#6 I've always believed in God-it just took me a long time to realize I wasn't Him
Rediscovering Faith in the Middle of the Journey
Up to now in this series, I’ve made only passing references to my faith and the role it’s played in my life. I’ve always believed in God—it’s just taken me a long time to understand that I wasn’t Him.
I was raised in an observant Jewish home. My parents maintained the dietary laws of the Old Testament (keeping kosher). We attended Friday night Sabbath services as a family, and my dad and I would attend the Saturday morning services together as well.
Throughout elementary school I went to Hebrew afterschool to prepare for my Bar Mitzvah-a ceremony which represents the covenant of a young man moving into Jewish adulthood. I was able to lead the Saturday morning service in Hebrew and often did so. By my high school years, I became acutely aware of how my external performance pleased so many. But I felt alienated and disconnected from a real relationship with God.
I was in high school during the late 60s and had been raised to believe that I could do anything. Nonetheless, I was unable to fully accept that concept. The surge of hormones in my body combined with the social unrest of the times led me further from my faith. It was in that context that I came to weight training. (See Blog Post #3 – The Skinny kid Who Picked Up a Barbell - https://www.brucecohnfitness.com/blog/fitnessfailurefaith.)
I believed my accomplishments were entirely my own, even as I was riddled with persistent self-doubt. That mindset followed me into adulthood and my professional life. I was the one who made things happen- and I rarely paused to consider how much help I’d received along the way. As it was said of Horace Greeley, the 19th century newspaper legend, I was a self-made man who worshipped his creator. In doing so, I had quietly pushed God to the side.
As I followed a path of self-absorption, I was always on the lookout for a connection to something larger than myself. I still considered myself a Jew but without a clue. I explored Eastern religion, meditation and New Age ideas but none of them stuck. And then I met a girl. A woman, beautiful both inside and out. She was smart, kind and a longtime follower of Jesus Christ.
It turned out that we could talk about anything and usually did. And while I disagreed with her on any number of things, we always walked away feeling both challenged and smarter. I’ve always considered myself a lifelong learner, and God used that to bring me back to Him. And it didn’t hurt that the person he used to reach me was so darn attractive.
I remember one conversation about faith where I lashed out at her reminding her that the God I knew from the Old Testament was a scary, vengeful God. I brought up Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism. God made him wait 100 years to have a son and then demanded that Abraham sacrifice that son. My future wife smiled at me and said, “Yes, but in the end, God provided the lamb caught in the thicket as a substitute; just as He provided Jesus as a substitutional sacrifice for our sins.” I was blown away, and just like my first time in that YMCA gym in high school, I was hooked.
This began my faith journey. Along that walk, many experienced believers poured their lifelong beliefs into me. And I started to become a better man. I’ve referred to failure as my teacher-but it also carried me into a place where answers became less important than faithfulness. When control slipped away, I discovered how easily I had confused effort with trust.
What remained was not clarity, but calling: to stay attentive, to remain open, and to be faithful with what was placed in front of me rather than anxious about what had been taken away. Faith, I’ve learned, does not rush us through uncertainty. It invites us to remain there long enough to be softened by it, to listen to what is being formed beneath the surface, and to walk forward without requiring reassurance at every step. Or as Psalm 46 tells us, “Be still and know that I am God.” Him and not me.