Our Hearts are Restless

Augustine wrote that "our hearts are restless until they find faith in God." It is a great truth. It is easy to overhear many conversations of people who had a bad week trying to fill the hole in their lives with shopping, parties, and activities.

Many good things are used as medication to avoid dealing with our real issues. It is difficult to face the void that often exists in our relationship with God. It is often far easier to try to forget our problems in the area of faith than to deal with them.

Of course putting off issues of faith, while easy, is ineffective. Since man is made for relationship with God his need to have reconciliation with God is a fundamental need.

We often do not see the fundamentalness of this need, but it is none the less fundamental. The pushing off of the issue never really helps since it reemerges nearly constantly because of its priority.

A right relationship with God is ultimately very fundamental to human health and happiness. Often we see religion as an unhappy thing. It is of course because we often presuppose what true happiness is.

We imagine happiness is something which it is not. We exclude the idea where true happiness can be found before we even consider the possibility that true happiness may be found in God.

I suppose you will find many atheists who say that faith in God made them miserable and then they grew and rejected God. I cannot in every case say why they feel as they do, but often you see that it is not faith in God that made them miserable but that they disliked what God had asked of them.

God asked for sacrifices in their lives that were "unacceptable" and that "no good God would ask." Since God had demands then God was unjust they say. The reality which this shows is how little they valued God.

Anyone who has been happily married for a time will know that certain sacrifices are always made in a true relationship. A relationship of value is worth the inconveniences that naturally come with it. If we despise the inconveniences faith in God brings than it simply shows that we do not understand the true value of our relationship with God.