My Faith

My Journey

In the Beginning

My foundation was Church. My family went to a small white wooden Church every Sunday, and I attended Sunday School. This is where I was first exposed to Christianity.

It is true that you don’t have to be religious to believe in God. It is also true that you don’t have to go to Church to be saved (Romans 10:9). That being said, my religion gives me comfort and brings me closer to God through worship. I believe that Church is necessary for community, and for building faith and sharing the faith.

I took my Confirmation quite seriously, at the age of 13, in our little Protestant Church. In my youth, my favourite book of the Bible was Revelation (now John), which both scared me and at the same time I found captivating. I was also, and at the same time in my life, intrigued with the TV broadcasts for The World Wide Church of God, which focused on end times. These things impacted me.

Changes Along the Way

As a young man, I believed in God. But, I didn’t attend Church. That changed shortly after I became a father with a young family. And, I can see the hand of God in how I arrived at St. Paul’s Church in Stratford.

Arguing with Jehovah’s Witnesses who used to come to my door frequently, I would go to my father with questions. Once, when I asked him a question about the nature of Christ that the Witnesses had me thinking about, Dad referred me to a priest who was a fellow Freemason with him. That priest was the Rector of St. Paul’s Church, and I’ve been there since.

I enjoyed debating with other believers and arguing with Atheists, both online and in person. I never understood why someone who believed that God wasn’t real could be so driven to destroy the faith of a stranger, even if it meant taking away the last semblance of hope that a person may have. Peter Hitchen’s book The Rage Against God helped me understand. I believe that the Athiest Penn Jillette explained my position best on YouTube with the story of the gift of a Bible by a fan at one of his shows, and how you would want to save others if you knew something that they did not know.

My audience has mostly changed. As, I find that apologetics now primarily focus on ministry to Muslims, not Atheists, as their faith expands into North America and the West. They are also an evangelical religion.

In those early days, I was a love the sinner hate the sin kind of Christian when it came to matters of sexuality. This, in and of itself, was a long journey for me. You see, the arguments of the Christian Left were not logical to me, based only in loving your neighbour. Because, I could love my neighbour without affirming their actions. The Secular Left’s arguments did not apply; as, in my warp bubble of religion only faith arguments applied to matters of faith and religion. For reference: In Star Trek, Einstein’s laws of physics do not apply inside of a warp field.

But, I started asking questions like, “If there is a gay gene, why would God make people gay if it is wrong?” And, that got me searching for answers. The answers from the Secular Left and the Christian Left didn’t make any sense to me. I asked God for guidance and answers. The 14^th chapter of the book of Romans was my answer. It fundamentally changed how I viewed other people’s relationship with God and gave me my scriptural foundation that I had been looking for, for moving forward on the issue. I had always been okay with Same Sex Marriage—as it was called here at the time—in a social and civil sense, just not in the Church. Slowly, and over time, I changed that position to one of acceptance based on the book of Romans and the 5^th chapter of the book of Galatians. Every person has their own unique relationship with God.

Why Do I Believe Now?

So, why at the ripe old age of 50 do I still hold on to the faith? The short answer is because I want to. I have never had a road to Damascus experience that has cemented my faith. I look at faith as St. Paul explained it in Hebrews Ch 11.

It’s not easy in the face of the onslaught of Atheism armed with science. But, I don’t see two opposing schools of thought. To me, science just explains how God created everything and how it works.

The often used argument of Atheists is that belief is built on a fear of death and dying. And, if we’re being honest, there is practically nobody who is not afraid of dying; we just don’t think about it until we are face to face with it. But, it’s so much more than salvation from death.

Being Christian doesn’t make me a good person. We can flip that around. It’s because I’m a bad person that I need Christ; if there’s a hereafter, I am unworthy to save myself. It’s precisely because I am a bad person that I need Jesus.

My father used to say that it was better to believe than not. Because, “if I don’t believe, die and there is no God, I was right; but I will never have the satisfaction of knowing. If I believe, die, and there is no God, I will die happy. If I die and believe and there is a God, I will be rewarded. If I die, believe, and there is no God, I die happy and with hope, and know nothing else.”

How do I know that Christianity is the one true religion? Well, I’m basing it on faith, the faith that St. Paul described in Ch 11 of the book of Hebrews.

Why did God come to an obscure corner of the Earth, in a minuscule nation in the Middle East, to a tiny race of people? To confound the wise and the proud is the standard answer. God can work through whom He wants. But, to me, I see the hand of God here once again; Alexander spread the Greek language through the known world in which the Gospel was written while the rise of the Roman Empire spread that faith throughout the empire in a language the common people used. Once it spread, the Roman Empire collapsed. That is why I believe God came to that area of the world, that and Abraham was a righteous man and God chose him because of his righteousness.

Sure, there are other religions that preach that a god had risen from death; but, Christianity is the only faith that preaches that a god loved us so much that He entered His creation, lived as one of us, died for our sins, rose from the dead bodily, and ascended bodily to heaven. Because, if the punishment of sin is death, as described in the 6^th chapter of the book of Romans, someone has to pay that price. Even we demand that evil be punished, and cry out against God when it is not and against God when we see injustice. We are all sinful, as the 3^rd chapter of the book of Romans tells us. In the 10^th chapter of the Gospel of Mark in verse 45, God came, died, and paid that price of death for us so that we could be free from the punishment of the law that we deserve. So, I have faith—in part—because of this love.

I also believe because of prophesy. When I read the 22^nd psalm or the Isiah Ch 53, I see Jesus so clearly. When I watch the movie The Gospel of John, narrated by Christopher Plumber, it is so moving, I am overwhelmed with an understanding of what God has done for me. When I see Jesus in the Old Testament scriptures, I am reassured.

When I think of the historical records from Tacitus to Josephus, the secular records, that exist proving that Jesus was here on Earth and died, I believe in Him. When I read the eye witness accounts—the four Gospels—of his life and death and resurrection, I believe. There are only two possibilities as I see it; either Jesus is who he said He was, or He was a mad man put to death for insurrection. I chose to believe the former. I believe because His early followers testified with eye witness accounts to having seen Him resurrected bodily. But, more than that, they were tortured and died for maintaining that witness, and nobody dies for a lie, certainly, not hundreds of Christians. Even writings from the late Han Dynasty seem to be prophetic about the life and death of Jesus.

I believe because in the book The Case for Easter, the author lays out the argument for the physiological probability for the accuracy of the Gospel account of the crucifixion. From the water pouring out of His side, to the method of death, the dry mouth, the breaking of the legs, and all of it, it is plausible and probable.

Why am I so religious? The familiarity of the liturgy is a comfort to me while at the same time allowing me to both love God and show my love to God through the discipline of praying The Office and through the dedication of my time to God as I praise Him and offer up my worship as a gift to Him. It also allows me to pray for others in need, and myself, while I pray The Office. Believing that there are five types of Christian prayer, it is important to me to pray for others and to praise and worship God.

I believe in God the Father Almighty. I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sin, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

 

I was asked why I am so religious.  Above is my reply.

Regards,

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