Are we Afraid to Question our Faith or Tradition?

[RamboPreacher]

...
In your heart of hearts, is it un-nerving to you to question your faith.

no. questioning my faith =/= doubting God.

What if you found out that what you believed wasn't really true? What then? What I want to know from you is this: Does it make you nervous to question your faith and tradition? It did for me for a long time - until about the age of 30. Please be honest.

yes, I was brought up in a Christian home and what was taught me (little though it was), was law. no questioning at all was allowed.

it no longer makes me nervous to question. in fact, I get a little nervous when I am not questioning what I believe and why. that is a flag for me that I need to look a bit deeper. I have come to realize that traditions can come and go and usually have little to do with scripture...

so letting traditions come and go are not a problem.

If I find something that isn't really true, I would need to really understand why it "isn't true". not just because someone taught that it isn't true with their presuppositions and apriori paradigms. Gotta know why it isnt' true. (prove it to me, or at least show me all sides of evidences and let me draw my own conclusions.)

[Jennifer Smith]

Traditions- no. Faith - yes.

My faith is built on foundations of the Word and what the Spirit of God has taught and instilled in me. What He has built in me and deposited in my life, I will not doubt or waver on!

The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.

His Word remains and lasts forever, the truth in the Word does not change.

[Russell Roberts]

Jennifer, so you are afraid to question if Jesus really died and rose from the dead? This is, I guess, a norrowing down of my question...sharpening the point a bit. Are you saying that you are afraid to question that?

[dave c]

I don't really want to get very deep into this because of a time element, but a thought has occurred to me (and it's about time). I love my wife and I have known her for 20 years. I don't question that love, either from her standpoint or my own. Our commitment to our relationship is a done deal until death do us part. I do (we do) continually adjust our thinking about each other and our dealing with each other as we learn more about the other and as we pass through various changes/situations.

For me, it is much the same in my relationship with Jesus Christ and His Word. I don't question the foundation of that relationship, but I am continually open to change in my perspective and application. I'm not in love with faith, or religion, or concepts, or interpretations. I'm in love with a person--a perfect person.

That said, it is my experience that God loves to be asked questions of all sorts. That's a lot of the fun of studying and meditating and praying.

[paul]

"irthnvesl

"I used to be afraid to question what I had been raised to believe. In your heart of hearts, is it un-nerving to you to question your faith.

Paul wrote:

I am sure that there are some of us on the forum that have challenged the belliefs we were raised with. For me it led to a different direction in my ministry, the way I viewd the world and my responsibility as a Christian. It led me away from the very organization that I was raised in and loved very dearly.

I think that we really have two questions here.

1. what you have been raised to believe
2. to question your faith.

As has been pointed out by several, is that the foundation of their faith in Jesus has beena bedrock and not questioned.

How does that differ from our beliefs we were raised with. How do we seperate the "traditions" from the "truth" ? Is question our belifs
(traditions) the same as questioning our "Faith?" Or is your traditional beliefs your faith ?

[Russell Roberts]

Well, having been raised as a Christian, the two went hand in hand. So I guess when I questioned one, I questioned both. Once my question regarding the resurrection of Jesus was resolved, other traditions soon followed. But the most challenging for me was simply to question whether the Bible was a truthful accound of history or not.

[one love]

I do not question my faith....as in wondering if Jesus is Lord or that whether he will provide, love, be a friend above everyone else, etc......


Now I do question or get rid of traditions and things of that nature. Years ago COGOP, TCOG, COG and many pentecostal holiness churches did not drink coke, gum, could not cut hair (some still do not cut hair I know) could not wear pants ever...etc. If one feels to do these things or not is between them and the Lord, I see things like that as tradition.
I respect those that feel otherwise.

[TW]

Well, having been raised as a Christian, the two went hand in hand. So I guess when I questioned one, I questioned both. Once my question regarding the resurrection of Jesus was resolved, other traditions soon followed. But the most challenging for me was simply to question whether the Bible was a truthful accound of history or not.

I know that I will draw some fire over my comments, but that's OK. Let's start with the question of; "Is the Bible an accurate and truthful narrative of history?" The Old Testament is the history of the ancient world as seen through the lens of the Jewish culture. Archeological evidence tends to support the major events depicted in the OT. With that being said, the events prior to Moses were from oral tradition, so I tend to grant them much more latitude in their exactness. As oral traditions are passed down from generation to generation tiny differences become magnified. Some of this, no doubt, was to make the tribes of Israel seem more important than they actually were on the world stage. It is important to remember that the ancient Jews had a tendency to exaggerate, i.e. almost every hill over 100 ft in height was named Mount something. The Sermon on the Mount actually took place on a hill that was around 150 feet in elevation. On the other hand the New Testament is supported by the writings of contemporary historians, such as Flavius Josephus. Over-all the Bible can be relied upon as a reasonably accurate historical record of the Semitic peoples of the region.

My other comments deal with "Faith." Faith, simply put is the belief in that with cannot be proven. Can I "prove" that Jesus is the Son of God? No, this I accept on faith. Can I prove the Jesus rose from the dead? No, this I accept on faith. Can I prove that my faith in Jesus gives me eternal life? No, at least not yet, this to I accept on faith.


TW

[Gerald Creasy]

Once my question regarding the resurrection of Jesus was resolved......

What side did you end up on?

[Russell Roberts]

Dang brother. That ought to be obvious. But just in case there is any doubt whatsoever tumbling around inside somebody's head, here is the answer: I am convinced that Jesus died on the cross and was physically resurrected from the dead on the third day.

[Pastor Gary]

Jennifer, so you are afraid to question if Jesus really died and rose from the dead? This is, I guess, a norrowing down of my question...sharpening the point a bit. Are you saying that you are afraid to question that?

What would be the origin of such a question? What would one have read or heard that would challenge that basic assumption of most believers?

[Russell Roberts]

Pastor Gary, for me, I guess I just came to the point in my life that I had to know for myself. My parents seemed convinced...but why? How did they know the Bible was the truth? To even question the validity of scripture or the Bible was, for me, like looking into an abyss. The question that haunted me was this: What happens if I really make a devoted effort to find out and conclude that my faith is baseless?

Determined to know the truth, I delved into scripture, submerged myself into finding out. I just had to know that if I was going to stake my life on something, it dang well better be the truth. Otherwise, as Paul said, "Party up boys cause we're dust in the wind" (That's my paraphrase).

[Mike Vande]

I don't really want to get very deep into this because of a time element, but a thought has occurred to me (and it's about time). I love my wife and I have known her for 20 years. I don't question that love, either from her standpoint or my own. Our commitment to our relationship is a done deal until death do us part. I do (we do) continually adjust our thinking about each other and our dealing with each other as we learn more about the other and as we pass through various changes/situations.

For me, it is much the same in my relationship with Jesus Christ and His Word. I don't question the foundation of that relationship, but I am continually open to change in my perspective and application. I'm not in love with faith, or religion, or concepts, or interpretations. I'm in love with a person--a perfect person.

That said, it is my experience that God loves to be asked questions of all sorts. That's a lot of the fun of studying and meditating and praying.

Yep. I found the thing I needed to do was separate my faith and relationship with Jesus Himself from a lot of the things I had been taught or read in books about Him. I needed that because it became obvious to me that folks I had trusted to teach me about Jesus and the reality of a life of faith in Him had little more idea what they were talking about *on a lot of issues than I did. For example, they taught that healing was the children's bread, but they didn't know why brother so & so died of brain cancer at 28, leaving a wife and two small children without a father or husband to provide for them, when healing is the "children's bread" and he was one of God's children. Without going into a lot of detail, I began an ongoing process of sorting through stuff I had been taught to believe, trying to find out why they were or weren't scriptural. A lot of the stuff I've found so far was from scripture taken out of context, and made to mean something they were never meant to say in order to support a teaching. Sometimes it was a teaching that was in fact biblical, but the scripture being used as a foundation for it didn't really support it.

As have gone through a lot of this stuff, I have had to come back around to admitting there are things that have happened to me that I can't deny were of God, but have no real explanation within scripture. And that doesn't bother me; if I understood everything that has happened to me in the Presence of God, there wouldn't be a need for faith. And if I understood God Himself well enough to explain ever thing He does, He wouldn't be God. God is infinite, or He is not God, and my mind is extremely finite and limited. So, there is no hope of me understanding Him in more than a cursory way, in the limited way humans are capable of knowing Him. I can let things go that I can't explain, and hopefully, I won't manufacture ways to explain things I see that have no humanly understandable explanation. I hope even more that I will recognize such attempts by others when I see them.

[Russell Roberts]

Mike,

That is the problem with the whole health and wealth gospel. Folks like Kenneth Copeland and those who subscribe to such nonsense is that healing is a 'right' under the New Covenant and that the failure to be healed reflects a lack of faith in whoever is sick. This, in a word, is skubala.

Same thing with wealth. To presume that God promises or wants every Christian to be wealthy is to believe an absolute lie. Jesus turned this logic on its head when he said "Blessed are the poor" and "Blessed are those who are persecuted for my name's sake".

"The first shall be last and the last first..." etc. He turned this whole program on its head. God USES suffering in the life of the believer to BUILD their faith and test it. THIS is what is not being taught by a lot of pastors in the Charismaniac movement.

[Jennifer Smith]

Pastor Gary, for me, I guess I just came to the point in my life that I had to know for myself. My parents seemed convinced...but why? How did they know the Bible was the truth? To even question the validity of scripture or the Bible was, for me, like looking into an abyss. The question that haunted me was this: What happens if I really make a devoted effort to find out and conclude that my faith is baseless?

Determined to know the truth, I delved into scripture, submerged myself into finding out. I just had to know that if I was going to stake my life on something, it dang well better be the truth. Otherwise, as Paul said, "Party up boys cause we're dust in the wind" (That's my paraphrase).

I guess that was settled for you a long time ago? Me too, I never really had to question, because my faith had already been proved out to me as I was growing up. My questions had already been answered!