Epiphany???

Note: I have now added the formerly missing Tolkien quote...

Currently, God and I have issues. I just don't understand so much, about so many things. And I sometimes feel like this one-sided relationship of belief is just a game wherein He knows all the rules and I don't even know if we are playing Cribbage or Chess or Hopscotch.

I was laying in bed, thinking, two nights ago, trying to determine why, exactly, I continue to believe in this God fellow. What is it that keeps that belief going in my life, despite the confusion, anger, and hurt? Why do Humans believe in higher powers of any type?

I really believe that understanding in life comes to us, sometimes in a deluge, sometimes through a laborious eternity of effort, simply by asking the right questions. On Monday night, as I tried so hard to fall asleep, I felt like the right question was coming to me.

What is the point of human existence?

Oh, yes, a small question, isn't it? Then, I think the more important question came to me: Why should there be a point? Which led to: Why do we want there to be a point?

And that, I think is the right question. What is it about we humans that hungers so mightily for a purpose in life? When we look around the animal kingdom, we see these instinctual beings, some of them very intelligent, and (near as we can tell), they do not spend lifetimes arguing about The Meaning of Life. Why do we?

Why do we, for the most part, measure life's meaning by the relationships that we surround ourselves with? I don't believe that it is some sort of evolutionary trend - why on earth would evolution lead us to monogamy as the most widely accepted approach to human coupling, when random sex with multiple partners makes for a better gene pool? Well, I just don't know enough about social structures in the world, or animal couple-bonds, or biology, or evolution to really have much of an answer to that, but it made me think:

Why does so much of our human nature revolve around emotions that seem to have very little to do with evolution and survival?

Which brought me to this:

I believe in God because I yearn for something greater than this world. I long for my life and the lives of those I love to have a purpose, an eternal presence. I feel as though I long for something more because there is Something to long for. And, as I understand myself and my world, that Something is actually a Someone.

And to somehow prove to me that this was the argument that needed to be fully digested in my brain, as I read The Narnian last night, the chapter that I started was on this very topic. And I read the arguments of great men for and against the idea of God. Frankly, I with Tolkien on this one:

The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act.

and
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream?

- from "Mythopoeia: Philomythus to Misomythus" by J.R.R. Tolkien

Ah, that God, always insinuating control into my life in ways that I don't expect. Develop my respect for C.S. Lewis, which leads to reading his biography, that argues in favour of His existence, quoting several learned Oxford Fellows like J.R.R. Tolkien.

I get it.

So...... that, for me answers the question. I believe in God because, to the very soul of me, I believe that this life is bigger than what we see. And I believe that is because of God.

Now, it would be artistically stronger for me to have ended the post at the last paragraph, but I must point out that this is my answer for my question and I have absolutely no desire to convert anyone to my point of view. It is simply helpful for me to structure to argument so that I can understand what I mean.

Also, this question of do you believe in God and why gets me only minutely closer to where God fits in my recent life experiences. I have absolutely no sniff.