It's always fun to do Question & Answer forums. Also scary as I'm not quick on my feet. Community Baptist Church Sunway kindly invited me again to address the youth group on a low key Friday night (30 May 08) along with two other panelists Elder Beng Tiong and MBS valedictorian Ps Alexa. (nice to catch up with Gary and of course, baby Micah!)
The thing about such forums though is that only soundbytes get through. Try answering the problem of evil or the meaning of life less than 2 minutes. There's so much you wanna say but due to time limit, you could only cover the bare essentials. And there's also the audience of some late secondary schoolers and college students, how do you keep em awake?
Here are some questions that get thrown out, and if you find other ways to answer them, do leave me a comment ok? :)
Q1: Why believe? Non-Christians are happy too.Why believe in Jesus? Christianity just restricts us from having fun. Some people are happy being Christians, and that’s good for them, but many others are happy just being the way they are. So I might as well just remain a non-Christian, right?
Non-Christians can live decently happy and moral lives, no question about that. But we should not choose our faith like we choose ice cream flavours or drugs – because it makes us feel good. We should choose a faith because it is true, even if it may not make us feel good in the short run. It’s like a diabetic who needs insulin even though it may not be convenient. All of us have a deadly disease called sin, even though some of us are happily unaware of it. The problem with us is not that we seek happiness too much. But that we are too easily satisfied and settle for things that give us temporal fun when an eternal ocean of pleasure is offered to us. In the long run, God wants us to be happy AND holy, but it’s a deeper kind of joy and a freer kind of holiness than we can imagine.
Q2: Can we prove that God really exists?How do we know God is real? Is there any proof that God is real, other than the Bible?
Over the centuries, the greatest minds in human history have gone back and forth on whether God exists or not. Whatever I can say to summarise it in 2 minutes will be like trying to contain the sea in a Coca-cola bottle. It also depends on what you mean by ‘proof’? Experiment? How can we put God in a test tube? But there are good reasons for believing that God is real. There are the ‘proofs’ from the cosmos, evidence of design in universe, which require some understanding of science and philosophy. But there is one ‘proof’ that all of us know about because we experience it personally everyday – from the moral law within our hearts. Consider how you quarrel about others jumping queue and ‘dun judge others’: “Get in line, I was here first”. Appealing to moral laws that others should follow as well. That tells us something about moral laws – it is not subjective tastes, for why “should” I follow your moral law in that case? That tells us something about whoever or whatever created us is interested in good conduct – courage, love, justice, truthfulness etc. We have cause to be uneasy.
Q3: I know God too. What’s the difference? People say, “Christianity is a relationship, not a religion. Christianity is not a set of rules.” I know that there is a God, and I don’t really live by any set of rules handed down from heaven. What’s the difference?
Yes, we have a personal relationship with God, and it is because He is a person, he can tell us what pleases him and what saddens him. You don’t follow the rules to make God love you more. The good news is God loves us while we are still sinners, and rescued us so that we obey His rules out of love, not out of the need to impress him. We always think of rules as restricting a love relationship but imagine a love in which the other party never says no or challenges your behavior. A God who just rubber stamps our lifestyles without ever saying anything we dun like to hear may just be a god created by our own imagination. He hugs us when we need love but never challenges the way we want to live. It’s not much of a relationship.
Q4: “Christianity is a good religion.” “Let’s do bad things, because Jesus will forgive us anyway.”Why do Christians say that their religion is a good religion which tells people to do good if they also say that Christ died so He can forgive everyone? Isn’t this just taking away any motivation for not doing bad things, and thus encouraging people to do even more bad, since there is no punishment anymore?
Many people say that all major religions teach people to do good. At one level, that's true. But at another level, they also differ on what is 'good'? For example some religions allow polygamy while others teach monogamy.
It's true that Christians are called to do good. But the difference lies in the motivation is different. For most people, we do good so that God will reward us and our performance counts for His acceptance. Christians do good not out of a motive to to earn divine forgiveness but out of sheer gratefulness and delight in God, who saved us while we are still sinners.
Grace is not an excuse for indulging in sin. If a consistent pattern of sin persists(no struggle), it may be an indication that there is no genuine faith in the first place. Faith without works is dead, the Bible says.
(To Be Continued)
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