Contending for Faith

The bible tells us to contend for the faith. There is a degree to which the Christian must be willing to fight at least intellectually for his beliefs.

But we are always to love. Love is the Christian virtue. To win without love is not Christian.

Many fields of thought teach charity in debate. Few of those fields practice charity in debate consistently.

As Christians we need to have charity in our debates. We need to love those we debate with and respect them.

You see many intelligent people believe errors. The world often does not act in this way. To disagree with me means you are not intelligent is the common perspective on the street and in the media.

We need to view others we disagree with in a respectful way. "You are wrong but I love you and know that you have many logical reasons for your beliefs" needs to be the way we live.

You see we live by faith. There is strong reason for our faith. But not absolute proof. If it was absolute we would not be living by faith.

The bible says for us to hold onto the faith. And that faith ends in the final day. You see we live by faith from the start to the end of the Christian life.

I believe Christianity is the most sensible belief system. It explains everything, but you see it requires faith.

There is no 100% proof. There is always reason one can doubt and reasonably so. We are not shown everything.

This is why charity is needed. You see every system has reason to have some doubt it in. No system is locked tight with a perfect logical proof.

This may exist but you see we are always so small. Ultimately the bible speaks truthfully about our smallness. It shows us that we are weak and feeble and that is why we cannot understand.

The true psychology of the bible is one of its most interesting proofs. It exposes who we are and that we are not as smart or good or logical as we thought.

Success

What is true success and how can we judge it?

The world has many answers. There are many things the world values.

We can see these things easily if we turn on our TV. What our shows promote and what the ads sell to us.

The bible always has a different perspective. There is a temporal nature to these things which makes them in the sense of eternity worthless.

This is truly difficult to see and impossible without faith, but the moment now is like 1 grain of sand on an entire beach.

If we are lucky to live to ninety we will be judge to have a long life. But eternity is always ahead.

There is always more ahead than behind. The importance of the decision to follow God and listen closely follows necessarily.

Pascal always urged unbelievers to look seriously at the claims of Christianity. Many people feel the pursuit is a waste of time.

Always we think in the moment and if eternity is real the moment is always a moment even if the moment is a lifetime.

When we look at the bible we find that we are who God says we are. No psychology of man really explains humanity.

The psychology and sociology of the day always falls short. The need for progress is instituted to explain that man progresses.

Some progress may exist in areas but often regress in others. A society may become better in some aspects but fall in others.

Education does improve societal behavior but only by degree and not in essence.

The sin nature always exists. We can teach people to act well and not make bad choices because of consequences but it does not change the heart of mankind.

Only God changes the heart of man.