Originally I was baptized Methodist for no other reason than that my parents, shortly after they were married, felt an obligation to a couple they had met on a ski trip in Austria. The couple turned out to be the pastor and his wife of the only church in the small Texas town where my parents emmigrated from Holland.
My mother and father are atheists, or agnostic, or perhaps deists, whichever describes someone who believes there may be a God but does not believe in Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, or organized religion in general. Years later, after several moves, my mother joined the choir at a local church, but I believe that decision was more of a social rather than spiritual calling.
Around the age of ten I came to the quiet conclusion that God existed. There was no defining moment, no flash or lightning or booming voice, just a gradual awareness. It felt as though there was something beyond what could be seen, an overarching presence that I could sense. Over time, that sense became belief and from that belief came a further realization that everything, including me, existed for some purpose, some reason. In my young mind, it had to be that way, and the only place I could think to look for purpose was the local church.
The town was small and the roads were quiet and the church was close enough that I could walk there Sunday mornings without thinking much about it. My parents never came with me. They did not encourage it but did not push back either. To them, it was harmless, something a child was doing on his own. To me, I felt comfortable in church, and as the oldest of five children, it gave me alone time, a chance to think, to be at peace, and to begin the search for some sort of understanding or guidance.
I guess because I had come to believe at a young age that a spiritual reality was as natural as the world itself, I struggled to understand why people trained to analyze and question, such as scientists and academics, did not largely reach the same conclusions. From my perspective, the scientific method pointed directly towards God rather than away from it.
For example, logical thinking proports that events occur with purpose, that there is nothing random, and that with enough information and sufficient knowledge, all outcomes can be predicted. So, if our universe and everything within it operates under that stricture, then it follows, logically, that everything exists for a reason. The question, then, is what that reason is.
There are some things we will never fully understand, not as human beings and not within the confines of our existence. That, I think, is also what creates friction between science and religion. Religion moves beyond the limitations of science and what we are capable seeing. We may not ever know the reasons we are here exactly, but there are clues around the edges.
One clue could be time. Time defines our existence. Everything we know, see, hear, and understand is governed by time. The distance light travels across space, the formation of the stars, the long geologic development of the earth and our own lives, all of it is shaped by time. We cannot think outside of it, and we cannot imagine any place without it.
Yet, it is because we have this gaping hole in our cognitive ability we can recognize that something exists beyond finite time. Infinity is the clearest example. It is something we cannot comprehend, yet we know it is real. It exists just beyond what our minds can perceive. And since infinity is real, we also know that there something out there we cannot understand. We cannot touch it, we cannot see it, but we know it is there.
The question then becomes why. Why would this something – let’s call it God – create us within a universe confined by time? The answer, as I see it, is that limitations of time force choice. Because of time, we cannot postpone things indefinitely. A fixed timespan creates movement. It drives growth, direction, and purpose.
Since we are here, encased in this finite time, then it follows that whatever or whoever created this world would not leave us in chaos and without guidance. There must be an indication of direction, some way to communicate with us about how we are meant to live. That guidance is what I believe in as religion. It is a type of guidance that provides a sense of what is expected of us, and a framework for how we are to interact. It also measures, for our benefit, how we should respond, how we should live, how we should help each other, and whether we recognize what is set before us.
That is religion. That is Catholicism.
The construction of life is so intricate and detailed and codependent, it would not make sense to create it without purpose and it would not make sense to leave that creation without a method to fulfill that purpose.
Logically, it must follow that in order to make His purpose known, God Himself entered into human life, became one of us, and died for us. It is the only approach that will guide humanity toward its fulfillment and offer the possibility of moving beyond the limits of time and to whatever comes next. It is this promise of eternal life that true spirituality and religion promise.
It is scientific, logical, and in my mind, absolutely indisputable.
CJ Hendricks