Because the Butterfly

If you were to ask me why I believe I would counter with a question of my own. Have you ever seen a butterfly in flight? Of course you have. Everybody has. But have you ever genuinely watched? I watched a butterfly flit and flutter across a parking lot one afternoon and it was clear to me that God was real. Here’s a creature that weighs less than a tissue and aerodynamically has no right to stay aloft. Yet as the breeze blows to and fro the butterfly is unaffected. It is here and it wants to go there. And it does it.

Why do I believe? Because I’ve seen a butterfly, impervious to the breeze, go where it wishes. I believe because I have met people who should be dead.  I believe because everyday around this earth another life begins in another womb. I believe because every day babies are born. I believe because if the earth was slightly off access, if the sun was just a little farther away or closer, if the moon wasn’t in lockstep, nothing would be living on this sphere. I believe because an airplane can stay aloft. I believe because a single kernel of corn planted today will provide enough to plant an entire field next season.

Nietzsche once said, “I think therefore I am,” in order to prove his own existence. I would posit that, “I am, therefore God exists.” Is that a simplification? Of course. Could somebody smarter than me who believes differently pick that argument apart? Sure. Could somebody smarter than that person, who agrees with me pick apart their argument? Yep. It can go on like that ad nauseam. But the fact that I am here, alive, breathing, tells me that God exists.

Why do I believe? Because a faith that started thousands of years ago with a man claiming deity continues to thrive today. Its founder died and was witnessed alive 3 days later… a fact that would be easily disapproved and should have resulted in a fringe cult that was snuffed out in no more than a generation at most. Yet 2000 plus years later that faith exists and thrives. Not because it’s a salve for the wounds of the weak minded but because it is, in fact, true. It could not and should not have survived otherwise.

Has this faith been lived out through history as it should? Of course not, but that’s the exact reason I believe. It’s a faith that has not done what it should have yet it still is alive and doing some good in a broken world.

I believe that God is real for many reasons. I believe because I am, to paraphrase the philosopher. I believe because today a butterfly will ignore the physical world around it and fly from one blossom to the next.