I recently heard a sermon about how comfortable Christians have become. We don't want to take the effort to go out and share the Gospel. Why is that? We know that Jesus expressly commands us several times in the Gospels and the book of Acts. We know that if a person dies without Christ, they will spend eternity separated from God. And yet many of us are comfortable in our nice little Christian bubble. Why is that? What should we do about it? Leave your comments and share your insights and opinions on this very important topic.
I recently watched an interview of Penn Jillette. Penn is one half of the comedy/magic duo Penn & Teller, and is an outspoken atheist. He told the story of how he went to youth group as a teenager and read one book that made him decide to be an atheist; it was not "the god delusion" or "god is not great", but rather the Bible itself. He went on to say that anyone who is seriously considering atheism should read the Bible cover to cover and they will most assuredly come out an atheist. How can this be? How can somebody read the entire Bible and not believe in God?
There was also an atheist man who was a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He saw a picture of a starving girl in a third world country and thought to himself "if there is a God, why would he allow this? Surely there is no God." He set out to do a full investigation to disprove God; reading many books, traveling the world looking for indicting evidence. The more he investigated, the more he decided there was in fact a God. This man, Lee Strobel, went on to become one of the leading apologists-defenders of the Christian faith- of our age. How can two people on opposite end of the spectrum search for the truth in the same manner and both end up flopping sides? If you spend any amount of time in a social network you will find countless stories of people "deconverting"; denouncing their Christian faith for an agnostic (I don't know whether there is a God or not) or atheist stance. However you will also find many people who were atheists for a long time and became Christians. Atheists seem to believe that Christianity is for unintelligent people and that anyone with a superior intellect would not fall for such gibberish. How then, do you describe Francis Collins? Dr. Collins is the leader of the Human Genome Project. He was described by the Endocrine society as "one of the most accomplished scientists of our time", and is a Christian. As a matter of fact, Christopher Hitchens, one of the most outspoken atheists of our day, has reached out to Dr. Collins for help with his cancer. It does not take mush time or effort to do an internet search for "famous Christian scientists" to see a long list of very intelligent influential scientists who were believers in Christ. Both Strobel and Jillette wanted to disprove Christianity. Jillette succeeded, by hos own estimation, and strobel was forced by the mountain of evidence, to recant his atheism and accept Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life. And yet atheists have mounds of scientific evidence to prove that God does not exist, while Christians equally have mounds of scientific and historical evidence to prove that God does exist. So we have an intellectual impasse, and that is where faith comes into the picture. Do you believe that we exist because of millions of random occurrences, that we are merely biological creatures with no further meaning or purpose, or do you believe that there is more to this life, that there is a creator. It all comes down to faith. Some things simply cannot be explained or understood. This also hold true in science as there are many conundrums that science simply can not explain. I guess the point of this article is that intellect alone can not sustain a Christian faith; these point could be argued back and forth for all of eternity.You have to choose for yourself whether or not you will believe that God created the world you see around you and the universe that we see in our telescopes. According to the New Living Translation of the Bible "Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see (Hebrews 11:1). Sure religion has caused all types of problems, wars, hatred, and all manner of evil. I'm not talking about religion. I believe religion is evil. I'm talking about faith in Jesus Christ, and believe me there is a BIG difference. In the end, you must choose what you will believe. A forced faith is not true faith at all. What do you believe? |
AuthorMy name is Mike Bowen. I am a Youth Pastor and have been in ministry in one form or another for about 17 years. Archives
December 2017
Categories
All
|