Testing...

So lately I have been testing myself. The night when it rained and rained and there were VW Beetles floating down the street, I was listening to some AM stataion on the radio (some guy named Brian Savage or something, something Savage anyway, if anyone knows what station it was, please let me know) and he was mocking Christians who were saying that the earthquake in Haiti was a judgment from God for Hatian voodoo practices. His words were pretty infuriating, but not because I disagreed with what he was saying necessarily. Who am I to say that the earthquake was a judgment from God. I know He judges whomever He wills whenever He wills and there are plenty of biblical examples of terrible natural disasters occuring and being labeled specifically as judgments from God. But because he was mocking, I was infuriated. I took it as a personal attack even though he was not speaking to me. I was offended. But I forced myself to keep listening to it because I was starting to realize that I had no solid position on the issue, and this guy was devouring other Christians in similar situations who also had no solid position on the issue. He was using all of the garden-variety arguments that God is supposed to be loving, and killing tons of people is not the best way to show that, that Catholics are all child-molesting loons, etc., etc., etc. So I realized that I was angry because he was spewing out fighting words and I had nothing to come back at him with, at least nothing so solid in my mind and heart that it was right there in my time of testing, which could easily (if I wasn't so darn stiff-necked) coerce me to agree with him in what he was saying rather than hold on to what I believe. His "arguments" (which were really emotional attacks meant to upset people just like me because it makes good radio) sounded pretty convincing in the absence of anything better.
Since that night I have begun to see these mockers and scoffers in a slightly different light. I am forcing myself to listen to them instead of just being disgusted by them and shutting them off. I'm realizing my need to know the Bible like the back of my hand. Jesus said that in the last days many scoffers and mockers would come. Well they're here. I feel like I'm being swamped with "false doctrine" all around me, and it seems more and more like it's even working itself into and through many churches. I have begun seeking out these scoffers so that I can listen to what they have to say and become calloused to their attempts to make me angry, lose my temper, and make a fool out of the Christian name. I want to get to the point where I can analyze their "arguments" (which are weak, logically and philosophically speaking) objectively and show them where they are wrong. This New Atheism that has come into play in recent years in so full of hot air, but it's extremely aggressive and as long as they can keep us on the defensive, we have already lost.
1 Corinthians 15:1-8 lays out the gospel as plain and clear as it could possibly be. It is a legal case for the resurrection that would have held up in Jewish court (would actually hold up in our courts today because of the huge crowd of witnesses, that is if it had happened today and those witnesses were still alive). The point is that we have nothing to fear in the beliefs we hold or the Bible we read. We can cross-examine them even to the point of molecular biology and find God in everything. The majority of cosmologists (people who study the origins of the universe) are becoming deists these days because they can find no other explanation for the universe's existence than the existence of some sort of God.
I am praying and fasting for the lenten season from fear and from judgmentalism. Fear of recompense for spreading the gospel and wearing my beliefs on my sleeve, and judging others (especially other Christians when they hold different beliefs than I). I am growing, I think, in part because of these attacks that surround us in this culture today against God and against Christ. They only confirm it in my head, but I need to get past this point of simply being offended, and have a direct, well thought out, rational, biblical response to their actual arguments (no need to defend against the irrational attacks that are only meant to make us angry). I need me some vulcan-power. God bless.