Statement of Faith

At some point, any candidate for President will be required to talk about his personal relationship with God.  With this in mind, I am going to talk about mine today.

I should start out by acknowledging that religion... faith... requires some level of cognitive dissonance.  For example, the Bible says that the Earth is what... 6000-odd years old?  But science says that the world has been around for billions of years.  I will freely concede that, as a believer in God, I suffer from this cognitive dissonance from time to time.

Regarding the separation of Church and State... I should start off by saying that the Constitution says nothing about the Separation of Church and State.  The Constitution says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.  Based on my understanding, Thomas Jefferson used the phrase "separation of church and state" to express his interpretation of the spirit of the Constitution's text.  With that said though, I don't specifically believe that the framers desired to abolish any reference to religion from the government.  In fact, the Declaration of Independence refers to God, and my understanding is that many of the Constitution's framers were religious men.  The idea was to make sure that the American government didn't create an official religion, and/or crush non-officially sanctioned religions... like what many Muslim countries are doing today.  Technically speaking, abolishing any reference to religion is promoting Atheism, which is the belief (faith -- because there's no proof) that God doesn't exist.

It should be apparent to you by now that I am a Christian.  I was raised Southern Baptist, and currently attend a Wesleyan Church on a regular basis.  I believe in God, but I am not 100% convinced that the only way to Heaven is through Christ.  In fact, I must concede that I occasionally have doubts of God's existence.  I have felt God's presence, but I am also rational enough to wonder if what i felt was truly God's presence, or if was simply serotonin or some other chemical being released in my brain at a specific moment.  But then again, these doubts most frequently occur when life is good.  When things go wrong, that's when I lean on God most, and, not surprisingly, when He's most likely to reveal His presence.

Part of my struggle with God is His condemnation of homosexuality, which I don't consider a choice, and his absolute silence on slavery, which I find morally reprehensible.  These are two of many questions I have for God... questions that I plan to ask when I finally meet Him.  Since I have questions and doubts, I believe that it would be ridiculous of me to condemn others who believe differently than I do.  Whether my fellow man is Atheist, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, or whatever, faith is a deeply personal thing.  In fact, I believe that it's so personal that America genuinely has no right to demand a statement of faith from their presidential candidates.  With that said though, I am willing to discuss my faith openly in connection with my candidacy, because I am willing to discuss my faith openly in general.