Thursday, June 5, 2014

Do you Believe in God?


If someone were to ask me if I believe in God, I would not know how to answer. 
Why? If I answer YES, would this person assume that my belief of God is the same as him or her?  If I answer NO, would this person think I am a non-believer?

Because of my place of birth and my race I probably have a long line of ancestors who believed in God before me.  They may have been indoctrinated by force way back but soon incorporated their belief of God into their way of life.

I do not remember ever doubting of God’s existence. God is part of me, He exists within me.  We are inseparable.  By the time I reached my late teens, I very much questioned the rules and rituals of my church and argued about their logic; however, I never argued about the existence of God.  Just because I was not accepting all of the dos and don’ts in the Catholic Church doctrine that did not mean that I was able to assume that God did not exist.  What I knew, however, is that I did not necessarily understand how the world worked and what the history reported in the Holy Bible really meant.

As a young person I was upset about the attitude of many of my contemporaries towards one another.  I never understood religious groups killing each other or the necessity to dominate another group of people by force.  My confusion and rebellion made sense, since most humans are religious and believe in some kind of ethical behavior towards one another.  Why could they not apply them?  I could!

In my twenty-first year I came across the Divine Principle, a book written about Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s revelations concerning God, the Bible, and the history of man.  I was not forced to believe in it, I was not indoctrinated; I did not even go to any weekend workshops like many others.  I read it on my own, and I liked it.  It answered basic questions that could not be answered by my Priest.  It was not complicated for me.  So, I adopted the rules and regulations that were attached to these revelations.

Forty plus years later, younger people questioned why they should belong or remain as the case maybe within my “church”.  How should I answer this?  It seems that when one belief in a particular set of thoughts then one has to incorporate all of the rules and regulations that come with it.  It may be true if one wants to become a Boy Scout, or a Mason, or the citizen of a particular country.  But in the case of religious belief, in the case of God, I don’t think so.  Why?

God has tried to reach out to man from the beginning of time.  He has used many different people and many different ways to do so.  Religions are just one of the tools that God is using to reach us and teach us who we are in relationship to each other, to the creation, and to Him.  Understanding how to live in harmony with one another and the creation is one of the goals.

It is obviously very difficult to live our lives for the sake of the whole.  It is difficult to love people who are unlovable.  It is difficult to forgive and to be compassionate.  It is difficult not to be envious of those who have more than we do.  It is difficult to overcome anger.  I guarantee you it takes a life time to understand what living for the sake of others means, and how to apply it in one’s daily life.  But it is a lot more important to do so, than questioning with which group of people am I going to worship today.  Remember, rituals should never lead your life only support it.  God and you lead your life.

Yes, I believe in God, "the creator of all things under the sun.  He is the true parent of all humanity.  He is not the parent in the parochial sense, existing only for a certain religion, a certain race, or the residents of a certain region.  You may call Him by any name.  What is important is that He positively exists, lives as the true parent of all people, and is carrying on the great work of creation in accordance with the principles and the laws of nature that He set up at the beginning of time. Sun Myung Moon."