According to Gray, for most religions it is practice that counts and belief is not very important. Creeds, he claims, do not come from religion, but from Greek philosophy; while it is myths (whether religious or scientific) that we live by. Instead of the scientific belief in the march of human progress, Gray contends (in a deliberate echo of Margaret Thatcher’s “There is no such thing as society. There are individuals, and there are families”?), “Humanity doesn’t exist, there are only human beings, each of them ruled by passions and illusions that conflict with one another and within themselves.”
 
I am currently preaching through a series titled “I believe” which is based on the propositions of the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds. Whereas Gray believes that, “We’d all be better off if we stopped believing in belief” I am preaching that what we believe is essential. The creeds may have been forged within the furnace of Greek philosophical arguments, but for eighteen centuries they have been the essential glue that has bound the Church – Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant – together.
 
And this is belief that matters, and produces results. It matters (as I am preaching this Sunday) that Jesus really is, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Believing that matters! And it affects every aspect of my life – it is the belief that shapes my practice.
 
Gray may believe that “it’s only religious fundamentalists and ignorant rationalists who think the myths we live by are literal truths” – but that, of course, is itself a matter of belief! It is a statement of faith. It is a creed. To claim, as Gray concluded, that “What we believe doesn’t in the end matter very much. What matters is how we live” seems to me somewhat oxymoronic. It is because of what I believe that I live the way I do.
 
Part of this belief is that humanity really does exist. Fundamental to the Christian message is the story (or “myth” to use Gray’s language) that all human beings share a common history and a common destiny – either “in Adam”, or “in Christ.” Believing this as literally true is what drives the whole mission of the church – our community life, our worship, our witness. Without this belief the church would cease to exist – as is very evident from the number of closing churches that we see; precisely those churches that have given up on belief. So while Gray may be correct in stating that (for many in the West) religion is not generally about personal belief – it has become more a matter of culture – that is exactly why we see a decline in religious practice in the West! Without belief, practice cannot be sustained.
 
Ironically, of all the philosophers, it is Nietzsche who most directly punctures the belief-less belief espoused by Gray. Nietzsche is clear – without belief, there is no practice:

They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality… We others hold otherwise. When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God is the truth – it stands and falls with faith in God.

Being labeled an English flathead by a German antichrist is somewhat cutting, but it is a cut – I believe – that cuts true.