Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

This is the long-promised post on this topic.  One of the things I noticed is that after reading the Bible without pre-conceived ideas, it became much clearer to me why bad things still happen when God exists and is good.  It all comes down to free will.  God created everything, all the angels, including Satan.  God also created us.  He wanted his creations to have free will and not be automatons.  This means he wants us to follow him, but he will not force us to do so.  Therefore, if everyone has free will then they can take actions which might be harmful to others.  So for instance, someone could steal from someone else.  Obviously, this is not what God wants us to do.  He could stop it from happening every time, but if he did, he would be taking away our free will.  So God gave us free willl, but some people will use it to do bad things.  So this is why bad things happen. As a little girl, I sometimes wished that Go...

Apparently, the Mayan calendar only goes up to December 21, 2012. So a few people believe that this will mark the end of the world. When we think about it, this is a ridiculous conclusion. After all, a calendar has to have a finite endpoint. Sure, the end of the world is one possible interpretation, but so is the notion of some ancient Mayans saying "OK, let's stop at 2012, that should give us plenty of time before we need to lengthen the calendar". Furthermore, imagine an alien civilization examining Earth's technology just prior to the turn of the millenium: "Wow, these Earthlings didn't really bother considering dates past Dec 1999 in their computers. Clearly they believed their world would end at the year 2000!" We don't know the details behind why the Mayans stopped their calendar for 2012, but this does not mean the end of the world will occur then. (Read here for a balanced article from USA Today ). Let's look at what the Bible says abo...

One of the things I find the hardest is to put in practice God and Jesus's teachings in the busy 'real world'. In fact one of the biggest struggles I have is listening to a religious leader (whose full-time job is in ministry) exhort us to do various ministry works, when the rest of us are so busy already with demands of a secular job and/or caring for children or other dependents. It is easy to feel that the religious leader is simply 'out of touch' with the demands on our time, yet I know that they are simply conveying the message that is there in the Bible. So, as a (currently) stay-at-home mother, why did I feel a drive within me to find some volunteer work I could do? After all, wasn't I already justifiably busy with the unpredictable and full-time demands of a baby? (To clarify ahead of time, I certainly didn't feel I was guilted into volunteering by religious leaders). So why did I feel to need to help minister to others? (For those who are curious ...