Board index ‹ Assorted Bible Questions

[Joint Venture]

Is it impossible for some people to ever have faith? I don't have faith because I don't see evidence of Jesus' miracles/words ever having been done/said.

I'm so spiritually lost and desperate to find the Truth. I want to fornicate and don't know how to stop that insatiable desire. Hinduism makes more sense to me: do good and good will come to you. That's the way to salvation/enlightenment. Merely having faith makes no sense to me. Many people (seemingly genetically) just can't have faith unless God/Jesus decides to show up, and even then they may think they're hallucinating/going crazy. What should I do?

[jimwalton]

In the Bible, faith is all about evidence. God appears to Moses in a burning bush before He expects him to believe. He gave signs to take back to Pharaoh and the Israelite people, so they could see the signs before they were expected to believe. So also through the whole OT. In the NT, Jesus started off with turning water into wine, healing some people, casting out demons, and then he taught them about faith. And they couldn't possibly understand the resurrection until there was some evidence to go on.

When you read the Bible, people came to Jesus to be healed because they had heard about other people who had been healed. They had seen other people whom Jesus had healed. People had heard him teach. Their faith was based on evidence. Jesus kept giving them new information, and they gained new knowledge from it. Based on that knowledge, they acted with more faith. People came to him to make requests. See how it works? My belief in God is based on my knowledge of the credibility of those writings, the logic of the teaching, and the historical evidence behind it all. The resurrection, for instance, has evidences that give it credibility that motivate me to believe in it. My faith in the resurrection is an assumption of truth based on enough evidence that makes it reasonable to hold that assumption. Jesus could have just ascended to heaven, the disciples figured out that he had prophesied it, and went around telling people He rose. But that's not what happened. He walked around and let them touch him, talk to him, eat with him, and THEN he said, "Believe that I have risen from the dead."

* In Matthew 8.4 Jesus encourages the man he just healed to go show the evidence that it was true.
* John 14.11 (and also 17.8): Jesus encouraged people to verify the evidences
* Heb. 11.1: Faith is based on evidences
* Romans 1.20 (the passage you mentioned). There are evidences, and we shouldn't be afraid to investigate them.

So it's not impossible for some people to ever have faith. Evidence comes first. You say you don't have faith because you don't see the evidence, so that makes sense. I wouldn't have faith if there were no evidence, either. Faith is not believing when there is no evidence, or believing contrary to the evidence. Rather, faith is making an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable to make that assumption.

> I'm so spiritually lost and desperate to find the Truth.

Yeah, I feel your pain. The search can be excruciating. Sometimes you feel so lost, and other times so angry. And you just want things to be clear when they are very unclear. I get it.

> I want to fornicate and don't know how to stop that insatiable desire.

Again, I feel your pain. Biology and hormones are really strong. So is the sin nature inside us. You can't stop the insatiable desire. Instead, the plan is in controlling it.

> Hinduism makes more sense to me: do good and good will come to you.

See, that doesn't make sense to me because that's not how life works. Plenty of good people don't see good come to them. That's one of many reasons why I think Christianity is true and Hinduism is not. Christianity says that the world does NOT work according to the retribution principle (if you're good, good will come to you, and if you are bad, you'll suffer for it). "Do good and good will come to you" isn't true to the realities of life.

> Merely having faith makes no sense to me.

Me either. Faith follows evidence. Christianity never claims that faith is blind or a leap in the dark.

> What should I do?

Let's talk about the specific things that are bugging you.

[Joint Venture]

Regarding retribution, the thing is that Hindus believe in reincarnation so the more good you do and the less bad you do through your incarnations, the more likely during each incarnation that you exit the cycle of rebirth and attain enlightenment.

[jimwalton]

Yeah, I know they believe that ideally, but for most people that doesn't seem to be how it works in reality. I struggle with the Hindu concept of reincarnation, but am certainly open to discussing it.

From a Hindu perspective, attaining Nirvana is not often achieved by humans. Though it is the goal, few there be that find it. What that means, however, is that reincarnation for most people is an ENDLESS cycle of meaninglessness. Beings circle through an eternal chain of human being, animal, insect, cow—whatever—in search of the almost impossible-to-grasp golden ring of Nirvana. Each cycle is weighed according to "goodness" as to whether or not one advances upward in the line or downward, but how can one be a good cat or a good bug? And since they are told in life that life and even their station in life is determined by fate (karma), and it cannot be changed (and they shouldn’t try), their theology teaches them they are hopelessly caught in a meaningless string of determined life cycles that they cannot alter, from which they will likely never escape, and therefore, at core, life for most is ultimately meaningless.

The belief in reincarnation stems from several desires in humans:

* We like to think we have another shot at life—another chance to do better, or to do it differently
* We like to think that death is not final, and that death, ultimately, has no impact
* We like to think that ultimately the judgment of God is escapable by our own eventual success at good works

The Bible has one particular comment about reincarnation, and that is found in Hebrews 9.27: “…man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment…” The word "once" indicates that death is an unrepeatable event. After that, we reap what we sowed. Though there are hundreds or thousands or more "second chances" during life, once we die, we have given our "final answer." Despite that we would love for death to have no impact, and for us to have an unending sequences of chances to get it right, that is not the teaching of the Bible.

Now, it is true that the Bible teaches that death is not all there is, and that it’s not final. After death comes the accounting for how life was lived. But we are not to misunderstand that if we have more goods than bads on the ledger we make it into heaven. That isn’t the teaching of the Bible at all. A person gets into heaven if they have the nature of Jesus inside of them, and they don’t if they do not have the nature of Jesus.

John 5. 25-29, in the words of Jesus, affirm that death spells the end of "second chances," and that after death there will be a judgment of each person.

Luke 13.22-30 seem to indicate that we get one round to make our choices.

And 2 Corinthians 5.8 lets us know that when believers are absent from the body, they are present with the Lord. There is no coming back in another form.

It seems to me that Hindus don't truly believe in the retribution principle, but rather in karma. You get what you get, not because it's fair or due to you (retribution), but because that's your karma, which could be terrible stuff despite your being a good person, or good stuff despite your being a bad person. Then in the next life, theoretically, there has been a micro-adjustment. That's not even retribution (do good and good will come to you), but instead a micro-adjustment that might be filled with as many problems and suffering as the previous round, since all of life, and everybody's life, has suffering in it.

You know, if you believe in reincarnation, I’d love to know on what basis—with what evidence—you base your beliefs. Let’s talk about it. Christians believe in that after death is eternity, and we get our evidence from the resurrection of Jesus, and his teaching that after death we stand before the Lord for an accounting. Where do you get your evidence, other than anecdotes and intuitions that people claim to have?

[Joint Venture]

My sister's guru says you don't go back to being an animal once you're human. She also claims to have seen her past lives after years of practicing special yoga and she "knows" that her guru is enlightened.

[jimwalton]

> My sister's guru says you don't go back to being an animal once you're human.

How does anyone know such things? It seems to me things like this could just as easily be made up. It seems to me there is no evidence for reincarnation, period, let alone such details as "you can't go back to being an animal once you're human."

> She also claims to have seen her past lives after years of practicing special yoga

It seems that if it takes years of practice of a special kind of yoga, the truth of it is suspect. I'm curious what makes her think it is real and not learned (the power of suggestion and positive thinking to fabricate what one desperately wants to see)?

> she "knows" that her guru is enlightened.

How can one evaluate the truth of this perception?

I guess this is my problem with Hinduism: If it's just philosophical perceptions, without any tie to history or reality, it is both unprovable and unfalsifiable. Where's the separation between truth/reality and making things up?