Don’t Tell Me What You Believe…..Show Me.
Lately I’ve been thinking about what it actually means to “believe” something.
Not in the way we’re told to believe, such as reciting words, affirming positions, putting a sticker on our bumper or a verse in our bio, but in the lived-out, day-by-day sense. What does belief look like when it leaves the safety of speech and enters the reality of action?
We don’t reveal who we are by what we say we believe. We reveal it by how we live.
Your values don’t live in your slogans. They live in your choices. Your beliefs don’t reside in your identity. They show up in your behavior. And your faith, whether religious, political, or moral, isn’t measured by what you say you believe, but by the way you treat people when there’s something at stake.
That’s what’s been eating at me as I watch the events of the past few years unfold.
Watching People Contradict Their Own Beliefs
We are living through a time when the gap between what people say and what they support has never felt wider. Nowhere is that more obvious than in two places that have an outsized influence on American life: the church and politics.
I have spent 46 years in the church, there I was taught the words of Jesus: “Love your neighbor.” “Blessed are the peacemakers.” “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.” Those teachings never felt abstract. In fact they felt like the most obvious teachings. Love the stranger. Feed the hungry. Welcome the refugee. Care for the sick. Stand up for the oppressed.
But today, many of the loudest voices in the American church aren’t preaching that kind of faith. Instead, they’ve traded service for slogans. Compassion for culture war and the gospel for power.
They say they believe in the sanctity of life, but they support policies that jail children, endanger women and bomb civilians.
They say they follow a savior who welcomed the outcast, but they cheer when immigrants are rounded up and deported.
They say they worship a God of mercy, but they defend cruelty as “law and order.”
Conservative Evangelcals are showing us what they believe, what their form of Christianity looks like. I’ve seen those pastors teach about humility then stand behind a man who lies, mocks, and threatens with impunity. I’ve heard churches praise a president who brags about and has been found liable for sexual assault, who threatened harm on those he is supposed to stand for and whose administration willingly rips families apart. I’ve watched faith leaders say “we’re called to love our enemies” and then turn around and call their political opponents demons.
I have experienced this kind of “love”. For speaking up for marginalized communities, for acting as though the church shouldn’t be above reproach and for voting democrat because my values and morality won’t allow me to do otherwise.
If your faith only applies when it’s comfortable, it’s not faith. It’s performance. And if your Christianity looks more like empire than empathy, you’re not following Jesus, you’re following Caesar.
Politics Is No Different
The same dynamic plays out in politics every day. I hear people say they believe in “small government,” yet support a surveillance state tracking pregnant women, students, and immigrants. They say they want “freedom,” but push to ban books, censor classrooms, and punish dissent. They say they back “law and order,” but shrug when their chosen leader defies court orders, threatens judges, and breaks the law himself.
This week, the Trump administration launched a military assault on Iran, without congressional approval and in direct violation of the War Powers Act. No public debate. No legal justification. Just a show of force.
And now the same people who spent years warning against “forever wars” are falling in line. The same elected officials who claimed to care about the Constitution are fine with ignoring it. The same citizens who said they hated government overreach are applauding one man bypassing all checks and balances to launch bombs on a foreign country.
You don’t get to claim you believe in peace while cheering for war. You don’t get to say you believe in America while supporting authoritarian rule. And you don’t get to talk about “saving America” if the version of America you’re defending is built on fear, cruelty, and unchecked power.
We live in a country where people are being deported, detained, and disappeared and too many of our leaders are silent. Or worse, they’re defending it. We need our leaders, both political and religious to be loud and angry. The protests against ICE and DHS are growing across the country, but they’re barely covered, rarely acknowledged or demonized by those in power and the mainstream media.
Now they want to shift the conversation to Iran. To flags. To loyalty. To strength. Because it’s easier to perform belief than to live it.
Beliefs Are Meant to Be Lived
Belief, real belief, demands something each of us. It’s not enough to post a Bible verse or a political quote. We put our heads in the sands, say we don’t like getting political, while millions of people suffer from those very same politics we choose to ignore. What matters is whether that verse you read leads you to feed the hungry or just to shame the poor. Whether that quote leads you to fight for justice or simply judge your enemies. Whether your beliefs bring people closer to dignity, or give you cover to deny it.
When you vote for cruelty, you are practicing cruelty. When you support leaders who lie and hurt others, you are endorsing their lies and their harm. When you ignore injustice because it benefits you, you’re not neutral, you’re complicit. You can’t pick and choose someone’s character when you are considering who to support. You don’t get to say, “I voted for him because of his economic policy, not what he will do to immigrants”, especially when they tell you what they are going to do!
I’ve had to sit with that truth myself. I’ve had to ask where I’m comfortable saying the right things but not living them. Where I benefit from systems I say I oppose. Where my silence protects me more than my courage pushes me. And I’m trying, imperfectly, often painfully, to close that gap. Because belief isn’t a light switch. It’s a habit. It’s formed in what you do, over and over again. It’s what you choose to pay attention to, who you stand up for, what you defend. What you refuse to accept, even when it would be easier to look away.
If You Want to Know What Someone Believes, Watch What They Protect
That’s the standard I’m trying to hold myself to. And it’s the standard I think we should be holding each other to.
What do you defend?
What do you excuse?
What do you stand by and allow?
If your answer to those questions doesn’t match the values you claim, then you’ve got work to do. We all do.
This moment in history isn’t asking us to say the right things. It’s asking us to do the right things. To put our bodies, our time, and our resources where our beliefs are. The world doesn’t need more performative faith. It needs integrity. It needs courage. And it needs people willing to live the values they claim, especially when it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it’s hard.
Because in the end, we’re not remembered for our slogans. We’re remembered for what we did with our power, our privilege, and our platform. And we don’t define ourselves by what we believe. We define ourselves by how we practice what we believe.
Well said, and more importantly, provocative.
"And I'm trying, imperfectly, often painfully, to close that gap". That's the nub of the issue, isn't it? We are all human and thus fallible. We will never close that gap. But that fact isn't what's important. The mindset is.
Like most of us in our community I take my measly, little, one vote very seriously. I put in countless hours in deciding who I should vote for. Yet, as I look back over a long life of voting, there are many instances where I wish I had that I had voted differently. Why is that?
Because it isn't, and never should be, about voting strictly on the "issues". For when I look back, one thing has become increasingly, if belatedly, clear to me. Issues can, and do, change. But the most fundamental thing does not... Character. A leader with a flawed character will eventually harm us. A leader with strong moral character can, and will, correct a flawed policy that does not work. Moreover, even if a leader with character supports policy we may disagree with, we need to acknowledge that they do so for moral reasons and that we ourselves could very well be wrong.
I do not pretend that character solves all problems. As you point out, there is a gap to be closed. While we, as human, can never completely close that gap, we can narrow it. A life lived with a strong moral code, and the choices we make based upon that, is a life better well lived. As fallible beings, perhaps that is the best we can do.
Absolutely all of this. The loudest members of the church have spent years replacing Christ with capitalism (I will die on this hill).
As we see day in and day our online and in real life, we see and talk to people who seem to actually believe in nothing. Their values and opinions change on a whim as soon as a leader they "respect" (,quotes because I don't think it's actual respect they have, just blind obedience to questionable authority figures that make them feel good about the hate in their heart) says something contradictory to what they have been yelling about. We saw it with egg prices. We now see it with the "president of peace", and we will continue to see it as our education system continues to be dismantled, the rise of anti intellectualism continue to flow into more spaces, and people willingly corral themselves into the killing fields of American politics where spin is king, and thinking is the enemy.