101 Questions for Christians (Can YOU reply to these?)

I don’t think these questions should be unfamiliar to Christians. The answers and conversations surrounding these questions should be common amongst both new believers and mature believers, and both adult converts and those who grew up in Christian homes.

You might like to share these questions at a study group. Also, if any of the questions presents you with particular difficulty in answering then I urge you to start a conversation with other Christians about that question, and seek the answers together.

If you are not a Christian, but have Christian friends, you might like to challenge them to reply to  some of these!

Additional: These questions are not in any particular order and are not meant to make up a Catechism or curriculum.  They are merely written off the top of my head as a creative exercise.  There is no reason, other than for readability/reference-ability, why I have written every tenth entry in bold.

1. Why do you believe that God exists?
2. Why do you believe that the God of the bible is this God?
3. Why do you believe there is only one God?
4. Why do you believe that the bible is true and trustworthy?
5. Why would God make such a terrible world with disease and pain?
6. Why should anyone follow a God who lets bad things happen to good people?
7. Why should someone who is basically a good person be punished in hell for not believing in your God?
8. Why is it important to believe in the Trinity?
9. What is the meaning of life?
10. What if it doesn't make me happy to follow God?
11. How come there are so many denominations?
12. How do we know that we can trust the bible when there are so many different interpretations?
13. What about Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc?
14. There is no absolute truth! (Isn't there?)
15. What causes division in the church?
16. Is division in the church ever a good thing? Why?
17. Have the gifts of the Spirit ceased?
18. What was the biblical form for the gifts? (What did they look like in practice?)
19. Do Christians have to give 10%?
20. What about “prosperity preaching” - doesn't this prove Christianity is a scam to make money?
21. Are all homosexuals going to hell? 
22. Hell is going to be better than heaven! (Isn't it?)
23. Do babies and children that die go to heaven? 
24. What about people who never get the chance to hear the gospel - do they go to hell? (This doesn’t seem fair)
25. What is the gospel?
26. How does the gospel save people?
27. Does this mean everyone will eventually be saved?
28. Why eternal punishment? (and not just a short time)
29. What does it mean to be born again?
30. How does a person become born again?
31. How should we read the bible?
32. What is a study bible?
33. What is a bible commentary?
34. How does a Christian “hear” from God?
35. Why pray if God already knows what we will pray?
36. What is worship?
37. What is discipleship?
38. What is the difference between general and special revelation?
39. Does God know what I'm thinking? Explain
40. What is a miracle?
41. What is God’s purpose in miracles?
42. Can miracles be from the devil?
43. Can we make God bring a miracle by praying hard enough?
44. What does it mean to be holy and how does this apply to us and to God?
45. Do miracles depend upon our purity and sinlessness?
46. Do blessings depend upon whether we are sinful? (or have sinned)
47. Can we be perfect in this life (completely free from sin)?
48. How were people saved in the Old Testament?
49. What qualities should Christian leaders possess?
50. Why are there different versions of the bible?
51. What is the best version of the bible for me? (and why)
52. What is the difference between the Old and New Testaments?
53. Are the books of the bible in chronological order? Explain
54. What does the future hold? 
55. When do/did the “last days” begin?
56. What is God’s purpose in the suffering of his people?
57. What is the purpose of hell?
58. Who goes to hell?
59. What will hell be like?
60. What is the purpose of heaven?
61. Who goes to heaven?
62. What will heaven be like?
63. Is there any place other than heaven or hell where people might go when they die?
64. Do animals go to heaven?
65. What is the difference between Roman Catholicism and Protestant Christianity?
66. Why is Roman Catholicism wrong?
67. What was The Reformation?
68. What is the best way to know error or untruth when you see it?
69. What should you do if you find out you are wrong?
70. How do people identify their gifts from God?
71. How do they use their gifts from God?
72. What is the best form of church governance?
73. What is the difference between a biblical pastor and a biblical teacher?
74. Can we know for certain that we are saved?
75. How do we reach assurance?
76. Can we say if someone else is saved or not? Explain
77. Can we lose salvation having once had it? Explain
78. What does it mean that God is sovereign?
79. Do we have free will? Explain
80. If we don't have free will, does that make us robots? Explain
81. If we do have free will, does our decision to follow Jesus mean we are smarter than those who choose not to? Explain
82. Why is it important to have assurance of salvation as a Christian?
83. What is discipleship?
84. When is Jesus coming back?
85. What should help Christians to get through hard times?
86. What does it mean to worship in spirit and in truth?
87. What does Israel have to do with Christianity (both past and present Israel)?
88. Why did they sacrifice animals in Israel in the Old Testament?
89. Why has the sacrifice of animals ended and will never be needed again?
90. What does it mean to glorify God?
91. How should marriage glorify God?
92. What does it mean to be made in the image of God?
93. How does ‘being made in the image of God’ inform our stance on abortion, war, and euthanasia?
94. Can we earn our salvation? (Why/why not?)
95. What is the fall?
96. How does the fall explain so much of the imperfect world we live in?
97. How does creation demonstrate the existence of a Creator?
98. How does creation show the glory of the Creator?
99. Should we read all of the bible literally? Explain
100. How should Christians seek to make converts? (Methods, attitudes towards God, attitudes towards men)
101. How do we examine ourselves to see whether we are Christians or not?

Get talking!

More on My Christian Walk - Bicycle Radio NZ

Today's episode covers:
More on my Christian walk and some rambling thoughts about the sunrise, etc.

Bicycle Radio NZ - Wednesday, June 13th 2012 (episode 14) (right click to save)

This "radio" show started a few weeks ago as a way of expressing myself creatively while I had no time to write.  Instead of recording every day, I am only going to record when I have something I'd really like to share. This might mean once per week or once per month.  The experiment continues to adapt.

Thanks for listening!

Sam

The Glory Test (Baptism and Salvation)

I've come across a number of blogs recently where the writers claim that water baptism by immersion is necessary for salvation.  Here is my brief response to this false doctrine:


"If we are saved by faith, then we are saved by faith when we believe, not when we get baptized, otherwise we are not saved by faith" - from www.carm.org 


Faith has been the way people are saved (even in the Old Testament)

• Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness Romans 4:3 
• ...the righteous shall live by his faith 
  Habakkuk 2:4
• You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you 
• Isaiah 26:3
• ...if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  (10)  For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved Romans 10:9-10

Salvation is a work of God, not man.  Only He has the power to change someone from the inside.  Because of this, only God should receive the glory for salvation. 


The false doctrine of baptismal regeneration tries to steal glory from God by making salvation a ritual performed by and dependent upon man. 


This "glory test" is usually a good test of the validity of doctrine.


You can read more about baptism and salvation here:
http://carm.org/is-baptism-necessary-salvation

Intelligent Design vs. Biblical Creationism (a concise comparison)

A quick search via google found very little in the way of a reasonable comparison and nothing concise.  I’ve attempted to provide this as a Christian who believes that the literal account of creation from Genesis is true, wanting something simple to reference people to, and out of frustration at those who argue that ID is Creationism.  

One note that is important in the extreme:  While any form of belief in a creator god must be labelled as creationism, including Intelligent Design (ID), there is a clear distinction between the broad sweep of the creationism of many different religions and the Biblical Creationism that is most commonly under attack by evolutionists.

It is just not fair or honest to insist that ID is Biblical Creationism under another name.  While there may be some overlap, as there is between even Biblical Creationism and Evolution, this doesn’t mean they are the same thing.  The debate should be shifting towards refining the points of contention and not just slinging words around to muddy the waters and slur opponents positions unjustly.

The Comparison

	Intelligent Design	Biblical Creationism
Is an “old” earth compatible?	Yes	No
Is “Irreducible Complexity” a  necessary argument for  your position?	Yes	No
Is the theory of Evolution  compatible with your  position?	Yes (ID offers an explanation  for many gaps in  evolution too)	No
Does your position require  the Bible to be true	No	Yes
Does your position rely on  a different interpretation of  much of the same  evidence that the theory  of Evolution and “old earth  geology” uses?	No	Yes

A Word on The Debate
It is the final two points where the debate needs to take place between Biblical Creationism and the current Atheist/Secular Humanist position.  Anything else is missing the mark.

The questions for debate are:
1. Is the bible true?
2. Can the evidence be interpreted in a reasonable but different way?

Trust and Truth in Science and Religion

Some trust in Science, some trust in God, some trust in both.  There are truth gaps in both Science and Religion that force us to trust if we are to continue to live by it.  It is our past experiences within that realm that will inform us whether we can safely place our trust  there or not.  The same principle applies to human relationships, favourite authors, Internet providers, and a host of other fields with unknowns that we commit to based on what we already know about them.  For now, we will look at trust and truth in Science and Religion.


Is there enough truth for us to trust in what we trust in?
This is not so much a difficulty in the Science realm, because the scientific method is formed to be able to make rational sense of observation of the universe.  Any theory or hypothesis that does not square with experimental data is replaced with an updated one that does work.  It’s a clear and simple, common sense process of human exploration of the natural world.  It doesn’t always work though, as it relies on fallible people to spot the inconsistencies in a theory, and even then it might take a while for people to be willing to let that theory go, especially if they have been making good use of it for a long time.  This gives rise to the question, “How much truth has to be compromised before the trust is compromised?”

Take the case of the dinosaur bones found with blood cells preserved inside.  Actual dinosaur blood.  Read the journal article for yourself here (or here for one of the articles at www.creation.com)  It seems that any rational scientist would have to make a choice, assuming he or she holds to dinosaurs existing over 60 million years ago along with a much shorter decomposition rate for organic material.  The choice would be between which theory is wrong.  Either dinosaurs didn’t live that long ago, or blood cells decay at an impossibly slow rate under particular conditions.  Trust in that portion of science must drop away, otherwise enough trust has already been built up that the scientist would safely assume that more evidence will come to light to explain how both can work.

When it comes to the bible, people are not so willing to trust.  
If we start on the same grounds that we might start from with science, we can see that there is no difference in how we can apply our trust to the bible.  There are truth claims, some of which are obvious and easily believed and it is a wonderful resource of accurate wisdom about human nature and life principles that work.  

However, there are gaps and contradictions that don’t seem to make sense and there are claims that we can’t know anything about through “natural” means of knowing.  Yet the parts that we can believe should convince us that it is worth looking a little deeper before throwing the baby out with the bath water.  Some contradictions readily dissolve with the right context or understanding of how God is working through history.  Others are not so easy to deal with, much like the science situation above, and require a re-think of past ideas; yet there is no reason to think we should dismiss the lot.

God of the gaps
Scientists are quick to accuse believers of “invoking the god of the gaps” .  When things in the universe don’t stand up to the claims of the religion (a gap in knowledge) then a miracle or mysterious action of god is used to cover the gap.  God of the gaps can be seen as a faith that the gap is a part of god’s plan or something that we can trust Him about despite not understanding how it fits in with the rest of reality.

What many scientists don’t realise is that they use science itself as a god of their gaps.  Scientists will come across something such as the dinosaur blood cells discovery and then say that “science will discover something that explains this, it’s just a matter of time.”  This is essentially putting faith in science to cover a gap in knowledge (or a contradiction in current knowledge).

Both rely on faith/trust but for different reasons
Science builds our trust with accurate accounts of physical reality.  The bible builds our trust with accurate accounts (primarily, but not exclusively) of moral/philosophical reality.  These two different reasons make it hard to compare the trust that we place in each, but that does not mean that either is totally wrong.  When each encounters a truth that stretches the bounds of belief, the adherents to that field (science or a particular religion) must decide if that claim is too far out for that system to adopt.

As a final note, I have focused on the bible, and by implication Christianity.  This is because I am a Christian and have explored the claims of Christianity more than other religions.  After looking at the other major world religions (and some minor ones also) I decided that they didn’t match with reality enough to bother trusting.  In short, where a religion makes their god lower in stature than man or who requires sub-standard payment for mans sin, I don’t think it can be true.  That is another discussion for another time though.

Some useful links

http://carm.org/introduction-bible-difficulties-and-bible-contradictions

Reasons to trust the bible

13 Things that do not make sense (New Scientist)

Willingly Trapped

We are all willingly trapped within our own view of the world.  That doesn't mean that we can't see another's point of view, though we are quite likely to think them foolish.

Faith void of reason is foolish.  God is reasonable and gives us reason enough to trust Him.  See what He has to say in His word before arrogantly judging Him as unreasonable.


It is where faith intersects with reason that we find truth and reality.