As a Pastor’s kid, the biggest headache I had growing up was the dichotomy of Faith, Science, and Religion, I did not know exactly where the confluence lies.
For many years, I had a major problem (yes, it was a problem) with some of the Sermons I heard my Dad preach from the Pulpit.
Whenever we got home from Church, I had more questions than answers, many of the stories I heard from the Bible didn’t add up – some were outright insanity when tested under the light of human comprehension, and whilst I was radically awakening the latent Genius in me that was curious to search and know just about anything and everything, the most frustrating part of the search was that even my dad and indeed every Preacher I asked, had no answers, at best, they cautioned me against what they called “overthinking”, for which I may run mad.
Things haven’t changed much till today. Most Christians are very close-minded about the subject of Christianity and the trustworthiness of the prints in the Bible, they dread to think beyond belief and never dare to question the logic or rationality of anything they read in the Bible, their most convenient answer is that it is either a Mystery, a Miracle or a function of Faith and therefore, to them, it is not just a taboo but also treasonable to call the scriptures to question of logic. And if you push too much, they start thinking you are either backsliding, going crazy, or reading books you should not read!
What most Christians don’t understand is that, the book called the Bible, in itself has been a tome that has for generations been called to intelligent questions by great theologians, historians, archeologists, scientists, and several working minds of mighty intellectual prowess and great brain powers. So why do many Christians suspend their Brain Power and discard to their peril their ability to reason or even read wide about the universe in which they function just to avoid their minds from getting too curious to ask daring questions that have the propensity to liberate them from the possible illusion of religion?
If all scientists were staunch Christians with close minds as we see around us today, I strongly doubt we will have Space Rockets as we do today – they will not bother to ask what is up there beyond the skies because it will be unthinkable to find out about escape velocity from the gravitational pull of objects in realms where we believe to be governed by principalities and powers, all we will have done is pray and believe that God lived in a Castle somewhere beyond the clouds. Similarly, we will not have had Marine Engineers and Oceanographers who travel thousands of miles below the Ocean to the seabed and return with evidence such as photographs of the sunk Titanic ship, we will have concluded that such an adventure was an attempt to usurp the powers of maame water or some spiritual mermaid that controlled the ocean planet.
Don’t look at me like that please, okay let me ask you, where does Jesus live? At a point you say he lives in you, right? Other times you say he lives in Heaven where dead men transmuted into saints dwell, another time you say he lives in the Spirit Realm. If Jesus lives in you when you die, where does He who lives in you go? Does he depart from you and go to Heaven to wait for you for judgment? Ok, I get the answer, the trinity right? Never mind, we will come back to this, before you start wondering if I am still born again lol.
But, you, yes, you; you are most likely a Christian reading this, if you were born into Saudi Arabia or some village in China, what would have been your chances of being the Christian that you are today? Be honest with yourself, what is the probability?
Are you a Christian today because a certain mystical being showed up in your room, adorned with great light and beamed rays of powerful lights into the crevices of your eye socket, then spoke with some deep baritone voice and told you he is Jesus Christ of Nazareth, so follow him and give your life to him…or you are a Christian by circumstances and humans being a creature of habit that learns to take the form of its environment and educate itself through self-evolution and adaptation?
You were born into a certain kind of environment that had Churches (and perhaps a few Mosques) all around you, most likely you attended a Church, your parents prayed at home or you followed them to church, attended Sunday School and somehow grew that way, do you know why it is close to impossible for you to have grown up a Shintoist? Because you NEVER had any of its temples surrounding you to influence your mind by doctrinal training or continuous repetitive hearing and seeing of all their practices which is a polytheistic religion that allows more freedom for believers to worship the kami – or other deities.
So if you were born in Aogashima-mura, which is unarguably the most isolated inhabited island of Izu archipelago, the smallest village in Japan, by what measure of certainty were you going to be born again in Christ? And if you never became one, did that, therefore, mean you were bound for hellfire? THINK ABOUT IT! That you have been fortunate to have been born in an environment that made it possible for your chances of making it to heaven possible!
Question: Why will God make people get born into environments where they perhaps never even had the opportunity to hear the Gospel of Jesus and therefore did not become born again, end up in hellfire? Okay wait, let me rephrase, why will humans suffer the fate of an all-knowing God who will burn them in everlasting fire; but in the first place make them appear and get born in places on Earth where their chances of hearing His own Gospel is close to impossible?
When a Faith-filled born again Christian like me, ask this kind of question, it makes the Religious Scribes and Christian intelligentsia uncomfortable, but isn’t this a sensible question to ask; for someone who has a properly working brain that doesn’t stop working just because he gave his life to Christ?
What if the guy in Iran or Mecca also believes that being a Muslim is the way to Heaven, and all his life, that is what he heard from his Father, Sheikhs, Imams, School Teachers, etc and believed genuinely in it, lived honorably and kept all the commandments in the Quran, but then he still gets to go to Hell because he never heard about Jesus nor gave his Life to Christ?
How does this make God look good or sensible not to even consider him as an Intelligent Being or the all-wise entity? And we say His love is everlasting and unconditional? Sometimes it is overwhelming how contradictory it can get.
In the extensive research made by Morgan Freeman in his documentary called the Story of God, it is unsurprising that many people in different parts of the World had a different view of the supernatural being called God.
On my first ever visit Ethiopia many years ago, I saw that in many Churches, Worshipers sat on the mat and crossed their legs as we do for yoga-similar to how Muslims sit on mats and pray, and that was how these Ethiopian Christians worshipped, many of the Churches had symbols of the moon and star on the chapel as though it was a mosque!
I visited the museum, read the story of Lucy, Haile Selassie and so many documented History about Queen of Sheba, King Solomon and many others, it immediately came to my understanding that the Bible we read doesn’t have the full account of many of the stories it tried to chronicle – and if certain pieces are missing from it, how do we know what we don’t know which is not part of it and yet important for us to know? Okay…read that last sentence again, very slowly…did you get it?
Do I believe in Jesus? Yes. Do I believe in Miracles? Why not – as a child, I saw my Dad, a Pastor heal the sick right in my presence, there is an unseen Power that can make the unexplainable possible. Why will I doubt what I personal experiential knowledge of? I pray and see results!
But hey, 2000 years ago, Cloud Seeding will have been an absolute miracle attributed to a Spirit being, but today we know that by Science we can cause rain to fall by inducing nucleation.
So many things that could not be explained 1000 years ago now have an answer, and Mysteries that has remained unsolved for long, e.g. the Bermuda Triangle, is rapidly receiving answers through extensive research and discoveries.
Be Open-minded, I promise you, you won’t die, neither will you run mad, lol.
The other day I was having a heated discussion with another very vast scientist friend of mine regarding the String Theory, Spinoza Thesis on the Theory of God, Darwin and Larmackism’s Evolution theory, etc
I was comparing Spinoza and Einstein’s which has some slight variations. Spinoza’s Theory is strict on the fact that God is not a Creator or any individual entity being of *itself*, whilst Einstein believed in one Supreme Intelligence with Universal Intelligence.
Hey, if you love books like I do, try to read about human history, read Noah Harris’ book called Sapiens, after Sapiens you can read Homo Deus, it is an extension of Sapiens, a book that delves into human history, ethics and our adaptability.
I am currently reading a book called Washington Black – it is about a slave boy in the west indies and his relationship with his white master.
One may ask, what exactly is the point of this article, it is very simple, I have attempted to succeed in stretching your mind beyond its usual limits and confines of how you think about what you have come to believe as your Faith, Religion or Science – whichever is applicable in your case.
One thing is clear, Christianity hasn’t been able to answer so many questions which ordinarily should have logical answers, and the ideology that once you are a Christian you should not ask questions does no good to the Christian faith itself. It just many times make people who hitherto were very intelligent and used their brains more to suddenly discard it all, resorting to relying solely on mystery, which is not the true nature of God, as he is willing to Reveal more knowledge to anyone bold enough to ask questions for more understanding of God and his creation of the Universe.
#violentlydisturbyourcomfortzone
Source: BigGodwin Martey
