If you want to contribute to this series and share your story, please email me at pastorjosephyoo(@)gmail(.)com, without the parentheses. 

Why Do I Believe? The answer now for me is because I choose to believe that the Bible is true. Granted, the caveat to the previous statement is that the best way to interpret the Bible is to read it in its original language (Greek/Hebrew), and that understanding is revealed/discovered to us when God chooses to. Which would mean that I have near zero understanding of the Word compared to others, and would still mean that I would be “blindly” following the Christian Faith (Please remember the previous sentence).

Looking back at the last 2 decades of my life, I have definitely been believing in Christianity blindly. From the day I was born I have been indoctrinated, taught, and programmed to believe that this whole God/Jesus/Spirit thing was real. It wasn’t till I was 12 that I chose to believe that the gig was real. Even then, my faith was based on… faith.

For 21 years I believed in something based on feeling and emotion. Both attributes that I think are powerful gifts from God, but due to our human nature they float around like a feather in the wind. For that reason I found myself disliking revivals and the emotional alter calls to come forward to receive prayer/salvation (even if they were very necessary and/or genuine).

During this phase of my life I believed– and still believe– that I was a sinner. Jesus, who is part of the Godhead, died for me and therefore, I am saved.

Frankly, that is all you need to be saved.

However the answer “Jesus died for my sins, and therefore I am saved” wasn’t enough of an answer for me as I try to answer the question “why do I believe?”.

While I believe that logic and reason are futile in the grand scheme of things, they are the things that solidified my faith.

I previously grounded my faith on emotion alone which was unstable, at best.

But I have discovered that my faith is stronger when rooted in the Bible.

I also believe that God gave us reason, logic, and intellect to be partnered with emotion in our relationship with Him. We are to use both our mind and our hearts in our faith.

I choose to believe in God because I fully believe with the core message of the Bible.

Now I have written in the first section to remember the sentence “Which would mean that I have near zero understanding of the Word compared to others, and would still mean that I would be “blindly” following the Christian Faith”.

I am not as educated as others and I have no grasp on Hebrew or Greek.

I also believe that not everything in the Bible makes sense and there exists a fallacy in my statements about faith rooted in the Word.

However, I’m inclined to believe that science requires “faith” as does religion.

Nowadays, we believe that matter can be in two places at once; time is not constant; Newton physics turned out to only to be approximations; Pluto went from being a planet to not.

We are still discovering things in the scientific world and rely on theories until they are proven.

I believe that there are still (new) things that are being revealed and discovered about God. And the things that have been revealed already through the Bible, for me, it makes sense to me. I admit that I have not analyzed or cross checked every single line and word in the Bible. But I also haven’t done that with other areas in my life either.

So there is my reason of why I believe what I believe. It isn’t as inspiring, nor is it dramatic. It’s just a guy that reasoned that God active in this world makes much more sense than God not existing.

 

Jin Yoo went to Moanalua High School in Hawaii. His family relocated to El Paso, TX where he attended college. He currently finds himself back in the Aloha State serving in the Army.