Written by Chris Bloom, posted by Lora Bloom
Throughout the Bible, God tells people to trust him. He's forever showing people he can be trusted. That's all the Bible means by faith: trusting in something you can't see.
Of course, the opposite of trusting what God says is denying what God says. Denial seems to be our default setting, but with all the evidence God has given about his own trustworthiness, the burden of proof lies on the ones doing the denying.
Denial is easy to do, but much harder to justify. There is simply no reason for it. With all that he has done, there is not a single scrap of evidence to back up the notion that God can't be trusted. As Norm Geisler and Frank Turek put it, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.
I'm sure there are a lot of reasons for not trusting God. Some people just deny his existence altogether. I admit it's not a position I really understand, I know some people hold it. Some of the people I know even hold it.
Some people look at all the evil in the world and conclude that God is either uncaring or malicious. It's difficult to know how to answer these people, other than to ask what they expect. Should God protect people from the consequences of their own actions and those of others? If someone shoots somebody else, should the bullet just fall to the floor without hurting anyone? If a pregnant woman drinks, should it not affect her or her baby? If a person jumps from a building, should he just float harmlessly down?
If freedom to choose means freedom to choose what's wrong, then shielding us like that would effectively destroy any freedom we might have. And if we have no freedom, then we're just automatons going through prearranged motions. (I know my Reformed brothers and sisters would say I'm wrong at various points, but all I can do is ask your indulgence. We're on the same side, after all.)
A lot of people use the argument that if God were all- good and all-powerful, then evil wouldn't exist. Since it obviously does, God is either not all-good or not all-powerful. In my opinion, that's a decent argument, but it doesn't take into account the fact that what we consider good might not be the same thing that God considers good.
Man is not the measure of all things. A lot of the mistrust and denial of God's goodness comes from holding him to a human standard that was never meant for hm. We just don't know enough to know what the best thing is. But God knows everything, and he's completely and totally good. It's not just a matter of a blind leap of faith in the dark. It's trusting that someone who can see just fine and will catch you like he promised.
And that's what some of us find so hard: trusting somebody else. Sometimes it's because we've been let down before, maybe multiple times. Sometimes it's because we just can't see how God can work things out. But God's never let anyone down, and it's not our job to know how everything will work out. It's God's. He'll take care of that; we don't have to.
Our trust in God won't make him any greater, and our denial of him won't make him any less. He'll still be God no matter what. We're the ones who stand to lose or gain.
[LC Bloom will still be LC Bloom whether you believe in him or not. He's from Birmingham, Alabama, and can be reached at lechroom@icloud.com. He also writes for Built for Glory and COBRASAURUS!!!!!]
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