I want to get you thinkin’!
I must confess that I’ve never been a person greatly concerned with facts, figures and “Sciencey” stuff. Sure, I liked to know if things were true or not and I always thought it was good for other people, like, say, my doctor, to know the necessary information to do his job and not ruin my or anyone else’s life by being wrong, but I guess you could say I’ve never been obsessed with proof. I’m what you call a “feeler” by nature. I go with my gut, my intuition, I like to feel things out. The problem with being a feeler is that sometimes you need to know facts, you need proof, especially when it comes to matters of God and faith. Sometimes your feelings can deceive you, no matter how good your gut is, and you need something more solid to stand on. When the good feeling about God goes away, is God still good? Feelings are important, but need to be supplemented by facts and evidence.
The other reason I find it necessary to examine the evidence of this belief that I’ve chosen (or maybe you can say it has chosen me) is that other people want to know why. I’m here to tell the story of what God has done, not just in my life, but for the world. He created us, He sacrificed for us and He forgave us. These simple actions can seem far-fetched. In a world where gods run rampant and claim the faith, hope and trust of people everyday, “I feel that my God is real” isn’t a statement that does the true God justice. It sounds like everyone else who believes, who feels that his/her god is the real one.
Before we get into the evidence examining and fact finding though, I feel like we need to ask some questions. I grew up in church, so I feel like there are questions and answers that I take for granted. If you are consistently in a church environment, you may have learned to answer certain questions with what we call “Sunday School” answers, meaning you don’t really think about the question, but give the answer that you’ve always been taught you should give without giving it much thought. I want to try to move out of the “Sunday School” answers and church language way of thinking and really explore. I’ve come up with several questions that should get your mind moving and stretch you if you think about them. You won’t be able to come up with definite answers for many of them, but that’s okay; we’re going examine them anyway. Here they are:
Who/What is God?
What is the Bible? What does it do for you?
Do you believe in the Trinity? If so, which member of the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) do you identify with the most?
Do you believe that a higher being (God) created the world? If so, how many days did creation take?
Why is Christianity difficult to believe? Or is it very easy to believe?
Why are you here (as in this study)?
Why are you here (as in this world, living, breathing, existing, etc.)?
To download a text version with more spaces for writing that you can print off and bring to class, click here.
Besides introductions and getting to know one another in our first class, we’re going to fumble through some of these questions. If you are following along online (or if you’re attending in person and want to get a jump on the discussion), please add your two-cents in the comment box on this page whenever you’re ready.
I only ask that you remain respectful to others. Don’t assume anything about anyone, because we don’t all know each other’s backgrounds, inner most fears and insecurities. I want this to be a safe environment where we can uncover more of who God is.
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I love these questions because you are very right in that if you have grown up in church, you know all of the Sunday school answers. Here are some of my answers:
2. What is the Bible? The Bible is God’s word to us. He used ordinary men to write it. It has lessons for us to learn, ways that God shows us how He interacted with His followers before we came, and words to encourage us.
3. Do you believe in the Trinity and who do you relate with the most? I do believe in the Trinity. There are 3 “people” that exist as 1. It is something that our minute brains will never fully comprehend. I most relate to Jesus because He seems like the loving one of the 3. He is the one who sacrificed His life for us. God I view as the ruler and judger of people. So I have a hard time seeing the awesomeness and love of God.
4. God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th.
5. I think Christianity is very difficult to believe at times. Think about it: You hear these stories about what He did a long time ago and they sound totally impossible. Then you are asked to only accept them and Him for what He has doen for you and you can have eternal life. It seems to good to be true. I feel sometimes that I don’t know if I’ve done the whole thing correctly cause it just seems too easy. It’s hard to believe that there aren’t any requirements on our part other than trusting.
6. Why am I here? I really would love to actually be in the class in person but I have choir practice. So…. I wanted to join this group because it interested me. I want to know more of how to love God and have a better view of God than I do. I think that my view is skewed.
7. Why are we here on earth? well the churchy answer is that we are lead others to God. I think if we all truly blieved this, we would live totally different lives.
Sam, thanks for your answers. They added to our discussion last night. You were in good company with your thoughts. I hope to have a follow-up posted tomorrow sometime and will try to have the notes for our next session up by Monday.