Glad You Made It!
I created this blog because I cannot sit back and do nothing. If I truly believe in God, then shouldn’t I help others believe too? I don’t want to nag, but I still want to help. I feel like I’m walking a tightrope.
As a wife, mother, friend and Christian, this is my gift. I’ve put hours of thought into this and I will probably keep adding as I feel the need. So here goes!
Believing Is Your Choice - Think about how awesome that is!
I don’t know if anything that I’m about to write will stimulate your thinking. The bottom line is that until you are ready to accept that God is alive, you will not open your heart and believe. Sometimes I wonder if people don’t believe in God because they really don’t want to believe. Will believing make you less intelligent? Intelligent people can and do believe in God. There are many scientists that believe in God. Have you heard of the Dissent from Darwinism? Go take a look. Here’s a snippet: “During recent decades, new scientific evidence from many scientific disciplines such as cosmology, physics, biology, "artificial intelligence" research, and others have caused scientists to begin questioning Darwinism’s central tenet of natural selection and studying the evidence supporting it in greater detail.Yet public TV programs, educational policy statements, and science textbooks have asserted that Darwin’s theory of evolution fully explains the complexity of living things. The public has been assured that all known evidence supports Darwinism and that virtually every scientist in the world believes the theory to be true.The scientists on this list dispute the first claim and stand as living testimony in contradiction to the second. Since Discovery Institute launched this list in 2001, hundreds of scientists have courageously stepped forward to sign their names.”
I’ve heard people say they don’t want to believe in God if he allows painful events and suffering? If it was perfect on earth, then why would we need heaven? God’s thinking is not our thinking. He sees death differently than we do. He allowed his son to be tortured! We can’t fathom letting a loved one go through that. The thing is, we will all die. No matter what has taken place on earth, there is a perfect place waiting for us. Man is why there is pain and suffering. This would only make sense to someone that believes in God. If I started talking about Adam and Eve and the garden right now, you might stop reading, so let’s press on to other things.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Some people need proof of God’s existence. I look at a newborn baby, a snow covered mountain or the stars and I see proof. How about proof He does not exist. Why does it have to always be the other way around? In math, there is something called “indirect proof”. Your beginning assumption would have to be that God does exist. Your job would be to find contradictions. Is there evidence God does not exist? If you have that nagging feeling in the back of your mind and you really don’t know what it is, could it be God? Does it upset you when you find out someone believes in God? Why do you put so much energy into thinking about this and searching for answers. If you don’t believe there is a God, why do you care if others believe? Something is bothering you...If that feeling won’t go away, could God be calling you? If there was no God, why would we even entertain the thought that he might be out there? We are his creation. We can’t help searching for him!
Whether you ever accept him or not, he is a part of you.
My neighbor was recently robbed. He did not see who did it, but he came home to a mess in his house. A computer and a tv were gone. A glass jar of coins had been dropped and was all over the floor. If you told my neighbor that all of that had “just happened on its own”, he would laugh in your face. How is this different? We can see God’s work. We ARE God’s work, and yet people will say this “just happened” for no reason!
When it comes to God, my logic has always been that God is the creator. He is all-knowing. He can do anything He wants. I accepted this when I was a kid. I believed in Noah’s ark and the plagues and people being raised from the dead and Jonah being swallowed by a fish. I took everything literally and believed because God can do anything. He can create the earth in seven days if He wants to, but God is above time. Time to Him is different than it is to us or at least this is what seems logical. I believe in the Bible. I believe that God used men to create this document. It is an amazing book. I don’t think you can make this stuff up. How could all these people come together and create a plan like this. I also believe in Jesus. I believe he is the son of God and he was sent to live among us. I believe that he died on the cross to save us so that we can be with God in heaven. I believe in heaven and hell. As terrible as it sounds, there will be people doomed to hell. I don’t like to think about it, but I do know that I don’t want it to be me or anyone else that I know or love. (Read the bible and you will be amazed. Yes there are some boring parts and yes there are confusing parts. You do not have to start at the beginning. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John describe Jesus’ life. Of course this is amazing, but read Romans and the Corinthians...very good advice as well as information that you will think, “wow they had that problem back then?”)
You are not alone in your confusion and disbelief. Even people in the bible were hard to convince. People that actually listened to Jesus speak and saw his miracles still were unsure. If the bible were made up, it seems that the writers would have avoided displaying the disbelief, but the book is honest and shows actual events. Read John 6:35 – John 7 and John 8:12 – John 9.
I’ve been reading books and articles that have opened my eyes to some incredible evidences that God is a truly creative and magnificent designer of earth and all that’s in it and around it. The Cambrian Explosion was a time period where many creatures came about all at once. They did not slowly evolve because there are no fossils found that support this. Before this time period, most of the fossils that existed were very simple creatures but during the Cambrian Explosion advanced creatures came into being. This diffuses Darwin’s assumptions that we all evolved slowly and everything is tied together somehow. The more advanced that science gets, the more it helps us discover that God was behind it all. How else could creatures suddenly appear?
Scientists have tried to create an environment where life can start on its own. It’s not possible. Something cannot come from nothing. If it could, it would have happened in modern times. Scientists would have discovered how to get the ball rolling and make life…but it hasn’t happened. I see two extremes here:
Out of nowhere for no reason earth was formed and life began. There was no reason for it to exist, it just did. For no reason man and woman came about. They have no purpose. Everything just accidentally happened. When we die, that’s it. No God.
The other extreme:
God created the earth. He set things in motion. He intended for life to exist. He gave us a purpose. He gave us a reason to live a righteous life. All things created are here for His glory. When we die, we go to heaven or hell. If you believe in the one true God, heaven is your eternal home.
Speaking of life, DNA is so complicated, intricate, and precise. It has been compared to a computer program. A computer has a creator and so does the computer program. DNA had to have a creator that did not leave out any details and knew how to line up the proper sequences so that DNA could work properly. The cell itself is a machine. If one thing is missing or is not working properly, it will not function.
Break Time...Stop and do this!
Have someone you know put something in a box and give it to you without you knowing what it is. Pretend you are scientist discovering something. What processes would you go through to figure this out? Try a few things, but you cannot open the box! We will come back to the box!
Resume
Let’s turn our attention to the stars. Einstein’s theory of relativity helped scientist come to realize that the universe is expanding. If it is expanding then if you go back in time and watch it backwards, then you would see that the universe all comes together in a dense ball of matter. This would mean that the universe had a beginning. The big bang is widely accepted among scientists and God believing people. It also lines up with what Genesis says when God said let there be light and there was. What about life on other planets? We have found none, but does that mean it doesn’t exist? If there is, does that dispel God? Could God have created multiple planets with life? If God exists, He can do whatever He wants. It does not have to make sense to us.
Earth is a planet unlike any other. It is exactly in the right place in our solar system to support life. If it were any closer or further from the sun, we couldn’t live here. The gravity constant is precisely what it needs to be so that we can function and not be crushed. Earth has the perfect amount of oxygen so we can breathe. It has the perfect amount of salt in the ocean. The moon is in perfect position to make sure the tides rise and fall. Earth seems to be made for life. I wonder what the odds of a planet to be placed in the right spot and then life to spring from it? It’s harder for me to say it “just” happened than to believe that an intelligent designer molded it for a purpose! Let’s say the designer created the earth and then set it in motion and then did not interfere. Jesus would not have been necessary then. Jesus did live on earth. Was he just a crazy man? What about the eye-witness accounts of the miracles he performed?
How old is earth? Some say life has been on earth for 4 billion years and the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Some say it is only thousands of years old. Some say look at the rock layers and some talk about what a world flood would do to the earth in terms of uncovering things and moving them around. Is the age of the earth important to determine if there is a God? Could God’s first seven days in the beginning really be millions of years, since time means nothing to God? The bible says that one day to God is the same as a thousand years (2 Peter 3: 1-8). First of all, how did they know to say that to us? Secondly, I feel like this means that God transcends time. Time is a manmade measurement. Days make sense to us because we know that the sun rises and sets during this time. There was no sun rising and setting in the beginning. Days didn’t exist, so years didn’t exist.
Brain Power:
The human brain is incredible. We have a “consciousness” inside us. This inner being is what talks to us. Our moral compass comes from here. Is this the part that lives after we die? I believe this is our soul. This is how we make choices and decisions. This is the part of us that will live forever.
Have you ever wondered why the brain is wrinkly? More wrinkles, more surface area, more room for neurons. The brain can fold and fit in a small space, but still provide enough room for all that grey matter! How incredible is that?
Story Time:
My husband has no reason to make up the story I’m about to tell. This happened to him in 2009 a couple of days after my brother died. My husband believes in God, but at that time I would not have called him a deeply religious man. My brother was Tom’s best friend. He died in his sleep from a brain aneurism. Of course this was devastating to all of us. Tom needed to do something during this time, so he took Greg’s truck home to wash it. I guess he needed to be near something of Greg’s. Tom loves washing cars. While washing Greg’s car he noticed that Greg never went and got the valve stem cap for his tires. This made Tom mad and he started talking to Greg out loud. Tom said that he was crying and gripping at Greg telling him that he should have gone and gotten this taken care of and that he had told him over and over where to go to get them and there was no reason for him not to have already done this. The truck was parked about 20 feet or more away from the garage under a big tree in our driveway. Tom needed something out of the garage so he walked over to the garage and set down a blue bucket that he liked to fill with water when washing cars. The bucket was sitting right outside the garage. When he came back to it something was sitting right next to it. It was a valve cap! It was sitting up like someone had placed it there. It was not on its side like it had rolled down to the bucket. It was sitting on the circular end! How could this be? I was in the house the whole time this was going on. Tom came in and sat down in a chair in the living room. I could tell something was weird. I asked him if something was wrong. He was speechless for a moment. When he finally got himself together, he told me the story. Like most people, we tried to reason it away, but there really was not a good explanation. Of course, I want to think that it was my brother. Maybe it was God. Maybe it was an angel. I don’t know.
Another strange event when my brother died… His autistic son, Robby walked up to my mom (his grandmother) the day Greg died and said, “Daddy said everything will be okay, Robby.” Robby likes to repeat what others have said to him. He doesn’t know how to lie or make things up.
LAWS, LOVE?
If there is no God, why do we have the need for rules and laws? Why is it in our nature to have leaders and to want to believe in a higher being? Why do we care about each other? Why do we have the ability to love? If we didn’t have a soul could we love? If we were just a brain in a body, wouldn’t we be more like robots? It is not logical to ask science to explain everything. There is nothing wrong with exploring and trying to find answers, but when science cannot answer a question, what next? Does that mean you say, “Well if science can’t tell me, forget it.”
Back to the Box
You probably have jiggled the box, listened to the way the contents move around inside the box, approximated the weight of the box, smelled the box, compared the box to other things and so forth. You may even have a hypothesis about what might be in the box. Until you open it, you do not know for sure what it is. I did this same experiment when I was getting my masters in science and math curriculum. The professor was having us do this activity to take us through the scientific method. This opened my eyes to what scientist must go through when they are studying things in space, or in the depths of the ocean or things from the past. If you cannot actually see the object, you can only hypothesize. The best part of this experiment is that there is something in the box and someone had to put it there. It did not pop into existence on its own. Something cannot come from nothing. There must be a creator or molder. Look around. You can see the evidence of God everywhere. You can see it, smell it, hear it and touch it. God has given us evidence. Why do we choose to ignore what exists all around us? Don’t “Science” God away. He is the master scientist. We see his work every day!
I am a math teacher and through my research I have come across Pascal’s Wager. Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist and inventor. Pascal used logic to show that you lose nothing by wagering for God if He doesn’t exist and that you gain everything if God exists and you have wagered for Him. If you do not wager for God, you lose terribly if He does exist and you lose nothing if He doesn’t exist. If you are agnostic, lean toward God and start your search. If you are atheist, ask yourself if events in your life have changed you toward atheism. Have you been hardened for some reason? Are you set to only believe in what science tells you? I hear atheist say that they want to believe but they just can’t. One friend of mine said he envied me for believing, but he couldn’t believe.
What if you wait until you are 50 or even 60 to believe? You will regret the time you spent not believing. Regret is a terrible thing. I hear people say, “I don’t want to believe in a God that allows terrible things to happen.” So, if you don’t want to believe, then does that mean God goes away? One thing that keeps me going since I feel like I can never be good enough is I think about Paul and David in the bible. Paul persecuted Christians but God chose him to preach and evangelize. I’m sure Paul had regrets about his former life, but God obviously loved Paul and forgave him. David had a man killed because David slept with the man’s wife and got her pregnant. How terrible is that? David was a man after God’s own heart. God forgave David and loved him anyway. (By the way…why would those people be in the bible if it were made up?) God loves us no matter who we are and no matter what we’ve done. The one biggie is WE HAVE TO CHOOSE HIM. He will never force us to choose him. We have free will. Sin is what makes this world ugly. We decide to sin or not sin. Sin causes terrible chain reactions. Satan is behind the terrible things of this earth, not God. God gave us free will and you can see what a terrible mess we have made of this earth.
If you are an honest reasonable person, then you will open your heart and mind to the possibility that God is the creator of the universe. If you do not search for answers, then maybe you don’t want to believe. I’m fascinated that young adults that haven’t lived a long life think they know everything. How can someone so young have everything figured out? Our minds are not equipped to understand the magnitude of God. Just because you can’t understand why some things are the way they are or maybe you just don’t like the way they are, that’s a reason not to believe? Don’t be turned off by bad Christians. Don’t be turned off by things you can’t understand. Strip everything away. If you were starting at square one, you’d have to ask, “How did this all get started?” If you could accept that a designer set things in motion, that’s a start. Your next question might be, “Why did this all start?” God wanted people to love and in return for them to love him. Your next question might be, “How are we supposed to know this?” The bible is our gateway. It’s like curriculum. It lays out the plan for us. It’s also a historic document. The bible tells us about how Jesus had to come to the earth because of our sin. He was the ultimate sacrifice. We get baptized when we are ready to declare that we believe and we want to follow God. We can ask for forgiveness when we sin because of Jesus. Another question you may ask is, “So what is my job?” It’s our job to worship God, serve and teach others.
Of course that was all simplified. Many deep thinkers can think of a million things that don’t make sense or confuse them or make them question the whole thing. We can go a million different directions and even talk ourselves out of believing. Can you say without a shadow of a doubt that there is no God? If not, then don’t call yourself an atheist. Take the first step. At least say you don’t know. The next step is to search! If there is a possibility God exists, then PRAY, STUDY and SEARCH for answers and don’t stop. Read about other non-believers that became Christians. A surprising Christian apologist is a famous author: C.S. Lewis. One of his Christian friends that never gave up on Lewis was another well-known author, J. R. R. Tolkien.
Be careful.
What if you decide that it is your mission to make sure people don’t believe in this “ridiculous God?” It is ludicrous to believe in such a thing. How can people be so stupid? I don’t want my wife or children to believe. I don’t want my friends or family to believe. I can’t be around people that are this stupid. I’m going to make sure they don’t believe! I’m going to talk to them using my best arguments.
Down the road...BOOM!
Something changes you. Out of nowhere, you read something, heard something, watched something, listened to someone…something incredible happened to you….Now you believe. You weren’t expecting this. Now what? You just convinced people not to believe. You can’t take back the past! You do not want that guilt on your mind. Please be careful.
I’m far from perfect. I’m not a writer. I’m not a philosopher. I’m not a scientist. I’ve rambled and talked in circles. I do know this: I believe in God and if I truly do believe in God then I should help others believe too. We are all important to God. No person or race is superior. God is calling us all. He wants us all to be with him in heaven one day. He loves every person…even the ones that don’t believe in him.
Take one day at a time. Pray. God answers prayers. Choose God, you won’t regret it.
