Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

There is often confusion about whether we are saved by our works or our faith. This debate is pointless, because the true answer is that we are saved by the grace of God (although faith plays a critical role at our end of things). God's grace can be thought of as an invitation extended freely to everyone to know him through belief in Jesus. Yes, that's right – an invitation to all of us sinners. Faith is the means by which we accept this invitation . It is true that without faith, we cannot be saved. So faith is critical, but make no mistake – if God hadn't issued this invitation by His grace, all the faith in the world wouldn't save us. Let's move on to works. Works are a way God knows us (provided we are doing the works for His glory). In contrast, if we are doing good works without a thought of God, this alone certainly won't save us. If we truly have faith, truly believe, then our actions will be in line with the Bible and this will be evident in an ou...

One of the more difficult theological questions is: Why did God make Adam and Eve knowing that they would fall? Reading the Bible helped me get a little more information on God and on how free will was really important to Him (click here for my earlier post on that topic). But, this is where it got tricky. If God knows everything, then why did he make Adam and Eve, knowing that they would lead themselves into temptation at great cost to them and to the rest of humanity? C.S. Lewis's theological writings offer an excellent perspective on this. He believes that man redeemed through the death of Jesus is somehow intrinsically better than unfallen man . "For God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity would have been..." - C.S. Lewis, Miracles 1947, in Chapter 14 "The Grand Miracle". This viewpoint falls in line with two Biblical readings: So He told them this parabl...

When I was a schoolgirl, a friend of mine remarked "God only knows what would have happened if Adam and Eve had not eaten from the forbidden tree."  I still think this is very true.  Before reading the Bible, I used to get mad at Adam and Eve for snatching away a paradise from us.  Now I realize that attitude is a bit ridiculous, because it implies that I could do better.  When I really asked myself, could I do any better than Adam and Eve? - the asnwer was simple: I don't think so.  To do better than them, I would have to be perfect and resist any and all temptation.  That is not me.  I am an imperfect human being, a sinner.  Furthermore, to do better than Adam and Eve, I would need to resist eating from the forbidden tree for my whole life.  The temptation wouldn't just be a one-time test.  After thinking about it, I realized I almost certainly wouldn't be any better than Adam and Eve at resisting temptation.  To tak...

The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum of saints All too frequently, organized religion (i.e. a church) can seem pointless and boring.  I certainly found it this way before I started reading the Bible.  Often, the lack of interest in church may be caused by one of two main things: 1. The person has had a bad experience previously in organized religion 2. The person feels uncomfortable about realizing that they are a sinner In the case of the first problem, it is quite possible that differences in Christian denominations has confused the person.  It is confusing!  It is important to go to a church whose teachings are in line with the Bible.  Identifying such a church oneself does require a) attending a church and b) reading the Bible. In the case of the second problem, that isn't actually a problem at all for attending church.  All of us are sinners.  It is as simple as that. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of G...

When I was younger, I thought that Christians were too heavy-handed about telling people about Jesus.  In fact, I thought they gave a bad name to the rest of the Christians! I puzzled as to why Christians couldn't just leave people alone about this. I only figured this out in the past year.  To Christians, the news that Jesus has come to save us is simply good news! In an era of bad news, from violence to war to tsunamis, the Christians see the news of Jesus as good news.  They would tell friends, family and even strangers about other good news, so why not about Jesus?  Therefore a Christian who is enthusiastic about telling others about Jesus is about as unremarkable as a mailman who likes to be sure the mail gets delivered. I have to admit that it took reading the Bible for me to be able to 'see' this though. If you found this post interesting, you might also like these related posts on this blog: My Christmas experiment - freedom of religi...

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...