Does God Exist?
Does God exist?
This question has plagued man-kind since the “beginning”. Is there a higher force, a supreme sentient being out there? Whether or not you call it God, Brahman, Allah, Vishna, Krishna, Yahweh or Jehovah, most people have believed in something higher than ourselves. We as a collective humanity have believed that we are not alone in the world and in times past we have reached for the stars and hoped and prayed for a divine answer.
This is not about your specific beliefs – i wouldn’t assume to call any one out about what they may believe in – but about my belief, my hope that there is something out there who…
I don’t know how to explain myself properly, in my mind I imagine this ball of light. This light is Good. It is all the things we associated with happiness, warm, comforting, fulfilling. It is beyond our conception, it is everything and everything is it. We are not without it, and it cannot be without us. We are talking a lot at the moment in my study of religions class about life after death, and recently our year coordinator has been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer, and my SOR teachers father is not well, and is in hospital. This has brought home sharp and fast the reality of our studies, not only do we want to know this information to pass an exam, we won’t to know this information to be assured of the well-being of loved ones.
I’m not a deeply religious person, I could probably count on my fingers and toes the numbers of times I have been to church in my lifetime. I go to a catholic school, do I guess you could say I was raised catholic, but I am very open to different beliefs. Until recently I did not think God existed. Logically there just couldn’t be “someone” there watching over each and every one of us. But it is often at the worst time in our lives that we turn to religion, and – I pause here to think about what I want to say – look don’t read this and go what a nutter, I have been described by many people as sacrilegious and iconoclastic, I’m not usually the religious type.
It is in the darkest periods of our lives that we turn to religion. This reminds me of a story – Footprints
One night a man had a dream. He dreamed He was walking along the beach with the LORD. Across the sky flashed scenes from His life. For each scene He noticed two sets of footprints in the sand. One belonging to Him and the other to the LORD.
When the last scene of His life flashed before Him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of His life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times of His life.
This really bothered Him and He questioned the LORD about it. LORD you said that once I decided to follow you, you’d walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why when I needed you most you would leave me.
The LORD replied, my precious, precious child, I Love you and I would never leave you! During your times of trial and suffering when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.
Carolyn Carty, 1963
Some philosophers believe that it is only through suffering and prayer that we attain a soul. Does that mean that to attain a pure soul I should suffer and pray, suffer and pray and then suffer and pray some more? This is all a way of expressing my uncertainty with life. I’m not sure of the boundaries any more, what I once took for solid fact has been torn down and replaced with a void of unanswered, indeed unanswerable, questions.
Answer me this – does God exist and why does He punish us so?
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