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After 11 months of questioning and pondering, reading and writing, today I finally got somewhere with my personal beliefs! I can honestly say that I am at a point that I can believe in God that loves people.
This has really, really been a hard struggle for me, as some of you know from reading my questions and comments. I’m pretty happy to finally have at least 1 point of something I can say that I truly can believe in.
Here is a quick summary of where I am with it
-God loves people and wants to help them: I’m not really ready to say anything other than that about the nature of God, if he has a body, if he either omniscient or omnipotent, or even if God is anything that gender can be assigned to. (I will still use He out of convention)
-God is Good: I have a general sense of what it means to be good, but I haven’t nailed that down yet. Extreme cases are obvious, and I’m planning on using those to help distinguish between more difficult cases. I think I will work on this next
-Bad things happen in the world, they happen because this world is a battleground between good and evil. God can’t prevent bad things from happening. There are things that he would prevent if he couldn’t but he can’t. (I need to explore the reasons for this more as well.)
-Bad things also happen because the world is controlled by natural laws, and those thing just happen when you combine things together to make an earth.
-I haven’t yet given enough thought to if God created the earth, the universe or anything in between.
-I’m not prepared to say whether God fills a parental roll, or if he cares about individuals.
-I’m not sure yet if God is a being independent of my existence, or if he is an unexplored part of my own self.
I came to this point by:
-I decided I wanted it to end up this way. I did start with a bias toward there being a god, despite a long time of uncertainty. I have finally decided that I am comfortable choosing to believe in God.
-There have been things in my life that have turned out better than they were likely to.
-In observing people, I have noticed that people that are grateful to God for the good things in their life are more pleasant people than those that aren’t.
Most of all, after almost a year of not being able to say for certain that I believe in almost anything, it is nice to have made modest progress.
excellent! it’s a wonderful belief to anchor upon. Amen to wayfarer’s comment. That is a wonderful foundation belief. Excited for you too. What I love about this site is being in a ‘mormon’ environment where all types of beliefs are celebrated. I may borrow a few thoughts for myself
rebeccad wrote:I came to this point by:
-I decided I wanted it to end up this way. I did start with a bias toward there being a god, despite a long time of uncertainty. I have finally decided that I am comfortable choosing to believe in God
I’m leaning toward this as well. I think I will decide to believe in God just cause I want to. It is the same thing that most people do. They want to believe in the church they are raised in so they do. They also get good feelings about this decision to confirm their belief.
It is nice to know that it is your decision though and that you are making it with your eyes open.
Great news for you! I am similar to you in that I am trying to determine Gods interaction and role. I can’t deny I have felt inspired….I also agree that people who find a profound belief in God and his mercy seem to be more like I would like to be than those who hang fercociously on to religious tenants (be they atheistic principals, environmental, or rabid LDS). I can’t help but feel a divine presence …and I usually feel it more on a cool clear sunny morning when most of the world is asleep than I do ANYWHERE else. I congratulate you. I feel we are walking the same path….and I like where it is going…the going is tough and kind of lonely but it feels like…progress
Thank you so much for the support. It is great to have a place where we can comfortably discuss these things.
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