Internet Sidewalk

Not Self-Tricking!

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Today, I would like to share some about my journey from agnosticism to eventual belief in God. I tend to think of myself as having had some pretty extreme agnostic views before I came to believe in God.

First off, for anyone who doesn’t know, to be agnostic is to neither believe in God, nor disbelieve in God.

I was agnostic from late 2006 to mid 2011. During that time, I believed that only God could convince me of his existence, but that he would never do that. I believed that if God ever did reveal himself to anyone, it was in the distant past and is not something he does anymore. I thought God’s expectation (if he were real) was that we believe in him without any solid evidence. I felt this to be entirely unfair and not something I could possibly do, even if I wanted to.

Furthermore, I thought that everyone who believed in God was “self-tricking”; that they were in fact believing in God without sufficient evidence. I’m not saying that I thought they were incorrect about the existence of God. I was, after all agnostic, not atheist (Atheist is to disbelieve in God). I just thought that they were somehow believing in God without any real evidence because they wanted to.

Anyhow, self-tricking is not what I’m doing. God made sure that I absolutely know that he is real and he is good.

In 2008, God began to reveal himself to me with great intention. God proceeded very slowly though and I didn’t even become suspicious that God might be revealing himself to me until early 2011. Once I became suspicious, I went on to waffle back and forth time and time again between agnosticism and belief for about six months. I spent the entirety of nearly every day during that time period cooped up in my house alone (or so I thought anyway. I didn’t know about David or Peace-Guys yet), trying, trying, trying to determine once-and-for-all the truth of the existence or non-existence of God.

During those six months, I cried out to God on many occasions, begging and pleading that he please be quick and please be clear with me if he were in fact revealing himself. Still God moved slowly.

Those six months were the most difficult of my life. I was in agony. I was suffering. My hours, days, weeks, months were wrought with intense emotional pain. I needed the pieces to fit together. I needed to know the truth. My need to know the truth grew and grew until It reached a fever pitch, and still God continued to move slowly.

Something I didn’t yet have was even an inkling of understanding about God’s unfathomably great wisdom. It seemed that God was taking a painfully long time to do something that he could just as easily and effectively do in an instant. It seemed as if God were torturing me without any good reason.

Of course, God wasn’t torturing me. What he was doing, was laying a very strong foundation to build upon later. Beginning all the way back in 2006, without me even knowing he was doing it, God was teaching me volumes about himself and a multitude of other spiritual topics.

As God continued laying that strong foundation, the evidence grew from a tiny molehill into a giant mountain and eventually there was enough that I came to know the truth: God is real and God is good.

Years later, I know that I am blessed that God revealed himself in the way he wanted to instead of how I wanted him to do it. It has yielded tremendous benefit for me. I’m not yet detailing the exact events of those six months, but I will later (it may be in the playback too).

God bless you all!

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GodSantiAgnosticism2011