As some of you are aware, there is a new grad student in my lab who is extremely interested in the Bible — to an extent about salvation, but right now particularly how it can help him be a “better person”. He now has a Chinese-English bible (he just arrived from China last month) and is asking me questions about things he doesn’t understand as he works his way through. Fortunately I convinced him to start at Matthew instead of Genesis, so I’m off the hook on Leviticus for a while However, he asked me four questions today which I thought I’d share, because (a) I was fairly unprepared to answer 3 of the 4; (b) they may be questions you hear witnessing to completely unchurched people who are just searching out the idea of God existing, let alone whether or not Christianity is the answer; and (c) perhaps you could give me some ideas on how to answer a couple in particular better than I did. Some of them might seem really obvious or even silly to us, but I found that answering them for somebody who is just thinking about the concept of whether or not there is a “supreme being” for the first time is actually kind of difficult:
1) If Jesus is God’s Son, who is God’s wife? — obviously the virgin birth is the answer here, with Mary essentially being God’s conduit to bring Jesus into the world. Interestingly, in these days of in vitro fertilization etc. the idea of a virgin birth doesn’t sound as crazy as it used to. I think he was satisfied by my answer on this one.
2) If God created everything, where did God come from? — an interesting question to which I don’t think anybody can come up with a completely satisfactory response — I told him I’d think about a better response, and this site (coupled with the link provided) is pretty good: http://www.christiananswers.net/evangelism/responses/home.html#existence
3) What was God doing before he got around to creating the universe? — I have no clue! Ideas on what to say?
4) (particularly in the context of the pre-human creation time) doesn’t God have any friends? — this question I think is derived from a basic misunderstanding of a supernatural being; on the other hand, in last week’s PDL reading, Warren emphasizes how God has emotions etc. and so values relationships (with us now, but what about before we were on the scene?) Again, outside of talking about how Christians have relationships with God which God values, I didn’t have a great answer here.
Please feel free to post any answers you might have to these questions or other questions you have been asked (or thought of) so we can all be better prepared when these opportunities come up to fulfil purpose #5.
Once we realize that we have hurt someone, because of our sinful hearts, how do we be forgive or be forgiven for our offence? I know that we should pray to God to show us our wrong doings (forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors) but what if we have really done a big one…..something that we feel that we will never be forgiven, as a matter of fact, we feel that we aren’t christian anymore because of it. How can we be sure that God has forgiven us…..now other christians….now the ones that we have hurt….How can we face our christian friends again? do we even have a right to be friends anymore? And what if I have been forgiven, but years later things pop up to bring back the horrible memories….Is this just the devils attacks or is there some unresolved sin? How do I tell the difference?
A question has been rattling around inside my head since last Sunday’s message and following discussion. In relation to telling the difference between God’s will and your own will, this was really well illustrated by Christa’s dramatic description of her struggles over the last few years. (Similarly, I have felt completely stymied in every attempt to accomplish anything in the last year , so this is really important to me.) Her suggestion was that when you know you’re doing God’s will, you just have to keep truckin’ no matter how discouraged you may become or how hopeless things seem. This is a common concept in both Christian and secular contexts - perserverance, fighting the good fight and all of that.
So… You’ve gone through the steps - prayer and study, talking with others, examined your motives and inspired desires - and you’re confident in your role in the body of Christ. You knew it wasn’t going to be a cake-walk, but you now realize its going to take an Abraham-sized helping of faith to follow God through this.
But what if God is telling you that you shouldn’t be doing what you’re trying to do at all? What if you misinterpreted God’s will? To persevere when God is trying to accomplish something different by you - that’s just plain foolish.
So… how do you tell the difference between when what you are trying to do is so important that Satan and all of his henchmen are out to discourage you at every step, and when what you’re doing is simply your own will and not God’s?
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However, he asked me four questions today which I thought I’d share, because (a) I was fairly unprepared to answer 3 of the 4; (b) they may be questions you hear witnessing to completely unchurched people who are just searching out the idea of God existing, let alone whether or not Christianity is the answer; and (c) perhaps you could give me some ideas on how to answer a couple in particular better than I did. Some of them might seem really obvious or even silly to us, but I found that answering them for somebody who is just thinking about the concept of whether or not there is a “supreme being” for the first time is actually kind of difficult:
