Every so often, I search through some of the anti-Christian sites to find interesting questions they say Christians can’t answer. Some are pretty foolish. Some are truly unanswerable since they are “Why” questions about God’s actions or seeming inaction. No one knows the mind of God unless He explains some of the whys.
Here are a few I found I thought were thought provoking from here: https://schoolandtravel.com/christianity-questions-that-cannot-be-answered/
- Does God have free will? This poses a definition problem. We would need to define “free will.” If the question is “Can God do anything He likes?” then yes. He would be acting within His nature. If it is “Can God do anything at all?” then no. God cannot and will not do anything that is against His nature (like sin) or is logically impossible (make a rock He can’t move, etc.)
- What crime deserves to be punished for all time? The crime of rejecting God’s gift. Because we have freely chosen sin in our lives and God, as a purely Holy being, cannot allow sin in His presence, all of mankind “deserves to be punished (separated from God) for all time.” But God loves us and has set up a “work around” for that. He has paid the payment we should have paid for the sins we should not have committed by offering His Son’s perfect human life. The payment has been made for all mankind, but God will not force you to spend eternity in a place you reject. It is up to us as individuals to accept that payment on our behalf by asking Jesus to be our Savior, or else we can reject it and accept the deserved punishment.
- When you say that Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit are all one God, what does that mean to you? The use of the term “God” for the Father here is confusing to the non-Christian. The trinity doctrine states that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the three persons in which God chooses to exist. God is one Being but three persons: one what but three whos. That is what it means to us.
- Does it make sense for Christians to pray to Jesus in the hopes that he will talk to God [the Father] on their behalf? It’s perfectly reasonable to pray to Jesus on our own behalf. This is part of the system God has set up. Since Jesus is both God and man, He has a foot in both worlds, so to speak. He knows first person what it is like to be both human and divine. Who better to be our Advocate: 1 John 2:1 (ESV) My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
- Is the way you understand the Bible right? Almost certainly not, at least not completely. God has given us a lot of information in the Bible for us to understand. Some of what is given there is beyond understanding, and some is difficult to understand and easy to misunderstand. A Christian would be arrogant to think he understands completely all that God has taught. We have human minds and are trying to understand an infinite intellect. The basics God wants us to understand are plainly written. There are difficult and controversial sections of Scripture. I believe God wants us to discuss and learn from these as a community. We are to love God with our minds, after all: Mark. 12:30 (ESV) And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
- Would you [commit sin] if God told you to? I changed the original wording of this question because I felt it was inappropriate for this site. The basic idea is a good one, though. You can look it up, if you like, at the address given above. One answer to this is found in my answer to question #1 above. God will not do (or ask us to do) anything which does not align with His nature. However, if God asked me to do something, no matter what, I would do it because God is the standard of morality. God doesn’t say and do things because they are good. They are good because God says and does them. Sometimes God does honor what might be considered as sin in another context. He honored Rahab’s lie, for instance. There seems to be a hierarchy involved at times, much like we see in our laws. I can jump a fence and trespass on a neighbor’s property to save a child drowning in their pool, as an example.
- Is there any amount of proof that will make you stop believing in Christianity? Yes. You would just need to prove Jesus has not risen from the dead: 1 Cor. 15:17 (ESV) And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. By the way, the resurrection of Christ is the best document event in the ancient world with no fewer than seven eyewitnesses writing about having seen it.
- Why are the miracles of today less impressive than those of the Bible? I’m not sure they are. I’ve witnessed a complete healing of a friend with lumps in her breasts. The doctor examined her the day before she was to have surgery, and they were there. We prayed for a healing that evening. The next day he checked again just before she was to be worked on, and no lumps. There is also a book written by evangelist Mel Tari, Like a Mighty Wind, which records many miracles done in Indonesia in 1965, comparable to the works seen in the New Testament. Several other miracles are recorded and some videoed involving healings. We don’t see a lot of miracles in the West, I believe, because of the lack of or the superficiality of our faith.
Why is this important?
I thought these eight questions were fairly representative of some of the questions asked of Christians by non-believers. We need to be prepared to answer these and others like them, and from time to time we will post some here with what we believe are fair answers.
Believers Armed and Dangerous 