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31 years coaching experience/Worked Camps/Clinics on 6 Continents

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Coaches Seem to Have Strong Faith

(How I feel is the result of 10 billion years of evolution? I can't believe it)
Why can non-believers be so angry?  Since I was at best an agnostic, I will tell you my opinion (it's my blog). Many non-believers  have had some horribly traumatic experience in their life which makes them question the belief in a higher entity. They are so angry at the "God" they don't believe in, they are constantly cursing His very existence...or lack there of which can be confusing, I know.

When I was younger, my uncle was unbalanced. How much so?  He was molested his daughters because "God told him to". My father who was not related to his children by blood stepped in and took two of the children who wanted out of the family into our family. I was probably 8-13 years old while all this was going on, so my experience with "religion" was at best questionable. We didn't go to church except during the main holidays, we were cultural Christians. My father was a questioner of everything that went on with the church and was constantly looking for the truth in other avenues. Then Jimmy Swaggert and Jim Baker were doing their thing in the 1980's stealing and lying while preaching. Lots for a young mind to take in and I became extremely negative towards God.

When those two cousins moved in, they were troubled for all the obvious reasons. Looking back on it now, I feel sorry for them, but it was a strain on our family and for me. Before they moved in, I had tried my best to win trophies and be noticed for athletic achievements to get my father's attention/love which I know now was a mistake.  My father loved me without those things, but my father never played athletics, so it didn't work, in my eyes. My sister was his favorite. He wanted a daughter and I don't know if he ever really related to me. He had an alcoholic father who he had tried to get the affection of and I don't think my dad ever really related to his own father. Then comes this athlete who is more like his mother as a son. (sidenote: my father and I have a very good relationship, one of love, respect and admiration today, he is a great, great man).

Well, you can understand how hard it was to get my father's attention when two more, troubled children were thrown into the mix. Our family grew, but the two new members got more attention than me or my sister. There were court dates, counseling, court dates, visitations, preaching by my wack job Uncle while around him, my Aunt turning against her father (who was in every sense a true, loving, giving Christian man).  Very hard for a kid to take in and I became angry at God for allowing this to go on and in turn attacked anyone who would believe. That's my story of why I was the way I was.

Many of the non-believers I have known through the years are angry children/people like I was. Their fathers have left them, their mothers have left them, one or the other parent is crazy, parents have died in car crashes, parents force them to go to church and then don't live a Christian lifestyle, parents have died from an illness, over and over and over events that were worse than what I went through. So they don't believe...and they attack those who do, they are angry at a God who they feel has allowed bad things to happen.

Even through trying to teach, talk and even learn myself, I don't always know the answer. My preacher says that it all comes back to "Yea, but why?" when you have doubts about bad things. And there is only one person who can answer that and he isn't a living, breathing human being on this earth. I have come to grips about 90% of the time that I could never understand why God does what he does, but if He exists his knowledge and understanding would never make sense to the brain of a human being. That isn't good enough for many people who don't believe and I understand.

But the bottom line is that most people will not believe until they are ready to listen, ready to believe. So I will continue to talk to brick walls, lead my FCA at school and hope that I am able to move those kids who are believers and doubters (as I can be sometimes about certain aspects of my faith) back to the faith or to at least not lose them.

So any non-believers who are reading this now and upset that I would label you in this way and are angry that I would be arrogant to judge you, and are upset at everything I have written, aggravated that I don't have an open mind like you, well, you just proved my point, and there is a way out of that anger.