Two questions for the questioning

Apart from my earliest unreflective years, there was never a time when I didn’t believe in God. As I’ve previously shared, I was raised in the Catholic Church where I soaked in the primary Christian doctrines of the Trinity and God as Creator and Savior, with all the “omni-s” duly accorded him. For much of my life I didn’t pay him much attention, but still he always figured into my worldview.

Yet even since I’ve become a devoted follower of Christ and he is never far from my thoughts, there have been moments when I’ve questioned my long-held beliefs. Sometimes because of difficult personal circumstances, other times because of what I witness or hear about in the lives of others. Or simply because I wasn’t seeing answers to my prayers. He seemed very far away and I was losing sight of him.

There are two basic truths I recall…two questions really…whenever the temptation to doubt worms its way into my circumstantially-driven, limited perspective. The first is this:

Is there any other reasonable explanation for the universe and all that is in it that is more plausible than the existence of an almighty, self-existent God?

There are many lines of reasoning for the truth of the Christian faith, but in times of struggle they can be easily forgotten or easily questioned. In those doubting moments it helps to find your foundational footing on the obvious reality of the need for an explanation of our existence. There is a God. From this conclusion you ask, okay…what religious worldview is the most coherent in accounting for reality and answering the universal existential questions of life? Questions of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. That’s Christianity.

If then you know he exists but you wonder if he is really good, ask yourself:

Since we can imagine a human being who consistently loves unconditionally and has great compassion, is it not inconceivable that our Creator could be any less loving and compassionate?

Consider the incongruity of God’s creatures (us) being more gooder 🙂 than him. If you can imagine or perhaps even know someone who would do anything for you and is always concerned for your welfare, then you can know God is even more so.

My faith in God is strong because I have good evidences for his existence and for the truth of how he is revealed in the Bible and in his ultimate revelation, Jesus Christ. Also because of his personal activity in my life by his Holy Spirit. But I think as long as we are in the flesh we are constrained by our fears and physical and spiritual limitations, and questions and doubts will come.

So our remedy for those infrequent but very real moments of uncertainty is the one Jesus gave to John the Baptist’s messengers as recorded in Matthew 11. John was in prison and experiencing some doubt, likely as a result of his circumstances, and sent them to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” And Jesus replied, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.”

What do we see? We see an amazingly beautiful and complex universe. And what do we hear? We hear great love and compassion expressed from one created being to another.

How great and loving then, must be our Creator and God.