What defines religion? Ask the person next to you; tell them I made you do it. Really, try it. Hope you had a great conversation.
Merriam-Webster says it is "a system of beliefs, principles held together in ardor and faith." In a little bit, I tell you how I came to the conclusion of a single intelligent creator. But here's the disclaimer, anything you read here, I am completely responsible for and firmly believe it to be true, but you'd be a sucker for taking my word at face value.
Why? Because the faith I have will not save us. As a matter of fact, none of these personal accounts of faith to Jesus you have in your hand will save you. You'll probably read about how Jesus changed some of the players' lives. Maybe some of them were naughty before, while others were already ethical upstanding people. But the key factor is that Jesus does this, NO ONE else can, not even yourself. Many have a hard time eating this truth because it can't be seen. And at times, looking to Christians as examples is a serious let down. Trust me, I am let down by others just as much as I am a part of it. People want absolute positive fact before believing in God. And that is ANOTHER reason why we cannot count on each other's examples as the defining source to our beliefs. If you look ONLY to others for proof of existence, it may be time to evaluate the decision making process. Yet at the same time, the events that transpired in the players' lives are important enough that they feel the need to tell you, because it would be way too selfish and immoral (of all things) to keep Jesus to ourselves. We are proclaiming God's Truth, not our own, not Cornerstone's, not organized religion's, nor any other church's. Ultimately the nature of truth will expose what is right and wrong. It wouldn't be if it wasn't true! So be careful for those who say every religion is plausible because everyone's beliefs are valid. Valid maybe, true no. If everyone was right, no one would ever be wrong.
Believe it or not, I came to faith through my non-Christian parents! We never had too much, but there was a lot of love in the house. They credit their hard work to wanting to create a better lifestyle for my sister and myself. My father ran a store in
Being Asian and all, I took a lot of math and science courses (though barely getting by most of the time!). Through physics, biology and math, it dawned on me that we live in a very specific world, where very specific variables need to exist for us to exist. Did this all happen by chance? A stat class showed me an incredibly ludicrous probability where amino acids would form into the proteins that we're composed of. All at the same time I started to attend church and learn of a Jesus character that was selfless to the very end of his life all out of obedience to his father, God. At that point, seeing my parents' great sacrifice to spend their lives working so hard in combination with learning about Jesus, I could not see it any other way, God was and is the intelligent creator.
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