Are science and faith at war? Does science undermine or corroborate belief in God? Does faith suppress or inspire scientific research? Explore these questions and more at this two-day conference held at the Riley Conference Center on the campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Featured speakers include Dr. William Dembski, author of The Design Revolution and other books; Dr. Stephen Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design; Dr. Jay Richards, co-author of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed For Discovery; and Dr. John West, author of Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science.

Sessions will explore a Biblical theology of nature; the role of Christianity in the founding of modern science; the impact of Darwinian Evolution on ethics, society, Biblical studies and theology; and the scientific evidence for intelligent design and its implications for theism.

This conference will be of special interest to seminary students, college students, and pastors and other church leaders. At the end of the conference there will be breakout sessions for students, pastors, and church leaders on how to incorporate science and faith issues into one’s church, ministry, or career.

Probe president Dr. Ray Bohlin, a Fellow of the Discovery Institute, is one of the speakers.

For more information and to register, visit the ScienceandGod.org website.

I need help resolving past stuff in my life. I’m stuck and I don’t know where to go or what to. Can you help?

I can tell you that from my study over the years, as well as personal experience, I believe the key to emotional healing (which is what resolving past stuff is about) is a two-pronged effort: grieving and forgiving. That said, the overarching, “big picture goal” is what David realized in Psalm 51:6 when He told the Lord, “I know that You desire truth in my inmost parts.” God brings freedom and healing when we allow Him to show us the lies we have believed about what we’ve experienced and the conclusions we have come to about Him, about life, about other people and about ourselves. When we renounce the lies and embrace the truth, we actually experience Jesus’ promise in John 8:32, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” But it needs to be more than an intellectual assent to the truth; we also need to open our hearts to the freeing power of truth.

It’s important to face our losses and our woundings, inviting Jesus into the process (absolutely essential), so that we give Him access to those places in our hearts that need healing. In fact, one of my mentors calls Christian denial “the refusal to give God access to the hurts He wants to heal for His glory and our benefit.” Instead of going digging, it’s much better to ask the Holy Spirit, our Comforter and Counselor, to shine His light on which wounds and losses He wants to address, since He knows the best order for untangling our messes. As He brings memories to the surface, we ask for grace in facing them, experiencing the feelings again but this time in a redemptive way because we are giving them to God to heal, and grieving the ungrieved feelings we haven’t yet dealt with. This means tears, and sometimes screams. (The best definition I’ve ever heard of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the emotional debilitation that can follow an emotional trauma such as sexual abuse, or war, or observing something horrific like the workers who cleaned up the aftermath of 9/11, is “failure to scream.”) Journaling is one of the most important tools in grieving because there is something therapeutic about the layers of sensory experience in writing on paper: holding the pen, feeling the paper, smelling the ink and the paper, hearing the sounds of pen on paper. And somehow, the Holy Spirit seems to be able to direct our thoughts and our feelings in the process of writing out what’s in our hearts, and He dislodges the shards and splinters of lies that are embedded in our souls so that we can recognize them, renounce them, and embrace the truth He shows us.

One of the things God has shown me about grieving is that there is a finite amount of grief for each wound and loss. He knows how many tears are attached to each wound, and once they’re out of us, they are gone forever, collected by God Himself in His tear-bottle (Ps. 56:8). (Consider this: if you think about a childhood loss or painful experience that caused tears, have you cried about it lately? Probably not, because you finished grieving it years ago. There were a finite number of tears over losing a beloved pet in fourth grade, for example. And also consider that since there will be no sorrow or crying or pain in heaven for the believer (Rev. 21:4), all our grieving has a time limit.

The other part of healing is forgiving, where we face the wrongs done to us and choose to let go of them into God’s hands for Him to deal with. There are good resources on understanding forgiveness and how to forgive (two of the best are Total Forgiveness by R.T Kendall and I Should Forgive, But… by Chuck Lynch), but bottom line, we forgive because the only one we hurt by refusing to forgive is ourselves. It’s like someone tosses us a hot potato, and we clutch it to our chest exclaiming with pain, all the while continuing to hold it to ourselves. Forgiving means letting go of the hot potato so it no longer hurts us. When we forgive the people who caused us pain, we release them into God’s hands for HIM to deal with them as He sees fit. Louis Smedes said that when we forgive someone, we set a prisoner free, and we discover that the prisoner was us.

Refusing to forgive has terrible repercussions. Unforgiveness is a bitter, corrosive poison that consumes a person’s soul and diminishes their spirit. I watched a family member grow increasingly invalid and weak with the years of holding onto grudges and insults, whether real or perceived, as if they were treasures. By the time she died, all of her life and vitality was drained out, and there was nothing but a brittle shell of who she used to be. But failing to grieve also has painful consequences: uncried tears heighten stress and cause all kinds of physical diseases and maladies. Because we are a unit of body, soul and spirit, our bodies hold onto soulish pain and it comes out as physical pain and illness. This is why James 5 “connects the dots” between physical illness, confession of sins, and the need for prayer.

Hope you find this helpful.

Sue Bohlin

© 2009 Probe Ministries

Hi there! Someone once raised this objection that really bugs me… They asked whether it isn’t vain or egotistical of God to command our worship and praise and be so passionate about His own glory. While I certainly don’t agree that God could be vain or egotistical, I’m at a loss for how to respond to this objection. I can understand why some people read verses like these and conclude that God is tooting His own horn:

For my own name’s sake I delay my wrath; for the sake of my praise I hold it back from you. Isaiah 48:9

I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth—everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Isaiah 43:6-7

For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another. Isaiah 48:11

How would you respond to this objection to the Christian faith?

What a great question! I meditated on it for a couple of weeks.

God wants us to relate rightly to Him. Because He is so immense, so powerful, so sovereign, so righteous, so holy, so pure, so right, so good, so loving, so kind, so just, and most importantly, so glorious, relating rightly to Him means responding in awe, in fear, in love, in attraction, in worship, and in praise.

His commands are His loving gifts to us because He created and designed life to work the way it does, and His commands align with His design. The Ten Commandments are powerful because that’s the way He created life to function, and we are blessed when we obey. We have trouble when we disobey. His command to praise and worship him is no different because He knows that He is the only source of life. Being rightly related to God is the only way to enter into life, to get our empty souls filled up. Being rightly related to Him means humbly accepting our position as creatures, and affirming that He is God and we are not. It means praising, worshipping and glorifying Him and, as the Westminster Catechism starts out, “enjoying Him forever.”

God is not a limited, finite creature for whom it would indeed be prideful and arrogant to say, “Worship and praise me.” There is no sinful pride in His invitation to be rightly related to Him, to invite us to enjoy and partake in His glory.

We don’t look at the sun and say, “How arrogant of it to shine so brightly, to relentlessly give off heat and light that makes life possible on the earth.” It’s the nature of gargantuan balls of burning gas to do these things. Our response to the sun is one of respect, gratitude and fear: we can’t even look directly at it for more than a glance or it damages our eyes.

It’s not arrogant or prideful for God to shine with a radiance beyond a million suns. That’s what glory does: it radiates. It shines. That’s how He is, that’s who He is.

The God who created the billions of galaxies can pinch the entire universe between two fingers like a toddler picking up a Cheerio. This same God, who keeps the galaxies in motion just as He holds the atoms of physical matter together, not only revealed Himself through His prophets, He actually became one of us, then died in our place and came back to life just as He said He would.

The only response to that kind of God that makes any sense is to fall down at His feet and worship Him.

Thanks for writing!

Sue Bohlin

* * *

After reading this article from my Facebook, a friend sent me a link to a short essay on this subject he thought I’d enjoy. I did, and I’m posting it here because I bet you’ll enjoy like it too! C.S. Lewis’ Most Important Discovery

© 2009 Probe Ministries

Our church is wonderful and loving. Christ centered with a Godly pastor. Within the past two years we have had several baby showers for unwed mothers. All of their parents are actively involved in our church but not all of the girls. Are we right in honoring these unwed mothers with baby showers within the church setting? I want to help them but what message is this sending to the young people in our church?

I fully understand your conundrum. This question became intensely personal in our family when a beloved niece became an unwed mother. Her Christ-following mother, distraught over her daughter’s sexual sin and ashamed by what she perceived to be the implications of her own mothering, had a very memorable conversation with God soon after her daughter confessed she was pregnant.

“What am I supposed to do with this, Lord?” she complained. “I suppose you want me to give her a shower??!!!??”

Then, in her spirit, she heard words of unexpected compassion: “Every child should be welcomed and valued.”

Whoa. Suddenly, she realized that the Lord’s heart was to celebrate the baby, the circumstances of whose conception were not her fault. She and some dear friends from church held a baby shower, and this young unwed mother experienced her first up-close-and-personal taste of God’s grace. Jesus’ church provided everything the baby needed, despite how the baby came to be in the first place.

The welcomed, celebrated, and well-loved baby has grown into a little girl who has never once wondered if she is loved. She swims in an ocean of family love. And her grandmother pours truth into her through song and story about Jesus’ love for her.

This young woman became a great mother, married a wonderful young man, has had two more childen, and guess what? In part because of her experience of church as a source of grace and compassion, the family is starting to attend one nearby.

I’m so glad you asked, so I can tell you this great story with such a happy ending.

Warmly,
Sue Bohlin

© 2009 Probe Ministries

I received a letter from my daughter’s public elementary school that they are welcoming a new family with a “transgendered third grade girl.” This letter is urging us to welcome and accept “her” and treat her the same as any other girl. She will be in third grade and my daughter is in second grade. The letter also informs us that our school district does not tolerate discrimination in respect to gender identity and or expression, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability or religion.

There is a meeting at the school next week for parents to come and ask questions, etc. about transgender children. The parents of this student, staff, district personnel and the principal will be at this meeting.

I am really in need of some advice on how to handle this. We are a strong Christian family who believe that God did not make a mistake when He created this child. I am having a very hard time saying I will go along with the school district and tell my daughter to accept him as a girl. I want to be a loving, yet clear witness for Christ at this meeting.

Oh my word! I am so sorry you have to deal with this very difficult situation. I have thought about your question a lot and sought the wisdom of some of my friends who are immersed in ministry to those with gender issues.

I think you have a challenge here to balance the Lord’s command to be loving and compassionate to this family in crisis, and the need to disciple your own daughter in truth and love and wisdom.

One thing that really strikes me is the presence of overt spiritual warfare. This confused child and the parents most probably have no idea that they have been attacked and conquered by the lies of the enemy who comes to “steal, kill and destroy” (John 10:10). I don’t know about you, but it breaks my heart to think about a child who so despises gender to the point of wanting to change it, and parents that think they are helping by going along with it.

When it comes to the parent meeting, I respectfully suggest that you seek to be overwhelmingly kind in your words and your tone. You might communicate that you are concerned about the ridicule that this child will receive from the other students, regardless of their hope to head it off. Children are still in the concrete stage of operations at this age, and they may not accept that this student is a girl. It’s quite possible that this child will be ostracized and marginalized, called names, and whispered about in ways sure to cause pain. It would be appropriate to ask how the school is planning on handling that. It would also be a good idea for you to be empathetic to the difficult situation that these parents are in. You could say that your prayers are with them during this transition to the new school.

You can’t control what a school does, but you have total control over how you talk to your own children about it. Since you are committed to biblical standards of truth and love, that means framing this unfortunate challenge to your daughter in a way that tells her the truth and honors this new student. Something along the lines of, “Sweetheart, there is a new third grade student using a girl’s name who looks like girl and acts like a girl, but God made him a boy. He isn’t bad, he’s confused. We don’t know why, but he doesn’t understand that being a boy is a good thing, and God makes lots of different kinds of boys. This is very sad, and we need to pray for him and be kind to him.”

This means that your daughter may have an opportunity to show kindness and compassion to a hurting child—not by joining into this game of “pretend,” but by simply reaching out to connect with a smile, an invitation to sit together at the lunch table (if second graders even mingle with third graders?!). . . basically, showing the love of Jesus to this hurting child. Part of that might include encouraging her not to discuss what mommy and daddy say about this child or their family to other children at school.

This is definitely a sticky situation. It’s easy to be broadsided by the fact that in your wildest dreams you never thought this would happen at your daughter’s school, and therefore rise up in defense for truth and justice regarding these poor children’s hearts and souls. That being said, let me encourage you to see yourself as the ambassador of Christ in this circumstance. Try not to get caught in a debate with non-believers. Speak as Jesus would speak, sharing truth in a way that leaves no room for debate or verbal retaliation.

It is very sad that our children are growing up in a generation where they are exposed to things that are difficult for grown adults to understand themselves. I will be praying for you, your family, the family of this child, and your school at large.

As I am writing to you, I am continually reminded that it is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. Therefore I urge you to trust the fight for truth to the Lord. In the meantime, pray for the lost souls that are at your daughter’s school, and look for opportunities to communicate the gospel to those who have not trusted Christ, starting with compassion.

I hope you find this helpful.

Sue Bohlin

© 2009 Probe Ministries

Dear Sue,

I just read your article on abortion as a source to prepare a message on abortion. Thank you for a well written, well documented work. Many of the sermon reviews I have done so far lack documentation for the claims being made in the sermon. I am curious to know more regarding your point when you touched on the issue of abortion because of rape or incest. What you would say to women in those situations, and do you leave a little more room for personal decision there?

Thank you for your kind words about my article.

Since I am a woman, I’ve definitely thought about the possibility of pregnancy resulting from rape: what would I do if it happened to me? As traumatic and life-altering as rape is, I would still need to pass it through my Christian worldview filter, and I come to these conclusions (which also apply to incest):

1. God is still in control, even when He allows unspeakable evil into our lives.
2. Because He is good, that means He has a purpose and a plan to redeem even unspeakable evil, which means we can trust Him.
3. Pregnancy resulting from rape or incest brings an innocent child into existence, who has a right to life because God has made him or her in His image. He loves them and He has a plan for their lives, or they would never have been conceived.
4. Aborting a baby conceived by rape or incest doesn’t make the pain go away, and it doesn’t make the problem go away.
5. It makes it worse because the lingering guilt of abortion is horrific. A woman will often start to think of her life as divided into BA/AA (before the abortion/after the abortion).
6. In addition to the trauma of being raped or incested, a woman is then further burdened with post-abortion syndrome. (See my article “The Dark Underside of Abortion.”)

I understand that from a human standpoint, giving “more room for personal decision” to abort in the case of rape or incest makes sense. But from an eternal, biblical perspective, it still violates God’s command not to murder, and it still incurs the consequences of one’s own sinful choice. When a woman is victimized by rape or incest, she is not responsible for what was done to her, but she is responsible for her response to being sinned against. Sinning against her unborn baby and against herself is not justified, even though we certainly understand why she would do it. The need for compassion is excruciating. Which is why, if I were were talking to someone pregnant as the result of rape or incest, I would gently and lovingly give her the bigger picture of what is at stake.

Thank you so much for asking for clarification on my position on this important question. I am grateful for the chance to explain what I have hammered out concerning this very difficult issue.

Sue

© 2009 Probe Ministries

I read Kris Samons’ answer to e-mail about Seventh Day Adventists and I just want to say thank you. I’m a devout Baptist and my long time boyfriend is an SDA. It has bothered me for a very long time. I asked my pastor and he said the Adventists he knows don’t believe people who go to church on Sunday are Christians because God commanded us to keep holy the Sabbath. It’s been hard trying to find a middle ground and making things appear as simple as it really is. The fact is we both love God and firmly believe that through Jesus we are saved. It is just very hard for people like my parents who are 45 and up to understand that SDA people and congregations vary. You did research and you concluded that people need to take every SDA on a case by case basis. This was wonderful news to read. I just hope my pastor will accept my boyfriend for the Christian that he is: a Christian that just happens to worship on Sunday. It’s like John 3:16 has less value nowadays. Before belief was all that was needed to be a real Christian. But now I feel like we have to leap through hoops and do X amount of things to really prove it. What do you think? Are my boyfriend and I “unequally yoked” like Paul writes in Corinthians? How should I go about getting my parents and pastor to understand what you researched?

You are not alone in being frustrated that people attach works (AKA “hoops”) to salvation, trying to make it harder to enter the kingdom than Jesus does. That is part of the essence of legalism. Spiritual fruit—Christlke character—isn’t enough of an evidence of true spiritual life for those holding their cherished hoops, and how sad is that?

If I were you, I would ask my boyfriend to tell my pastor and my parents about his relationship with Jesus and about his understanding of how one becomes a Christ-follower. There is nothing in the Bible about “Follow Me and go to church on Saturday,” and if he gets that, I would hope he would be able to communicate it to the “gatekeepers” in your life. Since you are a college student, my guess is that your boyfriend is too, which means he’s still very much under the influence of his family and his church. It’s possible he isn’t as strong in his personal convictions as he will be, Lord willing, several years from now when he’s out of school and living an independent adult life. I think that is an element of your situation that can be brought to the table—that he is still in the process of forming his spirituality. Is he absolutely committed to SDA theology and to staying in the SDA church? Or is it just a matter of comfort and habit for him? Can he ever see himself worshiping with you on Sunday? If he can’t, then you would have to be the one to do all the adjusting and the concession-making. That would be a deal-breaker for me, totally apart from the unequally yoked issue. (No, I don’t think you are unequally yoked spiritually, but you could be mismatched if the issue of where and when and how to worship becomes non-negotiable for both of you. Which could be considered a type of unequal yoke.)

Concerning how you get your pastor and parents to see what Kris wrote about: you can print off his article and give it to them, asking them to consider another perspective. But the bottom line is, no one can make anyone else see things they don’t want to see. You can offer evidence of another perspective, but if someone doesn’t want to see it, they won’t. I’m sorry life is like that, but it just is. <wince>

I hope you find this helpful.

Sue Bohlin

© 2009 Probe Ministries

How is it fair for God to judge an unsaved person’s sin on Judgment Day if that person did not know “specifically” that their action was a sin? If an unbeliever is taught sex outside marriage is morally OK and no one ever shows him in the Bible that it is against God’s laws, how can he be judged guilty? Don’t you have to be taught the law in order to be punished for it?

Thanks for your letter. This is a very good question. Briefly, here are some important points to bear in mind.

First, carefully read Romans 1:18-32 and 2:1-16.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing to be wise, they became fools,
and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,
and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,
being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips,
slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful;
and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things.
And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things.
But do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?
Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?
But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,
who will render to each person according to his deeds:
to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life;
but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation.
There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek,
but glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
For there is no partiality with God.

For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law;
for it is not the hearers of the Law {who} are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.
For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves,
in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them,
on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.

These passages strongly suggest that all men (with the exception of infants and the severely mentally retarded) have an inherent knowledge of God (through the things that He has made) and of basic morality (for God has “written” the law on their hearts in some sense). This knowledge of basic morality, though not perfect because of the darkening of our intellects due to sin, comes through our conscience. Thus, in this sense, all men have some knowledge of God and of their morally guilty status before Him—all men are therefore without excuse.

Second, God has graciously provided the Holy Spirit to convict unbelievers of their sin and (hence) their need for a Savior. Please see John 16:7-11 in this regard:

“But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.
“And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment;
concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me;
and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me;
and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.

Thus, not only has God made His existence and basic morality clear to man through creation and conscience, but His Holy Spirit also convicts the world of their sin and need for salvation in Christ.

Finally, we must remember that God is perfectly holy, just, and fair (Deuteronomy 32:4, etc.). For this reason, we can be absolutely confident that on Judgment Day no one will be able to look God in the face and honestly complain of being treated unfairly or unjustly. God will be perfectly just and completely fair in His judgment of each individual. We can therefore safely rule out any sort of unfair or unjust judgment of any particular individual. Everyone will be treated fairly; no one will be treated unfairly. God is all-knowing and completely good. We can trust that He knows perfectly well just what an individual did—or did not—know about His moral standards. And we can trust that He will judge that individual fairly and with perfect justice.

I hope this helps.

Shalom in Christ,

Michael Gleghorn

© 2009 Probe Ministries

My atheist friend is a tough atheist to talk to, because he’s read so much philosophy and anti-God literature. He’s really into The God Delusion. I wondered if you are familiar with it, and if you know a good response to its assertions.

We don’t have an article on our website, but I can recommend several online responses to Richard Dawkins’ book:

Is God a Delusion?
www.gotquestions.org/God-delusion.html

William Lane Craig’s Q&A: “What do you think of Richard Dawkins’ argument for atheism in The God Delusion?”
www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5493

Flew Speaks Out: Professor Antony Flew reviews The God Delusion
www.bethinking.org/science-christianity/flew-speaks-out-professor-antony-flew-reviews-the-god-delusion.htm

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Richard Dawkins’ Failed Rebuttal of Natural Theology
www.arn.org/docs/williams/pw_goddelusionreview2.htm
(this one is long but thorough for a web-length article)

To treat someone like your friend with respect, this means familiarizing yourself with the responses to Dawkins’ arguments so you can speak to him personally about specific issues in the book rather than handing him an article or a book. (I put myself in your friend’s shoes: if a committed atheist wanted to disabuse me of my silly belief in God and the Bible and handed me The God Delusion, telling me to read it, I wouldn’t do it. I have enough to do without reading something I’m not motivated to do. And in fact I have books on my shelf still unread because that method doesn’t work! But if this person met me for coffee and talked to me about specific issues, that would make a difference. I’d make sure to do my homework to able to “give an answer for the hope that is within” me [1 Peter 3:]).

Hope you find this helpful. The Lord bless you and keep you today!

Sue Bohlin

© 2009 Probe Ministries

I am the person who unfortunately believes the bad things anyone tells them. I am also the person who will take one minute detail and suddenly base that as evidence of something that I am.

This all started about 4 years ago during worship. The pastor was singing, “Who the Son sets free is free indeed,” instead I heard, “Who the devil sets free is free indeed.” I ignored it, but then I started thinking, “You are hearing that because you were never a child of God.” And I believed it. I believed that I was predestined for hell and that it must have been because I committed the sin of blasphemy. This took a lot of willpower to not let it take over my life. It came to the point of me only believing that I was only sincere in my life when it came to evil things, that that was who I really was and not a child of God. I am still unsure till this day which is true, and which is a lie.

Unfortunately I walked away from God, and now that I am trying to come back I feel like I can’t. In school, I hang around with a lot of homosexual friends. I never thought anything of it until a friend of mine asked all of us who are straight, “Which of us do you think is gay?” and being the way I am, I immediately thought, “Am I?” And I am now battling over my sexuality. I know that it’s wrong, and I never had any desire for a woman before, but after that conversation with those friends, I find myself attempting to think and act like a lesbian. It’s horrible, but I don’t know how to stop it.

Aside from the homosexuality feeling, I feel as though I am a phony, that my walk with God is fake. Everyone always says that “faith isn’t mental, it’s in your heart and what your spirit knows.” But I feel like my heart is totally hard towards God and that no matter how many times I will say, “Lord make me believe, or Lord please deliver me of all of this garbage,” that he will never listen because my heart is truly not in it. I don’t know if it’s a matter of faith or a matter of my emotions, but I don’t know how to separate the two and just believe and believe that God can deliver me and forgive me for all of the sins that I’ve done. I try to pray and read the bible, but I go to sleep feeling worse off than I did before. I don’t know how to fix it. I am in a depression that I’m honestly not sure I can get out of.

I don’t know where to turn. I am trying to turn to God, but the whole issue of sincerity and insincerity is getting to me and it’s prohibiting me from allowing God to really save me. I don’t want to be evil or unsaved or predestined for hell. But I don’t know how to take myself out of the equation and focus on God and him healing me.

Why can’t he just ignore all of my sins and my unbelief and my insincere feelings and just show me he is God and change me?!?!

I am so glad you wrote to us! I am so sorry for this place you find yourself. It has to be really hard to be you, at least right now. But I do have an observation and a couple of suggestions I think may help.

The Bible says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7). The beliefs you have about yourself and “the way you are,” constitute a filter through which you interpret everything you see and hear. From what you describe, your “flesh filter” (flesh is the human part of us that operates apart from the Spirit of God; it’s broken and unredeemable, which is why it needs to be crucified with Christ) is exceptionally susceptible to suggestion. You easily believe things whether they are true or not simply because the thought is in your head. It doesn’t matter if it came from your own heart or from the outside as a spiritual attack, your filter tags all thoughts as valid and true. (Which is also a problem in college, where you hear things that are not true all the time but you don’t know they’re not true!)

Where does that come from?

From not being grounded in truth. You don’t know what is true, so you can’t identify what is a lie. Lots of people try to make faith a warm fuzzy emotion of the heart, but that’s not the kind of biblical faith Jesus called us to. Faith is radical trust based on evidence that God is trustworthy. That’s one reason Jesus calls us to love God with our minds: we need to actively engage with the evidence for His existence and evidence of His love for us. And that’s why your prayers, as well-intentioned as they are, aren’t being answered. God doesn’t want you to passively sit back and let Him do all the work, because He will not do for us what He calls us to do for ourselves. Asking Him to make you believe is like showing up on the __________ campus and expecting the school to educate you while you stay in your room without going to class or studying. Does that make sense?

I want to recommend an excellent resource to you that will help build your faith by wrestling with the truth that will allow your faith to rest on the fact that it’s TRUE and not some warm fuzzy feeling. Teresa Vining wrote Making Your Faith Your Own after having some similar struggles to yours while she was in college. www.ccel.us/makingyrfaith.toc.html and www.amazon.com/Making-Your-Faith-Own-Guidebook/dp/0830823263/

Concerning your struggle with your sexual identity: it’s important that you speak the truth to yourself. God made you a female, designed to connect meaningfully with both women and men in different ways. The erotic/romantic connection is intended to be strictly between men and women. You are not a lesbian, you are being tempted with same-sex feelings that are coming from outside you (spiritual warfare). They may be strong, but they are not true. Truth is reality as God sees it, and He made you a heterosexual woman. This is the same line of thinking (helping people see and commit to what is true rather than their feelings) that we teach in the ministry I serve with that helps same-sex-attracted people deal with unwanted homosexuality.

I hope you find this helpful. I send this with a prayer that you will know that God loves you, He is for you, and there is hope for getting out of this dark place as you walk into His light.

Warmly,
Sue Bohlin

© 2009 Probe Ministries