Eureka Christian Church

Reflecting Christ's Light from Our Doorsteps to the Ends of the Earth

Questions about God

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We are special, with one-of-a-kind DNA. What does this mean for me?

Of all the millions, billions, and trillions of atoms floating around the universe, God made us here and now with a one-of-a-kind DNA and a brain to gather memories. We are special. What does this mean for me?”

Your recognition that God has made us and that we are special is true and Biblical. And you are wise to ponder what that means for your life. Does your life have purpose and if so, what might that purpose be?

The Psalmist recognizes that we are made by God when he says in Psalm 139:14-16, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.” Another Psalm that speaks to the issue of God’s recognition of us is found in Psalm 8:3&4. Here the Psalmist ponders the great wonders of the universe and our existence in that universe, “When I look at your heavens the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” These passages from Psalms help us realize that we are wondrously made by God and he/she continuously has us in mind.

However, we might then ask, as you are doing in your question – so what?

In Colossians the apostle Paul tells us in 1:16, “For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible…everything got started in him (Christ) and finds its purpose in him (The Message).” Therefore, it appears that we can look to Jesus Christ to find our “so what,” or our own purpose(s) here on earth. Again, we turn to the apostle Paul for help. He writes in Ephesians 1:16, “It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone (The Message).”

In terms of specifics, I believe we need look no further than the Sermon on the Mount recorded in Matthew chapters 5 – 7 to discover how God wants us to live our lives here on earth. There is plenty of “purpose” and Jesus explains this to us. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus instructs us to be salt and light for others, to go beyond the ten commandments by paying attention to what is in our hearts, to love our enemies, to pray to God and depend on him rather than worry about anything, and to treat others the way we would want to be treated.

A good book that will help you continue to explore and discover God’s purpose for your life is, The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.

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Will God forgive me?

Will God forgive me for whatever it is I have done, or must I continue to suffer?

We  might re-frame the question this way: If I repeatedly hurt myself or another person, or, for example, if I relapse into the very thing I told myself I would never ever do again (and that I told my loved ones I would never ever do again); given just how deep my regret is, and given just how much damage it’s done to my relationships, will I ever feel the feeling of forgiveness again? Will I ever feel again what it feels like to be whole? Will I ever feel restored or reconciled to the person I’ve hurt (or to myself)? 

A theologian once said, sin and forgiveness run “horizontally” and “vertically.” Sin and forgiveness involve both our relationship to God and our relationships with other people. On the one hand, when we hurt people we care about (or when we do harm or hurt to ourselves) God unfailingly forgives and draws close to us when we ask. But this doesn’t negate or erase relational damage. In a vertical sense, we are always accepted and loved by a God whose spirit nourishes every possibility of life within us. This is true even when we cause pain, feel regret for it, and in the aftermath struggle to accept or love ourselves. However, in a horizontal sense, relational healing and forgiveness take time. Relational healing is a process. Meaningful relationships weather powerful storms, but they are fragile when trust is broken. When a relationship is damaged or a wound reopened, healing is a long and winding path. It requires love, time, honesty, and re-building the foundations of fidelity or trust. Depending on the damage caused, the path doesn’t always lead where we expect or want. Sometimes reconciliation keeps a safe distance, especially when the damage caused is cyclical or abusive.  Horizontal forgiveness, especially for serious relational damage or pain, is long-haul soul care.

What about when I know I’m forgiven horizontally and vertically, but I continue to struggle (internally) with my regret? What about when I’m unable to forgive myself?

Suffering is painful, especially if it is regret. But suffering is also the soul’s attentiveness to the deep feelings that pass through us. As Henri Nouwen might say, suffering is a place where we encounter ourselves laid bare. When suffering is unrelenting, we need to seek help. But when suffering is redemptive or meaningful, it can attune us to the possibility and hope of healing and wholeness in God’s bright and loving future. God’s forgiveness does not cease. The judgment of God is that forgiveness and love have the final say. But it’s also true that healing from deep spiritual or relational hurt is like healing from a severe physical injury. Wounds need to be dressed, bathed, cleaned, and redressed through the habits of attentiveness, listening, honesty, hope, and trust. Healing and forgiveness aren’t feelings only; they are a process.

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Will God stop forgiving me one day if I repeat my sin?

Will God stop forgiving me one day if I repeat my sin?

One way to think about the question is to put it this way. Does God’s forgiveness run out? If I do the same thing again (which I promised myself and God I wouldn’t do), will God stop forgiving me for it?

On the one hand, Jesus seems to teach that forgiveness is at the center of God’s nature, and God’s forgiveness doesn’t run out. No matter how many times I sin (or act in contrary ways to the love and humanity of God revealed in Jesus toward myself or another person or the world), God’s arms are open. This, for example, is the main point of Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). The love of God doesn’t give up on us; it waits for us and celebrates our homecoming.

Divine love is boundless and eternal. Divine love is enough to accept us and welcome us even when we struggle to accept and love ourselves. The judgment of God seems to be that forgiveness and love have the final say.

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Is it OK to not believe in literal heaven and/or hell?

Is it OK to not believe in literal heaven and/or hell?

When it comes to any idea, I don’t think we can or should force ourselves to believe things that contradict what we’re able in our conscience to accept as true.

Heaven and hell are strange ideas, especially the idea of hell. If by “hell” we mean a place God creates and designates for eternally tormenting people unable to accept Christian faith, it introduces a number of logical problems to the idea that God – in God’s essential nature – is loving, just, and merciful. For instance, it’s a difficult argument to make that a just and compassionate deity would say, after creating humankind, “Let there be eternal and unforgiveable torment for the ones who do not accept or love me or my message.”

It’s worth noting too that much of the imagery in popular Christianity that describes heaven and hell in this way (bliss for the one and torment for the other) are largely shaped by medieval and renaissance literature, like Dante’s Divine Comedy (graphic images of sinners in hell tormented eternally) and Milton’s Paradise Lost (devil with pitch forks looking to collect souls). These images are a long way off from what the biblical writers in the apostolic era and the early church would have envisioned regarding the afterlife. Paul speaks of the resurrection of the dead. The gospels speak of the “kingdom of God” where righteousness, peace, and joy in the Spirit define life together with God. Many first century Jews (like Jesus) held the belief that once a person dies, we go to “the place of the dead” or sheol (in Hebrew). For most first century Jews, sheol was neither good nor bad, just a place where souls live on as shades of their living selves. It was later that Christian writers developed elaborate doctrines of heaven and hell as afterlives of bliss or torment.

Heaven and hell are also tricky ideas because they are so fraught with use and abuse by Christians who use them as a cudgel to try and force conversion. I remember hearing the message so many times when I was young, “If you don’t repent and believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, you’ll go to hell. If you want to be with God in paradise forever, then you need to believe.” Theologically, I think this is a spectacularly unsound way to think about heaven and hell, because it reduces the Christian faith to a cost benefit analysis, instead of an adventure (worthy for its own sake) toward the heart of God.

I once heard the story of a Muslim saint called Rabia of Basra. She was known around her town for praying loudly in public spaces and for carrying around a bucket of water and a torch wherever she went. She would pray aloud, “Lord, if I worship you in order to gain an eternal reward, then take this torch and burn down the riches of paradise. If I worship you for fear of torment, then take this bucket of water and douse the flames of hell. But if I worship you because of your worthiness, then hide not your face from me.” I think I agree with Rabia. If all the heaven and hell business turned out to be false, and if the afterlife turns out to be more like sheol or eternal rest or sleep awaiting its new beginning, Rabia’s bucket and torch would have us consider the possibility that loving God and enjoying God’s love in this life would be enough in itself.

I do think that heaven and hell are powerful metaphors for things we experience in our lives here and now. For example, Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard says that hell points to the realities of despair and anxiety, when life becomes a prison to itself, or when we feel cut off from God and meaningful life with others. When life is an exile to joy and hope, or when we are exiles to our true self or the ground of our existence (God), then life becomes a hell. Kierkegaard calls this “the sickness unto death,” which in his view threatens the life of God in the soul. On the other side of it, for Kierkegaard, heaven might be when we know and enjoy divine love – and meaningful fellowship with other people through divine love – and when we are conscious of the possibility of joy and hope as gifts that abide with us, even in the shadowy valleys of life.

Heaven (or life with God) points to the acceptance that we are accepted and loved by a loving God. Whatever higher reality they do or do not point to, perhaps the words “heaven” and “hell” are best understood as symbols (sometimes rather clumsy ones) for pondering the boundless mystery of God’s love and the soul’s journey into God’s heart.

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Questions about God

Many of the questions we have received are about the nature of God’s relationship with us and how we engage with God. Keep reading for some thoughts and additional resources:

Does God still speak to people today? How can I hear God speaking to me?

Excerpt from 10 Great Examples of When God Spoke and Speaks—#10. Though we do not audibly hear the voice of God today, we can still hear His voice in His word that has been recorded for us. Here are some Bible references that you can look up that remind us that God still speaks today and that we are able to share His words with others: John 6:44, 10:27-28; Romans 10:114-7; 2 Corinthians 2:17; 2 Timothy 4:2.

How can I believe in a God I can’t see or hear like I can see or hear people or objects?

Richard Rohr reminds us in Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer [p. 28] that “we cannot attain the presence of God. We’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness.” “This,” David Benner suggests, “is the core of the spiritual journey—learning to discern the presence of God, to see what really is” (The Gift of Being Yourself, p. 41).

“Honest and prayerful reflection on the Gospels and daily experience provide a rich opportunity to meet God in ways that will change you” (David Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself, p. 44).

How do we know that God is with us if we can’t see Him?

“The omnipresent God whose name is Immanuel (God-with-us) is not distant but nearer to us than we can imagine. God is not alien to the circumstances of our lives but comes to us in them. Our challenge is to unmask  the Divine in the natural and name the presence of God in our lives” (Ben Johnson, “Spiritual Direction in the Reformed Tradition,” in Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls, ed. Gary Moon and David Benner).

You say, “God is all around me.” How can God care about me when I am just one among those who number in the millions?

“God cannot help seeing you through eyes of love. Even more remarkable, God’s love for you has nothing to do with your behavior. Neither your faithfulness nor your unfaithfulness alters Divine love in the slightest degree. Like the father’s love in the parable of the prodigal son. Divine love is absolutely unconditional, unlimited and unimaginably extravagant. … Whether we realize it or not, our being is grounded in God’s love” (David Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself, pp. 46-47).

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Where was God when I was suffering?

Why was God or an angel not there when I was bleeding and beaten on the floor?  I had to get the help [on my own].  Why did I have to suffer for so long and so young?  I didn’t sin or hurt people—if anything, me being abused was protecting the others.  But why?  Why was there no one to save or to help me?  

Editor’s Note:  Because of the depth of pain in this question, two members of the Response Team have offered their perspectives.

Response One: I am so sorry you had these experiences. It hurts my heart to know this kind of thing happens, and that this happened to you.

To answer this is difficult, and there are not satisfying answers. An early church teacher, Irenaeus, spoke of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God allowing evil as a way of soul-making—that the existence of evil would help us be more aware of and draw us closer to God. There is a whole branch of theology devoted to this dilemma, called theodicy. However, it is wholly inadequate for addressing many of the horrors in this life, including those you experienced.

The best understanding I have of why situations like yours occur without God’s direct intervention is that God chose to create a world in which we were given free will—free will to choose God or not to choose God.  Part of this free will means we have the freedom to hurt others. I am sure this hurts God, too. However, it seems there is something about redemption and salvation that requires us to respond directly and personally to God, and that it would somehow be ruined if God forced us to follow him. I am a parent, and think of the love of my children. I want them to choose to love me, I do not want to make them love me—and I cannot. The downside of this freedom is that we are also free to do great harm.

Response Two: I am so very sorry that this happened to you. The trauma you experienced at such a young age is heartbreaking. I join with you in weeping for the pain your younger self endured and the scars that linger still today. People are often capable of terrible actions toward each other. Call it sin. Call it evil.  Either way it is an unmistakable sign of brokenness. The person who abused you was/is broken. I am so very sorry that you bore the brunt of that brokenness.

Sometimes people think that bad things happen to them because God is punishing them. Personally, I do not believe this, but the idea is definitely out there. “If you are suffering, it means you have done something wrong.” This is not a helpful response to the question of why we suffer, as you even point out in your question. “Why did I have to suffer?” you asked, “I didn’t sin or hurt people.” Exactly. The abuse you endured wasn’t because you did anything, and it wasn’t God punishing you. It was the abuser taking advantage of the power he or she had over you and causing you deep pain. In other words, the brokenness belonged to the abuser, not to you.

Why do bad things happen to good people? This is a huge question. People have been asking this question probably since the beginning of time. There are many, many books on the topic—one, in fact, called When Bad Things Happen to Good People. We have received several questions about the problem of suffering through this Questions Ministry too. You can find some other responses here.   

For me, I think bad things just happen. Sometimes unspeakably bad things happen—as you experienced when you were young. We can’t get away from pain and suffering because they just are. They are a part of living in these mortal bodies (for example, the suffering that comes from disease), and they are part of living in a world where people struggle with their own brokenness (for example, the person who abused you). Pain and suffering just are.     

So what do we do with the pain and suffering we experience? Well, when we are in the moment of crisis, we put all our strength into surviving. Making it through. Doing what we have to do to keep going through the valley of shadows. But then, once we are on the other side of the pain—once we are safe and on the road to healing—we can look back and say to ourselves, “Look at that! I made it through. I am strong. I am resilient. I am me—wholly and fabulously me!” And, once we are safe and on the road to healing, we can look around with eyes more attuned to see the struggles that others are going through. Then we do what we can to help them because we’ve been there, and we know what it takes to survive.

Where is God in all this? The answer I have received through my faith and my personal experience is that God is right beside me. Right there always. Weeping with me when I am weeping. Comforting me. Mourning with me. Giving me the strength to make it through. And, healing me when I’m on the other side of the pain. 

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” Psalm 23 says, “I fear no evil, for You, O God, are with me.” Notice the way that is phrased: even though.  In other words, the valleys will come. The suffering will come. The pain will come. Even though I walk in all those difficult places, the psalm says, God is walking there too, never abandoning me to the pain. In my experience, I have felt God as a presence within me—rather than a bodily presence coming to my aid in the way you describe in your question. But that’s just my experience; others may have the experience of a bodily presence.

I think I hear in your question that you felt abandoned by God in your greatest moment of need. I am sorry for that too. And it makes me think of Jesus’ own prayer from the cross. When he was in his greatest moment of need, he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). In other words, why have you abandoned me? He was praying the words of Psalm 22 in that moment. If you are looking for God in the memories of your painful experiences, perhaps this might be a pathway to discover where God was in those awful times. 

You might want to spend some time with Psalm 22. You can even say what Jesus did out loud, “My God, my God, why did you abandon me?” (I mean, if Jesus can pray such a prayer, then surely we can!) “My God, my God, why did you abandon me?” Say it as many times as you need to, as many times as you want to. Shout it. Whisper it. Write it down in a prayer journal. “My God, my God, why did you abandon me?” And then wait. Wait and see what thoughts come to your mind, what images rise up. 

When I pray like this, I begin to realize that new thoughts come into my mind. Things I never realized before, things I never saw before. I believe these are messages from God. Sometimes we call this the “still, small voice of God” (1 Kings 19:12); sometimes we call it the “peace that passes understanding” (Philippians 4:7). But either way, it has helped me to recognize that God was actually there for me, even though I didn’t see it at the time. I was not as alone as I had thought. Maybe this will be of help to you as you continue your healing journey. My prayers will be with you.

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Are there people beyond earth’s atmosphere? Or organisms?

Are there people beyond earth’s atmosphere?  Or organisms?

The short answer to your question is that we do not know.  Philosophers and scientists—plus regular people like you and me—have been asking this question probably for all of human existence.  So far we have no proof of life beyond earth’s atmosphere, but that does not mean it doesn’t exist.  NASA has a fun website called Exoplanet Exploration that you might want to visit.  You’ll especially want to explore The Search for Life on the site.

In college, I took a class called “The Search for Extraterrestrial Life,” and we explored this question using something called the Drake Equation.  The Drake Equation gives us a way of trying to gauge the probability of whether or not we might ever discover life on other planets within our own galaxy.  (Keep in mind that astronomers estimate there are 100-200 billion galaxies in the universe; we’re just talking about one, our Milky Way!)  The Drake Equation involves coming up with estimates for:

  • the average rate of star formation in the Milky Way
  • the number of those stars that might have planets
  • the number of planets per star-with-planets that could support life
  • the number of those planets that would actually go on to develop life at some point
  • the number of those planets that would develop into intelligent life
  • the number of those civilizations that could develop technology we could detect (such as radio signals that go out into space)
  • the length of time such civilizations would exist

Multiply all that together, and you come up with a potential estimate for the number of civilizations in our galaxy that we might be able to communicate with someday. 

Some Christians believe (or perhaps they fear) that if we were to find life on other planets, it would somehow lead to a crisis of faith because it would call into question the creation stories in Genesis.  I do not share this concern.  The creation stories found in Genesis 1:1-2:3 and 2:4-25 both proclaim God as the Creator.  For me, discovering life beyond the bounds of earth would merely mean that God’s creative work extends beyond what we know.  But I believe that already!  Of course God’s creative work extends far beyond what I can possibly imagine or even comprehend!  Finding life on other planets would become for me just one more indication of God’s magnificent, creative power. 

I believe and proclaim that God is the Creator of the universe—the heavens and the earth; the moon, the sun, and all the stars in the sky. 

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established.
Psalm 8:1, 3

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Why does the Bible make me feel like nothing I do will be right by God?

Why does the Bible make me feel like I should die? Like nothing I do will be right by God?

I’m sorry that reading the Bible makes you feel as it does. And it’s true that some parts of the Bible, like Jesus’ instructions to “turn the other cheek,” (Mt. 5:38-40, NRSV) or to “go, sell your possessions, and give your money to the poor,” (Mt. 19:21, NRSV) sound like impossible ideals for us to live up to.  You may find comfort in knowing that Paul, to whom authorship of much of the New Testament is attributed, also felt badly about his inability to live as he believed God intended him to live.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul wrote, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Romans 7:15-19, NRSV).

Paul, however, also understood the power of God’s grace and God’s desire for us to be justified, or made right, with God through our faith in Christ. In the same letter to the Romans, he also wrote, “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.  For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1-4.NRSV).

Please know that you are not beyond God’s reach, God’s power to forgive, or God’s love, and that God longs to be in relationship with you.

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What about evil and suffering?

Editor’s Note: Three questions were submitted that are closely related to one another:

  1. How can evil exist when God is all powerful, all loving, all knowing?
  2. Why does God allow so much evil in our world?
  3. What’s the point of all this suffering?

These questions — and others like them — are the subject of a branch of theology called theodicy, which roughly means the effort to defend God’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil.

The necessity of that effort grows, in large part, from the belief in God’s omnipotence — i.e., that God is all-powerful. If, indeed, God is all powerful, all loving, all knowing, then the presence of evil or suffering is perplexing and troubling. And the anguished cry of humans is likely to be something like: “God, why are you allowing this?”

But many theologians have suggested perhaps God is not all powerful in the sense of having all the power. Perhaps God’s creatures have some power and the freedom to exercise that power.

It could be, these theologians have proposed, that God seeks to guide and persuade God’s creatures to behave in a certain way, to make actual God’s will for them. But the creatures possess some power and some freedom. In a misuse of their freedom, the creatures to some degree or another reject God’s guidance. When the divine guidance is rejected to some degree or another, the result often takes the form of the suffering and the evil that we see in the world.

I have found this understanding of the relation of God to God’s creatures to be helpful. It preserves the belief in God’s power and love; it serves as a vindication of God’s justice; and it acknowledges the freedom of God’s creatures. It also provides a deeper and more profound meaning to the admonition to pray, “not my will, but thine be done.”

For a fuller and more systematic exploration of the concept of “divine persuasion,” you might try reading this book by Lewis Ford. It’s available online at: https://www.religion-online.org/book/the-lure-of-god-a-biblical-background-for-process-theism/

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How Can I Get Closer to God?

How can I get closer to God?

Drawing close to God entails opening your heart to him (or her). Deuteronomy 4:29 tells us, “From there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and soul.” God desires to be found by us primarily because he will never force himself upon us. He loves us too much to do that. We are not puppets, instead we are his beloved. In Psalm 42:1 we find, “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.” This means that within us there is a deep, deep longing to grow closer to God and he will answer that call. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, wrote in the 4th century, “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

Finally, in terms of how one goes about drawing closer to God, you might look toward spiritual formation through the use of spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines are activities such as praying, reading the Bible, engaging in worship, solitude, silence, service, and communing with others who are seeking the same things, just to name a few. A resource you may want to use is A Spiritual Formation Workbook by James Bryan Smith and Lynda Graybeal. You may also want to ponder the question, “How is God trying to get closer to me?”