Even though I've self-identified as a Christians for 41 plus years, and served as a pastor for 35 or so years, I still have a lot of questions and doubts (many yet unanswered) about the God, Jesus and the Bible. People might ask me, why then are you still a Christian? Aren't faith and doubt in opposition to one another? After 41 plus years, shouldn't you have found the answers to your questions and resolved your doubts? How could you possibly lead and shepherd others in "the faith" if you have been uncertain about "many" things.
It all comes back, each and every day, to why I chose to become a follower of Jesus in the first place. I was drawn to the person of Jesus as he is depicted in the Gospels. I fell in love with the story of Jesus: the Word who become flesh, was born in a barn, lived as a carpenter's son, spent about three years in active ministry preaching the "good news" of the kingdom of God and ultimately submitting to death on a cross but being raised to live again and lead his people from the side of the throne of God. In spite of my questions and doubts, I still love that story and I choose each and every day to believe that it is true enough that I will allow his life to be my example, and his teachings to be my guide.
What it comes down to for me is that faith is about making choices. When I was an atheist, my choice was to believe that there wasn't enough evidence to trust that God existed. I chose to believe that there was enough evidence to believe that the cosmos could be explained as an accident of science (physics, biology and chemistry combined). I won't go into all that happened to cause me to look at other so-called evidence, but the bottom line is this: I read about and chose to trust the story of Jesus, and I choose each and every day to continue to do so.
I was listening recently, during a very difficult and physically painful period of time, to a podcast where Rachel Held Evans (RHE) was being interviewed. She, like me, has lots of questions and doubts about the Christian faith. So she was asked, "Why, then, are you still a Christian?" I love her answer, and I am appropriating it as my own. She said, “The story of Jesus is a story I am willing to risk being wrong about. I get that I might be wrong about this…but the story is still so compelling.”
I get that many have chosen not to trust the story of Jesus as told in the Gospel accounts, and as referenced in the other NT books. And I respect each person's right to make their own decisions about what and who they believe. For me, the story of Jesus (or "the gospel of Jesus") is so compelling that I want to embrace it and strive to live it out in my daily life, to the best of my ability. And I, too, am willing to run the risk of being wrong. That's why I became a Christian and will remain a Christian for the remainder of my life.
(The RHE podcast - https://www.nomadpodcast.co.uk/rachel-held-evans-loving-th…/)
(A short interview with RHE - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch4YlC_3tPY)
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