If You’re Looking for God, You’re not Crazy

I am amazed at the number of people I meet who find themselves actually surprised by their own level of spiritual curiosity. Their reasons are varied, but the need for the search is nonetheless the same.

There’s the woman who just went through a painful divorce, and she’s wondering if she can ever trust and love again.

There’s the Fabio look-alike who does construction for a living. Women are lined up to get an evening with this guy, and yet he’s spending most of his time these days thinking about the possible reality of God.

There’s the successful trial lawyer, a self-described “recovering Catholic,” who is having strange urges to give church another try.

There’s the CEO who is coming to the terrifying realization that his money and expensive toys aren’t enough. He’s still hungry for more, something…spiritual.

There’s the irreligious parent who is just trying to stay one step ahead of her child’s questions about God.

There’s the husband and father who has experienced yet another massive moral failure. He’s beginning to wonder if he might not need some outside, spiritual input.

There’s the bright, highly educated, scientifically minded grad student. She has always found evolution to offer satisfactory explanations for her existence. Now, however, she’s finding that some of her previously accepted theories don’t really answer life’s more pressing questions.

And there are the grieving husband and wife, whose sudden and tragic loss of their child has left them emotionally breathless. As mad as they are at God, they have found themselves looking for him, hoping to find some sort of meaning in their child’s apparently senseless death.

Each of these real people is a summit seeker.

Can you relate to any of them? Are you somehow a reluctant but still determined seeker? Are you surprised that you’re reading a book about spiritual matters? Well, don’t be too concerned about your lack of intelligence or some inherent weakness on your part.

To be spiritual is actually quite normal. We are instinctively a spiritually inclined people. We seem to find it most natural to believe in something. There’s probably good reason for that.

There is the very great possibility that someone exists beyond you who is in fact wooing you.

In light of that possibility, I’d like to offer you a rather wild proposition. Now, given that we live in a culture that claims life is some big accident or that we were actually brought to earth by aliens, I don’t feel so bad asking you to consider a claim that seems on the surface to be rather outrageous.

So here it goes: I’d like you to consider the possibility that the answers to our most pressing questions can be found in the life, teachings and, strangely enough, the death of one man who lived over two thousand years ago. I’m inviting you to at least consider the possibility that Jesus of Nazareth, the humble Jewish carpenter and unlikely founder of the Christian faith, may indeed have been on to something when he said he was God’s Son.

–From A Man Who Told Us the Truth