For instance, during the above aforementioned difficult weekend (I discovered the unpleasantness of the self-employment tax, and then got thrown out of my busking spot in Central Park by police as they came and cleared all of the buskers out as I was trying to make the money to pay my taxes), I had a bit of a freak-out. Instead of going home, buying a bottle of something or other and drowning my sorrows in video games, I called up a friend, and we got together and hung out the rest of the day. All in all a much healthier way of dealing with life's issues than going off into fantasy land and pretending they don't exist. Hopefully I have the willpower to continue in this mindset even after the theological motivation moves on.
Recently, I had an experience that I would say made me feel even more confirmed than ever in my newfound faith. I won't go into too many details, but let's just say I got hired to play with a string quartet at a party that turned out to be much more wild than I had bargained for, and came face to face with the obvious brokenness of New Yorkers who work incredibly hard all week waiting for the time when they can unwind with sex and drugs. It's a funny thing, but I find that perhaps the greatest sign that "right" exists in the universe is when "wrong" so readily rears its ugly head. I think people have the problem of evil backwards: evil is not a sign that God cannot exist, it is in fact a sign that He MUST exist, because we know evil when we see it. Obviously many (probably all of us) have been blinded to various forms of it, depending on who we are, but we all (or at least the vast, vast majority of us) at least see some of it for what it is. The simple reality is that the existence of "wrongness" implies an ultimate standard, and a standard implies God (a moral standard cannot exist without a reasoning consciousness). Perhaps an odd way of looking at it, I'll admit, but even back when I was reasoning through the problem of faith, I always found the concept of evil to be one of the biggest logical sticking points for me as a nonbeliever. For, without God, how can I say that evil is anything more than a point of view? And yet my inner being so utterly resisted that notion, it was just impossible to accept, even then.
Now, I see much more wrongness in the world than I did when I was an atheist. And yet, amazingly, I see so much more that is right with the world as well. It seems that all good things in the world come from God, and yet almost all of them can be abused by our free will. So now when I eat an amazing meal, or take a sip of a good scotch, I realize that the pleasures these engender are tiny facets of the divine nature - God delights in useless things, things that serve to increase our enjoyment of creation without providing any sort of strictly utilitarian outcomes (obviously, when I eat I become full and replenish my body's energy, and yet there is no utilitarian principle in the enjoyment of food). And yet, were I to eat way too much (or at least, to do so on a regular basis) I risk losing good health, and of course losing much of the enjoyment in eating (any addict will tell you how the pleasure taken in a thing decreases as the simple addiction to it increases. Satisfying an overpowering urge for something doesn't equate to pleasure). To say the least, I find the simple idea that all good things come from God to be heartening, and a necessary counterweight to keep one from being brought down by all the ways in which His gifts have been abused.
Just some things I've been thinking about lately.
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