Speaking to Relevant Magazine in an interview, actor and Christian Matthew McConaughey spoke out about his Christian faith and how prayer impacts him, nothing that he is a believer in God and that his Christian faith helps him realize that fate is not the ultimate determiner and that what we do matters.
He said, during that interview with Relevant Magazine, that he is now a believer in God, something very different than during his years as an agnostic. Particularly, he explained that his Christian faith has helped him move past a fate-focused worldview and recognize that things matter and that decisions lead
He began, “I’m a believer. I believe in God. I also, at times in my life, took advantage of the idea of, ‘Well, it’s all fate. What’s going to happen is going to happen. It’s all been written.’ I had a time where I had a couple of very agnostic years. It wasn’t as much about disbelieving as it was more about telling myself, ‘Hey, quit chalking things up to fate. You have your hands on the wheel, you’re responsible for your decisions.’ That’s why you’ve got free will — you make the choice for yourself. Your hands are on the wheel.”
Continuing, he explained how, in contrast to those who see the Earth’s smallness in the vast darkness of space and think only of our supposed insignificance in the context of such an expansive universe, he sees Earth and, through his faith, realizes that “it all matters.”
As he put it, “When I’ve been in the places where — you know, I look at Google, and I call it God’s eye in the sky. I look at Earth, and I look at our little dot we are on the planet and the world’s turning and we’re that little individual on the planet. And I say, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m like nothing. None of what I do matters.’ That place of humility is actually where I realized – oh it all matters.”
Then, when asked by Relevant Magazine how praying keeps him “connected to God,” McConaughey spoke about how the routine and constancy of church and need to think things through that comes with prayer helps him keep up with life and reflect on things in a healthy way.
He said, “Prayer is inventory for me. It’s why I love the schedule of church. I mean, you know, it’s time to go. It’s been seven days – I go to church once a week, so Sunday, I go and I pray and I do inventory. I try to let memory catch up. I take a deep breath, understand myself as being number two in God’s house and go back to my week remembering what I can.”
Continuing, he added, “I’m usually coming off a very busy week, so it’s sometimes hard to see the lineage of the week that we led to being at that point. Things overlap. You forget certain things, and then I try to picture everyone in my life until I can catch them in a snapshot in my mind when they are their most true selves. Not everyone is going to be happy. Some are very solemn faces, but that’s a friend of mine or a loved one or a family member that they are really being them their true selves at that moment. And sometimes it’s a picture of them 20 years ago, sometimes it’s a picture of them this morning.”
Featured image credit: By All-Pro Reels from District of Columbia, USA – Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97724492