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jn_en_2009_07_22

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How to come to faith? II ...

Wednesday, July 22, 2009. How do I come to faith in Jesus? We are taking some days this week to think about this topic. I talk as if you were my friend. We somehow got into a discussion about this. What is faith about? Why do you believe? How do I come to faith? Thats what I want to try. I want to search for the way to faith. How can it happen?

We talked about the struggle to come to faith yesterday. What can be the questions? When I started at the age of 14 to ask consciously on what my faith may be based, I had many open questions. One questions was: why should I believe that there is a God at all? Perhaps the world is empty, there is just what we can see, touch and the physical world below and behind it. Perhaps the view of our natural science is somehow complete - all the religions are following the wrong track? I know a lot about Christianity, and at that point I knew not much about other religions. But what if all this is just an illusion? What if God does not exist?

Of course I was not the only one asking this type of questions. If you look into the history of philosophy you will find every single argument somewhere. Today there are active people promoting a critical view on religion and there are many theologians which have a critical view. So what? Give up faith? I reached the point where I said: I do not know! I really do not know. So I entered a philosophical stream known as “agnosticism”. It claims that you cannot know whether God exists and should act accordingly. In fact I did not follow this claim, I just said that I personally did not know.

The point where I gave up a naiv faith was very important for me. Now I was open to explore what the bible was saying and what Jesus was saying. But it took many years until I made significant progress. Until then I lived in a world where God was far away, though I still had the hope that God was there, but I could not get this into my hands. Nothing was clear, nothing was open.

I want to jump in time a little bit. I came back to faith almost ten years later. It is interesting today to observe this time, looking back. I have not been that far from God. But I was outside of the range of faith. The hope to come to faith is not faith. Thinking God might exist is not faith. But God is extremly nice - he was waiting for me to come to him, waiting for me to come to the point where I could understand what he was up to. It is not catastrophic if we have problems with God. It is even not catastrophic if we have times where we live in darkness. Things can change - and if we ask God things will change! God's perspective is a long term and eternal perspective. [R.W.E.P., jesusnetwork.eu]

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