3 Wild ride!

So about my coming to a belief in God, to make a long story short, as a human being I, like you, am in the thick of things. By that I mean that I am beset by the party going on when I came into the world and still going on to this day. My job, as I see it, is to process it all and make sense of it or just get on board and go along for the ride--my choice. For lack of a better solution, I have pretty much gotten on board all my life, gone along for the ride, out of instinct to herd up, I guess. Until I knew better first hand why not to get on board or go along, the ride at least seemed to be going somewhere and it was sociable.

It was easy to get on board the world's opinions. They are everywhere--headlines, film, talk shows, in conversation and so on. Fitness, health, finances, relationships, the world had unlimited advice on all these things and more and a frowning insistence upon congruence with its thinking.

Then there was my flesh. My flesh had drives--reflexes, instincts, feelings, sensations, emotions and they all competed for prominence in my person. Frequently I felt at their mercy. My "time" said let it all hang out. Okay. I got on board.

Without, evil influence was all around me, embodied in other people, inherent in situations, circumstances and things. And within lurked insidious thoughts disguised as my own. I handled both as I saw most others of my time handle them--ineptly. What a ride!

And the ride got wild. Over my first thirty years on earth, the world's advice kept changing. My flesh got demanding. And I came up hard on thirty years old with a real need for delivery from evil. I had a desperate need for real solutions to the world's inadequacy, the clamor of the flesh and the presence and influence of evil. And I needed real answers to a torrent of questions.

Such as, life: Got Meaning?

If so, I want . . . need to know!

Is it God? Is He the solution, I asked?

I knew about God. I'd been taught Bible at home, in school, at church. But it's not like anybody ever used the Bible for everyday solutions. At home it was there but not read. (Except by my grandfather. He was the one who taught me. Everybody else was way too busy.) In school (private preparatory school) the Bible was important, but little more than literature--sacred literature, noble literature, but literature. And at church, I don't even remember reading it. Lots of creeds to memorize though.

Back to God: Thus the summer-sort-out after 30 some-odd years of life. My past life came pretty well into order after that, though afterward I coasted uneasily, the deep answers evading me. By the time I was thirty-eight, I could see that I was still in a real eddy of life and going nowhere with no real solution at all to what I now call Significant Truth #1. I had that history with God, oh yes, but no relationship. Actually, no notion of a relationship, either.

By then, though, Kathleen was in parochial school and I was an aide there, part time. And in my spare time I found myself thinking, I know about God, but I do not know God. (This was an ah-ha moment for me!) Then I thought, is there more to a focus on God for a child of the modern day than just knowing about God?

My thoughts began a cascade. Who did I think God was, anyway? Could God be the solution for all my needs? For the first time I seriously began to consider that God could hold all the answers to the human predicament created by the world, the flesh and the devil. The possibility dizzied my senses, propelling me to confront the truth that despite my history, I only knew superficially about God.

The realization launched a real spiritual odyssey.

I decided then and there to search out this "real" God, but first I would review all possible candidates for God before settling on just one to pursue (the God of my upbringing) and excluding all others, if only just to be able to say I had.

I hit the books.


To be continued . . .