u/Horror-Barber-3817

Hello everyone! I am really into reading and writing and want to know if there are any groups in town for this. I am especially looking for something which may have more younger people, as I am a college student myself.

*Sequel to my earlier post. This is an actual apologetic, even though I still rely on faith at the end of the day. Here is the prequel if you want it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChristianApologetics/comments/1sxrz4c/a_dialogue_between_the_doubter_and_believer/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button*

If you have been reading this journal chronologically, you have certainly heard quite a lot about the heart by now. And although February has been so much more peaceful and pleasant than the month preceding it, I am sadly discovering that this philosophy of relying on my heart to believe isn’t as perfect in practice as it is in theory. For every man suffers from an occasional lack of courage, a temporary weakness of spirit. And in those moments, if one happens to be depending on spirit alone, he leaves the door unlocked to his faith so that the Devil may enter and ravage it. Furthermore, if this man is also aware of his own psychology and what he is subconsciously doing by putting faith over reason, he so clearly advertises to the Devil where lies its weakness. Although he may recover his joy and faith once he recovers his spirit and those good dispositions of his heart, it certainly can not be ideal to be so easily swayed with daily vicissitudes of feeling and thus enjoy only half of the day in God’s embrace.
So the ideal faith does, in some respect, rely on the arguments of the head as well. Because even though the heart may be enough for salvation, or meaning, it isn’t enough for peace of mind. And since we have so extensively explored the arguments of the heart in this journal, justifying the existence of the Christian God in the more poetic sense, it only seems right to take some time to see what arguments the head has to offer. That is what this essay seeks to accomplish. While reading, keep in mind that because Theism is the prerequisite to Christianity, some (or even most) of the following arguments more generally seek to justify the existence of a Creator, while others more exclusively attempt to justify His Christian nature.

I believe in the Christian God on account of the following arguments of logic: 

1. That the concept of existence is so incomprehensible to the human mind that it characterizes unreasonable faith with a reasonable nature. What is existence? Seriously. Look around. Actually look around you. Think about your body and your mind. What is any of this!? The more one thinks about it, the more they discover that the question is of such a nature that it cannot be truly grasped. How can we explain something that is everything? Especially if we are inside of it! But is there even an outside? Agh, see what I mean! It confounds me to even write about it! This is where human reason breaks down. How do you explain existence without owning that it was created by God? The only other explanation is that existence simply is. That its nature can only be explained in a higher dimension if you will, which lies beyond human conception. But the universe is really, really, strange. There are so many mysteries. What is dark matter? Could it be God, or the angels? What is gravity? Or any of the four fundamental forces, for that matter? What is dark energy and why is the universe expanding? What happens if one were to reach the limit? Is there a limit? What is a black hole? Why do there exist three spatial dimensions where we may travel each way, but one temporal one where we can only move one way, not by our own will or at our own pace but at an arbitrary rate designated by the universe, journeying into forms which, unlike the other dimensions, are not known until reached and depend on the nature of other parts of that dimension, and furthermore, that if we could go the other way, we would eventually hit a boundary, and moreover, that this boundary perfectly coincides with the vertex of the other three dimensions? In this way could we picture God as a Being existing in a higher dimension? If the universe and matter began at a single point, even if that point was in a relative sense, as suggested, why is it not homogenous? Speaking of matter, what are atoms? What are quarks?  It is true that we cannot label existence as “intelligently designed” because there exists nothing relative to it by which we may call it intelligent. It is all that we know. But we do know that if any of it was different, if any of the questions above or the universal constants like the value of gravity were altered slightly, human life would not exist. Is it objectively intelligent? Perhaps. Is it intelligent in the sense it was perfectly designed for humanity? Yes.  Now if physics and chemistry are of a nature so auspicious to us, with qualities so flawless, that they would eventually lead to our existence, an existence which believes naturally in a Creator, does that not give countenance to the idea that we are but another aspect of its perfection? If everything seems to be made for us, why do we assume “us” is wrong? The universe may not be “intelligently designed” in the objective sense, but if it was constructed so flawlessly that it would culminate in our existence and belief in God, then in a way, to deny this belief is to deny not only the accuracy of biology, but of chemistry and physics too!
2. That the ability for simply material things like atoms to feel pain and joy is also incomprehensible. You can talk about the neurons and the signals all you want, it doesn’t explain how pain actually hurts. If we are but atoms, then what’s stopping ourselves from just burning people alive for the hell of it? They’re just some molecules, what does it matter if those molecules are arranged a slightly different way for a few minutes while they burn? Evolution can fully explain the outward aspect of pain and joy as advantageous traits, but it cannot explain the sensation. Even if it someday can, it will only be able to do so materially; it will never be able to bridge the gap between why the physical processes, like synapses, actually hurt, even if more research further enlightens the process. Therefore, there is reason in assuming the sensation comes from God.
3. That Jesus Christ is a person so peculiarly remarkable, it makes sense that He could be God. If Christ was only man, He was the most remarkable man to ever have lived and it’s not close. If you were in His shoes, could you have pulled it all off? Here's what you would have to do:
   1. Live a sinless life. For if you are caught sinning, the act’s up.
   2. Fulfill many Old Testament prophecies with extreme precision.
   3. Form teachings and ~40 different allegories and parables which are among the best to ever be spoken. Simply become the greatest moral philosopher to ever have lived.
   4. Come up with the perfect and logical endpoint to Judaism all on your own, by the opening of the faith to the Gentiles, the dissolving of the Old Covenant Law, and the ultimate act of God’s humility and love, to come down to Earth as a lowly human and sacrifice Himself for the world’s salvation.
   5.  Be born at a time directly following the major prophets and a gap in scripture, and at a time which would allow your church to disseminate across the largest empire to ever exist, exactly at its height, and perfectly coinciding such that, once it has gradually spread throughout and become the state religion, that empire shortly collapses into all the different nations.
   6. Be willing to die an excruciating death.
   7. Be convincing enough in your words, image, and impression that you somehow convince everyone around you that you are God, a concept of the greatest possible blasphemy and personal risk for those believing it. Moreover, convince them that you walked on water, turned water to wine, predicted your own death, came back to life, etc. Have them so thoroughly convinced that they suffer terrible deaths rather than renouncing you. Furthermore, ensure that these faithful disciples of yours are not seen as crazy or cultist, lest everyone else just ignores them. And make sure they are able to write works so flawlessly coherent to Christianity, like John’s Revelation and Peter’s letters.
   8. Do all this in such a fashion so fortuitously heroic that some of it must be out of your control. For example, Judas’s betrayal is such a fitting aspect of the story, but seemingly a chance one. Being persecuted, in like regard to the Old Testament prophets, and being killed by your own religious leaders and elders, is of a nature so perfectly constructed and poetic that it seems to me as if it cannot have been organized unless by God
   9. Once dead, have all this spread across the entire world until it reaches every corner, unlike any other religion.
4. That the prophecies in Daniel align with the timing of Christ’s coming. Several of Daniel’s prophecies about the four empires, and the 70 ‘weeks’, coincide with Christ’s coming.
5. That Christianity is the perfect mental framework. If Christianity is man’s construction, it is the greatest thing he has ever produced. Its belief system keeps the user more thoroughly satisfied with life and full of morality than any other which has been set forth. It seems as if the human mind and the Christian faith were two puzzle pieces which were meant to be connected together. Not only in man’s day to day life, but in his perception of logic and harmony as well. For the religion is so harmonious to the human mind in its consistency across thousands of years of writing, the sophistication and beauty of both its overarching story and each intermediary one which composes it, its moral philosophy, its portrayal of Satan’s fall and the Garden of Eden being of such a depth that only the most ingenious mind could have produced them on their own, all of which was generated from no prior example or ‘decent’ religion to improve upon, but instead was the first of its kind.
6. That we are morally inclined to believe in Christ. If we believe in a Creator who formed the universe with intelligence so that everything lined up that human morality may come into existence, a morality that attracts us to such a Creator, we can then assume this morality is the tool by which we may seek Him out. And no other religion appears more beautiful to that God-given sense of morality than that of Christ.
7. That the obscurity of evidence for God, the lack of indubitable proof, the historical imperfections of some books of the Bible, construct an ideal filter for good. If God is trying to filter the good from the bad, to see which man is fit for the next life, what method is more picturesque than to make yourself known enough that everybody may have the opportunity to consider you, but obscure enough that only those with such an aptitude for love may overcome the obstacles to belief? How beautiful and fitting is it, according to our own moral senses, that the Creator and Judge would select those who love Him so much that they do not need evidence to believe! The nature of such a filter is so genius and wonderful that I cannot help but think of it as evidence for God. If not hard evidence, it certainly soothes those who lament the absence of absolute proof which is so commonly used to argue against Him.
8. That the vast majority of people throughout history have believed in God. The modern atheistic, contra-nature trend is but a blip in the human story. One can interpret the fact that most people believed simply as the result of human nature, and therefore not to be considered in the pursuit of universal truth. But let us not forget man was endowed with reason as well as instinct, including those in the past, and that each of these people who had faith must have had some logic for doing so. It is true that just because a majority exists, it does not always mean they are right. But surely somewhere in those billions of minds which have chosen to believe, there exists some justification or reasoning, which in your limited time, exposure, and faculties, you have failed to conceive or encounter on your own. That if we weren’t living in such a strange, unnatural time, you would encounter in day to day life a more normal distribution of human perspectives which would favor religion more so than today and certainly have some influence on you, who, being human, is not immune to his surroundings. Remember that some of the greatest wisdom has concluded in the existence of a God. If you are a believer, you enjoy the good company of Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Newton, Jefferson, Madison, Da Vinci, Einstein, Jesus, and others.
9. That, continuing that line of logic, your beliefs are fallible and cannot be trusted even in their own certainty even if they conclude God does not exist. Everybody’s been wrong before. How often has our teenage logic convinced us we were so right in rebelling against our parents but we later realized that logic, or understanding, was flawed? Is atheism any different? Surely we no longer espouse the beliefs we had as children, because we have matured and grown more intelligent. But how can we be so sure there exists no higher level of maturity or enlightenment, by which our certainties may be changed? How do we know it isn’t all relative? Just as an ant cannot comprehend humans, could it not be possible that we cannot comprehend God? Faith doesn’t necessarily posit certainty, but atheism does and so it is vulnerable in this way. To the atheist I say: “the stakes are simply too high in the realm of religion for you to allow obstinacy and arrogance in your own logic to chain you, lest they’ve chained you away from the truth.”
10. That the classic atheistic arguments are weak and do not disprove God. The truth is that the only weapon the atheist can wield are his seeds of doubt; the negative to your beliefs. His logical arguments which deal with fundamental truth, rather than suggesting you could simply be wrong, at least in my opinion, are quite weak. For example, evolution does not disprove God, or Christianity. God clearly foretold evolution, guided it, or created the universe in such an arrangement that evolution would result in us. For how ridiculous would it look for God to expound the science of evolution in Genesis instead of just telling us He made us? The other popular argument about the existence of evil in the world is so clearly absurd in my eyes, that it is almost not worth acknowledging. Could it be because we live in a fallen world? Or because this is a test, a simulation if you will, by which certain parameters must be set so that our morality may be on full display? Or because this life is nothing compared to an eternal one which may follow?

Conclusion 
I am beginning to accept that I may never enjoy that blissful certainty in God which I once had. I truly hope I find it again, but alas, I continue to rely on my heart. These arguments have helped ease its labor, but it labors on nonetheless. Peculiarly, that faith in its new form of uncertainty feels more beautiful and powerful than ever. I now love Christ more than I ever have, so much so that no evidence against His legitimacy would turn me away from Him, and that even if all twelve of these arguments were proven faulty, that they were serving as mere sophistry to justify a predisposition, I would still prefer death to the renouncing of that love and faith. And for now, this finally satisfies me. After months of struggling, I finally feel some peace. I try not to think obsessively about the afterlife, but instead I focus on my love for God and enjoy the relationship in its present form on Earth. I am convinced that while the merit of these arguments may be substantial, an obsession over them as a means to constantly justify your faith is nothing short of destructive. They are nice to think about here and there, but the realm of the head can be so inescapable that it isn’t worth lingering there too long, lest doubt or insanity find a way in. So ultimately, the heart is still where I put my faith. The process of figuring this out is why I wrote 10 pages of apologetic arguments only to say at the end that they didn’t matter and I’d still believe if they were wrong. And it makes sense. Did not Jesus, in His gospel, compare the ideal spirit of belief to the credulity and innocence of children? I heard recently from a very wise man that God’s nature is like that of smoke. Something that can be observed, but the moment we try to grasp Him, we feel nothing, in accordance with His inconceivable nature. O, but how I am tempted to grope for it! O, Lord! What a cruel trick you have played on us all! To bind up meaning in the thorns of suffering and to obscure faith within the abyss of doubt! O, why have you made it so? And yet, I wouldn’t change a thing.

*This is a real journal entry I made during a struggle with doubt. It depicts the debate that went on between the doubter and the believer in my head, as they made their arguments for belief. I should mention that this isn't a traditional apologetic, but it's what got me to believe again, so maybe it could be of some use to people here. And I did write an actual apologetical that is a sequel to this, which I will try to link*

Over the course of the last three weeks, I have been utterly tormented by a great spiritual battle. That is, the clash between my belief and my unbelief. From the moment I rise to the moment I fall asleep, I incessantly bear witness to the passionate debates between the doubter and the believer within me. If you have ever seen the cartoons where an angel stands on one shoulder of a man, and the Devil on the other, both trying to persuade him to do a certain thing, it feels exactly like that. And they never stop talking. I have suffered over a hundred hours of their arguments. Both of them want to convince me that they are the one I should listen to. It has all become so agonizing, so tiresome, so draining, that I compare it again to the scene of the angel and the Devil, except this time the two enemies are not only speaking, but also violently tugging at the nearby ear until my head cracks in two under the stress of opposite forces.

But in spite of all of the pain they have inflicted, their debates have afforded me the opportunity to consider nearly every argument conceivable on both sides, so very deeply and extensively. Rather than explaining those arguments through the filter of my own interpretations, I will present the two enemies in their own words, as best as I can with my own memory.

Believer: Did you read my essay about the head and the heart? Where I argued that the head cannot give us an adequate answer on the question of God, while the heart proves His existence?

Doubter: Yes, and I admit to you that it is well-written and thoroughly expounded. But the argument is hollow. You tried to sound smart with fancy words and philosophical constructions, like the head and the heart, but these were artificial complexities crafted to justify your own stubborn predispositions. You clearly had biased intent and were willing to form any philosophy which would make belief in God appear sensible. So you came up with the erroneous idea that whenever logic cannot absolutely prove something, truth becomes subjective and just whatever we feel like it is. And you euphemized it by hiding it behind the moral, virtuous ‘heart’.

Believer: Sir, you are twisting my words. My intention in writing was never to suggest that the heart, or feeling, should completely replace reason. Rather, the heart is there to assist reason; it is there to bridge the gap between possibility, or probability, conceived by reason, to certainty achieved by faith. In my essay, I was merely pointing out your flaw of assuming that reason alone is sufficient!

Doubter: But it is sufficient. The ‘heart’ means nothing. Even the young boy understands that he must ignore its capricious, passionate effusions in order to become a man. If you were to do the same, your reason would be freed from its fetters and inevitably arrive at the only logical conclusion — that there is no God.

Believer: Yes, it is true, man’s intellect tells him that he must reject the caprice of his heart to make good decisions. But does man’s heart, when evoked, not tell him on the contrary to reject the sophistry of his head to do the same? Both mirror each other by impeding the other’s judgement. They are but two sides of the same coin. They are the two innate voices within that constitute our nature and what it means to be human. Why should man allow one of his parts to destroy the other? You speak of fetters, my friend, but by allowing precisely this to happen, you are the one who is bound. Like a scheming lover, your head has cunningly obtained your loyalty by manipulating you into thinking that the other natural voice within, your heart, is an idiot, a savage, and not to be trusted. Like a wicked son of a dying king, your head has depravedly murdered his own brother, your heart, to usurp the throne of your humanity for himself. He has tricked you into thinking that the only thing which could ever possibly matter in this world is objective, universal truth, when you yourself exist as a subjective creature. Through all this treachery, he has bound you in his chains. And you obsequiously obey him. So which one of us is really in fetters? This is why you cannot find God. For man does not meet God when he is sober in the mind. He meets God in the bleakest darkness. When he eats this world, and is so thoroughly disgusted, so utterly revolted by it all, by its gaudiness, by its wicked people, by life itself even, that he spits it out with repugnance and resolves that God is the only thing in it worth a damn. And if God isn’t real, to hell with it all! Or on the contrary, when life is so beautiful, so picturesque, so wonderful, that the prospect of God not existing is inconceivable! The point is that in order for you to believe, you need to do more than reflect intellectually. Some thing, some circumstance, must rip you out of your own abstract consciousness so that you can consider the question from a human perspective.

Doubter: That soliloquy of yours was wonderful and all, but have you considered that it may simply be false? For someone critiquing sophistry, you sure formed a lot of it yourself! All that beautiful speech, the metaphors, the imagery, the call to action; it’s all in vain! You cannot speak things into existence my friend, no matter how hard you try. You construct such lofty, moralizing abstractions, but they have no grounding in reality. Your heart’s desire for something to be true should scarcely convince you that it actually is. For how often has the heart been wrong! Let me share an example. Some time ago, I was in love with a girl. I, like you, listened to my heart and resolved that she was ‘the only thing in this world worth a damn,’ and I, like you, allowed this passion to convince me that she must feel the same way, that her love for me had to exist. Now where did that faith get me? I was mistaken, and so are you.

Believer: Do you regret putting faith in that girl?

Doubter: Ha! Of course!

Believer: You should not regret it, my friend. For isn’t it irrational, even stupid faith that is the very foundation of romance? Isn’t that what makes it beautiful? Isn’t that what makes it ‘worth a damn’ in the first place? Isn’t that living!? Maybe there is a universe where that girl did love you back, and this sober, mechanical perspective of yours would reduce its worth to absolutely nothing. It is the same with God.

Doubter: Perhaps you are right about the girl. But whether I should or should not have put faith in her does not change the fact that her love for me didn’t exist. In the same way, just because you ‘should’ believe in God, just because it is ‘beautiful’ to do so, it doesn’t mean God is actually real. But to seek happiness is the prerogative of the individual, and if delusion in God is how you find it, who am I to stop you? Go ahead! Be the romantic! Just know that it is delusion, not truth.

Believer: What is truth? What is delusion? What do any of these words mean?

All I know is that it is in my nature to love God. That is what I was made to do. Historically, it is what humankind has always been made to do. I was born with a God-shaped hole in my heart, and the filling of it, my faith, is simply my acquiescence to my own humanity!

Now allow me to use your own phrase against you. To seek truth is the prerogative of the individual, and if defying your humanity is how you find it, who am I to stop you?

And you defy this humanity only by the aid of your own arrogance. You satisfy that innate need for God by worshipping your own intellect. Because in your brief time on Earth, you have formulated logic so sound, perception so clear, that you have unveiled the secrets of the universe! How smart you are! Such wisdom you have! Is this anything but hubris? Is this anything but the pride of the modern man? The same modern man who is convinced that with enough science, with enough technology, a new age of human prosperity can be ushered in, perfected and purified from the religious foolishness of the past? And in his boundless conceit, is still convinced despite the fact that all of his efforts and ingenuities of the last few centuries have culminated in a state of humanity only more wretched, more hollow, and more pathetic? Is this anything but man’s desire to be God, just as Satan originally did? Because your intellect was prideful and admired himself, because he believed that he was flawless and nothing could exist outside his scope, because he wanted dominion over you for himself, he has killed your heart. Just like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, he has persuaded you to relinquish your faith so that you could enjoy the apple of knowledge, and it has cost you everything…

Doubter: What do any of these words mean? They are nonsense, and you know it. In order to prop up your stubborn childish fantasy, your thinking has become increasingly convoluted and elaborate. I’m like the serpent from the Garden of Eden? Really? You have absolutely no proof that any of that stuff is real. Think about how crazy you sound! A heavenly garden, an evil serpent, Satan, an apple of knowledge, Adam and Eve… do you realize how fantastical it all is!? You just made it all up. Your God is nothing but an evolutionary fairy tale constructed to cope with the difficulties of life.

Believer: Let me make one final statement, dear sir, as I sense that we have reached our typical stalemate. I have made a multitude of arguments for why believing in God is the more moral, more human, and more beautiful choice. But I see that this has done nothing to convince you that what I say is actually true…First of all, in my efforts to get you to understand the need for faith, I fear I may have implied that such faith must exist in defiance of reason. But this is not at all the case. Reason itself provides very compelling arguments for God’s existence and faith is only needed to bridge the gap between reason and certainty. After all, where do you suggest this universe came from, sir? Thus I refuse to let you place the label of ‘fantasy’ upon my head without resistance, as my mind is just as much a product of reason as yours. Nevertheless, the debates of the head are for another day…I have given up on trying to convince you, my dear friend. I now turn to the audience, that being in which we both reside, that boy who harbors such great affection for myself and such impassioned disdain for you. After all, is it not him whom we argue for? And so allow me to address him directly with the following advice as to how he may achieve that belief he so desperately desires.

First, you must reject your intellect’s insidious suggestions to ignore your heart under the guise of its inferiority. Treat the two voices within as equals, because they were inseparably bound to you at birth, as equals, and constitute your nature. And remember that while man can depart from truth unscathed, he cannot depart from his nature without vitiating himself into the inhumane.

Secondly, reflect on what I have said not merely within your own closet. Do not put faith in your own logic, in the vain hope that with enough contemplation, with enough internal debate, you will find a way to overcome your doubt and fall permanently on God’s side of the fence. This is mistaken. Your logic is merely human; it is not strong enough to figure it all out. You must stop thinking about it so much and just live. For you will find it easier to believe when you are living; when it is bright sunny day, when your loved ones are smiling at you, when you are facing a fear, when you are crying, when you are laughing about something, when you are kissing the girl you love, when you are suffering, when you are hungry, when you are looking at something beautiful, when you are having fun, when you are grateful, when you are on an adventure with friends, when everything is lost, or when everything is gained, rather than when you allow your mind to sit and contemplate in a vacuum.

Thirdly, remember that the only true power the atheist within you has is doubt. The only thing he can really say is, “What if you’re wrong? What if when you look up at the sky, there really is nothing there? What if these thoughts of yours are all crazy?” That is all he has. His other arguments, like evolutionary morality for example, can be contested and remain powerless in the face of faith and conviction that God is real. But doubt is powerful because it attacks that faith itself, rather than a concept that can be supported by it.

And the best way to defeat this doubt, is to simply recognize the pathetic, contemptible voice from which it originates. That is, fear. And there is absolutely no virtue in countenancing fear. In fact, to preserve his honor, a man must treat it with just neglect. Like the diver standing on a cliff, debating whether or not to jump into the water, you can either listen to that misguided “rationality” that persuades you to not to jump and sends you home in misery, or you can correctly designate it as nonsense, refuse to overthink it, take the leap, and then go home in a courageous bliss. So too it is with God. Be brave, my friend. This life is too precious for you to spend it under the yoke of fear.

And lastly, if, in spite of all this advice, you are still having trouble believing, remember that at the end of the day your ability to believe depends on love. Love for God is the undeniable prerequisite to faith, and the supposition that you may find belief without it is gravely mistaken.

I want you to imagine that you are living in a fantasy medieval kingdom. Now picture the most precious girl in this entire world, the one who means everything to you. If she was captured by an enemy army and locked away in a distant castle, guarded by a dragon, would you choose not to embark on the quest to save her because you fear the dragon may have killed or eaten her already? No. If she were truly precious to you, you would make it your sacred duty to rescue her. For even if you were absolutely certain in your mind that she was dead, and that you would die trying to save her, you would still go because you love her too much. You would still go because you cannot picture a world without her or one where you gave up on her.

And if upon finally reaching the castle, you woefully discover her decaying corpse, you will not lament over the futility of the journey. You will not lament over the arduous trek through the dense forests, or the frigid nights alone in the mountains, and how they could have been spent cheerfully eating and drinking back at home. No. You will collapse to your knees in sorrow to embrace her lifeless body. You will shower her with the rain of your tears as you choke on your own woe. You will notice the dragon menacingly approaching you, and in that moment, right before he devours you, you will love her more than ever, and be utterly convinced that the future you sacrificed in coming there was a microscopic price to pay for this one final, perfect, inexpressible embrace.

In this allegory, the embarking upon the quest represents faith. The arrival at the castle represents death. The girl you love represents God. And the girl’s status of living or dead represents God existing or not existing. The purpose of the allegory is to show you how love creates faith. You embark on the foolish, dangerous quest for no reason other than love. Furthermore, it is to show you that love always justifies that faith regardless of its outcome. In the end of that story, you do not regret your futile faith. In fact, you are glad you had it.

But there is a deeper meaning. Thus far, in my arguments, I have treated belief in God as if it is the end goal. But belief is not the end goal. Love is. The purpose of the allegory is to show you that love is not the means to the end of faith. Rather, faith is the means to the end of love. You don’t try to love the girl more, under the supposition that it might create some drunken illusion which facilitates your selfish end goal of comfort. That is, comfort in the security you would feel if certain of her survival, and the eternal bliss that awaits you. Instead, you act foolishly faithful and sacrifice everything for the end goal of fulfilling, beautifying, and glorifying the love.

I, being so greatly moved by the Believer’s final speech, dismissed both parties from my brain and meditated on his beautiful words. It was an argument so lovely and picturesque, to shift the means and ends in such a way, that I had no other choice than to embody it wholly. For as I continuously observe the evils, the shortcomings, and the inadequacies of man, including myself, and contrast it with the perfection of Christ, I cannot help but become utterly consumed by love for the latter. He is everything that is good in this world. He is perfect, when nothing else is. And if He said that He is God, I believe Him.