Why I Believe

A Bee collecting gold
Cactus Flower - from my personal collection

This blog is a place where I talk about my beliefs.  Beliefs are a collection of ideas that I hold to be true and that I use to make choices and to give meaning to life.  This essay is intended to explain WHY I believe.  It is about the process that I took to get to where I’m at.  Unlike others, I didn’t have one life-changing experience or a great mentor who helped me believe.

1. Truth is like a golden thread.  I’m a collector of truths wherever I find them.  I’ve been collecting golden threads since the dawn of my ability to reason.  I remember in High School being given classic literature to read and beginning the process of collecting.  The truths I’ve collected have been woven together to collectively represent what I believe.  I believe them because I’ve found similarities between the threads in literature and the ones in scripture.  The scriptures are the basis or beginning point of all truth.
2. The beauty of ideas and word pictures matches the beauty in the physical world that I can see with my eyes.  If truth wasn’t beautiful, idealistic, optimistic and poetic, it wouldn’t appeal to me.  I see beauty and I want to remember it, keep it and live it.  I believe because it appeals to my sense of beauty.
3. Goodness is a quality in people and projects people work on that appeals to my desire to be safe, secure and comfortable.  The places that feel safest for me are places where people who value truth come together.  I do not mind if some truths I value are different than those that other good people value if I feel safe with them.  The sense of safety and the perception of goodness are both subjective so I reserve the right to perceive and judge for myself.  The reason these are part of why I believe is because they are the tangible effects of truth that I recognize and use to guide my own life.
4. I believe because experience has shown me how to judge between good, better and best.  Without experience my beliefs would be hypothetical.  With experience, I have learned that pure truth is like a sword — sharp and sometimes painful.   I have seen pure beauty, like silk, have a different kind of strength — flexibility and warmth.  Goodness can be blind and if it guided my beliefs alone, I might be misguided.  But goodness has the ability to continue without clarity in every detail.  Experience has turned into wisdom which has taught me when to prefer truth over beauty and when goodness is more valuable than truth.  Wisdom is like wearing the glasses of discernment which makes it possible to choose between truths that seem to conflict.

I believe in God because of the synergistic combination of truth, beauty, goodness and wisdom.  I believe because I feel, I see, I live and I compare.  I do not know everything but I continue to collect golden threads and my tapestry of faith is growing bigger and more beautiful every day.  I am supported and protected by my beliefs because I own them.  I have carefully selected and tested the truths that make up my beliefs and I am happy to share what I have found with you.