Quest for Truth ... you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free
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They are included for reference only, and the views expressed and conclusions reached are not necessarily the same as mine.

There are many religions in the world, each with its own god or gods, and some with none. Even a casual investigation into this plethora of religions makes the enquirer aware of the fact that there is a vast divergence of belief and practice - even within a single religion. How are we to make sense of this chaos? And how are we to weed out the false and determine what is the truth - assuming that the truth is to be found here at all. Surely this is an atheist's paradise! If there is a creator god, how come there is so much confusion over the question of who or what he/she/it is?

We need to establish some reasonable criteria that we can use to try to resolve this mess. I would suggest that the first one of these is as follows:

  • Since the universe that has been created is a uniified and ordered whole, we are looking for either a single god or an integrated team of gods who is or are working to a clear and purporseful design.
This means that we can exclude immediately all forms of animism, because there is little evidence of a serious attept to explain creation, and paganism, because there is no evidence of a unified purpose or any clearly stated objective in creation. Hinduism, with its many gods, does not seem to have a consistent view of creation, although the vast timscale of its cosmology has won favour with modern evolutionary cosmologists. Buddhism, an offshoot of Hinduism, does not acknowledge a supreme being, and so has no "creator" as such. Similarly, Taoism is not overly concerned with creation as an historic event, but relates all things back to Tao, from which all things have their origin. If we are looking for an intelligent and purposeful creator, it seems that we are unlikely to be successful by going down any of these avenues.

The Judaeo-Christian account of creation, found in the Bible, and the Islamic account, found in the Qur'an, are similar to each other, but not identical. They do, however, present us with a definite process of creation and a definite sense of purpose in creation, even though that purpose may not be expressly stated. This would suggest that the monotheistic religions hold out more hope of leading us to the truth than do any of the others.

The second criterion is this:
  • If there is a real god who really created the real world, then any dealings that he has with the world will be real, not fantastic, fabulous, or fictional.
This immediately invalidates any of the world religions that rely on myth and legend to present their message. We are looking for people and events that can be verified historically and archaeologically. There is one set of scriptures that stands out from the crowd in this respect, and that is the Judaeo/Christian Bible. No other religious holy book contains anything like the same wealth of verified historically accurate informaiton. Time and again, archaeology has made discoveries that confirm the accuracy of the Biblical record. I have searched the internet and have been unable to come upon any web sites that present scientific evidence of the accuaracy of historical accounts within the Qur'an. This is not to say that such evidence does not exist. I am certain that many within the Moslem community will protest that such evidence is compelling. All I am saying is that I have not been able to find it.

The third criterion is this:
  • The real god will give us reasonable and satisfactory answers to the difficult moral and philosophical questions that we face in life.
In this short essay, I am not going to attempt to answer every question and objection that will ever arise, but I do believe that it is of great importance to give a clear and reasonable explanation, from a Biblical perspective, of the issue which, probably more than any other, is a cause of people rejecting the idea that there is a loving, caring, all-powerful God.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AND THE SUFFERING OF THE INNOCENT

The problem is expressed quite simply:
If there is a god who cares about the well-being of mankind, why does he/she/it permit evil to run rampant throughout the world, and allow innocent people to suffer either as the result of natural disasters or at the hands of wicked men?
This objection is based on the assumption that if God exists, He must be in day-to-day hands-on control of everything that happens upon the earth, and that mankind has not been given a free will.

The Bible, however, presents us with a very different picture. We are told that in the beginning, when God made mankind, His purpose was that man would be free and that man would have control. Genesis chapter 1 verse 26 reads:
Then God said, "Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion ... over all the earth ..."
God also said to man, as we find in chapter 2 verses 16-17:
"Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
We then read about how man chose to go against the clear commandment of God and ate of the forbidden tree. (Please note that it was not an apple that Adam and Eve ate. God has no problem with apples. The forbidden item was the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.) This decision took man out of the will and purposes of God, and the inevitable results of this were that:
a) Man is no longer free
b) Man is no longer in control
c) Man no longer experiences only good, but now experieces evil as well

The two things that people fight for most in the world are freedom and control. There is neither man nor woman in this world who is able to say that throughout their life thay have always been able to do exactly and only what they have wanted to do. We have all experienced restriction to some degree, and many experience it today to an extreme. We have all known what it is for someone else, or for natural events, to be in control of our lives. The Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004; Hurricane Katrina in 2005; the London Bombings of July 2005; ongoing religious persecution in the Communist, Moslem, Hindu,and Buddhist countries of the world; the persecution of Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Slavs, and others under the Nazi regime in the 1930s and 1940s; the "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslav states in the 1990s - all of these are evidences of mankinds lack of control over the world in which we live, and the effort of some to establish control for themselves at the expense of others.

So, where is God in all of this?

God gave man freedom, but man threw it away. God gave man control, but man threw it away. By wanting to be free from God's authority, man lost the freedom that was his by being under that authority. By wanting to seize control for himself by refusing to come under God's control, he lost control and found himself to be subject to the control of the very forces over which he should have been in charge.

Is there any issue that faces the world today that could not be solved if all men were to forget about their personal empires, their personal ambitions, and work together for the good of everyone? Is there really not enough food for everyone to have enough? Is there really not enough money for everyone to have enough? Is there really not enough land for everyone to have enough? Would the natural disasters, such as Katrina and the Tsunami, be so devastating if we all worked together for each other's benefit instead of always fighting our own little corner? Why do we blame God for something that is not His fault? Why do we argue that He does not exist because we have closed our eyes and turned our backs on Him? Why do we not humble ourselves, climb down off our self-made thrones, and admit that without Him we have messed up and have no hope whatsoever of redeeming ourselves?

Where is God? He is standing by waiting for someone to turn around and ask Him for help. He is standing by waiting for someone to admit that they got it wrong and to ask Him for forgiveness. He is standing by waiting for someone to stop blaming everybody else except themselves, and to take responsibility for their errors. He is standing by waiting for world leaders to give up on their own tottering empires and to embrace His Kingdom.

He is standing by waiting for you.

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