Doubting God

I started contemplating about asking for signs from God, which inadvertently resulted in these following questions.

If I am not to ask for signs, it is because I should trust him all the time:
- and if I am to trust him, is he for real?
- and if he is for real, is he all-powerful?
- and if he is all-powerful, why are we born in different context, some with more and some with less, i.e. why isn't he fair?

In my search for answers, this book crossed my path, again.


The Case for Faith, A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity
by Lee Strobel

I read it in year 2003. I felt it was a good book back then but I remembered it did not speak to me as personally as his previous book did, The Case for Christ.

But as I leafed through it this time, I came to the second last chapter which began with these two quotations:

In their most inner thoughts, even the most devout Christians know that there is something illegitimate about belief. Underneath their profession of faith is a sleeping giant of doubt...In my experience, the best way to conquer doubt is to yield to it.
~Dan Barker, pastor-turned-atheist

Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at time without despair, believe only in the idea of God, an not in God himself.
~Madeleine L'Engle, Christian

With that, I embarked on re-reading the book.

Getting to it again 12 years later, the book really speaks to me now. I appreciated the doubts raised, the questions asked and the answers that were given.

The book is divided into 8 Objections:
* Objection #1 "Since Evil and Suffering Exist, a Loving God Cannot" with Peter Kreeft, PhD
* Objection #2 "Since Miracles Contradict Science, They Cannot Be True" with William Lane Craig, PhD
* Objection #3 "Evolution Explains Life, So God Isn't Needed" with Walter L. Bradley, PhD
* Objection #4 "God Isn't Worthy of Worship If He Kills Innocent Children" with Norman L. Geisler, PhD
* Objection #5 "It's Offensive to Claim Jesus Is the Only Way to God" with Ravi Zacharias, D.D., LL.D.
* Objection #6 "A Loving God Would Never Torture People in Hell" with J.P. Moreland, PhD
* Objection #7 "Church History Is Littered with Oppression and Violence" with John D. Woodbridge, PhD
* Objection #8 "I Still Have Doubts, So I Can't Be a Christian" with Lynn Anderson, D.Min.

The wonderful thing is that the experts whom Strobel interviewed were people I respect and whose books I read. Interestingly, I read Dr Lynn Anderson's book mentioned in the interview, If I Really Believe, Why Do I Have These Doubts?, just two years ago, without realising that I have read about it 10 years ago in 2003.

In answering the questions I had, the first chapter was enough. But I got hooked into Strobel's interviewing style of writing and finished the book in no time. It was brilliant.

pearlie