The Comfort of Faith

I remember well the comfort that faith brought me in my youth. The certainty that the world was a black and white place gave me solace through many years of struggle. It wasn't until I started college that I began to doubt anything that I was taught by the Lutheran church.

The remarkable thing was that it was my college girlfriend who made me start thinking about just how much religious dogma flew in the face of logic and reason. See, the dangers of the heterosexual lifestyle? Yes, I had a girlfriend in college, I think most gay guys did, in the early 70's.

Sometimes when I see all that is going on in the world, I think back to those days when I found so much comfort in my religion. God had an answer for everything, no matter how illogical, all you had to do was believe. That was not too much to ask, for all the happiness it brought me.

Now I see people dying in horrible, senseless ways, and I suffer with them. I ask God, and myself, why did this happen. Where is the joy of Christ's love and understanding when two men go into a party store and beat a 73 year old man to death for chump change. My heart just aches with the horror of it all. I want to live in the well-ordered world that was promised me in my youth. Through 12 years of parochial school education I knew what the world was all about. How good would always triumph over evil, how the light of God would always shine through.

Now I am in my fifties struggling to understand the meaning of life and the reasons why we all must die some day. Things could be worse, I could be Ted Haggard and know the world is a very gray place, but have to live my life as though it wasn't. Who knew that when he became an evangelical minister he had to take the hypocritical oath, telling his flock to do as I say, not as I do (shades of Jimmy Swaggert).

Getting back to my point, about faith. God gave us free will, which brought along a whole list of benefits and things that are not so beneficial. If God had just left us as we were in the Garden of Eden, we would be doing okay. Everything would just be peachy keen. I am sure God had a very good reason for giving us this free will thing. I just haven't figured out yet what it is. If you have any ideas, please let me know.