Question of Faith II

An important question for Christians is "How strong is your faith in God?"

I was thinking about this type of question lately when I was researching a book that was suggested for our Waters Edge Church Community Group. The principle of the book was a supposedly skeptical "journalist" whose purpose was to make a case for faith by asking "experts" questions related to the toughest objections to Christianity. These include questions such as:

• If there's a loving God, why does the world have so much suffering and evil?
  
• If the miracles of God contradict our laws of science, then how can any rational person believe that they are true?
  
• If God is morally pure, how can he sanction the slaughter of innocent children as the Old Testament says he did?
  
• If Jesus is the only way to heaven, then what about the millions of people who have never heard of him?
  
• If God so loves us, then why does he allow natural disasters to occur that can kill thousands upon thousands of innocents?
  

Books that chase after these questions tend to provide answers along the lines of:

• God's ways are not our ways; we can never understand what he does and why.
  
• He does not stop suffering and evil for the sake of free will that he has given us.
  
• We must trust the Bible wholly because it has never been disproven.
  
• Suffering is allowed to occur because technically nobody is innocent; we all are plagued by the original sin of Adam.
  

Ultimately I recommended that we steer clear of this book as it just couldn't stand up to the even slightest scientific scrutiny. It was written under the pretense of seeking out the really hard questions to faith, but it was written with a clear and obvious agenda that seemed to do Christianity a disservice. In the end, faith is not something that can be scientifically justified. Hence the term, faith, a belief not based on scientific proof. (Part 2 of 2)