So if you have questions about the faith and feel that no one has ever adequately addressed them--this is for you. I pray you find a deeper understanding, and ever-deeper trust in the only One who can ever make sense of all the madness.
First … questions are normal. Doubts are normal. It’s what you do with them that makes the difference …
I just had one variation of this conversation with one of my
kids yesterday about the guy from Hawk Nelson. How Christian entertainers and
artists need prayer because they’re as visible, maybe more, than people in
ministry, and thus even more of a target for the enemy. But I’m not sure that
approach is what you need, personally.
Last night I went to that guy’s Instagram account and read
everything he had to say, and then later lay awake for a couple of hours
thinking about it all. It’s ironic because I’ve been reading through the
book of Job, and then teaching the youth group out of Ecclesiastes, and both books
grapple with these same questions. Where is God in the face of injustice? Why
do the same evils happen to everyone, regardless of how they live their lives?
If you know anything about the story of Job (and I wouldn’t be surprised if
not—that one gets ignored by “faith” teachers because it doesn’t line up with
their theology), then you already know that God never, this side of heaven,
answers Job’s questions. He basically shows up, asks Job if HE was the one who
set the stars in place and laid the foundations of the earth, etc. etc. etc.,
and brings Job to a place of realizing that hey, he’s really in no position to
question things that we aren’t capable of understanding in this life. Sounds
really unfair of God, doesn’t it?
So let me tell you another story. This morning, after
sleeping only half the night because, well, Big Questions about Life, the
Universe, and Everything, I got up, threw on my bathrobe, and after just a sip
of coffee went out to feed the chickens. I needed to make sure first thing that
they were all right after the door to the coop was left open all night—last
fall we had trouble with a mink or some other predator getting in behind the
high fence of their yard and killing 1-2 each night, and I’d been scrupulous
about making sure they were safely shut in at sundown every day, until last
night. The chickens were fine, though, just very hungry! I tossed them a can
full of scratch over the fence, then went into the coop via the storage room to
fill their regular feeder and set that out in the yard before turning back to
begin the task of gathering eggs. That’s when the rooster—right after I’d fed
him, the ingrate!—decided to sneak attack, and I was so startled, I tripped and
fell in the floor of the chicken coop. (I am fine, too. LOL) Fortunately I had
a hoe to hand and used that to fend the silly critter off so I could get back
on my feet and push him back long enough to pull the coop door closed to let me
gather eggs in peace.
Dumb bird. Humans feed him, every single day. And still he
sees us as a threat to his harem. I mean, he literally turned from pecking at
pellets, to throwing himself at me as I was “retreating” with the empty feed
can.
How often, though, do we do that with God?
I have no way of communicating to this rooster that I’m not
a threat—quite the contrary, I’m a good part of why he’s even still alive. We
at least have the advantage of some communication, however limited, with God.
But even so, there’s so much we don’t, and can’t, understand. Think about how
limited we are sometimes even as parents to explain to our own children why we
have to do what we do! How much greater is that divide between us and the Creator
of the Universe??
Even so, there is much He gives us. Going back to our
questions and wranglings over evil and injustice. If there is no God, why do we
even care? What’s the basis of our indignation over wrong, if there is no
Absolute to define what good is, to start with? Why is abuse such a big deal, including wrongs that have been done us, personally?
And what about music and art? How can we even
recognize and appreciate beauty? C.S. Lewis made the comment that every
physical human craving is met by something: are we hungry? There’s food. Are we
thirsty? There’s water. Tired? Sleep, or at least rest. But emotionally,
psychologically, spiritually, we find ourselves craving something that this
earth holds no answer to. That in itself, he says, is proof we’re made for
something outside this world. I was thinking last night how all of history
holds questions and dilemmas that will not, cannot, be answered this side of
eternity. All of humanity, literally all of creation, is holding its breath and
waiting for the culmination of all the answers.
But … we are not there yet. We’re still caught in the agonizing
grind of the day by day, where life is full of questions and contradictions and
paradoxes and ironies. Like stupid roosters who can’t recognize the being who
provides them food. And then bigger things that seem impossible to get past.
The thing is … no other religion or philosophy or worldview
offers what Christianity does: HOPE. Meeghan and I have been watching this
Korean drama that’s part historical, part adventure/intrigue, with what appears
to be a thread of romance shoved in there sideways. It has struck me time and
again how completely without hope the historical Asian mindset
is—and yet such a deep respect for beauty and craving for wisdom and truth.
Yes, it gets overlaid and mixed in with all the usual gunk—human ambition,
pride, selfishness, greed. And those things are what muck up the basic message
of the Good News of Jesus coming to die for us. I read that guy’s questions
about that as well—why all the killing, always the killing, even in regards to
the Son of God. And again I ask, why would it matter unless there IS a God and
He’s woven that longing into our very souls and spirits to look for more? I can
offer answers to those questions, BTW, but are the intellectual answers what we
really need? Or just a deeper assurance that God really does KNOW, and He’s got
it, and all of it WILL BE ANSWERED when the time is right? But in case you’d
like my attempt at the intellectual answers as well …
Why the killing? Well, death entered as a result of man’s
disobedience. Think about this: God gave Adam and Eve absolute perfection. They
lacked nothing. And … it wasn’t enough. The serpent persuaded Eve that God was
somehow being unfair or withholding a rightful good by telling them not to eat
of the ONE tree. (… sound familiar??) And then … blood was shed to cover the
result of that disobedience. (God killed two animals—two of Adam and Eve’s
pets, for crying out loud—to provide skins to cover their nakedness. Which,
nakedness was not the problem! It was their newfound consciousness of it, and
the potential issues THAT was going to cause.)
So, that initial shedding of blood was not just practical,
it was symbolic. It was setup for the whole Jewish sacrificial system, which in
turn was a foreshadowing of the sacrifice Jesus would make for our
redemption, indeed, had to make. Nothing can make payment for our violating God’s
law except for blood. Think too of the earliest law—after Cain killed Abel, it
says that “whoever sheds blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” Why God let
Cain off the hook, I don’t know, except that he begged for mercy, and so we see
that God is also merciful even though bloodguilt demands payment.
Let’s go forward in time to the Israelites taking the land
of Canaan. Mention is made at one point of the sin of the Canaanites not having
reached full measure of awfulness—but then, somehow, it was, later. The people
of that land were terrible, brutal … parents selling their children into ritual
prostitution, other people using those prostitutes without thought—indeed, as
an offering to their “gods”—children and babies being sacrificed to appease
those same gods. Was all of that okay?
Also, notice that it wasn’t too different from some aspects
of our culture today, even though we sanitize it and dress it up in nice
clothing. But maybe I digress. God told Israel to go in and wipe out those
nations, yes, but they also had instructions that if anyone wanted to follow
God—the one true God, who does indeed extend mercy and grace throughout the Old
Testament, and anyone who thinks He was just “angry” hasn’t read much of their
Bible—then they were brought in and became part of the congregation of Israel.
Trouble was, Israel didn’t do that completely, and instead started adopting the
ways of the Canaanites, down to the whole thing of child sacrifice.
Was that okay?
Sooo … fast forward some more to Jesus dying on the cross.
Did you know He fulfilled every single prophecy in the Old Testament, and
then some? (I say this because most people aren’t aware that even the design of
the Tabernacle and the sacrificial system is a picture and foreshadowing of Him
and what He does for us.) And … did you know that God even gave us historical
evidences of the Resurrection? There are a handful of facts that even skeptics
admit:
- Jesus was a real person who lived and was killed by the Romans (writings of Josephus)
- His followers saw something that they believed was the risen Jesus, and it so convinced and transformed them that they devoted their entire lives to the cause of Christ—to the point that EACH ONE OF THEM died for it, or were willing to
- A confirmed opponent of this Way, Saul of Tarsus, also saw something that he was convinced was the risen Jesus—and he also devoted his entire life to preaching Christ, to the point of being beaten and stoned and shipwrecked and all kinds of other persecutions, and eventually dying for it
[Note: my thanks to former professor Gary Habermas, who has devoted years to defense of the faith, specifically in reference to the historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus]
All these together give us some pretty hefty confirmation
that Jesus was real and that He died, and that He rose again. What other
religion claims that? And other philosophies sometimes convince groups of
people to kill or commit mass suicide—but each one of them, separately, dying
for it? If it were a hoax, someone would have cracked and admitted it. And then
those who didn’t believe would have been all over it.
And why is the Resurrection important? Because without it,
we have just another religion. Just another theory about how people should
live. Has it been mistaught through the years, or distorted? Of course. Humans
are still stupid, even redeemed humans. We still fail each other. We still
garble the message, even when our intentions are good. And—you know already
that [the representation of faith given us by a particular family member] isn’t a good one, or wasn’t (I can’t
speak to where [they] might be right now—and yes, I do pray for [them] even if I still
can’t bring myself to resume a relationship with [them]). But those scars go deep,
and I’ve found just in the past 2-3 years that I still deal with repercussions
of things done to me in my childhood. Which—yes, some things are just plain evil, no
matter how you slice it. But again, who’s to judge that, unless God really IS
and has laid down a real standard of right and wrong?
Anyway. That’s just a sampling of the abundant intellectual
reasons available. But I suspect what most are looking for are the emotional
reasons to believe. My Philosophy professor said years ago, when reason and
emotion conflict, emotion will win. It’s ironic, really, and more than a bit
paradoxical, that people crave the emotional answers so strongly … and yet we
can’t throw reason out the door, either.
Ravi Zacharias, who recently went home to Heaven, spoke so
much about all this. An immigrant from India, he attempted suicide at 17 and
then gave his life to God, and as a result of his study offers some of the best
defenses of Christianity I’ve ever heard. Here is a brief introduction of this man and his work:
