I Want to Believe.

For this semester of youth group, I set on a theme of "I Want to Believe."

It was this image that gave me the notion. It is from a fairly popular poster that was rather prominently featured on The X-Files. I feel like it gets at a larger human compulsion that we all have, that we want to believe in... something. Anything. But we all want to believe.

So I have used each week to run with that theme, using the flow "I want to believe..." and then some phrase that I think is pretty common to most people, and then look at how true that statement is.

The first week was "I want to believe that I am important."

Each of us, if we are being honest, I think want believe that we all have intrinsic value, that our opinions matter, that we have something to contribute, something to make us valid and have a reason for being. I think in most of our thoughts, we figure as the prime actor, either as how we perceive a certain thing or how we can influence a certain thing. Most of our core beliefs, even the truly altruistic ones are usually prefaced by "I think..." or something comparable. We therefore want to believe that our reasoning and logic are valid, that we can contribute to the larger dialogue about issues and events, or at least that the things that we value (whether its family, religion, art, or Halo 3) really do matter because they matter to us.

If we are all at the core of it all, actually important, if our values and opinions actually do matter, than what is it that gave us this importance? Why are my views more important than the views of a dog or a tree? What gives me the right to feel that I have dominion over certain things, like ants, or even where a rock is placed?

Nothing?

Yet I'm not sure how many rational people who would argue that the feelings of a rock or an ant are completely congruent with those of a human being. Therefore, if we are important, it would beg to offer that something must have made us that way.

I'm not sure that mere "survival of the fittest" logic will get us to the point that we have evolved into a greater importance. My cats clearly think that they are more important than I am, and yet I have no problem changing their plans to suit my own. There are few if any other species on the planet that are so willing to manipulate their environment solely to fit their wants (not merely their needs). We are completely willing to alter our environments solely for our pleasure, without much if any consideration as to how that will affect the impact that it will have on the larger stability of that environment. But I digress...

If we are important, what is it that made us so? Have we created this importance in on our own? Or have we been given a sense of this importance for a reason?

Is the value that we sense in ourselves intrinsic, as I said above, or is it merely manifested by our own instinctual interest in self preservation?

Moreover, if something made us important, that something would have to be more than us, to be bigger than us in some way. There seems to be something in each of us that tells us that we are important, from the day we are born. It seems to be more than a simple compulsion to survive - I would argue that most of us have a compulsion to actually DO something. Even if that something is simply beating Halo 3. We want to accomplish things, not simply things that help us survive, but things that validate our sense of self value.

So, again, what gave us that importance?

If we are not simply beings that exist, but instead are beings that were created, what created us?

God?

If we want to believe that we are important, then something had to have made us important, and that something had to have been bigger than us, big enough to create in us a sense of that importance, something that moves beyond simply survival, and moves us to create and accomplish things that reflect that importance that we sense in ourselves.

If that something that created this sense of importance, that created us to be important, is not God, than what is it?