None of self and all of Thee

I read a story, probably fictitious about a college professor who tries to prove to his students that God doesn't exist. The professor's argument went something like this... If evil really exists and God created everything then God created evil and fails to live up to his own definition of himself... Several of his students argued with him and one of them finally seemed to "win" the argument. The student's argument was... cold is not measurable except as the absence of heat. Darkness is not measurable except as the absence of light. Evil is merely the absence of God. Doubtless the professor was unconvinced. In real life, no one is swayed by clever semantics. They may not have a rational reply to the argument but they do not therefore believe.

But the argument about evil being the absence of God intrigued me. It's true of me, no matter if it's not true globally. In my life, when I don't fill it with God I fill it with evil. There's not an in-between, uncommitted, "good-evil neutral" position that I can hold. There's no Sweden of morals and ethics. I cling to God because when I don't fill myself with godliness I find myself lost in the darkest, dreariest moral cold that I can imagine. If not for God, why obey the laws of the land? If not for God, why would I even be decent, let alone upstanding or generous or kind? Satan, according to his church says that we are stupid to consider anyone but ourselves. If it stands in the way of your pleasure or your happiness he tells us, run over it, annihilate it. If it doesn't serve your immediate needs then destroy it. Frighteningly, without God that's exactly where I go.

I have to suspend my disbelief to embrace God. In the religous culture that surrounds me it's known as faith. It is the belief in things that cannot be proven. It is the hope of things that are unseen. (I can hear my father saying those words in many sermons. How could I have known then how crucial and critical faith would become as I learned to be skeptical and cynical in a world full of cons and cheats and traps?) So, everyday, by faith, I choose God. I choose God because He loved me even when I filled myself full of evil. He loved me enough to send His son to be horribly tortured and killed on my behalf. Sometimes it's the fact that God and his love are so unlikely and irrational that makes me cling to it more... sort of a "truth is stranger than fiction." No way could a man dream up a God like our God. Can I prove any of this? No. But I know it. I know it and I actively choose to believe it.

Dear God, less of me, less of evil, less of selfish concerns, less of this world, less of things, less of self righteousness, less of the corruptible... more of you. Restore this broken vessel and fill me again. I want to be wholly yours.