Matthew McConaughey: ‘I’m a Believer. I Believe in God’
By Movieguide® Contributor
In an interview with Relevant Magazine, Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey discussed his faith and how it impacts his life.
“I’m a believer. I believe in God,” the actor declared.
However, he didn’t always claim that title.
“I had a time where I had a couple of very agnostic years,” he explained. “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.'”
“God’s laying out the highways, but we each have our hand on the wheel,” McConaughey continued. “I look at Earth. I look at the little dot that we are on the planet. The world’s turning. And we’re that little individual on the planet. That smallness can make you go, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m nothing. None of what I do matters.’”
“That place of humility is actually where I realized — oh it all matters,” he reflected.
A big part of humanity that McConaughey is still trying to figure out is the topic of free will.
“I’m eternally fascinated with trying to get to what are the decisions we can make that are selfish and selfless at the same time,” he explained. “What is our relationship with responsibility and freedom? Understanding the responsibility of freedom and the freedom that comes with responsibility? Where do we make the decisions? The ultimate place — I call it heaven on earth — is when we want what we need and we actually need what we want.”
Regularly connecting with God keeps McConaughey grounded.
“Prayer is inventory for me. It’s why I love the schedule of church. I mean, you know, it’s time to go,” he said. “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,” McConaughey continued.
He also relies on the Bible, even though he doesn’t always understand it.
“I don’t know what to do in my daily life with the burning bush,” he told Joe Rogan, referring to the story of Moses in the Old Testament. “I do know what to do with ‘love your neighbour like yourself’ and I do know what to do with some Proverbs that I can take into daily practice.”
Movieguide® previously reported on the actor’s faith:
Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey said that he witnesses Christians in Hollywood compromise their faith for the sake of their career.
“I have had—and I won’t throw any people under the bus—but I have had moments where I was on stage receiving an award in front of my peers in Hollywood, and there were people in the crowd that I have prayed with before dinners many times, and when I thanked God, I saw some of those people go to clap, but then notice that, ‘This is gonna be a bad thing on my resume’ and then sit back on their hands,” McConaughey told podcast host Joe Rogan.
McConaughey could be referencing his famous Oscars speech in which he publicly thanked God for the win.
“God has graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human hand,” he said from the stage at the time.
