Belief, Not Logic

In my first job out of college, I analyzed Tesla’s business model for a credit committee review meeting. It was 2016, and Tesla stock was trading around $15. The company consistently missed their production targets, Elon had a number of suspicious self-dealings between his companies, and electric car adoption was low. Needless to say, I rated them a high credit risk. “Don’t buy the stock,” I said.

Tesla now trades around $410, down from an all-time high of nearly $500. That’s a 30x increase in ten years, or 40% per year. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

And yet my skepticism was “right” back then. There was a lot to question about Tesla’s valuation, as there is to this day. Why is Tesla’s market cap nearly 30x larger than Ford’s while producing a third as many cars? It doesn’t make any sense.

What I missed were the intangibles of the company, its product and most importantly its founder. There is something magical about driving a Tesla for the first time. Electric cars feel intuitively like the future. And Elon is one of one, for better or worse.

Tesla’s stock price isn’t logical, and yet it’s real.

In Jesus’ time on Earth, the most powerful things he said were equally illogical.

Think about his foundational claim: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

The Jews he was speaking to at the time were right to be incredulous. “Living bread? Is this guy nuts?”

“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

Their skepticism is what I feel every week in church. How can Christ’s body and blood give me eternal life? The passage of time has not made it any easier for my brain to understand. It’s not logical. Every Catholic has thought the same at one time or another, sitting in a pew. And yet, that belief is core to our faith.

I have always considered my skepticism to be an asset, not a liability. I have a built-in BS radar. I think many things are too good to be true. And that serves me well in many situations.

But inherent skepticism can be a weakness. It can lead me to skip right past a critical question: “What if this were true?”

What if this bread did give eternal life? Answering that question is a matter of belief, not logic.

How I’ve dealt with my skepticism is to just accept it. My brain does not fully believe everything it hears in church. It just doesn’t, and I doubt that will change.

But when I walk out of church each Sunday, my heart is fuller than it was when I walked in. I’ve smiled at familiar faces, sung my favorite songs, and been told that God loves me. As of late, I’ve spent that hour with my kids on my lap, watching them take it all in.

How can that not lead to eternal life?

See you next week.

Emmett

John 6:51-58