Power of Belief

We live in a world that is hard to understand, it is full of love and hate, laughter and sorrow, richness and poverty. Some believe that it is created by a single god, others believe it is many gods and there is a growing population that say there is no god at all.

I myself have my own belief in this world, it matters not what it is or how I justify it, for it is mine and only I need to understand it. The picture you see tells many stories, stories of neglect, poverty, sadness and dismay for those of us from North America, however that is not the same image other people around this plant see.

I met a man years ago, while working in the Northern oil fields of Canada. He was an older man originally from Germany with an intelligence far greater than mine at the time, the problem was he proclaimed himself as a “Born again Christian”. Now as far as I was concerned there was nothing wrong with that, however, many of the workers we worked with did not take too kindly to him trying to “convert” everyone around him to the way he thought. His name was Ike and like I said he was a very intelligent man.

Each day, my boss would send a worker over to work with Ike, and each day those workers would come back to my boss and say they could not work with him. Their complaint was he would preach to them all day long about Christianity. Then came my turn, my boss approached me and requested I “give it a try”. I looked at him and said, no problem!

My first day with Ike was tough, as we did our work, he went on and on about “the lord Jesus”. As I did not know much on the subject, I just listened. At the end of the shift, my boss came to me and asked “how did it go”, my reply, “fine”. My boss was shocked, as I was the only one that did not complain or request not to work with Ike again, instead I said I was happy to work with him.

Now just to make things clear here, I am not a Christian or religious in any understanding the world has today. What fascinated me most about working with Ike was simple. How could such an intelligent man such as Ike, believe without hesitation in something he could not see or prove. That’s when it dawned on me!

I went back to my camp room that night and I started buying books. Books on Christianity, Judaism, Catholicism, Buddhism, and Islamic belief for a start. Now these were not books on the teachings of these beliefs, but the origins of these beliefs. I would sit in my camp room after work night after night and read. The more I read the more questions I had. I started to talk with Ike about the origins of his believe, which he was happy to divulge his understanding of it. Some of what Ike told me matched what I was reading, while other parts were completely contradictory. Never once did I argue with Ike, but rather allowed him to tell me what he believed.

What Ike taught me was that it is not a god or a profit that guides us, it is the power of our belief! This power is not just held with so called deity, it is in every aspect of our lives. From what food is good for us to how one should raise our children. We proclaim our belief loudly onto others without study, or evidence. We just simply “believe” that is the way it is.

Looking back in history is funny, for not too long ago some of the human race believed that the world was flat. There was a time when we believed tomatoes were poisonous, and that people of colored skin were less than human. We held those beliefs so strongly that no one at the time could change that belief.

Today we believe in many things that again have no real factual backing, yet our human nature bonds us to a believe system that drives us emphatically. 

Take for example this picture, what do you see? Some will believe a child is starving, left to die only to be eaten by an awaiting vulture. Yet another might see that vulture as a creature of their god, deserving to live just as that child has the right to live and survival of the fitness. Could it be however, that a father, knowing that his family is staving, knowing that the world does not care whether his child lives or dies, has discovered a way to save his family.

If I told you that by using his child to lure a vulture close enough so that he may claim it for his family and therefore allow them to live another day, would that change your belief in what you see, if that answer is yes, we must ask ourselves, how many times a day do we see things, develop beliefs based on what we see, without knowing the facts. More importantly how often do we spread those beliefs to others……like Ike did?

The picture says many things, one thing for certain, is a child is starving!