Why Do You Believe?

How and why did your faith begin?

 

Still searching man.

I got so turned off on religion when I was a kid that I totally turned away form it, but I have always believed something was there. I can feel it in my soul. I just don't know. I don't have faith in anything. Everything is a contradiction.

 

Here's the short version:

In my teens, I didn't know and didn't care whether God existed or not. The only exposure to church I had was being forced to go to a little Methodist church in northwest Arkansas, where I saw and experienced little more than ritual and hypocrisy.

The first two years of my marriage, my dad had a stroke and my wife nearly died from Lupus -- those experiences changed my attitude and I found my self motivated to find out for myself whether or not God was really there.

I spent the next few years doing research, starting with the scientific evidence both for and against. Finding the bulk of the evidence on the side of an Intelligent Designer, I switched gears to studying world religions. If there was indeed a God, I wanted to know who had the right ideas about Him.

I spent another year studying religions before finally being convinced that Biblical Christianity was trustworthy enough to commit to it in late 1999 (had nothing to do with y2k).

Since then I have listened to, talked with, and debated people through the internet and in person, fielding and finding answers to any and all questions about Biblical Christianity, and I can say honestly after over 10 years of studying, dialoguing and debating, my faith has never been betrayed -- it has only grown and gotten stronger.

 

My grandmother. She died in 1998 at the age of 94. I don't think you could ever have a better example of what a good christian person should be like. I can only hope to be close to the quality of person she was.