I love the heart-felt honesty of the following post. Thanks for sharing PlastikBuddha, your post was tremendous. :up:
:first:Many people have been curious about my conversion and I've been thinking about how to answer such a complex question.
:angel:
It began partially as a componet of a project of mine and partially the natural result of being an insomniac agnostic (not, thankfully, a dyslexic :think- trying to understand the nature of the obligations that might exist between the Creator and His creation, created either directly or indirectly (or at least somewhat less obviously directly) and found that I recognized Someone there as the ideal embodiment. Perhaps I am culturally biased, but I don't feel that I am.
It was a kind of spiritual vertigo, to feel that the faith I had frankly not always had the highest respect for might have something going for it after all. As with most people I can be misled by the law of averages when it is combined with the fact that nearly empty containers often make the most noise and further blended with a generous dose of being too easily impressed by my own occasional cleverness (a faculty that combined with a certain amount of wile can sometimes be mistaken for intelligence :think
The God I envisioned had a reason for what He did. It might not be a reason that would be apparent to His creation. I see no reason whatsoever to believe that I am smart enough to know what the mind of God might be like, infinite and eternal (words we use as placehorders for concepts that we can't really grok). A reason to create a savage garden that produces, among other things, self-aware creatures like ourselves, so pitifully aware of our own nature yet alone of how our every action affects the world, and most importantly the people, around us.
The idea of a malevolent creator seems foolish to me. Our world, at least from our human perspective, is not some Panglossian wonderland but it's not hard to imagine worse. The motives seem even more questionable for anything capable of this kind of thing. Indifference also seems hard to accept. Seems like a lot of work through to go through for no good reason. Yes, that assumes that we human beings are a part of that reason. I was comfortable taking that one on faith.
"So might a Creator who looks kindly upon his horrifyingly bumbling creations choose to express this love and what might that look like?", I asked myself. It would primarily be a message of inclusive hope- a message for all of mankind, beyond petty legalism and the accidents of birth. Its rules of conduct would be simple but non-intuitive, cutting the clutter of mortal conditions and particulars with a perspective that would be obvious with hindsight- recognizably right but the easiest things in the world. Something like Matthew 22:37-40 and perhaps?
The idea that this love might include some kind of sacrifice, something that both showed this love by suffering with us and allowed us to enter the mystery of eternity, where all of our little unpleasantnesses to one another are revealed for what they truly are, as though we had been completely righteous men and women, occurred to me.
The idea that this sounded familiar also occurred to me and I reluctantly asked myself if I could hope that this were true. I didn't find it hard to do. I asked if I could believe if it was true. That took a little longer but I eventually decided that I could. It boiled down to whether or not I can believe that there is a reason that there is something rather than nothing.
I can. I can believe that there is an intelligence that is beyond space and time, ineffable, that feels our pain and the pain we cause others and has provided a way for us to balance those scales. And I respond with love and gratitude and call myself a Christian and try to live accordingly.
Peace.
