A response to comments made about "Clearing things up"

I was planning on posting this as a comment, but it ended up being too long. It doesn't count for today's post though. It's simply a response.


Emily, I would say nothing, but I believe that we are meant to be the salt and light of the world. He obviously needs something more. Maybe it’s here that he’ll find it. 6 months ago, I would have completely ignored this, but the more Brian and I allow God to run our lives, the more amazing our lives have become. We are more blessed, more peace filled, more intentional, and live with more purpose than we ever have before. I don’t help but want that for everyone. No one is below living in the peace of God.

Yuvimodder, no, I absolutely don’t believe that you should go to Hell, but people do go to Hell. God shows himself to all of us, and each of us is able to choose to believe Him or not. It’s a simple decision. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done, He loves you and will love you.

It is hard for me to understand someone who doesn’t believe in any form of God  even more so than it is to understand people who simply believe in another form of deity. I will say that you challenge me. You sound well educated and well read. But I’m very curious as to why you make it a point to post on my blog? Do you gain anything if you cause me to doubt my faith? Or do you just enjoy the banter?

It’s not egotistical to believe that there is God who created the heavens and the earth and also man. Because of sin, we were separated from that God. He created us for His pleasure, as his children, and we caused a gap in our relationship with Him through sin. He later sent His son to die on a cross for us, so that He could have His children back.

I would bet that you don’t have children. I will say that until I did, I had a much harder time understanding this “God” of all creation and His ways. But through the love I have for my kids, I begun to better understand why He often chooses to intervene and why He often doesn’t.

You see, my God, isn’t concerned about the things of the world. The things we consider pain and suffering are small parts of the big picture. We were not made for this world. We were made to live in perfectness with the god who created us. That’s why “this world” often seems so foreign to us.

And you actually didn’t anger me with your first post at all. I find it interesting and strange that you care at all what I have to say or who I say it to. And in response to my King of Kings condemning homosexuality, He condemns homosexuality just as He condemns lying, deceit, cursing, adultery, and the list goes on. He considers all sins the same and treats them the same. They are equal in His eyes. Just because someone is a homosexual, that doesn’t mean they’ll go to Hell. The only way you go to Hell is because of the lack of a relationship with Jesus. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, or how many times you’ve screwed up, all He asks for is your love and acknowledgement.

When it comes to God preventing evil, there will come a day, when He will destroy all evil. Until that time, there will be a season for everything. “God didn't promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow, sun without rain, but He did promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and light for the way.”

 

Without pain, how would we ever know joy? And the truth is that our minds are so incapable of conceiving His every intention and plan and maneuver. If we understood it all, then it wouldn’t be called Faith.

 

Speaking of egotistical, it’s pretty big headed to believe that we are smart enough to understand and figure out every little piece of this world. There are and have been brilliant scientists throughout history who believed in God, recognizing that this thing we call “life” is much bigger than us. You can check out: http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/sciencefaith.html and see that so many geniuses recognized that there was something else involved in our creation.

 

My favorite reference though comes from CNN. Dr. Frances Collins, the Director of the Human Genome project, tells his personal story as to why He believes in God through faith. I thought I’d include it below as well in case you didn’t bother to click on the link.

http://articles.cnn.com/2007-04-03/us/collins.commentary_1_god-dna-revelation?_s=PM:US

 

To close, I hope you stick around. You might just find that there are people here who will fight for you not with you. There were numerous people who prayed for you tonight.

 

Keep following and we’ll keep doing our best to show you what God can do to those who love Him.

Best,

Allison  

 

He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God. http://bible.us/John1.10.NLT

 

Collins: Why this scientist believes in God

April 03, 2007|By Dr. Francis Collins Special to CNN

I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views.

As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan.

I did not always embrace these perspectives. As a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s, I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers.

I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I here?" "Why does mathematics work, anyway?" "If the universe had a beginning, who created it?" "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?" "Why do humans have a moral sense?" "What happens after we die?"

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative."

But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.