While it would have been sweet to see Chuck Norris fight Oprah, nothing of the sort actually broke out last night. It turns out that many of us have very different thoughts on religion and spirituality. From my small group, we found that while we didn't all agree on what faith we believe in, we did agree that faith is a very important part of our lives. We also found that many of us had questions we didn't feel comfortable asking anywhere else. We came up with some great questions as well as some tough answers to some of them. We've posted the questions you came up with below...take a chance to read them and toss up your thoughts on what you believe. If faith is something as important as we talked about last night, maybe we should spend more time figuring it out.
Questions:
"Is religion ignorance?"
"What's going to happen if you find out after you die that your faith wasn't real or correct?"
"If God created the world, who created God?"
"How do you know where to look to find the answers?"
"Should the Bible be taken literally?"
"Does God hear me when I pray and does he care?"
For another student's perspective on his faith journey, check out Mike Holloway's journal in the journal section.
Happy blogging!
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I remember a time when I would pick holes in "religion" or worse yet "religious" people, particularly Christians.Once, as a teenager I even challenged a priest with the absurdity of believing all the stories in the Bible. How could any reasonable person believe that God destroyed the world by flood and saved one man and his family on a boat...crazy!
And then, through experience,listening, thoughtful study, and honest communication with God I came to know and believe that there is in fact a God, He is loving, Holy and Just. And He not only saved that one man and his family on a boat, but he wanted to save me as well. And who I needed saving from - was myself. I had to stop poking holes in God's story and see the HUGE holes in my own. The ones I was filling with ever lie and deception the world offered up to me, and I willingly sold out to...be your own God...live for today...experience is the best teacher, so try everything once...and so on. None of those things brought satisfaction to the yearning in my soul...the yearning to be fully known and yet loved unconditionally, God did that through His Son, Jesus Christ. I am a sinner saved by that Amazing Grace!!
So why did God save Noah and his family when everyone else was washed away? The Bible says "Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord"...because amidst all the chaos and evil of those days, Noah "walked with God"...he simply plodded along listening to, talking with and experiencing more of his God - he wasn't sinless, he limped from time to time as well as stumbled, but he kept walking with God, through life, through the waters of the flood and on into eternity. (read the account of Noah, Genesis 6 - 9)
I would encourage you to look hard at what you believe and why you believe it. There is truth in this world - we are all given a mind and a heart to seek after it and choose who or what we will believe and therefore worship, because the fact is we all worship something.