You might find this strange.
Strange about me, that is.
I am a person of deep faith, a Christian. Raised in the Church since childhood, surrounded by family, teachers, community, and even a nation for whom God was absolutely real, I grew up never questioning the reality of God.
Here is the strange part, though: I have been a skeptic at least since adolescence and on into adulthood.
It isn’t that I don’t believe–absolutely–in the reality of God. I do.
And yet, as I’ve confided to my wife many times, I would be right there among the most sincere, determined skeptics but for this one thing. And it is a powerful thing that is one of the centerpieces of the Bible.
It is that we can each have a personal relationship with God.
In this blog and in the series of books I will be writing (the first of which will be published early 2023) I will describe what that personal relationship has been like for me. I will also look at many of the main parts of Christian dogma that skeptics find troubling. One of these is the concept of Hell.
Skeptics understandably ask something like this: “How can a good and loving God send unbelievers to Hell where they will suffer unbearable pain for all eternity?”
I get it. I really do.
In this blog and in the book series, I will address skeptical challenges such as these.
One of my conclusions is really a challenge for the Church. I strongly suggest that we should respect the challenges skeptics make instead of sighing and shaking our heads and insisting that they either accept the doctrine as it has developed over the last several millennia or be doomed to eternal Hell.
I suggest that the skeptics may well be a sign of God preparing to challenge us to move into the next phase of growth and becoming that He has planned for us.
I hope you will bookmark this blog and return periodically to decide for yourself whether my ideas are worth pondering.
And perhaps you will want to read the book when it becomes available through Amazon in January, 2023.
The book’s title is A Skeptic’s Guide to God: How to Believe When You Don’t.