Heavy Reading

I just finished a book by Francis Shaeffer, founder of L'Abri in Switzerland...He was a philosopher and theologian which makes reading his work extremely challenging for me. He speaks of things and people of which I have no knowledge...so I have to look up a lot or get REALLY good at gleaning the meaning from the surrounding passage....with that said, I wanted to post what I wrote down while reading...There isn't much real flow to what I am about to write..but I am going to post it exactly as I wrote it and exactly as the ideas came to me. Some of what is written is my condensation of Shaeffer's work, some of it is what came to my mind out of the inspiration of his work...I hope it gets you thinking!

Here goes:

1) Because God "IS", we can therefore exist and even have the possibility of existing.

2) Man is not reduced to a "machine". He is not a "zero" or a sum of random meaninglessness. He is created in the image of his creator adn therefore, though small and finite, he has a value and a worth that is outside of himself. He has meaning and value BECAUSE he is created ON PURPOSE by an EXISTING CREATOR.

3) Man is not "intrinsically" evil. Man was not always as he is now. At one point, man rebelled and cruelty entered. Man, as he is now, is abnormal from what he once was. ie: fallen.
This allows for God to be wholly good and man, by choice, has brought about evil.

4) Since man is abnormal compared to original design, and because he has value as a created being, created by a good God who exists, then it follows that there IS HOPE in restoring man to what he was supposed to be.
- This is where Christ begins to make sense.

In order to believe the above, you can't hold to the idea that man is simply randomly ordered matter and has no real significance against all other forms of matter.

"In order to please God, one must first believe that he exists and that he is a rewarder of those who earnestly seek him".

"Without faith, it is impossible to please God".

2 types of "faith":

- God exists.
-God does not exist.

We won't know anything exhaustively, but we CAN know truly. True-truth.

Human beings desperately want to know and be known. Without a belief in God, there are no absolutes and therefore nothing, including ourselves, can be truly known. There will always be some level of uncertainty, distrust, and cynicism.
The Bible talks MUCH about knowing and being known by God.
God "knows" us or he doesn't "know" us. Hell is a place of eternal unknowing. Total isolation from God and others. We must know God to be truly known. HE is our creator and by denying his existance, we, in essence, deny our own existence. Without Him, we are not. If He doesn't absolutely exist, neither do we. A created thing must have a creator or that thing never truly was. When we die in our unbelief, we enter an eternal realm in which our denial of God inevitably means our denial of self. We cease to be, yet we are. This knowledge is eternal torment. Complete isolation from others, locked in our own knowledge that we do exist, but alone forever.

Christianity is not a blind "leap of faith", but gives us the go ahead to ask the sufficient questions and then believe Him and bow before Him. It is not a lobatomy of reason. A true Christian takes life experience, lines this up with the claims of the Bible and see that they fit to his or her satisfaction. This is the point of faith..or rather the beginning of faith. And God himself gives us this faith. (Which is why some accept it more readily than others with less questions....greater faith given by God perhaps?) It is not sheer deduction but deductions being revealed as truth to the seeker. At every doubt along the path of the believer, the person must revisit his intitial questions, take into account the Biblical answers and say, " In light of this new question/doubt, does my belief/faith still stand?" This is where prayer and continued seeking take place until a suitable answer is found...where faith in the initial conclusion can carry a believer until the answer comes. It can also be, I believe, where faith can be abandoned and the initial conclusion aborted. The true believer, one who endures til the end, is the one who hangs on for the answer, trusting the reliability of previous answers and in the truth of the goodness of their God.

Francis gives an example of "faith" vs. FAITH:
Climbers in the alps reach a foggy area where one can not see anywhere around him....the guide keeps leading them onward until they are completely lost and blinded by the fog...one climber asks, "If we keep on like this, what will happen? " The guide says, "You will die"...So the climber says, " Suppose I jump off the egde and land on a cliff, then what? " The guide says, " You will live another day." So the climber, on that word alone, jumps.
Another climber asks the same questions but upon asking about jumping...he hears a voice through the fog...It claims to be a man who knows the entire mountain, every cliff and outcropping and that if he ( the climber ) jumps, he will live. The climber continues to ask questions of the voice in the fog, until he believes the voice is telling him the truth. At his point of belief, he jumps.

Faith like a Child?
Children ask lots of questions about their world ( I have 3...so I know)...but as opposed to adults, what they don't know, doesn't seem to bother them as much and they are comforted by what they see in their world as absolutes....the sun comes up and goes down every day....absolutes.
They aren't so concerned as knowing exhaustively in order to believe. They can be convinced and appeased by knowing simple truths. There is a simple trust in children that what they are being taught/ told is indeed the truth. The good parent does not exploit this trust and lie to their children. God, our good father/creator, tells us to simply believe him. We can ask questions, but we are to trust him when we can not know exhaustively and be content with the simple truth he has given to us.
Only a horrible parent would misuse the simple trust of his child in order to harm that child or cause them pain/ harm.
God is consistant. What he tells us of in his word, the Bible, is truth. He not only teaches us about himself and his character, but he warns us and tells us truth, so that we will avoid much pain and hurt.
If my son asks me if it is safe to jump from the roof, and I tell him nothing...is that a good parent? What if I tell him it is safe to jump? Again, I am being a horrible parent. The good parent, as is with our good God, tells the child what they need to know in order to live life within the safe limits of their world. It is then the responsibility of the child to believe and obey. If they do not, they will reap the consequences of those actions.
We would be wise to listen to the warnings and teachings of our Creator...to believe them and to be thankful for his guidelines and boundaries. He loves us and has given us value...he does not desire our destruction. He desires to give us life and free us from our rebellion and our abnormalities. This is the truth. And this much CAN BE KNOWN.