Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

There are many examples in the Bible of God punishing people when they did not listen to Him. So it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking God is always looking for reasons to punish us.  The more I have been reading the Bible and praying, the more I see that in fact, it's exactly the other way around - God by default wants to bless us. We are His children. He wants us to have good things for us spiritually. Again, this is different to giving us the equivalent of a bunch of candy, which I have written about before .  Even in the book of Job, where Job suffered an incredible series of calamities, none of these came from God. They all came from Satan. This is not to say that God didn't punish people - there are plenty of examples of that in the Bible too. The message I'm trying to get across here is that God by default wants to bless us. Again, blessings are things which are good for us. Often these may take the form of spiritual gifts, such as wisdom, but can take the...

I was reading the passage of Mary and Martha again. While I have talked before about it , an additional angle on it was revealed during the most recent reading. This is the Bible passage where Jesus visits Mary and Martha: Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’ Luke 10: 38-42 It is clear from the message that if we have a choice between ministering to Jesus or hearing what he has to say, we should pick hearing what he has to say (which I covered in...

I was reading in the news media about someone who had betrayed someone else. If I had been the victim, I confess I would have had difficulty with keeping my focus on the main thing (God and Jesus). It would have been all too easy to fall into the trap of bitterness and misery in that situation.  Even if I make a conscious effort to rise above the bitterness and misery to keep my focus on God and Jesus, I would still have not liked the person and would have avoided them. Which is OK! Christianity says you should forgive the person, but you need not continue any relationship with them (I talk more about that here ). Your forgiveness is in your heart, between you and God. There is no requirement for you to see the person again or for them to know of your forgiveness. You can cut off contact with them for the sake of your future physical and/or mental health, even if you have forgiven them. Forgiving someone for a specific past event does not equate to you needing to place any trust in...

One thing that has helped me a bit is to remind myself that I should not descend into worrying about other people's relationships with others. I'm not saying we shouldn't care. Certainly, if the opportunity is given to us to help a relationship between others we should do so. However, the relationships of others to others is ultimately between themselves and God. If I find myself getting a little too concerned about the relationship between two other people (neither of whom is myself), there is a simple reminder I give myself. It's this: "I'm not so perfect that I should worry about this person's relationship with that person." I add "Instead I need to focus on my relationship with God, and my relationships with others." This is a very good and very timely reminder. We each have our own relationship with God, and our own relationships with others to focus on. The time spent on those is infinitely more useful than any time spent worrying...