Why I “believe”

Here’s something i have mixed feelings about…

I have never been into “taking things on faith” — I’m a critical thinker, an explorer, a critical rationalist. I question my ideas. Yet I have an idea I can barely stand to question.

God = Love

I am dependent on a gridwork that is love, is grace, is good-enough, is peace, is exactly right & good. That’s where my faith is.

There are folks who are ok with a world that just is, and I’ve tried to be one, but that’s where I have not been able to be ok. If the universe is cold, and made of rocks, some of which happened to catch fire — if I see it that way — so far the result has been that I’m scared, miserable, sometimes suicidal. The bottom layer has to be good. That’s the limit I’ve come up against.

I don’t think I believe a single proposition “on faith”, except maybe that one.

My god-shaped hole is right on a major artery.

But maybe it’s not on faith.

Actually, I don’t think I believe this “on faith”, or just because I choose to. In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t, because I’ve never been able to believe anything just because I choose to. When I was an atheist, I didn’t want to be. I wanted to believe in something more.

I think, instead of believing “on faith”, that I subject these ideas to criticism as best I can.

I can’t really subject the Cold Universe Theory or the God is Love Theory to scientific testing, so I have to look at other things. I think I take my gut-wrenched reaction as pushing against the Cold Universe Theory. And when I see the incredible things that happen when love is at work in the world, that theory just looks weaker and weaker.

Redemption is real, grace is real, and for now, I’m going to live in faith that the Love-Universe is real, too.

(By the way, my Brother and teacher tells me that that Love-Universe is the Kingdom of God, and that I live there! Hallelujah! How cool is that?)