The Case for God

The best part about believing in God is that He never fails to show you how cool it is to believe in Him.

A few weeks ago, my mom dragged me to a mid-day mass the day before I was scheduled to get my bar exam results back. I was overwhelmed with anxiety and self-doubt, fully convinced that there was no way I passed, even though I had studied for 400 hours and spent the entire summer praying for a miracle (if you’ve taken the bar, then you understand – everyone leaves the exam feeling like they failed). My anxiety was so bad that I didn’t even want to go to church that day, which is highly unlike me, and I was even brainstorming ways to break the news to my mom that I wasn’t going to retake the exam in the event that I failed.

As I sat attempting to listen to the first reading, I found myself only being able to focus on my belief that I was going to be deeply embarrassed the following day as all of my friends and classmates searched for and failed to find my name on the publicly-available pass list. At this thought, I started crying.

In a desperate attempt to get the tears to stop falling before one of the nearsighted elderly people sitting next to me took note of my fragile mental state, I started talking to God. I essentially told Him that I felt so unwell that I didn’t even know what to pray for. I was genuinely at a loss for words, and ended up asking Him to help me feel better in whatever way He possibly could.

Immediately – literally one second after I finished my prayer – my brain automatically began tuning into the reader’s words.

“Do not cry or be filled with sorrow. For all the people were crying when they heard the words of the Law. Do not be sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” (Nehemiah 8:9).

Telling you that my jaw dropped upon hearing this would be an understatement.

The joy of the Lord? Did that mean I had passed? The next day, I would find out that it did.

In that moment, I knew that God was speaking directly to me. His message was exactly what I needed to hear, and it was so specific to my situation that there was no room for me to doubt that it was intended as an answer to my prayers.

Moments such as this deeply impactful one make me wonder how anyone in today’s world could possibly be an unbeliever. Yet, atheism and agnosticism persist in today’s society, often fueled by those who have chosen to turn a blind eye to anyone but themselves and the power that they believe they hold within. Instead of crediting God for moving mountains in their lives, they attribute their success to the law of attraction, or rather their own personal manifestation “skills.”

The biggest issue with atheism and agnosticism is that their core beliefs have been disproven time and again by the innumerable miracles that have taken place throughout the world over the years. Contrary to what adherents of these non-belief systems might argue, there’s nothing coincidental or even scientifically explainable about miraculous occurrences, such as people being cured of “incurable” diseases, for example.

What is perhaps most upsetting about those who adhere to such beliefs is that they don’t understand that they have absolutely nothing to lose, but rather everything to gain by having faith in God – and God even makes it easy for us to have faith in Him (“If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.” (Matthew 17:20)).

So not only does God reward us handsomely for believing in Him, but He has also made our task an easy one. Do you know how tiny a mustard seed is? It’s basically a particle of sand. Therefore, if we have even the tiniest amount of faith in God, He will answer our prayers.

The simple truth is that God moves in mysterious ways, and oftentimes for reasons that we will never be able to discern. I’ve always thought that one reason atheists and agnostics are so skeptical is due to the hardships they experience in their own lives. Sometimes, experiencing trauma leads people to believe that God couldn’t possibly exist, because, if He did, then He wouldn’t have let such a bad thing happen to them. Yet, look at what happened to God’s only son – He suffered the worst death imaginable and was even simultaneously ridiculed by one of the men hanging on the cross next to Him (“Are You not the Messiah? Save Yourself and us.” (Luke 23:39)). Even still, Jesus’s faith in and love for His Father never wavered.

While it’s hard to fully understand why Jesus had to suffer the fate that He did, the lesson to be learned is that in order to lead the most fulfilling life possible, we must always yield to God’s will for our lives and trust that He has our best interests at heart – regardless of whether we’re currently experiencing trauma or life is going incredibly well.

Although life can be a lot like a rollercoaster, full of high-highs and low-lows, God is with us every step of the way and wants to be our go-to in both the good times and the bad. If and when we begin to doubt, all we have to do is harness our sand particle-sized faith and tell God what we need, and He will answer.

Another problem non-believers seem to struggle with is being perceptive (i.e. when God reaches out to them, they don’t realize it’s Him, or when they get the opposite of what they prayed for, they don’t understand that it was for their greater good). This, in turn, may cause them to think that because they didn’t receive a response from God after they asked for one, or that the opposite of what they wanted to happen ended up happening, that God isn’t real or is “out to get them.”

The truth is, God will always answer you, regardless of whether you’re perceptive enough to understand the specific way in which He answers your prayers, and He will always answer your prayers to your benefit, regardless of whether or not you see it that way. It’s like a person with a lead foot getting stuck driving behind an elderly person going significantly under the speed limit – the person who was speeding might be incredibly annoyed by their being in what they see as a predicament, but, in reality, God might’ve placed them behind such a slow driver to prevent them from getting into an accident, therefore saving their life.

Other times, however, God’s presence is unmistakable and impossible to ignore. For example, three years ago, four years after my dad had passed away and one week shy of his 68th birthday, my sister awoke to two lengthy texts from her best friend from high school.

Her texts essentially said that our dad had visited her in a dream that night and was trying to convince her to tell my sister, mom, and I that he loves us, is proud of us, and is always with us. She also said that during the dream, she got the feeling that his birthday was coming up, even though, in reality, she’d never known when his birthday was.

Obviously, this experience could’ve only been divinely orchestrated. To my family and I, the craziest part of this wasn’t even the message we received from my dad – it was all of the thought, planning, and intention that was clearly involved in transmitting it. For example, this particular friend was my sister’s only friend from high school that she still kept in contact with and that my dad had known when he was alive.

We wondered why he chose this specific friend, instead of one of our family members or other friends, to share his message with us. We ultimately decided that it was because, if he had chosen a family member or other friend, they would’ve just chalked it up to being a random dream and wouldn’t have shared its message with us. The fact that my dad chose my sister’s high school best friend made the entire thing all the more unusual, which is what encouraged her to tell us about it and therefore get my dad’s message to us.

Even though the experience of suddenly losing my father when I was only eighteen was incredibly traumatic, it’s what ended up completely transforming my faith in God. At a time when I truly felt like I was living a nightmare, I turned to God and found that He was the only one who could help me feel better.

I still struggled with parts of my faith for years afterward, but always relied on the success stories of others to carry me though the difficult times and help me achieve my ultimate goal of having an unshakeable faith in God. Now that I’m at that point, I look back and pray that others will understand my case for God. Hopefully I’ve made a good one, since I’m an attorney now after all.