Keeping up with the articles

The series that I recently completed on the Bible drew out a lot of great questions and concerns about the Bible and the authenticity of it. The last article in particular seemed to create a lot of confusion. It is because of these comments that I decided to start a blog. There are so many times that answering the questions of people in a "comment" section does not give enough room to do the answers justice. This was certainly one of those times.
So, in respect to those who posted comments, in particular Montgomery, Angelica, and Kirk; this one is for you.
Let's start with God. Montgomery brings up a great point when stating that God seems scary and aloof. But if one really reaches out to God, what they find is a relationship very much like the one found in Luke 15:11-32. A son takes everything that is to be his inheritance and leaves home. He travels far away from the father and squanders his inheritance. When all of his money and hope are gone, the son decides to return home hoping that the father will give him a job but knowing full well that he deserves nothing from the father except scorn.
The father, however, has watched the road every day since the son left, praying that one day he would return. When he sees his son in the distance, the father runs out to meet him with his arms open wide and tears of joy running down his face. His son has returned! He is back in the father's arms where he can now know the love and acceptance that had been denied him since the son left home.
That is what we experience when we allow God into our hearts. Love, acceptance, freedom.
But make no mistake about it, while God wants you to know and understand His love, Satan wants to deceive you into believing that the opposite is true. His plan is to snatch you away from the Father and keep you believing that you will not be accepted back to Him in order to keep you from your inheritance. Not because Satan wants you; he could not care less about you. Satan's goal is to keep you from the security of God. Plain and simple.
This brings us to the next concern: How can God love us and still allow bad things to happen? The answer to that is not as complicated as it may seem. The truth is that God gave each of us free will. The ability to have that free will comes with a price. We are never sure how someone is going to use their free will and how it may impact our own lives. Sometimes, the execution of someones free will results in beautiful, amazing things. But the opposite can be true as well and that is when we see the hurt and destruction that we witness every day.
God could take the free will from those who chose to abuse it, but the question then becomes, "What is abuse?" Each of us have done things with our free will that has hurt those around us and ourselves. That being the case, in order for the free will to be taken from one, it would need to be taken from all. Then you have robots. That was not the design God had in mind when He created us. No one wants to be forced to be loved and that includes the One issuing the most extreme love.
Moving on to miracles. Angelica stated that we do not witness miracles today like they did in the Bible. I beg to differ. Not only do we witness miracles, they happen more frequently than those in Biblical times. However, they do not get the recognition that they did back then so it is much more difficult to recognize them for what they are. Nevertheless, if you take time to explore this phenomenon you will see the truth of miracles today.
Every day there is someone somewhere who is cured of a disease, a receiver of money they needed, relieved of pain that has plagued them for years. All one needs to do is keep their eyes and ears open to see the beauty and compassion of our loving God. His miracles are everywhere.
Lastly, I want to express emphatically how important it is for those of us to know to truth to reach out to those who are confused and hurting. I see in the lines written by Kirk someone who has been burned by deception and lies. I see someone who may have reached out to Christianity only to have it be turned against them. I would love to say that as Christians we love as God loves. But the truth of the matter is, we do not. Non-Christians so often see anything BUT love when they express questions and/or concerns about who Christ is. They have valid questions and they deserve answers without condemnation. Jesus would never have put someone down or gotten angry with them because they did not believe. If we expect to reach the lost, we MUST do it in love.
Magic and Christianity are vastly different. While magic uses illusions, God is free from any type of illusion. He has designed each of us to question and also to understand. It is this understanding that is so vital when exploring a relationship with Him. It may be a great discovery for one to research both magic and God to see which comes up as truth and which as a game. I encourage anyone who feels the way that Kirk does to seek the truth of what God has to offer. I promise you, it will be much more fulfilling than the discovery of how a rabbit is pulled out of a hat.