No blogs in January

I’m taking a break! Partly because I’ll be away for some of January, and partly because I need some time to catch up and put together some much-researched topics, I won’t be posting any blogs in January. But come back on the 3^rd of February for regular weekly thoughtfulness once again.

If you think you’ll forget in that long, or would just like a reminder, or if you have some thoughts, questions or opinions, send me an email at gregornewton(at)gmail(dot)com

See below for this week's blog.

Take care and God bless,

Gregor

Why?

To finish off the year, I want to do something different. This week I simply reflect on why I believe in God. It’s probably something I should have done long ago, so you know where I come from in writing this blog. My faith isn’t a tradition passed down that I cling to for safety or comfort, it’s a dynamic and often troublesome fight to understand myself, the world, and what it all means. This isn’t a long story of my life, telling of how I grew up and so on, but a reflection on what convicts me about God today.

The thing that has the most impact on me is the nature of existence itself. When I spend a night looking up at the stars, musing at the existence of the universe in all its magnitude, and considering things like where it all came from, where it ends, how there can be nothingness beyond it, I can’t help but consider what must be behind it all. How else could everything work without some form of higher power? Concepts of infinity and endlessness are quite simply beyond understanding. It’s the same with the world around me – a creation full of such intricacies that there is no way I can believe they all just happened by chance, no matter how long the earth is meant to have existed. This isn’t discarding science, but saying that there’s more to it than mere chance. Naturally my words don’t do this justice, but you need only consider something like the human body or a fragile ecosystem to see how finely balanced and carefully interrelated everything is to see my point.

The idea of the supernatural is something that convicts me quite a bit too. Much as I’ll often try to argue away seeming miracles and the like, I can’t deny that there are myriad things in this universe that at least appear supernatural in nature, whether they’re coincidences way too huge to be believable, healings, hearing the voice of God or spirits, or events that are simply not possible. Like anyone, I will often try to ignore these, I think we all want to pretend that miracles or the supernatural don’t occur, even as Christians, but the more I see or hear (from authoritative sources) the less I can deny that there’s more to this universe than what can be explained without God.

The Bible is another pretty significant impact for me. Not just believing what it says, but in studying it as a history student I come to see that it is so much more reliable than just being an object of faith. I’ll be looking at some of this more another time in this blog, but the way it all holds together, the way prophesies play out, and the way theology holds true has me thoroughly convinced that it is reliable as a historical source as well as a religious document. Even in taking an objective stance, it still makes way too much sense for me to attribute to chance, despite the questions and troubles that arise at the same time. The Bible is one of the most confusing and disputed works known to man, but for all its seeming problems it has an awful lot that holds together and speaks to me of an authentic God.

And finally my own spiritual journey is pretty special to me. From encounters with God (in whatever sense), to the times I feel without God, to seeing the way God has shaped my life and everything in it, I know that God is with me. This is an area that can’t be explained verbally, and is something that can only be experienced, but it is a core part of why I follow God.

In the end, I don’t claim to be able to prove anything to you about the truth of Christianity. It’s not my goal, and it’s a personal decision we all need to look into ourselves. Here I have only just touched on some of the major things that amaze and convict me about this world. I simply look around me and there’s no way I can’t believe in some form of higher power, and the more I look into it, the more Christianity makes sense. Our understanding of God may not be perfect, and it has questions of its own, but for me a world without God has far more questions than a world with God. That’s why I believe in God, and that’s why I struggle through the questions in this blog, to try with honesty and integrity to understand the faith that shapes who I am and what I do. What I’ve written here is why I believe, and everything else I struggle through in this blog is trying to figure out how the rest of it fits together, testing my faith and leaving nothing untouched. If it’s what I believe in, it’s not good enough just to trust that it works, I have to figure it out for myself.

A chosen people?

Why were the Israelites God’s chosen people?

The Old Testament (pre-Jesus) of the Bible is full of stories and history of the Israelites (now the Jews), and centres on them being God’s chosen people. All the way through the Old Testament, different authors cite God’s specific choosing of them. But why were they the people of God, and not anyone else? And what does that mean of us today? Are the Jews still the only chosen people of God?

This is a challenging question, because the Bible speaks so clearly of the Israelites as God’s chosen people: “And who is like your people Israel – the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to create a name for himself” (2 Samuel 7:23).

When I think about it this does make sense though. The differences between denominations in recent times show that as imperfect people, even within the Church we fail to get things right and have conflict amongst the greater Christian community. Our understandings of God differ, generally in minor details, and these are the cause of disagreements and in some cases conflict.

If God had ‘chosen’ every nation and spoken directly to each nation as He did to the Israelites, then by now the world would have hundreds of different cultures claiming to know the exact nature of God. While they may all be generally right, the minor differences they have would almost certainly end up in conflict, with each claiming to be completely right. The conflicts between Christian denominations now, like Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, are bad enough, without completely isolated communities claiming to know exactly the same God in different ways, and are good evidence of the harm that could be caused if God acted the same way with all nations.

So the way I understand the chosen people of Israel is as an example set by God for the rest of the world. As cultures spread and people moved all around the world, so God spread with them. So in that way, God used his chosen people as the starting point for all people to know Him personally, eventuating in a world where all had the opportunity to know God, and from one source, rather than hundreds of cultural variants that would cause confusion and conflict today. And I think that’s what “create a name for myself” means – God showing Himself through the Israelites. It’s not some ego-related claim, but God saying this is where I’ll start to show my true self to the world.

Similarly, God doesn’t write off other people, but says “foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, and to worship him… these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer” (Isaiah 56:6-7). The temple in Jerusalem had a special area for foreigners to worship, and clearly they were accepted, albeit in a different way, within the Jewish community. And as I looked at in “Faith for the unreached”, this doesn’t mean that people who have never heard of God by name can’t know Him or be granted eternal life.

In the New Testament, writers like Paul confirm this, by preaching to the Gentiles (the non-Jewish people) and accepting all who believe into the community of Christ. The chosen people of today include all races, nations and cultures, so we are all the chosen people of God.

So I guess in essence my way of understanding this question is quite simple – God had to start somewhere. In considering this, and how this doesn’t exclude non-Israelites from faith, I think I can be quite happy with why the Israelites were the chosen people then, understanding that as the word of God has spread, so all people are God’s chosen people.

As for why it was Israel and not, say, Australia? Well, I guess we can’t really know for certain, but it’s understandable, as they are one of the most ancient population centres, and were prevalent in the early historic world of Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultures. They lived in areas close to where written history began (and thus there are many written records of God), and existed around many of the major civilisations that we have records of today. Apart from that, I guess it’s just up to God. After all, why not start there?

Some Bible verses to check out on this topic: 2 Samuel 7:23; 1 Kings 8:41-43; Isaiah 56:3-8; John 10:14-16; Matthew 15:21-28.

God and War?

Why did God encourage the Israelites to fight their neighbours and take their land? How is that the actions of the loving and gracious God of Christianity?

I want to tackle the issue of one of the seeming differences between the Old and the New Testament, that of God encouraging the Israelites to go to war with their neighbours, to kill the people and to take their lands, frequently with God on their side. It’s a huge challenge to me to consider this, as it doesn’t seem to be the same sort of God we worship at first glance.

In really thinking about it, there’s no way I can dismiss war as ‘good’ or even ‘Godly’ so to speak, but I do see it as an important part of a big picture of Judaism and Christianity.

The Old Testament, and particularly the book of Joshua, tells of Israel conquering new lands, and killing the inhabitants in the process. One thing that sticks out for me in this is that it is clear that these countries were morally and ethically wrong. And by this I don’t mean pagan worship, though this was there too, but from what I’ve read (both in the Bible and elsewhere) they were nations that operated in the vein of Sodom and Gomorrah (see Genesis 19:12-13), countries rife with behaviour none of us would consider remotely acceptable by any standards. So although I still don’t like the concept of war in itself, the idea that God was reclaiming a land that was His anyway (as God and Creator) from a ‘sinful’ people and giving it to His people who lived by His moral standards, seems a lot more sound to me. And when the Israelites didn’t do the right things, and lived similarly bad lives, they had the land taken from them at God’s command, being overrun and enslaved by the Egyptians or Babylonians. Thus it went both ways.

Also, a lot of these accounts of war tell of the Israelites defending their own country. Just as we would not consider it ‘sinful’ or wrong to defend our own country, this isn’t such a difficult aspect of Old Testament warfare to comprehend.

The biggest thing that struck me though is that we consider this whole issue from the perspective of death being the end. But in terms of the rest of Christian theology, death is only a step on the journey. So when the Israelites killed their enemies, those who died moved on to the spiritual realm, and if they were living God’s way they moved on to heaven anyway. For those who died, they only moved on to the next stage of their lives more quickly than they would have otherwise. Of course there is likely to be pain and suffering for families, and I don’t pretend to make light of that factor, but when taken as a big picture the deaths of people, for whatever reason, become much less significant and wrong.

Of course this brings up one of the 10 Commandments from Exodus 20:13, which is “do not murder”, but from the original Hebrew it is clear this refers specifically to deliberate, premeditated murder, rather than all forms of killing. Obviously I’m not saying killing people is right, but that the absolute prohibition refers only to specific murder, and it does not preclude God from working in this way.

Another point that I think is important is the context of the Old Testament, when power was shown by military might, and this was an important part of a nation’s identity. The Israelites probably wouldn’t have listened to God very much if they remained oppressed and enslaved for their entire existence, as they would question where their God was. For God to work in these times, He also had to be a part of the times. I’m not saying that God changes His nature, but that He changes the way He works according to His purposes. Just as we change the way we act around different people, so God acts differently according to different needs. I think it's necessary to understand that in the militaristic Old Testament times someone was going to die, and it was simply a matter of who. These were times of conquest and warfare, and conflict was a given. It wasn't a question of whether there would be a war, but when, and who would win.

I think it’s also worth noting that Christianity isn’t all soft and cuddly, as is sometimes portrayed. When I really look into the Bible, I can see that Jesus was a hard man, overturning tables in the Synagogue, and saying “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). While He is described as a Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), and that is the ultimate aspiration of God and of Christians, Jesus recognised that war and conflict were an unfortunately necessary part of a world corrupted by sin and hatred. A parent may wish to have a home where love and peace rule, but at times strict discipline is necessary. That’s the best way I can describe the necessity of war at times. It’s undesirable, but necessary.

Having said this, many a war has been attributed to God in the past, and many leaders have claimed to lead a ‘holy war’, from the dark and distant past to only just recently. I don’t mean to justify these. Of course it’s always possible, but it’s also a good excuse for leaders of Christian nations to use to validate their actions.

Personally I hate war, and I’m quite sure God does too. But it doesn’t mean it’s not necessary sometimes and for good reasons. I would much rather peace, and will fight for it (excuse the pun), but I’m pretty sure God can have a good reason for fighting wars too.

Some Bible verses to check out on this topic: Joshua (all); Isaiah 9:2-7; Matthew 21:12-13.

A Postmodern Faith?

A church with all the answers?

From what a number of people have said, it seems that one of the things people dislike so much about the church is the way it presents itself as having all the answers. The thought that the church can say God is like this, does this, and thinks this, and this is the way you should respond, what you should do, how you should live. And this negative opinion comes from both Christians and non-Christians. While I do think it’s important that the church make a stand on certain issues, be they moral or theological, at the same time I think there are so many areas where we just don’t understand, and the church fails when it tries to give a simple answer.

When someone presents you with a question, it’s natural to respond with a solid, absolute answer, to say ‘this is how it is, end of story’, even if that only addresses part of it. Sometimes they’re almost “because I said so” sort of answers that don’t address the question at all. This is something the church can do too, trying to give solid theological and moral direction when the answers aren’t always as clear cut. I’m not saying here that the church is wrong in what it says, but that sometimes the way it presents things is very absolute, insisting that it has all the answers when it’s not necessarily that simple. I think sometimes the church is a bit like a parent, trying to give a straightforward solution or direction to ‘children’ of faith, not realising that people have moved beyond this and want a solid and honest understanding of Christianity as it is. What the church has to say is valuable, if not always perfect (just as with parents), but it can be out of touch with the contemporary world, like telling a teenage child they can’t go out “because I said so”.

When you really get into the depths of Christianity, and trying to understand the nature of God, the reality is that we simply don’t know enough to really measure up God. Here I really want to emphasise the mystery of God. I know many people are discouraged in faith, or turned away when the church fails to meet their needs. But the way I see my faith is as a mystery, something I always puzzle over, something that will never be at rest. I know not everything makes sense, that God seems illogical or flawed at times, but when I take a step back and think about it, everything is so much more illogical, more flawed without God. It’s easy to get caught up in the technicalities of religion, and forget the simple nature of faith in God. No, we may not know exactly how heaven and hell work, or what parts of the Bible might be metaphorical or literal, or why other religions have developed. But I wonder how much these little things really matter. When the church (or for that matter individual Christians) try to give simple, straightforward answers it may cause resentment. But for me the central thing that doesn’t change is faith in God. No matter how these things are explained, God remains God.

At its heart, I think ‘religion’ (as opposed to faith) is a way that people of faith try to explain God. Everyone wants clear, simple answers, and the church has developed in trying to provide these answers. Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it fails. The core of faith for me is understanding that God is God, and forgetting about the theology and all the stuff that goes with it where it’s a problem. This won’t be a popular idea with some, but I hold that the most important thing is quite simply understanding that God is. Full stop. The rest is important for sure, but that core point, the “I AM” of God, is the core of my faith, and the rest settles in around that one absolute truth.

If a child has only ever seen birds flying in the air, and then sees and aeroplane, they will try to explain it as a type of bird, somehow different, but likening it to what they understand from their experiences. Obviously they will be wrong in the way they interpret the plane, but despite this, the plane remains a plane. When we try to understand God, we are trying to interpret something so different to what we’ve ever seen before, and we’ll get it wrong in many ways, but God still remains God.

Much as I dislike a lot of what Postmodernism has to offer, this is one thing I like about it. Many have moved on from trying to describe God in black and white terms, instead focusing on a more spiritual, personal relationship with a God who is beyond their comprehension. Theology is important, but to me God Himself is more important.

Some Bible verses to check out on this topic: Exodus 3:14; John 8:58; Acts 15:5-11, especially verse 9.

Why is there suffering?

If God is a loving God, why does He allow suffering to occur? Why do things like cancer or tsunamis happen?

The typical answer I’ve heard to this is “we can’t know the will of God, there must be a reason only God knows”, but I know that’s not enough. We will never be able to know the will of God completely, or to adequately understand why suffering occurs, but simply saying that God knows and we don’t is not enough. When people look around them and see such suffering, they naturally question how there can be a god.

There is no way I can justify the way the world works, and the way God works in it. I have a few ideas to put forward, but I don’t expect to explain suffering away, or to ‘make it all ok’. It’s not something that can be brushed away even by the best of explanations. These are simply some thoughts on how suffering and God can coexist.

One idea is the importance of suffering in the way we live our lives. I can look back on the hard times of my life (although trivial compared to many) and see how those experiences have shaped me and are a part of who I am. I was reading a book recently which explored this idea really well – “For man to be free and capable of growth, he needs to be in an environment that challenges him. If we lived in a world where it was impossible to suffer, wouldn’t we remain incredibly bland and childlike?”* That captures my ideas really well, and it’s a thoughtful exploration of the importance suffering plays in human thought and existence. Suffering does act to shape the way humans think, behave and respond to the world.

Related to this is the thought that the presence of suffering can give direction to our lives. The presence of suffering leads people to question the nature of existence, of a higher power, and provokes thoughts about death and eternity and what they mean. While suffering isn’t something God wants us to go through, it does play a part in our understanding of our existence and purpose.

Possibly one of the most important considerations is that in the frame of Christianity life is only a precursor to eternity. So even when someone suffers a horrendous life, when they do die they move on to eternity, and depending on what choices they’ve made in life they can have an eternity with no suffering. While this can sound like a coverall feel-good idea to make people disregard suffering as somehow OK, it does come into understanding how God can allow suffering. Its nature as being very temporary is really important, as it makes it far less significant in the big picture, rather than a lifelong curse or cruel ending.

Besides, Jesus himself suffered one of the most painful forms of death, crucifixion, and also suffered on earth just as humans did. God is not some distant entity oblivious to the sufferings of mankind. To assume that suffering is something God has cursed man with is to forget that it played into the life of His son as well, meaning that God (as Jesus is God, a part of the trinity) has experienced the very pain and sufferings we deal with.

A final thought to consider is the idea of Spiritual battle. I don’t understand what form this takes, or how it works, but with both God and the devil both active in the world, could suffering be at least partially attributed to the devil’s opposition to God?

When it comes down to it though, I really have nothing I can say to a parent of a kid who dies of leukaemia, or in response to hundreds of thousands of people dying in the tsunami. To try and cover up suffering with a cheerful “God’s in control” is so hopelessly inadequate. I don’t know that what I’ve written here is much better. There is no way I can hope to make the concept of suffering any less real, any less painful or any less challenging. All I can hope and believe is that in the context of the greater frame of existence, of life, death and eternity, that somehow this suffering becomes a little less significant, a small part of a greater whole. That it will become a part of our identity because of its very pain, through what it teaches us and causes us to question, but also that in time it will become a part of our understanding of God, causing us to question, to explore, to engage with God because of the suffering of the world, not to turn away from Him as a result.

Some Bible verses to check out on this topic: Job (all); Romans 8:17; 1 Peter 4:1-2.

* Richard MacKenna, God for Nothing…

Creation of Humanity

Why did God create humans? If He knew many of us were not going to follow Him, wasn’t he just condemning us to hell?

Firstly I want to warn that in looking into this I have to address issues of choice to follow God as necessary for ‘salvation’, and some of it may come across as preaching. This is not what I am trying to do at all, it’s not intended to convince you of the need to do this or that, but simply to explain how it can work in a Christian context.

I guess to start with the best thing is to consider how it all fits together. The idea is that God knows everything, because He is God. And so when he created humans, he knew that some of us were going to rebel against him and thus suffer ‘eternal separation from God’, or hell. It’s important to note that this is not saying that he predestined us to this fate, but that he knew what we would choose through our own free choice in our lives.

I think the best way I can see this is that it is giving people an opportunity out of love. I’ll draw an analogy here with parents, based on a generalisation that they are loving and caring (I know there are exceptions). Parents have children with the full knowledge that their child could grow up and have a terrible life of some sort – through illness and suffering, crime and hatred, depression, whatever it may be. Everyone on earth suffers in some way, and the reality is that life is hard, and so our parents are ‘condemning’ us to the suffering of this world, as well as the good. But parents still have kids despite this hardship. However the reason parents usually have kids is out of love – to give them opportunities, hope, and the chance of a good life, as far as possible. Their kids won’t always take these opportunities, or may have them snatched away by something like illness, but their parents gave them this opportunity out of love for them.

What if this is why God created humanity? He knew full well that some of His children would suffer terrible lives, and worse, that some would suffer a terrible eternity through their own choosing. But in creating life, and creating humanity, God was providing them with an opportunity of an amazing nature. He gave much more than any parent on earth could hope to give. In a (non-religious) view of parenting, the best they can hope to achieve is a child that grows up generally happy and well off, living a decent life. But in taking this view of why God created humanity, people may suffer a hard life on earth, but if they choose to follow God they are then given the gift of an eternity with God, and all the blessings that come with that.

Yes, God knew that some of his children would choose not to take the opportunity to follow Him, but the reality is that they are condemning themselves. Just as it’s not a parent’s fault if their child chooses to go ‘astray’, nor is it God’s fault if his children do the same thing, and condemn themselves.

So I think it is possible to understand the way God can have created humans not to condemn them, but to love them. I’m not going to say that that’s likely to be the full story, there’s sure to be a lot more to it than that, and this also leads into many other topics. But I think a significant part of the story is that God wanted to create beings who could share with Him in His love and life, if they choose to follow Him. I don’t think it’s a case of God creating to condemn, as any condemnation we bring upon ourselves. John 3:17: “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” God is only filled with love for us.

Naturally, this means the ball is in our court as to whether or not we follow God, and I don’t intend to ague that issue. All I want to do is see how God is not an unloving God who created people to condemn them, but instead a God who loves his people and wants all of them to share in eternity.

Some Bible verses to check out on this topic: John 3:16-17; Romans 8:1-2; Genesis 1:26.

Salvation for the 'good'

Does a good, moral, ethical person, who happens to be atheist, go to hell? And do people who call themselves Christian but commit terrible crimes go to heaven? Why should a good person go to hell?

This is heavy! It’s also something that has huge repercussions for how people understand Christianity, and is thus a sensitive topic. But it needs to be looked at, because it really is an important issue.

The question of the ‘bad Christian’ going to heaven is slightly more straightforward. I would strongly question the actual faith of a ‘Christian’ who continually commits crimes, or willingly and knowingly sins against their God. Sure no-one is perfect, and naturally Christians will do things wrong, sometimes majorly. But I don’t think someone who acts repeatedly and intentionally against the values of Christianity is taking their faith at all seriously, if they have any at all. “If we claim to have fellowship with him [Jesus] yet walk in the darkness we lie and do not live by the truth” – 1 John 1:6.

There’s also another aspect to this – is it ok for a person to just ask for forgiveness and all their sins be forgotten? As I see it, there’s a big distinction between asking for forgiveness and actually meaning it. Sure, anyone can say a casual “oh sorry God”, but unless they really mean it, I doubt God’s going to be paying much attention. And again, if they really meant that they were sorry they wouldn’t go out and willingly do the same sort of things repeatedly. So the concept that “I can do anything as long as I ask God for forgiveness afterwards” is somewhat flawed, because it’s clear this person doesn’t actually mean what they say to God.

But as for atheists, on the surface it seems really straightforward – “whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16). BUT there’s more to it than this. This is in the context of preaching the word of God to the nations, so it concerns only those who know of the Biblical message, however that does leave us with all the atheists who live ‘good’ lives.

There is a major concept I think is important here – asking what actually constitutes ‘good’. In thinking about this I realised that all our values of what things actually make up living a supposedly good life are shaped by religious and societal values. Western countries are generally based on mainly Christian morals (right or wrong), rather than on any universal morals. By contrast, in some societies it is ok to exact revenge on others, to kill certain people, or even to steal (eg. ancient Sparta). So in essence, there isn’t any actual reality of ‘good’ other than what this society values as good. So that means that a ‘good’ person is really just conforming to the values of society, whether or not these values may be the same as Biblical values. This is important for society, but not something that makes somebody ‘worthy’ of heaven.

Also, the nature of salvation is something huge, and it comes as an undeserved gift from God. Just like I couldn’t earn the right to rule the world, nor can I earn God’s salvation by being ‘good’ by whatever standards, as it’s quite simply beyond our reach as humans. While Christianity involves trying to live a ‘good’ life, I don’t think this has as much to do with earning salvation as being willing to serve your God. I don’t give my friends my time and effort to earn their friendship; I do it because I care about them. Same with God, it’s not about me earning salvation, but about being willing to do things for God out of love. This is the whole idea of salvation by faith, not by works. One of the best-known Bible verses, John 3:16, says that whoever believes in Jesus shall have eternal life. Not that whoever does good will have eternal life.

I don’t know that I like my thoughts here any more than anyone else will. Naturally I want everyone to experience an eternity in heaven. But I don’t think our standards as to what should ‘earn’ us a place in heaven – living a ‘good’ life – are really as rigid as we might think. After all, God makes it clear that because we have all failed, none of us actually deserves anything from God (See Rom 3:23-24). So while at first it can seem harsh that ‘good’ people can be condemned, I have to question what it is that makes them ‘good’, and that if God is real, why would they not do everything possible to search out the truth about God, whatever this may be?

Some Bible verses to check out on this topic: Ephesians 2:8-9; Romans 3:9-18, 23-24; Mark 16:15-16; Matthew 7:17-23.

Feeling God

If God is here in this world, and here in my life, then why can’t I feel Him?

This is something I struggle with at times. Sure everyone goes through ‘dry times’, but why do these times occur, and why can’t some people who are exploring religion feel God when they search for Him?

The first part of this addresses Christians who can’t feel God. Sometimes an answer is easy for me. I can’t feel God because I’m doing something in my life that I shouldn’t be. When I’m caught up in sin of some sort, whatever it might be, that’s at least part of why I can’t feel God, because I’m turning away from Him. But sometimes I seem to be doing things mostly right, but am feeling very distant from God.

Feeling God when we’re doing well is something I think we’ve come to expect from religion. That as long as we’re doing what we’re meant to do as Christians, then God should be here with us all the time. I think a major part of the problem here is that we often expect that God should be here with us as long as we’re not doing anything wrong. But just because we’re not doing something wrong doesn’t mean we’re doing everything the way we should be. And if we’re living a really ‘easy’ Christian life and just expecting the good bits of Christianity, God has every right to let us know that it’s not just about the ‘good life’, but that it’s about so much more. Not being able to feel God could be a good suggestion that we need to pay more attention to what He wants of us. We all need to do that regardless!

And I think God sometimes tests us even if we are doing things God’s way. It seems harsh and cruel, but I don’t really think it is. Although not feeling God at times is one of the hardest parts of being a Christian, at the same time it builds us up and makes us stronger. Sometimes God leads us into the ‘desert place’ for a purpose, even if we don’t always know what it is. That’s certainly true for me, in reflection. Hanging on to the ‘memory’ of God in the ‘alone’ times has helped me to trust and engage with God so much more in the long term. It doesn’t make the ‘dry times’ easier, but it means that I can understand that just because I don’t feel God doesn’t mean He’s not there. And often God’s presence comes subtly, not in the big signs or booming voice we might expect or want.

Lots of the Psalms show people crying out to God, searching for His presence. It’s encouraging to see how this isn’t something unusual, but a part of every Christian’s journey. And even in crying out in desperation, they still continue to praise God, recognising that even when they can’t feel Him, He’s still worthy of their praise.

The other major part of this question is about people who are just exploring faith, who try praying or searching for God but just can’t feel Him. This is probably even harder to comprehend.

Here I think it comes down to the willingness of the person involved to actually search for God. If anybody could just pray “Hey God, if you’re there, answer me now” and it happened, then it wouldn’t really be faith. It comes back to the idea of actively and vigorously searching for God. A brief prayer ‘just in case’ isn’t really searching for God or wanting to follow Him, and understandably it’s not going to result in much!

And yet there are some who search for years, and still haven’t felt God. Here I have to say that I honestly believe that if people truly search, then they will find God and God will show Himself to them in time. If you lose something in the house that’s really important, you won’t just look for it for a little while and give up, not even after a long while. If God could be real then that’s pretty important, and so warrants more than a short search. If God’s real, He’s worth searching all your life for, and not giving up on. So just because someone hasn’t felt God after searching for a while doesn’t mean that He’s not there, or that they should give up.

I don’t like not feeling God any more than anyone else, and it’s a hard thing to come to terms with and can be a major cause for doubt, but in the end I do believe God remains with us always, and I have to trust that even when I can’t feel Him, He’s still there. That’s the very nature of faith.

Some Bible verses to check out on this topic: Psalm 77; Job (all); Matthew 7:7-8; James 4:8.

'Follow up' evangelism

What is the point in ‘follow up' after someone has become a Christian? Sure, letting people know about Christianity is one thing, but why do Christian groups work hard to retain people, bringing them into the church? Doesn't this suggest their faith is thanks to our own efforts, and not God?

Often in Christian groups I hear people saying "once they've become a Christian that's great, but it's really important to follow up, or else they'll fall away and stop believing". This is a really hard concept to come to terms with, as it suggests that person's faith depends on us following up. That is, taking their details, calling them, inviting them to a youth group and so on. Shouldn't 'salvation' be a case of us presenting them with the Christian message and them making the choice to follow God with the help of the Holy Spirit, and not dependent on our efforts to 'convince' someone by chasing them and 'integrating' them into the church?

I have two thoughts to give here. The first is that where evangelism incorporating follow up is used 'successfully', Christians accept that it is by the work of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God who works within us. So God knew that the person would need encouragement and support in their faith, and thus sent a Christian along to follow up and give this support they needed.

Secondly, if this follow up weren't to occur, the idea is that God would send someone else down the track to do so in a different way, and so a person doesn't fail to know God just because one Christian failed to do what God wanted.

So if you were to have some outreach event, and 'Joe' accepted God and became a Christian, if another Christian then follows up and makes sure he's doing ok, and encourages him to come to church and so on, it is (generally) by the Holy Spirit's guidance. And if the person still ends up drifting away or turning away from Christianity, it's because Joe has decided other things matter more to him than God. A Christian 'intervening' at this point isn't going to change their ultimate belief in the end, only support or encourage them in their faith.

Also, if the same thing were to happen with Joe but no-one followed up and he drifted away, the idea is that later on, God will provide another opportunity, and another person, to meet that need in him.

The hardest thing for me in understanding this question is that it is so hypothetical. But I think I can say that 'follow up' is not strategic recruitment of followers, but a part of God's way of presenting His message to the world, and those who carry out the 'follow up' are simply doing God's will. Looking into this, I found that most of Paul's letters in the New Testament do just this – encouraging small communities of Christians after they had accepted the gospel (see for example 1 and 2 Thessalonians).

I'm not sure if this explains it fully, it's still something I'm thinking about and working through. But at least this looks into how ‘follow up’ is a part of God’s plan for encouraging people in their faith, and seeing how it is something God often calls us to do as part of presenting the message of Christianity rather than 'convincing' someone to be a Christian by integrating them or socialising them into the church. Ultimately it’s not about integrating anyone into a church or group, but about encouragement. And still, after this effort some will make the ultimate choice not to follow God, and that is their decision. The Christians who presented the message and 'followed up' gave them the opportunity and they chose not to accept it.

As with anything, 'follow up' can be misused, but that doesn't make it wrong as a concept. I'm sure we all know people who've been pestered incessantly, and that's not good. But as a concept in itself, Christians need support and encouragement just like anyone else, and so 'follow up' is a part of this process, with God calling us to make that commitment to another person to encourage them in their faith, trusting that whatever happens God will provide what they need to remain strong in faith, if they so choose.

Questions?

If you have any questions you think would be good to explore at a deeper level, or any really heavy topics that just don't seem to make sense, add them as a comment here and I'll see what I can do :-)

Jesus' death

Why did Jesus actually have to die? Couldn’t God just have forgiven everyone and be done with it?

On the surface it seems like a really straightforward question, just pull out the standard doctrine, “well Jesus had to die for our sins so we could be made right with God…” But when a friend really questioned this issue, it actually struck me as having a lot more to it that that. Why couldn’t God have just forgiven everyone? It’s a very fair question.

I believe that as humans we have a soul, our innermost being, beyond our physical body. This is the essence of what it means to be ‘human’ rather than just another animal, and what sets us apart as a special part of God’s creation. Our soul is a gift from God, and that is the part of us that is in the image of God. Through free will we chose to ‘sin’, or rebel against God. This sin separates us from God, because we have ‘contaminated’ ourselves with it.

But to get to the crux of the question – why can’t God just forgive us? To look at this we have to get into quite heavy spiritual stuff, delving into the areas of God and Satan which can often be hard to comprehend or seem strange and theological. The reality is that (in the Christian understanding) there is God, and there is Satan, the Devil. When we sin, we owe a big ‘fine’ – death. Romans 6:23: “the wages of sin is death”.

I see the issue of forgiveness or ‘salvation’ (though the term often makes me cringe because of the way it’s used) as having two core parts. The first is God’s personal forgiveness for our sins. Because of sin we aren’t able to enter into God’s presence. It’s kind of like the magnetic fields on a magnet – when you put the magnets a certain way, they will repel each other. God is pure and perfect, and our sin ‘repels’ us from Him. We need to be forgiven in order to meet fully with God.

But the second one I think explains why God can’t just forgive us and be done with it. Death isn’t simply a punishment God gives, but it’s a claim that Satan makes on our lives. You could say Satan’s like a gaoler, and he can ‘hold’ us in death because of our ‘crimes’, or sins. This is something that can’t be overcome through God just forgiving us and forgetting about our sins. Because Satan has a hold over us through sin, someone needs to take our place, or pay our fine. Thus Jesus death is not just so he can forgive us, but it is paying a ransom to Satan for our lives, taking our place. In Matthew 10:41 Jesus says he came “to give his life as a ransom for many”. This is what it boils down to – that Jesus didn’t have to die only so that God could forgive our sins, but so that through his death, Satan would have no claim on our lives, as that claim had already been paid for.

So in essence, there’s a lot more to this question than God forgiving us. We have to be made right with God, but we also need to have our ‘fine’ paid to Satan. And that’s what Jesus did in his death, by taking our sins upon him when he hung on the cross.

The whole concept of Satan, evil, and all that stuff is a huge one that I have only just touched on here, and hope to look at a bit more in the future. Bear in mind this is only a part of the big picture.

Faith for the 'unreached'?

What happens with people who haven’t heard about Christianity?

Lots of people ask this question, and I have asked it myself. And it’s a bit of a tricky question when you get into it deeply. I’m going to give you my ideas here, but I don’t claim to have any divine revelation on this matter, so take it as you will! Quite simply, this is the way I understand it to work. Also bear in mind that this is taken from a Christian perspective, and works on the assumption that Christianity is true in its basis and beliefs.

The core of my ideas regarding people of other faiths is that God searches the heart of every person, and not only what name they know or worship. So rather than having to know the name of God, and follow strictly Christian practices, I believe that God looks for people who show a yearning to know their creator, a yearning to love and serve their god, whatever form he might take.

I’ll look at ancient Greece as an example. Before Christianity in the area, Greece had only a polytheistic (many-god) religious belief, observed by the majority of the population. But as with pretty much all faiths, this was carried out with devotion and commitment by many of the worshippers, whose aim was to come before a higher being (or beings) and recognise that they were created by and overseen by them. While they didn’t know the name or identity of God as we do, many of the people of ancient Greece demonstrated a yearning to meet with their creator, and I believe God recognises this. God is a god of grace and love, and just because the people of Greece couldn’t name him as God, and instead gave him the form of their Olympian gods doesn’t mean He will reject them outright.

Also worth noting here is that when Christianity came to Greece, it was progressively accepted by the population, and today forms the main religion of Greece. This shows that when they were shown the identity of God, they readily recognised Him and left their previous understandings of religion behind them. This shows that the people of ancient Greece were not caught up in a religious practice that dominated their lives by its rigid polytheistic details, but rather that they were searching for the truth. When this came in the form of Christianity, they accepted it and modified their faith traditions accordingly.

I will make the point that there is a big difference between people who don’t know of Christianity and follow other faiths, and those that do know Christianity, and choose instead to follow such faiths. These are quite different scenarios. The issue of other faiths like Islam and Judaism today are a whole other topic to be looked at another day, but I think many of the same ideas apply. God looks at the heart.

So my argument is that God will accept any who willingly search for Him and yearn to follow their creator, even if they don’t know who He is. That means it’s not impossible for a person who has not heard of God to be accepted by Him, but instead that God is willing to accept any who honestly search for their maker.

This is a challenging idea. Not everyone will accept it. But I think that we need to understand above all else that God loves His people - all people. And thus will see all those who seek the truth as people ultimately devoted to Him. The important thing here is searching for the truth. It means not simply accepting whatever is presented, whatever faith it may be, but actively seeking God.

Faith over time

Why is it that people leave the Church? And more importantly do these people leave the faith? (Note the difference between Church and faith). The National Church Life Survey* indicates that for adults who have left the Church, 55% who have left in the past four years maintain the core Christian beliefs. This drops, however, to 15% for those who have been away for more than 30 years. Why is there this decline in faith? While it is easy to say that they have not been nurtured in a faith community, I want to look at it at a deeper level – if God has called them, how can they have fallen away?

First and foremost I want to assert that God calls everyone to follow Him, and will give every person the opportunity to know Him, and accept Him if they so choose. Thus these people who have left the Church have done so generally having been called by God personally, and at some point made a commitment to follow him to some degree, at least to the point of going to Church.

The way I see it is that people who have left the Church, and ultimately left the faith, are people who have known God, but have then decided to put other things in their life first.

As a hypothetical example, ‘Joe’ is a regular Churchgoer, who has a personal relationship with God, a life devoted to prayer and service. However as life continues, he becomes increasingly affected by his daily life, such as his workmates who regularly go to the pub for a good night out. Slowly, as time goes by, these relationships he has draw him further and further from God, not simply because of their presence in his life, but because of his personal decision to put them first, above God. Maybe he slept in on Sunday mornings because he had too much of a hangover from the night before, the exact reasons matter little. While he remains a Christian, and knows he should be doing more as a Christian, every time he puts another thing above God, he is drawing further away from Him. This is not a failure of God to meet with Joe, but a failure of Joe to commit to God.

Eventually, Joe may have put so many things above God that he has largely forgotten God’s calling in his own life. At this point he may well ‘cease to believe’, not because of any lack of God’s presence, but because of his willingness to walk away from God, whereby eventually God becomes so low on his list that He essentially ‘ceases to exist’ for Joe.

Therefore, the way I understand a loss of faith for an individual is not one of God failing to call them personally, or a failure of God’s existence, but the personal choice of an individual not to put God first, which leads to their loss of faith. It’s much like the story of the wealthy man in Matthew 19:16ff, who believed, but was unwilling to sell his possessions in service to his God. He was unwilling to place God first in his life, and was risking that these worldly things could draw him away from God.

This is a possible explanation of the reason why people of a strong faith can ‘fall away’ and leave their faith behind, not because of a lack of faith in the first place, but because of a lack of commitment, which leads them to make God less and less important, until he essentially fails to matter.

What are the repercussions of this? It shows us how important it is to put God first in our lives, without failure. Whenever we put something else in first place, we not only offend God, but also choose to put God lower down on our list, and thus open ourselves to falling away from God of our own doing. It’s not up to God alone to pull us back to Him, it’s something we have to be willing to commit to ourselves. It also shows how our Christian community is important, as it does nurture us and help us to stay focused, even though the ultimate choice is ours.

*http://www.ncls.org.au/default.aspx?sitemapid=6151

Flawed.

If Christianity is true, then why are there so many views? So many extremes? So many disagreements?
Why is the Christian Church so fragmented if we have God on our side?

How is it that you can have two Church ministers talking, one who advocates homosexuality, and the other who says it's a sin? One who leads a Pentecostal 'happy-clappy' church, and one who says they are misguided and wrong? One who says the tsunami was an unfortunate natural disaster, and one who says it was an act of God against an unrighteous world?

Big questions. Big differences. A hard topic for Christians and non-Christians alike. I've struggled with it too.

I don't pretend to know everything, or to be able to say which (if any) of the ideas in the questions above are right. But I am willing to put forward a reason for why these different opinions occur, whilst still maintaining that God is God.

Simply, we're flawed.

No Christian is perfect. No Christian is even anywhere near that! Christians merely try to live lives that are right by God. But inevitably we will fail. Every day there are temptations and challenges of the world, and every minute of our existence we fail. My argument is that first and foremost it is a failing to meet with God, and discern what God wants, and secondly a failure to accept what God wants and let go of our own ideas and prejudices. That is why the Church is so often divided, why there are so many divisions and disagreements.

I can say confidently that if everyone prayed earnestly and willingly, and was prepared to let go of their own values and prejudices in order to discern what God wanted, there would be no disagreements. But at the same time I know that no-one can manage that completely. I know I fail continuously. Every time someone buys something they don't need instead of giving to the needy, or speaks harshly against another person, they are failing. And that includes me. What I want to stress here is that the Christian faith is not broken because God is broken, but because we as individuals are broken.

There are some terrible things happen in the world under the name of God, many of which are clearly not God's will, and it's tragic to see these things happen, and to see how they reflect on Christianity as a whole, but that doesn't make the faith wrong. Just as you can't say a parent is fundamentally flawed because of some mistakes they've made, nor can you say the whole Christian faith is flawed because of some mistakes Christians have made. Sure there are often a lot of mistakes made, but that reflects on us as individuals, and not on God.

So when you see someone saying something or doing something contrary to their faith, or with a differing opinion, it's not because God is broken, but because we are. Remember that whatever is said, whoever is judged and however someone represents or misrepresents Christianity, it is because they are flawed, not God.

An introduction

Welcome to "an impossible faith?"! This blog is a new venture from me, with the hope of discussing some really tough questions about Christianity, aiming at exploring the faith deeply and meaningfully. I don't promise to give answers in my blogs, and I think some may end up more as a series of questions to ponder, but I hope it's helpful and meaningful for whoever reads it.

I pray that God's Spirit will be with me as I write, and also with you as you read what's offered, so that all can come to have a better understanding of the Christian faith, whatever they themselves believe.

God bless!