Is Faith the Luck of the Draw?

There was a rich prince called Siddhartha Gautama. He lived in a palace in the village of Lumbini in Nepal. He grew up and got married like many other people. One day he left the palace for the first time and he met a sick person and an old person and he saw a corpse. This experience changed his life. He thought that their must be more to life than the pain of suffering, death and rebirth. He began a path to enlightenment, the middle way and 45 years of teaching others how to live with sickness, age and death. Siddhartha became Buddha and Buddhism was born.

About 500 years later Saul of Tarsus was on a mission to imprison Christians of the early church until he had a vision and heard the voice of Jesus on the road to Damascus. Saul became Paul and became a missionary to the world of the Mediterranean and he wrote 13 of the 27 New Testament Books.

A further 500 years later Muhammed was meditating in a cave looking over Mecca, a city which was immersed in greed and dishonesty, ignoring the poor and needy. He wondered how these people could be taught to live better, honest lives caring for one another when he was visited by the Angel Jibril and he became Allah’s messenger to the world.

These are examples of revelation and religious experience from the history of religions. Not everyone has an event or individual experience that led them to their faith. Today and throughout history many people’s belief and faith will be have been determined by their country of birth or their upbringing.

Is faith and belief a matter of chance, is it something we choose, is it something we search for or is it determined by God?