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Introduction to Common Religious Questions |
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At one point in my foolish steps as a first-time believer (aren't they all foolish?), I was proud enough to be demanding of God to know what my "gift" was. Each believer has a gift, something they do as a believer for God, or for the benefit of God's purposes. Some of the more recognizable gifts are Evangelism, Healing, and Prophecy. I think everything in me wanted to know that I was going to have the gift of prophecy. My puny little mind wanted to know the future, to be able to foresee my path and that of others, and to be able to provide answers. In the fourth day of a really stupid symbolic fast to God where I was stubbornly fasting until I received my answer, God apparently got off the floor from laughing and gave me one before I hurt myself with my stupidity. At least I was praying the whole time. With a sudden clarity within that only comes when you know you've gotten an answer, I understood a word but not it's meaning. So I went to look it up in a religious book about spiritual gifts. My answer was a letdown for me, but at the same time a sense of satisfaction settled on me as part of my answer. No matter what I thought I should get, God had other plans for me. My gift is Exhortation. Well, that really took cake. I was in my first few months as a Christian; I didn't know #@*!$. Bah. But as disappointed as I was that it wasn't Prophecy, I KNEW and I was satisfied. Exhortation is the counseling one Christian gives to another to support and fortify the believer's faith. But, I couldn't find my ass with either hand as a Christian and I had many misconceptions and ingrained fallacies that God would need to remove. Oh, I'd like to say that God and me struggled mightily with what I thought and what He had to teach me. I'd like to say that the education was twenty years of exhausting battle between a defiant me and a patient God where only by my heroic defeat did I learn anything. But it just wasn't that way. No, my instruction had, in fact, already begun and would continue through a very strange process that only seems perfect in hindsight. Sure, there were books, but the big education was something totally unexpected. God immediately sent me Jehovah's Witnesses to bang on my door. No, after almost twenty-five years, I am not a Jehovah's Witness. Never have been, never will be - not after getting kicked out of their Kingdom Hall. Ha! What did they serve to do for God's purpose? Well, it goes this way. Know-it-all me, reading the books I felt directed to read, had already formed opinions that were biased towards earlier teachings from the Catholic Church and other believers. I can only imagine God getting frustrated and sending me JWs as a punishment, but they really served to jolt me from my subjective assumptions. Everything they said just did not sound right. But it wasn't obvious until I prayed and studied whatever they said to find the real answer. The JW-punishment taught me religious objectivity - the ability to uncover God's Truth without letting what I had "learned" get in the way. I was able to apply that objectivity not only to the JW silliness, but also to the areas where God was leading me to learn. It wasn't a hard process, it was a long process. I suppose my capacity to understand is limited. God could only teach me so much before my puny mind couldn't hold any more - and it took almost twenty years for me to get it. I pray that what He taught me has some effect somewhere on a believer to provide answers to some very common questions, so that God's effort with me was not in vain. In the past, I would have expected grand results, a worldwide network of exhortation that led back through me to God, but I can only laugh now at the pomposity and vanity of such thinking. No, I know within that everyone serves their purpose, and if my long instruction was only meant to answer questions for just one person, then so be it. I am satisfied within that I am following the path set before me. I know answers to a few questions - common ones, posed by unbelievers and skeptics. The questions are supposed to be the ultimate "gotchas" that prove that God just can't be and that man and his self-inflated wisdom can disprove of His existence by mere logic. GOD'S WORD: He taught me a little about this - not much, and I'm not claiming to be Exhortative on this topic (out of pride), but I'll impart what answers I have to the common slurs against the Bible. This will also serve to set up all the following topics. THE CREATION ACCOUNT: It is wrong as it is taught, and all the answers are in the Bible. Christians all seem to stand by the accepted teaching in the churches that the earth is only 6000 years old and Gensis 1 proves it and details the Creation. NO, it does not, and I will show how the traditional teaching has blinded the believer to the answer that is so very obvious. I'll also discuss evolution. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS AND BEING A CHRISTIAN: This ones saddens me the most. Nearly all churches preach only half the message of the gospel. This will be the most important answer as it will deal with the believer's foundation of faith and progress with God. JESUS: He made some claims about himself. Either he was who he said he was, or he was a total jackass. Christians sometimes stumble over answers to this one. GOD AND TRAGEDY: Nothing shakes someone's faith like the question "how could God let this happen? This just proves there is no God." There is no more selfish statement made by man, despite the loss and grief. The answers are evident; believers and non-believers just don't want to accept them. This one is the easiest to answer, and the hardest to accept. It is also the question that plagues many believers and will likely have the most meaning. THE FLOOD: Science laughs at this one, but the anecdotal evidence is there. The Bible says some things that AREN'T taught in Church and believers just gloss over the Flood Account. Every day I pray for wisdom, among other things. "Seek and you shall find" were not empty words; we've made them empty by repeating them but never seeking. As a man, I would suggest considering my answers in the light of logic - prove them yourself with objectivity and prayer. I could only handle learning the six answers, because I am a man, and man's number is six. Fitting, hmm? |