If there is a God, either he is good or he is evil. If he is evil, I have no interest in pleasing him. If he is good, he will prize honesty. I am committed to searching for truth; a just God who prizes truth will honor honest doubt above blind faith. I refuse to pretend to believe in a God for which I see no evidence merely out of fear that he might exist and out of the infinite possible manifestations of deity might demand faith as a prerequisite for an afterlife of eternal good.

Furthermore, if God does exist, then through all religions in all of history one thing remains consistent: living a life in pursuit of justice and equity, championing the cause of the oppressed, and seeking truth and integrity in all things is the best road to divine reward. This is taught by virtually every religion, and is incidentally the absolute centerpiece of Jesus’ teachings.

And if God does not exist, this is not a bad way to live one’s life — far preferable to demanding blind faith in a mysterious deity and threatening every follower of every other religion/belief/ethos on earth with eternal torment merely because their understanding of God is different from my own. It takes a special kind of arrogance to insist one can know an unknowable God better than every other person one meets.

When there is such overpowering love from Christ and for Him, I look at these questions and feel distinctly uncomfortable. Not in a bad way, at all. It’s a discomfort of someone who wishes she had the answers. I hate that these questions hurt so badly, for people like us struggling, but I wonder sometimes if that is the refinement needed to grow.

I am one of those who is easily optimistic. Grossly so, I’m afraid. It doesn’t mean those questions don’t arise, it just means that I’m optimistic that something beautiful can come out of such ugly and horrible things. I’m optimistic that all those hurt, kidnapped, tortured, and abused people will be welcomed into Christ’s comforting arms, no matter what. I hope (and really, that’s all it can be in Christianity… hope, rather than actual, direct knowledge of what’s happening) that the damned get a second chance (and I’ve read that they do, somewhere). I know, in my heart, that people don’t get damned for not yet knowing Christ.

I don’t think any of what we “know” from the Bible is a certainty. Sorry, I’m rambling. But those were some of the thoughts sparked by the questions and I’ve not fully processed all the questions you’ve written to really be relevant.

P.S. Thanks for your fearlessness in putting those questions out in the open for searching eyes to read.

You mention noah and his ark. It is a common fairytale, told in similar versions all over the world. I commented on a Chinese version of the story a while back on Science blogs. Linky.

This Noah character reminds me of a story that is told by the Dai people of Xishuangbanna in South Western China. They also have a character called (Hen) Sang Mudi that saved all the animals from a giant flood. As an architect he built a giant raft and scooped the animals up to save them all from drowning. As the animals where so pleased at being saved, they helped him to restore the lands of the Dai. The tortoise became (inspired?) a stair, two female dragons became banisters, a monkey helped him put the beams in place… etc. He could thus design the Dais’ timber stilt houses that we know today.

I’ll keep you posted when I write a more extensive blog post about this.