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Why do I still believe?

aarde
Some time ago when I lay awake at night the thought came to me:
Why do I still believe in God?
The past 20 years I worked among colleagues who considered "Believe in God" completely irrelevant, if not worse. This makes it a legitimate question in my opinion.
When I lay thinking about this, I came to the conclusion that the reasonable arguments (see later) were not the most important factor. Most important for me is the inner peace that I experience. The first time that I was completely overwhelmed by such inner peace and happiness was when I, still doubting His existence, surrendered myself to God's mercy. That experience has changed my life, even though at first I could not believe it. I was 19 years old then.

I think that this is what Jesus meant when he said to his followers:
"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you, I do not give to you as the world gives." ( John 14:27)
There are many more places in the Bible about peace, where it obviously does not mean "the absence of war".
Precious to me is the quote of the men from Emmaus after Jesus had walked along with them, but they had not recognized him at first: "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road?" (Luke 24:32)
In his letter to the christians in Philippi, the apostle Paul wrote:
"And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." (Phil. 4:7)
Recently I read several books of christians who had been imprisoned and tortured because of their faith. In their testimonies the Peace of God was mentioned again and again as the most important force that kept them going and helped them not to become hateful.

At last some remarks about the reasonable arguments.
Everybody who knows something about the living organisms around us must be impressed by their complexity, ourselves as living proof. In my opinion, the "belief" that all this could come together "by itself" through "natural selection" or "evolution", is at least as unreasonable as the idea that there is a creative Spirit working this out. The origin of Life itself already is a great mystery.
The more we discover about matter around us, the more our "certainties" appear to be not so certain after all. Believe in God is not so crazy!







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