Wednesday, December 5, 2007

I'm not exactly the world's greatest blogger, am I?

It's not that I don't want to.

I mean, I want to have a really great, thought-provoking blog that people check every day to see what my latest scintillating thoughts are.

And I really DO want to finish up my fascinating story of how I returned from atheism to Christianity.

OK, so here we go - long story, short: I remained an atheist for about a year. During that time, I became a moderator (under the username "windsofchange") at the Internet Infidels Discussion Board (IIDB).

Meantime, I continued going to church every Sunday with Steve, but I didn't pray or do anything else other than that. I guess you'd have to say I was a hypocrite. But I didn't mean to be. I just didn't know what else to do.

See, this has happened to me before. Twice in my life, to be exact. And each time I'd lost my faith completely, I stopped going to church or having anything to do with religion at all. And each time, after several YEARS went by, my faith snuck back.

So, I thought, this time maybe I'll just wait and see. I won't make any major life decisions (or get rid of any books, like I'd done the last couple of times - hey, restocking your bookshelves every time you change your worldview can get expensive!) for at least one year. Then, if I am still convinced that there's no God, I'll do what I need to do.

Then, one day, I just woke up and found that my faith was back.

I know that sounds simplistic, and I don't really know how to explain it. But ...

Imagine a dry well that you've abandoned because you were sure the spring underneath it had dried up, but one morning you were out on a walk and, on a whim, you lowered a bucket, and it came up full of fresh, clear water - and you realized the spring hadn't dried up after all. Perhaps it had just been dormant, and while you ignored the well, it just quietly filled up all over again.

My theory is that it's a good thing for a Christian - or any believer - to take a break from time to time. Chuck it all and live without "religion" for a while, and see if it works for you. Because I think there's a tendency to start taking our beliefs for granted, letting our prayers become rote and stale, and getting smug (we believers are so much better than nonbelievers, aren't we?). So it's good to throw all that off from time to time, and start from scratch.

Just don't forget to lower the bucket into the well every once in a while. Because you never know. ;-)

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