The Christian Skeptic

God is love. It's such warm and fuzzy, comforting thought. Even Christianity with its emphasis on forgiveness and loving our neighbors is undeniably beautiful. Until God goes and damns people to hell.
Christians try not to think about it, but the verses are there. We use our theology to anesthetize our fear by reducing our sovereign God to a passive figurehead who merely allows the things we don't understand. Yet Scripture says what it says, and it says that God predestined some people to destruction.
The passage in question is Romans 9. I don't blame you if you missed it in your daily devotions or weekly Bible studies. The preceding chapter and its whole "nothing can separate us from the love of Christ" schtick can be very distracting, especially to pastors and teachers who would rather cultivate ignorance than risk apostasy. Someone has to pay for their salaries.
By chapter 9, Paul had just finished encouraging the Christians in Rome that there was no condemna…

Christianity is like an email scam. You get a message that there's an unverifiable problem with your account and then you're given an unverifiable solution to that unverifiable problem. Similarly, salvation comes through faith in a God to prevent us from a fate we take on faith.
That's a lot of faith. When skeptics say that Christianity lacks evidence, they're not wrong. We can claim that Jesus' resurrection has over five hundred eye-witness reports, but we still need faith to trust the veracity of those reports.
Evidentialist apologetics are less popular today, probably because someone figured out that non-empirical evidence isn't really evidence. Instead, many Christians are utilizing a more experiential apologetic--one of personal, miraculous deliverance.
Stories abound in the church of broken addictions and supernatural rescues from abuse. We hear of alcoholics recovering suddenly after decades of enslavement and domestic violence victims finding justice w…

Going to church ruined my faith. From diapers to adulthood, church was all I knew about Christianity and it created a barrier between me and God. Especially the worship part of church services.

Half of my life was spent playing or leading music before a congregation of enthralled people. The enthusiasm and earnestness written on their faces evidenced an undeniable experience. Many spoke of being able to sense God's presence in a very real, almost tangible way.

While attending Moody Bible Institute, I was surrounded by hundreds of emotional worshippers during weekly chapels, and I often heard students describe how awesome it was to be singing God's praises together with so many fellow believers. They could really feel the Spirit moving.

I never did.

Skeptic that I was (and still am), worship was at best a meaningless experience to me. When I saw joy in the crowd, I assumed it was from a particularly sick drum fill or guitar lick, not God. When I saw tears, I assumed it was fro…