I heard an interesting scholar on a talk show the other day. It wasn't that he was an agnostic that surprised me. It was why he was an agnostic. The reason was that there is suffering in the world. Well, quite frankly, the reason for most of the suffering is people. My best friend's brother was in the military in Spain and he said he didn't believe in God. My friend asked him why. He said he saw the most incredibly poor people there and could not believe that God could let this happen.
It's strange to me how people judge God by men's actions. People are people and God is God. God gave gave humans a brain and the ability to make decisions. Some make decisions to be good. Some decide to be bad. I heard a child on a show yesterday who wished all the people in the world would listen to a certain song that would convince us to be good to each other and we would all be happy. Apparently he was not yet familiar with man's inclination toward being like animals.
People act as if they were animals in various ways. Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin wanted to be kings of the jungle. Some people rob banks and kill other people like a pack of coyotes. Our government steals our money right out of our pockets and they set it up so it would be legal. In every culture and organization - yes, even the church - there are animals. It takes a lot of effort to be human. God told mankind to master the earth. To act like animals is not what He meant.
Many people refuse to acknowledge God. No amount of logic or reasoning will change their minds. It's like the presidential debates. About the same percentage of people that are for the candidate think that candidate won. People are not generally open-minded.
When I was younger, people would ask me questions about the Bible and I always had the answer. One day a friend invited me into his office to ask me some questions. Instead of having all the answers that day I started to realize how I had been indoctrinated. He was showing me things with which I was unfamiliar. The culture of the Hebrews and other peoples, the languages, and even how English had changed so much since the King James Bible was new. I guess you could say I was reborn that day. I learned that, as he teaches, when confronted with facts you have to be able to consider them and change your beliefs if necessary. It was a feeling of freedom. I could now ask questions about things and I could even ask questions about the validity of my own beliefs.
We went through a period of knocking down bad theology until one day I realized that I no longer knew whether or not there really was a God. I had torn down my foundation and there was nothing on which to rebuild my life. Fortunately I began to study deeper into things and over a period began to piece facts into a new set of beliefs. There are many things I am still not certain about but I now know why I don't know the answers. The one strong belief I have is that we are here and it is by God himself that it happened. The unverified, confused, so-called scientific explanation lacks substance and gets shakier as time passes.
I think God chooses our paths so that we can make up our own minds and learn about reality. He certainly seems to lead a lot of people on rather strange paths but somehow they get there. I suppose He leads them to places where they can go ahead and knock out some of the obstacles before they arrive at the place where they realize who God is.
A lot of great believers have traveled down the path of agnosticism (not knowing whether or not there is a deity) to become great teachers about the Creator of the universe. My favorite was Malcolm Muggeridge (I hope I spelled that correctly). He had a unique radio show in which he began right away to explain how wonderful the world is and what a wonderful gift from God it was. For years he had tried to prove there was no God until God awakened him.
As I have always said, I don't like to talk to atheists because they already are omniscient. Agnostics, on the other hand, have questions and can discuss things without getting angry. I have a blast talking to some of them and learn some things. I don't learn anything from atheists.
To sum it up, it's all right to be an agnostic. It's just not all right to stay one. Eventually, if you are honest, God will show you the way as he did me and Malcolm. God didn't create a bad world. He didn't tell us to choose to be evil. Everything isn't perfect in this world but if there is a next world, this is how we progress to it. If God had created a perfect world I would be hearing arguments of how we don't need a God for the world to exist and why would we? People would be the same there as they are here. They just wouldn't believe for different reasons.
