Why have faith...

In today's increasingly faithless society, the question is coming up more and more: Why believe in God?

My roommate and I got into this discussion maybe a week ago now, and I couldn't help but get offended and miffed about his deviations from my opinion. Even though some time has passed, this conversation is still on my mind, and while I seemingly recoiled at his explanations, I think it's because I ask myself those same questions everyday.

Why is it that I believe in God? I grew in a deeply religious home, went to a private Christian school for 12 years and made church my foremost social platform. Given my circumstances growing up, I think I could have proceeded down two paths. First, I could have accepted everything I was taught and found nirvana at the ripe old age of 13, or I could rebel from the world I was brought up in and judge for myself where this faith would play a role in my life.

I took the latter of the two paths, but let me clarify this statement by saying I didn't rebel in the sense of abhorring God and religion. I didn't try other sects of beliefs. There was never a part of me that wanted to look outside Christianity, although I recognize the value of other beliefs (religious and otherwise); but part of me always knew that it was either this or nothing. I spent the end of my high school career and college years distancing myself from my inherited belief system. From time to time, I'd find myself back in a church, recharging from a prolonged state of hopelessness and wishing that I would just believe unconditionally. For a while I struggled between these extremes, trying to find moral immunity in the gray area between faith and human rationality.

That's what got me so fired up during our debate. My roommate asserted (he himself coming from a strict Catholic upbringing) that any person with rational thought couldn't possibly believe in religion - the converse assumption (by omission) was that religion is for the uneducated, irrational masses. Now, he never said that, but that's how I took the criticism.

After years of contemplating and fretting and killing myself to assert some kind of conclusion on this part of my life, I have come full circle. I realize that rationality is what brings me to my faith. Everything I've learned and experienced has been in the wake of my upbringing. Only after running away from this doctrine did I realize the extreme comfort and peace I had knowing that there was someone/thing above me with a larger purpose. Forgiveness for failures, hope for a brighter tomorrow, the freedom of relinquishing control over any area of my life; all of these things bring a sense of understanding to my life. Realizing that most things are out of my hands is probably the hardest thing I do on a daily basis. Still, every time I finally let go, things end up working out. Do I remember and adhere to these beliefs all of the time? Probably not as much as a I should - but then again, isn't that part of the journey?

Some people might view this philosophy as naive and irrational, but I have the freedom of choice and I choose to live my life this way. People have many different ways of figuring and hypothesizing and rationalizing the successes and tragedies in their lives. Some choose to believe solely in the power of themselves, while others choose to believe in a creator or ethereal watchman. Despite their vast difference, when you come right down to it, they are all simply variations on the same rationalizations.