Faith
My faith is a major part of my life and my writings. The following is a brief statement of my faith and why I believe it.
I believe that God created the world and everything in it and as our Creator, He knows what is best for us, just as a watchmaker knows the best way for his watch to run. I believe that God laid down His instructions for how we should live our lives in the Bible and we need to read it and seek to understand it so we will know how to live our lives. God gave the Jews the books of the law to help them learn how to live, just as parents have to set down rules for young children. You can’t tell a child to love their brothers and sisters because they don’t know what love is. You have to teach them not to hit their siblings and not to take things that don’t belong to them. Eventually, Christ came to show us how to love one another just as parents teach older children to care about each other. Christ didn’t abolish the Law but showed us how to fulfill it. However, we are unable to love each other for love comes from God and we are all sinners and are cut off from fellowship with God. However, Christ died in our place to pay for our sins and restore us to fellowship with God. Finally, Christ sent the Holy Spirit to guide us and give us power.
The prevailing belief today is that it doesn’t matter what you believe and you should not push your beliefs off on others. You can listen to someone and if you like what you hear, you can accept that. Such a person could become a chameleon that changes what they believe depending on their surroundings. In fact, most of the time, the person doesn’t even bother to figure out what they believe because it doesn’t make any difference anyway. The problem with that is that the people who push those ideas know exactly what they believe and they know that if you don’t bother to figure out what you believe, you will accept what they tell you without bothering to think about where you are going with it. In fact, most people today are being blindly led down a path to destruction and don’t even realize it. The fact is, our beliefs rule our lives and determine our decisions, whether we know it or not.
My wife and I had good friends who were very active in church. They believed in the importance of salvation and usually went out about every weekend knocking on doors and talking to people about their need to get saved. They really liked their pastor and looked up to him. However their pastor began to drift into some dangerous beliefs. One of the beliefs he took up was called “double predestination” and states that some are predestined at birth to go to heaven and some are predestined to go to hell. If you are predestined to go to heaven, you will go, even though you live like the devil your whole life. Somewhere before you die, you will accept the truth and go to heaven. If you are predestined to go to hell, it doesn’t make any difference if you are a preacher and give all your money to the church, you will go astray eventually before you die and go to hell. The church kicked the pastor out so he started his own church and this couple followed him and joined his church Every weekend, they continued to go out and try to convert people. My wife and I sat down with them and asked them why they went to so much trouble to convert people when it didn’t make any difference. The people would sort themselves out on their own. Mentally they accepted the teaching of the pastor, but in their heart, they still believed it made a difference.
I did a study in college on the effect of beliefs on actions and found that overwhelming evidence showed that what you believe determines the course of your life. I analyzed the beliefs of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews and then analyzed data collected by various studies on changes in lifestyle from parent to child. By asking what someone did for a living, what their parents (usually the father) did for a living, and whether they were active in their church or synagogue, I could tell you whether they were Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish because of their different views towards work. Back then, churches were very good about teaching their beliefs but today few church members know much of what their church believes so the church has very little influence on their life. What they believe still rules their life but few members actually believe what the church teaches and few have any idea what they really believe. If church members are to serve Christ, they must know who Christ is and what He desires for them. For that, the church must return to giving them a basic foundation of beliefs and helping them build their faith on the foundation. For that reason, I wrote the books of the catechism and the series “In The World, But Not Of It” to help Christians learn to live in the world without being corrupted by it. I have not written heavily about theology because there is a lot written about theology. I have written from the standpoint of understanding the world around us as it is, not as the liberals would have us believe it is, and dealing with it in a manner that is pleasing to God. While many claim to know how to make the world better, God knows best how to make it better, because He made it to begin with. As we trust Him and seek His guidance, He will help us restore it to what it should be. However, the world will never be perfect until Christ returns again, casts the devil and all who follow him into the pit, and restores His rule over the world.