This Jesus We Talk About: Answers to Questions from a Doubter

By Bill King

How would you answer questions about the Christian faith? In this book a doubter, whom the author named Thomas, asks many of the common questions that can lead to a resistance in accepting the Christian faith. Thomas friend ,named Matt (who relates thoughts, understandings, and experiences of the author), writes his answers in the form of letters back to Thomas. The author writes of a God that is gracious, forgiving, accepting, and ever loving. And he explores what it is like to be in continuous fellowship with God through Jesus Christ It is a fellowship free for the asking, a gift waiting to be given.

This book is an invitation to be Gods friend. Before you accept such an invitation you may want to know more about the God doing the inviting! The book presents God as a loving father who wants us to come home. Discover the love and grace of God thought Jesus Christ, a love that will draw you into that intimate friendship.

LAWRENCE GERATY, Ph.D. President Emeritus, La Sierra University

I highly recommend THIS JESUS WE TALK ABOUT. It is a theologically sound exploration of many of the most common questions concerning the Christian faith. The authors lifetime search for a living faith is evident as he explores the answers to questions that would challenge a faith in Jesus.

LELAND YIALELIS, M.Div. from Andrews Theological Seminary

Bill King is a man of faith and intellect, the convergance of those two make this book a must read HAROLD WATKINS, Attorney at Law THIS JESUS WE TALK ABOUT explores experiences within this broken world that present questions, doubts, and struggles. The author shows the value of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that brings meaning, healing, and belonging resulting in a loving relationship with Jesus Christ, others, and oneself. STEPHEN DANIEL, Ph.D. Clinical Psychology from Biola University I heartily recommend Bill Kings book. He writes with a lucid style and every page is brimming with insights into an authentic faith. Grace triumphs in This Jesus! Read it and be blessed! ROBERT NORTON, D.Min. From Fuller Theological Seminary

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490872179

Bill King

BILL KING, husband, father, and grandfather, has enjoyed a career of designing and building custom homes. Living in the Southwest, he actively enjoys the seasons by traveling, photographing, golfing, hiking, and snow skiing. As a committed Christian who has participated in small Bible study groups over the years, he continues to explore and share experiences and ideas about the Christian faith.

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Copyright © 2015 Bill King.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

Cover design by Bill King

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-7218-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-7219-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-7217-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015903622

WestBow Press rev. date: 09/21/2016

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: Questions

Chapter 2: God or god?

Chapter 3: Relevance

Chapter 4: Who Are You?

Chapter 5: Nonissue or Spin?

Chapter 6: No Coming

Chapter 7: Off the Hook

Chapter 8: What Good Is It?

Chapter 9: Saved Anyway

Chapter 10: Death or Torment?

Chapter 11: The Good Life

Chapter 12: Passive or Zealous?

Chapter 13: A Good Something Else

Chapter 14: Creation by Evolution

Chapter 15: Prayer Chain

Chapter 16: Hubble’s View

Chapter 17: Three in One

Chapter 18: Soul with Wings

Chapter 19: Dos and Don’ts

Chapter 20: Faith Stuff

Chapter 21: The Knowable God

Chapter 22: New Year’s Resolutions

Chapter 23: Religious Stuff

Chapter 24: Why?

Chapter 25: The Word

Chapter 26: Stop

Chapter 27: Past, Present, and Future

Chapter 28: Rescued

Postscript

Discussion Questions

Bibliography

About the Author

To my beloved, inspiring, fun-loving, and beautiful wife—

in a magnificent partnership through a marriage

of fifty plus years.

PREFACE

As a home designer, I am often conscious of how indebted I am to the experience, ideas, and architectural work of my contemporaries and my predecessors. If a client wants Tudor architecture, I need to know the particular design elements that make up traditional Tudor architecture. That is likewise true if someone wants a Victorian, prairie style, mountain lodge, craftsman, Southwest, or contemporary design. It is also true of my efforts to design the interior elements of a home. What are current architects, designers, builders, and product manufacturers creating and publicizing that might influence my creation of a beautiful, functional kitchen, bath, home office, home theater, or the like? What are the elements of green building and sustainability that apply? What can I learn from past masters? The variables are nearly limitless.

What I design for a particular client on a particular property for a particular budget is unique and one of a kind. To some degree, however, what I design is still a reflection of the historical and cultural consensus of what makes up a home. I try to incorporate classic or innovative design elements and marry them with current products to create a unique design that meets the needs and desires of my client.

As I wrote the letters that compose this book, I realized that I am likewise deeply indebted to those who have gone before and have expressed their thoughts on these subjects. I have benefited from pastors and friends; religious tapes and videos; many books, commentaries, and study helps; but most importantly, from the Bible itself. These along with a great deal of prayer and meditation gave rise to the expressions of the themes contained in this book.

Not everyone’s theological (study of religious doctrines) and eschatological (dealing with last things and events) understandings are the same. The source of one’s beliefs comes from an individual’s informational culture and history as well as the choices one makes within and because of it. Though you, the reader, may not agree with some of my understandings, that is okay. This is not a book about theology or eschatology. It is rather a quest to present the truth about our God in Jesus Christ as a gracious, loving, and relating God who wants a personal relationship with each of us.

When I am designing and building a home, it is always my desire to see it enhance the lives of those who live in it. I want it to be an environment of comfort and beauty where families live, love, laugh, cry, play, grow, entertain, and create wonderful memories.

Likewise, I sincerely desire that this book will enhance the reader’s experiential connectedness to the God who continually comes to us in love. This love is most assuredly expressed in the life of Jesus Christ and the Spirit of truth He has made available to each of us.

Yes, it is this Jesus we will be talking about.

INTRODUCTION

It was never my intention to write this book or any other book for that matter. I have never had any aspirations of being a writer. My aspirations have been to be a Christian husband, father, father-in-law, and businessman, a man who enjoys sharing my understanding of the Christian faith in all the venues of my life. However, on the many occasions when someone has asked me, What do you do? I have never answered the question by saying, Oh, I share the good news about Jesus Christ. I have always assumed they were asking what my career was or what I did for a living, not what I thought about the things of the Spirit. Thus, I have answered the question by telling them that I have made my career in designing and building homes.

At this stage of my life (more than seventy years), I have set aside the design and construction business. This has provided some extra time for me to write a book about my understanding of Christianity. The inspiration for this book, however, goes back many years to meetings with fellow Christians in small Bible study groups.

I count myself lucky to have been introduced to Jesus Christ at a very young age. Because I was baptized at thirteen, I was nurtured in my understanding of spiritual things in the context of my childhood denominational church affiliation. I always liked my age-group classes, which met before church worship services. Even better were the youth get-togethers where we met to sing and have discussions about life, the Bible, and how we might better relate to one another.

I attended a Christian college that required a number of general education Bible classes. Though a committed Christian, I spent more time in my major field of industrial arts and spent as much time as possible working in an architectural office with further time spent in happy pursuit of the fairer sex. The theology students on campus seemed to me to be in a world of their own. Their study of Greek and Hebrew, systematic theology, and Old Testament studies put them beyond my more pragmatic orientation to matters of the Spirit. General education Bible classes were about as far as I cared to go.

What did inspire me, however, were the many dorm-room discussions I had with three to six fellow students. Sometimes our discussions lasted for hours at a time and well into the night. They were rich with fellowship. We entertained a wide variety of ideas about how life worked and how God or Jesus Christ fit into it all. We discussed Christian church creeds, dogma, traditions, and how they fit into a coherent belief system consistent with a God who loves. But like so much of life, spiritual growth and understanding is a matter of process.

After college graduation I served two years in the military. Halfway through my tour of duty I married my college sweetheart. Since we both wanted a marriage with Jesus Christ at the center, we shared morning worship before we jumped into our daily activities, went to church, taught youth classes, and engaged in other forms of spiritual activity. Still, over time we entered into a kind of spiritual malaise. The everyday work world dominated our lives.

For a number of years we just did church. We were not challenging ourselves or others in spiritual growth. We eventually came to the realization that in order to grow, we needed direct and personal discussions with fellow Christians from both outside and inside the church. Our spirituality needed exercise, not just with our ears in church, not just with our quick thank-you prayers in the morning, not just with hearing a TV minister or reading the Bible or a book now and then, but with real spiritual exercise and activity.

We needed challenges as well as accountability within our understandings. We needed to access that unique knowledge that comes from the collective priesthood of all believers. We needed to heal from the damages we discovered within ourselves and from those thrust upon us by a broken world around us. We needed to encourage and help others with their healing from their own sense of brokenness. We needed to struggle with the pensive questions others had about their spiritual understanding and its practical application to daily life. Thus began a lifelong habit of actively participating in small group Bible studies.

One-on-one and face-to-face small groups have been for me an excellent means of grappling with sincere questions of spiritual vitality and have provided a forum when I have been searching for spiritual understanding and answers. In this intimate setting my fellow Christians and I have asked one another questions such as the following:

• How are you at the spiritual core of your life?

• How well are you faring in your Christian experience?

• Do you feel a connectedness with God and Jesus Christ?

• Have you found that you can put your trust in God, or do you mostly go it alone?

• In a world that can so easily become fragmented, do you see life and all its circumstances in a contextual whole?

• Do you continually affirm your relationship with God through Jesus Christ?

• Because of your relationship with a living and loving God, how do you affirm and celebrate life?

• How does a person truly worship anyway?

• How do you transfer what you believe to how you act?

• Is the Christian life making a significant difference in your life?

And there are a thousand more questions.

My participation in Bible study groups has challenged me to think more, know more, and learn how to express my thoughts about the God I have experienced and grown to love and admire more clearly. In one group discussion certain current events made all of us, including me, painfully aware of how little we knew of other world religions. About the same time I happened to be reading through a flyer on courses offered by a college. This desire to know more and to be better able to communicate about God, Jesus Christ, and the relationship of religion within a larger worldview led me to enroll in a comparative religions class.

While I was taking this course, I wrote several essays. One of the essays was about a fictitious work colleague named Thomas who asked another work colleague named Matt (see chapter 1) a whole series of questions about aspects of the Christian faith. Why the name Thomas? I suppose it comes from the biblical character that is often referred to as Doubting Thomas.

It was fun asking the questions since I didn’t have to figure out the answers, which was not the purpose of the essay. The essay was done. The class was finished, and I went on to other activities. Yet there was something about that essay and Thomas’s questions that kept nagging at me. If I had to, could I answer those questions? Could I defend the faith that I held? I wasn’t sure. I figured that someday I would go back to that essay and take the time to see if I could answer each question.

A couple of years later a Bible study group I attended was viewing a series of videos that featured discussion afterward. Down to our last video, we decided to talk about what we wanted to do for our next study. I mentioned my essay about questions on spiritual matters and shared a copy I kept in my Bible cover. Everyone agreed that the essay contained some of the questions they, too, had wondered about. We concluded that it would be good to take a question or two each week and see how we as a group of Christian men would answer them. Since it was my essay, I was given the opportunity to lead the discussion. Oh great, I thought, what did I just get myself into?

Now I will admit to anyone that it is much easier to ask the questions than to give the answers. Some of them caused a real struggle. But once I started, I was determined to answer each question to the best of my understanding. My goal in answering was to give a consistent picture of God, the picture that I have come to experience—a God that is creative, relational, personal, trustworthy, gracious, and loving.

It took some time, but we finally worked through all the questions. At the end of our exploration this wonderful and supportive group of men said that I should take all the questions and answers and put them in book form. My first reaction was, Yeah, right! But as the years passed, that idea kept eating at me, and I couldn’t drop it. All my support groups encouraged me to do it. Though I didn’t have a clue on how to go about it, I tackled the task. A fictitious work colleague, Matt (who relates thoughts, understandings, and my experiences as the author), would write letters to my Doubting Thomas. After a great deal of hiccups, editing, and time invested, here it is. I pray that you will be edified and blessed by reading it.

It is my hope and prayer that you may find an answer or two to questions that you have always wondered or even worried about. Most of all, I hope that this book, which is really a compilation of essays, draws you into a closer relationship with the person of Jesus Christ and that you will find Him, as I have, very creative, continually relational, uniquely personal, forever trustworthy, eternally gracious, and always loving.

CHAPTER 1

QUESTIONS

My friend Thomas (see introduction) had many questions, and they weren’t glib or sarcastic. They rang with sincerity and made me wonder how I, a committed Christian, could best answer them.

Thomas had heard me claim a personal relationship with Jesus. He’d often heard me talk about it. He also knew that I prayed, attended church, and met with small groups to explore spiritual subjects. I knew that if I were to have any chance of introducing him to the personal and relational Jesus I knew, loved, and admired and the Jesus I called my friend, I had better pay attention to his questions and have some very good answers.

I wasn’t expecting what Thomas delivered to me—twenty-six thoughtful questions. In a letter from him to me, he outlined his thoughts and posed his questions.

Dear Matt,

From some of our conversations at work, you seem to be confident, even enthusiastic at times about your Christian experience. I find this both curious and a bit troubling. My experience of Christianity has apparently been much different from yours. When I was growing up, my parents took my siblings and me to church from time to time, but it was not something that seemed to affect the way they lived or viewed life. In our family we never talked about God or Jesus, and we never said grace over meals or prayed openly as a family. We never read the Bible either. We had a Bible, but it remained on the bookshelf.

I think our going to church from time to time was just something that my folks did in an effort to be good. I certainly understand that my parents wanted to be good parents and desired to expose my sisters and me to Christianity, which they presumed they were doing by taking us to church. They never pushed us toward it, just provided enough exposure to let us know that such a belief system existed and that it was up to us if we wanted to explore it further. But despite their intentions and efforts, Christianity always seemed optional to me.

I never inquired too much about Christianity through my years of education. Having witnessed the in-your-face, street-corner Jesus signs, TV evangelists, and the always-needing-more-money religious solicitations, I didn’t have much use for Christianity or its claims. I remember one philosophy professor saying that religious language and rituals were nothing more than efforts on man’s part to construct meaning out of a bleak human existence that seemed random, finite, and meaningless. That professor asserted that postulating about God was fruitless and naive.

To me, Christianity and its truth claims seemed irrelevant and even misleading compared to life in the real world. I guess I thought Christianity was something that some people needed to nudge them toward a more moral and ethical lifestyle or something that served as an insurance policy in case there turned out to be a hereafter. But personally I never saw the need to believe in or participate in Christian religious stuff. And when I saw the conflicts in the world over religious beliefs, it made me mad. I often thought that the world would be much better off if the idea of God had never come up. But mankind’s history refuted my wishful thinking. Mankind has repeatedly turned to a god of some kind.

At break times and sometimes at lunch I’ve joined you and some of our colleagues in some lively discussions about religious issues. As you know, I am the cynic and antagonist in the group. This may shock you, but I have actually looked in the Bible a number of times. That’s right. I own a Bible. But my looking has been more for finding fault and raising questions than an honest search for answers. I’ll confess that my Bible sits on the bookshelf in much the way as my parents’ did.

From our discussions I see you as someone who expresses an understanding about the meaning of life based upon your Christian beliefs. Your experience of Christianity seems more than a nudge toward moral and ethical living or an insurance policy for the hereafter. Your Christianity seems somehow more interactive than others’ as if you check in with it frequently. So I’ve decided to ask you some questions that might fill in some of the blanks about Christians and their beliefs.

Personally I don’t feel any need for an active belief, so maybe it is just intellectual curiosity. But whatever the reason, I think you may be able to give me a better understanding of why Christians think they have discovered a sense of wholeness and deep connectedness to a transcendent being. And I think maybe you can explain how that connectedness manifests itself in their lives in ways unknown to non-Christians.

These are my questions.

1. Jesus of Nazareth died for sedition some two thousand years ago on a Roman cross in Jerusalem. How could Jesus’ death two thousand years ago have anything to do with me now? (Chapter 3: Relevance)

2. It doesn’t make any sense to me that Jesus’ dying on the cross could pay for my sins. No judicial system allows a man to pay for the capital crimes committed by another. So what makes it right for Christians to assume that Jesus paid the price for mankind’s deliberate wrongdoings? Is this some mental gymnastics to allow them to feel free from guilt? How does Jesus’ dying on the cross in ancient times affect the choices a modern person made in the past, makes currently or will make in the future? (Chapter 4: Who Are You?)

3. It seems that Christianity rests on the idea that Jesus rose from the dead. If that is true, why did only His closest followers record the event and preach it? Why didn’t historians and government officials of the time document it as well? (Chapter 5: Nonissue or Spin?)

4. I understand that Jesus said He was going to come back from heaven soon. For nearly two thousand years now people have been saying that, but there has been no second coming. Is this just a scare tactic to keep religionists in line? It seems to me it is similar to what kids are told about how they need to be good because Santa Claus is coming. (Chapter 6: No Coming)

5. Most people feel a person should be responsible for their actions, but the Christian says he has been let off the hook for his mistakes. I think I have heard you say that Christians are justified or absolved. Does that mean they just don’t want to take personal responsibility for their actions and have created a neat way out? (Chapter 7: Off the Hook)

6. I know people who are really good people but who are not Christians. I also know other people who say they are Christians, but who are not so good when it comes to morals and ethics. What good is it to be a Christian if it doesn’t affect the way people live, except for maybe the way they spend their Sundays? (Chapter 8: What Good Is It?)

7. If there is life after death and if I am a good person (have integrity, am morally and ethically honest, and live the social values that Christians talk about), why wouldn’t a loving and just God save me even if I didn’t buy into all that Christian religious stuff? (Chapter 9: Saved Anyway)

8. Christians say that I along with everyone else who doesn’t accept Jesus Christ as Savior deserve to die. What have I done that is so bad that your God is going to give me the death penalty? And is this really the death penalty, or is it an eternal torture penalty? Is God, because of my doubts about Jesus Christ, going to send me to hell, where I will be tortured forever because I made some mistakes and didn’t believe things correctly while I was here on earth? Is that what a loving God does? (Chapter 10: Death or Torment?)

9. I have a fantastic and loving wife, great kids, a well-paying job with excellent benefits, friends, good health, a good retirement plan, a nice home, and other material comforts. How would being a Christian benefit me now in this life? What would I gain that I don’t already have access to? (Chapter 11: The Good Life)

10. In comparing worshippers of a variety of the world’s belief systems, including Christianity, I notice that some are extremely zealous while others are quite laissez-faire. The laissez-faire person does not seem to hurt anyone. However, more people have been killed by zealots of a religion trying to proselytize or maintain religious purity in themselves or others than from any other cause. Why would a reasonable person want to become part of a belief system that has the makings of bigotry and hate? Doesn’t Christianity, like other belief systems, see it as an us versus them world? (Chapter 12: Passive or Zealous?)

11. Is the Christian any better than a good something else like a good Hindu, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Jew, or good New-Ager? It seems that every Christian I have ever talked to thinks their belief system is the correct one about life and God. Why are there so many different Christian beliefs, and who is to know which is right? (Chapter 13: A Good Something Else)

12. Does it really make any difference if a person believes in evolution, either pure or God-directed, or the seven-day Genesis Bible story? (Chapter 14: Creation by Evolution)

13. Christians seem to believe in prayer for all kinds of things—getting a job, healing, staying safe on a trip, and so forth. Yet they seem to experience about the same percentage of car accidents, cancers, divorces, and other tragedies as non-Christians do. What does prayer really accomplish? A person I work with is on what she calls a prayer chain. If one person has a problem, then all the people on this prayer chain pray about the problem. Isn’t one person’s prayer as good as a whole group of people’s prayers? Is the Christian’s God so political that He listens to a group more than to one? (Chapter 15: Prayer Chain)

14. The Christian talks a lot about having a personal relationship with God. A lot of children have imaginary friends, and a lot of crazies think they have relationships with all kinds of people. How is the Christian’s relationship with an unseen, inaudible God any different? The Hubble space telescope has never seen God, has never viewed heaven, and has never photographed anything that would indicate the existence of something more than the natural world and universe. If God is there, why is He so invisible? (Chapter 16: Hubble’s View)

15. Christians talk about a three-person God spoken of as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I don’t understand how you can have three different identities and three separate persons all in one being. How can that be? (Chapter 17: Three in One)

16. Where did the idea of each man having an immortal soul that has a life all its own come from? There is nothing in the physical body that science can identify as the soul. Is the soul supposed to be a living thing within us or just a metaphor describing the essence or summation of a person? (Chapter 18: Soul with Wings)

17. I’m not saying that I want to, but if I were to become a Christian, wouldn’t I lose a lot of my freedom? Why do Christians say they are free when there are so many dos and don’ts in their lives? What kind of freedom are they talking about? (Chapter 19: Dos and Don’ts)

18. Sometimes I think that Christians just fake their beliefs or maybe just inherit them and never examine them. Some act like it is just an insurance policy for the great hereafter. They all say we must have faith to believe in the unseen. But what is this faith, and how does it work in relation to fact and reality? Does faith mean that God is unbelievable—a deity who reportedly did something that cannot be proven? Are we just expected to believe in Him anyway? (Chapter 20: Faith Stuff)

19. Some Christians say that they know God, that they have a personal relationship with Him. That sounds very arrogant to me. How is God knowable if the God they talk about actually created and sustains the whole universe? (Chapter 21: The Knowable God)

20. I can understand the idea of a new life, a new beginning, or a fresh start like New Year’s resolutions. But what is different about the Christian’s new life in Christ? Isn’t it just a form of New Year’s resolutions by another name? (Chapter 22: New Year’s Resolutions)

21. How far do your beliefs have to go before you can call yourself a Christian? Can you just believe in Jesus, who died for your sins and not believe or participate in all the other religious stuff? (Chapter 23: Religious Stuff)

22. If God is truly loving, how can He allow so much suffering in the world to go on for such a long time? Mankind has witnessed the Roman persecution of Christians, violent religious movements, the Holocaust, multiple genocides, man’s general inhumanity toward other human beings, pain, slavery, and the mass starvation of countless children. Where is God, and what relevance does He have in all this suffering? Isn’t the survival of the fittest the real truth about life? (Chapter 24: Why?)

23. Christians say that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. How can that be when it was given orally from generation to generation and then reduced to written form about 600 to 400 BCE and then translated into different languages many times and finally translated within the same language many times over? I’ve heard some claim that the various translations don’t even seem to say the same thing. (Chapter 25: The Word)

24. If you don’t like being a Christian, is it easy to stop being one? (Chapter 26: Stop)

25. Christians say that being in Christ changes their past, present, and future. My past is my past—that’s history. What can Christianity do about that? I am responsible for my choices in the present. What can Christianity do about those? My future is yet to be determined or discovered. What does Christianity have to do with those? (Chapter 27: Past, Present, and Future)

26. Why are you a Christian? What does it do for you? What do you think I am missing by not committing my life to Christ? (Chapter 28: Rescued)

Maybe you don’t have answers to all of these questions, Matt. But these are the kinds of things that give me pause about exploring Christianity and its beliefs. I would really like to know what you think.

Sincerely,

Thomas

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Wow, good questions, I thought to myself. How was I going to respond? If we were to meet someplace and