{"id":5258,"date":"2025-04-21T17:15:18","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T22:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/?p=5258"},"modified":"2025-04-20T18:04:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T23:04:14","slug":"why-i-still-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/?p=5258","title":{"rendered":"Why I Still Believe"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve mentioned many times how badly current US political and even some religious leaders have misrepresented Christianity.\u00a0 A couple examples are here\u00a0 https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/?p=5209<\/a>\u00a0 and here\u00a0https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/?p=1066<\/a> .<\/p>\n

You might wonder why I still believe.\u00a0 And to be perfectly honest, that have been times I’ve wondered that myself, more so in the last 12 months than at any other point in my life.\u00a0 \u00a0But at the end of the day I do still believe.<\/p>\n

I have been a Christian my entire life.\u00a0 I was born and raised in the LCMS- Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.\u00a0 \u00a0I attended Bethany Lutheran College for 2 years.\u00a0 \u00a0I am now a member of my local United Methodist church.\u00a0 \u00a0I’m not going to get into why I switched – if you are curious you can read about that here<\/p>\n

All this being said, I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expect on Christianity.\u00a0 What I can speak to is why it works for me.<\/p>\n

No I don’t understand why certain things – like war, crime, disease, etc. – happen.\u00a0 No, I can’t explain why so many people use God and religion to do awful things to their fellow humans.\u00a0 \u00a0I’m not going to tell you that your child getting cancer or your spouse leaving you is God’s will.\u00a0 \u00a0I’m not going to tell you that you need to believe like I do or be damned for all eternity.<\/p>\n

I don’t believe that the universe is 6000 years old.\u00a0 I don’t believe that women are inferior to men.\u00a0 I trust modern medicine (including vaccines).\u00a0 I am adamant in my support for LGBTQ+ rights.\u00a0 I don’t find any of these things incompatible with believing in an almighty God and I will argue HARD against anyone who wants to argue otherwise.<\/p>\n

I believe because I have seen how faith can change people in amazing and powerful ways.\u00a0 I believe because I have felt things that I cannot explain any other way.\u00a0 I believe because there is supreme comfort in knowing that this isn’t all there is and there is something \/ someone bigger than anything I can comprehend.<\/p>\n

I believe because I feel it in my heart.\u00a0 It’s just that simple and just that beautiful.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve mentioned many times how badly current US political and even some religious leaders have misrepresented Christianity.\u00a0 A couple examples are here\u00a0 https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/?p=5209\u00a0 and here\u00a0https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/?p=1066 . You might wonder why I still believe.\u00a0 And to be perfectly honest, that have been times I’ve wondered that myself, more so in the last 12 months than at any other point in my… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[20,19,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","category-myself","category-warm-fuzzies"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/prayer-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}