At one of our last winter golf sessions, one player indicated that he had a hard time understanding the Bible and religion in general. One of the things that I’ve concluded is that religion is one of those things that you believe in or don’t. You absolutely cannot make logical sense of it. You either have faith or you don’t.
Some things can be “proven” to be true, or not true, but sometimes factual data just isn’t available. But even when we don’t have facts to prove something, we often still tend to believe. We’ve all heard the saying, don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is already made up.
So there are some things, even today, with all our advanced technology and knowledge we just don’t know. Ghosts — some people claim to have seen ghosts and offer that up as proof they exist, but others argue that any sighting of a ghost can be explained away by lighting tricks or some other logical explanation. Aliens — a lot of people have seen UFOs and we’ve all heard the conspiracy theories that the government is hiding alien bodies, but so far as I know there is no verifiable proof that other lifeforms exist from somewhere in space. Lots of people claim to have been taken aboard alien spacecrafts, so you won’t convince them, but as yet it’s not a scientifically proven fact.
The Bible is certainly one thing can’t be proven, but most people believe the stories about people who lived for hundreds of years and completed fantastic feats because they are part of the Bible. There is no proof that these writings are a true reflection of a higher power, but most people do their best to abide by the rules and morals outlined in Bible.
And then of course there’s God. The biggest leap of faith that anyone takes is believing that a higher power exists and guides our lives. By definition, God cannot be proven through empirical evidence, but the idea of God is something that most people believe.
All through life you can choose to believe or not believe lots of things. Some people choose to believe everything they hear on Fox News — others don’t. But I’ve come to the conclusion that there are some things you should believe in because those things are worth believing in. It really doesn’t matter if something is or isn’t true.
So everyone should believe in something. Winfried has a sign in his office that says, “I believe I’ll have another drink….” Sounds good to me.
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