A Fancy or a Feeling?

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If there were no God, there would be no Atheists. ~G.K. Chesterton

So I was talking to a friend the other day about God.

This friend is kind of wishy-washy about religion and actually professes to be leaning towards atheism. By the way, this friend was not Teachinfourth – just in case ya'll were wondering after his searching for God post awhile back -although we have spent a fair amount of time sorting through faith,belief and other such ethereal topics. Anyway this mostly atheist friend was trying to explain why believing in God just doesn’t make any sense to him. He believes that people just use God as an excuse to explain whatever coincidence they want to explain. He is an atheist on logical grounds – there is just no proof that God isn’t just a figment of mankind’s imagination.

I have to say that he is right. Believing in God is entirely illogical…and I like to think that I’m a pretty logical person.

But I believe in God anyway.

Now, I do not have a perfect faith, but I do believe there is a God and that there is a plan.

I was trying explain my faith as we were talking and I hit upon this analogy. Of course I didn’t think of this analogy until the day after our conversation…it would have been much cooler and more satisfying if I could have formed this argument in the moment of debate…but whatever.

Here’s what I think…

Belief in God is all about feeling and intuition in the same way that being a parent is all about feeling and intuition.

I mean, when you have a new baby there are times when you simply don’t know what it wants. You’ve fed it, changed it, burped it, rocked it, sung to it, and the baby is still crying. Because you hopefully want to be a good parent (and because you really want to get some sleep), you keep trying to figure out what your baby wants. Through trial and error you slooooowwwwly come to recognize the signals that your baby is throwing out there. You can tell the hungry cry from the cranky cry. You can tell the “I’m just throwing a fit” cry from the “something is really wrong” cry.

Now to anybody else a baby crying is just a baby crying - could mean anything or could mean nothing. But to you, the parent who has spent hours and hours and days and years studying this child, that cry means something…something specific.

Can you prove it?

Well…maybe not.

But you know what you know and you feel what you feel whether it’s logical or not.

Believing in God is a quest. A quest for a feeling that helps you find answers to questions that, like your baby's cry, only you might understand. It takes a lot of time and a lot of practice but eventually, slowly, you start to recognize the signs...and then maybe even start to sleep through the night.