It seems as if we prefer quite often to avoid the hard questions. "Where was God when that terrible thing happened?" "Why does God send people to Hell?" "What makes you think you're right when everyone else is wrong?" There are a lot of difficult questions that swirl around Christianity, and it seems as if most Christians prefer to avoid them. However, I think there are things in the Bible that might contradict our overwhelming capacity to ignore the tough questions:
Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person (Col. 4:6).Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it seems to me that we are commanded to be ready with answers. Now, I'm not suggesting that we should all have answers that will convince the skeptics. (Hint: No such answers exist.) What I'm suggesting is that each one of us should have researched the questions enough to have answers that satisfy us. We should have answers to give rather than simply spouting responses we've heard and never considered.
Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching (2 Tim. 4:2).
Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence (1 Peter 3:15).
Where did this come from? My grandfather was not, by his own admission, a Christian. So, the surviving family show up, among whom was another member of the family who was also not a Christian. I started thinking about that in anticipation of the trip. I wondered if he considered that walking into a funeral for someone who wasn't saved would open him up to interrogations -- well meaning, of course -- about his spiritual condition. "How do you handle this?" "Believing as you do, how do you respond when someone you love dies?" "Is there any way you can make sense out of this senseless death?" I realized, however, that a thinking non-believer would be perfectly able to counter my imagined questions with equally difficult questions. "How do you handle this? You believe that he died without Christ and is damned. How do you ease the pain? How do you answer the question of how God could allow this?" And I was faced with questions that were difficult for me to answer.
Now, I am a person that doesn't like leaving things like that hanging. Some people are perfectly happy with spouting truisms that deflect the question without personally engaging the answers. Some people are perfectly happy never asking the hard questions. But I'm not either of those. I may not be able to convince others, but if I don't have answers that satisfy me, I'm not comfortable. Mind you, sometimes the answer is "God is God and I am not and I won't be able to answer that," but that's perfectly satisfactory in some cases. So I worked through the questions he "asked" me to my own satisfaction. I wonder how many others have done that?
We are commanded to "be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Rom. 12:2). We are told that spiritual maturity is "for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil" (Heb. 5:14). Yet too many Christians today wallow about in mediocre thinking processes, unwilling to ask and answer the hard questions, content with letting others do the dirty work. It's not just misguided. It's not merely unwise. It's wrong. We are commanded to give answers, to be ready at all times to make a defense. I suspect that much of the harsh words that come from Christians to their interrogators comes from a position of hidden unease. When you are not sure of your own answer, it is likely that you will react with emotion rather than "gentleness and reverence." Maybe that's something we should work on.
5 comments:
I agree with this post. You're talking about the discipline of apologetics. For many years, I knew I believed, but I didn't know why I believed, then I stumbled upon apologetics and the obstacles to belief fell away.
Now I understand that the Christian faith is historical and evidential, it's never a blind faith. And not only can I answer most of the tough questions, I can reach out to others in a way that can convince those open to facts and evidence that Christianity and only Christianity is true beyond any reasonable doubt.
Keep studying, my friend.
We're just the messengers. I do make it a point to communicate to whomever I'm talking to that what someone chooses to do with the message is entirely up to them. You can't argue someone into heaven because if they can be argued in, they can also be argued out.
My grandfather, or more properly stated, my grandfather by marriage lived his life on his own terms without being associated with any particular organized church. I had a chance to listen to his thoughts regarding his “beliefs”, how he’d lived a good life which seemed to be patterned after teachings found in the Gospel and yet not wishing to be “counted” as a member of the “church”. It seemed somewhat contradictory to me and yet I listened as he explained that he was aware of his short comings, his weaknesses and did not want to be a hypocrite as so many of his associates seemed to be. He was willing to meet God on his own terms without the trappings of “organized religion” as he called it. He’d read the scriptures and, for the most part, had lived by the righteous instructions found therein.
In my religion we believe that righteous individuals and those who were less than righteous, all who have not accepted the Gospel during their mortality are given a chance to hear the Gospel in its fullness on the other side of the veil. It is not up to us to decide whether or not these individuals accept or reject the Gospel, it must be assumed that they accept all that is offered and act in such a way as to permit their progression in the eternities.
If they reject the Gospel it will not matter that we have prepared a way for them to progress; however, should they desire to progress and those necessary ordinances have not been performed, how great will be the burden of guilt on those who could have assisted these powerless individuals, being mindful that such ordinances must be performed in the flesh, and yet did nothing towards fulfilling those needs for them.
The responsibility to perform the sacred ordinances of Baptism, which is required of all who wish to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, may be done vicariously. The ordinances of baptism for the dead, along with other life saving ordinances, are performed vicariously within the temples which have been dedicated for such purposes.
“Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?” 1 Corinthians 15:29
I'm sorry for your loss Stan. You and your family will be in my prayers.
Good points.
I am sorry for your loss.
Thank you all for your kind condolences. At times like these I don't know how other people make it without a Sovereign God in whom to trust. Fortunately, I know such a God.
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