To be clear: Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and I'm participating in Lent in hopes of strengthening my relationship with God.
A few years back, during a TV interview, an elected official I know quite well was asked something along the line of "Are you more likely to trust another person that is religious, even if their religion is not the same as yours?" The response was off the cuff and a little cluttered, but went something along the lines of "Yes, of course, after all, we all worship the same God."
The question of "which is the correct deity?" is question that I am neither properly educated for, or frankly speaking, intelligent enough to explore. I'm a smart guy but when comes topics with magnitudes and complexities like "correct faith", "meaning of faith", "God vs. society vs. history vs. globalization", "if God can do anything can he create a bolder so big that even he can not lift it?" "If God created the universe, what created God?", "If the universe started with 'Bang', what was before the 'Bang' that allowed the bang to occur?", "What is functionality of looking at something light years away, when images we see in real-time are actually hundreds of years old?". Those questions are like understanding the distance to Jupiter, 928.5 million Kilometers, and would take about 950 years to drive there at 60 MPH, at a glance I have an answer but it meaningless to me, I just can't relate to it.
My faith is limited to what I've been exposed to, how I've thought about it, how I feel it affects me and my personal experience in seeing it in action. People much smarter than I have gotten lost in the quest for understanding religion
The "all the same God" response brought upon some flack to that particular politician, from members of other religions. When given a chance to clarify, and again I'm going by memory, that elected official explained that as long as your worship a God, they would have a better understanding of you belief structure and be more likely to trust you. While I understand the reasoning behind trusting religious people more readily, I don't find it to be sound logic.
Without knowing a person, how would one know that a particular person is indeed devote? There are always indicators as to whether a person is devote; they openly ware a symbol of faith, they bow before meals or pray openly and often, they make their worship attendance known, they work or volunteer for a faith based or funded organization, they could even just tell you that they are. But all of these indicators are just that, indicators, and until you can verify devotion by your own preference of litmus test, one would not know if they are trusting a person because they have faith or just because they appear to have faith. If a creditable source were to tell you that a particular person is devote then you'd be trusting that sources recommendation more than the actual person. By the time a person can verify another's faith, they will have probably will have already concluded to what degree that person can or should be trusted.
For me, trust is less a question of faith and more a question of moral accountability. From time to time we will all come up short with moral accountability, some more often than others, and some to a greater degree. The frequency that it occurs in our own life probably contains high and low points, so it is not a matter of does the person have moral accountability but how seriously they take it. Having faith in a particular religion helps with moral accountability because your morality is tied to your God. But other things can dictate moral accountability; the desire for social structure, political or professional advancement, fear of penalty, opinions of others and one's desire to be wanted.
In a way, I'm working on my own moral accountability. I'm not taking God out of my equation for Lent, but if I did I'd still be working towards the following goals:
- No solids for 40-Days
- To figure out where my path it taking me and why I am dong this
- To be more verbally filtered
- For mental clarity
- To be skinnier
- To understand and appreciate that I'm not always in control
- To talk more about things with importance
- To live a moralistic life
Which is all about self improvement. Kindness, meditation, self-reflection, healthier - all of which are hard to argue as unnecessary in life. Even if you are a person that is skeptic about religions, skeptic about some hypocrisies that are often associated with faith, even skeptic about society in general, it if hard to find flaws with basic self improvements. Especially if the improvements benefit not just the direct person but those around him or her.
I don't argue to try the equation without God, but rather, if you can get on board with self improvement, there is no harm in adding God to the package. If at the end of a journey you are only a better person and not any more spiritual, you lost nothing. If you do not attempt to incorporate and appreciate God you will not gain him. If you didn't know God before, work to have him in your life and succeed, it is another positive thing. I sometimes struggle or even forget to appreciate all the wonderful things God and prayer has done in my life.
It is kind of silly, but for me, God is like a person at a dance, across the room, standing quietly against the wall, but if you ask him / her to dance you will always get a "yes." As you dance you'll notice how truly beautiful, interesting, wonderful, caring and fun God is. You will be amazed at how important and great it is to have God as your friend. But if you never ask God to dance he / she will just always be that quiet person against the wall, waiting to be asked.
Random Notes: Started the day at 195 Lbs, finished around 1,700 calories. Feeling good, not missing my double chin, though I do want a cheeseburger.
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