I was lying in bed last night restless from thought; I was pondering what I should write about. My recent writings based on magazine articles have left feeling like I have been getting unattached and rather impersonal. I do enjoy doing such writing, but I want to remember my primary reason for writing. To share what God has been teaching me. I never laid out down much of a foundation of the whats and whys of my beliefs.
Why do I believe? A rather unspecific question in itself. I recall the first time I was ever asked that. I was at Hume my sophomore year. I don't know why I was asked or for what purpose but I was asked, "Why do I believe in Christ?" The best answer I could come up with on the spot was, "because I know I am sinful and I know I need forgiveness." I am convinced if anyone is honest with themselves they can come to the same conclusion. That moment was almost six years ago, upon further analysis there is not a more simplistic answer I think to answer the same question.
One of my initial objectives for this topic was to try to prevent people from foolishly saying I am a Christian "because that is what I was raised with". I have no doubt my upbringing a great deal to do with who I am but why I am the way I chose, is because that is what I want. I would say until my junior or senior year, when people asked how long I had been a Christian I would usually refer to a prayer I said at the dinner table when I was four. Not that I disregard that moment, after all I still remember it today, but I don't think that was any momentous turning point in my life at that point. When people ask me today when I became a Christian it was at Hume my freshmen year. I was in a kayak watching some of friends getting baptized. There was something different about that moment that I think I was finally honest with myself with what it meant to be a Christian. I knew all through jr. high I was holding back a little bit, whether I was actually "saved" from the dinner table prayer I said so many years ago I don't know, nor have put much thought into it. Guessing over past states of faith like that seems rather frivolous. I suppose the best way to phrase what happened at Hume was I realized God wanted me, personally.
Years following my personal spiritual development have lead to a much grander picture of why I believe. I think it was that same year at Hume I was introduced to apologetics. The main pursuit of apologetics is to reconcile reason with faith. Not to say that faith is contrary to reason, but generations of "enlightenment" philosophy and science has hailed faith to be separate if not incompatible from reason and logic. I personally love apologetics so much because I am able to know why I believe through logic which reinforces what I know to be true in my heart. In addition to apologetics my thirst for understanding has lead me to study just about any secular topic that might impact our faith. Be it the origins of the universe in understanding the Genesis creation or microbiology to show how complex we were made from God's breath. 1 Peter 3:8-17 has been my motto to live by. From where I stand now, I know my faith to be true by: personal experience, philosophy, history, biology, chemistry, and psychology. The list of olgy's is growing and getting more in depth with every book I read.
I recall a tidbit I heard on the radio some years ago. I think it was Chuck Colson speaking. He said something along the lines that even if he chose to live a completely selfish life he would still arrive at the conclusion to be a Christian. He would arrive there simply by logically comparing the pro's and con's of what God asks of us in return for what we get. The offer God has presented to us is enough that through reason we can know his existence, our purpose and who God is. The funny thing is so popular today in any discussion of Christianity and logic mixing the common perception is that one must sacrifice some logic for some faith or vice versa. The easiest response to why so many highly educated people proclaim to deny God has come to light on several occasions that the primary reason for disbelief is desire. A common mindset, the more independent one strives to be, the more alien it seems to spend it selflessly living for God. I suppose from the military stand point we can appreciate that a little bit. Freedom we had as civilians is a weak comparison to the freedom from sin. One of the major apparent differences is every person knows when they are in the military and most people are blind or in denial that they are chained by sin.
I know anyone can read the same books I have read and see where I am coming from to see how I know the empirical facts about Christianity are true. The most important part about why I believe is based on my personal experience with God. This is where many people tend to claim that they are spiritual and sense God in and around them. Often it is more of a pantheistic god in nature or spirit of earth mixed with an idea of God. I cannot discount those claims as legitimate experiences except by what they are lead to do or how it guides them, I might be able to point out that the "spirit" is certainly not the God of the Bible. I say this so there is no confusion when I claim I have heard God, that it is not muddled as my unique form of spirituality that speaks to me in my own little world. I have found with my own experiences and examples of scripture that when God speaks to someone it will radically shape them.
I am convinced that God has spoken to me first because what he told me was not what I wanted to hear but consistent with what I should do and second because it was such a direct answer to a present situation. I remember when I contemplating being called into the Army, I was waiting for "the call". At that point I looked into scripture to see what kind of examples there were of the Holy Spirit's leading. Much to my surprise the instances in which individuals were called by the Holy Spirit was in relation to an immediate and specific event. As influential as those two instances in my life were presently they are reference points. When I draw near to the spirit it is a daily meeting that I know he is near.
