Unbelief. Questioning God

 Most Europeans today want to question everything that has to do with God.
It started with the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Gen 3:1 NIV

For Martin Luther and the pioneers of the Reformation, the Bible was the Word of God, the foundation of our faith. But then came the Enlightenment, German humanism, and humanistic theology.

German culture was to have a new foundation:
“Did God really say?”

This way of thinking did not begin in Germany, but with philosophers in Italy and France, but German poets and thinkers enthusiastically adopted this view and developed it further.

Then this questioning of everything became the foundation of modern culture, and now we are in the next phase of the aberration, post-modernity. In the post-modern view, there is no longer any absolute truth. You have your truth and I have mine.

Only the findings of natural science are supposed to be absolute truth, but this is not the case.

About twenty years ago, scientists claimed that no new neurons grow in our brains. Now we know that our brains can repair themselves with intensive care. 

We have been misled by humanists, but Christian theology has sometimes not helped either.

There is a widespread theological theory that God determines everything, so we have no free will. God has predetermined who will believe and who will not, who will be saved and who will burn in hell.

Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isa 64:8 NIV

It is true that God shapes our lives. He is the Creator and we are the creatures.

But let us not forget what God says in the book of Jeremiah.

God can treat us as He pleases, for He is the Creator, but He is also just. 

If we trust and obey Him, He will shape us with blessings. If we are stubborn and resist Him, then disaster will befall us.

Then the word of the LORD came to me. 
He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. 

If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 
and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. 

And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, 
and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it. 

“Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the LORD says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’ Jer 18:5–11 NIV
 
God can treat us as He pleases, for He is the Creator, but He is also just. 

If we trust and obey Him, He will bless us. If we are stubborn and resist Him, then disaster will befall us.

The biblical parable of the potter and the clay teaches the sovereignty of God but also that God gives us free will to submit to him or turn away. It is up to you and me.