The Reason People Don't Believe

I'm convinced everybody wants to believe in God. Of course, it really does not take much convincing. Who wouldn't want there to be a loving, merciful God who lets you live forever in a perfect and wonderful place? When it comes to someone who is either atheist or agnostic, the reason for the unbelief is not because they don’t want God to exist.

Many will argue the reason they do not believe is because of all of the problems in our world. The evil, hate, war, suffering; you name it. And while this could be considered a legitimate argument to a degree, for many (but certainly not all) the reasoning ends there. Yes there is evil, hate, war, and suffering, but why does that equate to God not existing. If God loves us, he wouldn't allow us to suffer; but why is that so? Evil in its own right does not mean God cannot exist; it is simply a shallow argument that looks good on the surface. Unfortunately, many do not make the effort to discover why things such as evil do not erase God's existence. So, why?

Because we don't want to believe in God.

This is strictly my educated opinion, but one that I find to carry much weight. I would be willing to argue that the majority of time, either consciously or unconsciously, people do not want to believe in God because they do not want to change their lifestyle. We so often think of God in terms of rules. No sex, alcohol, drugs; and do we really have to take the time to serve other people?

And this often comes from a skewed view of who God is. God is not out to ruin our fun and to make us live boring lives; in all actuality, it is quite the opposite! But we think that we know best, and we do not want to change our self-pleasing lifestyle, and that is why so many won't believe. It's not that they don't want to, they just don't want to change how they are living.

But it really goes back to our faulty view of God. When we think God, we think anti-sex, anti-alcohol, anti-fun, and anti-freedom. We forget that God actually created all of these things. Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding, and yes it was real wine. It isn't that God does not want us to enjoy these things, he just wants us to enjoy them in the proper context because that makes them even more enjoyable. We think we are free without God, when really we are slaves to our "freedoms" of porn, sex, and alcohol. When it comes to God, we like the whole heaven idea, but not the idea of believing in a God and putting others before ourselves. And we certainly do not believe in hell, because that just seems to be to "mean" and intolerant for our culture. So we simply dismiss the idea of God, not because we don't want to believe, but because we don’t want to change how we are living.