So what if there's not a God

OK, the votes have been counted and verified, and the most popular of my three blog ideas was this one. Church and Money  and 'Politics For The Win' will follow in time.

You may remember a while back, Richard Dawkins and friends ran a London Bus Poster that said 'There's Probably No God', and then a Christian group responded with (the extremely original) 'There's Probably a God.' Well, I'm saying 'So what if there's not a God.'

I've been thinking a lot about my relationship with God recently. Much of this is to do with two podcasts I listen to; firstly Unbelievable, a weekly show on Premier Christian Radio which I cannot recommend highly enough. It is a show which looks at all the big questions generally in the form of a debate between a Christian and an Atheist/Person of another Faith/Person of Another Christian view. The other is The Pod Delusion, supported by the British Humanist Association, which is a magazine show of skeptic issues, and is therefore often very negative in its view of Religion, and often gets me angry in the black and white portrayal of Atheism vs. Christianity; one is portrayed as good, one is evil, one is an intelligent position, one is for foolish unthinking people. Both of these podcasts have made me think about my views of the world. And I have come to a conclusion, I don't mind if God doesn't exist.

I must stress, I still believe in God, and have a relationship with him. What I'm saying is that if it turns out that I (and millions if not billions of others) am wrong, then... oh well, life goes on... wait no it doesn't, I guess, after a point... you know what I mean...

I've come to the view that living a Christian life is the best way to live it. At its most simple form, Christianity is all about loving one another. It teaches generosity, kindness, peace. It warns against greed, angry, jealousy and violence. I can't see why anyone would want to live any other way. Yes, free love, drugs, and self-centredness all look attractive, they can also be extremely damaging, physically, emotionally, and in how we relate to others. The community of the Church is also something that Christianity encourages. Ever since I was born, I've had people looking out for me, looking after me, loving me and helping me grow, even when I moved away to University and now to the North for the real world. I'm not the most socially-confident of people, but having a group of like minded people who you can spend a few hours with a week fulfils that desire for social contact.

A colleague of mine, who doesn't believe in God, has said to me that he finds Christians the nicest people to work with, and I believe this is for all the reasons above. Christianity encourages us to look beyond ourselves, and that can only be a good thing.

So what I think I'm saying (and sorry this is a bit all over the place) is that if you remove the idea of Heaven and everlasting life, if you remove the idea of a Creator God, a Loving Father and a Sacrificial Saviour, then there is still a lot going for living a Christian life. And that is why, if I were to wake up dead and find out the God didn't exist, I would be a bit disappointed, but would still be happy to have lived as if there was.