Stop believing in God!

Religions usually take a top-down approach, by first trying to prove the existence, nature, and laws of God, and encouraging adherents to believe and behave like children of that God. That is hard because you must first believe in something that is beyond the experience of your five senses. Often you believe because you are told by priests, popes, and imams to do so, even though you cannot see, hear, touch, smell, or taste the reality you are told to believe in.

Instead of outsourcing your faith to outside authorities, it is time to reclaim it and make it personal.

Instead of engaging in blind faith in an invisible sky-God, I propose a bottom-up approach where you start with what is visible around you as a means of experiencing the invisible God.

You can see, hear, smell, touch, and taste planet Earth in all its glory and experience the loving presence, power and providence of a Glorious God and have a glamorous life.

So, my first request to you the reader, is:

Stop believing in God and start experiencing God.

Chelan Harkin gives poetic expression to this sentiment in her poem, You Don’t Have to Believe in God:

You don’ t have to believe in God

but please collapse in wonder

as regularly as you can

try and let your knowledge

be side-swiped by awe

and let beauty be so persuasive

you find yourself willing

to lay your opinions at her feet.

Believing is mostly an intellectual exercise devoid of affections of the heart. Our beliefs are centered around statements composed of words, and words are abstract. Words are often misunderstood, misinterpreted and misused and mostly repeated without knowing or experiencing their meaning.

For example, for a Christian, the Apostle’s Creed starts with “I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth,” followed by six other statements to believe, in addition to nine things they must believe about the nature of Jesus, such as virgin birth, death, resurrection, ascension, sitting at the right hand of God, and the second coming of Christ in the clouds for final judgment. Repeating those theological statements is not going to get you any closer to God, just as reading a restaurant menu is not going to satiate your appetite.

(from Cosmic Kindergarten: Earthly Lessons for a Heavenly Life)