What if I Have Doubts? (continued) - Intellectual,

Philosophical, and Cultural Issues

Short Answer Version

Some people think that a philosophy like existentialism, humanism, naturalism, or post-modernism somehow trumps believing in Jesus. Others claim devotion to another set of spiritual principles that they might not call a religion. A large number of people consider themselves set in beliefs of their family or country. These are all complex pursuits requiring insight to examine.

The shortest, truest, and best answer when considering all the philosophical and cultural issues is ''Jesus is better''.

Long Answer Version

No human has the ability to prove conclusively the premises of a philosophy or religion. No philosophy represents a good argument against believing in Jesus to be saved. However, many seem to offer precepts that make the philosophy seem on the surface to be a good replacement for believing in Jesus. But nothing can compete or compare with faith in Jesus as Savior.

One or more religion teaches that if you become a believer in Jesus, you will be excluded from salvation. If you consider yourself part of such a group, please dismiss that part of your teaching as untrue. Jesus said ''I am the way, the truth, and the life. No person comes to the Father except through Me.''

The tenets of any philosophy require faith to accept. Philosophies vary greatly in their views. If a philosophy tries to exert influence on its readers to disbelieve in Jesus as Savior or to choose either atheism or agnosticism, that philosophy should be considered at best untenable and dangerous.

Many philosophies make their end-goal the achievement of an individual’s personal happiness here on earth. Some do this in a way conducive to self-gratification on a short-term basis. Others are more altruistic and look beyond the individual to the corporate happiness of a culture or the entire human race.

Philosophies can be multi-faceted and exploratory. They can be profound, helpful, hurtful, creative, well-structured, disarrayed, self-refuting, illogical, or confusing. Both noble and ignoble motivations are represented in the vast number of philosophies.

Naturalism

One currently ubiquitous branch of philosophy is called naturalism. It has been around for centuries. It currently asserts that the scientific method relates to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are based on natural causes. This even includes social occurences, learned morality, and intelligence.

A specialized form of naturalism became a school of thought in the legal profession in the 1700s. It was based on a moral code superceding rules and positions of human authority. The moral code seen in nature was considered to transcend observable nature. Therefore, the concept of ''the laws of nature'' began as being or coming from a higher power than nature.

Naturalism in art began in the early 1800s. It was a move toward focusing art solely on the physically observable.

In Philosophy

Naturalism as a philosophy began in the mid 1800s. It did not at first deny the existence of God. The atheist movement had been growing and undoubtedly influenced naturalism. Without allowing for God to exist in the naturalistic ideology, the laws of nature were recognized, yet defied explanation. Nature can be explained to the extent it can be observed, but the complex functions that keep it operating, balancing, and changing can only be theorized. Therefore, the thing that replaces God in naturalism is ''chance''. This is merely a word for likelihood or probability. These laws of nature seem to take on many of the functions believers ascribe to God.

Statistical probabilities were at the center of the equation, as if the laws of probability wrote themselves. A naturalist also considers the laws of mathematics, physics, and nature to be devoid of the genius of design and creation. To me, the idea that it all exists and is maintained in momentum and equilibrium by chance is unfathomable. I'm not saying that God constantly focuses on holding every little thing in balance. It is more plausible to my mind that He created self-perpetuating systems that do it by His design. They demonstrate and fulfill the laws of nature God created. However, some scriptures can be easily interpreted that God is the one controlling it all. Those who favor that perspective have a perfect right to do so.

In Science

Some people attribute naturalism as a mixture of philosophy and science to Robert Boyle, who lived in the 1600s. He never used the word ''naturalism'', but he did invent the word ''chemistry'', and is known as the father of chemistry. Many naturalists like to think of him as the father of naturalism as well. He was a strong believer in Jesus and the Bible his entire life. The various schools of thought that arose later calling themselves ''naturalism'', were largely based on his work. They eventually veered from His spirituality. There is a very good You-Tube video entitled ''Robert Boyle - Man of Science, Man of Faith''

Naturalism entered the realm of modern science in the 1800s. Scientific Naturalism was popular among academics around 1830. In 1837 Charles Darwin made it a pursuit to examine scientific naturalism carefully, and did so for several years. During much of that time he considered himself a naturalist, as was the trend. But then he found it lacking. The areas that Darwin felt were inconceivable became some of the the kindling for writing his famous book and publishing it in 1859.

Starting in the introduction, and repeatedly throughout the book, he differentiated his views from those of the scientific naturalists. Scientific naturalists believed in the opposite of evolution when they said all domesticated animals would fully revert back to aboriginal animals in the wild. Darwin countered with his knowledge that many domesticated animals would not survive in those environments.

Naturalists believed that each species descended from other species through genetics. The existence of genes and chromosomes was newly being theorized in the same historical period. The first gene was not discovered until about seven years after Darwin's book was published.

Over the course of many years, most scientific naturalists gradually went along with Darwin's theories and deserted the original premises of scientific naturalism. Their main thrust remained atheistic, not allowing for divine creation.

In Literature

This worldview was adopted as an approach to literature. First postulated by Hippolyte Adolphe Taine of France, who between 1858 and 1864 wrote a four volume History of English Literature, and a book of essays on literary critique and history.

Taine's critical theory was first adopted by French novelists such as Emile Zola. Zola, wrote dozens of fictional works that incorporated naturalism, thereby veering from the norm and proving successful. Zola later organized his thoughts and constituency to enter the arena of philosophy. He is now called the founder of naturalism as a philosophy.

Although, the philosophy emerged sometime in the late 1800s, it became so popular among literary scholars that it spread quickly, even into an unlikely place: literary analysis of the Bible.

This is ironic because the Bible is filled with the supernatural. How can a naturalistic approach extract any intended meaning conveyed by a book that is primarily about God and the supernatural? Such strength did the power of suggestion possess, that an invasion of naturalism swept through western culture. It created waves of peer pressure, crowd psychology, mass suggestion, and anti God bias.

When naturalism spread, it infected the colleges and universities of the early 20th century, even the Christian ones. Today sadly, many of the most prestigious theological seminaries base their studies of the Bible on naturalism, through literary criticism.

Naturalism claims to be based on the scientific method. In fact, it is counter to scientific procedures because it makes a statement about the existence or non existence of God.

Naturalism is a philosophy of prejudicial bias. It is based on applying presuppositions that are largely indefensible. In so doing, it is failing to address quite a few red flags. In my opinion, it is a relatively weak philosophy, but still has a sway on the public largely due to the desire not to ''swim against the current''. Even today, many have assimilated the precepts of naturalism without even knowing where they originated.

An ancient Chinese school of thought, contained a word many translate as ''naturalism''. It bore little resemblance to later naturalism. It did, however, bear some resemblances to the ancient greek philosophies. Zou Yan was the founder, and his teachings were part of the Yin-yang school of thought. It had a strongly spiritual component.

Positive Versus Negative Philosophies

I prefer philosophies with goodness at the center, goodness of life, of future hope, of morals, of ethics, of loving others. Human goodness and happiness are nice things, and they are good endeavors to pursue. Although they are good, they are not the best, which is relationship with God. But put the two together, and you have a winning pair.

I disfavor philosophies that lead people to hopelessness, emptiness, anarchy, depression, or anxiety. Most of them, tend to exclude Jesus if that tells you anything. Here are some examples:

The philosophy nihilism can be capsulized as ''life is meaningless, so reject all moral principles, including most religion''. Existentialism holds that humans are without purpose in a world that makes no sense; therefure, they must fill in their need for purpose as best they can. But they know in the end it will all be meaningless. Postmodernism believes human consciousness cannot identify reality with objectivity; truth does not exist; science, technology, and logic cannot be trusted, being instruments of established power; neither reasoning nor human nature are consistent among humans; people can't know anything for certain; no theory of the natural world can be valid.

Some of thes philophies gained rather large followings when were introduced. Today, not so much. Postmodernism is the newest, and it has lost much of its thrust since it was introduced in the late 1900s. Relatively speaking, a tiny percentage of the populace holds to them today.

I hope you don't mind that I mentioned these negative, intellectual philosophies. Even though most well adjusted people currently reject them due to the sheer hopelessness factor, I can see an element of truth in them for some people. However, it does not apply to those who believe in Jesus: The apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Ephesus that prior to believing in Jesus, they were without Christ, ''having no hope and without God in the world''. Shortly before telling them this, he prayed that the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God would enlighten the eyes of their understanding, that they may know what is the hope of God's calling and what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. The message of Jesus instills hope.

No philosophy is better than Jesus. None can replace in your life what Jesus can provide. He alone is the way to heaven.

The Best Alternative To Any Philosophy

Believing in Jesus is not a philosophy. It is not a religion. It is not a set of principles. It is a relationship with God, and the way to eternal life. No other manner of living can touch that.

The wisdom Jesus portrayed in His teachings far exceeds that of any philosopher. Relationship with Him allows us to tap into His wisdom.

He understood that a person’s eternal well being could be jeopardized by the philosophical pursuit of temporary happiness.

Even if you strongly hold to a religion like Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, or Buddhism, you can have faith in Jesus to save you and it will happen. If you do make a decision contrary to the teachings of another religion, you might face opposition from its people. But I guarantee you will not face opposition from the Creator of the universe either now, or when you see Him face to face in Heaven.

We should treat people of all religions with honor. Being a follower of Jesus is a much higher honor than any religion. It is a deep friendship with the most brilliant, loving, and wise person of all time.

People who try to make this personal relationship into a religion rob themselves and others of the true value that can only be found in friendship with God.

If someone from a different religion or philosophy tries to dissuade you from following Jesus or to persuade you to adopt their preferred religion and add a flavor of Jesus mentality on as an extra, don’t go there. Jesus is not a religion or a mentality. He is not a belief. He is a person. It is about relationship, not religion, not a set of teachings.

I have studied major world religions and found they probably have more in common with each other than people would like to admit. Each believes in God. Each has a set of virtues for people to grow in.

The set of virtues is very similar among the world religions. They all have their versions of Heaven, and most also have a version of Hell. They all try and help you avoid evil, and live good lives. At their core, each attempts to work toward the betterment of mankind and the followers of the religion. They work against evil and in favor of God. Most present wisdom and insight in their writings.

You will see that following Jesus is so much better than any religion on earth, and He puts His virtues into us by His Holy Spirit. He gives us power to resist temptation and live clean, happy lives. This power is far more practical and effective than will power.

There is no reason to hold animosity toward any of the major religions. The right thing to do, as I have stated repeatedly, is to move your focus to believing in Jesus as Savior.

If someone says to believe in Jesus but to call Him a name specific to a foreign religion, such as Allah, Vishnu, Krishna, Buddha, Baha, or Maitreya, do not listen to them. It is an attempt to pull you away from Jesus. The same is true in reverse. Don’t call any of those ''deities'' Jesus or YHWH.

Believing in Jesus may clash with other religions, but it should not be out of animosity by the believer. In certain places people know that if they believe in Jesus, it will mean someone will be hired to kill them. Others know their family will cut them off. These are admittedly very strong inducements not to follow Jesus.

Persecution in anti Christian, atheistic countries today is prevalent. We all need to the count the cost to our mortal selves when we believe in Jesus. We should also see that the eternal future of each believer weighs more.

The first followers of Jesus lived in peril and persecution. Many were martyred. Many were rejected by friends and family. But each had experienced an encounter with Jesus that made it seem like they would be denying reality itself if they were to disavow belief in Jesus. The truth is they would have been denying the eternal reality, and therefore persecution was a small price to pay.

Jesus IS God and salvation IS by grace through faith in Jesus. Believers who encourage others to meet Jesus need to make sure the listener understands who the other person in the relationship truly is. New believers would be wise not to allow themselves to be influenced away from true beliefs by people teaching beliefs contrary to salvation in Jesus.

Spiritual enemies of Jesus want nothing more than to keep people from getting saved and becoming effective followers. They use all kinds of strategies including influencing ideologies negative to Jesus as Savior. These enemies are not people. The Bible tells us not to consider people our enemies. The real enemies are the spirits influencing the thoughts and feelings that steer people away from finding Heaven.

We live in a world where there are deterrents all around us to believing. The more poignant issues involve the state of the world today, the increasing presence of ungodly values disguised as good, and the subtle pressure by peers, media, family, and others to avoid choosing Jesus as our personal Savior.

These forces war against the plans of God to bring us out of the negativity around us and into the light, the kingdom in our midst, the kingdom yet to come, and freedom from all the negativities of our world.

If we have are eyes opened to these threats to our eternal happiness, we won't be fooled by them so easily.

Here are a few of the threats: Otherwise noble movements that exclude Jesus, popular notions that lead people away from Jesus, escapism, relativism, vengefulness, zealotry, paranoia, greed, distrust, disinterest, and fatalism.

A strong deterrent is to make idolatries out of obsessions with success, wealth, partying, and the objects associated with them. None of these things are automatically wrong by themselves. The obsession is wrong because neither you nor God are in control of your actions when you worship as idols non Jesus things.

A major deterrent is definition creep. Important concepts that lead us to Jesus are being redefined, diluted, made fun of, or considered obsolete. A few examples are the words, ''sin'', ''righteousness'', ''holy'', ''the fear of God'', and ''the universe.'' Somehow the universe God created is being turned into a replacement for God when people are ashamed of using the words ''God'' or ''Jesus'' in a sentence.

Of course it has for many decades been the practice of unbelievers to turn profound Biblical truths into swear words. Even the word for making love, which God created to be a wonderful thing, is now the ''grand daddy of all cuss words.'' People don't know they are defaming God by using the word. Bringing light to this issue is not meant to embarrass anyone, but to get to the root of one of the biggest deterrents against believing in Jesus as Savior today.

Too many people refuse to become saved for reasons pertaining to pleasures that are only sinful when employed outside of their prescribed context.

The answer to this and all the deterrents that exist, is to understand that God has a way of helping us deal with these things by virtue of His presence in our hearts when we believe in Jesus. A tool He has given us is repentance, and is most powerful when light shines on the roots of our sins.

Jesus is our Savior, and can save us from being susceptible to all the deterrents. One reason is that most or all of the deterrents had their origin in and are perpetuated by the war strategy of satan.

When Jesus comes into our lives He gives us ''authority over all the power of the enemy.'' By our prayers, He will break the power of the enemy and his clever deterrents in our lives over and over.

My main point about all the philosophies, religions, and paradigms of this age or any other, is that none of them are as good as relationship with Almighty God through Jesus Christ our Savior. None present wisdom as pure as that of Jesus. None have the signs and wonders, miracles and healings such as those that accompany faith in Jesus. None present salvation by grace (God’s undeserved favor and unmerited, unconditional love), through faith alone, faith itself being the gift of God and no human could boast about achieving it. Like night and day, the difference is great between knowing Jesus and practicing all the world’s religions and philosophies. Jesus is better.

Every people group on earth has a wide variety of personalities. This includes every religion group. Some are good, some are bad. It is wrong to stereotype a whole people group around the bad people in that group. But that is the reason there is so much conflict between religions. People are doing wrong by blaming or accusing a whole group.

This might surprise you. Jesus is in every major world religion somewhere. The Koran gave more praise to Jesus than to Mohammed. He is their awaited messiah. The Jewish scriptures testify over and over of a deliverer, prophesying in precise detail about Jesus. Some day they will recognize Him as their messiah according to the Bible. Even Hinduism and Buddhism have a place for Jesus, although it is not the place He deserves.

Perhaps we should start praying that these lines will become more blurred in the hearts of the true God lovers in other religions, so the light of heaven breaks through the fading blur and they recognize Jesus as their true King and Savior. In other words, let us pray that God will soften their hearts to the real Jesus.

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