Sunday, September 30, 2007

Why would anyone believe without evidence?

Question: Why would anyone believe without evidence?

The article by William Lobdell stirred up some discussion on the internet. Here are two related comments...

Comment July 21, 2007 at 3:35 pm
In my experience, most believers are like this. They have a powerful moral sense, a need for answers and no powers of rational analysis at all.
To read this is to feel a strong sense of empathy for a decent human being struggling to reconcile the irreconcilable, yet also to wonder why anyone would ever let their beliefs be determined by such vacuous crap? He drifts into religious belief with no evidence, and drifts out again with no coherence.


Comment July 21, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Is faith a weakness or a mechanism to cope with hardships?
When the emotionally vulnerable endure some genuine personal tragedy then faith becomes a useful 'skill'. I mean, who hasn't ever wished really hard that there is a chance to see loved ones once again?
Of course most of us do sober up after a while and learn to move on.


If you are a believer you may find these comments hard to hear but it is important to listen to what is being said. If you are not a believer you may want someone to seriously answer these objections. Can I ask both of you to listen in for a few minutes.

There are several statements made but the question is still the same. “Why do people believe in God, Christ, the Bible without evidence or a well thought out foundation for their religious convictions?” The assumption behind the words is that we could avoid a crisis in our life if we were just a little more thoughtful and this would be accomplished by not believing or having a solid foundation for our faith.

Answer: We have a need to believe.

The irony of these comments and the question is that I often wonder myself why people don’t take more time to think through the most important question of their life, the existence of God and what that means to me and all of humanity.

I spent most of my life pondering that question and people amaze me with how shallow we approach this foundation of an eternal life with God. Many of us spend more research on football teams, and cars than we do on the question of our mortal souls relating to an immortal God. The comments were insightful, and misinformed.

We believe because we need to believe. Faith is the normal way of living and anyone who is really honest will admit that they use faith all the time. Faith is another word for trust. We place our trust in things, peoples, and systems on a minute by minute basis. In an interconnected world you cannot fail but use faith constantly. Religious faith is placing some of that trust in a god. A Christian faith is placing most of that faith in our relationship with Jesus Christ.

Now why would anyone do that? You are going trust someone, why not Him? His track record is better than most and you have put faith in less trustworthy things in the last twenty four hours. Why not believe in Christ since you are going to believe in something and hope for the best anyways.

Faith, in comment two, is called a useful skill to help us cope with life and its unexplained tragedies. That is a big reason why the modern American adopts faith as we do many things. We adopt faith because it works, but we also drop faith when it doesn’t seem to work. In others words we value people, things, and God only when it is working for us. Unfortunately that is not a high quality faith, but a self absorbed life.

The amazing thing about Jesus Christ was that he elevated this conversation to a whole new level and said faith is not just believing, or acting religious. He said that faith should be a day by day relationship with Him. The Christian faith makes no sense at all if it isn’t more than religion and ideas. The coherence of faith is in the relationship. Therefore if we have no relationship, or if it is all about us, then we don’t have a faith that Christ would endorse. That is not what it means to be born again.

Please see the previous posts that discussed this topic.

Monday, September 24, 2007

“Is a baby a sinner?”

Question: “Is a baby a sinner?”

Here is the question that stumps many Christians. If I say “no” then I have to admit that there are many “good” people in the world (all the babies) and that our problem is a social problem of learned sin. If sin is learned then it can be unlearned through behavioral psychology, social reform, and education.

If I say “Yes, all babies are sinners...” then I will be accused of being insensitive and judgmental. After all, what have babies done that they would be judged a sinner? They haven’t lived long enough to have done anything wrong. At worst I would be seen as a baby hater and a religious nut.

So, let me risk my answer and then beg your patience with my response...


Answer: “All babies are sinful.”

Stick around long enough to find out why I would say such an offensive thing and see if I can manage a little bit of truth that you might consider.

They key in this issue is the definition of the terms “sinful” and “righteous or holy.” Most people who look at a cute baby, like I do at Church every Sunday, say things like, “She’s so cute.” We look at that baby face and we want to pinch it or get the kid to smile. If we manage that, our day is made. I have often been caught on the floor with toddlers in my church, but I still claim they are sinful, just like me.

Most of us think of a sinful person as being a drug addict, a murder, or politician. How can I put a baby in that category? The Bible is clear on what sin is, and simply put, one of the main sins from the dawn of time is being self centered. No matter how cute a baby is, or how sweet they can be at times, they are basically self absorbed little people and will be that way for many years until a loving parent fights the battle in the terrible two’s. That is when they learn they are not the center of the universe.

What is a holy, righteous and innocent person then? The Bible defines this kind of person in the opposite way. They are God centered. They believe and act as if God is at the center of the universe. No baby is able to do this. They have to grow up to even approach this great truth. Most adults are not able to do this, because we must die to our selves and let Christ live in us through His Holy Spirit. As one famous author put it, He must sit on the throne of our heart instead of us.

Question: “Will a baby go to hell if it dies?”

This is the one reason people don’t want to say babies are sinful because then we are accused of saying they will go to hell.

Answer: "No, they won't go to hell because they are not accountable."

The Bible tells us that we are held accountable not for everyone sin we commit or for being sinful. We are only accountable for the sins we KNOWINGLY commit. The Christian church has taught for thousands of years that babies go to heaven and are not judged because they don’t know they should be God centered rather than self centered. They are innocent by ignorance and not be nature. When do they cross the line and knowingly choose sin? I don’t know. The church has called this the age of accountability and for many years thought it occurred around the teenage development. There are many who know think that the ability to know right from wrong comes much sooner because of exposure of media and accelerated society.

What we do know is this, all of us come to a point in our life when we know that we shouldn’t do something, but we do it anyway. That is when God hold’s you accountable and judges you for the sin in your life.

Hey! If you think I’m being tough, remember this. The more you know about God the more accountable you are. I’m a Pastor and the Bible says I have to give an accounting more than most because I suppose to know better than most. What I have just argued goes double for my future date with God.

These two questions were born of out of the last blog and I am sure there are more that will come from this blog. Give me a chance! Thanks for reading all the way through. Now click below and leave your thought. Read the previous blogs!

Sunday, September 23, 2007

“Why wouldn’t a good person go to heaven?”

Question: “Why wouldn’t a good person go to heaven?”

“Thank you...” Words I love to hear. They were from a college student who had just survived tremendous pressure to abandon her belief in God. A college professor and class mates pressed her hard to question the reality of Christ but she was able to answer each question and objection thrown at her. Why? She had asked me those same questions years before in High School.

The number one question she asked as a teenager and her college class mates asked was this: “Why wouldn’t a good person go to heaven?”

Although I can answer this question, I have gone deeper into my own understanding of the crisis of faith in America because of what the question reveals about the person asking. Anyone who asks this question is a religious person, but not a born again Christian. Many people who claim to be Christian are asking this question, but if they really understood the truth about Christ, they wouldn’t ask.

Answer: “There are no good people. Only sinners go to hell, and we are all sinners.”

Christianity can not make sense to anyone who believes that good people are rewarded with heaven and bad people with hell. We will look for God to punish the wicked here and reward the good if we believe that is how the justice of God is dispensed.


In my last Blog I shared William Lobdells’ story in the L.A. times and his crisis of faith. The key question he is asking, the turning point of his faith, is this question. This is the crisis of a religious person realizing that it doesn’t work with a Christian God. Here is the quote from his article:

The questions that I thought I had come to peace with started to bubble up again. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does God get credit for answered prayers but no blame for unanswered ones? Why do we believe in the miraculous healing power of God when he's never been able to regenerate a limb or heal a severed spinal chord?

In one e-mail, I asked John (a pastor), who had lost a daughter to cancer, why an atheist businessman prospers and the child of devout Christian parents dies. Why would a loving God make this impossible for us to understand?

The answer he got back, the one he heard, was: "My ultimate affirmation is let God be God and acknowledge that He is in charge. He knows what I don't know.” William respects this pastor but says “...but he couldn't reach me.”


This question is ancient. I remember seminary professors telling me it was not answerable. They were wrong. The bible is very clear about this question. Evil, suffering, and death is in this world because of sin, the fall of humanity. In the New Testament we are told...

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Romans 3:23

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—
Romans 5:12

If you can accept this premise, that everyone is guilty of sin, then the answer to the question is that none of us can get into heaven by trying to be good, because we will never be good enough. We are all sinners.

If you can’t accept that we are all sinners, but believe instead that some are good and some bad, then you are a religious person who cannot accept the message of Jesus Christ. The Christian faith does not make sense to a person who demands a sorting out of the good and bad people of this world.

Some of you are scratching your heads wondering if you ever really understood the Christian faith. Good. Let help you. You may have thought that Christ rewards the good and punishes the evil and when life turns out very different a crisis faith results. The truth that Christ came to bring us is this:

We are all sinners and Christ came to pay the cost of our sin. We are saved from the judgment of sin not because we are good but because Jesus (the only good person to walk this earth) paid the price for us.

All religions of the world argue that we must work at being good and earn our way into heaven. People who are not good enough are sent to a judgment and those who did their homework get into heaven. We expect a loving God to treat us that way now while we are on earth. The Christian faith has always taught that it is only by the grace of Christ, not by your good works, that you enter heaven, because no one is good enough.

Conviction of our sinful heart is the starting point of a saving faith. You can’t skip this and think that a life with Christ will work for you, because it won’t. His death on the cross is an answer to the sinfulness of all, but if we are not asking the question, “How can I a sinner be right with God?” this his death is useless and meaningless.

The Bible says that there is no true salvation without a true repentance. Their can be no true repentance with out a God inspired conviction (Psalm 51).

I will stop here and ask you to consider these words. They are not mine. I am only sharing what God has shown us in the Bible. If you want to disagree I am not insulted for I am not defending my opinion. I am only being true to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

So this leads to the important question: Are you Christian or religious?

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Question of Faith

This last week I came across the L.A. Times story by William Lobdell and was moved. I have been a Pastor for over twenty years and his story touched the heart of my mission.

William lobbied his editors for the religion beat because he wanted to show people of faith in a positive light. He did find the affirming stories in Orange County that he knew were out there, but the darker stories soon overwhelmed him, bringing his own faith into question. This story was written in July of this year, but is the story of many millions in the United States. To read the whole story, go to: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lostfaith21jul21,0,3530015,full.story?coll=la-home-center

In this blog and in the many to come I want to begin to address the questions he and others have raised on this courageous journey testing the reality of God. No faith is worth having if it can’t be tested.

Your comments will be welcomed and I am sending an email to Mr. Lobedell to join in the discussion, but this is much bigger than him for it is the issue that all of us must face if we are going to discover the truth about God and our faith in Him.

So, Mr. Lobedell, I hope you are listening and will write back. I imagine that many people have written offering their thoughts, attempting to rescue your faith, while other applaud your courage. In the end, most of them don't really understand but only project their own convictions upon your actions. Now is the time for dialogue and the ruthless search for truth, no matter where it may take us.

This is the only story worth writing, the only life worth living.

(This post is part of my sermon this week and you can check it out at www.fcog.us, after Sunday. Text will be available on Sunday and audio on Monday.)