The more I learn about life, the more I realise how much there is out there that I still don't know. But what does “knowing” really mean?! In the end the most important thing is what I believe in, i.e. what my convictions are. After all, only those will have a real impact on my life. (Just a random example: all smokers know that smoking is bad for their health...)
What do I believe in?
First of all, I believe that God actually exists. And with “God” I don't mean any old god but the One of whom the Bible reports that He created the whole Universe—and that includes you and me.
I believe that it was God's intention to have a loving and trusting relationship with His creation, and that it is our job (yours and mine) to be God's stewards and look after His creation in an equally loving way. However, humans thought that they knew better than their creator and didn't want to be told by Him (or anyone else, for that matter) what was right and what was wrong. And because love cannot be forced, God let us leave so that we could follow our own ideas and desires. Today, the deep chasm between us and God which resulted from this separation is normality.
I believe that we are so tremendously important to God, that He abandoned all his eternal omnipotence and became a human being in the person of Jesus Christ only to be close to us. Jesus' life on this Earth is a very practical example of what an intimate relationship between God and man/woman is supposed to be like. But even though Jesus was the only perfect human being who ever lived or will live, even though he never did anything wrong, in the end he suffered an incredibly cruel death on the cross. And Jesus died willingly in order to give us a chance to return into this loving relationship with God.
I believe that Jesus did not stay in His grave, slowly rotting away, but that He rose from the dead two days later, spent 40 days with His disciples, and then went straight back to God's own dimension.
I believe that Jesus is still alive today and through His Holy Spirit is working within me in order to make me more like Him. And that is exactly what He offers every person who invites Him into their heart.
Consequences
All the time I think I know better than the One who made me and end up following my own GPS instead of His voice. No wonder that accidents, breakdowns, and extreme detours are the result. Thank God(!) that He is much more patient with me than I am: He pulls me out of the ditch, patches me up, or shows me where to make a U-turn in order to get me back on the straight and narrow.
Ultimately, however, I'd like to learn how to let go and let Him take the wheel instead of just asking for His advice (and then ignoring it anyway). For me this has nothing to do with sitting back and doing nothing anymore or with refusing to take responsibility for my life and my actions. On the contrary: I believe that if God takes control of my life, something meaningful starts to happen—because I'm finally free to not do what I feel like doing, but to do what is the right thing to do.
Well, so much for the theory...