What do I believe? When my son Ryan came into our family I felt like I was blessed by God. When I talked with someone who's baby had died in a tragic accident, I couldn't figure out what God was doing? Where was He and how could he let this happen? At best God is sending us mixed messages.
Sometimes I would get so angry about some wrong I would be angry at myself for bothering to believe in God. I would tell myself that it is impossible to believe in ALL of God's traits at the same time.
God is supposed to be:
1. ALL knowing
2. ALL powerful
3. Everywhere at once [omnipresent]
4. Pure distilled LOVE
5. and yet EVIL exists.
HOW can all 5 of those things be true at the same time. I mean I could accept a loving God who wasn't all powerful. Then I could accept that evil exists because God doesn't have the power to clobber and eliminate it.
Or I could accept that God is all powerful, and all knowing, but just not all that loving. He has limits to what He tolerates and eventually he just gets exasperated and says, "Go to hell."
So I would struggle. Do I believe in God, or not?
When I gave up on being a fundamentalist I felt a little better. I was no longer expected to believe in a talking snake, like we read about in the Garden of Eden. And I no longer had to accept a God who would place a wager with the Devil and allow Job's children to die just to test Job's faith.
Was I an atheist then? I thought maybe I was, since I certainly no longer accepted the 'Bible is inerrant' position I was raised to believe.
But atheism has it's own certitudes, and the atheist beliefs are just as un-provable. I trust science over myth, but God is not something that can be scientifically studied.
I had a teacher in college that would say, If you can't measure it, you can't know anything about it. Unless you can weigh something, or see how warm or cool it is, or measure it's length and width you can't know anything about it.
So since God can't be sliced and stained, or put on a scale does that mean He does not exist? That is what my teacher was telling me. God is beyond or out side of the realm of things that can be proved, therefore there is no God.
Sometimes I want to believe, but science was telling me, if you can't measure it, you can't prove it is there, therefore, it isn't. But it seemed like science was saying nothing really mattered, that sin was just an evolutionary myth developed by humans so we wouldn't eat our babies and the species would survive. I want things to matter, for humans to have worth and value, and I know that is not a good enough reason to accept an unverifiable God, nevertheless, I am not a scientist and science was falling short for me.
I am starting to think it is wrong to believe anything on the grounds that we have insufficient evidence. If you don't have the evidence to decide something, then what you should do is NOT Decide, don't pick, abstain, do not commit, opt for mystery, learn to live with your questions, refuse to be an affirm-er or a denier.
Jesus said follow me, he did not say accept my arguments'
Jesus had his own doubts. My God, why have you forsaken me?
What I am starting to realize is that there are three kinds of belief.
1. One belief is what I say I believe.
2. One is what I think I believe,
3. But my core beliefs actually govern what I do.
Say a tightrope walker stretches a wire across Niagara Falls, and then he takes a wheel barrel filled with bricks and pushes it all the way across and back over Niagara Falls. Then the tightrope walker addresses the crowds asking "Do you believe I can do that again?" Yes yells the crowd. The performer then asks, "Who here thinks I could put a man in this wheel barrel and push it across and back?" Everyone believes this guy could do that, so every hand is raised. Finally the wire walker says, "If you want to volunteer to be that man, keep your hand raised." All the hands drop. Would your hand stay up?
I said I believed this acrobat could wheel a man across Niagara Falls. I thought I believed he could do it.
But it was only when I was called on to act upon my beliefs, it was only when I was asked to trust my life to this wire walker that I discovered my core belief. I discovered that I did NOT believe wholly and without reservation in this wire walker. I was NOT willing to trust my life to his skill. I found out that my core belief is in gravity. I had no doubt at all that if I were to fall from the wheel barrel that I would fall to my death.
In this stupid parable, the wire walker could be science, or the tightrope walker could be God, but it seems I just don't believe enough to pick to trust eternity to science or to God, My core beliefs govern what I actually do.
I can't swear that Jesus existed. I think he did, and I think he does live, and I say the Nicene Creed and I proclaim that I believe in Jesus, but as I now know, there are degrees of belief. I am seeking to know my core belief in Jesus. I know the story of Jesus, and I believe the truth in the story. I know that when things were very bad, Jesus expressed doubt, but what Jesus never did is compromise his core beliefs. Jesus loved people, and helped people and valued people over the rules of the Bible. Jesus violated the scriptures as it applied to the Sabbath Day. Jesus was absolutely sure God would be OK with him healing sick people on the Sabbath Day Jesus was lead by his core beliefs and he still at times broke or bent the commandments from the Bible and believed that that was OK with God because the Sabbath was made for man, man was not made for the Sabbath.
If I had to pick I would rather be LIKE Jesus, or be OF Jesus rather than believe in the reported details of his life. I want to have a set of core believes that are in harmony with Christ's core believes, and I want my Jesus compatible core beliefs to govern what I do. I want my core believes to cause me to react with love and kindness. I want to be helpful, and emphathic, and I want my trust of love to be so strong that it over comes all my other belief systems.
