Long essay

struggle with conviction. I rarely feel something so strongly to be true that it consumes my identity. Because of this I have developed a false self confidence of sorts. A voice in my head that tells me I am justified and correct when I finally do reach some level of conviction. I think the logic at work here is that if I am not easily convicted then I must only be convicted by something extraordinarily convincing. I say false confidence, but the truth is I trust this intuition and allow it to guide my actions regarding the “big” questions. Since most of my strongly held beliefs have taken a long time to form I am not ashamed to hold them once they reach maturity. I think this is a good thing. Another part of the way my mind works is that my convictions are subject to change. I think this is also a good thing. It feels to me that the Truth is never going to reveal itself to me as a whole so to get closer to the Truth my views should constantly be changing and adapting as more and more of the unreachable is revealed to me. Truth, I would say at this point in my life, is not entirely obtainable. However, I would also qualify this statement and say that it is every bit worth searching for. Which brings me to my main point. I do not write this to make an argument for why Truth is worth the search, that would be another topic I’d love to tackle and might at some point. No, I write this to explain primarily to myself where I am right now as far as my convictions and where those convictions are going to and coming from.

Most recently I’d say I was convicted of very little in the realm of God and the divine. I was truly an agnostic. On some days I would lean a little towards deism and others atheism. However, I did not feel convicted by theism (at least the idea of a personal or relational God). This conviction is what I will call backlash; it is a semi-extreme reaction to my church-laden youth. If I was not so timid when it came to being convicted as I mentioned