8/30/15 Trevon 24
Do you know where
you came from? Where were you before you
were conceived? Do you know how you got
here? If not, how can you know where you
are going? Do you really have control
over what happens when you die? Does
anyone really have the ability to figure this out on their own? It’s for this reason that many people such as
Trevon, an investment banker I reached out to in a sidewalk conversation, claim
agnosticism. An “agnostic” is a person who
believes that nothing can be known of the existence or nature of God or of
anything beyond material phenomena. The
word in Greek simply means “no knowledge”, and I believe that is very wise to claim
ignorance when it comes to trying to figure out God on our own.
But we are not on our own. “If a good God created us” I told Trevon, “then
He must have made us for a reason. And
if He made us for a reason, why would he hide it from us? And if he reveals Himself and his purposes to
us, I don’t think He would only reveal it to some individual or some small isolated
group somewhere, and leave the vast majority of the world up to their
imaginations. So this leaves us with the
major world religions. And when we
compare the major religions, they all teach that we can somehow earn a better afterlife
with good deeds or religious actions.
All except biblical Christianity, which teaches that everyone has the
knowledge of good and evil and are condemned as sinners but that we can be
saved through faith in Jesus rather than trusting in our own goodness or good
deeds.”
Now I know this line of reasoning
probably violates various rules of classical logic, beginning with the initial
assumption that God is “good”. But in
Hebrews 11 we are told that “…without faith it is impossible to please God,
because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards
those who earnestly seek Him.” We can’t
arrive at a right knowledge of God by our limited human logic and without faith. We need to have faith that He not only exists
but that God is good, a rewarder of those who seek Him. He rewards us with revelations of Himself
when we seek Him on His terms, not on the terms of science or logic or human
reasoning. Let’s claim ignorance when it
comes to figuring God out on our own, and humbly rely on His revelation of
Himself in faithful obedience.
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