Doubt In The Context of Faith

Honestly, after reading this OP, it looks like you've been completely immersing yourself into conversation with atheists and are on the verge of total collapse from your faith. God has answered all of these questions sufficiently for me through prayer and then some. I suggest you ask Him for the answers, since you seem to be losing trust in your fellow Christians' answers.

It sounds to me as though you have not lived in true submissive faith with Jesus Christ. And even then, if you have, doubts can crop up but you gain something to reflect back on in your life as the proof and reminders that this is real. That is the case for me. I believe we live in a time where demons are testing our very faith and the weak in faith will fall/fail but the strong have a history of evidence right in their own lives and can't be fooled. When you question faith, it's faltering and it's time to draw all the nearer to Jesus Christ, not man made studies and such. If you need proof of faith and worse, proof of God, then you aren't faithful, for it is by faith that we believe and by faith that He is just to save us by Grace.

Dave G. said:

for it is by faith that we believe and by faith that He is just to save us by Grace.

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And why is that? Why can't He go back to the Old Testament way of interaction and show us visible signs?

Lucian Hodoboc said:

And why is that? Why can't He go back to the Old Testament way of interaction and show us visible signs?

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I've seen signs, have you Lucian ? But they came after submitting myself to Jesus in faith. They didn't come before. Gods plan is that we come in faith and then things are revealed to us, no one has won the battle through works, not even Abraham. For it was by faith he believed and counted to him as righteousness.

Not everyone in the old testament saw signs, only key people were selected and they told the others to follow. Not only that but signs like stars in the sky most folks just passed off as something up there but the ones who needed to know knew what it meant.

Lucian Hodoboc said:

And why is that? Why can't He go back to the Old Testament way of interaction and show us visible signs?

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God has given us a better covenant then the Old Testament.

And there are miracles that God does all the time. You are so busy looking for who you want God to be. You cannot create the God of your liking. He is who He is.

Audacious said:

1. Inefficacy of (Intercessory) Prayer
Studies have shown that intercessory prayer doesn’t work. The Bible says it does – Jesus says it does! – but it doesn’t. It doesn’t have better outcomes for sick people, or make you more likely to succeed in your goals, or anything! We’re supposed to be able to move mountains and be immune to snake venom, but people who truly believe they’re safe still die from Christian snake-charming.

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Frankly, most Christians do not know how to pray. We must pray convinced that our prayers will be answered, and most believers are filled with doubt. I include myself in that group, btw, but I at least know what hinders my prayers when they are hindered.

Audacious said:

2. Why sin/evil/etc? God can do anything, so why this?
Here’s the thing: this is not the best possible world, with or without Eve’s fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. If God is all powerful, why doesn’t He just make it so that whatever makes us have to go to Hell isn’t necessary in the first place? Not just believers: everyone.

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God can not do anything. He is Truth and can not lie. He is Life and can not die. I am sure you have heard the answer before, but God does not violate our free will. The gifts and the callings of God are without repentance. He will not make us do anything.

Audacious said:

3. Dead Babies:
Everything that happens is God’s will, or can be made to fit His will, right? So how do dead babies make any [staff edit] sense? Babies don’t sin, and their lives aren’t object lessons.

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Not everything that happens is God's will. Do you believe that it was God's will for Adam and Even to sin and bring the curse into His creation? There are many things that happen because of the laws of God that he set in motion. If sperm joins with an egg, babies are born. Since the entire universe is affected by the curse that Adam and Eve brought into creation, babies can be born with diseases or malfunctioning parts. The laws of life are corrupted by the curse.

Audacious said:

4. Why doesn’t God communicate with us in ways that are more sensible and direct?
I mean, His presence is everywhere and all, but why doesn’t He find undeniable ways to show us that He is God? More of the clouds opening with a loud accompanying voice, less of the “communicating with us through our consciences” stuff.

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He is a Spirit and we are body, soul and spirit. He wants us to learn to be spiritual and commune with Him in the Spirit, but you want God to be carnal and commune with us materially. Maturing in Christ means being one with God and intimate with his ways, will and leading. You want to remain immature.

Audacious said:

5. Why are all of the arguments used to “prove” Christianity also used to prove basically every other religion?
You can apply them to Islam, to Buddhism, to Hinduism… it’s just the same kind of thinking, the same kind of excuses that don’t quite seem to work, over and over again.

If Christianity is true, and God is real and watching over us, and there is a heaven… why are we using the same logic, reasoning, excuses and cop-outs as everyone else is? Why do we need to?

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Arguments do not prove Christianity. The power and presence of God prove Him to those who experience Him. Only Socratic questioning is useful in helping a person uncover why they do not want to believe in God and Jesus.

Audacious said:

I've been having a lot of doubts in my faith for the past few months. Not the kind that can be easily dismissed, but actual, relatively rational thoughts.

I haven't really been able to talk to anyone about them, since no one in my family is a Christian and neither are any of my friends (online or off). So I'm wondering: how do y'all deal with doubt?

If anyone's interested, my specific concerns in the doubt are:

1. Inefficacy of (Intercessory) Prayer
Studies have shown that intercessory prayer doesn’t work. The Bible says it does – Jesus says it does! – but it doesn’t. It doesn’t have better outcomes for sick people, or make you more likely to succeed in your goals, or anything! We’re supposed to be able to move mountains and be immune to snake venom, but people who truly believe they’re safe still die from Christian snake-charming.

Why would a God who exists and loves us and is all-powerful say that He’ll help us, and then turn out to not do anything at all?

2. Why sin/evil/etc? God can do anything, so why this?
Here’s the thing: this is not the best possible world, with or without Eve’s fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. If God is all powerful, why doesn’t He just make it so that whatever makes us have to go to Hell isn’t necessary in the first place? Not just believers: everyone.

A good God couldn’t possibly want all of those people to go to Hell, right?

There’s the argument that God did exactly that through Jesus, but why? Why would he do that when Jesus’s resurrection happened 2,000 years ago (give or take), and we don’t have any solid evidence that the actual miracle of the resurrection (or any other miracles) happened?

I mean, if God is real, shouldn’t there be a lot more hard evidence?

3. Dead Babies:
Everything that happens is God’s will, or can be made to fit His will, right? So how do dead babies make any [staff edit] sense? Babies don’t sin, and their lives aren’t object lessons.

4. Why doesn’t God communicate with us in ways that are more sensible and direct?
I mean, His presence is everywhere and all, but why doesn’t He find undeniable ways to show us that He is God? More of the clouds opening with a loud accompanying voice, less of the “communicating with us through our consciences” stuff.

I mean, His presence is supposed to be implicit, but it’s not. And even if it were – why couldn’t it be more obvious? Why would the subtlety even be necessry?

Heaven is a big deal in the Bible. Miracles are a big deal in the Bible. But in my own life, and looking at scientific evidence and (not necessarily scientific) well-recorded data, there’s nothing that seems to indicate either one. Few modern-day miracle stories even do anything to prove YHWH, much less the resurrection.

5. Why are all of the arguments used to “prove” Christianity also used to prove basically every other religion?
You can apply them to Islam, to Buddhism, to Hinduism… it’s just the same kind of thinking, the same kind of excuses that don’t quite seem to work, over and over again.

If Christianity is true, and God is real and watching over us, and there is a heaven… why are we using the same logic, reasoning, excuses and cop-outs as everyone else is? Why do we need to?

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Can you give the URL to the study that you say proves prayer does not work?

Thanks.

ToBeLoved said:

You cannot create the God of your liking. He is who He is.

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So, I'm stuck in a situation in which I either accept to agree with a God whom I don't agree with or choose to suffer in Hell for eternity? That doesn't sound like free will to me. I'm just stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Some good questions that I think most Christians have dealt with in some form or another over the centuries. I've had these and others like them myself at various times. I'll try to toss out some short responses to the way I've dealt with these questions. (In context, I've been a Christian for over 40 years now.)

Audacious said:

I've been having a lot of doubts in my faith for the past few months. Not the kind that can be easily dismissed, but actual, relatively rational thoughts.

I haven't really been able to talk to anyone about them, since no one in my family is a Christian and neither are any of my friends (online or off). So I'm wondering: how do y'all deal with doubt?

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All Christians need to spend some meaningful time with other Christians. Being a Christian has enough challenges without trying to do it on our own.

Audacious said:

1. Inefficacy of (Intercessory) Prayer
Studies have shown that intercessory prayer doesn’t work. The Bible says it does – Jesus says it does! – but it doesn’t. It doesn’t have better outcomes for sick people, or make you more likely to succeed in your goals, or anything! We’re supposed to be able to move mountains and be immune to snake venom, but people who truly believe they’re safe still die from Christian snake-charming.

Why would a God who exists and loves us and is all-powerful say that He’ll help us, and then turn out to not do anything at all?

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I've read some of these studies. These can measure the physical act of praying of particular people known to the people doing the study, but not the faith or spiritual element of it or indeed if others not known to the study were praying. I was only aware of studies in medical contexts. I was unaware of any studies done related to success or other issues.

I'd also comment that Christian faith is not about "certainty that I'm right", it's about trusting and knowing God.

In my life, I have a few events that I simply cannot explain. When I get into a "okay, is all there is the physical world I see?" type of mode, at some point my thinking returns to a few things I cannot rationally explain. (I'm a PhD in physics and have spent decades as an applied scientist, engineer, and analyst.) For example, I was once at a church service and just felt very strongly that I was supposed to go up for prayer after the service. I had nothing particular I asked for, just a strong sense I was supposed to the let the speaker pray for me. He just prayed a generic prayer over me and in that instant a couple phobias and an addiction left me. Poof, gone. I didn't even have those things in mind when I went up. I've heard similar stories from other people that I know personally. The bottom line is that when I apply the same standard of thinking I do professionally to a number of things I've seen firsthand in my life. From my knowledge of things, phobias and addictions don't normally just vanish in an instant like that without some "rewiring" going on in the physical brain.

Audacious said:

2. Why sin/evil/etc? God can do anything, so why this?
Here’s the thing: this is not the best possible world, with or without Eve’s fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. If God is all powerful, why doesn’t He just make it so that whatever makes us have to go to Hell isn’t necessary in the first place? Not just believers: everyone.

A good God couldn’t possibly want all of those people to go to Hell, right?

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I see this as a consequence of free will. God lets us do what we want. We each choose to make this an imperfect world. Each of us makes mistakes, gets angry, hurts others, and falls short of whatever standards we think constitute perfect morality. In my opinion, eternal judgement is basically when God takes out the garbage and gets rid of everything that we justifiably complain about as making the world a bad place. I think that the biblical view of sin is much broader than only rule breaking. I think one aspect of it is like an infection (think zombie movie or story where a single touch or bite infects someone and quarantine is the only approach) that has touched all of us. Perhaps some of us show less zombie symptoms than others but we all have it. The gospel really has two parts. The first is that God is not holding what has happened and what we've done against us. The second is remaking us (as unique individuals) as a new creation (still reflecting that unique individuality) that does not have the old "zombie" nature that had infected us. It's that new creation that will last forever with God as our source of life. Hell is usually portrayed exclusively as a legal punishment but I think that there is also the aspect of quarantine and cleansing.

Audacious said:

There’s the argument that God did exactly that through Jesus, but why? Why would he do that when Jesus’s resurrection happened 2,000 years ago (give or take), and we don’t have any solid evidence that the actual miracle of the resurrection (or any other miracles) happened?

I mean, if God is real, shouldn’t there be a lot more hard evidence?

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It's a question of what constitutes hard evidence. Let's say that Christians throughout the ages perfected preserved and defended the empty tomb of Jesus in a continuous manner from the first person who saw Jesus resurrected. Some people would point to it and say hard evidence. Others would point to it and say, "um... empty hole. What does that prove other than bunch of people claim to have been sitting here watching it and talking about it for 2000 years?"

To be honest, this is one of those things where conclusions depend on initial assumptions. If the initial assumption is that the physical universe is all the exists, then supernatural miracles by definition cannot exist. All such things are either delusions and fantasies or yet to be explained phenomena that occur by chance. If the initial assumption is that something exists outside of the physical universe and can interact with it, then there will potentially be events that are unexplainable by purely physical causes. I am equally skeptical of those who claim by faith that the physical universe is all that exists and those that ascribe every little thing (I got over my cold faster than I expected) to faith and a miracle.

Audacious said:

3. Dead Babies:
Everything that happens is God’s will, or can be made to fit His will, right? So how do dead babies make any [staff edit] sense? Babies don’t sin, and their lives aren’t object lessons.

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It's ironic that when people mourn over the evil in the world it's ascribed to being God's fault and that He doesn't mourn over it; and when the Bible says God plans on getting rid of all of the evil in the world He's being unloving and judgmental. I go back to viewing sin and evils as broad categories that encompass everything wrong with the world which is why God is so serious about it. I fall back on the zombie analogy that we're part and parcel with it and contribute to it. There is an often unrecognized cost of God pulling us individually out from this and making us into new creations free from it. That cost is that the evil continues on while the process of redemption goes on.

Audacious said:

4. Why doesn’t God communicate with us in ways that are more sensible and direct?
I mean, His presence is everywhere and all, but why doesn’t He find undeniable ways to show us that He is God? More of the clouds opening with a loud accompanying voice, less of the “communicating with us through our consciences” stuff.

I mean, His presence is supposed to be implicit, but it’s not. And even if it were – why couldn’t it be more obvious? Why would the subtlety even be necessry?

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This is one I've never come up with a completely satisfactory answer myself. I find the "God gives us the Bible, we don't need anything else" view unsatisfactory and incomplete. Part of my thinking has been that humans have a tendency to idolize methods and recipes. If God always used the same method, we'd start to look to the method. This is one I haven't thought through enough to give a good answer. Most of this is that I've usually been satisfied with the sense I've had of God communicating in different ways in my life.

For me, the questions come in when I sometimes wonder, "how much of this is in my head and I'm fooling myself." I then fall back on the times where I don't think that there is any way to rationalize a few things.

Audacious said:

Heaven is a big deal in the Bible. Miracles are a big deal in the Bible. But in my own life, and looking at scientific evidence and (not necessarily scientific) well-recorded data, there’s nothing that seems to indicate either one. Few modern-day miracle stories even do anything to prove YHWH, much less the resurrection.

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This is similar to a few things above and my response would be similar.

Audacious said:

5. Why are all of the arguments used to “prove” Christianity also used to prove basically every other religion?
You can apply them to Islam, to Buddhism, to Hinduism… it’s just the same kind of thinking, the same kind of excuses that don’t quite seem to work, over and over again.

If Christianity is true, and God is real and watching over us, and there is a heaven… why are we using the same logic, reasoning, excuses and cop-outs as everyone else is? Why do we need to?

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One of the biggest things that distinguishes Christianity to me are its unique statements about the nature of the physical world and a spiritual world. My opinion is that most Christians really do not appreciate the uniqueness of doctrines such as the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Christ, and such things as the Bible putting such things as God's Sovereignty (and predestination) and human free will on equal footing. Sadly, many Christians fall into a mode of tossing Bible proof texts and various arguments back and forth and trying to figure out which statements a Christian is supposed to believe or not. Frankly, many Christians are more concerned with arguing about how and why God might do something rather than that He actually is doing something.

Speaking for myself, the biggest reasons that I am still a Christian after over 40 years are the simple sense of God's presence in my life and some out-of-the-ordinary events I have observed at different times. I'm quite cognizant of confirmation bias and how probability works. I'm an analyst and have had to explain to stubborn people why what they are firmly convinced of is wrong. There are things I've seen in my life and friend's lives that I cannot rationally explain using the same scientific, engineering, and analytical thinking I use professionally. For me, it's about whether or not God is real and actually does stuff rather than having a comprehensive understanding of how or why.

Anyway, a lot of stuff here that I didn't fully edit and re-read. There are probably some ambiguous points in what I wrote.

Lucian Hodoboc said:

So, I'm stuck in a situation in which I either accept to agree with a God whom I don't agree with or choose to suffer in Hell for eternity? That doesn't sound like free will to me. I'm just stuck between a rock and a hard place.

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Do you ‘really’ understand who God is?

You’ve read the Bible and know who God says He is?

I would recommend reading the Bible. Starting with the Gospels, Jesus is God in the human form and He is God.

Then read Romans.

The thing you may find is that the Bible describes faith as hope in things hoped for and we all find our hope in God and His love. So great that He sent God Himself, His Son to die for us.

With free will and mankind having free will there is a lot of wickedness and pain in the world. Your hope and faith and mine are not for and in this life. Rather eternal life with the Father and walking with God in His peace and love throughout this life. Life that is often unfair and hard.

That is why our faith is important, because this life is like a pebble of sand on a beach in comparison to eternity.

Never forget what He has died to give you.

Find out who God is. Read only 10 min a day and it will help.

Hey Audacious,

Good of you to start this topic.
I've been 'on your case' quite a few times in various topics already, not gonna do that here.

It's difficult...
You may not have gotten the idea, but i'm also someone who needs evidence and reason to build true faith in anything on.
I also started out as a worldly person, albeit rather spiritual and 'new agey'.
Atheism and naturalism have never impressed me.
I see it as pseudo rationalism and in fact just another philosophical belief, but with big blind spots for unexplained things, which includes the origins of the natural.

Maybe i'll chime in later, maybe i'll reply to your OP too.

I hope you'll find 'the Way' in this controversy.
Let me share my YT playlist again, could be of help if you're looking for answers and Christian views on various matters:
apologetics - YouTube

Audacious said:

Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: a multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certai... - PubMed - NCBI

It's a pretty huge large study with a fairly solid methodology, as far as I can tell.

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I read the synopsis and I find it severely lacking. Who are the people praying? Were they even people of faith? Where is the data?

There are studies that show the opposite and I wouldn’t be looking at any medical or scientific source for any study on God or faith. Even an atheist knows that. They are biased.

Audacious said:

I've been having a lot of doubts in my faith for the past few months. Not the kind that can be easily dismissed, but actual, relatively rational thoughts.

I haven't really been able to talk to anyone about them, since no one in my family is a Christian and neither are any of my friends (online or off). So I'm wondering: how do y'all deal with doubt?

If anyone's interested, my specific concerns in the doubt are:

1. Inefficacy of (Intercessory) Prayer
Studies have shown that intercessory prayer doesn’t work. The Bible says it does – Jesus says it does! – but it doesn’t. It doesn’t have better outcomes for sick people, or make you more likely to succeed in your goals, or anything! We’re supposed to be able to move mountains and be immune to snake venom, but people who truly believe they’re safe still die from Christian snake-charming.

Why would a God who exists and loves us and is all-powerful say that He’ll help us, and then turn out to not do anything at all?

2. Why sin/evil/etc? God can do anything, so why this?
Here’s the thing: this is not the best possible world, with or without Eve’s fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. If God is all powerful, why doesn’t He just make it so that whatever makes us have to go to Hell isn’t necessary in the first place? Not just believers: everyone.

A good God couldn’t possibly want all of those people to go to Hell, right?

There’s the argument that God did exactly that through Jesus, but why? Why would he do that when Jesus’s resurrection happened 2,000 years ago (give or take), and we don’t have any solid evidence that the actual miracle of the resurrection (or any other miracles) happened?

I mean, if God is real, shouldn’t there be a lot more hard evidence?

3. Dead Babies:
Everything that happens is God’s will, or can be made to fit His will, right? So how do dead babies make any [staff edit] sense? Babies don’t sin, and their lives aren’t object lessons.

4. Why doesn’t God communicate with us in ways that are more sensible and direct?
I mean, His presence is everywhere and all, but why doesn’t He find undeniable ways to show us that He is God? More of the clouds opening with a loud accompanying voice, less of the “communicating with us through our consciences” stuff.

I mean, His presence is supposed to be implicit, but it’s not. And even if it were – why couldn’t it be more obvious? Why would the subtlety even be necessry?

Heaven is a big deal in the Bible. Miracles are a big deal in the Bible. But in my own life, and looking at scientific evidence and (not necessarily scientific) well-recorded data, there’s nothing that seems to indicate either one. Few modern-day miracle stories even do anything to prove YHWH, much less the resurrection.

5. Why are all of the arguments used to “prove” Christianity also used to prove basically every other religion?
You can apply them to Islam, to Buddhism, to Hinduism… it’s just the same kind of thinking, the same kind of excuses that don’t quite seem to work, over and over again.

If Christianity is true, and God is real and watching over us, and there is a heaven… why are we using the same logic, reasoning, excuses and cop-outs as everyone else is? Why do we need to?

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I gotta admit I don't personally have the time to deal with all your questions. However, I do have evidence of scientifically documented miracles.

Now in the Bible we are told of a Man Who believed in Adam and Eve and Noah as being actual, historical figures. The Bible says He did miracles and told others to do things like raise the dead and heal the sick. It also describes His death and burial. Is there any actual scientific data to support those stories? To my great surprise, when I was an atheist, the answer is: Absolutely!
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See secular news reports about Val Thomas, dead for 17 hours but now alive and normal after prayers from her family and her Church. . See Medical Marvel Beyond Chance, from a secular source, with a pediatrician giving his report. this one attesting to a dying child's healing which cannot be explained by modern medicine, and came after a relative laid hands on her and prayed for her. The DNA in every cell of her body was changed. .
Here is some more documented, scientific, evidence, not nearly all of it at all. See CBN's short vid Dean Braxton. You'll hear his critical care doctor, rated the best patient care doctor in Washington state, saying "It is a miracle...a miracle..." that Braxton is alive, has no brain damage and is normal in every way. Why? He had no heart beat and no respiration for 1 3/4 hours! His family believed in divine healing and they and others were praying for him. . Also see CBN Dr. Chauncey Crandall Raises A Man From The Dead. Part 1. This video is a bit faded but has the most complete information on this story.
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Bruce Van Natta was in a horrific accident and lost all but a couple of small pieces of his small intestine. Someone he never met was told to take a plane to lay hands on him and pray for him and to his doctors' amazement, his small intestines grew back! .
Get Dr. Richard Casdorph's book The Miracles. There he gives medical documentation for miracles, mostly, but not all, from Kathryn Kuhlman's healing services. Casdorph came to Kuhlman's meetings to debunk her but turned into a supporter, as did other doctors. You can see him and other doctors in some of her healing services on YT. (She is now deceased.) Delores Winder is one of the cases documented in his book. You can watch her amazing story on YT with Sid Roth. Delores Winder testimony.wmv The book The Audacity of Prayer by Don Nordin lists medically documented miracles.
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On Andrew Wommack's vids you can see doctors talking about "miracles" too. Check out the YT vid with the opthamologist who says Yes, Ronald Coyne could see out of an empty eye socket after a faith healer prayed for him. You can see him doing demos. At the end of the book Don't Limit God you see a medical statement by a doctor saying that his patient used to have M.S. and diabetes but is now cured. . Do you think that Someone Who can raise the dead and heal people of deadly "incurable" diseases, Someone Who created time, space, matter, energy and you - needed "evolution" to make life forms? No, He created them fully formed and fully functional in 6 days just as Genesis, a Book He always supported, tells you.
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Then there is the Shroud of Turin. If you don't know, the Shroud is a linen burial shroud with the faint image of a crucified man on it. If you have heard that the Shroud was proven to be a Medieval fake based on carbon 14 testing, in the documentary Jesus And The Shroud of Turin you can see the very inventor of carbon 14 testing saying that the sample was invalid due to contamination. Documentary | Jesus and the Shroud of Turin
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The vid demonstrates many miraculous features such as pollen from Jerusalem and faint images of flowers that are found only in the Jerusalem area during the spring, as at Passover when Messiah was crucified. With modern technology we also see that the Shroud has an x ray quality which reveals bones and dentition of the Man on the Shroud.
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In the 70s a NASA scientist noticed the Shroud's photographs had inexplicable, unique in the world, qualities. He got up a team of scientists, called STURP, to examine it in person in Italy. (No, the Shroud is not "just a Catholic thing" as the Vatican only came into possession of it fairly recently in history.) They used NASA, and other, high tech equipment with 100s of thousands of hours of research. Their findings are seen all over the net and were published in respected science journals.
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The team was composed of 3 Jews, at least one agnostic and one atheist, and people of various faiths. They all agreed on these things: There is no paint on the Shroud and they have no clue how the image got there. It exactly matches, down to blood stains where a crown of thorns would be, the description of Messiah's death and burial as given in the Bible. The image could not be duplicated with modern technology.
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These miracles are not what many would call proof. But they are certainly evidence. In a court of law you generally rely on evidence, not proof, as the actual crime is historical and cannot usually be observed (unless there was a video cam.) . About the Shroud I say "If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and waddles like a duck, maybe it's a duck." Maybe that Man on the Shroud is your very Best Friend and Savior. I pray you will find that out.
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You're going to need a miracle some day friend. They are out there in abundance for those who humbly seek them from their Creator, the One Who made all that DNA out there.

I have the same type of doubts. I think asking questions is good.

Honestly I just go to church because it's what I do. I am not so rationalistic about my faith, maybe that is why I naturally gravitate more towards Lutheranism. As a Lutheran I also don't really focus on the "omni-God" philosophical type stuff as much. The stuff we would call "the hidden God". Because honestly the hidden God is not a place you can find reason for faith- not for Luther, and not for me.

Being a Christian is really very simple, it is just following Jesus as best we can. It does not mean we live without doubts or that we find the existence of God obvious.

ToBeLoved said:

Do you ‘really’ understand who God is?

You’ve read the Bible and know who God says He is?

Click to expand...

I've read the 4 Gospels, Acts and half of the Old Testament. I'm trying to finish Paul, but his teachings seem so completely opposite to Jesus' teachings that I'm having a difficult time accepting him as a true apostle. But then again, so did the other apostles at one point.

Lucian Hodoboc said:

I've read the 4 Gospels, Acts and half of the Old Testament. I'm trying to finish Paul, but his teachings seem so completely opposite to Jesus' teachings that I'm having a difficult time accepting him as a true apostle. But then again, so did the other apostles at one point.

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Lucian you can't fully get Paul's ministry till you understand who it was to and for that matter who Jesus' was to.. Jesus assigned Paul to the Gentiles specifically, obviously he ministered to more. Where Jesus himself said that He was here on earth to speak to the Jews. And if you think about it, Gentiles were not used to practicing Jewish customs that Jesus was breaking the Jews of in the first pace. So, well it's just a different ministry. But Paul had 3 years of personal bible study from Jesus Christ, believed to have happened in the desert.

You aren't alone ,it took Peter a bit to get the idea of Paul's anointing too !

Please Read this Lucian:
Ephesians 3New King James Version (NKJV)
The Mystery Revealed
3 For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles— 2 if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, 3 how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, 4 by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), 5 which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: 6 that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel, 7 of which I became a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of His power.

Purpose of the Mystery
8 To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to make all see what is the fellowshipa]">[a] of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ;b]">[b] 10 to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, 11 according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him. 13 Therefore I ask that you do not lose heart at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.

The entire OP can be summed up in the following question:
Why didn't God just make us all gods?

The answer to all 5 OP questions and my summation question, is that this is God's universe, not ours. Everything is done His way, and for reasons known mostly only to Him. Christianity is the only religion in the world that doesn't rely on man's works in order to be saved. God has been gracious enough to afford us the opportunity to choose Him, or to choose the emptiness of man's works.

The real question that I would be asking right now is, "Who is trying to kill me right now?". Someone or some group of people has planted these seeds of doubt in your heart. It's up to you if you want to use these questions as a reason to doubt God and possibly accepting the second death because of it.