Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

I've noticed a disturbing trend lately where there has been a rejection of the Bible/Christianity for the reason that it does not mesh with what that person heard in Sunday School many years ago. The Sunday School version is not incorrect, but we need to be aware that it is a simplified version of the 'real God' for a younger audience. If someone then reads the Bible later on, they (like me) will find that there is a lot more to the Bible than what one learns in Sunday School. The God of the Bible may even seem 'different' compared with what one learns in Sunday School. This is because we are more mature and are learning more of the Bible, not because religion is incorrect or inconsistent. The God that we learn of in the Bible, is, in turn, only a shadow of what we will see when we meet Him face-to-face. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see bu...

It was only recently that I had heard an acronym for the Bible: Basic Instruction Before Leaving Earth. It made me reflect that indeed, we are all in need of this basic instruction before we leave Earth. For indeed, we all at some point will leave Earth. The death rate is still one per person. I just felt compelled to blog this. -Ver If you found this post interesting, you might also like these related posts on this blog: Confusion Between Sunday School and the Bible Are We Saved by Works or by Faith? The Myth of the Mayan Calendar Predicting End of World in 2012 "I'm just too busy right now!" vs God as a Boss The First Thing I Found Out... We Have Free Will

I have read the fiction book "The Shack" by William Paul Young (check out its website at http://www.theshackbook.com/ ). I actually read it as part of a study at church, so it was not something I would have thought of reading otherwise, but I was very glad I did. As a bottom line, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone, but especially those who: have had or are having bad experiences with the church or organized religion, are wondering why bad things happen if God is good, are unable to acknowledge God in the middle of a personal tragedy, are struggling with forgiveness. I admit I had some reservations initially, it has been a controversial book. I am reviewing here only the book and not its background, but for those who are interested in more, click here for a balanced review from USA Today giving some of the book's history and author's background, as well as comments from some Christian church leaders. The reservations I had were dispelled by the t...

The word 'Christmas' has often been replaced with the generic 'holidays'. I'm not saying everyone should convert to saying 'Christmas' (after all, there are a lot of atheists, Jews and so on who don't believe in Christmas or have their own holidays of different nomenclature). However, I realized I personally had got to the stage where I was almost afraid to say 'Christmas' for fear of offending someone. I needed to address this in a way that was (hopefully) non-offensive to others, but where I am clearly standing up for my beliefs. Here started my Christmas experiment, which was to wear a T-shirt saying 'Merry Christmas! Happy birthday Jesus' during my Christmas travel (two flights each way). I was curious. Would anyone say anything to me at all about this? Would anyone take open offense? The result? No-one said anything to me either way. My belief in fellow man's tolerance for freedom of speech and of religion was largely regained ...

Here is my top 7 list of BAD reasons I've come across over the years for not believing. I'm all for freedom of choice of anything (including religion), but I have yet to find any atheist arguments that do not fall into any of the following categories below: 'I'd believe in religion if God came down and said "Hey, I'm real"'. Hmmm. Jesus, as Son of God, did that about two thousand years ago. Not everyone believed him. 'I could believe in the Bible if it weren't for the Virgin Birth. That's just too much to take'. If we had a choice about how he got here, would you think it so much more natural for Jesus suddenly to pop into existence out of thin air as a fully grown man? It might be a more comfortable idea to some of us, but, as C.S. Lewis argues in his book Miracles , God planting the embryo in Mary's womb that was to become Jesus incarnate, is the most 'natural' way He could have got Jesus here in human form. 'I...

One of the things that is the most consistent throughout the Bible is that we have Free Will. This is not something I had given much thought to previously. The things I found out were: God so valued free will that although He could have made us automatons, he didn't. As an example, He told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of a particular tree in the Garden of Eden. He could have 'built us' so that it was impossible for us to go against His wishes, but He didn't. He let us choose, even though in the end Adam and Eve disobeyed His wishes. God also allowed his enemy to have free will. Satan was an angel that disobeyed God. Although God could have destroyed Satan then and there, he allowed him to make his own decisions. This is not to say that God will never intervene (or has never intervened!) - just that God seems to value free will highly. In that case, why is there ever an argument for predestination? I think the main argument for predistination is based on two ...

Good question. In the past couple of years, I've been trying to untangle some of the 'big picture' things in life. By the way, I am Christian. One of the ways I started on my recent journey of re-discovery of Christianity was by reading the Bible, starting at Genesis, and trying to have no pre-conceived notions of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and other big questions. Would I discover anything new? Would I be able to get more insight into Big Questions? The answer is that I did make some discoveries that were new to me, and wanted to record these somewhere. Hence this blog. I welcome comments and insights from others.