Paul E. Little
Book Critique
This book was a very well balanced look at one of the greatest problems with the Church today; the fact that most Christians know that they believe...
but they don't know why they believe.It covered topics such as is there a God? Did Christ really rise from the dead? Is the Bible God's holy word? If God loves us so much, then why does he allow suffering and evil? And the mother taboo of them all, Is this whole thing even rational?
Little takes on some of the most undesirable subjects in Christianity. More importantly he not only exposes them for the fallacies which they are but also shows us why we should believe, that God is God and their is no other, that Christ rose from the dead and paid for our sins, that God's word is holy and eternal, that God loves us so much that he gave us the right to obey or disobey him and had we obeyed him there would be no suffering or evil, and that God's ways are indeed above mans ways and why a lot of this may not make sense to him it is not irrational or illogical that there is a God and he loves us. It's not so much that we can't believe, but that we don't want to believe.
This book is a shot right between the eyes to all the silent doubts that have plagued the Church and it's teaching for so many years. Its not enough for us to simply show up for church anymore, but know why were their.
That's what has been wrong with the church for so many years, the world looks at us and asks us "how can you worship a God, that allowed my baby to be born blind" or "you can't see God or touch or hear him, why then do you believe in him?" or how do you know that Christ rose from the dead, where you there?" And many other questions that challenge our beliefs.
The church has heard these questions for many years and has given them the same answers for many years. "according to the word of God..
." "In my personal walk with God, I have found..." The same answers were given to us when we asked these questions, they made sense to us and we believed. However the world still says that these answers are unsatisfactory and that they don't make sense to them.
If they believed in your God then they would believe in his word and would believe in your walk with him. But they don't believe in any of that. And we allow that to bother us, we don't understand why we believe and why they don't. But we've never stopped and thought that maybe when we heard these answers we wanted to believe. We wanted to have some justification for our faith.
And when the world hears these answers it's not that they don't make sense to them, it's that they don't want it to make sense to them.This book is a great help in understanding that. If they acknowledge that your God is real, then they must acknowledge that they are living in sin. To allot of people this is the true problem and the real reason why they won't believe. This insight is vital to understanding that what you believe is indeed the eternal truth of God and that that the world refuses to acknowledge God because it means that they must acknowledge their sin.
This book takes a very accurate look at this.This was a very open look at the rational of faith it was very biblically sound making full use of the scripture and also of personal experience. I would highly recommend it to any Christian that has ever wondered " what if ".I found this book to be fair and open about some of the most ignored issues in the Christian walk. In my personal life I was introduced to Christianity through my mother.
In my house my mothers word was law and if she said to pray to god then you prayed to God, and didn't stop until she said it was ok to do so.We would have certainly never asked, "why should we pray?" Unfortunately this did not do much for my understanding of why I believed and this book really helped me relize that . I now have an answer to all my " what if's ".