My earliest articles were written while I was a faithful Christian, with doubts.  They were simple questions.  As I read and studied more, the questions became more sophisticated, more troublesome.  Pretty soon, my articles started professing real heresy - The Resurrection Challenge, Polytheism in the Old Testament, etc.  And last of all – an article on Secularism, written as a credo by Robert Ingersoll that makes more sense to me than any Christian Creed that I ever recited.

I took a couple of weeks off the Internet, a break from my Theistic reading, a break from commenting on other blogs.  I just needed some fresh air, and some time alone with God (whoever God is) to think about everything I have learned.

I have reached a kind of resolution.  While I still have questions about the Bible and Christian belief, they are now merely academic to me.  My faith no longer hangs on the answers to those difficult problems.  I found answers, but they are diametrically opposed to Christian belief.  My questions about the Bible are now no more than amusements to me.  I might as well face it - I am in no way a Christian anymore.  Morally?  Sure, I can be Christain in the sense of maintaining Christian values.  Do I have faith in Jesus Christ for the saving justification from God and the remission of my sins?  No way.  I used to, I had that faith for many years, but that faith has evaporated.  I am convinced, after much study, reading, reflecting, prayers, tears that The Gospel message for our salvation is pure fiction – pious mythology.  I am not saying this to offend anyone.  It is not a conscious decision to reject any Christian’s belief system; I have not signed my name on any dotted line, and I mean no insult.  I don’t really consider this a de-conversion.  It is just a reaction to what I have learned and experienced.  I can no more believe in Jesus Christ as the savior of mankind than I could believe in Superman as the savior of mankind.

I can list many many reasons why I am no longer a Christian.  But I have defended myself to my fellow church friends many times in the last year or so, and frankly I am tired of it.  I am holding responsibility up to the Christian to tell me what reason I have to believe.  I am open minded – I am willing to accept sound reasoning why I should believe.  I will trust Christianity and Jesus if there is a good reason to believe the Gospel Message is true and the Bible has any divine authority – I have nothing against it and hold no grudge.  But I just see no reason why those things should be true.  And sadly most Christians reason out and analyze last night’s episode of American Idol more than they do their own Christian beliefs – and I think that is tragic.

I am not angry or bitter regarding my years of Christian belief.  On the contrary!  Christianity has taught me an enormous amount about people and why they believe what they do.  Christianity has given me a sound moral foundation, a heart for generosity and giving, and loving and caring for my fellow human being.  Christianity has given me a healthy sense of humility and taught me my proper perspective in the world.  But leaving Christianity has also taught me more about people, both good and bad.  Leaving Christianity has given me a new appreciation for The Bible, as I see it and read it as a human document with whole new meanings, and no longer with the bogus and constricting straightjacket of infallability.  And a side-effect has been a renewed interest in history and literature in general.  

I also believe that since there is no Divine Salvation, there is probably no afterlife – neither Heaven or Hell.  The fact that there is no Hell is a huge relief for me, and a reason for hope for the countless billions I used to believe were doomed with damnation.  If there is no afterlife, then I am committed to making the most of this life as I can, because this is it, baby.  This realization convicts me to be the best man and husband that I can possibly be, and has drawn me even closer to my lovely wife. 

So what will happen with this website?  I don’t know.  I still want to publish articles, but since I am not questioning as fervently and have reached a sort of resolution, my articles won’t be as frequent.  Computers are not a hobby of mine anyway, and given a choice I would much rather be working in the yard or jogging in the desert with my dogs.  I have many diverse interests, not just theistic discussion, so future articles may branch out into other areas, such as history, desert ecology and conservation, physics, astronomy, and maybe even my true love *gasp* mathematics!  Whatever happens, I will avoid Politics like the plague. 

When I do discuss the Bible or Christianity, I still resolve not to debate (too much anyway) with my readers.  Sure, I throw out questions to counter an argument every now and again, but in the end I really don’t care what anyone on the internet believes.  But just remember this.  Life has a way of being unpredictable – all I ask my readers is to never stop learning, or stop asking questions, or take beliefs or claims at face value.  I will continue to do the same, as that philosophy has enriched my life greatly. 

I am not a Christian.  Where do I go from here? 

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2007/04/16/how-could-loving-god

 Nuggests of wisdom from Mr Ham:

When it comes to “moral evil,’’ such as a person shooting fellow human beings, I’m sure most of these leaders would say that it was because of sin. However, if really pushed, many (just like the secular world), would not take all of Genesis 1–11 as literal history.  There’s an inconsistency here in taking Genesis literally to accept sin to explain moral evil, such as the shootings at Virginia Tech, but not taking Genesis literally in their acceptance of millions of years of “natural evil” before man.

Nice – blame it on the scientists.  This is why I can never interpret these portions of Scripture as literal ever again.  My wacko polytheistic interpretation of Genesis 2 and 3 makes more sense than a medieval superstition of original sin that became a modernday scapegoat for the ills of the world.  Is this the true Christian response?  Immediately place blame and place more divisions in our society? 

Compare Mr Ham’s comments to the homily written by SocietyVs:

http://societyvs.blogspot.com/2007/04/evil-intentspirit-and-learning.html

 SocietyVS offers sage wisdom:

Unless we also change our thinking about our neighbor than these horrible things will continue to linger in society (for someone will also hold these grudges of evilness and then one day ‘act upon them’). The change needs to start with us, then work forward in our interactions with others – we need to reflect a ‘good spirit/intent/persona’ – one that allows us to work one with another for the betterment of our lives.  

This shows me that true Christianity does not come from the talking heads and media stars.  It comes from simple folks like you and me. 

Funny – I still *feel* like a Christian.

• How does God talk to you?  Do you hear an audible voice?  Does God speak to you by testings and trials?  A feeling?
• What sorts of things does he say?  Do you check what you hear against God’s word (The Bible)?  Have you ever heard anything that did not pass that test? 
• Does he give you direction in life?  How do you disinguish God’s wisdom in direction from your own wisdom?  Is there a difference?
• How do you know it is God talking to you?  How do you know it is not your own subconscious?  How do you know it is not something else?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

But it is quite evident that the process taken here is based on the goal. Christians want to believe that there is a risen Savior. They want to believe that there is good news, a Gospel. They want to believe that there is hope for today and tomorrow and after this life. They want to believe. The other side, the anti-Christian, wants to believe that there is no risen Savior, no God, no “sins”, no “hereafter”.

Stan, yes I agree that in general people end up believing what they want to believe.  But is that really the case when it comes to deconverts from Christianity?  I don’t know, I have never met any besides myself.  I don’t blame Stan for wanting to believe in a risen Savior.  I don’t blame him for wanting to believe in a risen Savior, a Savior for the sins of a lost and searching world. 

My question to Stan, and to any other Christian who assumes our motives is this – why would I not want to believe also?  Who does not want to believe in hope for the here-after?  Who does not want to believe in an eternal paradise, a paradise with no sickness or pain, an eternity with my family and loved ones, an eternity of great joy, worship of God and a heavenly universe of continual discovery (as I used to imagine it).  Of course I want to believe in these things – why would I not want to believe in this?

One Christian that I know says that I am doing this because I want place myself above God or as my own God, saying that I want to ascend like the Most High (Is 14:14).  Maybe my motive is that I want to fall into a life of Sin, whatever that means.  I have always been a sinner, and I have always accepted that.  It’s not like I am saying, “forget this Jesus Junk, I want cheap wimmin, cheap whisky and to play cards with my buddies”.  You have to be kidding me!  If anything, this experience makes me strive to be a more loving and devoted husband to my wife, and given me a renewed committment to my family – because this may be all there is.

The notion that I want to place myself as my own God is absurd.  I am not out to worship my own greatness and place my knowledge and wisdom above God Almight.  I would never dare!  I realize my frailty, my weaknesses, my nature to occassionally fail, and yes if you wish, my own sinfulness.  I claimed Jesus as my Personal Savior, my Lord for as long as I remembered, and relied on his unique and perfect sacrifice on the Cross for the remission of my own sins.  I had no problem confessing my sins to a loving Savior who gave His all for me.  That I am rejecting Jesus because I love darkness rather than light is patently absurd.

I love my Christian church family.  I love my biological family, some of whom are Christians.  I grew up with them.  I lived with them.  I learned with them, worshiped with them, witnessed with them.  I have been a Christian my entire life.  I loved being a Christian.  The Christian belief system is ingrained in me.  How could I not love them?

 Of course I want Christianity to be true.  To change my entire life’s paradigm at 43 years of age is … .. not exactly easy.

Stan, I agree with you when you say:

Now, being on one (obvious) side, I can’t really begin to fathom why someone would want to believe the other way.

It is simply this – after much reading, consulting Church members, researching, praying and thinking, I find the claims of Christianity, our Bible, and the here-after to be wholly implausible.  I may be wrong.  I want to be wrong.  I am still looking. 

 I am a physicist by training and profession.  I must take loads of evidence, and relate many variables before I make a decision on how to procede with an experiment.  I must take observations that I have made in the past, and extrapolate those into predictions.  Why should Christianity be any different?  I have looked, studies, probed and prodded, and as much as I want Christianity to be true, right now, as of 10 April 2007, I find it very unlikely.  If God holds me guilty because I see very little probabilty of the claims made in the Bible with relation to other alternatives, then this universe is truly mad.

There is one more misconception that I must address.  I am not ‘deciding’ one belief system over the other.  I once believed the long held notion that our Earth was flat (not really, but work with me here).  Somebody presented me with some evidence to the contrary.  Very interesting, I thought.  But my evidence still outweighs theirs.  Pretty soon more and more people piled on the evidence for a round earth.  Pretty soon, I became convinced through the preponderance of evidence.  My decision that the earth is spherical is a reaction based on the evidence presented to me, and I am making a similar reaction based on the evidence from Chrisitanity.  I am not converting or deconverting to anything because of a pre-concieved ethical notion of right or wrong, who I want to be lorded over, or my desire that there be no accountability to a God.  That is rubbish!

At the same time, I have to understand.  As a Christian, I thought all apostates maybe were never Christians in the first place, and wholly lost in their sins.  It is what we were taught.  How wrong I was…  

But to me, it is not what is possible, but what seems most plausible. The Synoptic Gospels line up the events of Jesus life fairly well. The Synoptics line up the events of the cross pretty well also, despite the differing sayings of Jesus in all 3. They line up sort of well until…. guess where? The assumed original ending of Mark at verse 8 of the Resurrection story. That is when things get hopelessly confused in Matthew Luke and John. I think this is sufficient reason to think that Mark is the oldest Gospel and was used as the main source of information for Matthew and Luke. Mark and Matthew use really implausible story-telling devices. I think it is in Mark where the women are witnesses to the burial of Jesus at the tomb. Why did they go to the tomb alone on Sunday morning, knowing a rock they could never move was there?

In Mark, just as they muse, “who will roll away the rock for us?” right on cue, they look up and what do you know, the rock is rolled back.

Matthew elaborates on this greatly. The women come to view the grave, the stone does not simply roll back, no there is a massive earthquake, an angle comes out of the sky, either the angel or the earthquake has rolled back the stone, but the angel sits on it! Whoa, very impressive – but it reads to me like a story embellishment.

I hear that all 4 Gospels vary greatly because this represents 4 different vantage points. This is not plausible to me. How many witnesses were there to the resurrection scene? A few women at the most that I can see. Why would they tell 4 different eyewitness reports to 4 different Gospel writers?

And speaking of witnesses, who were they? In John, Jesus materialized in front of his disciples where? In Jerusalem behind locked doors!! That’s it? No outsiders allowed in to see the risen savior? In Matthew he appears at an isolated Mountain top in Galilee. Why the secrecy? We don’t believe modern-day conspiracy buffs when they are the exclusive witnesses to an event (no offence, I don’t know how else to phrase that!) “You didn’t see it? It was here, I swear!” Paul speaks of 500 witnesses – this does nothing for crediblility here, not in my eyes. It seems like an afterthoght – “First to Cephas. Then the 12. Then 500 other people!” But, who are they? It could have been 5000 people and this does not help the testimony any.

There is real confusion in the narratives as to whether Jesus was spirit or flesh. Yes, there is a difference – a huge difference. In John, Jesus was not to be touched – presumably because he was spirit. Later he can be touched, in other Gospels he is sometimes ghostly, sometimes flesh. Through in the narrative in 1 Cor 15 for even more competing doctrines and real confusion. I just see many competing doctrines in these stories about the nature of Jesus’ bodily nature. Read books like Tobit, 2 Enoch or Ehman’s ‘Lost Christianities’ for more info on this, it is a huge subject.

I could go on about where I think the most troublesome difficulties in this story are, but I don’t have the time right now. It seems the most probable to me that these are fictive devices, that we see story development and elaboration and embellishing when we read the Gospel Resurrection stories in the order that they were written. Hey, I could be wrong, but to me that makes the most sense. If God wanted to be convincing to me and a whole lot of other people, he picked a funny way of inspiring the 4 Resurrection narratives to be believable.

So the bottom line is, did Jesus rise from the dead? Is he resurrected? Anything is possible, and I do not discount the miraculous. But from everything I have read and from what makes most sense to me, I don’t think a man named Jesus physically rose from the grave. The narrative elements don’t seem likely to me. This is not easy to say, and I would like to be convinced otherwise – after all, I believed it my whole life.

.…and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.   Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.   If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.  – 1 Cor 15:17-19 (NASB)

Of course I believed in the Resurrection.  It is a foundational belief.  It is essential.  As CS Lewis would say, it is part of “Mere Christianity”. 

I have always been an avid reader, and I always saw books in the library or store that had titles that just screamed, “Open my cover and browse my pages if you dare.  For we are here to challenge your Christian beliefs!”  My church pastors had words for authors of books like this:  Pseudo-Intellectuals, who “professing themselves to be wise, they had become fools” (Rom 1:22).  They were likely angry apostates, out on an agenda to debunk The Word of God, the Anvil that has worn our many Hammers.  It was easy to pass by these books left on the shelf without thinking another thought. 

Upon entering graduate school, I was introduced to the Internet, and I was soon a little overwhelmed with the ease that I could obtain information.  More than I few times, before I knew better, I had accidentally hit a porn site while in the school computer lab, and I would be furiously clicking the “close” button before an administrator noticed!  The power of the Internet, the Information Superhighway, where articles and opinions were shoved in your face before you had a chance to see what was on the cover. 

While working in the lab late one night all those years ago, I stumbled onto this site, an article by Dan Barker, self-proclaimed minister turned atheist, which challenged the reader to take what he called the Resurrection Challenge.   The Resurrection Challenge was a challenge to harmonize the accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in the Four Gospels, and the one in 1 Corinthians 15 to remove the (apparent) contradictions.  Dan Barker was a Christian minister who became an atheist simply because, he claimed, he found Christianity to be unbelievable.  Another angry apostate!  I read a few paragraphs of the article, but did not finish it.  Of course the Gospels could be harmonized – we are only talking about the inerrant Word of God here!  Sure the angels appear in different places in Jesus’ tomb, sure they said different things, but those details are so minor, so trivial, when considering he entire overarching theme of the Resurrection.  The funny thing is, I never took it upon myself to at see if the Resurrection accounts could be harmonized.  I knew they could, and that settled it.  I clicked the browser window closed and did not give the Resurrection Challenge another thought. 

Until last year.  I was hosting our small group Bible Study, and the seeds of doubt had begun in my own faith.  I was still a Christian, a believer in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  I was scrounging around the Internet looking for some resources, until I again stumbled on, you guess it, the long forgotten Resurrection Challenge.  This time, I read the entire article.  Then I grabbed a steno pad, pencil with sturdy eraser, and attempted the Resurrection Challenge.

I admitted defeat in about 5 minutes.

Undaunted, I itemized most of the discrepancies that I found in the Resurrection Accounts just to see how many there were.  Some of the contradictions are listed in the original article, but I had to check for myself.  I was stunned at how divergent the accounts were.  Not only were they contradictory in nature, they were practically completely different stories!  This was not a case of several different eyewitness getting the story details slightly different, this was wholesale opposition.  The truth of one Gospel account had to imply the falsehood of the other.

I listed the portions of the Resurrection accounts which diverged from the other accounts, and gave up after a couple hours.  It really rattled me.  If God wants us to believe in the Resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ, why are all these accounts so different?  If God wants us to believe, why did he make his recording of events so inconsistent with each other?  If these were separate Police reports of the same event, would they even be considered?  What truth could be gleaned from them?

Read the original article here.  Take the Resurrection Challenge.  What do you draw from your conclusions?

A list of some of the contradictions is at the end of Barker’s article.  But he did not list one that I found, one that I consider perhaps the most troublesome and baffling contradiction in the entire Bible.  It concerns whether Christ rose in the Flesh, or rose in the Spirit.  Here I list two accounts from the Resurrection narratives:

Account 1)
In 1 Cor 15, Paul is speaking of the resurrection of the dead, following the example of the resurrected Christ. He makes this remark that states Jesus was risen with a Spiritual, and most emphatically not Physical body.

So also is the resurrection of the dead It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
1 Cor 15:42-44 (NASB) – but read the whole chapter for good context.

Account 2)
The resurrected Jesus has just disappeared from Emmaus, and has appeared to the eleven remaining disciples in
Jerusalem. He mentions that he has a Physical, and most emphatically not Spiritual body.

While they (the eleven disciples) were telling these things, He Himself stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be to you.” But they were startled and frightened and thought that they were seeing a spirit. And He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. While they still could not believe it because of their joy and amazement, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave Him a piece of a broiled fish; and He took it and ate it before them. Luke 24:36-43 (NASB)

The only way I have seen these two passages reconciled is with the tried and true Harmonization by Omission tactic.  I have heard the theory that Jesus could have risen as spirit, ascended to heaven while nobody was around, then came back to Earth as flesh.  I won’t even entertain that idea here, because to give it credibility is to be desperate to even include sheer brute force to make this issue harmonize. 

Some Christians concede that while the details of particular passages may differ, the essence remains consistent.  I don’t see a consistent essence in this case.  Everything differs except the amorphous detail that Jesus rose.  What message he left, who he saw, what form he took and what he did remains unknown, because not a single detail can be reconciled.

The essence of Jesus life through the Gospels seems to be consistent, at least through the Synoptics.  He taught similar things, he performed similar miracles, and events can be harmonized with a little ironing over rough details.  Why do the events diverge so greatly after the crucifixion?  There is general agreement that Mark is the first Gospel to be written, and many scholars agree that there is not much of a Resurrection story in that Gospel.  Many scholars agree that the Gospel ends at Mark 16:8, with the women fleeing the sepulcher in fear.  The End.  If that is true, could it be that when Matthew and Luke were independently compiling their Gospels from Mark, and left with a paucity of Resurrection material, had to elaborate their own accounts from Oral Tradition and legend?  What about John?  Perhaps he had to derive things independently as well, thus four wildly divergent Resurrection accounts. 

That is the only thing that makes sense to me.  Is the Resurrection of our Savior Myth and Legend?

Tomorrow I will go to mass with my wife and celebrate Easter with her.  I want to believe, I truly do, but what am I to hold my faith on?  I am convinced that the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy is incorrect, so do I have nothing to go on but 2000 year-old hear-say?  I want to believe because I am afraid to discard a belief I have held my entire life.  I want to believe for the sake of my family, and the sake of my wife. 

I am afraid to say it.  But I must admit it.  This will be the first Easter that I celebrate as a non-believer. 

I used to be involved in a small group home Bible Study organized by our Baptist Church.  We usually hosted it in our house, and sometimes I led it.  We had a workbook as a rough guide, and since I thought the book was rather tepid, I liked to venture into gray areas that were not discussed in the book.  This was always more meaningful and relevant for me, and hopefully challenging for the participants.  We usually followed this up with prayer requests and intercessions before God.  

One particular night, our topic was prayer, specifically prayer for the sick.  Our Scripture was out of James:   

Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective – – James 5:13-16 (NIV) 

One of the members recalled her deceased father.  He had always been a good father, she said, and we let her speak as she shared some reminisces.  Then she began crying.  Why did God take her father while he was so young? she cried.  He was a devout man, she said, he always obeyed his parents.  We all sat and let her grieve.  He always obeyed his parents, so I don’t understand why God took him so young.  I don’t understand why God did not keep his promise.   

She was referring to this:“Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— “that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” – Ephesians 6:2-3, which is just a rewording from the commandment in Deut 5:16. 

We heard her right.  The commandment that she referred to has a promise attached.  She was accusing God of breaking that promise right in front of our eyes.  “Why”, she cried, “did God break his promise?” 

The group collectively said nothing.  No, I don’t think she was expecting answers from us.  She just missed her father terribly and wanted to mourn.  But I felt completely impotent.  When she was done crying, she collected herself, wiped her eyes and prepared to continue with the workbook.   I felt not only impotent, I felt that Ephesians 6:2-3 and Deut 5:16 were just as impotent.  We could offer no answers, no support, and neither could our Bible or our faith in God.  She asked why God broke a promise that is clearly stated in Scripture.  Her father kept his end of the deal, so why did God not keep his end?  But we dare not dwell on these things, because in the end it is all according the divine Will of God.  The Will of God trumps everything.   

So we ignored the whole thorny issue, said not a word about it, and moved straight on to James 5:17.  “Elijah was a man just…” 

That was the last small group that I led.  I just could not go on with that same pious routine, which I felt was losing all spiritual relevance and meaning.  Our small group just seemed to excel at passing around short excerpts of Scripture that had long since become trite platitudes that ultimately meant nothing. This was nothing new; I had experienced this sort of thing many times before.  This spiritual dryness brings about the call for ‘Revival!’ amongst the truly faithful.  Since we had become lukewarm and stale, it was time for a revival of the Holy Ghost, to stop being mere spectators of the Faith, and be on fire for the Word again!  So Revival would begin by being more fervent and emotional in our singing, studying daily to find the ‘meat’ of the Word, more time in the ‘Prayer Closet’, secretly giving an additional offering over the 10% tithe, and more Evangelistic calls to the lost.  But this time I had to face it.  Unless we are some natural born Billy Sunday, this attitude just does not last.  I knew that even if our small groups witnessed the most dramatic revival ever, we would still be powerless to answer a simple question like “Why did God not keep his promise in Scripture?”  Holy Ghost empowers our revivals for only so long before we lose the fire and drift back into Biblical Platitude Land.   

I figured if revivals worked like this, we were barely alive.  “Call the Medic, The Church needs reviving again!”  I know what the Christian reader will say at this point.  You need more faith!  You need more prayer!  You cannot just try Jesus and quit if you don’t like Him, it is a full commitment!  I don’t know what to say to this, except to say, to quote DagoodS, “You have no clue”.  We were all committed Christians with saving faith, including my wife and myself.  But I just had to face the fact that there is something fundamentally wrong with this faith that seems to be empowered by nothing but our own fervent desire, our own deeds of study, prayer and evangelism, and our own good intentions. 

Here’s a general question for anyone — in terms of the Bible, what are the clear-cut, no way around it, ways that one knows one is saved? All I’ve really found is believe in the Son, and ‘publicaly confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in one’s heart in the resurrection.’ Other than that, it comes across as somewhat vague.

Here is my answer.  It started as a direct answer to Heather, but quickly morphed into a general rant so sorry for the crude structure.  Other answers and comments are, as always, welcome.

************************

Salvation, as preached from our Pulpits seems very simple.  Our Pastors generally have it down pat – and it makes sense if you follow their logic and not think too hard about it.  But I agree that if we put away our Four Spiritual Laws pamphlets and Chick Tracts and see what the Bible actually says about Salvation, it gets hairy.  It is no wonder theologians have struggled with these issues for centuries. 

Here are a few passages that come off the top of my head.  Mind you, there are more: 

John 3:16 says if we believe in him we will have eternal life.  Simple enough. 

Ephesians 2:8-9 says we are saved by grace and not by works.  Cool. 

Matthew 19:16-22 has Jesus telling a young rich man that he will attain eternal life by following the commandments, selling all his possessions and giving the proceeds to the poor.  No mention of grace, or God’s favor.  OK, now it is getting confusing.  Are we saved by grace or not? 

Romans 6:3-5 says that we will be united with Christ Jesus in the resurrection if we are baptized into Christ Jesus.  This is said in the context of dying to sin.  No selling of your possessions here.  Again, what does baptism mean in this context? 

Titus 3:4-8 says that we are saved by the mercy of God through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.  God gives his mercy when we trust in him.  Do we trust in God that he will save us?  That he is merciful?  Trusting that God raised Jesus from the dead? 

1 Corinthians 15 defines the Gospel (The News) by which we are saved.  Hold firmly or believe on this word: That Christ died for our sins, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day and that he appeared to Peter, the Twelve, more to 500 people simultaneously, James, all the apostles, then lastly to Paul.  OK, so we simply believe these things – no word of giving to the poor or baptism for our salvation.  Which is it? 

These instructions are tough to put together, but it gets worse.  For instance, when baptism is mentioned, what does baptism even mean?  Is baptism necessary for salvation or isn’t it?  If so, is it by Immersion?  Sprinkling?  As an infant? As a cognizant believer?  As repentance?  As witness?  And if we have to believe in Jesus, we have to make sure it is the RIGHT Jesus.  Is Jesus the sole atonement for our sins?  If baptism is a requirement for salvation did Jesus die for all sins up until the time of baptism or also after?  Do we have to believe that Jesus was God Incarnate?  Or is it enough to believe that Jesus was the Son of God?  Am I wrong to believe that Jesus is a god outside of the Father?  No, that is clearly heresy.  Or is it?  OK, then can I believe that Jesus is another personality of The Father, like a schizophrenic God?  No?  Is Jesus a separate entity from the Father all together to form a united GodHead, much like a father and son form a single united family?  That is heresy too?  But what else is Three Persons in One Godhead supposed to mean? Then is Jesus the same as the Father but in a different form, like liquid and ice are both forms of water?  Is that the Jesus we are to believe?  This doctrine says that modalism is a heresy, is it?  I don’t know, you tell me.  Are we to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, or does that not matter?  Are we to believe in Jesus as Savior?  Or are we to believe in Jesus as Savior and LORD? 

This may seem over the top, but it is really not.  Over the years, brilliant theologians wrestled with all these issues and countless more to ensure that they understood God’s Plan of Salvation.    

Here is an example to consider:  In my last article Trusting Jesus for my Salvation, I quoted Mark 16:16, which says that you have to believe and be baptized to be saved.  Period.  What do you believe? The resurrection?  The crucifixion?  That Jesus is the Son of God?  Do we believe a person?  An event?  A teaching?  Almost as troublesome -  How are you baptized? With water?  With the spirit?  Both?  What does that even mean?  When are you baptized?  As an infant?  On the deathbed?  As a literal confession of sins?  As a symbolic witness?  There is no mention of these thorny issues. 

This is just a smattering that comes off the top of my head.  There are other passages which mention works, baptism, repentance, the old Mosaic Law, …… 

Most Christians attempt to harmonize all these Salvation passages into a coherent unit, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.  For the last few hundred years, we have been in a unique period in history.  We actually have the privilege of opening up the Scriptures and reading and interpreting them for ourselves, where the poor commoners in the Middle Ages had to rely on the word of their local priest.  And we now see for ourselves how difficult it is to put that Divine Jigsaw Puzzle together.  After reading the Bible for myself and being as objective as I can,  I honestly don’t think I even know what Salvation means anymore.   

Here is another example to consider:  God spent the better part of 20 chapters in Exodus giving Moses and the Israelites very detailed instructions on how to communicate with him by means of a portable structure: The Tabernacle.  The Tabernacle was to be where the Glory of God lived, where the High Priest would atone for the sins of the people, and where God would meet with his people.  God went through great effort to give Moses unambiguous direction on how the Tabernacle was to be built.  He gave specific size dimensions.  He gave encampment instructions for the twelve tribes.  He gave the materials to be used in the Tabernacle.  He described the rooms, the Outer Court, the Holy Place, and the Most Holy Place.  He gave great detail to the implements and ornaments to be used in the Tabernacle.  The colors, the metals, the types of skins, the curtains, the braids, the hooks, the pins were all specified.  The shewbread, the laver, the branched lampstand, and the alter were all detailed.  In the Holy of Holies was the very focus of the Tabernacle – The Ark of the Covenant, the construction of which was detailed in every way.  The lid was actually a separate item, the Mercy Seat.  The materials were specified, along with the cherubim engraved on top, which protected the Holiness of God in his meeting place.  The uniforms or vestments of the priests were also detailed.  The aprons, the breastplates, the helmets, the robes, the tunics, the … 

You get the idea.  I have not even commented on the ceremonial feasts, cleansings or offering instructions as given by God.  If God gave Moses this much detail on his Tabernacle to Moses, written like a bulleted list that even a caveman could understand, then why are we, the Saints of the Church Age given such ambiguity as to our eternal salvation?  If Jesus’ atonement by crucifixion and subsequent resurrection is the culmination God’s Plan for the Justification of humanity, the event the Old Testament prophets dreamt and wrote of, the event where Christ humbled himself to obedience to death and God exalted him to the highest place, the absolute Apex of the History of the Universe, if all that were true you think God would at least give us Clear, Consistent, Unambiguous, Non-Contradictory instructions on how to take advantage of that Plan of Salvation.   

But it is not simple.  It is very difficult.  God’s plan for Salvation is not a clear list like he made for Moses when the Tabernacle was built.  God took that effort for the Israelites, but not for us.  I have to wonder why God never made that effort for those whom he loves so much.  Unfortunately, we have no clear instructions and that is why we have countless Christian denominations, which all interpret the Bible, and in many cases, God’s plan of Salvation very differently.  He lets us put together a jigsaw puzzle of seemingly random passages that say very different things about salvation.  And you better make that puzzle fit and interpret these salvation passages correctly.  Don’t just find a church creed that teaches the interpretation of Salvation that you find palatable, or rely on the church interpretation that you were born into and have grown comfortable with.  Your eternity rides on how you decipher these passages.  Our eternity rides on knowing God’s Secret Handshake.     

Are you interpreting God’s plan of Salvation correctly?  Are you sure?  How do you know?  Are you really sure?  Are you willing to gamble your eternal destiny with the knowledge that you currently have and your particular interpretation of Scripture?  

**sigh** Hand me that simple Four Spiritual Laws pamphlet, will you?

In the meantime, I found this article by DagoodS called Can’t Win.  He is a much better writer than me, and fully expresses the predicament of losing faith in God.  Yesterday, in a comment on this site, I admitted that I had lost all faith that God would answer any prayer.  It is rattling to even type that confession here, but there it is.  I do have much to think about the implications of that statement.

As a fully deconverted Christian, DagoodS may also be predicting my future in his article.  Maybe.  I don’t know what the future holds for me, but I will keep searching, and will continue to be honest.

Read the article here.  It is long, but read it to the end and you will be rewarded.  DagoodS expresses many of my own thoughts better than I ever could.

Afterward He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen.   And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.  He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.  These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” – Mark 16:14-18 (NASB)

There are many other portions of scripture like this (John 14:12, Matt 17:20, Matt 18:19, Matt 21:21, Mark 11:24, etc), where the followers of Jesus are promised that they will be able to accomplish miracles and wonders with the power of God.  I believed this as a youngster, but as I grew older reality set in.  The world around us tell us that these promised miracles never occur.  No matter how devout we are, no matter how much faith we have, the promises of the miraculous never occur.   

But it grew worse then that when I prayed for, not the miraculous, but base and simple things.  I prayed fervently for the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit to help me witness to my friends at work.  After a while, I felt as though I were merely talking to myself; pumping myself up with confidence, “I can do it with your strength, I can do it with your strength, I can do….”  But I felt no overwhelming power than that which I could muster up from my own being.  This worried me.  I felt that I was being ignored by God, despite my living as sinless and faithful life as I possibly could.

Many attempts are made to reconcile these portions of Scripture with this fact of reality.  I have heard that the promises only apply to the original Apostles.  I have heard that the promises are applicable to Christians as a whole, and may not apply to individual members.  I have heard that we cannot perform miracles today because we are a sinful and faithless bunch of Christians.  I have heard ‘casting out demons’, ‘serpents’ and ‘deadly poisons’ allegorized to mean things like alcoholism, and ‘speaking in new tongues’ allegorized to mean speaking in love.  All sorts of attempts have been made to excuse the Bible for what we witness in our natural world.  

I have long ago lost patience in trying to rationalize these troublesome portions of Scripture, because I found in it something far more serious.  There is a small phrase in the Great Commission that really concerned me:

 “He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.”

If Jesus did not keep his promises concerning the obviously miraculous, or even simple and mundane requests in prayer, what kept him from keeping the promise of salvation?  If the promises were only given to the Apostles, was his promise of salvation only to the disciples?  If everything in the Great Commission is allegory, should Jesus’s promise of salvation be allegorized also?  If that is true, what does salvation even mean? 

I was thrown into a real crisis of faith.  If all these elaborate arguments needed to be made to excuse the Bible’s broken promises for the believer, if these promises of the miraculous are never fulfilled, or my mundane prayers seemed to be ignored, what is to keep Jesus from fulfilling his promise of Salvation?  Was I really at the whim of a God who will show mercy on just those whom he will choose? (Exodus 33:19, Rom 9:15).  Was I saved by God’s grace or not? 

In the end, I decided to just forget all that troublesome clutter and just have faith in Jesus.  I guess that is called ‘resting in his grace’.  I decided that these passages of Scripture were probably never going to be reconciled in my lifetime, but if I were just to be saved by the grace of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, I should just trust in that and not worry about the complications. 

In other words, I pretended those broken promises did not exist.  I ignored the contradictory passages of Scripture that promised great things and never delivered.  Frankly, I ignored those passages out of fear.  Who am I to question God? 

Now that I am out and openly questioning these difficult passages, I again ask these same questions.  The Scriptures which make promises of this type make no sense to me.  Can I trust Jesus for salvation when trusting in him in other promises avails nothing?  Is the concept of salvation just an allegory for the disciples’ ears?  Is there even any such thing as Salvation? 

[footnote:  Now that I have done more reading, I am well aware that many modern Scholars consider Mark 16:9-20 to be spurious.  If that is true, that opens up a whole nother can of worms, but that does not negate plenty of other passages of Scripture which promise us Salvation through Jesus and answer to prayers.]