In Reply to: Re: Finally! posted by QE on August 02, 2010 at 10:08:19:
"Did you at some time question your beliefs?"
YES! Between 1994-2004 I completely dis-associated myself from Christianity. I went pretty far out and about in my journey after 20 years of thinking I knew what I believed.
I still question many things. These days what I wonder about is whether the God that people talked about throughout the Old Testament is the same God that Jesus talked about or the same God revealed to me through nature. When I consider the enormity, complexity, and elegance of the physical universe, it's hard not to believe in some sort of creator. Even though there is a lot of chaos and incomprehensible scale, there is a sublime order in creation that seems purposeful.
That said, I have trouble reconciling the Creator of time, space, big bangs, strings, black holes, quantum particles, black matter, and billions of galaxies with a Biblical God who seems to be little more than a tribal deity taking sides in a 5,000-year-old war between Israel and Palestine. And what about a personal God so intimately involved in human history on this little backwater planet that He decides to become human, get tortured to death, and then rise from the dead? That's downright bizaar if you really about it.
One OT writer who expresses my feelings is the psalmist who said: "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place; what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?"
Not all God-talk in the Bible is equal, imo. Sometimes the God of the Bible pretty much resembles the time and culture in which a fallen race of people have placed him. Really, what the heck do any of us know? Not much. Frail, ignorant creatures that we are, we can only engage in a relationship of trust with a Power greater than ourselves and hope that our personal concept of God is an accurate reflection of the revelations that speak to us most deeply.