What is the Christian Faith?
4: It takes faith to reject God
To
believe or not to believe is still an act of faith. Faith is like a
spiritual key. It opens us up to an awareness of God’s presence.
Some people are afraid of even beginning to look more closely, wanting to have all the answers. Taking a chance on just speaking to God to see if there is anyone there is out of the question for them, because there is no proof. This is somewhat lacking in logic, since we all live in a state of ignorance. It is just as much a leap of faith not to believe in God as it is to eventually get to the stage where you take the plunge and open up yourself to the risk of faith. Each one of us may be tempted to say that we do not know enough 'about' God. But God does not want or need you to be clever. He wants you to love him and draw close to him. There is a vast wealth of amazing information about God and how people have worshipped, yet this is not an academic affair, it should rather be like a love affair to which we respond with our hearts and commit our lives. The word knowledge in the bible is used of the very closest relationships. We need to spend time in placing ourselves before God and contemplating his greatness and glory. This is something which is very hard in our society today, particularly because very few people have time to think about anything anymore. Everybody is so busy. The problem about living very busy lives is that we can become shallow. We can become cut off from our spiritual roots. Perhaps never before has there been so much need for people to return to the spiritual dimension from which they have been cut off.
It
is not helpful to try and bash people into believing what we believe, it can
easily have the opposite effect.
We should learn as much as we can about what God has taught us through the bible and the lives of other Christians, yet the most important thing that we can do is to know God. To have felt the touch of God on our lives. A little knowledge of God is worth infinitely more than a lot of knowledge about Him. The bible teaches that when we seek God we shall find him. In the Psalms (34:8) in the Old Testament it says ‘Taste and see that the Lord is Good’. A dish may look good and be recommended by the chef, but only if we taste will we ever know. We can talk recipes until we are blue in the face but unless we taste we are ignorant. Have you an appetite to know God, to taste and see ?