Now that you have the fear of God in you...

I am a pretty liberal gal, and it is popular these days for liberal people to eschew faith as a relic of a superstitious past. I, however, retain my belief in God, Jesus, and, as imperfect as it can be because people are running it, the Church. Why?

There are many arguments against faith that I find compelling and upon which I contemplate deeply, most notably, that people invented Zeus and Jupiter and all those Sumerian and ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses, so why should my "God" be real while those were fake? People needed an explanation for why things happened, they didn't have the benefits of the scientific research that we do today, so they made up what appeared to be plausible explanations for what they didn't understand. Is my God an extension of this?

There are also arguments against faith that I don't find compelling at all. For instance, people have used religion to persecute or alienate others or start wars or whatever other nasty purpose they could find for it, so God must not exist. That neither disproves nor proves the existence of God, that just proves the existence of assholes.

So why, being someone who also believes in science, do I still believe in God?

Aside from some personal experiences I don't feel like going into at this time, The Tridium, Easter, and the early lives of the apostles come closest to bringing logic rather than just a gut feeling into the equation.

Despite some ax-grinders' attempts to disprove Jesus existed at all, there was a dude names Jesus who was crucified. He had some followers and pissed off a lot of powerful people.

It became life-threatening to be or to have been his friend. You'd be killed in a pretty gruesome way if you agreed with the stuff he taught or claimed he was the real deal.

So why do it? I mean, NOW you can bilk people out of millions of dollars and start a mega-church and get a private jet out of the deal. But back then, if you were one of those original people like Peter or Andrew or Mary Magdalene, why stick to your story? Why not go on the Judeo-Roman version of the talk show circuit and tell the story of "How you got duped by that fraud, Jesus?" You'd have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by sticking to your story rather than renouncing it.

That's why I have a hard time not dismissing such a story that seems so ridiculous on its face.

That being said, I'm not a fundamentalist/literalist when it comes to the Bible. Metaphor as a teaching device, people!