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What is the role of belief in the life of a follower of Jesus?

One of the central ideas I present in Discovering The God Imagination is the idea that we can’t change reality.  In the creation of the world, God establishes what is true. It’s remarkably simple and brief.  Everything rests on God’s original judgment of all reality as good. If humanity can change it, it was never true in the first place. My previous post, A Question To Ponder, explored the idea of becoming a child of God. At some point a few embrace the belief that we are children of God.  This moment is often called salvation, which is the recognition of what is true in the cosmos.

But a subtle tension emerges when we create two groups: those who are in and those who are out.  Does belief get you in?  To belief is then traditionally thought of as the moment we then change the accounting ledger, or the Book of Life.  The act of believing gets us in to heaven.  I get this.  Who would ever WANT to be thrown voluntarily into the lake of fire.  But the act of believing is then seen as the moment we change reality.  To belief literally places our name in the book of life.

The problem with this theory is that it becomes a “work”.  In other words, salvation is dependent on human action.  The central act of grace rests not on reality, as evidenced in the cross, or on the atoning work of Christ, but on the human act of believing.  Belief gets you in. The Apostle Paul directly argues against the idea of works in his letter to the Ephesians.

in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.  Ephesians 2:7-9 (New International Version)

If reality, and thus salvation, is cosmologically dependent on the human action of belief, then it is a work. The change in the reality rests on a human action.  The different is in where the problem is located.  If the problem is located in God, and our belief in Jesus gets us out of judgment, then it’s not grace.  According to Paul it can’t be.  The change is dependent on human action. So what then is the role of belief?

But if the problem is located in humanity, in us, in our capacity to construct a false reality, then the human act of belief doesn’t change reality. It aligns the person to reality.  In order to offer the concept of salvation to someone, it must already be true for them to accept it.  The act of acceptance is then not getting someone in but revealing reality to that person that they are already in.  The act of belief changes the person locally to the grace that has always been true.  Belief then serves to change the mind of the person, not the cosmos.  Faith holds onto that reality and confronts the evidence that suggests a different reality altogether.