The Origin of My Faith...
- I was born at a very early age... :) ... to some very loving but very fundamentalist Southern Baptists.
- I was baptized as a 5 year old of my own free will. I had walked the aisle. I had stepped forward and said I believed.
- The preacher was skeptical. So they had a little quiz for me to make sure I understood.
- I passed the quiz. I felt saved... and loved. They said I was saved. They also said... "once saved, always saved".
- There was a time when my beliefs were unrestrained.
- When I hit my teenage years, logic began to create doubt.
- There were obvious logical flaws in the Bible, a text our family considered the undisputed Word of God. Nothing could be questioned.
- The book was the foundation of our faith. But the flaws were cracks in the foundation!
- My belief was shaken. Darwin and biology are very convincing.
- It appeared obvious... "elephant in the room" obvious, that chunks of the Bible are fiction.
- After hearing the dogmatic "It's all truth!", there was a tendency to rebel and say "it's all fiction!".
- There was a time when I considered Atheism. I could see the logic of Ayn Rand and an objectivist philosophy. "If we can't observe something in an objective experiment and see consistent proof..."
- My career is based on logic. My accounting degree and CPA put me into the reconciliation business.
- I became an auditor. Could we reconcile the cash balance per the company to the bank statement?
- Reconciling meant finding the differences, and in the process, identifying the shared truths.
- My career took me into computer programming and development. I automated reconciliation processes, making it easy.
- My hobby was trying to philosophically reconcile between atheism and faith.
- So on one side, my father is a very intelligent man. And as you may have guessed, he asserts Biblical Inerrancy.
- On the other, as my son matured and showed his genius, he adopted a fairly hard atheist position.
- I felt a strong personal need to be able to reconcile this...
- I had a life of logic...
- Interspersed with religious experiences that were really intense...
- As I got close to truth and beautiful things, I would feel this incredibly electric feeling. It was just chilling! I suspect the 80% of the people that have spiritual beliefs have probably had similar feelings when they felt near to a divine presence.
- And yet, when I heard the call to legislate morality, I felt revulsion.
- We need to lead with Grace.
- The truth is, we all have a God given right to believe as we wish.
- The grace that we are given, we should extend.
- A graceful Christian is not coercive, and should not legislate morality or wage culture war.
- A graceful Atheist should not be hostile to religion.
- Let us reassert the God-given right for each to believe as they wish.
- Let us spread God's grace.
- Let us live and let live.
- --amen
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