I grew up a Christian, attending Lutheran elementary and high schools, and didn’t really break out of that world until college. By my late teens, that classic teenage rebellion had me asking questions about my beliefs — questions that couldn’t be answered. Rather than prayer, I decided religion was something I no longer believed in.
Religion was essentially forced on me as a kid. My beliefs were my parents’ beliefs, and they were determined to raise their children the same way. That may have only amplified the sense of rebellion I felt as a young teen.
Getting Older
Now that I’ve been in Seattle for more than fifteen years, and as I get older, I’m increasingly aware that I’m not going to be around forever. My eyes don’t work as well as they used to, my feet ache, and I’ve developed some strange autoimmune condition where my body has decided platelets are the enemy — the only solution being a massive course of steroids. And while my parents are still around, it’s becoming obvious that won’t last forever, given their own health struggles, which still dwarf mine. Is this what I have to look forward to?
Core Beliefs
It seems like there’s been a erosion of core beliefs lately — the kind that bind us together as a society. Religion has served as that foundation for thousands of years, and things do seem to have become more of a mess in the modern, secular era. Maybe a return to some form of religion is exactly what’s needed to get things back on track.
By core beliefs, I mean the basics: taking what isn’t yours is wrong; killing people is wrong. As Christians, we have the Ten Commandments for that foundation. Muslims have the Six Articles of Faith. Whether you’re Lutheran, Catholic, Muslim, or Buddhist, there is a broad consensus on right and wrong.
By adopting a religion’s core beliefs, we recognize that the world is bigger than ourselves — that we are all interdependent — and those shared beliefs bind us together as a society in a way no government or country ever could.
What would replace those beliefs if religion disappeared entirely? What if we woke up tomorrow to irrefutable proof that God could not exist? Would we turn to governments for moral direction? Most governments, after all, ground their authority — at least in part — in God.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.“
Preamble to the Declaration of Independence
If government authority did not come from God, and it has been established that there can’t be a God, then what would we have left to hold us together. Why should we then respect whatever authority the government has on us other than governments asserting their authority through fear.
Obviously we have had governments asserting their authority through things other than God. Although through of the recent examples at least seem to be the ones with terrible human rights records.
Evangelism
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”
Matthew 28:19
This passage is typically cited as the Christian mandate to evangelize. Evangelism isn’t really in my nature — I don’t consider myself particularly persuasive. As I mentioned, my wife hasn’t joined me on this journey, though she has been supportive of my quest to find God, to the extent she can be.
The impulse to spread the faith exists across religions, not just Christianity, and it’s a large part of how the major religions have survived for thousands of years. It has also been used to justify some of history’s worst atrocities — wars fought in God’s name, with evangelism as the rationale. For instance need to spread Catholicism to the native populations of Central and South America was used to justify Spain’s colonial ambitions. Not the mention the whole crusades thing, ah yes, my high school mascot strikes again.
People have free will. The most effective evangelism isn’t at the point of a sword — it’s living a life that reflects your beliefs. Doing that well takes real thought and prayer, because the world is a difficult place.
I have no proof that my version of faith is the correct one. I rely on faith alone, trusting that what I believe is right. That makes evangelism even harder in an era where everything demands data. There is no data here — that’s precisely why faith is required.
At Home
As I write this, my wife has not joined me on this journey. We recently had a conversation about whether moral authority can exist without God. She believes people are born with certain morals and develop others from their environment. I hold that without God, that surrounding environment would be a pretty poor foundation for moral development.
I can pray for her, and I can try to be a living example. But she’s her own person. So I’ll do my best to live in a way that reflects my faith — and hope that serves as an example to those around me.
Knowing there is a God in control makes the world make a little more sense, even when his ways remain a mystery.
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