Why Do You Believe it?

By Gene X. Christian

After you have done the hard work of contemplation and review about what you believe, it’s time to take the next step and answer the question “Why do you believe it?”

People formulate their beliefs through a multitude of factors, but overall there are patterns. By taking a look at some of these patterns, you can decide for yourself — did your beliefs take shape because of overwhelming evidence, or is the cause more easily explained? Let’s dive in.

You were born into a religious family

This one is easy to wrap your head around. I’ll use my easiest to obtain example: me.

• My grandparents on my mother’s side were religious, and their flavor of Christianity was in the American Baptist denomination. Mom was brought up in faith from an early age, and was a believer for most of her life.
• My grandparents on my father’s side were religious, but they hopped around to different churches, and even different denominations. Their flavors of Christianity were rooted in evangelical pentecostal (with one family member as holiness pentecostal - pretty hardcore). They attended a Christian Church as long as I can remember (note: oddly enough, the Christian church is the faith, but also the Christian Church is a denomination). Dad became a very practicing believer after returning from the Vietnam War and starting a family.
• My grandparents were Christians. My parents were Christians. My sibling and I were Christians.

You found religion after a difficult time in your life

I used to be good friends with someone who was a committed Christian. However, he wasn’t without faults, and after an altercation that happened while he was on parole he had to serve prison time. Although he was definitely a believer when he went in to the Big House, by the time he came out a few years later, he was all in. I was still a deeply committed Christian then, but it became his entire personality which completely overshadowed how I practiced my faith. I have lost track of him these days, but I suspect he isn’t much different now.

Have you ever been to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? Of the twelve steps of AA, six of them directly refer to a higher power. I have witness some eye-opening displays of people reaching absolute rock bottom. In those times, those people are looking for something, anything, to help them break the cycle of addiction. AA is highly successful. It offers a strong community, accountability partners, and educational techniques that can be applied to help overcome alcohol addiction. I have known several people who went through AA and came out on the other side as a Christian.

There’s no shortage of difficulties in this world, so there are plenty of opportunities to go through a trial, draw some inspiration from something religious while going through that trial, and then becoming more religious as the difficult time subsides.

You were in need of community, and religion gave it to you

One of the amazing things about religion is that it comes with a built-in community. Do you want an environment that is perceived safe for children? Find a church with a good children’s program. Troubled youth in your life? There’s a church in nearly every city with a hot youth program that has loud music, food (usually pizza), activities, and safety. Your kids aren’t somewhere doing drugs; they are learning about Jesus. What could be wrong with that?

Many modern churches do a lot to try and be appealing to a large group of potential followers. Coffee shops, modern music, relaxed dress codes, and the projection of a safe environment for families go a long way to nurturing a faith-based community.

As a bonus, if your schoolmates are also religious then church is a venue where your social safety net (friends, cliques, allies) can be built and transferred easily between church and “the world” (anywhere not church).

Your peers and peer pressure/influence can go a long way to help shape your religious beliefs.

You had a “personal revelation”

“God came to me in a vision.”

“I prayed for a sign and then something was revealed to me.”

“After a severe illness, I had a near death experience.”

“After my family member died, something happened that showed me they were waiting for me on the other side.”

“I spoke in tongues. I was slain in the spirit. I had a vision. I experienced something I cannot explain.”

There are things that happen to individuals that on the surface seem supernatural. These events are typically only perceived by the individual, and very personal in nature. My mother died several years ago, and her death preceded an exceptionally difficult and depressive period for me. In that time, I saw an angel in the clouds — and mom loved angels.

There were times I felt her presence in my parent’s empty house. I absolutely believed there was something letting me know she knew I was suffering, and was trying to send comfort from the beyond.

You were an atheist, but then you found belief

Everyone is born atheist; that is the default state of religious belief. It’s only after consuming religious information that people turn to faith.

For clarification, the word atheist is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “A person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.”

There’s an important distinction to be made between atheist and a skeptic. Atheist is the default belief; skepticism/critical thinking comes when the a person doesn’t blindly accept the face value of faith claims.

You beliefs are deeply rooted in where you were born

Source: Pew Research Center

• If you were born in the Americas, you are more likely to be Christian (or some flavor of Christianity)
• If you were born in northern Africa or the Middle East, you are more likely to be Muslim.
• If you were born in India, you are more likely to be Hindu.
• If you were born in Israel, you are more likely to be Jewish.
• If you were born in China, and some countries in Europe, you are more likely to not have an affiliation.

Swinging back to my first point about my own history, my grandparents, parents, myself and my sister were all claimants to the Christian faith. That spans generations, and the family lived in the United States, so it’s easy to see why your birthplace has such a huge impact.

What’s next?

Now that we have gone over some possible reasons for why you believe what you believe, it’s time to write that out for deeper reflection.

You have already sorted out what you believe, and now you are giving consideration to why you believe.

Go ahead, write all of your thoughts in a notebook. Connect some dots and see what it says about you. Think about your peers; friends and family, co-workers and rivals. Do you see similarities in what they believe and why they believe it?

In the last post of this series, I’ll talk about how to put this all together to engage your mind and really think deeply about your faith.

Published on 2024-12-23

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