Hard Questions

[Gail]

What are some of the hard questions people ask about life?

[Liz]

What is my purpose? Why do bad things happen to children? Why must I suffer or struggle with (health, financial, relationships) all the time? Why does it seem like God blesses others more than me? Why did God lead me to this point in life and then turn silent? Why doesn't it seem like my prayers are being answered? What if I do what I'm supposed to do, try and have a relationship with God, and still don't make it? In other words, how can you be 100% assured of your salvation?

[Gail]

The "whys" are so big, aren't they? It seems like people want to understand them.

[Gail]

How about, "Is this all there is?"

[Gregory Matthews]

intellectual responses are not the answer to such questions.

[JoeMo]

One of the hardest questions for me to answer is when people ask why God allows totally senseless acts of violence or horrific natural disasters?  Is He too weak to stop them; is He that vengeful, or does He just not care?  Or "I've reached out to God my whole life; why doesn't He reveal Himself to me?

I have no intellectually satisfying answer for that.  To me, many of these criticisms of God are a matter of perception.  God does things for people; but they don't recognize His hand; or they blame man's inhumanity to man as the vengeance of God (e.g., trade tower disaster).

Other things are a matter of faith.  I don't have faith that I will ever be "good enough" to deserve eternal life with Christ.  If I have to rely on my deeds even just a little bit, I'm doomed.  For me, it's strictly a matter of faith to me that Jesus did a good enough job to redeem me; and any good I do is simply the fruit of that redemptive power.  One question I try to never ask myself is "am I saved?"  I am 100% sure (well - maybe 99% sure) of my salvation by faith.

[Gail]

Is it within man's ability to answer those biggies? 

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

When I dwelt on the "why does God..." and "why doesn't God..." questions, those were big factors in pushing me over to witchcraft and worship of the goddess — because there were always answers to such questions in paganism.

But God isn't beholden to make Himself understood to us.  It makes me a bit uncomfortable to see people try and explain hard problems that seem to involve the "will of God."  God's **will** is that everyone be happy, that everyone be healthy, that everyone be saved.  But that's not how life works where Satan has a foothold... actually, more than a foothold — he directs the choir.

[Gail]

Do we really need to know the answers?

[Liz]

Sometimes I think it would help, and then when I look back on my life, no I wouldn't want to know what was to come. I guess that is where that elusive faith comes into play. Faith that it will all work out eventually. It's just that sometimes, at least for me, faith is like the tide, sometimes it is right there and I'm ankle deep in it, and other times it is miles away and I have miles of hot dry sand in-between.

[debbym]

This definitely sounds like the faith testing of the children of Israel in the desert wilderness.  That is what God's people are walking through today till we get to the Jordan and the Promise land.

Blessings

[Gregory Matthews]

O.K.  I probably should have said:  Intellectual answers are often not the answer to such questions.

What then is a good answer?

Take the question:  Why did God allow my wife to die in that accident?

The answer to that question might lie in a focus on the  pain  the husband was suffering in the loss of his  wife.

 

 

[Lauralea]

On 8/20/2016 at 11:03 PM, Gail said:

Do we really need to know the answers?

While we may know parts or some of the answers we cannot and should not expect to know them all on this Earth. I agree with Pam.

[Gregory Matthews]

People differ as to their needs and what they need in answers.

Yes, eternity will be a time in which we get answers that we do not have here on Earth.

Regardless, we must in once sense of the work respond to the questions that people ask.