An alternative VISION to the one of the TYRANTS PART 1

Beliefs matter. And beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality matter in a fundamental way.

When I found my faith in God it changed everything for me. I still have a lot of things to figure out when it comes to it. And there has been lots of struggles over the years. Struggles with behaviors and habits that I didn’t want to recognize as problematic. But I can confidently say that I would be in a very different place in my life if I hadn’t found my faith. 

At the core of this was the shift of going from viewing life as meaningless, to viewing life as permeated with meaning. 

In a sense, our beliefs truly create our reality. Because we act on our beliefs and our actions create our reality, both on an individual and a collective level. 

Right now many consider us a burden on the planet. We often hear that there are too many people. Many consider humanity a problem that has to be solved. Some even go so far that they think that it would be better if humanity was wiped from the planet. 

I think that such conclusions are easy to come to, when you see a world devoid of an ultimate meaning. And it’s obvious why you would dismiss the idea of such a meaning. People look at all expressions of religion spirituality and say: “where is the evidence?” But slapping the label “belief without evidence” on all religion and spirituality, and thereby dismissing it, is beyond narrow minded. I will get back to why I believe this to be the case in a moment. So please bear with me.

Now, what if a higher meaning is what our future is dependent on? I keep coming back to this over and over again: It’s either freedom in God or some sort of tyranny. On a personal level, we can freely choose to live as God intends, or we will be ruled by our instincts and impulses. And on a collective level we can either put our trust in those that claim that we need stricter regulations to save the planet. Those that say that we need to be monitored, manipulated, taxed and forced into compliance. Or we can put our trust in God. In that he will not let us perish from problems that seem to require unacceptable solutions. Solutions that may not work anyway, I might add. Because we have never been very good at predicting what our measures lead to.

When we have faith in a higher meaning and a life after this one, our perspective shifts. We no longer need to take what we can during our brief, meaningless existence. Because we have something in our lives that is infinitely more important than the sensory gratifications that this short life has to offer.

Said hunt for kicks and empty sensory gratifications was more or less my life, up until I was twenty-three, which was the time when I embraced faith. You may think that I could have been a decent person anyway. Because quite frankly, I wasn’t. What I'm trying to do here, is not to excuse bad behavior. What I want is to show you how my beliefs affected my approach to life.

Now, I think that the kind of nihilistic lens that I viewed life through is much more common than people realize. It’s just that most people don’t spell it out for themselves and live out its consequences as much as I did. Because I was quite clear about my views and their consequences for how I chose to live my life. 

The impulse is still there though, even in many that don’t consciously embrace nihilism as a philosophy. And it guides their actions and allegiances. 

As for finding meaning in religion and spirituality, I understand the whole idea of that the burden of proof falls on the shoulders of the one that claims something. But isn’t that the world is only what we can perceive with our five senses also such a claim that needs to be proven? And isn’t the testimony of countless people throughout the ages, that swear that something higher exists, worth anything in this context? Since subjective experience is the foundation of our being in this world, can we really dismiss it? 

Admittedly, the difficult thing with subjective experience, is that unless it can be tested somehow we only have people’s words. On the other hand, testimonies are used as evidence in trials all the time.

In this case, the testimonies may not point clearly towards one particular view or interpretation of a reality beyond our physical. But they do point to the fact that there is such a reality. 

You may even partially see this blog as a testimony of this kind. Because since I met my wife almost five years ago, we have had some really strange experiences together, that have confirmed the faith that I’ve been carrying for seventeen years now. 

This is the crux of the matter. Today me and my wife and many others know that there is a spiritual side to reality. We know that God exists, even if we sometimes have a hard time putting our trust in God, at times when life’s difficulties seem insurmountable. Because of the nature of our existence, there is no way of proving that God or this spiritual reality exist. But I know. My wife knows. Many other people know. Contless other people throughout history have known. Because our experiences tell us this, in no uncertain terms.

Throughout this text, I think that I have made a pretty strong case for the idea that the belief in God changes how we act in the world. Because our priorities ought to change when our beliefs change. Fundamentally it’s the difference between a perspective of finitude and meaninglessness, contra one of infinity and meaningfulness. And ultimately it’s a choice about what to put our faith in. 

To PART 2.