Many times in college we have events that make us question our faith. Growing up in a predominantly southern christian town at a public high school where the teachers were pretty open about their beliefs and most students were involved in a church, or at least claimed to be Christian, it was really hard to be faced with opposite views this first year at a public university. I have never had a reason to question my faith, until questions were posed to me that made me discover a new level of faith. When a professor who has their Ph.D. and seems to have worlds of knowledge, but they clearly disapprove of what you believe, it can rock your world. It seemed like all odds were put against me as three of my professors and classes were challenging what I believed about literally everything. The very foundation of who I am. This semester instead of feeling farther from God, I feel so much closer and more in awe because of these classes that were put in place to rattle me, but proved to rattle me into a deeper level of amazement with the world around me.
Astronomy, geology, and sociology are courses that make you think. They make you take a step back and reconsider. I find it so valuable to learn about this universe, the world, and people of every walk of life. Stars, mountains, families, galaxies, religion, oceans, and everything in between, is difficult to wrap my mind around. Much less the origin of it all. In these classes, the ideas of the Big Bang, being made of stardust, human evolution, and every other scientific idea was proposed. This article isn't to bash ideas or science, but to encourage those who are having their faith shook because of them. When I looked out into the world before these classes, I was like "oh alright, cool." But, now I am in AWE. I am in awe that there are so many stars in the sky that we cannot even count them. I am in awe that the perfect amount of chemicals mixed in our atmosphere at exactly the right temperature to create the perfect environment for us to live in. I am in awe of emotions. I am in awe of love, joy, sadness, tears, laughs, and how people interact. I am just simply in awe. As my professors tried to convince the class of no God, they showed me there was indefinitely a beautiful, magnificent creator. How would my heart know exactly how many beats per minute to pump blood throughout my body to keep me alive? What purpose would cells or chemicals have to produce the emotion of sadness, which then promotes tears? What would be sciences reason for the strong bonds of love we form with other people? What about the way our brains organize ideas in a way that it is hard to even pinpoint why or how our brains work? I l love the way Propaganda put it in this spoken word, " One must begin with the mind that was given to him to even believe he's evolved."
Yes, I respect the professors beliefs and I don't think these classes should be avoided because if you look closely enough, they open our eyes to the beauty of how perfectly perfect things are in a way that if one little thing was changed, things couldn't survive or thrive.
As I was driving down through South Georgia down the Florida, I realized how in awe I was. The long, worn road with farms as far as you can see and the sky so blue with the fluffiest, pure white clouds floating effortlessly in the sky, I was in awe of creation. In awe of my God. In awe of my Creator.
