God and how convenient is to believe in God

This blog is not about religion neither I am a religious person but I think is important to discuss what influence has what we believe in our path through life. For most of us our God, whoever is, has some meaning that definitely influence strongly our way in life; our believes about him and the way we behave as a consequence of those believes are always very influential on how we look at our life, our decisions, our goals, our behaviour and our relations with other people and the environment. So many people rely on their god all their dreams, decisions, problems and paths that they have to take in life that nobody asks themselves if their god is there to really sort out all of what apparently are human issues and they forget completely what the real meaning of God is in their life. I’ll explain this to you:

I was asking myself if somebody can really believe in God, I have always asked myself about it. Not because he does not exist, but because of the convenience of believing in him. Is not clear?, I’ll explain myself. A long ago when I used to read the Bible I learned a verse that never forgot and that I like so much:

“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1).

Without going deep into theology, cause I don’t have a deep knowledge about it and don’t want to make philosophical discussions about the meaning of this verse, and more from the point of view of a common man, this verse to me means the most pure and simple form of believe in God, have the assurance about what we do not see.

Since when we are born, our parents, teachers and, in general, society shows us many forms of God: God, the supplier; God, the saviour; God, the punisher; God, the creator; God, the restrictor, etcetera, forms in which in one or another way we can appreciate God and how he influence our lifes; base on this, our moral principles and our own way, we create a concept of God that keeps changing with time.

Many people seek refuge in these concepts of God, for god or bad; the supplier God is the one that fill us with wealth or give us our daily bread if we ask him for it; the restrictor God is the one who limits who we really are and don’t let us be guided by our instincts; in the same way we could describe 100 different ways in which we look at God at different stages of our lifes. But there is one form of God, the saviour God, the most interesting one, which is who has reserved a sit for us in paradise if we were good down here and which I think is the most hypocrite and egocentric form of describing God, cause it is based only in our self-love looking of God for our own wellbeing. Here is where we find that big fear of God, fear that he will not take us to paradise if we are not good people, if we don’t follow his desires.

 Even the most holy among the saints has been saint not because of love of God but because of fear to him or, in other words, most of the people don’t believe in God because of a sincere conviction but because of convenience. Yes, goodness is something excellent, is the most sublime and simple gift of a human been and is good to practice it, but how many people who believe in God practice goodness not because of the fear of God but because of truly conviction. Since today, I haven’t met anybody that believes in God and follow his words because of true conviction but because of fear, fear of going to hell, which transforms conviction into convenience, convenience of believing in God because of what we can get from him but not because of pure conviction, not just because God exists; if we can escape from hell by believing in him why not believe in him then just for convenience and not because of conviction? How many of you, who are believers, don’t expect something from God? How many of you really believe in God without pretending something from him?, for example your own salvation; how many of you follow the rules and go to church without expecting anything from your God, just for real conviction that he exists?.

Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662, the mathematician, philosopher, physicist and theologian, said in the Pascal’s wager:

“The reason is that, even when the probability of the existence of God would be extremely small, that smallness would be compensated by the big profit that would be obtain, in other words, the eternal glory”

He said that even when you cannot determine the existence of God believing in him would be a better option that not believing as by believing you has everything to win and nothing to lose. And that’s exactly what people do without noticing it, they believe in God cause of the benefits of believing in him but not for pure conviction. That’s how the churches convene so many people, by installing fear of a punisher God in people minds.

I was wondering how many of you really believe in God, not for convenience, not because of any fear, not believing to try to fill the emptiness that all of us feel, but because of a real conviction that God exists, nothing else, without expecting something from him. 11 years ago when I convert to the Protestantism and finally leave it 10 years ago I had this last talk to God when I ask him to teach me the real way to believe in him, without any convenience, without expecting anything in exchange, I said I would search every day of my life that way to believe in him which I haven’t found yet, and I said that the day I would find it I would believe in him again in the most pure and simple way of believing in God: having the assurance about what we do not see. I hope my answer is there… by now I still believe in him by convenience…

Lets start with a story!

I was thinking about different ways of starting this blog, how and where to start our way to our dreams, which would be a good point to begin a dreamers journey, so checking my old stories I found this one, which I wrote six months ago, and I chose it because it makes a point at the end to open our mind to be filled with whatever we want, is like writing our past again and again, creating our own memories and giving it a better meaning, which I think is a good point to start our way to follow our dreams. Here is the story:

The best goal of my life

Yes! , that was the best goal of my life, I remember it perfectly; it was amazing…, definitely one of the beast goals in the history of soccer…

It happened during a rainy month, as is almost always in Bogotá; my friends and I had just finished the most difficult part of our undergraduate chemistry studies, the fifth semester, when we decided to enjoy our little extra time on the sixth semester mornings as we didn’t have too much lectures at that time, so we decided to enter a short soccer tournament. All of us used to play soccer together with our girlfriends just for fun, we knew we wasn’t really good players but we enjoyed it so much, laughing about each other, relaxing and keeping our minds away from our studies. One day a friend of us told me about a tournament that other chemistry students used to organized every six months, the trophy was around 200000 pesos, and the rules were simple, each team should had only 6 players and the match would last 20 minutes each period, no women’s were allowed L!. So we decided to give it a try.

The first thing we needed to decide was the name of the team, and as every other team that was going to participate, we decided to choose a funny name for it. “Lucky is what I tell you”, I said, as that was the most funny popular phrase at the moment in all Colombia, and it was my favorite too, it was a mean but funny phrase at the same time. My friends just laugh so much about it that they agree to use it. Problem solved!

The second problem was to determine the positions of each player, we was eight men but only six could play; I used to play as defender as it was not ease for the other players to move 80 kilos from their way, but in this occasion, as no one liked to be the goalkeeper and all of them wanted to play in the front scoring goals, I decided to take the responsibility of protecting our goal, even though, it was a big responsibility.

The first match was a disaster; even though me and the others did our best we lost 0-4 against a group of friends; still we were happy, not surprised because of the results, just enjoying the fun of the game. Immediately after such a disaster we were called the “sábados felices” team (the “happy Saturdays”, a very popular humoristic show in Colombia) because our amazing (funny!) way to play soccer.

For the next match we planned carefully; knowing how difficult was to organize ourselves during the game we choose to remain in our positions even if most of my friends wanted to be in the front attacking to reach the opposite goal. It was a cloudy morning and had rained all before the game so the grass was really slippery and humid. The game was against another group of friends which were a lot better soccer players than us. All our girl friends were there to watch our game and were sitting in the humid grass near the field. The match started, we bravely fight to keep the match 0-0 and we gave the best of each one during all the first period.  Ball after ball I struggle to stop each of the kicks that the other team did; the tribune were crazy, everyone were screaming after each kick, balls were going from one side to another, it was an amazing game. Suddenly, the great moment came, the best goal of my live was going to be scored; it was starting the second half, I was goalkeeping, as always, when a defender from the other team throw a ball just near my area, suddenly a player from the other team appeared to kick the ball when I immediately reacted to stop him, I moved my body towards him and just exactly when he kicked the ball, my knee was in front to stop it, the ball hit my knee so strong that I felt it when up and suddenly disappear from my view; I fell down in the ground, looking at the grass, happy to know that I was saving my team again, just thinking in recovery as soon as possible to keep goalkeeping, and there it came, a few seconds after I started to listen to everybody screaming goooooooooooooooooooal, I thought someone on my team made a goal and felt happy; I recovered, stand up and then… it was amazing!, suddenly everybody was around me, some of the guys from the tribune were hugging me, saying “José that was an amazing goal”, the girls were also screaming, I couldn’t believed it!, I was looking all around cause didn’t understand what was happening; when I became aware that I did that goal I just let out all my emotion by smiling and jumping, I never realized I could make a goal being the goalkeeper, but I did it, and everybody was telling me it was an amazing goal, everybody talked about it after, the story remained in the mind of many people for many days; for me it was the best goal of my life…

I never saw what happened that day, I don’t really know how amazing was my goal, of course some people later explained me how I made the goal, but let’s say that, as I never saw it, every time I remember that day, I create my own story on how I did that goal, on what happened just after I hit that ball with my knee, and every time I finish the story in my head I can realized that it was the best goal of my life and I can feel the excitement of that moment as it would be happening just now… no matters that that day we were eliminated of the tournament because we lost the match 1-4. For sure all my friends remember that day and the glorious team that we were… and I’ll always remember that goal as the best goal of my life…

Welcome to The Pursuit of Your Dreams!

Today starts The Pursuit of Your Dreams, a blog dedicated to the people with big and small, simple and outstanding dreams who are willing to find and follow their path on life and want to become better people. The Pursuit of Your Dreams is a blog for everybody that want to pursue their own way in life, seduce life, a guide to become the best person you can be, find your own happiness and fight for your dreams as well as help others to find their ways too by enlighten their life. My posts are intended to guide you through life; they can be simple stories or notes about personal growth, energy and passion for life, understanding our reality from different points of view and of course follow our dreams, all from my perspective about life and the contributions you can make by reading, commenting and sharing this notes. This blog is also my way to help others to find their way as I am doing now, especially all the people who feel lost, insecure and have no more passion for life. This blog, The Pursuit of Your Dreams, will become our story of success and the way to communicate to the world that everything can be achieved in life!