I hope and pray that my struggles with faith will be mostly private. Undoubtedly, some reader will ask why I pray for that. Isn't faithlessness in vogue these days?
After all, apostates like Bart Ehrman, John Spong, and Marcus Borg make a name for themselves with works of faithlessness. All of those men are well known for their opinions on the reliability of the Bible. Their opinion is that the Bible is not reliable as a historical document or a revelation of God. They present a picture of Christianity where people are encouraged to believe in the Bible as a metaphor, nothing more, nothing less. They present a very lack-luster, watered-down, weak picture of Christ. They deny the deity of Jesus and promote a vision of Christianity that winks at sin and preaches universal salvation. It's a picture that is devoid of judgment and is extremely popular these days.
I understand that as many as 70% of Americans claim to be Christian, but one only has to look around at our culture to see that few believe in judgment. Blogspot is an excellent example of the works of a nation that thumbs its collective nose at judgement. Just flip through the blogs here and most of what you'll see is futility, vanity, or abominations. I spent some time doing that last night, and 90% of what I saw was garbage. I didn't keep statistics, but every tenth blog was a very elaborate boilerplate advertisement for pornography. Those blogs are a clear and blatant violation of the Blogger Content Policy, but I am still searching for the correct way to report them to Google. But even if I found the magic hyperlink for reporting this blog scum, I know from past experience that corporate America is not interested in righteousness. Nor do they fear judgment.
So what is the work of God? Jesus put it in a nutshell, which you can find in the 6th chapter of John's gospel. He said, "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent." That is it friend. The work of God is saving people from eternal torment. God is doing that through His Son, Jesus Christ. He brings men to faith in Him through the hearing of His Word. So the work of God is to spread the Gospel.
That simple truth is a tremendous principal that I have struggled with.
To be continued in part 2.
