Why Am I Here?

As a brand new member of the blogging phenomena I thought I would use this first entry to describe the inspiration behind this site. I am a recently converted Catholic, so recent in fact I have only been Catholic for 3 days, 12 hours and 16 minutes. As a member of the RCIA program I was confirmed and received my First Communion from the Roman Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil last Saturday evening. I was born and raised a Lutheran. My father was a Lutheran minister up until his passing in November of 1988.

After the passing of my father, I became disenchanted with the whole concept of God. It wasn’t that I stopped believing in him altogether but rather I made the conscious decision to go it alone. I put God and Jesus in the background and decided to take life as it came. I stopped attending church regularly, I didn’t pray, and began to adopt a more atheistic (not entirely, but so I felt) view of the world. In a sense I put my faith to the ultimate test. I began to ask why.

My whole life I had been taught to believe in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, yet I never really knew why I was supposed to believe in him in the first place. I have come to the realization that one can’t believe in Jesus just because. Personally I use the “just because” case with my two and four year old children. And for now it is quite effective, but I am well aware that this will not be a forever standing justification tool with them. “Why do I have to go to bed now, Daddy?” To which I respond “Because I said so.” This is usually an end of conversation statement. My father (the loving minister that he was) used the following classic end of conversation statement with his kids, “Amen, end of story!” As a person, when we transition from our adolescent years into our teens and finally into adulthood, we are not satisfied with the “just because” form of reasoning. We need more to quench our thirst of understanding.

So how do I come to be faithful again? Well, in humanistic terms it happened by accident. My wife has been a Roman Catholic for her entire life. We were married in a Catholic Church and I had made a promise to her that we would raise our children Catholic. Now that my daughter is four years old her inquisitive nature has started to take hold of her. I felt it would be far easier to join the church rather than to answer her questions such as “why don’t you accept communion with Mommy?” Heck, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? So without any pressure from my wife I looked into the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) at her church. I joined last September and have been hooked every since. I honestly never could have imagined the overwhelming transformation I would have when I originally joined the program. But it happened and here I am. I have come to the realization that although I left Jesus behind, he never left my side. I don’t mean to trivialize my transformation process; I just don’t want to bore you to death with all of the details in my first blog. I will elaborate on this in future postings as the topics arise.

So why did I begin this blog in the first place? I wish to reach out to other Catholics to get their feedback and feelings on their beliefs. Additionally I hope my postings will appeal to people of other faiths as well. I will use this forum as a place to discuss real life issues and to delve into them as mush as necessary and for as long as the topics generate a common interest. I admit this first posting is a bit dry and I expect future posts to be a bit livelier. I just needed to let you know where I was coming from as a starting point. In this blog I will be discussing many topics and though they may not always be religiously related, as a good Christian they will sustain a religious theme.

So with all of that said, I would like to be the first to welcome you to my blog. Well I guess since it is my blog I am the only one who can welcome you. In any case welcome and I hope to see you again real soon.

God Bless,

Scott