6/5/13 Arturo about 40
A prevailing belief in American culture seems to be that if
something cannot be scientifically proven, then somehow we are free to make up
our own version of truth about it. Today
a man named Arturo responded to my question about life after death by stating “Well,
no one can prove it one way or another, so I just think that if you really
believe in something, then it will most likely happen that way.” Arturo said he is Catholic but believes all
religions worship the same God, so I asked “Some people believe in heaven and
hell, some in reincarnation, some that we just cease to exist. Now if one of these views is actually the
truth, do you think what a person believes will change which one of these
actually happens after we die?” I asked this to try to help Arturo understand
that what is important is the truth, not our opinions or imagination about it. He
had been using our lack of ability to scientifically prove the truth as an
excuse to just ignore it. But in Romans
1, Paul wrote that we have no excuse: “For since the creation of the world
God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly
seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without
excuse.” We have all the evidence we
need for a reasonable faith in God; in the end all our excuses are just, well,
excuses. With this in mind, Arturo and I went on to a longer conversation about
the Gospel despite his initial doubts. Simply
getting a person to stop and reconsider the possibility of God’s existence and the implications of God’s truth can really
help them take it seriously.
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