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Does Christianity "Match" Reality?

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7 answers
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I don't know if this is a "good" question for Christianity Stack Exchange, but it's weighing heavily on my mind, and this seems as good a place as any. So here goes. I grew up as a Christian child in a church-going Christian family. This faith feels like home to me. Yet with each passing year of my adult life, I find it increasingly difficult to believe that it’s true. I was taught that God is working in the world every day. But surely, if an infinitely powerful being who wants things to be better did so much as lift a finger in that pursuit, the world would be fixed instantly. Yet it clearly isn’t. I was taught that God loves everyone, and wants each and every person to come to him. Yet when I and others like me try to look objectively at our daily lives, we see no sign of him. And yet there are still people in the world who have heard very little, if anything, about him. I was taught that the Bible is true, and yet some of its most central teachings are nonsensical at best, and horrifying at worst. Why is he angry at us for being imperfect, when he himself created us that way? Why would he punish us so brutally as a result? And why would he order the slaughter of massive populations of people, specifying that even the most vulnerable individuals should not be spared? For these reasons and others, I think if I heard about Christianity for the first time as an adult, it would seem fundamentally and hopelessly flawed. But the people I trust most in my life simply accept these issues as tolerable mysteries, and apologists try to explain them away with mental gymnastics that never quite seem to work. I realize I’ve brought up a number of issues here that atheists and apologists like to address separately. I don’t really know what kind of response I’m expecting. I guess the TL;DR here is that when I look at reality, and look at Christianity, they don’t really seem compatible. And if there’s anyone who’s interested in a frank discussion with a jaded quasi-believer, I’d be grateful.
Asked by Megalogue (39 rep)
Oct 14, 2022, 09:50 PM
Last activity: Oct 15, 2022, 11:01 PM