This is an interesting title, is it not?
I'm sure this blog will draw a lot of attention because it poses the question that is in the back of everyone's mind. You can identify as a Christian, religious person, agnostic, or atheist but we all do feel this lingering question weighing on us from time to time. Even if you have tried to deny it, forget or hide from or ignore it, it is still under there somewhere, begging to be answered.
Let me preface this blog by saying that I am a 23 year-old high school graduate.
I've never been to college. All of the knowledge that I've gained on these subjects came from books that I've read (I will list them at the bottom and you can read them, they include information from people who are experts in the fields I will talk about) and it has come from talking to other people and from life experience. I know now more than I did five years ago and I'm sure in five years I will know more than I do now.
I'm not an expert. I'm a normal person! Well, at least semi-normal.
But, I didn't make up any of this stuff. Please don't be offended if I say something you don't like, just go research it for yourself. This is just me shedding some light on how I view this subject. If you don't like it, you are free to leave this blog, but I hope that maybe something that you read from little ol' me will cause you to ponder and wonder more about God than you had in the past and maybe possibly be open to exploration of God, The Bible and all that it means to know God. Don't let past experiences, what you think The Bible says, or what someone else has taught you, what your parents taught you, how you saw some Christians act, or Westboro Baptist Church behave (I can assure you that Christians do NOT identify with those guys..), what the current culture says or any other factor that would influence your decisions about God and life in general. It is always best to learn and find out for yourself!
First of all, I doubt I can answer the question of "Does God Exist?" for you.
You can be taught any number of things and they can be drilled into your head, but unless you accept the truth of anything, it will not be your own. This is a question we will all have to decide for ourselves at some point in our lives.
It is funny how we are taught a particular faith by our parents as kids, and when we grow up we question it. Some may not, but I have always been a skeptic of things. I have never wanted to believe in things that seemed too good to be true. I'm not sure where I got that quality but it has been one that has both helped me and hurt me in my life.
I was raised in church and as a young girl was taught about God.
God was a regular part of my life up until about my middle to high school years. Somewhere in there it seems like my thoughts drifted away to other things. As a young girl, you can get distracted by any number of things; boys, clothes, popularity- I'm pretty sure I was distracted by all of them simultaneously. Somewhere in there I experienced the breakdown of my family unit- my parents got divorced.
Many people who stop believing in God are people who have experienced trauma of some sort and it pushed them into a place of anger and resentment towards any God that could be out there.
Now I don't remember pushing God or the thought of God out of my head, I just remember a strong desire to live for myself becoming very real after that event. I guess when you feel threatened you feel pressure to survive, and that was what I was trying to do. Survive. By ANY means necessary. There was a lot broken and wrong with my young heart and the wounds seemed to keep coming. I had a lot of attacks on my heart as a young woman as I think a lot of us do. There is something to be said about that. If you look at women as a whole, it seems like our hearts are under attack constantly. Why is that?
Anyways, as I continued along my path of trying to find pleasure and happiness, I began being sexually active. Not as active as most, but active enough to get pregnant and become a teenage mom. At this point my mom had remarried a great man whom I love, we had moved, I was in high school and still very much living life on my own apart from serving or acknowledging God at this point. I can't remember if I prayed except for the occasional, "HELP ME!" prayer. My mom was still going to church, but I had mostly rejected God and didn't want to go to church at all. I felt like there was nothing there for me except to have the words ungodly sinner stamped on my forehead. I also dreaded possible embarrassment, boredom and superstitious weirdos. However, as moms have power over there kids (and smart ones exercise it when needed) my mom made me go to church with her and her new husband on a regular basis.
I tuned a lot of it out,
but while I was there I still paid attention a little bit. I had been taught a lot of things as a kid but I also learned a lot of new stuff about this "God" guy from this new church. It was new stuff that I liked. It was actually worth listening to. So I listened, and as I did I came to understand and know God in a new way.Not as a mean guy in the sky who hated me and who I couldn't please to save my life, but as one who loved me as I was and made a way to save me that I did nothing to deserve. At that point I didn't really have doubts about God's existence, but I did have doubts about whether or not I could keep living my life as I had been. I felt like a complete screw up that was unworthy of any love whatsoever. God seemed to feel differently about me though. So that was the point where I decided to give my life to him and see what he had in store for me.
I can say that I honestly had a new beginning like The Bible describes.
I was born again just like it says. Spiritually I came alive and started growing and changing. Just ask anyone who knew me from my youth and they will tell you I am a totally different person. I really couldn't explain how that could just happen to you without saying that God really did do what he said he would do. But that is a different and awesome story that I will tell at another time.
Fast forward the story about four years. I had been attending that same church regularly and living a relatively active and normal Christian life. Something seemed strange though. As I taught my son about the Bible and God and life in general, I felt these weird feelings. I started to feel like a hypocrite because I was telling him things about God that I wasn't quite certain I even believed.
That was my first experience with doubt.
It's funny because as a young Christian growing up in church, I never doubted God's existence. It wasn't until I was older and had someone tell me that he was a made up lie, that I started to doubt. I remember the first time I really looked at my doubts and took them head on. I had questions and needed answers. I wondered how, why, when, where and every other possible thing you could wonder about God and his existence or lack thereof.
Now, I've never been one to just have blind faith and I don't believe that God would want me to lie about how I feel about him.
He wants us to actually believe him and believe in him, not just pretend we do! So, I went on a search to learn things about this God that I loved and served. This was a search that really helped to actually give me a real faith that I could stand in and believe.
I tell you these things so you can see into the life of a Christian. I don't know who you are or what you are like, but I want you to know that just because someone believes in God it doesn't make them a blind, superstitious dummy or someone who rejects science.
Now that that has all been said, lets get to the real question.
There are so many things that encompass God and the reality of him. Is he there? Is he not there?
There really can only be one answer.
If God is there and he is the one responsible for everything, then we probably should get to know him somehow and find out what it is that he wants from us. If he is there, then all of the atheists are wrong and misguided. Now, if he isn't there, then all of the atheists are right and anyone with a religious worldview of any kind is wrong. Both of the groups can't be right because God either is or he isn't. I had to know the true answer to that question! I couldn't ignore it even for a moment.
I had to at least find a place where I could stand firm.
I read a lot of books and did a lot of research. I learned about the Bible and it's history. I learned about Astronomy, the Big Bang Theory, Evolution and all kinds of other things. I'm so glad I took time to actually look into those things because a lot of my doubts came from those areas. Areas that I was taking advice and information from other people, but never actually researching myself. For example, the Big Bang Theory, which says that the entire universe- time, all space and matter- was brought into existence in an instant from a single point and produced everything as we know it. As a Christian I always cringed when I was younger if I heard the phrase, the "Big Bang"- Now, I love it! To think that there was nothing, then there was everything, is absolutely crazy and mind blowing! It also lines up with the concept that in the beginning God created... from Genesis 1:1. He spoke, it was. Bang!
Sometimes I start to think that the concept of God is a wild one.
Too wild and too crazy. But if you look at life in general, is it not WILD AND CRAZY? Are whales and sharks, and birds, love and family, reproduction and sexual functions not absolutely wild and mind blowing? Isn't the fact that we humans are here on this tiny planet orbiting around a nice warm sun that makes our food grow out of the ground and keeps us healthy and alive, not wild? So you really can't say that God seems too crazy because life in general is absolutely crazy. According to The Bible, in the beginning God created the heavens and earth. He spoke, and it was. According to some, there were some sort of elements that reacted to form the big bang, but how can that be possible if there was absolutely nothing before it banged? Where did those pieces come from? And if they came from somewhere else, where did they come from? If everything as we know it was made at the Big Bang, what made the pieces that supposedly caused it to bang?
Have you ever thought about how much intelligence is everywhere?
Where did intelligence come from? Certainly not from non intelligent chemicals? It just seems crazy to think that all of the genius we see around us could have just arose from nothing. It can be super trippy to think about. In conclusion, I don't see any issue with the Big Bang theory anymore. I do believe that in the beginning there was nothing and then there was everything. I just believe I know who made it BANG!
Another issue I had was Evolution.
I love how as a kid I was made to believe that I came from a monkey, when that isn't even a proven fact, just somebody's theory of how we got here.
If you could show me the process of me coming from a monkey and actually have evidence then fine. But if you have a story that you just "think" is what happened, please just keep it as a thought or a story. Before I go further let me say that I do believe in evolution on a micro scale. there are two types of evolution that I know of: Microevolution, and Macroevolution. Micro is the small changes in one kind of animal over time that result in different breeds and types of that same animal. For example: Wolves, pugs, beagles, pit bull (all dogs with different variations of their traits, but never becoming another animal). Micro evolution has been documented all around us in every species of animals and most famously by Darwin in his book The Origin of Species. Now Macroevolution is another thing entirely. It speaks of one kind of animal changing over time and becoming another animal. For example: lizards into birds, monkeys into people. This type of evolution has never been documented or observed in nature. Some people may have claimed to find the "missing link". One skeleton, or a few bones here or there that they constructed and claimed that it was half monkey and half human,
but most of that is guessing and trying to put something together that isn't really there.
In a lot of cases where they found a so called "missing link fossil" it turned out to be only a bone or tooth from one animal like a donkey, or human, or monkey. If humans had come from monkeys over thousands or millions of years, why would we not be able to find thousands of fossils of the in between stages? At least the stage right before we looked like we do today! There should be at least ten or twenty in the world of "in between fossils". But there really aren't any fossils to back up the claim that we came from monkeys. Just because a scientist found a few bones and put them together to look like that missing link, doesn't make it so.
The theory of evolution is just that- a theory.
So if we aren't sure that we came from monkeys, or that we all had a common ancestor, where did it all come from? I don't think I can believe that all of the totally complex, intelligent, crazy artistry involved in the tons and tons of animal types and variations all came from one basic organism. That is a lot of intelligence from non intelligent matter. Animals that are made with certain functions that keep them alive, or safe, or help them hunt. Who gave them the ability to adapt? Who gave any of us our abilities at all? In conclusion on this topic I will just say that the theory of evolution is just that. A theory. It lacks evidence. Don't base your life on it. It may be true, or it may not be, but it is worth it to investigate and then make a life decision.
Next we come to the topic of The Bible. Now,
The Bile is a HUGE stumbling point for some people.
They think it's old, outdated, copied and full of errors. Upon further examination you will learn that yes, it is old, but it is actually pretty reliable. Historically- it lines up with what was happening during the time periods that it was written. Many people have started reading The Bible in an effort to prove that it is historically inaccurate and they have failed. Whether you believe in the miracles contained in The Bible or not is something you can decide, but it is historically accurate when it talks about the events happening throughout it's written lifespan and it lines up with what other historians have detailed was happening in history around that time. It also has been preserved like no other book through the ages.
More manuscript copies are available for The Bible than any other book that we get our history from.
It also doesn't contain serious errors even though it has been copied to pass it down over time. If there are errors they are grammatical, or punctuation errors. Never are ideas, or thoughts, or the true sentence structures compromised. It would be like if 10,000 people copied the same article today, there would be some errors because we are humans and make errors. I know I make numerous errors when I write (as I proofread this blog for the fourth time. You've probably already found several!). The Bible claims to be inspired by God written by men. Not written by God. He inspired it but it was written by men who make grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. Now I am not going to go into detail about the manuscript copies that the bible has and how there are thousands more written and handed down to us than any other ancient writing ever, I'm going to encourage you to go research it for yourself and see how reliable it really is in it's entirety.
If you are curious about this God of the Bible, read about him in his book and see what you think. I prefer a more modern translation that presents the words the way that we would talk to each other today, such as the New Living Translation or New International Version. The Bible is long, but so is life for most of us.
If you really want to have a leg to stand on when you criticize Christians or say that God isn't real then you should probably read his entire book first, that way you have some material. You can't just pull a piece out from halfway through and judge the entire book. Who would do that today and be taken seriously. Everyone knows that you have to get the whole story first before you can fairly judge something. Once you reach the end of The Bible, if you still have no doubt that God is not real, then at least that will be a more researched conclusion than the one you started with.
If I could sum up this entire message of this blog, it would be
seek and you will find.
If you want to know if there is a God than seek him, look through his word, study him and see what you find! If you don't really care to know if there is a God, it might still be a good idea to see what all the fuss is about right? I would say so. Science is not at war with God. If you take the time to free yourself from agnosticism by seeking to know if there is a God you will be shocked at what you can learn. Be skeptical about your skepticism!
Here is a list of some books that I have read other than The Bible itself that have been very interesting and full of information.
The Reason for God, by Tim Keller. This is a great book, it reads a little scientific and can be hard to get through but is full of useful information.
I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. This is one of my favorites, it goes over SO many issues that I needed covered in my walk towards a real faith in God.
The Case for a Creator
The Case for Christ
The Case for Faith, all by Lee Stroble. All awesome, all full of information about the Bible, Science and how it is NOT in a constant battle with faith in God, and just wonderful for any seeker to read.
Please let me know if you have any questions or things that you want to talk about. You can comment here or email me at Jessh629@gmail.com.
You can ingest information about God and life and come to an educated conclusion on what you believe. Just make sure you have given yourself all of the information first.
Thanks for reading!
Jessie
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