In my
early adult life I began to wonder about God and Christianity. And I began to ask myself questions along
these lines:
Is this
Christian faith—that I say I believe—something I really do believe? Or, is it something I’ve just accepted
because it is what my parents have handed to me?
Can the
Christian faith hold up to hard questions and intellectual scrutiny? Or, is it simply a blind leap in the dark?
This
began a process that has prompted much thinking, questioning, searching,
self-reflection and study. I am not a
brilliant person. But I have enough
intellectual capability to think and reason and investigate. And this has led me to discover and read
authors such as: Paul Little, Ravi
Zacharias, G.K. Chesterton, Josh McDowell, Philip Johnson, William Lane Craig,
C.S. Lewis, James Sire, Norman Geisler, Frances Schaeffer, Os Guinness, J.P.
Moreland, Charles Colson, Paul Copan, N.T. Wright, Lee Strobel and many others.
I have
discovered that the Christian faith has an incredibly deep and rich
intellectual heritage. It turns out the
hard questions have actually been asked and wrestled with for a long time. In fact, I found that questions I would have
never even thought to ask have been grappled with for many centuries.
Have
all my questions been answered? No!
But I realize,
now, that no worldview, philosophy, or scientific approach can answer all the
questions. There are simply things we do
not know.
It’s
almost like “life” says to all of us, “There are things you don’t get to
know. Get used to it!”
Do I
still have faith in Christ at this point in the process? Yes. I
still believe. My heart still tells me
that He is the way, the truth and life.
I cannot walk away from that conviction.
This may sound strange to those who do not share my convictions, but the
truth of Jesus seems as true to me as the fact that I breathe. But now my intellect is satisfied that it is
a reasonable faith based on truth that is supported by credible evidence.
Dan Marler
Oak Lawn, IL
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