When I think about it, there are a lot of things I believe in that don’t make sense. I’m pretty sure that this is true of a lot of people. Here are a few examples:

I believe in the Chicago Cubs. I know it doesn’t make sense. Just yesterday Edwin Jackson used Google Maps to drive to the Cubs’ spring training complex where he was scheduled to start in a preseason game against the Oakland A’s. The phone app took him to the old training complex, more than 3 miles away and then on a wandering route. When he finally arrived at Hohokam Stadium it was only 25 minutes from the start of the game. Blake Parker made a substitute start while Jackson warmed up. Jackson took over pitching in the 2nd, but the A’s collected eight runs on nine hits in just 1 2/3 innings. The Cubs lost 14-2. The Cubs lose a lot. They were originally called the Chicago White Stockings when they were organized in 1870. They became the Cubs for the 1907. The story of how Chicago’s other team became the White Sox is for another day. The Cubs are the country’s oldest professional baseball team, organized a full year before the Atlanta Braves. The Cubs won the World Series in 1908. They haven’t won a Series since. They haven’t even made it into the World Series in my lifetime - not since 1945.

But I believe in the Cubs. I believe that anyone can cheer for a winner. It takes a real fan with real dedication to back a team that faces setback after setback. I believe that one day the championship drought will end for the Cubs and they will have a wining season. It may not happen in my lifetime, but that day will come.

I know. It doesn’t make sense, but I believe in the Cubs.

I believe in Jeffersonian democracy. Specifically I believe in the phrase Jefferson penned for the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.” I even take it one step further. I believe that every human being is created equal. The ideal which was present at the founding of the United States has never been achieved in institutional law. In fact we have lived with entrenched racism for all of our history. We began with slavery. Jefferson himself owned slaves. Slaves weren’t counted as full humans. We began with women denied the vote. We began without considering the status of the indigenous people of this continent. We have oppressed and held back and developed institutions of entrenched poverty and degradation for the entire history of this nation.

But I believe, in my core, that all people are created equal and that the goal of a society that offers equal opportunity to all people is achievable in human terms.

I know. It doesn’t make sense, but I believe that all humans are equal.

I believe in friendship. I’ve been a pastor and I’ve listened to other people’s stories enough to know that the person who knows you best is also the person who can deliver the most pain to you. Friends get to know your true flaws. Sometimes they exploit those weaknesses for personal gain. I know that friends betray friends. I know that friendships can fail. Business partnerships that start out as friendships can end disastrously. People betray their friends for financial gain, for social status, even to gain sexual partners.

But I believe in friends. I have friends who would do anything in the world for me. I have friends who accept me when I am far less than lovable. I have friends who would set aside their own agenda to help me.

I know. It doesn’t make sense, but I believe in friendship.

I believe in marriage. I know the statistics. I know that between 40 and 50 percent of married couples in the United States divorce. I know that there are marriages that don’t end in divorce that are far from healthy. I know that there are people who are married who are not happy in their marriages. I know that humans are not inherently more faithful than the critters I observe in my back yard. I have friends who have been divorced multiple times in their lives. I recently was looking at the profiles of some of my grade school mates on Facebook. I’m pretty sure the divorce rate is even higher among the people I know and call friends than typical. We live in a society of serial infatuation and prevalent straying from monogamous relationships.

But after more than 41 years of marriage, I know that I am happiest being married. I am sure, in the core of my being, that a single monogamous relationship with deep commitment and equally deep trust is absolutely the way I want to live my life.

I know. It doesn’t make sense, but I believe in marriage.

Since I have this propensity to believe in things that don’t make sense, there are a few folks who would expect me to add God to the list. There are skeptics who might think that belief in God doesn’t make sense. It is not, in my experience, at all the same thing.

My belief in God is very rational. I have studied logic and arguments and the history of philosophy. I am well aware of the relatively short history of scientific method in the story of human inquiry. I know how it fits into the wider picture of human thought and how lightweight it is in developing arguments about the existence, or non existence of God. I have observed how belief in God has dominate human rational thought in generations of doubt as well as generations of relative certainty. I tackle the sacred texts and the wider history of our people with an academician’s eye. I give the best of my rational thought to understanding the nature of God and the history of human understanding of God. I know how the arguments of the agnostics and atheists fit into the wider pattern of thinking about God.

I believe in lots of things that don’t make sense.

I believe in God because it does make sense.

I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.