If you believe in One God

[HallelujahHeisBorntoMary]

Was there a point at which you suddenly believed? What part did reason/logic play in your decision to believe?

Niecie and Bloss in particular, I'm interested in WHY you decided to find out more about God, what triggered it, what were the thought processes that went on, and whether you had to "suspend logic" in order to finally believe?

I think God reaches out to us in lots of different ways, what works for some doesn't work for others. Personally I was brought up believing, it was the particular church that I went to after leaving Uni that left me feeling alone and essentially drove me away, but it was my children and their needs that brought me back, not any one Christian, although once I started going to church, the curate was a "God-send".

That is a really good question Mary but not an easy one.

Two things spring to mind initially - firstly, though not a churh goer himself, my DH comes from a churchy family. His father is a minister and his mother a lay preacher so visits to them at Christmas and Easter tended to revolve around church. I was intrigued in what it was they believed although I never had the nerve to strike up a conversation about it - where do you start?!

Secondly, as you say, having children lead us to the belief that it would be better for them to have a Christian upbringing (for want of a better phrase) than not. Even if they didn't believe we thought having a sense of the community was important.

So then of course once you start going to church you have to justify that with a belief or a faith or it is a waste of a Sunday morning. I have found that I can't have a faith without knowledge or tying it in with what we understand of the physical world. I can't believe in the absence of logic or facts.

Does that make any sense? Probably not. I will go and ponder some more.

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Bloss you have left me feeling very uneducated and inadequate!

However, I think you are absolutely right about the importance of the question of whether there is a God. I have to reject atheism on the basis that they don't even bother to ask the question. It strikes me as too much of a cop out to say that atheism is the lack of a belief in a god and, as such, there is nothing to prove. It also seems flawed to say that you can only rely on things that can be empirically proven when empiricism is not always an adequate means of researching or understanding anything outside the physical sciences.

I have met a few people who also take the analytical/philosophical approach to God which has struck a cord in a way that somebody attributing a feeling to God often doesn't. Interestingly one of them did a testimony talk on the Alpha course I went on. For the most part I found Alpha a bit lacking in facts and a bit too much about experiencing and feeling but one chap did a really interesting talk on how logically and scientifically God had to be the creator of the universe. He wasn't a scary creationist or anything but what he said tied in with I had thought for a while and it was good to know I wasn't alone!

Mary, I suspect that God leads us to our belief by whatever way best suits our personalities. Some people can go to church for years, have very little understanding of the theology or the arguments but still have a deep relationship with God and a real faith. They don't care about the arguments for and against, they just 'know'. And then you get the more sceptical people like me who take some convincing and who want facts and theology and some proof even if it doesn't comply with narrow rules of empiricism. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how you get there, whether it is by feeling or logic, so long as end up with something that you can believe in.

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Thanks for your explanations Niecie and bloss - for me it was so definitely revelation first, then logic to work out the detail, that I didn't get how it would work the other way round. But clearly for you guys the route is different, but the destination the same. Isn't it great how God can meet us where we are and work with it? He can meet us in our ignorance, or wait for us to reach the right level of understanding to be ready to meet Him. Neat!

I shared this thread at my Doctrine class last night - it went down really well, thank you for helping with my homework