Let’s imagine Jasper, a thirteen-year-old boy. Jasper lives in an average suburb and attends an average middle school which subjects him to average social concerns. He wants to impress girls, wants to be popular, wants to avoid getting pounded into his locker every time the football players pass by.
Jasper has a closet full of shirts. Jasper can wear any of those shirts any day he wants to, provided it’s clean. Luckily for Jasper, his dad does laundry every night, so Jasper can always wear any of his shirts.
There are a number of factors influencing Jasper’s choice of shirts: his mother likes him to wear the shirts with collars because they make him look responsible, a girl once told him he looks good in green so he thinks he’ll do better with the ladies if he wears green shirts, the football players pick on him less if he wears a Vikings jersey. The problem is that Jasper doesn’t like any of those shirts. Jasper likes his plain blue T-shirt, the one he wore to the zoo last summer, the one he wore when he won a chess match.
Long setup to get to this analogy:
Jasper can choose to wear any shirt he owns for any reason, but he can’t choose which shirt will be his favorite. Likewise, a person can choose what they say about belief, they can choose what church to attend, they can choose whether to sing hymns, chant chants, or take communion. But they can’t choose what they believe.
Something could happen to change which shirt is Jasper’s favorite, but it won’t be an act of his will. He could have a great day while wearing his Adrian Peterson replica jersey—maybe the football players invite him to a party where they have soda and pie. However, he can’t decide that this morning he likes the football jersey better than the blue T-shirt. And so it is (it seems to me) with belief. Something could happen to change what I believe, but it won’t be my decision. I may be introduced to a new idea, a new perception, that changes what I believe, but I can’t decide to believe one thing instead of another.
Or is there something I'm missing?