You would think after three posts, I would be through writing about a belief in God. Truthfully, there are indeed numerous other posts about God, the nature of God, God's relationship to His creation, God's intervention in history and so on and so on. Most of these questions will be addressed in later posts. As an aside, you may tire of me indicating I will address something in a later posts. Frankly, I am tired of writing this phrase and am anxious to proceed as well. But my intention in these first few articles is to establish a basic foundation of beliefs. On this foundation of basic beliefs, I can discuss other beliefs which may not be "provable" but which are faith based and thus as strong as any other beliefs. In other words, I feel I must earn the right to discuss faith based beliefs by setting out some basic foundational beliefs.
But before proceeding, it is important to confess there are some questions about God that continue to elude me. For example:
1. If God is so powerful as to create all that we know and if God has a panoramic view of all his creation, then how can He be aware of me, such a tiny tiny portion of His creation? There are a lot of people in the world today, over 6.8 billion souls with births exceeding deaths by 2 to 1. If you count all the souls who have lived in the past, you have an almost unfathomable number. And yet the Bible, indicates that you should not worry because God knows the hairs on your head. Getting a handle on the concept of God knowing me personally, is more than I can comprehend rationally. It is truly one of those faith based beliefs where I simply have to say, "I don't know how, but I believe it is so."
2. "In relation to #1, it is almost inconceivable to me that God will hear, much less respond, to my attempts to communicate with Him through prayer. Some people pray several times a day, some pray all day and some seldom pray. But all who do pray, believe that God hears and answers their prayers. This all powerful presence beyond comprehend must have a super computer system to record, sort and respond to all the supplications of his creations. While I believe in prayer and I believe my prayers are considered, it is extremely hard for me to have this belief except by faith.
There must be other aspects of God which are beyond my ability to comprehend. These are but two of them. And frankly, neither of them cause me not to believe in God.
In the next few posts, I want to write about, "I Believe in Jesus". Was Jesus a real person of history? Was He who He said he was, the Son of God? What are the implications surrounding a belief about Jesus? Are there any parts of your belief about Jesus that are still unresolved?
And then next I want to address the single most important belief about Jesus, His resurrection.
This is what I believe. What do you believe? Let me know through email or in the question section on this page.
Don't fool yourself. You ARE a theologian, and a good one. If only everyone spoke with the same humility and used the same tone as you, how much stronger our witness would be. Thank you, Steve.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your words of encouragement. I write these posts for myself and for my grandchildren but I must admit, I am a little excited when someone responds. Someone has read my thoughts and is encouraging me to write more. So thank you very much
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