Anyone who knows me, knows I'm a Christian. Not just a "goes to Church" Christian, but a firm believer. Completely, 100%, absolutely in love with Jesus.
But that's not how it always was. What a lot of people don't know is that I went through a time where I wanted to be, tried to be, an atheist. That didn't work out. Logically, atheism makes no sense. There are a lot of reasons for it, but the primary one that I just couldn't accept was that atheism (which literally means "no god") required me to believe that evolution (macro-evolution, or the belief in evolution from one specie to a completely different specie) was absolutely true.
The problem inherent in that belief is that it makes absolutely no logical sense. I could explain that, but that would require an extremely long tangent and I don't feel like going through that one right now. Don't worry, you'll see it in another blog eventually.
Anyway, the fact that I found evolution to fail even as a theoretical concept meant that I was forced to believe in the existence of a god. But it didn't help me decide which one. After all, there are 5 major religions, another 35 less major religions, dozens, if not hundreds, of minor religions, and countless cults all represented just in the United States. Undoubtedly there are many more around the world. Each religion has a different deity, in some cases multiple deities. Some religions have deities that are remarkably similar, while others have deities that bear no resemblance to the deity of any other religion.
I made a study of many of those religions in an attempt to find one that seemed to be true. Truth, or the search for it, has been the absolute center of my existence for the past 30 years. I believed that one of these religions had to contain the truth I was looking for.
I studied Islam, Judaism, Mormonism (which is considered a denomination of Christianity by many, but study of the religious texts show it to be manifestly different), Christianity (the religion I was raised in), Hinduism and Buddhism. I looked into, but did not study as deeply, Baha'i, Vodun (more commonly called Voodoo), Wicca, and a handful of others.
I had been told by many that "all roads lead to heaven." Basically, they told me that all religions actually believed in the same god, and that all religious paths were equally valid. I accepted that for about a week. That was all the time it took for me to realize the inherent ludicrousness of such a belief. Islam and Wicca, Voodoo and Christianity, Shinto Buddhism and Mormonism, any combination of religions you may choose to study, bear no more than superficial similarities. They all make claims of absolute truth.
What such a claim means is that no other belief system can have any truth to it. Each religion excludes the possibility of another religion gaining you any eternal rewards.
For example: Islam believes that you will come to a day when your deeds will be weighed against you. If the good deeds outweigh the bad, you get into paradise. If the bad deeds outweigh the good, you go to hell. But the Hindu belief is that there is no heaven or hell. You get reincarnated.
Some religions believe in heaven and hell, others believe in only heaven, still others (such as Hinduism) believe in neither. Obviously they can't all be true.
So I had reached a dilemma. One of them had to be true, and the others had to be false. But which was true and which wasn't?
I started actively comparing them and realized something fascinating- all but one religion depended entirely on man. Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Wicca, countless others- they all had that one thing in common. Any rewards were earned by what the follower did. Any punishments were also earned by what you did. (The true belief in Karma isn't just "what goes around comes around." In a nutshell, it's a points system. The more good you do, the better your karma. Any bad thing you do subtracts from that karma. If you end your life with a karmaic "debt," your next incarnation inherits that debt and must work it off before building it's own karmaic total. And the status, even the specie, of your next incarnation is determined by your karmaic total at the end of your current incarnation."
The single religion that didn't follow that pattern was Christianity. I had been raised into that religion, but had never actually studied it before. I found the differences striking. This religion said that rewards and punishments were not earned by what you did, but were awarded based on your acceptance of the work that God had done.
By itself, that didn't convince me. Although it was a striking difference, it was not proof that there was any truth to it.
What followed that discovery will be discussed in a later blog, since I don't want to get onto a tangent that takes me even further from the primary point of this one. Suffice it to say, that what followed convinced me of the absolute truth of Christianity.
Now, to get to the primary point of this blog, and the reason I gave it the title (which some of my friends, who have seen me in debates, will find ironic) I did. I Don't Have To Be Right.
It's an amazing statement, profound in its simplicity. The truth is that I, as a Christian, don't have to be right about what I believe. But everyone who believes anything else does.
As a Christian, I try my best to live my life in accordance with my beliefs. If you study the Bible, you find that the basic beliefs of Christianity lead to a life filled with good. It tells us to give to those in need, to take care of those who are widowed, orphaned, or imprisoned. Nothing Christianity asks of its believers is something that would go onto the negative side of the karmaic ledger.
Which means, I win either way. If (and I'm only using that word for the sake of argument here, not in doubt of my beliefs at all) Christianity is right, I get into heaven. If Christianity is wrong, I either still get into heaven since the ledger will show more good than bad, or my next incarnation will get off with no karmaic debt to work off, or I simply die. Like I said, it's a win-win situation for me.
On the other hand, anyone who believes Christianity to be false has no choice but to be correct. Because, if they're wrong, their future holds only hell.
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