Reply #11: I am a believer. [View All]

[hamsterjill]

I was raised to believe in God and I do believe that He exists. I allow in MY universe, however, the flexibility that anyone can believe as they feel. I don't go around telling non-believers, etc. that something bad is going to happen to them simply because they don't share my belief. I fully acknowledge that none of us "knows" nor will ever "know" prior to our deaths. In my mind, "God" does not care what moniker is assigned to him, just that *I* acknowledge that a higher power exists. (Again, a personal decision).

There have been times in my life when I have experienced something similar to what you describe about your feelings that things would turn out all right. There have also been at least two distinct times in my life when I felt something saved me from a certain death.

Now, did God actually save me? Or did circumstances just occur that allowed me to live? Again - no one knows for sure, but I choose to believe in something greater than myself.

I do not like the way that God and religion have been hijacked by the right-wingers. In my mind, God isn't about wars and rewarding monetarily those that do his bidding. And I see that on a daily basis in the right-wing world. God is about calm and caring and compassion for fellow man. God is about empathy - being able to put myself in someone else's shoes and feel their pain, etc.

I have a problem when someone tells me that "God really blessed me" because what does that make those others who may not have been particularly blessed at that time? If God cures one person of an illness, thereby "blessing" that person, what is another to think who remains ill? Is the ill person not deserving of a blessing of a cure as well? So I'm careful how I think and act on that subject.