the libido of belief?

I recently read a blog posting by Bob Hayton who mentioned a quote by Karen Armstrong in her book The Case for God (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), pg. 86. Who in turn quoted from an online etymology tool that pulled from various ancient sources going back to Roman times.

The subject was the etymology of the English word “belief” and how it's meaning has changed over the years, but what interested me most was tracing the word origin back through the Middle English, believen to the German belieben (“to love), liebe (“beloved”), and the Latin libido. I was ok with the idea that to believe was to give your heart to something, but as I pondered this I began to see that the inclusion of the concept of libido, introduced something profoundly organic to what is mostly considered a cerebral activity.

I concluded, to put it bluntly, that there is a sense in which to believe is to have sex with an idea.

As I unpacked this thought it became apparent that what we believe holds a way more powerful hold over us than most of us realize, our beliefs define our spiritual relationship status, for good or bad.

Our actions in turn are the offspring of that union. Jesus put it another way when he said that you know a tree by its fruit. There is no escaping the implications of this for any of us because what we really believe can be traced directly back from our actions.  It is not what we say we believe that we believe, it is what we do that proclaims our beliefs.

We are all spiritually married to one idea or another which is why it is so hard to change our beliefs. Changing our beliefs is like divorce or widowhood. In order to believe something new a relationship needs to change and that can be painful. On the flip side we can be equally seduced and drawn away from the truly good things that shape our character and define us, to ideas that are cheap, short lived and broken, Jesus called that process adultery. An adulteration, a change for the worse.

A true believer is like a lover, faithful, committed, enduring the hard times, celebrating the good and bearing beautiful, abundant fruit for all to enjoy.