An article by R.L. Solberg regarding struggling with Christian beliefs and doubts brought home the reality that has deepened my faith in what Jesus said about himself and God. The Christian mind from many outsider views is one of “blind” trust and belief despite contradictory “evidence”. That is a fork in the road of life that one seems to come back to no matter which side of the fork one takes. Is faith in Christ just blind trust, or is faith based on something reasonable and verifiable? Interestingly enough, while this intersection may seem familiar as we traverse life's journey, the separate paths may in the end lead to identical outcomes. 

In the article the author mentioned that his transformation from “practical atheism” towards a renewal of faith happened after marriage and his first child.

“I’ll never forget looking into my newborn daughter’s eyes and realizing, this is unconditional love. A love that would do anything to protect, guide, and nurture – not because of anything she had done, but because of whose she was: mine. That realization hit me in a new way: This must be how God loves us. It isn’t about performance or perfection. It’s about our identity, about belonging to Him.”

By the time Rachel and I had our first child, we had a theoretical understanding that God loved us because we were His, but it took many years of living the Christian faith and wrestling with its beliefs before we understood that truth more deeply and the ramifications for how we should raise our children (and should have!). 

Like most parents, we entered the roles of parenting with no updated manual on the best way to raise a son or daughter, but we did have a pretty extensive idea of how it works by our own upbringing. We had ideas of what should and should not be done, but we did not have the acumen to analyze whether these methods were actually effective for raising our children in the “way he or she should go”, according to what Scripture states in Proverbs 22:6. Alas, one often discovers the foibles of ones understanding too late! What we now know and understand more deeply, is that every child is unique, a gift from God, and a parent should recognize this from the start of their role as parents. 

What we have come to understand is that the issues we wrestled with in raising children were based upon our understanding of the relationship between faith, works and the Law. I wish we had known that God is not afraid of our questions, so that we would have been more aware of the inconsistencies in our beliefs and our actions. I now believe that God is not afraid of our questions, but He does provide us with reason, history and evidence to address those questions when we actively search for answers. Sometimes the answers come with a blinding light while on the road, like they did to Saul of Tarsus. Even there in that moment a question was raised that had massive implications to upset the entire worldview framework that Saul, who later was named Paul held dear. For what it seems most everyone else, the answers come in gentle waves as we learn to articulate the questions that lie beneath the surface of our beliefs.

The author of the article encourages the reader to delve into the book of Galatians to come to a better understanding of our identity in Christ. In these days when there is considerable upheaval of what is presumed and what is reality, there may be no better use of one’s time in grounding one’s faith in Christ to withstand the testing of our faith in our Creator and “lover of our souls” as current events unfold.