Spiritual Journey, Part VII
Apr. 10th, 2006 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greybetaIt is said that the perfect number is seven. In Genesis, the good Lord created the world in seven days (he did leave a day for rest). In Revelations, there are seven seals. In between are the seven deadly sins and the forgiving of others seven by seventy times.
And so the official chronicles of my spiritual journey end here, even though it really never ends. At the beginning of this, I said I would seek the truth. After much meditation and prayer, I’ve come to a conclusion.
I don’t know why I believe.
While the answer is surprisingly simple, the explanation is not. After all, if it was that obvious, why wouldn’t everyone just believe in “the one true faith”?
I don’t know, but I can tell you why I make Jesus Christ the Lord of my life. I do it because of the things the good Lord has done for me.
Perhaps, I should call them coincidences. You can call me a fool for not calling them so.
When I was mired deep in my depression, I thought about killing myself. Everyone who has gone through some type of depression has thought about it. It’s just because it seems a lot easier to end it all then face another day.
One of my favorite questions to ask people is “Why do you wake up in the morning?” My electrical engineering advisor asked me this question once, and I started replying about politics and history. He then pointed out that if that’s what gets me up, then I should doing something that has to do with why I get up in the morning.
My engineering advisor didn’t care about the numbers of the EE program. He was trying to help me as a person.
I also have to thank my history research advisor. I’m actually a pretty lazy person and he didn’t bear down on me or set any deadlines. Nope, the undergraduate research program set the deadlines for me. He gave me the rope and it was up to me to hang myself.
Of course, I started not going to class for awhile. Out of concern, he kept calling me to go to his office. When I finally showed up, I told him that I felt depressed. He said he understood and invited the dean in. Everything would be taken care of.
But I felt, I don’t know, ashamed. Here I was in my senior year and I still didn’t know what I would be doing or what I even wanted to do. I was really confused. My research advisor told me not to worry about it and walked me over to the health center.
I was going through some difficult times, and I stopped believing. I even told my campus minister this, much to his disappointment. I sent out a few emails that I shouldn’t have, but perhaps they were more honest than I had been.
At that point, I felt like I had nothing to fight for anymore. I had lost everything. I came to college to find out what I wanted to do and I had basically just wasted four years of my life. There is not point in going on anymore.
It was good day to die.
Out of nowhere I recalled a conversion I had in high school with Mike, one of my closest friends.
D2: Random question. If you put a gun to your head, what would you do?
Mike: Daniel, if I put a gun to my head, I think my will to live would be so strong it would just say NO!
Fortunately, my will to live was pretty strong. And suddenly, I understood something. It’s difficult to describe, but a moment of insight clicked inside of my mind.
Before, I had been living my life the way I thought others wanted me to live it. A good guy, a studious guy and someone you had to respect. But that wasn’t going to make me happy.
So it seems obvious to live for myself, but that’s an awfully lonely life.
Then it remains that I should choose to live for someone greater than myself. It only made sense to make Jesus Christ the Lord of my life.
It goes like something from a Halloween special from the Simpsons. In it, the Simspon family gets beamed aboard a spaceship populated by Kang and Kodos type aliens. The aliens keep feeding the family, so they get unnaturally large. Lisa notices this and accuses the aliens of trying to fatten them up for a meal.
Lisa: You’ve been feeding us nonstop to eat us, haven’t you?
Cook: What are you talking about?
Lisa: What about this book, HOW TO COOK HUMANS?
Cook: Wait, there’s some space dust on that. Let me blow it off. Aha! It says HOW TO COOK FOR HUMANS.
Lisa: Wait, there’s still some space dust left on that. Let me blow it off. Aha! It says HOW TO COOK FORTY HUMANS.
Cook: Wait, there’s still yet more space dust left on that. Let me blow it off. Aha! It says HOW TO COOK FOR FORTY HUMANS.
The cook goes on to explain he was trying to be nice, but the family just kept taking advantage of his kindness. As punishment, the Simpson family is taken back to earth instead of the paradise that awaited them.
The analogy isn’t perfect, but I questioned God. I mean, He gave me all these talents and yet I couldn’t use any of them. I was really smart but I hadn’t figured out anything in four years in college. Was I here just for his amusement or something?
Nope, it’s all part of His plan. Hmmm, that sounds a bit condescending. You know, everything that happens is part of His plan, whether it’s good or bad. Man, why doesn’t He just plan good things so everyone believes him?
It’s because God doesn’t want a fair-weather follower. He wants me to follow him through both the good and the bad. But that doesn’t mean I am free from doubt or mistakes. Indeed, I am often full of doubts and make plenty of mistakes.
I had this misconception that God will take care of everything if only I truly believed in Him. But then I heard once that God only answers 50% of your prayers, and I began wondering. I could pray to Gaea or Buddha and get those same results.
My prayers were not in His Will. I know, that sounds like a rather convenient answer but I realized most of my prayers were about myself. Prayer is not about what I want, for it’s about what He wants.
I said I didn’t know why I believed, but that’s not quite right.
I believe because I believe God.
And so the official chronicles of my spiritual journey end here, even though it really never ends. At the beginning of this, I said I would seek the truth. After much meditation and prayer, I’ve come to a conclusion.
I don’t know why I believe.
While the answer is surprisingly simple, the explanation is not. After all, if it was that obvious, why wouldn’t everyone just believe in “the one true faith”?
I don’t know, but I can tell you why I make Jesus Christ the Lord of my life. I do it because of the things the good Lord has done for me.
Perhaps, I should call them coincidences. You can call me a fool for not calling them so.
When I was mired deep in my depression, I thought about killing myself. Everyone who has gone through some type of depression has thought about it. It’s just because it seems a lot easier to end it all then face another day.
One of my favorite questions to ask people is “Why do you wake up in the morning?” My electrical engineering advisor asked me this question once, and I started replying about politics and history. He then pointed out that if that’s what gets me up, then I should doing something that has to do with why I get up in the morning.
My engineering advisor didn’t care about the numbers of the EE program. He was trying to help me as a person.
I also have to thank my history research advisor. I’m actually a pretty lazy person and he didn’t bear down on me or set any deadlines. Nope, the undergraduate research program set the deadlines for me. He gave me the rope and it was up to me to hang myself.
Of course, I started not going to class for awhile. Out of concern, he kept calling me to go to his office. When I finally showed up, I told him that I felt depressed. He said he understood and invited the dean in. Everything would be taken care of.
But I felt, I don’t know, ashamed. Here I was in my senior year and I still didn’t know what I would be doing or what I even wanted to do. I was really confused. My research advisor told me not to worry about it and walked me over to the health center.
I was going through some difficult times, and I stopped believing. I even told my campus minister this, much to his disappointment. I sent out a few emails that I shouldn’t have, but perhaps they were more honest than I had been.
At that point, I felt like I had nothing to fight for anymore. I had lost everything. I came to college to find out what I wanted to do and I had basically just wasted four years of my life. There is not point in going on anymore.
It was good day to die.
Out of nowhere I recalled a conversion I had in high school with Mike, one of my closest friends.
D2: Random question. If you put a gun to your head, what would you do?
Mike: Daniel, if I put a gun to my head, I think my will to live would be so strong it would just say NO!
Fortunately, my will to live was pretty strong. And suddenly, I understood something. It’s difficult to describe, but a moment of insight clicked inside of my mind.
Before, I had been living my life the way I thought others wanted me to live it. A good guy, a studious guy and someone you had to respect. But that wasn’t going to make me happy.
So it seems obvious to live for myself, but that’s an awfully lonely life.
Then it remains that I should choose to live for someone greater than myself. It only made sense to make Jesus Christ the Lord of my life.
It goes like something from a Halloween special from the Simpsons. In it, the Simspon family gets beamed aboard a spaceship populated by Kang and Kodos type aliens. The aliens keep feeding the family, so they get unnaturally large. Lisa notices this and accuses the aliens of trying to fatten them up for a meal.
Lisa: You’ve been feeding us nonstop to eat us, haven’t you?
Cook: What are you talking about?
Lisa: What about this book, HOW TO COOK HUMANS?
Cook: Wait, there’s some space dust on that. Let me blow it off. Aha! It says HOW TO COOK FOR HUMANS.
Lisa: Wait, there’s still some space dust left on that. Let me blow it off. Aha! It says HOW TO COOK FORTY HUMANS.
Cook: Wait, there’s still yet more space dust left on that. Let me blow it off. Aha! It says HOW TO COOK FOR FORTY HUMANS.
The cook goes on to explain he was trying to be nice, but the family just kept taking advantage of his kindness. As punishment, the Simpson family is taken back to earth instead of the paradise that awaited them.
The analogy isn’t perfect, but I questioned God. I mean, He gave me all these talents and yet I couldn’t use any of them. I was really smart but I hadn’t figured out anything in four years in college. Was I here just for his amusement or something?
Nope, it’s all part of His plan. Hmmm, that sounds a bit condescending. You know, everything that happens is part of His plan, whether it’s good or bad. Man, why doesn’t He just plan good things so everyone believes him?
It’s because God doesn’t want a fair-weather follower. He wants me to follow him through both the good and the bad. But that doesn’t mean I am free from doubt or mistakes. Indeed, I am often full of doubts and make plenty of mistakes.
I had this misconception that God will take care of everything if only I truly believed in Him. But then I heard once that God only answers 50% of your prayers, and I began wondering. I could pray to Gaea or Buddha and get those same results.
My prayers were not in His Will. I know, that sounds like a rather convenient answer but I realized most of my prayers were about myself. Prayer is not about what I want, for it’s about what He wants.
I said I didn’t know why I believed, but that’s not quite right.
I believe because I believe God.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-12 05:15 pm (UTC)You're giving me contradictory answers here. Either God set out the rules and man broke them (in which case the question is what God was thinking, because God had to have allowed the devil into the garden, and God had to have known that man was going to break the rules, being omniscient) or else what man did had to happen in order for man to really live and have free will, in which case how is what man did a sin? It was something that needed to be done.
If God needed man to sin by breaking the rules, how is it fair to lay down a punishment for something that God more or less brought about because it had to happen one way or another? That seems terribly unfair to me.
LOL, if you are only going to see what you want to see in my responses as opposed to what I actually say then I'm done here. I, personally, consider being persecuted, tortured, and executed for ones belief in God as well as seeing the same thing done to ones family and friends to be a -really- bad thing and all that in addition to the normal trials and tribulations that the world has to offer, but that's just me I guess.
Again, I'm not understanding you because you keep giving me contradictory answers.
My core question is: If God takes any hand in the world, then why doesn't he take a hand to stop the horrible things that happen? I would consider being persecuted, tortured, and killed for one's beliefs (something that happens to Christians to this day in Africa, BTW) to be pretty horrible, yes, and I'm not understanding why, if God occasionally takes a hand to keep little Bobby from being too badly hurt in the car accident, he doesn't, you know, protect his missionaries better so that they can keep doing good work. What's the -point- of letting them suffer and die, if God is willing to interfere in order to spare others?
I mean, it makes sense to me if you stipulate that God -doesn't- take a hand, or maybe limits his interferance to offering advice every now and again, and I can even understand that in the context of "our sufferings on this earth are brief". But if any suffering is worth God directly alleviating, then why not all suffering?
What you seemed to be saying was that suffering is a punishment, which is what is confusing me. A punishment for what? If it's a punishment for the original sin (which I don't even understand in terms of why it's a sin) then why are people who have accepted Christ in their lives allowed to suffer? If it's not a punishment, then what is it? Why is it allowed to happen?
no subject
Date: 2006-04-13 02:26 pm (UTC)