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I don't think God would describe Himself as a father if He wasn't patient, loving, and forgiving. If a stubborn child stamps a foot and screams "NO!", the father doesn't abandon the child. If a teenager rebels, but then comes back, how does the father feel? The parable of the prodigal son gives...

For me, moderate theology means seeking out different perspectives and viewing change as a natural part of my journey. It means admitting that my theological understanding does not progress in a straight line of increasing wisdom. It means never being in a state where I think, "OK, I've arrived...

I try to remind myself that God is beyond my limited understanding. Trying to figure out or "track" the Holy Spirit in my life or in the lives of others just reduces Him to something He isn't. I think there's value in being open even if I don't always feel like that space is occupied or active.

I also struggle with anxiety and have had bouts of acute depression. Your decision to keep thinking of others during this time is a good one - a lesson I wish I'd learned earlier in life. I think you are also on the right track in considering what to do with negative news going on around you...

Some of the best prayer can take place during in-between times while walking, waiting, etc. Some people also "offer up" school work as a form of prayer.

There are many interpretations of scripture related to Hell/Gehenna/Sheol/etc. Most of us don't have nearly enough education in the original languages, historical contexts, and literary forms to speak with authority on this question. So I don't know exactly what Hell is or who will be there, but...

I do sometimes feel this way. It isn't always easy, but I remind myself that God's work is sometimes less obvious or glamorous. If I give a word of encouragement to a co-worker, who am I to say that it's less important than someone who gets a new exciting job today? His work could be compared to...

I believe that it's better to keep asking questions and wrestling with doubts than to suppress them. For me, it helps to consider different potential answers and try to find out more about the perspectives about which I am less familiar - even if some are less aligned with my current belief...

Prayer can take many forms, and doesn't need to follow a particular formula. It can evolve over time and can include dialogue, poetic words, wordless feelings, mere silence, and other expressions. If we believe that God knows what's in our hearts, the best mechanism of prayer may have more to do...

A lesson that I learned too late is this: a healthy faith journey has bumps in the road and changes of perspective. Sometimes that means losing some of the certainty that gave me comfort, but also kept me rooted in one place with even more blind spots than I have today. I look at it this way...

I don't think we can evaluate other people in a way that's anywhere close to how God sees us. Imagine if a brother said, "I'm concerned for my sister's place in the family since she doesn't seem to care or do anything to help the family, while I do. It's like... my sister doesn't care about...

I try to avoid reading personal messages from a passage that I happen to see when I have a specific question. For me, it feels too close to superstition and has too high a risk of misinterpretation or seeing something that isn't there because I want an answer. On the other hand, if an idea pops...

Our relationship with God is not merely a hot/cold yes/no kind of thing. It can help to ask the Holy Spirit to help to set our expectations first... so we don't lose hope when sorrow and frustration inevitably come. Then we can start to handle the ups and downs, and the middle ground where we...

That we are too addicted to certainty. That it's OK to wrestle with difficult sections of the Bible and seek different perspectives and interpretations - even if it knocks down part of some complete "system" that I'm trying to build. That sometimes we just have to accept and embrace the mystery.

We all wrestle with those questions from time to time. I usually end up acknowledging that I don't know, I don't need to know, and I probably couldn't fully understand it anyway. I suspect that the real answers are many levels beyond the theories we come up with. Imagine trying to explain the...

God not only hears our prayers, but completely understands the circumstances, our thought process, and what's in the heart. That is very comforting to me. The problem is, my level of wisdom and judgement is like that of an ignorant child compared to the all knowing God. So I try to remember...

I'm sorry to hear about the suffering that you've endured. It sounds like you are striving through it though, and this is just one place on your journey. The fact that you are seeking Him and these answers shows that He isn't gone at all. Even when we are walking a path of faith, there are...

Of all the so-called negative emotions, I think sadness is the most compatible with the life of a Christian. Isaiah 53:3 looks towards a future messiah that would be Jesus and describes Him as "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief". In Romans 9:2, the apostle Paul described himself as...

The good news is that we don't have to know the correct manner. Romans 8:26-27 provides comfort when we struggle to find the right words: "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless...

It's an interesting tension. On one hand, we shouldn't over-think the rules. Measuring the time between sins is not helpful either because not all sins are specific actions. They can be ways of thinking that are part of who we are at any given moment. On the other hand, we shouldn't just give...