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.

God is Actively Involved

 In 1718, a Dutch writer described God as an all-powerful watchmaker who created the universe and then let it run by itself like clockwork.

William Paley (1743-1805) was an Anglican clergyman looking for good sermon illustrations. He popularised the idea of God as a watchmaker. Everything in the universe runs according to scientifically predictable laws, with no ongoing involvement of the Creator.

Science was becoming the new religion.

God was thus understood as an absent and insignificant creator.
If you believe in such a God, it makes no difference to your life.

But in the Bible, God does not appear as an absent landlord without compassion.  

God in the Bible is actively involved in this world. He intervenes again and again. 

Today, these interventions are understood as supernatural miracles or are explained away by humanistic theology. 

There are even conservative Christians who claim to be Bible-believing, but who quote Bible texts that supposedly teach that God only wanted to work miracles in ancient times.

But they still believe that God answers prayers. How do you distinguish between a miracle, which God supposedly no longer performs, and an answer to prayer, which is not supposed to be a miracle?

They then say that the greatest miracle is the salvation of a converted soul, which is true, but they then dismiss other miracles as unimportant.

This doctrine is full of contradictions.

If you pray for a job and get it, that's fine, but if your daughter is dying of cancer and is supernaturally healed, you shouldn't believe it. Really?

A conservative preacher prayed for a girl who was dying and God healed her. But that's not supposed to happen in his denomination because the age of miracles is thought to be long gone.

The preacher attended a conference where he asked a charismatic preacher for a biblical explanation. He wanted to know if he was praying correctly.

He got a completely unexpected answer:

Why don't you ask the little girl?

God is love. Jesus tells us that God is our loving Father.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?
Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Mt 7:7–11 NIVUK84