With is better: an account of my own faith

7 reasons to believe in God

1. How could I not?  Of course, that doesn’t help you much.  But it really is my own personal bottom line.
2. Night skies.
3. Because some really smart people do.
4. Every project has a chief engineer.
5. The quest for meaning seems to serve no evolutionary purpose.  In other words, I seem to have been made to believe in God – it’s part of my genetic composition.
6. Because even, and perhaps especially, in the bad times, God’s presence is palpable.
7. Because altruism, acting for the good of another without regard to the cost to ourselves, is a real phenomena in the observable world.

7 reasons not to

1. How could I?  Sometimes I doubt.
2. Nature is as ugly and brutal as it is beautiful and peaceful.
3. Because some really smart people don’t.
4. Because Stephen Hawking, at least, believes that every project does not require an engineer.
5. Not every evolutionary aspect has a useful purpose – over the long haul, our quest for meaning might be abandoned as unnecessary to our survival.
6. Because God’s palpable presence might be imagination . . . or wishful thinking . . . or indigestion . . . might be.
7. Because the world is often a horrible place – terribly at odds with any vision of  God as loving and just.

***

If belief in God were a debate, at best the result would be a draw: for every point, every argument, there is a counter-point or argument.

God either is or is not, independent of my own belief.  Thus for me, the question is not a matter of proofs.  Rather, the question is how do I make sense of my own life experiences, my own sense of purpose, even my own brief, but oh-so-important-to-me existence?

I choose God.

I have lived my life both with and without God.  With is better.

That’s my testimony.  It’s the best I’ve got: with is better.

Make no mistake: I do not mean to say that my life circumstances are better with God.  In fact, the opposite has more often been true.  For a time, the more I believed in God, the worse my life got.  I don’t mean to say that the two were related (I wasn’t being persecuted for my belief).  I’m merely pointing out that the quality or depth of my faith had absolutely no impact on whether my life was better or worse, safer or more dangerous, happier or sadder.

The distinction is this: my life wasn’t better with God, but I was and I am.

I am a better person.  I am a happier person.  I am a kinder and more loving person.  I am a safer person.  I am a more whole person.

I’m not a preacher who preaches hell much.  Most days I don’t even believe in hell, at least not as envisioned in a good old-timey preacherly kind of way, as some sort of separate maximum-security prison to which God sends us to serve an eternity sentence.

But really I don’t preach hell much because I’ve lived hell.  You don’t have to tell me about it – I’ve been there.  And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that.  What I didn’t know is that there was an alternative.  But now I do.

I’ve lived my life with God and without God.

And with is better.