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?
Through prayers. As God's word says, all good things come through Him. Gifts given to us by Him, are
faith,
hope, and
love. So, to try and increase your faith on your own, is foolish, because He and He alone gives you your faith, and He and He alone will increase it when you ask. I'll try to help in answering any of the concerns you have, from my own perspective. You may or may not agree with my reasons, and that's fine, I just hope that you focus most of your time reading the bible instead of dissecting the doubts you, and the rest of the world may have. The answers I'm going to give you, are just from reading the scriptures, and how it's revealed His personality and qualities to me.
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?
Well, even Jesus went through a time when He wanted a different outcome than He was foretold to fulfill. Before His time on the cross, He prayed that God would "take this cup" from Him, and that if there was another way, that He could avoid death on the cross, but He ended this prayer, by saying if it was "Your Will".
We can ask for things all day, but if it's not in accordance to His will, regardless of whether or not we see why things are happening, it's important to try our best to have faith in Him and His plans. Think about Joseph. His brothers sold Him into slavery, and it took
years before God's plan finally worked out for the best. He became Pharaoh's right hand man, controlled all of Egypt, and through Him all of the
world was saved from the great famine.
There are studies about prayer not working, but the very idea of studying prayers, displays a lack of faith. He only answers prayers that are for our good, that are asked in the name of Yahushua (Jesus) and done so in faith, studying them, to see if they work, displays exactly the opposite of faith. God isn't going to make us rich, or raise someone from the dead just for doing it. It has to edify His kingdom, and it has to be for His Glory. I myself have seen countless prayers go answered, and I've seen countless go unanswered, but one thing I can tell you for sure, is that the ones that I needed the most to have answered, were always answered.
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?
I see a lot of people struggle with this one. I used to as well honestly, but we have to think about it from a Father's perspective. If you're a father, do you want a son that you've forced, and commanded to love you, to love you? Or a son that out of his own free will loves and obeys you? Someone you force into loving you, there's a name for it, but it's not love.
Some angels have free will, just as those that fell did. The whole thing about the garden of eden, if God put them there, and didn't give them free will, how would they have loved Him out of their free will? They'd be in a garden He placed them in, doing things He told them to, without the ability to do otherwise. They'd be prisoners, not children. Their love would be false, because they weren't given a choice.
He gives us the choice to love Him, and has given us all we need to do so, but we have that same choice they had. To love Him, or to disobey Him. To love Him is life, to disobey is death. He wants to create a place where we can love Him willingly, because that's the whole point of creation - for us. He wants to make for Himself children, and that's the whole point of all history, of all happenings upon the earth.
So Him destroying everything and restarting, would be the same in the garden if they didn't have free choice. It'd be a prison. We'd be forced to love Him, and wouldn't be loving Him despite the pain and suffering that goes along with it in this world.
HaShatan literally disobeyed to make themselves "gods" in this world, because the relationship we have with God, is different than the relationship the angels have. We have a legitimate relationship
with Him, we're His
children, they're made to minister to
us. They're made to be messengers and warriors on the behalf of our Father, we're made to be His children. This enraged
HaShatan (the hebrew way of saying satan, which in hebrew literally means "the enemy" or "the adversary".)
But, God all throughout the Torah, was constantly turning away from Israel due to their disobedience, not because He hated them, but because He loved them. He's a consuming fire, so all darkness, because He's absolute light, gets consumed in His presence. So, when Israel turned away, and went into the darkness, and became corrupted, He had to turn away to spare His children from being destroyed. Darkness and sin cannot exist in the presence of absolute light, it will get destroyed. So, those that
choose out of their free will to reject the Father, quite literally cannot spend eternity with Him, because it'd be absolute horror. They'd be in constant pain because His glory is that magnificent. They'd be utterly destroyed. That's why God had to leave us, because the earth is in a fallen state, and should He come back, nothing would be left, because all is in darkness and all is cursed.
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.
Well, in the Torah, in Deuteronomy 28, He tells us of blessings and curses that He will send on us for both our obedience, and our disobedience. He wishes to bless all, but He can only bless those that obey His Word. It's in His word to do these things. To have babies fail in the womb, etc.
I believe it's because Jesus fulfilled the law (as in He obeyed it at every turn), but people misconstrue that for "the law doesn't pertain to us", but when you look at our society, all of the curses that befall the ones that disobey His Torah, have, and are befalling us right now. Our society is actually setting up as we speak to be crushed under the ones we're not affected by. I digress though.
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.
It's part of the "great delusion" that He said He'd send on us. If He weren't to be silent, then we'd have no way to be led astray. We'd be pretty easily able to tell which God is the true God, because He's the only one that would talk to us. But, when Yahushua (Jesus) went up, He gave
us authority. We are the connection this world has to God. Now is the time when God is silent (somewhat), so the separation of His children can occur. Now is the time for
HaShatan to rule, so he can wreak vengeance and try his best to ruin us before the return. It's the last big fit that he has before he's imprisoned for the 1000 year reign of our Messiah. It's not a good time for us, but it's a time that we're supposed to spend our lives leading people out of the darkness he's created, and into the arms of our Father through what He's done for us through Yahushua HaMashiach (Jesus the Christ).
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?
Well, I'd have to hear more about what you mean by this to know what you mean.
It doesn't as far as I know though. All other "gods" are basically like, do this for me for salvation, do this for me, I need this from you yada yada yada. Being a follower of the Messiah is different, because He's the only one that gave Himself, for us. Whereas, the other religions want us to give ourselves for them. The words of יהוה, are truth. You can see this by the acceptance of
all religions by modern society, but the hatred, censorship, and outright lies in some cases of how the bible says things. That, and all of the enemies of the bible, the anakims, the canaanites, the "god" ba'al, molech, etc, are all worshipped subtly all throughout our society, everywhere. The societies (freemasonry, illuminati, skull and bones, etc.) all read the bible, and extra biblical texts, but from the view, that those who God was against, are the true good guys. So quite literally, those that control this world, believe the things that God taught, warned, and tried to protect us against. They're deceived and caught up with the spirits God tried to protect us against. That, and God is the only God that has scientific evidence backed by His words.
The unclean animals, look into the toxins that are in them. The toxins in pigs, or how there are 50x the toxins in the unclean fish than there are in the clean fish. That, and God's word is the only word that taught hygiene as far as "religious" texts go. I can go on and on, but that which God warns us about, the media, our society, is everywhere hidden in plain sight, just insulting God before us, and they've gotten us to rejoice and embrace it.
