My atheist and agnostic relatives and friends would likely get edgy right away reading something that starts off: Jesus said in the Bible that if one or more gather they can be in relationship with Him.

When you love and respect people with a different perspective, you also recognize the potential and devastating harm that can be done when trying to be who you are yet not throw gasoline where a mere spark may cause a violent explosion.What I want to do may not what I achieve, but if I'm successful I will tread in barefeet over the hot coals, not spill any fuel, and step again on to the cool safe ground with no harm to myself or others. Writing these thoughts has been prompted by someone who came into my life with amazing impact considering the circumstances and length of our acquaintance.

I believe, after much thought, that to begin this story it is necessary to talk about the context in which I feel it must be taken. It is a story of incredible belief in God. So that creates a problem right off the bat for those who do not belief there is one.

If there is no God then this is simply seen as something conjured up in a human brain.

If there is no God then every religion that worships one has been created by humans .

If there is no God then everything bad blamed on religion can be traced to bad humans who exploited innocent, good intentioned humans.

If there is no God then the teachings in Holy Books holds little significance.

However, even if one believes all of the above to be true, there is no denying the powerful force of people who believe in God. Even if it is totally a human creation, it was recognized early in the history of mankind that this was a very real force even if you could not see it, hear it, touch it, feel it or smell it. Humans just seem to sense it.

As with anything in the human realm it will be used for good and it will be used for bad. I believe it is so unfortunate even if inevitable that the strongest emotions gaining strength in our times is the bad uses and consequences of actions identified as religious in nature. The extreme response is to somehow destroy all religions and their activities.

I am hoping that the reader is already figuring out that this really isn't where I am going with this conversation....defending/condemning......condemning/defending. But I do have to color this with my own pencil because of the fact that I try to live my life based on principals taught in the Christian Bible and attributed to possibly the most controversial figure in human history. His name is Jesus. And frankly I don't really know much about what is said in other Holy Books. I do know that Jesus represents the only God claiming to have shown himself in human form on earth.

What I am trying to create context for, is that personal relationship between one person and one God.

There is no religion, no great infrastructure, no superiors to answer to. It is simply believing that there is someone who you can lay your whole life before, most desireably in secret. And when you are able to do that to the very best of your ability, you will receive answers to your deepest darkest fears, your highest most improbable desires and you will receive at least some deep understanding of why events happen for which we have absolutely no answers.

And that is where this story begins. Part of a recent holiday trip included some time on Prince Edward Island. Its a beautiful place to just go on drives over lightly travelled country roads, past impeccable homes with giant manicured lawns, immaculat looking churches and graveyards, huge fields of potatoes and corn, idyllic rolling countryside and cooperative September weather bathing everything in sunshine. One drive took us from the major centre of Charlottetown to the islands next biggest place of Summerside. Arriving in time for lunch to discover that many of the neat restaurants on the waterfront had already closed with the tourist season pretty much over. However we were directed to one that was still open for another week.

It is right on the water and provided an excellent view. A couple of tables have customers and there is a notice that the full menu is not available due to the impending winter closure. The girl who served us had incredibly severe disfigurement on her face and at first it required good concentration to look her in the eyes and understand her words when she spoke. She on the other hand seemed fully confident in her work. We watched as she chatted with the other customers. Eventually we became the last ones there so we struck up a conversation.  Val courageously (I thought) asked what had caused the scars. What we heard was the amazing testimony and courage of a young, openly Christian 24 year old girl who had half of her jaw removed when she was about 2 due to bone cancer. Then as a teenager she had a good portion of her face practically torn off in a automobile accident and at that time was given last rites with little expectation that shew would survive her injuries.
This is her mothers restaurant and she has always worked here since she was a little girl and told us her main goal after the accident was to get back to work before the end of the tourist season that year.
Nicole talked so candidly about her life and how she will be getting more surgeries next year to rebuild her face and told us stories of how she has been able to help others in the community that have faced extreme difficulties in their life. She is also involved with an organization called About Face(www.aboutface.ca) that helps people deal with facial disfigurement.

We became friends within a matter of a few minutes. Her amazing story of unquestioned faith in God and how that faith provided victory and hope over such daunting challenges really touched Val and I very deeply. We felt really blessed to have been brought to this place to hear this story.  We will certainly be keeping her in our thoughts and prayers as she prepares for extensive surgical procedures in Toronto in the coming months.

Such are the mysteries of God. He gives strength when we are at our weakest. Prayer works even though we really don't know how. We are also allowed to discount him as nothing more than a figment of the human brain. One thing for sure God and Jesus usually evoke emotion in the human brain and seldom promote apathy.

I have questions about the atheist point of view. The main point is that there is no god. But what I often read is their anger at religion and churches. ' There can be no peace until the last church is destroyed.' So would that prove that there is no god?
The 'fact' that I am working around is that there are some 60 million gods among the cultures of the world. So must the trappings of all of them be eliminated to prove there is no god?
So who was the first god? Didn't there have to be a first one some where back in time....and then another one and another one. Where did this urge to worship a higher power come from?
Having a god to worship does not make you a better person. In fact putting yourself out there as a person who can help you communicate with a god is really the worst kind of deceiver.
So are these the people that atheists want taken out? That is the end game is it not? If nothing else 60,000,000 gods should tell you this is a pretty widespread aspect of human nature and I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say it is pretty much hopeless to convince anybody but a minor minority that there are no gods. not a single one....

The most well known attempt to go down this road was the rule of communism in Russia. One of their main thrusts was to educate the people that there was no such thing as god. They murdered 60 million people who disagreed with them. It does become the only solution if you insist on enforcing a fundamental belief make over. And how did that work out in the end....I do believe that the human desire to worship a higher power won out.
I do not pretend to know how to explain god. I consider myself a rational human being who believes that at the end of the day there is one God, our Creator and that the Bible provides the operators manual for understanding who human beings are and how we fit into the scheme of things. Its obviously a complex book as people have been trying to fiure it out for nearly 2000 years and there's no end in sight that that I can see.
When I look up at a starry night I know with certainty that we are a microscopic speck in a bigger scheme. So for me it calls into question the issue of who is a human? And that is a whole other question. My biggest difficulty with it being able to rationalize the theory that we came out of the slime.
As human beings we are free to choose what we believe. When we look at the billions of us on the planet, that freedom is pretty obvious. We've gone every which way but loose....as the Clint Eastwood movie said.
But at the end of the day isn't there just one right answer, one truth? At this time in human history it just seems to be that the concept of no god is one of the weakest possibilities if you look at how humans in great percentage seem to lean toward the connection to a higher power.
The humans who use god, and religions as vehicles to do many, many bad things are bad humans. So anger against them is justified. Atheists would have a lot more friends if they stated that is how their anger is directed at. But it looks and smells like atheism is a veiled political attack on the concept of god and somehow points its bony finger at Christianity more than other religions and their gods.
Us humans are such an imperfect lot. All I know for sure is that when I try to live a life based on some basic rules laid out by fellow named Jesus it is the most complete form of living on this planet that I've found.
An atheist needs to tell me what set of rules he/she lives by...if its anarchy when you hold it under a bright light then I can't buy it.