I think it amazing that people have so much trouble
intellectually with Christianity. They
find all sorts of reasons to reject belief.
They read the Bible and say, how can this or that be true?
One of those discussions I read recently was a discussion on
the age of the earth. Scientists date
it in the billions of years and some ill informed Christians date it
specifically in the range of 6,000 years.
Part of the struggle is the idea that the Bible is a book of science
like a textbook in school. It is not. The Bible clearly delineates history of a
people in the middle-east, but there is quite likely a huge span of time from
the creation of the universe until the discussion of Adam and Eve. It talks of six periods of time involved in
the creation and then a period of rest.
It does not use a Hebrew word that only defines a 24-hour
day for each period of time. We have no
way of saying if these periods of time were even uniform. It uses words like evening and morning
(metaphoric beginnings and endings of epochs) before the sun and the moon are
even created. It is clearly a rather
general and poetic description of the process of creation. But, does any of that really matter? Why let something like that be a hindrance
to your faith? God created the universe
out of nothing but his word. Quite
literally it is an expression of his being, as are we.
I guess the final thing that always amazes me about the lack
of belief in Jesus being God’s Son (in whatever manner that is used to describe
his relationship) is that so many people can’t believe he rose from the dead as
he said he would. It is fundamental to
the Christian faith. I think the
strongest testimony is that 10 of the closest eyewitnesses (his disciples) to
his being alive, after seeing him crucified, dead and buried,were all killed
horribly in the years to follow for their belief in his divinity. Most of them expected to be killed for their
belief and outspoken attitude. People
don’t willingly die for a lie that they know is a lie.
We don’t need to know precisely how the universe was
created, but we do need to know who Jesus Christ is.
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