About faith, love and personal beliefs
Disclaimer: The issue of personal faith is a highly sensitive one and I've been known to occasionally step on a few of these sensitivities with my opinions. So if you are highly sensitive about your personal beliefs and do not like them challenged, this may not be a post you should read.
I am a highly rational person and this does not bode well for faith, because faith by definition implies believing in something that has not been proven. But I have noticed certain things that cannot be rationally explained and I have reached (rather rationally) the conclusion that something exists out there. You may call it God, you may call it Allah or "superior force", or even Karma. Something does guide us all and it occasionally shows itself very discreetly. I tend to think the miracles mentioned in the Bible are exaggerations of smaller miracles of the type we see every day but which in our cynical minds we refuse to believe.
On the other hand, as a rational person, I accept that there is a possibility that I might be seeing things where there's nothing to see and that in the end everything is a matter of interpretation. I may interpret the fact that it rained at an exact moment in time as a sign from above, while a scientist may come after me and say "no, not really" and explain exactly why that rain showed exactly at that moment and not another. At the end of the day we all believe what we want to believe.
But I find it very hard to believe that, even if God exists, even if he occasionally performs miracles that look more out of the ordinary than a simple rain, that he actually cares about certain things that are turned into a big fuss by some of the religious people I know or hear of. If you read about all religions, you will find that the differences between them are all at a ritual level - down to the core they all say the same thing. Be fair to the people around you, think about others when you do something and everything that implies, from small things like stealing an apple to big things like killing people.
I am of the firm belief that a mighty God has, among others, the ability to look into your soul and based on that realize for Himself whether or not you are a good or a bad person. No amount of going to church, talking to priests, charity donations and so on will change that. You may not donate to charity because you are poor. You may not go to church because you don't have the time to do so while working to feed your children. You may not have met the right priest to trust and communicate to. All those things are good and may occasionally help if done right, but in the end all that matters is what's deep down inside you. If deep down inside you, you only donate to charity because you want to be spared a tax return, then you're not really doing a good thing, are you?
That is my belief. Do with it what you will.
I am a highly rational person and this does not bode well for faith, because faith by definition implies believing in something that has not been proven. But I have noticed certain things that cannot be rationally explained and I have reached (rather rationally) the conclusion that something exists out there. You may call it God, you may call it Allah or "superior force", or even Karma. Something does guide us all and it occasionally shows itself very discreetly. I tend to think the miracles mentioned in the Bible are exaggerations of smaller miracles of the type we see every day but which in our cynical minds we refuse to believe.
On the other hand, as a rational person, I accept that there is a possibility that I might be seeing things where there's nothing to see and that in the end everything is a matter of interpretation. I may interpret the fact that it rained at an exact moment in time as a sign from above, while a scientist may come after me and say "no, not really" and explain exactly why that rain showed exactly at that moment and not another. At the end of the day we all believe what we want to believe.
But I find it very hard to believe that, even if God exists, even if he occasionally performs miracles that look more out of the ordinary than a simple rain, that he actually cares about certain things that are turned into a big fuss by some of the religious people I know or hear of. If you read about all religions, you will find that the differences between them are all at a ritual level - down to the core they all say the same thing. Be fair to the people around you, think about others when you do something and everything that implies, from small things like stealing an apple to big things like killing people.
I am of the firm belief that a mighty God has, among others, the ability to look into your soul and based on that realize for Himself whether or not you are a good or a bad person. No amount of going to church, talking to priests, charity donations and so on will change that. You may not donate to charity because you are poor. You may not go to church because you don't have the time to do so while working to feed your children. You may not have met the right priest to trust and communicate to. All those things are good and may occasionally help if done right, but in the end all that matters is what's deep down inside you. If deep down inside you, you only donate to charity because you want to be spared a tax return, then you're not really doing a good thing, are you?
That is my belief. Do with it what you will.
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