Posted by SLS on March 22, 2009, at 9:06:16
In reply to What is your faith in god based on?, posted by Cass on February 19, 2009, at 14:10:20
> I believe in God, but I've never had much faith. What is your faith based on? Is it based on experience, where you have had conscious contact with God and God has helped. Or is it based on religious texts? Is it based on what others have told you, or did you somehow develop faith outside of religion?
What a great question!
As you say, I somehow developed my own spirituality that is at least somewhat different from any Western religion. It still revolves around the concept of there being one God, the Creator of the Universe. I decided that having faith in the exact wording of scripture did not resonate well with me. I certainly learn as much as I can about existence from scripture, but I find that modern science has yielded great beauty in witnessing the majesty of the Design of the Universe.
I think belief and faith are separate things. The only faith I have is in God and my inability to be certain about much else regarding why the Universe exists in the first place. I believe that God created the Universe. I have faith that the Universe exists. I just don't know why. I don't spend much time thinking about these things, though, as I believe they represent questions that are ultimately unanswerable. Someone once suggested to me long ago that the reason God created the Universe was that He wanted a relationship. This made sense to me. It was so important an insight that it brought me back from atheism. I found my period of true atheism to be the darkest, coldest, and most vacuous of my life. For me, God is light and warmth and fullness.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:881116
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20080809/msgs/886522.html