Why does believing God exists matter?
During the toddler years, my child was an angel to everyone... except me. She saved her wild antics for her mother. When I say wild, I mean wild! To the point that when I would relate the things she did to her father or one of my parents, people began to doubt MY sanity. How could this precious little angel be capable of doing all that I claimed?
Naturally, this made me a little angry. Why did she only misbehave for her mother? I began to wonder if a two-year-old could possess a split personality? Discussing this with my pediatrician, she simply explained that I was my daughter’s safe space - the area in her world where she could experiment. My child would witness another child commit an incident at daycare and witness that child's punishment for this behavior then she would come home and try that behavior out on me to see if she received the same reaction as the child at daycare.
My child was intelligent enough to understand that she did not want to necessarily suffer the consequences of the other children pushing the boundaries at daycare; however, she was clever enough to realize that she wanted to push the boundaries at home. As she went through her toddler years, this pattern of behavior escalated.
I am very grateful for the support of my excellent pediatrician. Precious Dr. Sweet - isn’t that a wonderful name for a pediatrician - guided me through these turbulent toddler years. She warned me that I could not budge an inch on my discipline because if I did, if I ever gave in even one time and lowered the bar on my boundaries, the results could be catastrophic. She gave me so much literature to read on strong-willed children. She clearly explained to me that if I did not help my daughter understand and learn firm personal boundaries and self-control, the end result would be a child riddled with anxiety, no impulse control, and low self-confidence.
I would love to lie and tell you what a wonderful job I did but there was an older sibling in the house. I worked a full-time job. My husband worked shift work and often was gone at night. He often worked away for months at a time. The TV babysat more times than I would like to admit because that was convenient when my baby was not at her best and homework had to completed and dinner cooked. But I prayed a lot, and we made it through these turbulent years, and the teenage years functioned smother for the effort in the formative ones. Dr. Sweet promised, and I am proud to report that my daughter is a well adjusted and successful young adult, and I did not commit filicide.
My last blog asked does God exist?
This blog continues with that thought and asks:
Why does believing God exists matter?
When you become a parent and you realize that you have two children whose IQs are higher than your own, if you don’t develop survival skills, you are in trouble! There’s a phrase at my house - life experience trumps IQ every day. One of my own personal survival mechanisms; however, that’s not very helpful when a three-year-old kicks you in the shin, while wearing steel toed pink cowboy boots, and calls you stupid.
Aristotle introduced the philosophy of the syllogism around 330 BC. A syllogism consists of a major premise, minor premise, and conclusion. His classic example follows:
All men are mortal,
I am a man, therefore,
I am mortal.
Aristotle‘s principles for guiding and discussing argumentation have been tried and true for centuries. That is until now. My post-modern daughters would not hesitate to say something smartalec like:
Well, I am a woman,
I am not a man,
So that must mean I am immortal!
Now we laugh and recognize that of course, everyone is mortal. But this represents our current culture very well. It’s forgotten about the concept of fallacy.
A fallacy is a fault in logic or reasoning. Aristotle clearly discussed fallacies because his ancient culture had very clear guidelines, guiding principles for correct and incorrect writing, behavior, reasoning, and cultural practices. Their society functioned under strict rules and up until the time of Darwin that I discussed in my last blog, our society did too. Our plumb line, or line that directs the center of gravity, used to be the Christian Bible - the Capital T truth on which the United States founders built our nation. Certain principles didn’t come into question.
I’m not going to deep dive here into secular humanism segue to post modern thought, but basically this is the whole “you have your truth - I have my truth - you respect my truth - I’ll respect your truth,” idea. There's only one problem with that. Remember that precious toddler I told you about at the beginning of this blog? What happens when there’s no plumb line? No center of gravity? What happens to the toddler when she learns conflicting boundaries or worse? No boundaries at all? She begins to be filled with crushing anxiety. She possess no impulse control. Her self confidence plummets.
You don’t have to look very far in our culture to find rampant examples. Today's headlines tell of a public figure that three months ago celebrated being the media darling and accepted an Emmy’s for solving critical problems and today is vilified with billboards and calls for his resignation. How does something like that happen over a six month time span? How can the public eye be that fickle? When there is no baseline, the plumb line on which we build the foundation for our society looses its gravitational pull.
So why does believing God exists matter?
Saint Augustine said it best. When Augustine wrote from 354 - 430 AD, he spent a great deal of time considering how individuals either choose to follow God or follow idols. He states that if you follow God, an individual must submit to the Truth that God reveals in the Bible. If a person begins to rationalize truth to justify personal choices, that person follow idols. I call it perspective. Everyone wakes up in the morning and puts on his/ her own perspective on the world. Each person chooses which set of glasses he/she puts on that day.
If a person chooses to follow God and puts on her God glasses in the morning, the syllogism under which the day functions works like this:
God created the world for a purpose,
God created me as a part of the world,
I have a purpose in the world.
If a person wakes up in the morning and puts on the self glass and has no plumb line - no baseline for truth, the syllogism under which the day functions works like this:
Life evolved randomly,
I evolved,
My life is random.
After 160 years of Darwin’s theories governing science and scientific debate and promoting the separation of faith as an unverifiable standard, secular people who do not believe in the Bible as the word of God as truth argue this syllogism.
The mind and ideas evolve over time,
The Bible has not evolved,
The Bible's truths are not relevant to an evolved mind.
This thought process makes the Bible extremely easy to ignore as a standard of Truth for living; however, that’s not looking at the world through God glasses. God glasses say:
God speaks Truth
The Bible is the word of God
The Bible is Truth
Me, Myself, I glasses leave an individual's own knowledge to determine boundaries, the plumb line to build life upon. One look at culture gives the perfect indication how that glasses prescription helps people.
God’s word, the Bible glasses offer something very different:
Psalm 139:13 & 16 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
The difference...when we believe in the existence of God, we understand our life has purpose. We appreciate we are not random evolutionary flukes but beloved children of God. We don’t have to be filled with anxiety because our father in heaven loved us enough to set forth solid boundaries, plumb lines to give us enough gravity to keep us grounded in the chaotic crazy world and not spinning into a life of anxiety, no impulse control, and low self-confidence. Just like a good parent sets the boundaries for even the most challenging of toddlers. This is done from a place of love not punishment so the child can grow and mature into a successful, productive human. We'll explore this more in the next blog
I'm in so much trouble with my parents for not taking out the red eye and letting her look like a devil. She really was an angel! LOL
Lesson 3 - Miss Independent
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