Personal Belief in God

Any discussion of a personal theology begins with the fundamental question: do I believe in God? The answer is either a simple "yes" or "no." This is not a question that permits equivocation. Yet we do encounter equivocation. Increasingly, Americans and Europeans identify themselves as "spiritual" rather than "religious" without identifying the difference between the two. Those who take a New Age approach to religion may say "yes, but not in the traditional sense" when asked about their belief in God. Or "no, not like an old man who created everything, but more of a power that unifies everything." The title of this essay is "My Current Theology" and currently yes, I believe in God.

The reason why I believe in God is more difficult to explain. Simply put, I believd in God because I am not ready to embrace humanism or to live my life as an atheist. I was raised in a society and culture where God is a part of daily life in ways that are subtle and real, including "In God We Trust" on money, and it is difficult to move away from such beliefs. I would not argue that my belief is based on anything more than faith in what I have been taught and even what I have experienced. One cannot prove the existence of God through science, or there would be no religious wars, nor various religions that worship in so many different ways.

As I struggle with my belief, I realize that I do so in large part because of the nature that I ascribe to God and belief in God. Here, I hav

n logical appeal, yet for all the excitement about the finches which have specialized and developed unique characteristics in the Galapagos, the fact remains that they are still clearly birds, and even more clearly, still finches. We know that multiple strains of human-like beings lived together, but that Cro-Magnon eventually survived over all others according to the fossil record. But it appears now that evolution may not be gradual, but rather that there are periods of mass extinctions. What ramifications this may have for evolution, I cannot say, but I think that we do not yet have a complete picture of how evolution works, or what relationship some aspect of creationism might have to evolution. Fundamentally, sin is disobedience of God's will. From here, analysts have argued that sin shifts the focus from God to Man, augmenting sin through a type of species-based vanity. Sin is considered destructive and, because of the guilt that is often associated with committing sin, it can indeed be destructive. Sin is often associated with acts that are destructive to society, such as murder or those deeds considered evil. People sin, depending on one's belief system, because it is their nature and they cannot help themselves