The nature of Christian Belief
This wasn't intended as a blog entry, but came out of a debate on evolution on a discussion page, but ended up being so long and helping me to clarify my thoughts on why I believe as a Christian so I thought I would keep a record of it here. Besides, i haven't exactly been great at coming up with content so I gotta start somehow :)
The start of the post is in answer to a question about how awful a god would be to allow things like children starving in Africa:
The child in africa starving is doing so firstly because humans have decided to allow it to happen, there is no world food shortage or money shortage, just us holding onto more of both than we could possibly need. I don't pretend to understand how God thinks anything like fully or why he allows some suffering to continue but directly intervenes in other cases. I know people who should be dead but were healed and I know of people who weren't and I don't understand what the difference was.
You could say that part of why I can still believe in Him is because part of that belief is that this life isn't everything, its just a prelude to a reality so real it will make this seem like a dream, and that means He has time to make it all right. I don't believe that anyone will get away with injustice or cruelty in the end, they might avoid consequences from other humans now, might even make it so noone even knows what they have done, but in the end we will be called to account for everything. I believe that in the end noone will be able to say he wasn't just.
But all such reasons aren't the real reason I believe. Nor do I believe because I have seen Him work in my life, not just every now and again but constantly. Often I don't see the pattern until later and am surprised by the way He has led me through what at the time felt random. I have known him to speak through other people giving them knowledge they couldn't humanly have and I have seen him heal and many answers to prayer.
But even that isn't the reason, because if you choose then any number of coincidences can be still be explained as coincidences and objectively neither view can be proven.
I believe because he enabled me to, no matter what has come I have still believed because deep down I just know He is there, the personal evidences, the experences are good but they aren't why I believe. That is part of Christian belief - you can't be convinced intellectually to believe, oh you can show that to believe is as reasonable as to not believe and as intellectually defensible, but that just makes it a choice. The final step of being convinced we believe has to come from Him directly.
The way he does that is different for everyone and happens at different stages of life sometimes quick sometimes gradual, and even then always optional. He created freewill knowing the full consequences of that choice so He isn't going to suddenly revoke it.
I don't argue on these issues like the ones discussed here to talk anyone into Christianity, to be honest until I got drawn into this group I had got very sick of and stopped having these debates with people. Because neither side can objectively prove their case. Even if every single step of evolution from us all the way back to the first cell could be demonstrated in a lab, it would still not prove that it happened, just that it is possible for it to have happened, without witnesses conclusive proof of what actually happened in the past is not possible. There are only surviving clues and how you choose to interpret them, evolution may be a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the evidence (though I clearly have my doubts on that) but that doesn't mean it is true.
It is like a detective story, you have a bunch of clues and you can come up with any number of stories that would account for the appearance of the crime scene, but that doesn't mean any of them is actually what happened.
The only choice to make is whether something or someone has always existed and the only way to know for sure is if they introduce themselves.
The start of the post is in answer to a question about how awful a god would be to allow things like children starving in Africa:
The child in africa starving is doing so firstly because humans have decided to allow it to happen, there is no world food shortage or money shortage, just us holding onto more of both than we could possibly need. I don't pretend to understand how God thinks anything like fully or why he allows some suffering to continue but directly intervenes in other cases. I know people who should be dead but were healed and I know of people who weren't and I don't understand what the difference was.
You could say that part of why I can still believe in Him is because part of that belief is that this life isn't everything, its just a prelude to a reality so real it will make this seem like a dream, and that means He has time to make it all right. I don't believe that anyone will get away with injustice or cruelty in the end, they might avoid consequences from other humans now, might even make it so noone even knows what they have done, but in the end we will be called to account for everything. I believe that in the end noone will be able to say he wasn't just.
But all such reasons aren't the real reason I believe. Nor do I believe because I have seen Him work in my life, not just every now and again but constantly. Often I don't see the pattern until later and am surprised by the way He has led me through what at the time felt random. I have known him to speak through other people giving them knowledge they couldn't humanly have and I have seen him heal and many answers to prayer.
But even that isn't the reason, because if you choose then any number of coincidences can be still be explained as coincidences and objectively neither view can be proven.
I believe because he enabled me to, no matter what has come I have still believed because deep down I just know He is there, the personal evidences, the experences are good but they aren't why I believe. That is part of Christian belief - you can't be convinced intellectually to believe, oh you can show that to believe is as reasonable as to not believe and as intellectually defensible, but that just makes it a choice. The final step of being convinced we believe has to come from Him directly.
The way he does that is different for everyone and happens at different stages of life sometimes quick sometimes gradual, and even then always optional. He created freewill knowing the full consequences of that choice so He isn't going to suddenly revoke it.
I don't argue on these issues like the ones discussed here to talk anyone into Christianity, to be honest until I got drawn into this group I had got very sick of and stopped having these debates with people. Because neither side can objectively prove their case. Even if every single step of evolution from us all the way back to the first cell could be demonstrated in a lab, it would still not prove that it happened, just that it is possible for it to have happened, without witnesses conclusive proof of what actually happened in the past is not possible. There are only surviving clues and how you choose to interpret them, evolution may be a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the evidence (though I clearly have my doubts on that) but that doesn't mean it is true.
It is like a detective story, you have a bunch of clues and you can come up with any number of stories that would account for the appearance of the crime scene, but that doesn't mean any of them is actually what happened.
The only choice to make is whether something or someone has always existed and the only way to know for sure is if they introduce themselves.
posted by Dannie @ 9:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home