Considering answers to those faith-questions we all ask…
Tag: Christian Apologetics
People often use the words "knowledge" and "wisdom" without distinguishing between them. While the two are closely related, they don't have quite the same meaning. According to the Cambridge Dictionary wisdom is"... the ability to use your knowledge and experience to make good decisions and judgments". This is perhaps a definition of human wisdom at its best. You can have all the knowledge in the world but without wisdom you're prone to making mistakes.
If there's no God to decide what's good and what isn't good, who decides what's true and what isn't? Who decides what's right and what's wrong? In a world where God doesn't exist there can be no absolutes: there is no ultimate right or wrong except what humanity decides is so. "Good" and "bad" are entirely subjective concepts, and open to change. To paraphrase a certain president from not long ago, "Truth is fluid".
Some of the most difficult words of Jesus for us to accept - believers or unbelievers - speak of blessing and gain through loss, weakness and failure. "Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39). "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3); "... many who are first will be last, and the last first" (Matthew 19:30).
Why is it that simply believing in someone can make the difference between gaining eternal life and being eternally lost? Surely God doesn't expect us all to believe in someone we can't even see or hear? Surely scientists, historians and archaeologists of our time -the clever people - have all concluded that there is no God and that Jesus either didn't exist at all or was deluded or misquoted?
When you hear people make claims such as "Jesus Christ never existed" you find yourself being challenged. You've been a professing believer for X years, you go to church, you shape your life at least loosely around what you claim to believe, but you've never taken the trouble to find or memorize hard historical or archaeological evidence to back up your faith. With an awareness of this common failing in the back of my mind I recently benefitted from a podcast produced by the Associates for Biblical Research, titled, "Jesus Outside the Bible - The Top Ten Historical References" (
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 