Why Won’t God Just Make Me Believe? (Lent 27-2018)

Who knows what happens in the nanosecond before the brain waves cease? Does Jesus make a final appeal, offering one last opportunity before an eternity in hell? Yes, but it’s still an invitation to come, to follow Him, and a choice we have. It’s not like grabbing the hand of the toddler melting down and demanding, “Enough! You’re coming with me, buddy!”

God wants all men to be saved, right? (1 Timothy 2:4)

Why Won’t God Just Make Me Believe? Well, because faith is a matter of the heart, not works, and not history, even for the chosen people. And each man follows his heart.

Heaven wouldn’t be heaven with those who are there completely against their will. They’d soon resent being there with those whose hearts chose to follow.

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In the movie Life of Pi that we’ve been using for our Lent 2018 devotional series, faith is presented as an issue of the heart.

Mother: He’s young, Santosh – he’s still finding his way.
Father: And how can he find his way if he does not choose a path? (To Pi) Listen: instead of leaping from one religion to the next, why not start with reason? In a few hundred years, science has taken us farther in understanding the universe than religion has in ten thousand.
Mother: That is true. Your father is right. Science can teach us more about what’s out there-(With a hand to her heart:) but not what is in here. Art, music, literature they all spring from our faith.

Science. Hmmmm. Stephen Hawking. Brilliant physicist. Crumpled and confined to a wheelchair. Communicating his genius thoughts through voice assistance. He relied on science. Who knows if he died as the atheist he once asserted? I grieve for him and for his family. If Jesus made one last appeal, would Hawking have said, “My Lord and my God! I was wrong! Forgive me!” Or would he have said, “No thank you?” The Independent UK offers this insight

Professor Hawking has long been a critic of ideas of the afterlife or an all-powerful god. He said it was natural to believe in the divine before we understand science – but that science had now provided a better explanation.”

I hope he rethought that answer. To be so brilliant and so clueless…and leading others to cluelessness is a tragedy far worse than an earthly lifetime of disability.

Food for thought:

Why might science not provide the ultimate answer? What is the key to having a heart of faith?
The Apostle Paul spoke of grief at the hardening of his brethren, the Israelites, so the Gentiles could be grafted in as children of faith. He grieved yet he fully believed that the Israel of faith would arise, having their faith rekindled. Read Romans 9. In it, Paul asserts this about the seeming rejection of the chosen people, “32 Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the “stumbling stone.” 33 As it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” How are historical entitlements and science stumbling blocks to faith?

Join me tomorrow for Why Does Pressure Reveal the Inner Man?

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page. Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

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Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014.
Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations. We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17.
ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ. It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.