How to Understand the Bible for the Skeptic: A Help for Those Who Struggle to Believe

By Chris Briscoe

If you need help and guidance to find God and receive his love, then this book is for you.It explains, step by step, in a practical way, how you can open your heart - your spirit - and be touched by God's love. If you have tried to analyze God through Intellectual arguments or if you are like "Doubting Thomas", this book guides you how you can facilitate the Spirit of God to enter your heart so you have a spiritual encounter with God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9780244086145

Book preview

How to Understand the Bible for the Skeptic: A Help for Those Who Struggle to Believe

How to Understand

The  Bible

for

The   Skeptic -

A Help for Those Who Struggle to Believe

By Chris Briscoe ©

Copyright Page

How to Understand the Bible for the Skeptic -

A Help for Those Who Struggle to Believe

First Edition

© 2018 by Chris Briscoe

ASBN: 978-0-244-08614-5

Preface

Let me tell you why I wrote this book: There are so many people out there who have some really giant misgivings about religion - namely one: they cannot understand the difference between a person believing in God who no one has seen and the flying tooth fairy who equally no one has seen. And that is a valid point they bring up, or you may bring up. After all, God is someone who is invisible and to many people it is highly unreasonable for me - a Christian - to ask you to believe in someone you cannot see, as much as it is unreasonable for me to ask you to believe in the tooth fairy who no one has seen, as far as I know.

And you may have many other questions, and not just questions but answers - rational answers which refute the claim that God exists. And we could spend days going back and forth while each of us counters the other's arguments with the result that we are both still entrenched in our views. But this exercise would be limited in its effectiveness because intellectual argument can only get you to a certain place, but regarding your spiritual transformation, it cannot achieve that; because for that you need outside help, something which transcends your physical faculties because it resides from the world that oversees this physical world and resides in the metaphysical world where your conscience, your intuition, your imagination, your consciousness and your spirit comes from.

I would even go as far as say, when certain people are engaged in presenting and refuting each side of the argument of whether there is a God, this exercise is actually futile, if you think about it; because, actually, when a man really comes to believe, it does not involve his mind or intellect; I mean, it does not involve his physical brain and physical intellect - although they impact his decision and can help him to believe, but rather it involves first his spirit; because faith involves trusting that which you have become convinced of, even tentatively - and test involves, essentially, our spirit and emotions rather than our intellect.

See, for a man to believe, he needs to be born again. His inner spirit which has been in the state of lying dormant for so long needs to come alive and be born again; I know that intellectual arguments have their place, but they are not very effective at changing that part of us which transcends our intellect and rational - that part of a man’s or woman’s spirit which is also called a soul. And when I say spirit, I mean that part of us which exists after the rest of us dies.

You may not believe in the human spirit - and that is your prerogative - but none of us can deny the existence of some inner compass or inner law written on our hearts which gives us a inner standard - which actually refutes the argument that moral objectivism is relative; it is a strong refutation to the argument that we are mere animals with no inner standard because of the fact that each of us has a conscience - some silenced because of being ignored for so long while others louder - that inner compass imparted from the world where all-goodness and all-wisdom resides.

Whether you take the next step of believing in a God of goodness which endowed everybody with that conscience and the more important spirit - a spiritual antenna from our Manufacturer - albeit broken - is up to you  - but as regards our spiritual transformation, such refutations as I just mentioned or any you may bring, will only lead us to that final step of leaping into the unknown by faith, where we trust the invisible, loving Father, who will catch us up into his everlasting arms of love; but that final step or should I say, beginning step of our salvation is only achieved through his spiritual inner transformation, not by our sophisticated arguments.

Therefore, that's why in this book I am inviting you to put aside all the intellectual arguments. In spite of all your valid questions and equally valid and plausible answers, I would like to invite you to lay them all down and consider that, when testing whether God's power exists - it would be a better idea if you acknowledge that if this god I claim to be God and Father of all, who is yearning to be your loving Father - if this God who is all-powerful and all-loving, exists, consider this truth:

God is not discovered by our power but rather revealed by his power - from something outside our physical world that exists in our metaphysical world.  What I am asking you to do is in spite of all your misgivings, even any anger or hatred or deep suspicions about religion and even God, I ask you to put them all on the back-burner for now, and pursue truth. I am not asking you to be religious or asking you to go to church at this juncture - all I am asking you to do is pursue truth using the faculties which Mother-nature or Father-nature, or even God - whatever jargon we use - even the Governor upstairs has already given you - the above mentioned faculties which are called in the Bible the eyes of our heart.

In the Bible book of Romans 2:15, which talking about the unregenerate, unborn-again man or woman, says that the ..since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness. It means that some Power which is all-goodness and all-wisdom and All-powerful has written such a beautiful law on our hearts when each of us are born, which is called the human conscience. In other words, we have a built-in conscience. Natural Law teaches that humans have an integral inner nature which is rooted in