Why Do We Want to Believe What We Want to Believe?

“We often see only what we want to see and hear what we want to hear—especially when it preserves our comfort.”- Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods

It’s one of those God-terruption mornings. 03:47 AM. My eyes opened with dread. My body begged to sleep for a week. But something stronger stirred. A whisper: “Not your will.” And my heart, with coffee and cream in hand, finally whispered back, “But Yours be done.”

I’m no Jesus. He’s The Way. Me? I’m just a son of dust and grace, stunned that the Creator of galaxies wants to speak, to me, through me, through us. That kind of love is paralysing in the best way. And so, in the chilled stillness of Johannesburg’s dawn, the Holy Spirit asked a question that shattered epistemic soundproofing like glass. And then came the question; not just for my mind, but for my soul: Why do we want to believe what we want to believe? It struck me that our beliefs are not merely conclusions of logic, but confessions of longing, fear, and need. We do not approach truth neutrally; we approach it needily.

“Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.”- Francis Bacon

THEOLOGICAL-PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION

Not what we believe.

Not why we believe.

But why we want to believe it.

This is the primal fire of the soul. Beneath every doctrine, deconstruction, culture war, or moral platform lies this question. Why are we so attached to certain ideas? What is it about desire that makes belief so fragile or so stubborn?

We do not see clearly because we do not desire clearly.

We do not believe rightly because we do not love rightly.

We want to believe what justifies our autonomy.

We want to believe what preserves control.

We want to believe what gives us the illusion of light, without submitting to its source.

And here’s the frightening reality: we’re good at it.

“There is no absolute truth,” the culture declares, absolutely. But try telling your liver to be your lungs. The created order reveals what our ego denies: truth exists. Truth is. But our affections, disordered, fractured, and bruised by sin, twist what we’re willing to accept. And when epistemology becomes emotion-driven, belief becomes less about what is true and more about what, seemingly, affirms us.

JOHN 8:37–41

Jesus said, “I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you seek to kill Me, because My word finds no place in you.”

They were genetically descended from Abraham, but not spiritually aligned with him. When heavenly messengers visited Abraham in Genesis 18, he welcomed them. When Heaven’s own Son stood before his descendants, they plotted His death.

Why?

Because truth had no place in them. They loved their power, their self-made righteousness, their vision of God, more than the Son of God Himself.

As Spurgeon noted, the Word of God should have a place of honour, trust, rule, and love.¹ But for them, the Word was unwelcome, because it was unyielding. Jesus didn’t fit their expectation of truth, so they sought to silence Him rather than surrender.

“Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.”- Demosthenes

WHAT RIGHT?

What Jesus exposes here is our epistemic arrogance: the need to be right, even if it crucifies truth. This is what psychologists call motivated reasoning, our tendency to interpret information in ways that confirm what we already believe or want to believe.² Add to that the bandwagon effect, the illusory truth effect, the Mandela effect, and confirmation bias, and you’ve got a recipe for theological blindness masquerading as conviction.³

This isn’t new. As Nicholas Wolterstorff notes, “Belief is not merely a cognitive act; it’s a social, moral, and spiritual positioning of the self.”⁴

And yet we call it freedom.

But Jesus calls us out, not to shame us, but to liberate us. “You will know the truth,” He says in this same passage, “and the truth will set you free.” But only if the truth can live in us. Only if we stop building epistemological houses of mirrors and start letting the Light in.

As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in The Little Prince: “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”⁵ We have tamed belief to suit our desires. And now we’re responsible for that distortion.

So the question is not just what is truth, but: what affections are shaping what we want truth to be?

“The human heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”- Jeremiah 17:9, ESV

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

Here’s a soul-check:

What belief do I defend most ferociously, and why?

Does it honour God, or preserve my pride?

Am I letting Scripture conform me, or am I conforming Scripture to myself?

Consider journaling these questions or bringing them to prayer. Let God examine the inner motives beneath your outer convictions.

PRAYER

Father,

Expose the desires that distort my faith.

Let me love truth more than comfort, light more than illusion, Your Word more than my will.

Tame my mind, Holy Spirit, until my affections align with Yours.

In Jesus’ Holy Name,

Amen.

BENEDICTION

May the fire of truth warm you, not burn you.

May your soul no longer crave illusions but long for reality.

May your heart make room for His Word.

And may the question of why you want to believe what you believe lead you not to shame, but to surrender, and finally, to freedom.

In Messiah King Jesus’s Mighty Name,

Amen.

REFERENCES

1) Charles Spurgeon, sermon on John 8, cited in Enduring Word Bible Commentary, accessed June 12, 2025, https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/john-8/.

2) American Psychological Association, APA Dictionary of Psychology, s.v. “motivated reasoning,” accessed June 12, 2025, https://dictionary.apa.org/motivated-reasoning.

3) Ibid., entries on “confirmation bias” and “illusory truth effect.”

4) Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason Within the Bounds of Religion, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 67.

5) Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, trans. Katherine Woods (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943), 61.