Stop. What do you believe? Why do you believe it? Do you know the answers to these questions?

            I grew up knowing that God was real. My parents told me that so it must be true, right? Wrong. My parents could tell me anything they wanted to. Everyone around me was telling me what to believe. I never once asked myself why I believed these things other than I was told to. Going to a Christian school for nine years and earning my diploma from there, I was constantly being told that “Jesus was the answer”. It was not until my sophomore year that someone actually saw that we were a generation growing up believing something without knowing why we believe it.

            My teacher, Mr. VanDyke, instead of telling us what we should believe, asked us why we believe what we believed. This question shattered my world. I gave the normal, “church” answer, because Jesus is the only way to heaven and he died for our sins. He then challenged us to prove that the God we believed in truly existed. We had the faith without the proof. Once again instead of pouring his beliefs into our head; he asked us thought provoking questions that challenged our beliefs. Mr. VanDyke took the fundamentals of philosophy and equipped us with how to defend our faith. He truly wanted us to know why we believed in a God that everyone else had only given us a faith answer for.

            His influence on my Christian faith did not stop there. Senior year he dissected all the major religions in the world. He taught us that people from other religions literally view the world differently than us. He took this perfect little world I was learning a protected faith in and blew it up. I had no idea that people did not see the world as I did. This was one of the most beneficial things for me going into college. No matter what anyone told me I knew the proof of my beliefs. I also was aware of how people viewed the world and how they might try to challenge my beliefs.

            I have had many conversations with people in college and asked them those two simple questions. What do you believe? And why do you believe it? They usually give me the same answer that I gave before someone took the time to equip me with knowledge on the subject. This saddens my heart and makes me so much more thankful for the education I received. This is why I believe in knowing what you believe and why you believe it.