As for myself, hmm… probably what I’d say wouldn’t be much different from Pog or Cindy, but I’ll give it a shot…
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The world and the cosmos. When you look at the way things are, barring the usual questions of theodicy like suffering and evil ( which will always be a challenge to faith on some level), the world and the universe do have this sense of having been designed, and there is a creative flourish about it all, not to mention pregnant mystery… sometimes it may seem kind of messy and hard to understand, the way things are in the natural order, the way things are set up, here on Earth and throughout the cosmos (which even now we still know far less about than we’d like), but there seems to be a method even to the madness, rather than just sheer randomness… hard to put my finger on all of this, but maybe you get what I mean.
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Human beings. We ourselves are a mystery that, at least to me, the mere chance of indifferent and unguided evolution just can’t seem to explain.
Our bodies, our minds, which are so complex and intricate, and whose workings have yet to be completely understood even by science; our deep needs that go beyond the physical, including a deep desire within many of us, perhaps all of us whether we admit it or not, to somehow live beyond our impending deaths and someday find answers to the deepest questions and the deepest longings that we just can’t seem to find answers to in this life; our intense creativity and ingenuity; the sense of humanity’s brokenness, which people across the whole spectrum of worldviews share, and our drive to find an answer to that brokenness; the sense of the importance of relationships, and the need for love among one another, which people from virtually every walk of life and worldview share; and I could go on… strangely enough, though when we look all around us, look at the world and the cosmos, we find a lot of mystery and unanswered questions, when we look at ourselves, and at one another, we find just as much mystery, just as many unanswered questions, if not more… and that makes me think.
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The power of stories. Throughout history, humankind has loved to tell and hear stories.
We tell and hear stories in literature, in film, in music, and in all kinds of artistic expression.
But the stories that speak most powerfully, at least to me, and to many others I’m sure, are those stories that are full of conflict and struggle, but that still have an underlying hope, and lead at the end to redemption, to a meaningful resolution, to a happy ending or at least a hopeful one, towards home…
Throughout those stories that have resonated most deeply with me those themes are prevalent, and these stories have planted a seed in my heart that tells me that my story can be like those stories, that our stories can be like those stories, and that just as these themes find themselves in our fantasy, they can also be found in our reality, that though we have conflict and struggle, we do yet have hope, and we will, in due time, find redemption, resolution, a happy ending, find home… and I believe that these stories are passionately told and attentively heard because this is the kind of story that many of us long to be a part of… and I think there’s something to all of us this.
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Miracles, personal experiences, etc. I’ve had a number of experiences of a spiritual quality that I really can’t explain away or ignore, where I feel that I’ve been reached out to, communicated with, and in a positive, and a personal, way, some of them more subjective, to be honest, but a few of them fairly objective, and the source of these experiences appears to be, well, God, for lack of a better word, or at least a Presence (again for lack of a better word) working behind the scenes… and it also happens that these experiences point towards Jesus Christ as being important, though I admit I still have yet to fully understand, or even barely understand if I’m honest, all the ‘theological’ implications of my experiences… it would take too long to relay all of these experiences, but let’s just say that maybe God cuts some slack for skeptics now and then.
These experiences more than anything have helped me to believe that, at the very least, something more is going on… whether that something more can be trusted and banked on is of course a matter of faith and always open to question and doubt, but I cannot deny what I have experienced, that those things have happened.
The best natural explanation I’ve heard for my experiences is pure chance and coincidence, or that it’s all in my head, that sort of thing, and of course I’ve entertained those possibilities, but I just don’t buy it.
If it was just a couple things, maybe I could, but after awhile, after enough of those kinds of experiences, it kind of starts to add up, and any reasonable person could not help but be at least open to the possibility that maybe something more if going on… or at least that’s how I see it.
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Love. Of course, love is a broad subject matter, but in this case I mean to refer to two desires deep down inside of me, and as far as I know, in many other people, if not all people, though there are those who can become so corrupt and/or jaded that these desires can become buried or twisted and misshapen…
One is the desire to be loved, and the second is the desire to be able to love.
Starting out life as a loner by nature, and perhaps having some autistic tendencies, or at least a good helping of social awkwardness, love has been in some ways a mystery to me, or at least I’ve always felt that I wasn’t very good at it, at receiving love or giving love, though others who have known me would argue that… but if others could see inside of me they would know that I struggle with feeling as though I’m just not really getting it, or at least not as much as I could or should get it.
To have the revelation that love is what life is pretty much all about, and that it matters more than anything, is a very challenging thought to someone who has a tendency to be very self-absorbed, or at least feels as though he does.
In a number of ways, I believe that God has promised me that He would help me with this, help me to learn and grow in what it means to be loved and to love, to be more and more a part of this, well, dance…
I wonder sometimes if love is like the spiritual equivalent to gravity or magnetism… I think it is like a spiritual energy that binds things together, much like the Force in Star Wars, only, well, a little different
And when it is not present within or between people, who are meant to be vessels of this, well, divine energy, then things get more and more out of whack… but when it is present, then there is an ever increasing beauty and glory… just as there are forces within nature that bring order out of chaos, that bring life out of death, forces that bind things together, I think love is meant to work in much the same way on a spiritual level…
Not sure if I’m making any sense, but this is one of the reasons why I believe, because for one, love does exist, as few would argue, but it would have little meaning, at least to me, if it was just a fluke of evolution, or if death was final and irreversible… if anything is stronger than death, then it must be love… I can’t prove that scientifically, but there are many who believe that regardless, and I think there is a good reason for it…
In connection with this is my desire to be a better man; a good husband and father in the future, a good friend and brother, a good son, a good man… to reach my full potential, to find my place in the dance of life…
But I feel so broken and messed-up so much of the time, with so many weaknesses and shortcomings… perhaps I’m too hard on myself, but I know for sure that I need help, and lots of it. And I cannot turn to myself for help… I know, I’ve tried. But I’ve found out time and again that I can’t just pull myself up by my bootstraps.
And I cannot turn to other people, because they are in the same boat as me.
We all need help becoming better people, more or less, we all need help learning how to receive and give love well, we all need help finding strength and courage and wisdom for each step… we all need help finding healing and finding freedom…
we all need help learning how to dance in this thing we call life…
So I turn to God for help, because I don’t know who else to turn to… there are those who think I am a fool to do so, clinging to old superstitions and believing in something that is no more sensible than believing in fairies or Santa Claus, but I can’t help it…
I heard a little story once of an old woman who had faith in God, and an atheist told her that her faith was nothing more than a crutch… she replied that when a person has much difficulty walking, then it better for you to have a crutch that helps you to walk than no crutch, without which you would just fall down and wouldn’t be able to walk at all.
I can relate to that little story, and that’s kind of how I feel about it.
I need help walking in love, and I think we all do. And may God help us all in this. We can love because He first loved us…
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Trust. All of us fall short in one way or another, and many of us find rather quickly in life that we can neither trust one another in everything nor can we trust ourselves in everything. Not that we can’t have any trust in one another or even in ourselves, we can have some measure of that, in fact, I believe some measure is required for healthy relationships and healthy self-esteem, respectively… but is there anyone out there that we can trust completely, with all that we are?
So I look to God. Like my fiancee Kaylyn says ‘if we can’t trust God, then who can we trust?’
If we can’t trust our Creator, then the whole rug is pulled out from under us, so to speak.
But if we can, then we have no need to be afraid.
Though it is difficult to trust someone that you can’t see with your eyes or hear with your ears or touch with your hands, let alone understand fully, at least we have a shot with God at finding someone in which we can have perfect trust, who will never disappoint us or let us down, will never do us harm or abandon us in our time of need… of course, there are many who feel that God has disappointed them or let them down, who feel that God has done them harm or abandoned them… faith tells us that though that is the perception, it is not the reality…
Faith tells us that God, in the end, will not disappoint us or let us down, that God is in the business of healing rather than harming people, and that He will never leave us or forsake us…
There will always be room for doubt, but as for me, I can’t help but take a shot at the possibility that there is Someone out there, and even near at hand, that I can truly count on no matter what.
And in connection with this is the deep desire to be known and understood. We can get to know one another fairly well, but there will always be something missing. We are basically stuck inside our own skins, and cannot read one another’s minds or look into one another’s hearts. We cannot live another person’s life, or know and understand exactly how they feel, because we are not them.
But there is this deep desire, in myself, and in many others I’m sure, to be completely known and understood, and even more, completely accepted, warts and all… there is this fear that many of us have that if others knew absolutely everything about us, then they would reject us…
But what if there was Someone who knew us and understood us even better than we did ourselves and knew all of the bad stuff about us as well as the good, but still fully accepted us and wanted us even so?
What if there was Someone who could get inside of our hearts, our inner being, and commune with us there, share in our life, our struggles and our joys, and fully know us and be one with us?
At least in my mind, if there is no God, then we will never find anyone, ourselves included, that we can trust completely, with all that we are, and who will never disappoint us or let us down in the end, nor will we ever find anyone that will truly understand us, understand who we are and what is inside of us, even those things that we ourselves can’t understand… and if no one like that exists, then, though we have ourselves and one another, and that is something, we will always be missing something, and, in some important sense, at least on the inside, be alone, and that to me would be a sad thing.
So that is one of my reasons for believing, because I long to be able to trust someone completely, and long to be understood completely… also, I hope to learn from this someone how to become more trustworthy and understanding myself…
Not sure if I’m making any sense with this, but maybe you get what I’m saying.
Well, those are six reasons for why I believe, at least that I can think of. Sorry for my long drawn out rambling… but that’s my two cents, and hopefully I’ve contributed something of value.