Jean Calvin produced a catechism for people in 1537 called "Instruction in the Faith." As an experiment I am crafting an updated version. Comments and reflections are welcomed.
#1 People are “hard-wired” for God.
Have you ever wondered why there are so many different expressions of spirituality in the world? People attend church, synagogue, and mosque to worship their God. While some Buddhists are not really believers in a Supreme Being, others follow the teachings of Buddha and meditate with the thought that he is divine. Hindus worship many expressions of the divine. And even those people who seem to have no God spend time practicing “spirituality” through reflection time, special diets, and yoga. Even atheists, including the ones who are the fiercest critics of religion and faith, extol a higher governing principle: reason. People seem almost hard-wired for belief in a “higher power.” Perhaps it is because people like to make order out of things and having a “higher power” promotes order out of chaos by giving meaning to the world and our lives.
Some scientists have suggested that it is in very structure of our brains to respond to prayer and meditation and other practices that connect us with the divine; hence the phrase “hard-wired.”
Christians have been saying something similar for many centuries.
John Calvin wrote that the very fact that so many people, including those who were not believers in God, had thoughts about God was proof that we were made to know God. St. Augustine begins his Confessions by commenting that “our hearts are restless until they find rest in you, God.”
If you open your Bible to Romans 1, you can read the way the Apostle Paul described people and their natural desire to think about God: “that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For ever since the beginning of the world, God’s character though invisible — his great power and even greater nature — have been made visible by looking around us at the things that have been made.”
Put another way, Paul might have said take a look at yourself and the world around you. Can you be so quick to say there is no God? John Calvin spend less time speculating about the natural world as proof of God and said that the very fact that there are so many people who consider God a reality that they are proof that there is a God for us all to be thinking about.
What do we do with this knowledge? Well, here is the first step in a greater faith in God. Recognizing that there is a God means also accepting that God might have some claim upon you as your creator. Spend some time thinking about what it really means to believe there is a person that created you. Then you may begin to see this life as less about you and your wants and more about how you and this God can know one another and work together. Years and years ago, there were a group of Christians who wanted to put together a short series of questions and answers to teach people about the Christian faith. The very first question / answer that they wrote summarizes this idea that there is a God and we are led naturally to think about God, delight in God, and learn from God. Here is what they wrote:
Q: What is the main purpose of all people? A: To know God and to glorify God forever.
Spend some time thinking about what it could mean for your life to live with this idea in your heart.
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