Questions

Questions. Or better said questionings. The past few weeks I have found myself sitting across from or reading about people who are questioning what they have seemingly always believed. Spiritual people, church going people, and bible believing people, all questioning everything from doctrines of the Christian faith to bible belt traditions. Some questions need to be asked, while other questions find themselves on the verge of heresy. I am fully aware questioning has always taken place even within the ranks of the most faithful, but there is something about these questions that strike a sense of emergency within me. It's not that I fear the questions, for some of them should be asked, but, rather, it is the answers that alarm the spirit inside me. Answers that seem to be based not on faith, but on human understanding. Answers that are molding God into the image of loving men rather than molding men into the image of a loving God. It's not that the questions have stripped God of his divinity, but rather that men have exalted themselves to a place where they have redefined Him. This is neither the time nor place to discuss the questions raised, but rather this is simply to ponder how so many have arrived at such an exalted place. Of course this is nothing new, for it is what it always seems to be, the tempter's lie deceiving yet again. It is nothing more than the first question asked upon this earth and it is nothing more than the question that will haunt men for generations to come. It is perhaps the greatest sacred pondering, for all other questions find their basis in this one...it is the question of "Did God Really Say?"  Human reasoning will answer this question quite differently than faith will...which means the only last pondering left for this conversation is with which do we ponder?

Desperate For The Truth

Today I found myself reading words penned over 500 years ago. As I read these words it occurred to me I was holding in my hands words meant for a different generation, a generation that lived many decades before my own. I marveled at how these words had found their way into our generation and envisioned the author sitting at his table writing words that he could never have known I would someday read. I could see him sitting there, pouring over his thoughts, dipping his pen in the ink well, his Bible before him as his truth and his guide. It was then that my pondering led me to marvel on the fact that the same Bible he read is the same Bible I read. The words on which he was expounding are the very words to which I turn to strengthen my faith. He had them too. He had them first. And his love for the truth of them shaped what I believe today. I am somewhat humbled at the realization my generation is not the first to gaze upon the Word of God, to explore it's truths, to discuss it's precepts, or to debate it's doctrines. We are not the first and most likely we will not be the last. Which leads me to wonder about the words we will leave behind for the next generation. Will they be words of truth or words tainted with compromise? Will we have been a generation so desperate for truth we sacrificed everything else to ensure that truth is known by all? On this I ponder and I pray, praying that even if my generation fails, I still would be found as one who was desperate for the truth.

Entering Heaven

A few months ago I met a gentleman who had a Bible sitting on his desk. On the cover of this Bible it said "Entering Heaven". I remember thinking what a clever thought to have printed on a Bible, this man must be a Christian. It was a three second observation and I continued on to whatever it is that I do. Two months later I found myself as a witness to a conversation taking place about death when something was said about salvation. The gentleman I had met earlier stood amongst this group of ponderers and upon hearing the statement of salvation he rose from his relaxed position and in a two phrase sentence finished with "I am my own salvation". The emotions that arose in me equaled his own as I was offended for God that anyone would utter such words, especially one I had mindlessly declared a Christian. My thoughts then took me back to the Bible sitting on his desk and left me wondering why the words "Entering Heaven" if he was so strongly against the One who resides there?

Two days ago I was listening to a lady who was telling me about a Bible she kept on a shelf at work. She cherished this Bible because it was given to her by friends, when she owned a candy store. Years later the lady had moved on to another job and found herself in a conversation with a gentleman who shared that he had no Bible, because he had left his with his sister. The lady was led to give him the Bible on her shelf that had been engraved with the name of her candy store, Heaven. Due to a case of mistaken signentity, the words printed said "Entering Heaven" and so now sits this Bible on the desk of a gentleman I met.

And so tonight I ponder on the assumptions we are so quick to make. A Bible on a desk doesn't make a person a believer and words so cleverly printed can often be misleading.