Avoiding Evil

I wrote a post at the beginning of last month entitled Athiesm (Part II) in response to a comment I had received on a post that I wrote two and a half years ago entitled Athiesm. While I don’t get into the habit of answering every comment and question in such great detail, Brandon has several good questions that I would like to discuss. I know that many of you who read my blog are Christians as well and so you may have some other insightful perspectives and thoughts on these matters.

You said that without the Spirit of God, one cannot understand God. Does this mean that without the Spirit of God, one does not have a spirit?

It means that one does not have the Spirit, meaning the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, or some may refer to Him as the Holy Ghost. It means that a person is not indwelled with the third member of the trinity that Jesus sent to the disciples during pentecost. It means that you do not have the presence of the Almighty God dwelling within you. This, however, does not effect your own personal spirit or soul. There are many who believe that the human is made of three parts, the body, the soul, and the spirit. There are others who would would argue that we are only two parts because the soul and spirit are virtually the same thing. I will not get into the theological discussion of that issue in this post because it is sufficive to say that either way everyone has one. The spirit of a person is not the same thing as the Spirit of God.

- How much do actually believe from the bible? Surely none of you believe in quotes such as:

“And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it. (John 14:13-14 NAB)”

“And Jesus answered and said to them, “Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, `Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen. “And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” (Matthew 21:21-22 NAS)”

How much do I believe of the Bible? Well, I believe all of it. The Bible is the inerrant, authoritative, word of truth inspired by God. The inspired Word of God was written in Hebrew, Aramic, and Greek over a time span of 1500 years with over 40 different authors. It is a clear, consistent, and powerful message of who God is, who we are, why we are here, where we are going, and the paths we can take to get there. I do believe these quoted passages are true. I believe God will answer our prayers and I see evidence of God’s answered prayer daily. You have to remember that you can’t take verses such as these out of context either. To fully understand what these passages mean you have to have two things: 1. The Spirit of God. 2. A knowledge of the Bible as a whole. The Bible and all of the different books of the Bible are somewhat self contained and yet dependant upon the whole. To read a passage of scripture without having any knowledge of the rest of the Bible and expecting to understand it leads to the path of misguided and misuderstood concepts of God, Christianity, and the like. These passages do speak of Christ giving us what we ask. But what you don’t get by simply reading selected bits and peices are the answers to the questions that reveal the true understanding of these passages, such as, “What is prayer?”, “What does prayer accomplish?”, “Who can pray?”, “How should I pray?”, “What does it mean to ask in God’s name?”, “What is faith?” “Will God really give us anything we want?”, “Are there limits to what I ask?” and so on and so forth. All of these questions and more can be answered with a better understanding of the rest of the book, but to simply pick out a few passages and point to them creates a pool of confusion. To someone who knows little about the Bible, these passages may seem like we can simply ask God to get whatever we want, as if we can command God to do our will. Further understanding of God’s word will reveal that this isn’t the case. We can’t simply ask God for anything and expect him to hand us everything on a silver platter. We can’t command God to do what we want him to do like parents allow their children to do in our present day.

- When you read quotes from the bible that promote things like rape, murder, and slavery, how does that make you feel.

“They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman. (2 Chronicles 15:12-13 NAB)”

“(Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NAB)
If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.” (Is he nuts? Is this something he made up, or is this something Jesus / God told him?)

I ask this because I have a Christian friend who completely denies anything like that in the bible, and since I don’t own one to show him, I can’t prove it. Do you believe that those writing the texts added these things in?

I don’t believe these are things that people just wrote in the scripture to defile it, I believe even these passages are the inerrant , authoritative Words of God. Deuteronomy is full of law, which was according to their customs of today. Women were not treated as they are today, nor could they get by on their own in most cases. They needed a man to support them in the society they lived in. For a woman to be unmarried and not a virgin was a horrible thing. According the law, the man who stole away her virginity was now responsible for her all his days, without the opportunity for divorce. (This is my own interpretation, I don’t have time to do a study of these passages.) The Bible is not saying that these acts are ok to do. God recognized human wickedness, evil and gave the people laws and customs to abide by. Everyone likes to emphasize God’s love, gentlness, patience, kindness, mercy, and grace but we shy away from talking about God’s anger, wrath, vengence, and justice. We don’t want to think of God as being any of these things and yet he is a God with perfect anger, perfect wrath, and perfect justice. It can be expected that there is punishment, even death, for those who turn against him. These passages reveal another bit of God’s character.

- I’m sure any person with religion has had this question asked: Do you believe that those whose faith lies with other deities are damned? Will they theoretically go to Hell?

I believe there is only one diety, only one God. Therefore those who follow other gods, even gods that come somewhat close to the God of the Bible, do not know salvation. Salvation is through Christ alone, and in Him is the only way to the Father. So, yes, all other religions do not point to the same god, but in fact lead others astray and theoretically to Hell.

- How many books are there for Christianity, and what are their names? I’d like to get more foresight into the matter.

While there are hundreds upon hundreds of books written about Christianity, there is but one book that is the authoritative truth of God. That is the Bible.

- When people commit atrocities in the name of religion (like the Iraq War or the beheadings by Muslims) what opinion do you get of that person/s? Does it ever make you feel less about religion, or just the person?

People claim a lot of things in the name of religion. You can justify just about anything in the world and blame it on religion. Even so, if someone does commit heounous acts and claims it in the name of Christianity and yet Christianity teaches nothing of such act then of course the person is wrong. Why would you blame religion for what the person chooses for themselves, using religion as a tool? Many people blame religion for all these acts, when the true culprit is sin. Sin is the worlds problem. You could aboloish all relgion and still have death, wars, destruction, pain, and suffering. Sin causes such destruction, not religion. This is what Christ came to die for, the sin that entagles humanity and leads us to destroy ourselves.

I’d also like to mention that I feel many people are atheists because they are afraid of “The End”, “Armageddon”, and other prophets of doom. Many think that they will not be involved if they are not religious.

On of the biggest culprits of leading people astray is the illusion of free will and control. People, we don’t have complete free will and we don’t have control. Whether we like it or not there is a God, there is a Heaven, there is a Hell, Sin exists, Satan exists, the world is corrupt, it will end, there will be death, destruction, pain, and suffering all the days of our lives because of the death sin brought into the world and when we finally pass on from this life those who never found Jesus Christ will pass on to an eternity of eternal torment apart from God. There are none of these things we can control, and we in no way have any freedom from that. We can believe what we want, we can believe that these things are not true, but we must remember that just because we believe that these things are not true does not actually make them untrue. Truth is what it is, unchanging, unwaivering, unmoving. It stands strong and bold. We either know it, or we don’t. We either live it, or we don’t. We either believe in the truth or we believe in a lie. There is no middle ground.

Ideas, books and people come and go, but the Bible and the truth it contains is for all time. - Billy Graham