Faith and Work on Agnosticism

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Job 3:11-13, Isaiah 45:7, Habakkuk 1:2-3 , Matthew 27:45-46 , Luke 22:42-44, Psalm 73:16-17

I’m a paranoid agnostic. I don’t think God exists, but I’m sure there is some sort of force out there working against me.

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Author

Paul Tillich

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Exodus 3:11-12, Matthew 14:28-31, Mark 9:24 , James 1:5-8 , Psalm 13:1-2, Psalm 42:5

Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

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What is Faith? Is it a Way of Knowing?

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Travis Dickinson

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Genesis 15:1-6, Exodus 14:10-14, Joshua 1:9, Psalm 23:, James 2:14-26

There’s no shortage of the religiously faithless who seem eager to tell us what faith is. Many of these characterizations of faith are reminiscent of Mark Twain’s precocious schoolboy who quipped, “Fa...

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Is Christian Faith Antithetical to Reason?

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Richard Robinson

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In his book The Allure of Gentleness , Dallas Willard includes a thought-provoking excerpt from Richard Robinson, a prominent atheist thinker from the mid-20th century. In his work An Atheist’...

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The Frustrating Unpredictability of Faith

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Don Everts and Doug Schaupp

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Galatians 6:9, John 3:8, Ecclesiastes 11:5, Isaiah 55:10-11, John 6:44

Writing about ministering to postmodern skeptics, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp share a helpful insight into the mystery of God's movement: The first lesson they have taught us about the path to f...

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A Mischief to Religion

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Joseph Glanvill

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Anti-Intellectualism has been a problem in the church for some time now. Consider the words of the 17th century English clergyman Joseph Glanvill, who had this to say about the role of reason in faith...

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Author

Oscar Wilde

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Ecclesiastes 5:10-12 , 2 Kings 5:15-27, Isaiah 55:1-2, Matthew 16:26, Luke 12:16-21 , Psalm 49:6-8

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

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The Truth They Were Hiding

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Ecclesiastes 3:11, Exodus 33:18–23, Isaiah 55:6–9 , John 1:1–14 , Acts 17:22–31, Psalm 42:1–2

Many have heard of the polymath and famous atheist Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), whose career as a public intellectual touched on a variety of disciplines, including philosophy (he is considered one o...

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Author

Tim Muehlhoff & Richard Langer

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Numbers 12:1-2, 1 Kings 12:16-20, Matthew 18:15-17, 1 Corinthians 1:10-13 , James 4:1-3, Psalm 133:1

We may have more disagreements with nonbelievers, but our disagreements with fellow believers are more problematic and more emotionally charged.

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The Village Atheist

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Dallas Willard

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You may remember the old “village atheist” trick of putting a watch on the podium and saying, “Now, if there is a God, in five minutes he must strike me dead.” Not a single person who has given that c...

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It is Better to Question than Merely Accept Difficult Circumstances

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Phillip Yancey

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Job 13:23–24 , Genesis 18:25, Habakkuk 1:2–3 , Mark 9:24, Romans 8:22–26, Psalm 73:2–3, 16–17

If the Book of Job reaches across two and a half millennia to teach anything to men and women who consider themselves normal, decent human beings, it is this: Human beings are sure to wander in ignora...

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Are People in the West Abandoning Faith or Just the Church?

Author

David Zahl

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Exodus 32:1-4 , 1 Kings 18:21, Jeremiah 2:13, Romans 1:25, Psalm 115:4-8, Acts 17:22-23

In this excerpt, author David Zahl challenges the common belief that religion is “in decline.” He argues that while Westerners, particularly younger generations, may be distancing themselves from the ...

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Author

Karl Barth

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Genesis 15:6, Habakkuk 2:4, Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 5:1-2, Matthew 17:20, Psalm 62:5-6

Only faith survives; faith which is not a work, not even a negative work; not an achievement, not even the achievement of humility. . . . Faith is the ground, the new order, the light. . . . Faith is ...

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Famous Atheist Richard Dawkins Argues that You are an Accident

Author

James Bryan Smith

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Genesis 2:7, Jeremiah 1:5 , Ecclesiastes 3:11, John 1:3-4, Colossians 1:16-17, Psalm 139:13-14

The atheist author Richard Dawkins, who wrote, “The universe, at the bottom, has no design, no purpose, no evil, and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor care...

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Author

Karl Barth

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Philippians 3:12, Romans 4:13-25, John 6:44, Acts 9:6-3, Ephesians 2:8-9

Faith means to be apprehended by that which is not ourselves, to be seized by God.

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Grace & Guilt

Author

Paul Tournier

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Scripture

Genesis 3:1-24, Isaiah 6:1-8, Genesis 50:15-21, John 8:1-11, Luke 15:11-32, Psalm 51:1-17

In Guilt and Grace , Swiss physician and Christian, Paul Tournier, writes… I cannot study this very serious problem of guilt with you without raising the very obvious and tragic fact that rel...

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Author

Andrew Sullivan

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Modernity slowly weakened spirituality, by design and accident, in favor of commerce; it downplayed silence and mere being in favor of noise and constant action. The reason we live in a culture increa...

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The Evangelist Wasting his Time

Author

Richard J. Mouw

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Proverbs 25:11, Ecclesiastes 3:7, Isaiah 50:4, 1 Peter 3:15, Colossians 4:5–6, Psalm 19:14

As a college student, I was returning to school one year on a Greyhound bus. One of the other passengers was a middle-aged man who seemed to be making the rounds, engaging various people in quiet conv...

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Heart & Head?

Author

Nancy Pearcey

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Proverbs 2:2–6, Romans 12:1–2, Isaiah 1:18, Daniel 1:17–20, Matthew 22:37, Psalm 119:97–100

At a Christian high school, a theology teacher strode to the front of the classroom, where he drew a heart on one side of the blackboard and a brain on the other. The two are as divided as the two sid...

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Tim Muehlhoff & Richard Langer

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Exodus 32:1-35 , 1 Samuel 25:2-35, Proverbs 18:2, Mark 3:1-6, James 1:19-20, Psalm 119:66

First, we do not believe that strong convictions cause incivility. Instead, we believe poorly formed convictions cause incivility.

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Not All Who Wander are Lost

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Travis Dickinson

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Exodus 3:1-15, Genesis 12:1-9, Job 1:42, Psalm 139:, Acts 9:1-19

In the novel The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien, there is a poem called the “Riddle of Strider.” One stanza goes like this: All that is gold does not glitter; Not all who wan...

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Author

G. K. Chesterton

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Job 38:1-4 , Ecclesiastes 3:11, Proverbs 8:30, Matthew 11:28-30, Psalm 104:31

If angels can fly because they take themselves lightly, does God take Himself lightly?

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Reducing God to Manageable Terms

Author

A. W. Tozer

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Exodus 32:1-6 , 1 Samuel 4:3-10, Isaiah 40:18-25, Matthew 16:13-20, Acts 5:1-11 , Psalm 115:4-8

A. W. Tozer once wrote, Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a ...

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Why It can be So Hard to Express Christian Convictions Civilly

Author

Tim Muehlhoff & Richard Langer

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Daniel 3:16-18, 1 Kings 18:21, Isaiah 55:8-9 , Romans 14:5-8, Psalm 119:105, Matthew 7:15-16

First, most Christians attach their convictions to Christ personally. In other words, we form our convictions in order to please Jesus, not ourselves. Convictions do not express what we think or feel ...

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“Respecting” Religion by Making it Private

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Nancy Pearcey

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Exodus 5:1–2, 1 Kings 18:21–39, Daniel 3:16–18, Matthew 5:14–16, Acts 4:19–20, Psalm 2:1–2, 10–12

Most secularists are too politically savvy to attack religion directly or to debunk it as false. So what do they do? They consign religion to the value sphere—which takes it out of the realm of true a...

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Tell us about Being a Christian

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Hebrews 12:1-2, Matthew 5:14-16, 1 Corinthians 1:25, Micah 6:8, Colossians 3:16, James 3:17

In Soul-Making , Allen Jones shares an intriguing visit to the Coptic Monastery of St. Macarius out in the Egyptian desert. There, he meets Father Jeremiah, a monk who spins tales of the desert fathe...

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Author

A. W. Tozer

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Colossians 3:2, Isaiah 26:3, Hebrews 12:1-3, Psalm 16:8, Hebrews 11:1, 2 Corinthians 5:7

Faith is a redirecting of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus.

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When our Prayers Crash into the Ground

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Phillip Yancey

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Deuteronomy 6:16 , 1 Kings 18:20-40, Job 1:20-22, Matthew 4:5-7, John 20:24-29, Psalm 73:1-3, 16-17

Nine-year-old Leo Tolstoy , convinced God would help him fly, dove headfirst out a third-floor window and had his first major crisis of disappointment with God. Fortunately, Tolstoy survived the cr...

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Thanking God for Ignorance

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Proverbs 4:7, Hosea 4:6, James 1:5 , Colossians 2:2-3, Psalm 119:66

Melville Weston Fuller (1833–1910), a prominent U.S. lawyer and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1888–1910), once presided over a church conference where a speaker passionately denounced higher edu...

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Author

H.H. Farmer

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Genesis 4:1-16 , Jonah 1:3, Proverbs 1:20-33, Acts 9:1-19, Romans 1:18-32, Psalm 1:1-6

If you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters.

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