Board index ‹ Satan

[Locust]

I believe that it’s possible but do I have 100 percent faith that it’s true - no. But if God does exist in the manner Christians believe I would like to have a relationship with that being. But I also can’t pretend I currently have faith. There have been times in the past I wish I did. is the former possible without the latter? How do those initially without faith find this relationship ?

[jimwalton]

You don't need to have 100% faith at the beginning. It's a process. Faith, like other things, grows with evidence and experience.
I would say that if you are open to the possibility that God exists in the manner Christians believe, the next step is to understand what God is like, i.e., to accept the Bible as a legitimate expression of God's nature, character, and behavior. If we don't accept the text as legitimate, we will reject the information it gives that increases our knowledge of Him and shows us how to respond.

[Locust]

Thanks for all your responses. Accepting the text as completely legitimate may be harder for me than believing God is real. I guess maybe I don’t have faith in people I think at this time im actually more open to God being real than I am to the text not being fudged/incorrectly stated based on oral history/made up by people for their own purposes or beliefs.

[jimwalton]

We could talk about various texts, if you want—if that would be productive for you. I understand that theism is not necessarily tied to the biblical text, but since you're talking to me here, the only way we know anything about God and how to respond to Him is what the Bible tells us. The Bible is God's revelation of Himself, so if we can't accept that revelation, we can't affirm anything it says about who God is and what He is like. Maybe we should discuss the texts you want to.

[Locust]

About two weeks ago I was cleaning up an extra room at home and I actually found a copy of the new American standard Bible maybe I bought in high school or college. It’s probably been under a bunch of stuff for at least 11 years and I probably haven’t really looked at it longer than that. It was actually in the room I’m in now on a shelf.

I thought it was interesting that you mentioned the Bible and I looked up and it was there when any other time I probably wouldn’t have known I even had one in the house.

[jimwalton]

Well, is there something on your mind that you have questions about or you want to discuss?

[Locust]

I just don’t trust that people wouldn’t have made stuff up or changed things or just gotten things wrong. If there is a God, which I believe is a possibility, I don’t know how to believe that a book written by people is truly his word. I’ve seen people lie, cheat, steal over small things. I think to trust that it was accurate, especially as many appear to be written much later after the supposed events, required a bigger leap of faith. I’ve always thought that believing in and having a relationship with God would be personal and not need many outside influences like church / organized religions that are actually run by people

[jimwalton]

Thanks for being straight with me. I guess God had two choices: drop golden tablets from the sky with His word for us written on them, or to employ people to write down what He wants to communicate. If He dropped the tablets from the sky, I'm pretty sure there would be a lot of scoffing about, Oh, GOD wrote, these, did he?" and doubt about the true author. But if He employed people to write His words, then we can say, "But, hey, people are involved, so didn't they mess it up?" It's a great question.

So we have to examine the integrity of the authors, the integrity, value, and consistency of the text, and the process of transmission to evaluate the quality of the writing.

You're right that people, lie, cheat, and steal over even small things, but we know that because it becomes known or is obvious in their personality, character, or quality of life. So we have to examine that texts themselves and what we know about the authors to evaluate, "Are these people the liars of the world or have they written something of value?"

Then we also have to evaluate whether the passage of time necessarily denigrates the message. You probably know that the only things we know about Alexander the Great were written many centuries after he lived and died. The only things we know about Julius Caesar were written more than a century later. Do those facts cause us to throw out those biographies? Obviously not, but rather to evaluate them for accuracy based on everything else we know and the integrity and consistency of the writings themselves. We know how to do this kind of thing, so we don't just throw it away.

You're absolutely right that having a relationship with God is personal. You want it to be separate from the church, but the church is the gathering of people who also have a personal relationship with God. It was Jesus's specific intent that we all not just on our own in this, but that we gather together with other people who saw the same evidences and believed the same things, so we could teach each other, support each other, and help each other. It's actually a good plan.

One of the deals of the church, though, is that it has an "open door" policy: Anyone can come in. That's both a strength and a weakness, as you might imagine. Yay, everyone is invited. You don't have to pay dues or pass an entrance exam or be judged morally worthy. Anyone can come. The weakness is that anyone can come, and the church has a knack for drawing fakers and hypocrites. Like anything else, we have to be wise and be able to see who's for real and who's the faker. It's not always easy, but we should just throw out the church because it has hypocrites in it. So does government, business, education, and the media. It's the nature of people. The church, unfortunately, is just as susceptible as any other institution. But does that mean we reject it out of hand? No more than we reject government, business, education, and journalism. We have to learn to sort, evaluate, and distinguish.

If we're on Earth, there's no way to avoid people. You want to be part of something that doesn't involve people, but then you're an isolated loner, and you could accuse God of not giving your friends, teachers, mentors, or even people to talk about things with, as we are doing.