would simply say God was using this man, or her father was talking through this man or some other similar nonsense. Why would she maintain the deception in the face of incontrovertible, hard, objective evidence? She wants to! She wants to believe a lie. As transparent as the deception is to everyone around her, she believes it any way. She believes it enough to write about it in a national magazine! Such deception is extremely dangerous because it is extraordinarily difficult to break down.

Peggy Noonan is not the only person who has decided to believe error so that she will not be troubled by thoughts of a loved one suffering eternal loss. Her story illustrates just how determined people can be to believe exactly what they want to believe. Thus, we all learn the powerful need for every person to be determined to believe the truth. The truth doesn't change, but our attitude about it determines whether or not we can receive it. What do you want to believe? ""Buy the truth, and do not sell it"" (Proverbs 23:23).