I have this good friend who has supported my ministry for years. He's a great Christian man and makes full effort to live a faithful Christian life. He called me up on the phone a couple of weeks ago and said he was struggling with his faith. He wasn't really wrestling with HOW HE SHOULD LIVE (morality), rather, he was concerned with WHAT TO BELIEVE. When you decide to follow Jesus and connect with a Christian community, you're usually surrounded by people who have figured out how to deal with these troubling aspects of faith. There are a few ways people deal with these questions of faith: Some people brush questions aside and don't deal with them at all; these people choose to accept ignorance, going with the flow and reasoning that millions of believers can't possibly be wrong. Other people immerse themselves in a quest for truth and are indiscriminate of the data they're examining. This group can be easily swayed to dismiss Christianity all-together; in fact, many a liberal biblical scholar were reared in simplistic, ultra-conservative faith communities and finally rejected faith as a result of deeper studies. Then there are those people struggling with skepticism who honestly and humbly seek to discover answers to their questions. These people tend to consult clergy for help with these questions and, unfortunately, this can actually prove to be detrimental. You see, many ministers adhere to the earlier described "go-with-the-flow" philosophy and haven't really felt the need to explore the deeper issues themselves. These ministers usually suggest that you just read your Bible more, pray more, go to church more, and God will strengthen your faith.
But there are answers out there, and clergy ought to be able to help reveal these answers. I am by no means an expert in the field of apologetics (the defense of the Christian faith), but I know that some of you share the same questions that my friend has. And while you might not read an entire book on these subjects, you might be able to digest what I write here on my website. So over the next few weeks, I'm going to answer my friend's questions here on the blog. The majority of them concern the biblical text, but if others emerge, I'll go ahead and take a stab at them. The point of the exercise is that we believers to continue to ask difficult questions and diligently seek those answers.
And all of this is not to say that Christianity is fully dependent on empirical evidence (proven facts). In the end, what we have is faith. I believe God gives us enough to keep us going, but there are still holes that must be filled by the individual.
Still, we have questions . . .