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FAQ'S
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 | WHY DID JESUS HAVE TO DIE?
The first reason Jesus had to die was that God is a being who has two attributes named compassion and justice. If you have compassion and not justice, you are a sentimentalist. And that is not a good thing. If you have justice without compassion, you are harsh and rigid and that is not a good thing. It is important to balance both compassion and justice. You cannot violate the demands of justice to show compassion, and you cannot violate the demands of compassion to show justice. The Bible teaches us that God is holy, and that he must sentence evil and sin. For Him not to do so would be for Him to violate the demands of His own justice. Yet God had compassion on us and He was caught in a quandary so to speak. On the one hand, justice required Him to separate Himself from evil. But His compassion drew Him to people who were mired in evil. His only solution was to pay the demands of justice Himself and offer forgiveness based not upon sentimentalism but upon the fact that He, Himself, satisfied the demands of justice by paying the price for justice in His own person and the person of His own Son. Now I could illustrate it like this: Suppose there was a young man who was driving his car 75 miles per hour in a 45 miles per hour zone. He received a traffic ticket and was brought to court. He did not have any money and no way to pay his fine. So the judge said, Well, I can't dismiss the fine because that wouldn't be justice. You owe the court. End of trial. Suppose the judge was not only a judge but the young man's father. After the trial, he steps down and said, I know you have to pay that fine. I know you don't have that kind of money. I am going to write a check for . I'll pay the fee for you. Now it is up to the young man to either accept or reject the payment the judge, his father, made on his behalf. If he rejects it, then the check his father, the judge, gave on his behalf is not efficacious (effective). If he can't pay for the ticket, his only two choices are to accept his father's check or face the demands of justice. The Father is perfectly willing to satisfy the demands of justice, so now the question becomes will the person accept it or not. back to top
| | | IS WHAT WE'VE DONE REALLY THAT BAD?
Have you ever noticed that as we drive a car that hills look a lot higher than valleys? But when you look at it from a satellite, the hills and valleys level out. Similarly when we make moral assessments based on our own perspective it is true that some things are going to look more wrong than others. And God knows that from this perspective murder is worse than stealing for example. Still looking at our sins from an infinitely higher vantage point, it is like looking at our lives from a satellite. The more a person becomes holy, the more sensitized they get to the hideous things that unholy people take as just minor evils. Have you ever noticed in your own moral virtue that what you once thought as no big deal, you now see as a big deal. That is precisely because you have made moral progress. Imagine a supreme being, who is morally virtuous more than you can imagine, any kind of sin would be hideous to him. It is wrong to say that this is no big deal. It might not seem like a bid deal to us because we are looking at the hills and valleys. God looks at it from a much higher vantage point. back to top
| | | IWANT TO KNOW GOD, I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THAT HAS TO BE THROUGHT JESUS CHRIST
I'll answer that with an illustration to show you why that doesn't work. Suppose you stole from me and you brought it back to me a few days later and you felt bad about it. You said, Look, I stole from you and I am sorry. In order to make it right, I'm going to give you . Now, what is wrong with that picture? You might say that is not equal to. But what is wrong with that is something much deeper than the . What's wrong with it is if I am the offended party and you are the offender, you don't have the right to set the terms of reconciliation, I do -- as long as they are fair and just terms. But you don't commit an offense against someone and dictate the conditions of how they will be reconciled to you and forgive you. That is not how it works. Similarly, we have offended God, and He has the right to set the terms by which we will be reconciled to him. We don't have that right. A person that says, Yeah, maybe I've done some wrong things, but I have the right to dictate to him how I am going to be made right with Him is in big trouble. That's blatant arrogance. God has the right to set up the terms of reconciliation. And He set them up in a way where He had His own son sacrificed as a penalty for our forgiveness. back to top
| | | Can people who pass away still see this side (the living part of reality)?
This is a hard question. I'm inclined to say no. There is no clear evidence in scripture for it. There is one passage that talks about a cloud of witnesses surrounding us in Hebrews but that is a very ambiguous passage. Basically I think that is just saying that there have been people who have gone on before us and that they have given a legacy to us. My own sense is that people who die do not have direct knowledge of what is going on here. back to top
| | | Why is easier for some people to connect to God and harder for others?
I think for the same reason it is easier to connect with their spouse or their friends for some. People have various states of dysfunctionalality. There are people who have't cultivated their affective (emotional) life. I know people who haven't heard from themselves for six months. How are they going to hear from God? It simply has to do with the cultivation of the state of the soul. To the degree that a person carefully cultivates the faculties of the soul, they will be able to get in touch with God more deeply. Now God needs to help us with that of course. A rushed, busy life is one where a person will not be able to have a relationship with anyone. The best way to think about this is not to think of God, but rather to think about personal relationships and apply that to God. There is really no difference in principle between me and God and me and my relationship with my children or friends. back to top
| | | What happens immediately after someone dies? Is there an intermediate place of judgement?
When people die they are immediately brought into an intense awareness of God or an intense awareness of the absence of God. That is not the final state because that is a state where there is no body but only a soul. And the soul is disengaged from the body. There will come a time when people will be given resurrected bodies again. At that point they will be spatially located again. They will either be a part of a new heaven and a new earth or separated from God forever. back to top
| | | Why do evil people seem to have a lot of good things happen to them and good people have a lot of bad things happen to them?
It depends on what you call good. If you mean by good a life of instant gratification and pleasure, you might be right. There are times where someone who is a sex-crazed womanizer could have a lot more short-term pleasure than someone who has learned to get control of that part of his life. But I maintain that in the long haul, that isn't true. I think you pay over the long haul for what you purchase in the short term. It depends on what you are after. If you are after short-term pleasure, then there might be counter examples. If you are talking about human flourishing and by human flourishing -- I don't mean what Americans mean about it in having a large amount of affluence and having peace and happiness I mean being able to actually love your enemies, being the kind of person who is full of joy when bad things are happening. Bad people can't do that. You also have to take into account that we don't all start from the same point. There could be some people who are not trying to live good lives, but they had highly functional families, so they started higher. There might be people trying to live virtuous lives but came from bad backgrounds. So in an absolute scale, they would better off than this person who came from a worse background. These kind of judgments are hard to make in those situations it requires an omniscient perspective. There are a lot of moral people from other religions, trying to approach God from another direction and trying to have a relationship with Him. Why can't they? The issue is not good, moral people. Certainly you will find examples of people in other religions who are better than people in the Christian religion. But if the Christian religion is true, people cannot save themselves not because of the depth of our evil, but because of the lack of our holiness. Because of that He had to pay the price Himself. He has made free provision for our forgiveness. But it is not the kind of thing you can earn because the chasm is too far. It isn't like climbing a hill. It's like climbing up to a satellite it is too far to make it on our own. Remember we aren't here to get wet; we are here to swim. We are not here to be good; we are here to be in love with a particular person and be a member of His kingdom. If someone has missed that, they've missed it. back to top
| | | Why do some people seem to suffer more than others?
I think the answer of the Bible is that there is no answer to that in the detailed case. I'll tell you why in a minute. In general it could be that some people make worse choices. It could be that God permits it because He wants to give them an opportunity for greatness. I have had students in my classes who came from horrible backgrounds and others who came from privilege. The students who work hard and struggle through bad backgrounds get more respect than those who started in a better place they earned it. I think sometimes suffering gives a person an opportunity to rise to greatness. You have to understand that we won't make sense of this if we don't throw in the afterlife. Why is it that you can't make a judgment in a particular case about why this is happening to me? Why can't you make these judgments? It could be that the world is better off for God permitting this than it is for not letting it happen not that He caused it. Let's think of what that requires. I have to know what all of the effects of this happening are not just over a few months but over 50 years or 100 years. There could be 25 years down the line a lot of good things produced by this. But then I have to weigh that against what would have happened if it didn't happen. I don't have access to that. I'm not in the position to know all of the facts as to why God lets certain things happen because I don't have all of things needed for that judgment. back to top
| | | How do you know God's will?
This is a very difficult question. First, I think you make sure you are living according to the scriptures. That is what God has give to His people to define His community. More specifically, I think there are good ways of learning how to discern the guidance of God, by learning to discern when He speaks to people that doesn't have to be audible, but you can learn to discern His promptings. There is a good book on this by Dallas Williard called Hearing God published by Intervarsity Press. It is one of the best books I have ever read on how to discern the voice of God in personal guidance. It is a tremendously good book. back to top
| | | What about a person who is a mass murderer and at the very end of his life finds Jesus? Will he be in heaven?
Absolutely yes but he will have almost no rewards. You have to understand. This isn't just about getting into heaven. This is about flourishing in Heaven and having rewards. The rewards are not like having cotton candy for living a good life. C.S. Lewis draws a distinction between a soldier and a mercenary. A mercenary gets rewards from battle that are totally intrinsic to why he is fighting it is just payment. The soldier who gets the spoils of battle gets it precisely as a warrior because he believes in his cause. Now rewards in heaven are not rewards of the mercenary, they are rewards of the person who sought the Kingdom of God with all their hearts. For those who do, they will be given rewards. For the person who is justified by faith at the last, they will have very little to show for it in the afterlife. But how in the world could being a mass murderer be sufficient to overcome the kind of forgiveness that is offered in the murder of the very Son of God. But the person would have missed life on Earth it would be tragic and he would not have rewards in the afterlife. back to top
| | | When exactly is the age of accountability the age at which we are morally responsible before God?
Very difficult for me to judge that. I think it would vary from person to person. The signs you would look for would be a person's ability to understand people as ends and not objects. Someone who could recognize even if they couldn't verbalize it that they are living in a community of others who have value as well. They would be able to understand that they are morally responsible for their actions, and they would be able to form a reasonably clear picture of God. Now children do this at a fairly young age, certainly in late elementary school. But I do think we have erred in evangelizing our kids at a little bit too young. I think we need to wait a little bit because I think sometimes that we cheapen their decisions by having them make them too young. back to top
| | | What are two facts that compel you to follow Christ and what are the evidence for those facts?
I'm not sure I would limit them to two, but the reason we should follow Jesus Christ is because Jesus Christ was God. He was God in human flesh. It was like if I had to communicate to an ant hill that they were in danger, a good way to do it would be to become one of them and warn them. Well, God became a man and walked among us. What is the evidence for that? There are two kinds of evidence. First, is the historical evidence that the New Testament manuscripts are basically reliable historical documents. That involves things like the dating of these manuscripts, arguing that the time in between these documents and the time Jesus died there is not enough time for mythology to develop. We know, for example, that it took at least two generations from the time an event happened in the ancient world for the account to be so mythologized that it would no longer be recognized. Even after two generations, it is largely being retold accurately in the ancient world. From the time Jesus died and the time He was viewed as the Risen Son of God, we date that time span at no longer than three or four years after His execution. That is well within the span of two generations. There is also historical evidence that His tomb was empty, and that He appeared to His disciples after His execution. So the reason I believe Jesus is the Son of God is that He rose from the dead and that there is historical evidence that this happened. Buddha and Mohammed are dead and buried somewhere. Jesus isn't. I don't think that has to be accepted by blind faith. I think there is evidence. back to top
| | | Where did God come from?
That is a category fallacy. That is the fallacy of asking the wrong kind of question for the wrong kind of thing. You can't ask the question of how many inches are smells because smells aren't the kind of things that come in inches. The only kinds of things that you can ask the question where does it come from are things that can come from places. So I could ask where does this podium come from because it is a come-from kind of thing. We learn from experience that every finite object we see is the kind of thing that could just as easily not exist as to exist. Given that every finite thing we see could just as easily not exist as to exist, it is perfectly reasonable to ask where did that come from. But God is a necessary being. God is a being who if He exists exists necessarily. So the question where did God come from is like the question, where did something come from that can't come from anything because He can't not exist. Even if there is no God, atheists agree that if there is a God, that is what He would be like. So my claim does not prove there is a God. It simply says that granting the concept of God that atheists agree to, to ask of a being if it did exist where it came from is a misplaced question. When your kid asks you where God came from, you can say he didn't come from anywhere because he has always been here.
So the question is a mistake. The reason people think it makes sense is because they are used to asking it of questions where it does make sense, namely finite objects that came from some place. God is a necessary being. He is a first cause. And first causes don't come from any other causes. back to top
| | | Can we be secure in our salvation?
That is a difficult question, but I'm inclined to say that once a person enters the Kingdom of God through the new birth, then they cannot lose that entrance. The reason is that you cannot be unborn. If you are a member of a family, you can be a pretty dysfunctional family. But you can't be unborn once you've been born into that family. Similarly someone who has been born into the family of God can lead such a dysfunctional life that they break fellowship with God, they have no sense of His presence. If they continue to do that, it would be a legitimate thing to wonder if they ever had entered the Kingdom of God in the first place. But if they did, in fact, do so, then in principle that person could not lose their salvation. But they could lose the point of it! It's like joining the swim team and then just thrashing around and getting wet. What's the point? back to top
| | | Why does God put a desire in our heart and make it not possible
Like having a baby, for example.
First of all I don't think God puts all desires in our heart. I think there can be inclinations to desires that we have naturally. Those desires can be cultivated or they can be uncultivated based on our day-to-day choices. The strength of a person's desires is not a function of God giving the desires to them. It is a function of them doing something of what they were given in the first place. There are counter examples to this. There are examples where God gives you desires, but by and large the desires people have are not the result of God giving them to them but us choosing to cultivate or not to cultivate certain desires. The desire to be a mother is a natural one, but the strength of that desire can be cultivated. I happen to believe that a person can learn to live a chaste, sexually abstaining life if they are single and be perfectly happy with that. I also think a person can learn to be happy without children. That would be my quick answer. I think there is available for people the opportunity to learn to live without their desires being fulfilled and without that desire being nurtured and festered. I've done this myself. When I don't get a desire met, I start feeling sorry for myself. I keep cultivating the desires in an attempt to get empathy. That's just an example. I'm not saying everyone does it. But I wouldn't want to ascribe all of a person's desires to God. back to top
| | | What happened to souls prior to Jesus?
You have to draw a distinction between the basis of salvation and the means for appropriating that basis. The basis for entrance into the Kingdom of God has always been the death and resurrection of the Son of God past, present and future. But appropriating that to people has not always meant implicit understanding of the gospel message. People in the Old Testament were saved on the basis of the death of Christ, which was still in the future. But the means of appropriating that wasn't understanding the message, because they didn't have a clue. It was a calling out to the mercy of God and living in the light of that mercy, as well as they understood it at that time. back to top
| | | Assuming the Bible is accurate, why isn't God in our physical presence like with Adam and Eve?
The first thing you have to be careful with is ascribing to every case of communication with God and a person in the Bible some vivid, sensory perception of some kind. Many times God spoke to people in the Bible it is the very same kind of experience that we have each day. They were deeply impressed by God, but they had learned to discern it. So first, I want to make sure that we don't ascribe every case where God speaks to someone in the Old Testament as involving some sensory perception or overt manifestation of some kind. But second, some of them did. I maintain that still happens today. In fact, there is a tape I just saw the other day of these two girls who was captured in Afghanistan. One of the girls who was over there showing the Jesus film saw literal healings. They were watching the gospel of Luke and someone asked her, Does Jesus heal people like He did then? She said, yes, I'll pray for you. She saw a man's neck straightened right in front of her. She prayed for a group of children back in their homes and the mothers went home and they were healed. There was one woman who had a vision of Jesus that night in her apartment. The next day she became saved. It was an incredible manifestation. These kinds of things do happen. I think some of the people who have them happen to them are afraid to talk of them. I do think that there were more manifestations clustered around the three great periods of biblical manifestation Moses, Elijah and Elisha and Jesus and the apostles. But as far as we know, David never saw a miracle in his entire life. So we need to make sure that we don't ascribe too much to what happened back then. back to top
| | | Why is God so wrathful in the Old Testament and so compassionate in the New Testament?
I actually don't think that is true. You have to understand that in order for God to get the human race to the point where they could understand New Testament teaching, it took a long time of potty training, nurturing and growing up. That is why the Bible is called progressive revelation. As time has gone by, more and more is known because people didn't know it earlier. If you look at Jesus' statements in the New Testament, they are every bit as stern as the God of the Old Testament. In fact Jesus had more to say about Hell than any other subject. I think that makes them pretty much the same. back to top
| | | Who made God?
Genesis 1:1, 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Is. 43:10-11 "You are my witnesses," declares the LORD, "and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.43:11 I, even I, am the LORD, and apart from me there is no savior back to top
| | | How old is God?
Isaiah 40:28-31 "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 40:29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 40:30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 40:31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint back to top
| | | Has anyone ever seen God?
1 Timothy 6:15-16 "God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 6:16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen." back to top
| | | What is God like?
Exodus 34:5-7"Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD.
34:6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 34:7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation." back to top
| | | Can you become a Christian after you die?
2 Peter 2:4-6, 9 "For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment; 2:5 if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; 2:6 if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 2:7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men 2:8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard) -2:9 if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment back to top
| | | Is there any sin God will not forgive?
1 Timothy 1:15"Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the worst back to top
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