Saturday, 23 June 2012
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I Don't Have All the Answers
By Rob Shepherd, guest posting for Tom Zuniga
My life is like the following clip from the Office…As a pastor I’m supposed to know the way. I’m supposed to lead with confidence. The problem is sometimes I don’t know the way.
Have you ever been asked a question that the Bible doesn’t answer?
What happened to the dinosaurs?
Why do men have nips?
What’s the point of mosquitoes?
Why does a loving God tell Israel to kill every man, women, and child of a nation that they are taking over?
Those are real questions. Questions that make a lot of people wander from the faith.
I don’t have answers to every question. Sometimes I doubt. What keeps this pastor from leaving the faith?
Original sin.
According to the Bible we are born sinful. That makes sense to me. It’s why we’re so prone to wander. Our DNA is wired to be selfish. Nobody enjoys being fat and yet we can’t stop overeating. Nobody enjoys being stressed out by debt and yet we can’t stop spending. We are a broken people. We are addicted to destroying ourselves.
I don’t have all of the answers. The Bible doesn’t either. The Bible is not a text book to answer every question that we have. Instead it’s a love letter that points us to have faith. Faith in what we can’t see.
At the end of the day I want to follow God! The Bible helps redirect me when my life drives me into a lake of stupidity. It doesn’t answer every question but it points me Jesus. I’m need Jesus! More than I need answers I need Jesus.
What questions do you have that the Bible doesn’t answer? What helps draw you to God?
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Comments (9)
There is an entire universe of questions to be answered that aren't in the Bible. Christians created modern science by asking questions that were not in the Bible.
And over time it deepened the understanding of the questions and answers that are in the Bible.@PrisonerxOfxLove@xanga - While much of modern science is built by men who happened to be Christian, their efforts weren't driven or aided by anything of the Bible or of Christian thought.
Likewise, the contributions to mathematics by 15th century Persians or to engineering by ancient Romans weren't particularily aided nor hindered by their non-Christianity.
To answer the OP: My unaddressed question is why the gospels aren't true and under what circumstances and influences did the authors of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John write their books.
@Celestial_Teapot@xanga - During the 800 years of the Middle Ages the Catholic Church systematically trained multitudes of men in math and physics.
Four years of university math and physics was a prerequisite for the study of theology.
Such systematic training over centuries is why Western science far surpassed anything ever developed by any other civilization.
The Chinese, Japanese, Romans, Egyptians, Mayan, Aztecs, Greeks, Mesopotamians all used human and animal labor.
Planes, trains, automobiles and the microchip were developed and mass marketed in the West...
...because of Western science developed by Christians specifically because of Christianity.
@PrisonerxOfxLove@xanga - "Four years of university math and physics was a prerequisite for the study of theology."
Laughable, really. Wasn't it the Catholic Church who persecuted Galileo for daring to challenge church-encrusted dogma?
"Such systematic training over centuries is why Western science far surpassed anything ever developed by any other civilization."
The early industrialization of the West was a coincidence of secular factors. It was only by chance that they also believed that the son of a carpenter was some demi-god.
"The Chinese, Japanese, Romans, Egyptians, Mayan, Aztecs, Greeks, Mesopotamians all used human and animal labor."
America. Cotton plantation. Slavery. Bible Belt.
@Celestial_Teapot@xanga - Galileo was persecuted for insulting the Pope, not for his science. And please name another scientist who was persecuted by the Church like Galileo was.
You can't.
You folks continue to commit the egregious error of negating centuries of accomplishment because of a single error.
That brings up another egregious error committed regularly by atheists: applying standard of perfection to Christians and Christianity but not to themselves.
Atheism is historically renown not for producing the greatest science and civilization in human history like Christianity, but for unleashing the greatest mass murders in history in the shortest span of time.
@Celestial_Teapot@xanga - Secular factors all set into motion by Christianity.
Slavery was replaced by the superior technology produced by the equally Christian North.
And the slave owning South was destroyed by the technologically superior North. I give you Abraham Lincoln, a Christian president who understood American government as it was created in the image of God by America's Founders.
All of your arguments are saw dust because they suffer from undiluted bias, factual error, errors of reason, and selectivity seen in children as they pick fly poop out of salt.
@PrisonerxOfxLove@xanga - "Galileo was persecuted for insulting the Pope, not for his science. "
Nope: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair
Before you dumbly dismiss a wikipedia source out of hand, realize it sticks better than your unsupported bullshit.
"And please name another scientist who was persecuted by the Church like Galileo was."
There were none other like Galileo because he was the very best scientist of the day-- and what more, a man willing to stand against the backwards dogmaticism of the Church.
Fact: The Church held up biblical verses in support of Ptlomey.
Fact: In 1992, the Catholic Church apologized to Galileo; and it wasn't for "insulting the Pope."
@Celestial_Teapot@xanga - There are no others like Galileo because science was in the DNA of Christianity.
To condemn Christianity for being anti-science it is your responsibility to establish a pattern that supports that claim.You haven't done that. Therefore your claim is without merit. Your claim is also without merit because it is based in the intense anti-Christian bias nurtured by the faith-based religion of atheism. Since your religion is based totally on faith, facts mean nothing to you.
As for my source, try renown science historian James Hannam. He just wrote a book called, "The Genesis of Science."
I did a post on him recently, but you can find him on the Web.
Your last two facts are you proving my point about how atheists apply a standard of perfection to Christians and Christianity that they do not apply to themselves.
The atheist mass murders of the 20th century (that continue even to this very day) are indeed a pattern of behavior exhibited by atheist-run governments.
There is no pattern of behavior by the Medieval Church that was anti-science. In fact the total opposite is true.
During that time and the Renaissance, the Catholic Church was the greatest patron of science and art in Europe, if not the entire world.