A Life Worth Living.

Always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you. —1 Peter 3:15 (22 June 2005)

Why am I a Christian?

The short answer is I was born into a Christian familiy.

But no, that doesn't answer the question. There are a whole lot of people I know who are born into Christian families and couldn't be further away from God.

So, let's try this again.

Why am I a Christian?

Because I was born and brought up a Christian and somewhere along the way, I discovered God and his greatness on my own. Sure, it helped that I was in the right environment but there was a still a journey, all through those rebellious teenage years and early uni days when religion and God took a back seat to ideas of rationalism and empirical evidence. But all through all that, God was there and God was on my mind.

I returned to church after Bryan and I broke up. I think there was some comfort to be got in church at that point. I remember crying through the hymns, not because it reminded me of Bryan but I think because I was in a vulnerable state and was therefore, not fighting at all, allowing the Holy Spirit to actually touch me and fill me. Hymns are beautiful and when you know them well enough, God speaks clearly and loudly through them and they touch your innermost soul.

I've never been asked to defend my faith, well, actually I have. At the age of 9. To my Dad. It was one of those evangelical/healing sessions and Mom brought me. I don't know why. I was 9 and had the attention span of a gnat. But anyhow, I went and I saw this speaker lay hands on wheel-chair bound people and have them walk across the stage. I didn't think much about it, as a kid, you really don't think much about anything really. But the next morning, my dad asked me what I saw and I told him. And he said that it was probably staged. I told him that I didn't think it was and Christians wouldn't lie about these things. Whether or not it was true, I believed enough to say that to my dad who wasn't the most accomodating when anything he says gets contradicted. But that was then, as a 9 year old. Now?

I have many friends who need to find their way back to God and I don't really know how to help them except use my own life as an exemplar to them and even that isn't very much I suspect. I think Dan does a better job of that than I do because as an individual, he has more faith in what he is unable to see but still believes. My belief needs to grow into that. And to do that, I must stop trying to be in control of everything in my life and let God take over the wheel. But until then, I shall have to go on discovering and learning how to show reason as to why I believe in something that cannot be seen or heard physically, something totally irrational but at the same time totally logical.

And I see this as the challenge ahead of me...
"The final test of the Christian scheme comes from trying it out in one's life, testing the promises the scheme tells us God has made, following in the way enjoined on us by the church, and seeing whether it leads to the new life of the Spirit."