Apologetics Blog Post 3

This week I interviewed my flatmate, Aaron Hamstra, about his belief in God and what sorts of roadblocks and highlights he’s had in his faith journey. Similarly, to myself and the author of the book “Thinking,” by Andy Steiger, Aaron has a strong faith background, believing in God and trusting his works. I asked him about some parts of his faith that were easy and others that were hard. He told me, “I think that in my life, trusting that God is real is easy, but knowing why I trust He’s real is hard. I couldn’t tell you why I believe, I just do. One road block for me would be the whole science thing. The big bang, evolution and the fossil records, I don’t know where that fits into my faith.” As we discussed this we realized how hard it is to be educated, even at a bible school, to the degree where you can have a dispute over your beliefs and feel confident in why you believe in God. It’s a tough thing to realize that our faith isn’t held on by anything solid. It’s our own trust and upbringing that give’s us this faith that God is real.

 In the book, Steiger talks about the Christian tradition being one that is made of knowledge and has cases built for it over years, having lines of evidence that cumulatively are pointing towards a divine creator. (38) This is something that I struggle with. I can read about evidence and philosophical ideas that point towards a creator, but I don’t know if that is something I truly put my faith in. It’s a learning point for myself I now realize. I would like to learn and trust more in what may be right in front of me, pointing towards God. 

                Further along in our conversation, we started talking about pitfalls in our faith. What things in life hold us back from pursuing Jesus? For Aaron he believed it would be money. He worries about not having enough money or having too much. It’s a theme that sometimes makes him worry too much. For myself, success is my biggest worry. I spend a lot of time wondering if I will ever be “successful” and build a life for myself. As we talked about these pitfalls, we realized that it is something that we can mitigate. We just need to be disciplined and continue to trust in Jesus’s moderation of these in our lives.

                After my readings in the last chapter and after talking to Aaron I realize that faith is a difficult thing to argue and discuss. I am really impressed with all the arguments for believing in God in “Thinking” (38,41,49) as they really made a lot of sense to me. The fact that science started from religion really baffled me and is something that made me really question some of my thoughts of science. I learned a lot though writing this and I’m excited to see what else I learn in this course.

Blog Post #2 for Apologetics

Brandon Born

January 23, 2018

Apologetics

The Depressed Turtle

Life can be full of peaks and valleys, times where you’re feeling high as a kite and times where you’re as low as a depressed turtle. I know in my own life have had times where I feel like everything is going my way and other times, where I feel like it’s not even worth getting out of bed. I spend a lot of time chasing after adrenaline, which gives me those mountain top moments. I love it when I can have a full week spent doing nothing else but climbing, paddling, skiing, biking, or whatever. It keeps my mind occupied and my body tired. It doesn’t give me time to rest and reflect on points in my life where I’m feeling low.           

The only problem with living this way is it left me in deep valleys when I was not pursuing an activity.       I felt like my only worth was in my sports. When I was living in Norway I struggled with that a lot. I didn’t have enough room in my pack to carry along my snowboard, or my climbing gear or anything really. All I was able to pack was some hiking boots on my feet. It was really hard at times, I loved hiking, and I was living in one of the most beautiful places in the world, but I couldn’t help but feel a little bit depressed. A part of me that had been so important for the last couple years was gone. Adrenaline was like my drug and I was feeling major withdrawals.

It took a couple months before I started to feel less antsy and could start to actually enjoy myself fully. We had classes every week and I remember one week we had a talk on identity. It was a really painful talk for me actually. We had a time where we all got into groups and had to talk about our identity, but we couldn’t talk about our hobbies or activities. We could only speak about our personalities by using emotions and characteristics. I remember trying to piece myself together and realize that I was quite emotionally stunted. I was in such a low point, when it really should have been such a highlight in my life. With all the accomplishment climbing I had done in my life, I had failed to spend time on things that really mattered like emotional health and relationships.  For me climbing these peaks became such a focus that I was blind to what really mattered in my life.

It was during this same lecture week where we talked about what should define you if not your hobbies or professions. We realized that everything we define ourselves with on earth is trivial and temporary. If nothing we have on earth follows us after we die, then why does it matter to us? Wealth, careers, houses, skills, none of these matter once we are in the Kingdom of Heaven. So, why do we let these things define us now? We should let God define us and show us what we are worth. A simple way of doing that is by praying and reading the bible where there is lots of proof of our worth in Jesus Christ.