“That's a hard concept to grasp - it's a disturbing story. Have you ever felt that God has tested you in a similar way?”
   
  Certainly not to that extent, but yes, I do feel that my faith has been tested. If you would like to know a little about my tests and challenges, send me a PM, and I will respond that way, so as not to post it all over the boards.
   
  Yes, God has tested me, but certainly not to the extent where he has called me to sacrifice my own son! I can’t even imagine that! And yet that is exactly what God did for us by sending Jesus to die in our stead.
   
  “Do you think God is sorry to lose the unbelievers to hell? Do you think He's abandoned them? It sounds weird but I wonder why He would not attempt a rescue mission.”
   
  Yes! The Bible says that God want ALL to come to him! Yes, he is sorry, and doesn’t want them to go there! He has not abandoned any non-believer in this life. This life is all we have to be able to choose him, and as long as anyone is still breathing, God desires them to call out to him.
   
  A rescue mission? There is a story in (iirc) Luke, where it describes a gulf between heaven and hell. The gulf is permanent. There was a man in hell, who asked for someone to tell others about the permanency and awfulness of hell, but it says there are prophets, law, and the word of God. If they did not believe any of them, why would they believe someone who had come back from the dead? There is a rescue mission! It is those of us who are evangelical, who go about sharing the gospel of Christ.
   
  It is up to those who hear us, to believe us or not.
   
  “it's hard to just accept a belief about something like divinity just based on someone's word.”
   
  Andy, this is so true! Even one of Jesus’ disciples didn’t believe – until he touched the holes in the risen Christ’s hands and side! It is completely normal to have doubts, and not simply take someone’s word for it. Don’t take my word. Take God’s. It’s his word that matters. But as you have noted, that takes faith. Faith sometimes seems to defy logic and rationality, that is true. I can’t describe it – for me, it’s about believing, whether there is proof or not. Blind acceptance. But the beauty of it is that the acceptance doesn’t have to be blind. There are books, like “The Case For Christ” which offer some very good, objective viewpoints on it.
   
  While you may not really reject Christ, if you are not wholly for him, you are against him. He wants all your heart, he wants no other gods before him in your life. He is still the jealous God that is described in the old testament. He wants your full, undivided devotion.
   
  I appreciate the respectful conversation.
  An



BTW, who is that in your avatar? I was too old to really enjoy the Muppets, but I liked that one, and the two old fellows up in the opera balcony!

Anesis wrote:

It is completely normal to have doubts, and not simply take someone’s word for it. Don’t take my word. Take God’s. It’s his word that matters. But as you have noted, that takes faith.

May I ask how you (and any other readers) came to believe what you do?  How much influence was there from friends, family, or witnessers?  Did you accept everything at one time or did it have to come in pieces?  Were there parts of scripture that you had a really difficult time accepting?

Faith sometimes seems to defy logic and rationality, that is true. I can’t describe it – for me, it’s about believing, whether there is proof or not. Blind acceptance. But the beauty of it is that the acceptance doesn’t have to be blind. There are books, like “The Case For Christ” which offer some very good, objective viewpoints on it.

I'm not looking for empirical, verifiable evidence.  It doesn't exist.
But I do like to compare what I've experienced with others.
   

While you may not really reject Christ, if you are not wholly for him, you are against him. He wants all your heart, he wants no other gods before him in your life. He is still the jealous God that is described in the old testament. He wants your full, undivided devotion.

The god of the OT is rather frightening to me.  The myths and legends of my deities aren't all roses and lollipops either, but I don't take them more than some old stories.  What do you think of people who claim that Jesus is all loving or perfect love given the jealousy factor?
   

BTW, who is that in your avatar? I was too old to really enjoy the Muppets, but I liked that one, and the two old fellows up in the opera balcony!

He's Fozzie Bear, he wants to be an entertainer but he can't sing and his jokes are terrible (he's also Kermit the Frog's twin brother).  Statler and Waldorf are the two in the balcony.  You can never be too old for the muppets.

“May I ask how you (and any other readers) came to believe what you do? How much influence was there from friends, family, or witnessers? Did you accept everything at one time or did it have to come in pieces? Were there parts of scripture that you had a really difficult time accepting?”
   
  I was not introduced to even a concept of God until the summer I turned 13. I stumbled across a vacation Bible school, and they invited me to join, even though there were only two classes left. Still, I went, and I memorized John 3:16. After that, I don’t really recall much until I was 14 and joined a youth group at my parent’s church. I went along with everything, just because, even accepting Jesus in my heart. I left the church when I was 17, and never really attended regularly until my son was born 14 years ago, when I had that experience of hearing God. While there might have been some influence pertaining to knowledge of the Bible and God, by my parents by taking me to church, there was no influence at all in my later experience. It happened out of the blue, and no one else was involved.
   
  I accepted the Bible as I learned about it – including the summer I turned 13 and learned that first verse. I did not know what it meant, but I believed it was true. I do not know why, because I certainly never understood anything at that time.
   
  There are parts of the Bible that I struggle with accepting – not because I don’t believe it, but because it makes God sound like such a monster! But as I learn more and more about what his love really means, and about how his justice is rooted in holiness and not humanness, it comes together into that context, and I do accept it.
   
  Some I accept, simply because to me, God is God; he is sovereign and holy, and his character would not allow him to lie. I believe it because I believe God.
   
  “What do you think of people who claim that Jesus is all loving or perfect love given the jealousy factor?”
   
  I do not believe people’s idea of love is really what love is. Love protects the relationship. Many times in the Bible, God expresses his love for Israel by using a marital analogy. He chose her and made a covenant with her, and expected her to be faithful. Because we were created in his image, we have the full range of emotions God does, and that includes jealousy. If your wife were flirting with another man right under your nose, you would feel jealous – or at least you probably would at the early stages of your relationship. In the same way, God is jealous of those who commit to him – he wants our loyalty, and when we flirt with other gods, he’s jealous. At one point, God even divorced Israel but went back to her after seeing that her sister was even more guilty than she was.
   
  Love is not all fluff. There are harsh aspects to it, and it requires justice, loyalty, reciprocation, protection (even drastic measures of protection), provision, and yes, even anger over being wronged. God is love. He is perfect love, but it is hard for unholy people to understand real love in the context of pure holiness. If people deny the parts of love that seem negative to us, then they deny all of love in a holy context. So I am one of those who claim that Jesus is love, with all the holy jealousy and justice and painful discipline that comes with it.
   
  “He's Fozzie Bear, he wants to be an entertainer but he can't sing and his jokes are terrible (he's also Kermit the Frog's twin brother). Statler and Waldorf are the two in the balcony. You can never be too old for the muppets.”
   
  Ah, that’s right! Fozzie! But I thought he was Kermit’s cousin. Oh well. Ya, it was Statler and Waldorf – hehehe…memories!
  An

BethK wrote:

The God of the OT is a God that never gave up on his chosen people even though they deserved it about a million times. 

They deserved it?  Flooding the world, plagues, fire from the skies?  That's beyond tough love in my opinion.

I was born and raised in a Christian home.  I've never not believed in the Bible.

If you were to suddenly tell your friends and family you no longer believed, how do you think they would react?

When learning about evolution (when I was in college - didn't hear about it until then) I was convinced that the Bible verse that talks about a day to God is like a thousand years because God never slumbers nor sleeps so I just thought that creation probably took about 100 million years to equal God's day.  After learning more about it, I now believe that the Bible is infallable and if God had meant to say "On the first hundred million years, I created the sun" He probably would have said that instead of 1 day.  There are other issues that I don't have squared away in my head but I study every day and learn new information.

Evolution seems to be a sticky issue with a literal interpretation of scripture.  Are you anti-evolution?  Do you think it's a liberal/materialistic conspiracy?  Or do you just have faith that the Bible is correct and we can reach that conclusion scientifically eventually in time? 


What do you do when you reach a section of the Bible that makes you uncomfortable? 
I've heard the "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live" line interpreted to mean everything from "kill witches" to "do not help a witch make a living by paying for services like divination".  Do you just search for an interpretation that sounds better and go with it?

BethK wrote:

The God of the OT is a God that never gave up on his chosen people even though they deserved it about a million times. 

They deserved it?  Flooding the world, plagues, fire from the skies?  That's beyond tough love in my opinion.

I was born and raised in a Christian home.  I've never not believed in the Bible.

If you were to suddenly tell your friends and family you no longer believed, how do you think they would react?

When learning about evolution (when I was in college - didn't hear about it until then) I was convinced that the Bible verse that talks about a day to God is like a thousand years because God never slumbers nor sleeps so I just thought that creation probably took about 100 million years to equal God's day.  After learning more about it, I now believe that the Bible is infallable and if God had meant to say "On the first hundred million years, I created the sun" He probably would have said that instead of 1 day.  There are other issues that I don't have squared away in my head but I study every day and learn new information.

Evolution seems to be a sticky issue with a literal interpretation of scripture.  Are you anti-evolution?  Do you think it's a liberal/materialistic conspiracy?  Or do you just have faith that the Bible is correct and we can reach that conclusion scientifically eventually in time? 


What do you do when you reach a section of the Bible that makes you uncomfortable? 
I've heard the "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live" line interpreted to mean everything from "kill witches" to "do not help a witch make a living by paying for services like divination".  Do you just search for an interpretation that sounds better and go with it?