“Faith is believing that the universe is on our side, and knows what it's doing.”
Marianne Williamson.
Many people of the world go through life worried about whether God would approve of their lives. This is far from a trivial question to one who believes in God and the afterlife. The majority of one's existence, whether they spend eternity in the bliss of Heaven or the everlasting torture of Hell, depends on it.
With such high stakes, they might find it difficult to accept all that scientific talk about evolution and other such stuff. Whether it makes sense or not, the question becomes; of which view does God approve?
How do we know what is the right thing to believe with such high stakes? Some people want to believe in God but find that they can not agree with the views of their church. Others don't in their heart don’t believe in God but are so concerned about the possibility of Hell that they do their best to fake it; to force a belief where none exists.
Some believe in God but can't stand the Bible/Koran/other religious belief or writing. Others were born without a religion and are mystified by the number of religions to choose from. Some jump from religion to religion once a month, perhaps thinking they'll be safe if they have a little taste of all of them.
I refuse to believe that God will condemn millions of good people to hellfire simply because they don't follow the proper religion. It might be true. I can't disprove it. No one can.
But I just believe that if God were truly intending to be that strict, then there would be more just the Bible or Koran to go by as a rule book. There would be simple, clear, and unambiguous rules, constantly coming down from heaven. They would be updated continually as times change, perhaps either clarifying the old rules, or creating new ones.
Of course, if God HAD done this, the Bible would now be larger then all (100) volumes of the United States Code Annotated. People wishing to own a copy would have to set aside large areas of their basement.
Still, why doesn't he? Perhaps it is just because God feels that everything that needs to be said has been said already in the first book.
But there is more than one book to choose from, and, even within a single book, there are as many interpretations as to the messages contained within, as there are people who study them.
That really doesn't need to matter, I know. We still might be expected to choose the right book by being guided by some Inner Light, and to instinctively know exactly what the right interpretation of the messages are.
I just don't choose to believe it.
I believe that, since God is refusing to tell us the right choices to make in life, that God wants us to find our own answers.
And how do we find these answers? By reading the book and going to church?
Partially, perhaps. But how do we determine if the preacher or minister or whatever is up there in front is really telling us the word of the One Who Created Us All, or if he's just some guy from the street that put on some fancy robes.
I think, to an extent, we judge the value of what we hear in church by comparing it to what life has already taught us. When one religion tells us to honor our fathers and mothers, we compare this to what we have already learned in life, and perhaps say, "Yea, it makes sense to honor my father and mother."
When we hear another preacher say that evolution never happened, and that all-that-is was created in six days about four thousand years ago, and we compare this to what we see and what life seems to be telling us, and see if it this makes sense.
There is one thing in common with all religions, no matter what they're all about. And that's the fact that they give us rules about life.
And if these rules weren't at least somewhat useful, if they weren't at least somewhat effective in solving the problems they set out to solve, the chances are they wouldn't be followed for very long.
But God created life. God created the universe and all that exists within it. God set up the rules of existence.
And this is here my single act of Faith comes in.
My single act of Faith tells me one, very simple, very easy to assume thing. It does not require a belief in any book or any concept that runs counter to natural skepticism or conventional wisdom.
My faith is: if God exists, then God is fair.
Not too big a leap, is it?
But, virtually every difficulty that religion has ever faced can be understood and solved if this single act of faith is taken into account. It gives us a direction to look toward to solve problems, both those in our selves and in societies. It shows us in what ways purposes lie. It explains so much.
But first of all, I must first explain exactly what I mean by, "fair".
It doesn't say that the universe God created is fair, and that everything that ever happens in the universe if fair to each individual in it. This is so obviously not true that it is ludicrous.
Is it fair that I was raised in a middle class family and have never known true hunger or extreme pain, when there are thousands of people who die every day of starvation, who are suffering for crippling, painful diseases, all without doing anything apparently wrong? Am I that special in God's eyes? Am I one of the chosen ones?
No, I don't think so.
Yet, I do feel that God would be fair in how he interprets our actions, if these actions determine who gets into Heaven and who doesn't, but that isn't what I am really talking about, either.
My idea of fairness has more to do with the way that God would have set up the universe, and basically about the nature of reality.
It is possible that God planted the dinosaur bones, deliberately made our genetic structure similar to that of the apes, deliberately makes our carbon dating results incorrect, deliberately made the universe appear far, far older then the Bible allows for.
But I just don't believe it.
I don't think that God is lying to us, as a test of our faith or for any other reason.
There is no way of proving this.
God, all powerful in concept, can easily make us believe anything that God wants us to believe. God could make us see red as green. God could make it appear that the Earth goes around the Sun when actually the sun goes around the Earth, or the Moon, or Mars, or nothing at all.
God could, conceptually, change our thoughts and emotions toward things, either making us deliberately choose a poor course of action (as was done to the pharaoh in the book of Moses), or to choose the correct one against our will. God could make us believe false proofs of things, or disbelieve proofs that are true.
God could, conceptually, do all of these things.
But it is in this direction that paranoia lies. It is my act of faith that says that God would not do any of these things. I believe that God is honest with us, that what we see around us is actually what is here. That our proofs are as correct as we can make them, and if they are for whatever reason, false, they are false merely because of our own faulty reasoning, not because of God's interference.
What's more, I believe that, if God does choose to deceive us, for whatever reason, what God deceives us in is what God wants us to believe.
If we find evidence that evolution actually happened, EVEN IF IT DIDN'T, it would mean that God WANTS us to believe that evolution happened. If the Universe appears old and it isn't, then it is because God wants us to think that the Universe is old.
I will take this belief one step further yet. I believe that if we study the universe, if we study human behavior, social interaction, the relationships of man and nature, the nature of physics and the physical world, and everything, and if we can come to some conclusion based what seems to work best taking everything into account, then we will automatically be following God's plan.
It all stems back to my single act of faith, that God is fair. I do not believe that God would create a Universe that suggests optimal behavior as being one thing when God actually wants us to do something else.
If God created the universe, then God's plan is all around us. It is built into the nature of things, just waiting for us to discover it. It is wired into the chemical nature of our brains. It is built into the natural laws of physics and economics and social interaction.
I believe that, the closer we are to following God's plan perfectly, the more satisfied with life and existence we will ultimately become.
My Faith tells me that the answers as to how we should best live our lives are all around us. They are built into the fabric of existence.
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