WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE IN GOD? PART II

Continued from here.

The admission that God exists came to me slowly. Because logic dedicated the need for it, I eventually reached the conclusion the universe must be a creation. Someone created the universe. But who? Why?

Why me?

Why Christianity?

Like most American men, I was brought up to think of myself in terms of what I do. Because I wanted to be a scientist/engineer, I worked hard to fashion myself so as to think as one. Before I make a decision, I learned to observe, gather data, and deliberate.

Myself

What we each observe most closely is that person we call Me. What goes on in each of our minds, others can only guess. Perhaps no man is an island, but each observes from a lonely view no one else can share. No one sees exactly what I see, hears what I hear, feels what I feel, thinks what I think…… If and when we choose to do so, we can only empathize with each other.

And so as I grew into maturity, I observed from my tiny citadel. Why am I here? What is my place? What am I here to do?

As have so many other children, I soaked up the culture of our society without truly understanding how it came to be. What I did notice; however, is that much is in conflict. At home and in church, I learned of Christianity and Christian values. In school and from the mass media, I learned that Christianity was not worthy of mention. I spent hours each day in school and hours more in front of the television set. I spent much less time in church and conversing with my family.

So it was that by the time I was ready to graduate from high school, my secular education was complete. I had learned relatively little about Christianity. So I had little knowledge of my parents faith. I had learned so little about God, I had almost nothing in which to believe. What I had were too many Christian traditions devoid of Christianity — Christmas consumed by Santa Claus and Easter featuring the Easter Bunny.

My Family

That is not to say that that my parents were not devout Christians. Instead, it points to the struggle of raising a Christian family in an increasingly indifferent and sometimes hostile environment. Because its loss seems so ordinary, few of us appreciate the full difficulty of passing on one’s heritage.

Consider how we celebrate Thanksgiving Day. Yes, when the Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgivings Day the occasion was about giving thanks to God. But why did the Pilgrims come here? The Pilgrims were safe and prospering in the Netherlands. The Dutch did not threaten the Pilgrims with persecution. The Pilgrims feared their children would lose their religious heritage. The Pilgrims came to the New World so they could build a Christian community protected by distance from a disagreeing world.

In spite of the difficulties, my parents did achieve a modicum of success. When I told my mother that I no longer believed in Christianity, she responded that I was still a Christian because I still believed in Christian values. She also prayed for me.

Perhaps it was my mother’s prayers that explain why I met and married a lovely Christian lady. My new wife treated my indifference towards religion first with disbelief and then with reluctant forbearance. When we had children, she worked desperately to raise them as Christians, and she insisted we send them to Christian schools. Fortunately, I went along with my lady’s choice. So it was with my lady’s determination, and my acquiescence that our children grew up to be Christians.

The Bible charges parents, fathers in particular, to ensure that children receive a proper religious education.

Ephesians 6:4

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

It did not exactly work that way in my home. Instead, I learned more from the example of my children than they ever learned from me. Eventually, I started studying the Bible, trying to figure out what they understood.

My Country

I am no historian, but history is a subject that fascinates me. During my studies, I have come to understand that the United States is unique. Unfortunately, because we live in the midst of America, few of us fully appreciate what makes our nation unusual. In particular, we do not appreciate our Christian heritage. We are victims of a familiarity that breeds contempt, but without our Christian heritage, we would not be a free People.

We have grown too many cynics who tell us that religion causes problems. Consider the nature of a cynic. Look up the term (here) in the dictionary. A cynic is a “person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions and who disbelieves in or minimizes selfless acts or disinterested points of view.” Are we a nation of selfish people? Is selfishness what makes the United States a great nation?

All things are relative. Compared to other countries, the People of United States are generous and respectful of the rights of others. Why? I think we owe this to our Christian heritage. No. We are not perfect, but how much worse might we have been if our forebears had be pagans or atheists. Do these beliefs teach love of neighbor or love of self?

My parents were of the generation we now call the Greatest Generation. When World War II began, they dropped everything they were doing. They went to war. They, their parents, and their grandparents set aside everything to mobilize and fight. And they fought ferociously. But their ferocity in battle was not what made them great. Their battle prowess only secured them the defeat of their enemies. It is what they did when the war was over that brought them honor. Three generations of American forgave their enemies. They forgave hundreds of thousands dead, untold injuries, and lives disrupted. Then they helped their former enemies rebuild. That is what brought honor to them and to America.

My World

When a man create something, he imparts something of himself to his creation. That is, what a man creates says something about his character. When God created the universe, did He impart something of himself to His creation? When the Bible says man was made in the image of God, what does that mean?

One complaint about religion is that God does not share his message equally amongst all men. Is that true? Perhaps, but I suspect it far less true than most imagine. God’s creation is something we all experience. That includes our own nature. In spite all the things a man can possess, what we each seem to want the most is to love and to be loved. Does God love us? Does He want our love? Christianity teaches that God does indeed love us and wants us to love Him.

And so, sometimes in spite of ourselves, we each seek Him.

Why Methodism

Because we can only observe the world from our own point of view, our religious experience is a deeply personal. Methodism works for me. Will it work for everyone else? I do not know. I think it best people choose their own church.

But why did I choose Methodism? Think for a moment about the name, Methodism. Then read this.

Believing, as he did, that faith is more than merely an acknowledgment of ideas, Wesley contended that a part of the theological method would involve experiential faith. In other words, truth would be vivified in personal experience of Christians (overall, not individually), if it were really truth. And every doctrine must be able to to defended rationally. He did not divorce faith from reason. Tradition, experience and reason, however, were subject always to scripture, Wesley argued, because only there is the Word of God revealed ‘so far as it is necessary for our salvation. (from here)

It is the nature of people to associate with people who think like them. I like methodical people, and I think it is important to understand scripture. To understand, we must respect tradition, experience and reason. Consider what Isaac Newton said about science.

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants. — Isaac Newton

God did not deliver Christianity to us in a day. The Bible itself is the work of about forty authors (see here) over a period of hundreds of years. Its development reveals both God’s plan and how our understanding of religion has progressed over time.

The Bible is a storehouse of wisdom. When our understanding of it has deepened, we have been a better people. Just as our forebears passed on the scripture, their traditions, experience, and understanding to us, so are we obligated to pass on these gifts to future generations.

And so I rediscovered Christianity. What is Christianity teaching me about God? That is Part III (WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE IN GOD? PART III).