So yeah, this may seem kind of random and whatnot, but I just felt like sharing this.

~Ahem~

There's not a day that passes by when I don't doubt my belief, my principles, my faith. I'm serious. I am not going to sugar coat this to anyone, being Christian is difficult and often frustrating. I am putting faith in this thing we call "God" that created the world, and I follow whatever is written in this book we call the "Bible". Here's the serious question: Why? What's the point? Every now and then I ask myself this, and it always stumps me a little bit.

There are many ways my life could be easier if I believed Christianity was all bunk. Instead of spending four hours at church on Sundays, or two hours on Fridays, I could be doing homework or sleeping. I wouldn't have to follow this strict moral code the Bible explains. I could cuss without feeling guilty, be a part of many more conversations that would be frowned upon by my principles, I could even think thoughts that I would normally want to think … the list goes on. It almost seems that I'm missing out on life because it seems so restricted.

The gripes go on. All this may be for nothing. What I believe may all be fake. It could be the greatest conspiracy ever. It could all be a lie. There is so much stuff out there that seem to discount Christianity I don't know what to make of it. What if there is no God? I can't see, feel, hear, smell, taste God. Nothing is there to prove or disprove God's existence. Maybe this God we speak of is just there for a superficial sense of peace.

Seriously, can Christianity just be a crutch for the weak? Do I blindly believe in this concept of heaven after death just because I'm afraid of dying? Whenever I have a problem in my life, is it really all part of "God's plan" just so that I don't face up to the possible truth that life is hard and meaningless. I mean, really, we're born, we go to school, college, we work, we retire, we die, the end. And through the process there's plenty of suffering and anguish. When it really starts to hurt I ask myself why I suffer, and even though I “know” the answer, it’s often hard to believe in it.

And so after my mind backflips over and over several million times, it turns out that I'm still a Christian, I still believe what I believe. Why? Because I'm living in the truth. I've seen it all throughout my life of how God's been working in it. It's like God has been leaving his fingerprints all over my life. God does exist, God is true, and the truth is God is love. When times are tough, all I can do is let God take care of it and trust Him with the situation. Plenty of times the small picture looks bleak, but later on I see the big picture and I’m amazed on how God is so cool. Ok, part of it may be that my belief is my ticket into heaven, but it truly is much more than that. It's that relationship with God that I cherish, even though some may say this "relationship" is all fake. I can assure you it's not. I've experienced it as the truth, and it has also satisfied the intellectual/brainiac side of me as well. Unfortunately, I can't explain it all in this post, but drop a note and I would be happy to spend a whole lunch or two discussing this. My regular lunch discussions are so boring.

Questions, anyone? Written words can only do so much.

posted by justin at 12:01 AM