Where It Began

I'm not sure who said it or when, or even exactly how it was said.  Generally the theme is; "You are what you believe".  However how many of us really, and I mean really, really know what we believe in?  Or do we blindly adhere to beliefs that are an illusion of what we assume is "our truth".  If I were to ask you to defend what you believe in, and construct the foundation of how you came to this belief, could you?

I have to admit that for a long time, I floated along with a false security about my "Christian" belief's.  Not in way that made them immoral, but in the "WHY" I believed in the manner I had to this point?  It was at that point in time that I began a journey, it did not involve travelling about the country or the world.  It is a personal journey, one that I believe many "Christian's" do not even realize they should take and complete.

The First Few Steps:

Really as I look back, I didn't even know that the journey was even under way.  It all started with polite challenge of my Christian beliefs.  Now I would like to tell you that I knew what, and why I believed the things I did.  In fact, up until this point in time, I would have confidently asserted that I could tell you what those beliefs were, and felt I could offer up an explanation as to why.

     Embarrassingly this was a false confidence; I couldn't defend my beliefs.  I didn't even know where to look in my Bible to defend against the inquisition that slaughtered and shredded what I had believed and held as truth.  If this was a street fight, I was left lying beside the curb almost dead.  Those "Christian" beliefs I held, could they have been wrong.  What was the message contained in the Bible?

I had grown up in a Baptist Church, attended church regularly for years, but not so much over the last decade.  Had never really questioned, or maybe should say doubted, what I had been taught.  I had just accepted it.  This led to what I would call a complacency regarding my religious beliefs.  Truth be told, I was too comfortable in regards to this area of my life, ill prepared for any challenge.  I had a personal crisis, but one that I knew I could make several choices in regards to.  I could ignore it, after all it wasn't physically life threatening.  

     The other choice was intimidating.  Test those beliefs, see if they are as true as I believed them to be. Personally there was a lot of uncertainty about the second choice.  I knew I was going to have to examine, my core values, my Christian beliefs.  Dare I test them?  Are they true?  I knew I needed the answers.  Honestly I wasn't even sure if I could find the answers.

Direction Needed:

Well where do you go when you need answers?  To a Source that has them.  Seems quite logical to me, and being Christian, that source would be the Scriptures.  After all this was the one thing my friendly and polite "religious antagonist” and I had agreed upon.  The Bible is the authority, the giver of direction and of understanding. 

It was the understanding part that had me concerned.  It was all too clear to me, that although we may be reading the same book, we are definitely not coming to the same understanding.  Each of us had a different understanding of what the Bible taught.  What I really needed was a clear and concise foundation for the  how-to in understanding the message contained in the Bible. It occurred to me that what I was looking for was something called the "truth". However that question now became, "what is truth"?