My Belief

Today I challenged myself to meditate on why God is important to me. I've struggled throughout the day to come up with a thoughtful list that was not just a regurgitated litany of things other people have told me or that I felt I was supposed to say. When forced to look within myself for reasons for my belief I found my thoughts running in circles. I distracted myself with other things so that I didn't have to closely examine my own beliefs. I had to sit down in a quiet place and give it some serious thought.

As a kid my belief in God was based on the teachings of my parents and their friends. My dad was a Southern Baptist minister, and my parents' friends were other members of the church. I was surrounded by other believers. Disbelief did not even occur to me as a viable option.

When I grew older I had second thoughts concerning my belief in God. I became more familiar with what I thought of as "the real world." I saw tragedy (didn't really experience any) and thought that if God existed, trouble couldn't and wouldn't. I read books about other, non-Christian, religions. I found that it was easy to live an agnostic life: I didn't deny or affirm the existence of God. Denial and affirmation both require energy. I didn't want to devote any energy to "the issue."

I was stationed in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War when my best friend's mom sent me a letter that detailed all the things I was doing that went against my upbringing and my Christian heritage. I knew that no one near me was in contact with her and that she shouldn't have known what was going on in my life. The impossibility of the letter's accuracy made me examine again the question of God's existence. I pulled out an old copy of the Bible and began to read. I didn't know where to begin, so I figured "no better place than the beginning." I started to read the Bible from cover to cover.

As I read, I realized that God's gift of freewill for mankind was at the root of most (if not all) tragedy. When I wondered at this I realized that without freewill man's worship of God would be meaningless. The fact that we can choose whether or not to worship God gives our worship value. Forced worship is not worship at all. Freewill is a two-edged sword: on the one hand it gives us freedom to make our own decisions and take action based on those decisions. On the other hand we are also then responsible for the results of those actions. I realized that the tragedies I used as evidence that God could not exist were in no way proof one way or the other of His existence/non-existence.

I looked inside myself for proof of his existence. I felt listless without God in my life. When I began to exert energy towards my belief in God I lost this feeling of listlessness. I realize now that without God my life had no purpose--there was no end goal. Now I know enough about myself and my relationship with God that when I begin to feel listless I look at the strength of my relationship with Him. I have to ask myself if I am expending the right amount of energy/devoting the right amount of time to our relationship.

Now, I am fully convinced of God's existence. While books like Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ and Ravi Zacharias' The End of Reason offer more logical and thoughtful proofs of God's existence, I have to say that my personal experience with God and the evidence of His moving in my life is all the proof I need. As my relationship with God grows, my relationships with the other people in my life also improve (sounds like Matthew 6:33, doesn't it?).

My prayer is that my relationship with God continues to grow, that He will grant me more insight into His thought processes and that He will give me more understanding of His will for my day-to-day walk. I pray that He gives me practical ways to live a Christian life and helps me encourage others to do the same.