As those of you who follow my blog know, I am attending a Christian College. (Sidenote: First class is already over yay!) For the first class I had to write a paper about my worldview. In it I had to answer these questions:

1. Where did the world come from and why is it here?

2. Is there a God and if so what is the nature of his personality?

3. What are your core values?

4. Why do people do what they do?

5. What happens to people when they die?

You were supposed to answer these questions with your personal view, so I was honest. I have nothing but respect for Christians(except those that stand outside a teenagers school and shout that he is damned to hell and God made him just to be destroyed. But thats my next post), I think I might even want to be one. But for now I am still searching for answers.

In class we were asked to share our answers to each question. It didn't go around the room in any particular order so i actually opted to not say anything for most of it. The goal of my paper was not to be inflammatory, but i was afraid if i shared it in class it might be taken that way. I wrote it for only the teacher to read. I did not want to offend anyone in the class.

But now I am having a yearning to share. So i am going to put here a small excerpt from my paper. Please don't get offended, this is just one girls opinion. In fact, if you read it correctly, it just means that I have no friggin' idea and I am still looking for answers.

Here is my answer to the question about the personality of God:

I believe there is a God, but I am not sure if he is benevolent, good, holy, evil, jealous, cruel or indifferent. I have never been able to reconcile what I see in the world with what you would hope a higher power would be. I have tried to find some answers to this question. Along the way I have read Evil and a Good God by Bruce Reichenbach and other books written in the same vein. These books explored many different issues, including why evil exists, does it have to exist, could god really do something about it, and the nature of God's power. These books, and the others I have read, did not satisfactorily explain the nature of evil in a "good god's" world. They seemed to use circular logic to try and prove that God could do anything but somehow shouldn't in this world that he created and controls.

Every day you see people claiming that their lives were saved because of some little event. There was a story in the news where a little girl had a truck roll on top of her. She was saved because a tow truck driver forgot his wallet at home that day and was there to pull the truck off her. They attributed this to God's intervention. Another couple stopped a robbery at a bank because the woman was applying for a job. They were supposed to get there the day before the robbery but circumstance prevented them from making it to the bank that day. They attribute the fact that they were there at the correct time to God's intervention. Every day I see "little miracles" attributed to God.

I have a large problem with this. When you ask questions about great tragedies where hundreds or even thousands of people die, such as September 11, people tell you that it is because of free will. This argument makes no sense. If God caused a man to forget his wallet, or made a couple go to a bank on a day they didn't intend he has interfered with their free will. Either God is impotent to assist us because it would interfere with our free will, or he is free to intervene whenever he would like and chooses not to. From the interventions that are attributed to God, you could almost deduce that he can only help if it involves 5 people or less.

If you accept the argument that God can't intervene because it would interfere with free will you come across the question of natural disasters. Averting an earthquake has nothing to do with free will, but earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis and other natural disasters continue to happen. I am not sure what I think of a god that sits back and allows these disasters to occur.

The bible tells us that we were made in God's image. As humans, we make dolls in our image and then manipulate them for our amusement and pleasure. I can only hope this is not the type of god we have.