I clearly remember the moment you told me that you don't believe in God as one of the most wonderful in my life! Some people who have known me as their pastor would be surprised by this reaction, but my happiness was witnessing you thinking for yourself!
This seems to be the time that I've been waiting for my whole life, the time for me to explain how I know that God exists. It is based on my interpretation of Jesus' life, teachings, and death as outlined in Protestantism, and my own personal experience.
First and foremost is the comprehension that you and I are individualized expressions of God, without whom Creation does not exist. This is the common denominator of all life. We find our connection to God within ourselves which can lead to our discovery of its universality.
I think that all humans recognize their soul, their spirit, at birth, at the very same time we are bombarded by the miracle of Life itself. I call this our God-self, our God-connection, and every human in the world has it. It is who and what we are.
Nothing is more personal than our relationship with God. God sees through our eyes, thinks through our minds, and experiences what it is to be human through our living. From all such experiences, God comprehends the totality of Life on Earth.
Mathematical probability makes life elsewhere in the cosmos likely, but for now, planet Earth is the only proof that it exists. This fact, that Life exists only on Earth, is what makes Life sacred. There is no proof of Life anywhere but here and that is what makes it incomprehensibly precious and rare.
This is more than enough to open with. Your great grandfather pursued an endless search for Truth (ways to connect with God). His concept of praying for alignment differed from the more popular prayers of petition while it broadened the horizon of ways to connect with God.
There are no words to fully express how grateful I am for the faith in God he nurtured in me. This is how I can make the bold claim that I know God exists!
We are living at a time when many people are seeking God's attention. I want you to know that I found the connection within me (just like Jesus said I would) not because you are supposed to imitate me (my connection with God is far from perfect) but because I simply want you to know that this is something to think about; see if you can be mindful of your spirit, your soul. There you will discover your unique relationship with God and understand why you are never alone.
Death is humanity's common destiny along with all Life. Humans appear to be unique in that we can think about our own death in the context of knowing that it will someday be our own personal experience. I think that this is again proof that God exists in and through us. The question becomes whether or not our connection is lost when we die.
P.S. Your great grandfather, Earl K. Hanna, mentioned above, died April 7, 2020. Today is my seventieth Easter, the first without Dad. That surely sheds new light on how to proceed from here. Happy Easter, Jack! We don't lose the connection!
Let's continue...
April 10, 2020
All Life dies. Death is fundamental to the miracle itself. No one, past or present, knows what happens when we die. One function of religion is to try to explain. With many worldviews come many explanations, none of them correct or incorrect, because no human knows what happens when we die. It is Life's final experience.
Death is the ever-present backdrop of our life experience, which has been greatly amplified by the Zeitgeist emerging from the global pandemic being experienced now. The one constant that I am observing under our current circumstances is that human beings do not want to die. I will go so far as to say that this one characteristic alone may define human life as distinctive from All Life on Earth
Let's continue...
April 12, 2020
Who are we? When you click on the question, it will take you to the Wikipedia page on Personal Identity which explains the variety of approaches to answering the singular question, "Who am I?" You can go to the Wikipedia page about René Descartes who concluded, "I think therefore I am". Wikipedia has pages about the Soul, the Spirit, and the Mind. Finally, Wikipedia's article on Anthropomorphism is really very important for how we proceed in our proof that God exists. I'm not expecting you to read these articles in detail, but to peruse them to better understand the vocabulary of the various points of view (worldviews) about who and what we are
I started this post on April 5, 2020, which was Palm Sunday on the Christian calendar and the beginning of Holy Week. This was the Christian worldview of almost two millennia couched in the context of an unprecedented global pandemic with a greater loss of life than any time in living memory. Christian Tradition was foiled by the exigent need for the common good of social distancing which prohibited large gatherings, the hallmark of Easters past. With the collective worldviews of the human population of Earth all focused upon this unprecedented specter, the question of what happens when we die may become universally raised in a way never before seen.
Let's continue...
May 11, 2020
What timing! TIME magazine just published this article examining how some Christians may be viewing the pandemic through the lens of Tradition: What Jesus Really Said About Heaven and Hell. The Wikipedia article about Fear of God may help familiarize you with the concept from several biblical and religious viewpoints.
Let's continue...
May 15, 2020
The specter of death is the focus of our world still, and that brings us full circle to where we started. You know something is going on, and that what is raising alarm is the unusually high number of people dying. I can think of no more important time than now to ask you to be open to other ways of looking at death, and especially the way you understand God. Instead of asking your mother to say her prayers at bedtime, I just asked her to be still and take some time to talk with God. I guess you can ask her how that worked.
More than anything else, I don't want you to be afraid! When you discover your "connection" you will understand why we don't need to be afraid and how that frees us to make this a more blessed world with our God.
Death is the ever-present backdrop of our life experience, which has been greatly amplified by the Zeitgeist emerging from the global pandemic being experienced now. The one constant that I am observing under our current circumstances is that human beings do not want to die. I will go so far as to say that this one characteristic alone may define human life as distinctive from All Life on Earth.
More than anything else, I don't want you to be afraid! When you discover your "connection" you will understand why we don't need to be afraid and how that frees us to make this a more blessed world with our God.
