Human experience always contains both pain and joy. One of the reasons we can be confident that Christianity is actually true is it allows us to make sense of both aspects of the world. Of both beauty and pain.
The facts themselves do not compel belief. God will not force us to trust Him. God gives us the ability to respond and graciously allows us to choose how we will use the freedom that He gave us.
Its helpful to know the reasons for our faith...it helps us not be so vulnerable to doubt, and it helps us not be so vulnerable to false doctrine.
You can't fake joy. Authentic joy is the kind that grows out of the soil of pain and doubt and fear, because that is the reality of the world.
If we, who are finite, contingent, created beings, have got God completely figured out, it makes it seem likely that we invented him...If I am ever completely satisfied with my understanding of who God is and how he operates in the world, I am in dan...
