The Encounter*

Since I am a priest, people will come up to me and say they are not Christians because they do not believe in God.  OK.  I may suggest to them, at my peril, that being Christian has nothing to do with a mental believing in God.  The mind is not where belief begins nor where it has much energy to right action.  I know many a person who says they believe, but they are quite self-focused and judgmental. No, for me, belief begins with an encounter.  It is the encounter with an event, and that event is between a person and whatever you want to call God.  Bill W, the co-founder of AA had an encounter.  Before that he may have had some mild intellectual belief in the existence of some Force or Power, but it had no influence on a change in his behavior for the better.  I see people act in ways that are very loving, sacrificing of time, forgiving, compassion, kindness, but say they do not believe in god.  They have had the encounter.  It is not a mental construct.  God is Love.  It is a verb, not a noun.