Encouragement

Long, random, true story:

I was just doing my thing looking for random blogs to read, and I came across a Christian blogger who has subscribed to a blog about atheism. Hmm, I thought. That's weird.

But as I thought about it, I realized it was not so weird after all. For some Christians it may be wise, and for some foolish (depending on levels of maturity) . . . but not necessarily weird. If you're going to try and counter the lies of a popular culture driven by atheism, it makes sense that you would know the arguments and complaints of the debater you are facing.

So I started to look at the atheist blogs. The ones I saw at first made me very sad. Not because they were destroying my faith (they were not) but because they were destroying their lives. So fearful of the idea of an all-knowing God, so upset at the concept of heaven and hell, and focusing on "Christian extremists" who, many times, act against the Bible (i.e. those who bomb abortion clinics) and shouldn't be used as the poster child for Christianity.

That was a piece of cake.

Everything they said I could follow, and I disagreed with it, and I understood why I disagreed with it.

But then, I came upon a much harder website.

This was written by a man who had preached in a church for thirty years before finding too many "inaccuracies" and "contradictions" in the Bible and as a result became a hard core Atheist advocate and author. In all honesty, I was a little scared to read his stuff.

I know God, and I know the Bible is true . . . but I don't know Hebrew or Greek, or extensive theology or apologetics. It is scary to confront myself with the anti-God writings of someone who has probably "studied" God longer than I have been alive.

But I am just too curious to not read something.

So I read some of his stuff. I'll admit I didn't read every word, but the general concepts . . . he was pretty puffed up with pride at the idea that he could prove the Bible wrong with a couple of paragraphs of "information."

What's the point, you may ask, of me blogging this? The point isn't the easy-to-prove-wrong atheist bloggers or even the hard-to-prove-wrong atheist blogger. The point is that a Christian responded to him.

Someone who believes the Bible had typed up a complete response to the skeptic's post and linked to it. I looked over that as well, and I agreed with it. It agreed with the Bible. He did things such as go back and look at word meanings in the original language the text was written in to decide what it really meant, instead of jumping to conclusions.

Of course the atheist didn't give it much credit, saying the Christian should just read his new book because it would "do him good."

The atheist claimed he wasn't impressed, but I was. Speaking truth always makes a difference. Sometimes it speaks to atheists, and sometimes to the average Internet wanderer like me, who needs to be encouraged after visiting an antagonistic and challenging website.

So I emailed the Christian and hoped to encourage him by letting him know that his writing had encouraged me. Because when I do something that helps another person, I appreciate when they tell me. Otherwise, after a while, I get discouraged and wonder if I make a difference. One word of thanks can do more for a person's ministry energy than you can imagine.

So, thanks to all the people who fight for Truth with keyboards, comments, user names and blogs: You are appreciated :)


For anyone else who takes the occasional journey into the camp of online skepticism, I came up with a couple things to remember for keeping a godly attitude and not being swayed by any intimidation:


* The Bible has something to say about them as well.
You may know them as "false prophets," "mockers," or in other unflattering categories.


* Just because they use big words doesn't mean they're smarter than you.
They just have more education in something that is less true.


* You can fight the lies without fighting the blogger.
"The battle is not against flesh and blood . . . "


* God can stick up for Himself.
He's the one that saves us, remember? Not the other way around.



Take some time to thank a person who has encouraged you in the faith. Thank God for being the One we can put our faith in. Thank God for putting that person in your life.

We have a lot to be thankful for :)