It’s not that your questions aren’t valid, and it’s not that a healthy discussion and dialogue on the Bible isn’t necessary. They are and it is. It’s just that if we come at it from the angle of debating the veracity of the Scriptures, we’ll never arrive at an agreement. (Not that we have to, but I don’t think we’d even arrive at a mutual consensus.) This is what I mean by a narrative, counter-narrative. From my perspective, the Bible isn’t provable in the scientific sense of everything is neatly attributed to place and position. However, the Bible is equally provable in the sense that archaeology can substantiate a significant portion of its claims, ancient civilizations give credence to accounts in it (e.g. the Flood/Deluge is recorded in about every ancient civilization), and the written record of the Bible is unequaled in reliability of ancient manuscripts.

These things can be discussed, and should be, but they can be challenged as I pointed out before by the counter-narrative. You assert what we believe isn’t a choice, but I disagree with you. I know you’re inferring that facts lead to belief – but that is not the entirety of it. Facts question the 9/11 official story, yet beliefs still hold on to the narrative. We can be presented with two different sides of any story, but we still choose what we believe about the story. Our choice to believe (or not believe) is mostly influenced by our experiences and our personal understanding. I have four different children and they maintain beliefs of varying levels on any number of things, when given the exact same data one to the other.

So while I am happy to engage in debate on the Scriptures, and discussion about philosophical perspectives, I think I’d like to take another approach right now. I’d like to tell you an abridged version of why I have found God to be real, the Creator of the world, and the same as the God of the Bible.

I knew God first as Creator. It may have been taught to me, but I have no conscious memory of the teaching. I grew up in a rural landscape and I saw God in nature. It wasn’t a stretch to believe there was a creator, because I could see the evidence of it around me. (I knew nothing of Christ until my early teen years.) Belief in a Creator was simple for me by the evidence of my five senses.

I had a lot of pain and loneliness in my childhood, and very little understanding of the way this life worked. I was isolated a good portion of my childhood, simply from living on a farm in the country. I was an avid reader and read as much as I could find. There was no internet. It was all books or periodicals. I learned primarily by observation, secondly by reading, and third by a formal public school education (which I give little credence).
The concept of a personal god was foreign to me. I simply knew and understood there was a Creator.

It was in reading the Scriptures that I was led to Christ and the concept of salvation. That’s another story, but that’s where it began. I didn’t question the validity of the Bible. I believed it, even though I didn’t understand it.

I’m intellectual by nature, so questions come honestly, easily, and persistently. As I grew older, sat in the institutions of man, and began deeper seeking, questions naturally occurred. Because of the nature of my upbringing, I had a fervent zeal for two things: truth and transparency. I grew up in a house of pretense, mind games and lies abounded, and personal expression was all but forbidden. I hated the duplicity that I lived in, loathed the games, and was exhausted with all the secrets. Through a series of events, I was released (prematurely?) from that environment and my personal pursuit for truth and pledge for transparency began. I vowed I would never walk in a lie again or be bound by a lie, and I would be as transparent as possible. I hated and still hate anything fake, a pretense, and deceit.

I tell you that to explain our experiences influence our thinking, and yes, our choices.
I was drawn in particular to Christ’s statement, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” I put all my eggs in that basket, Devon. I’d been living (through no will of my own), a fake life of pretense and lies. I hated it. The idea that I could be free through the truth became my ambition. So I pursued the man of Christ to procure my freedom through truth.

I later clung to another part of that monologue from Christ, “So if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed.” I began to pursue how the Son (Christ) could set me free. I had no idea how this worked or how to apply this. My childhood church had already proven to be more of the same: pretense and pomp. I rejected it – in fact, when I was sixteen, I revisited that church and had a meeting with the pastor, who did not know me and I had never met. And I explained to him my disappointment at the lack of teaching truth that a church I had sat in for thirteen years had demonstrated.

It would take me fifteen years of earnest and persistent seeking to get the level of freedom I eventually did. In the meantime I would have a failed marriage, a good second marriage, and four children – three of my own.

I have heard the audible voice of God once – one time. It was in 1995 and I was distraught about some raging emotions I could not control and an opportunity before me that seemed too good to be true. I was on my knees in the borrowed living room of a kind stranger who wasn’t home at the time, in a strange city I did not know. I was there by blind obedience and trust in God going to a College He told me to attend. The voice of God spoke into that room so clearly, so distinctly, that I jumped. He said, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will be compassionate to whom I will be compassionate.” This did not seem to fit anything I was praying about, and I did not understand, though I knew it was the same words He spoke to Moses [Ex. 33:19]. So I said, “What?” And He repeated the exact same phrase. Then I saw the opportunity unfold that was before me with all of its blessings, and I understood the opportunity was God’s grace and compassion for me and I was to take it.

I tell you that because that opportunity I took changed the course of my life in some rather unexpected ways. I also tell you because you asserted God spoke no words of His own in the Scripture. That is not true. There are many times God answered people and the answer was recorded. There are many times God uttered a decree or statement. One of my very favorites was God’s answer to Job. And we know Christ said He only said what He heard the Father speaking, so we can deduce the words of Christ are also the words of God.
You want the word of God to be proven beyond a shadow of doubt before you believe, and I’m telling you it doesn’t really work that way. You believe by faith, and God proves it as you walk it out. I know the faith argument is generally mocked by atheists, but there’s no other real way of understanding. Because Christ multiplied loaves and told us we would do even greater works than He did, I trusted Him to get me 583 miles with two cars on the only money I had: $60 – one vehicle was a moving truck that got 10mpg. You can do the math and see the impossibility of that. Yet both cars arrived 583 miles later with less than a quarter tank in them.

Because Christ rebuked a fever, healed the sick, and commanded His disciples to do the same, I have learned to pray over every illness I have had for the past twenty years. My family’s medical records have been archived at our family physician’s office because we haven’t been to the doctor in almost two decades. We have practiced the tenets of our faith by believing the words of Christ and obeying His instructions. And no, it hasn’t come easily. There’s been a price to pay. (I once lived with a painful skin condition for two years before I got break through.) And no, I’m not a Christian Scientist and I don’t insist anyone else live as I do. I understand the principle of Romans 14 and we each answer to God for our faith and obedience to our understanding.

The reason Christianity cannot be reasoned is because it deals in the spiritual realm. Do you know scientists have attributed to at least twelve dimensions? Yet humans operate in four. What do you think is going on in those other eight dimensions?

When our son was five, he saw dark figures he didn’t recognize. He realized no one else was seeing them, so he kept quiet about them for four more years. When he finally spoke to me about them, he was as familiar with them as we would be with the daily inhabitants of our home. I didn’t have a grid for understanding. I began to press him for understanding. He had observed them for so long he could give me his understanding of how they functioned and what they were doing. The angelic realm opened up to him as well as the demonic. These things are in the Scriptures, but they aren’t widely understood or taught.

Paul speaks of these things and they are a mystery to the simple minded, or the carnal minded. But he explains it better than I:

1 Cor 2:6-16 [NASU]

Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; but just as it is written,

“THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD,
AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN,
ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.”

For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.

Catch the difference: “For to us God revealed them through the Spirit…” You cannot come at God through the flesh and think you’re going to find Him. You will not. You will indeed be exactly where you find yourself. God is not flesh. God is spirit and to understand spirit, you must be spiritually discerning. Does God speak to us and occasionally interject into the earthly world? Yes. But to walk with Him, to understand Him, to know Him, you must do so through the spirit. And you will be hard pressed to prove the spirit by going at it through the flesh or the mind.

I do not understand everything. God is a mystery and He reveals Himself as He wills. I have sought God on many things that I have not received understanding for, and equally for things He has shown me and I now understand. It’s a process. It’s a journey. If you want to know God, you can. Just stop using ONLY your reasoning and intellect to get there. You’ll never get there by that route.

There have been seasons and times I have turned away from the faith. There was a time I obeyed God to pray for a young lady who was dying, and she died three days later. I threw my Bible across the room in a heap and walked away. What good, I reasoned, was it to obey for such an outcome? It would be two weeks before I returned to that room and picked my Bible up from the heap it was in and sit before the Lord, finally quiet and not raging. He simply said this, “Recite Proverbs 3:5-6.” This was offensive to me. This was a child’s scripture memory – everyone knows this basic passage. So I hotly (and immaturely) spouted, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him—” God interrupted me and said, “Stop, go back.” I started again, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding—” God stopped me again: “Stop, repeat the last phrase.” I recited, “And lean not on your own understanding.”

“Say it again,” He said. Again I recited, “And lean not on your own understanding.”

It was a painful lesson but one I never forgot. I cannot trust my own understanding of God or nature, or anything. I must trust God. Is God good? Yes. Irrevocably yes. Just because I don’t understand His goodness does not make Him less than good. It would be several years later when He explained to me why Amy (the woman I prayed for) died. It was something I could not explain to anyone else – God had His reasons and He let me have a glimpse of them. I could not understand them at the time, but I did when He revealed it. This is what it’s like to walk with God. It’s strange, and uncomfortable, and challenging – yet also exhilarating and joyful and surreal.

My last story: I had a lot of obstacles to overcome. I had some severe traumas that needed healed in order to function healthily. I’m an intellectual and I had a lot of trouble laying down what my mind reasoned, and learning how to walk in the spirit. My mind kept screaming for it to make some sort of sense. I had sought some assistance from a ministry in Florida that specialized in healing and trauma, and it was the last day of our meetings. The breakthrough I had been seeking eluded me, and I was destitute, to put it mildly. I fought a debilitating headache that had rocked me practically incapacitated me by nightfall.

I went to bed like that and I awoke at exactly one a.m. on July 4th. God was in the room. It was the most incredible experience of my life. I never saw a figure, but His entire Presence permeated the room. Words will not properly convey it, but this is the best I have. The entire room pulsed. Absolutely everything in the room was living and breathing. The walls, the floor, the furniture – it was like something out of a twilight zone and because I’ve walked with God for a long time, I immediately knew it was my Maker. But in my current state, all I could think to say was, “If you could just touch my head…” My head was splitting in pain. I felt what I could only imagine was a finger in the middle of my forehead, and the pain rolled off as I fell back asleep. I awoke again at exactly 2a.m., then 3a.m., then 4a.m. and each time His Presence was still there, pulsing. The room, the entire room, was alive. Everything was responding to His Presence. I was unable to stay awake, even though I desperately wanted to. I would scan the room with my eyes, and marvel at the life that was permeating the entire place, but fall back asleep, until the 4a.m. wake up when I had to get ready to catch my flight. When I reflected on it later, I recalled that He came into my room on Independence Day. I live in another time zone, so when He was there at one a.m., it was straight up midnight at home. My personal liberty was sealed that day.

God is life. I tell you this because I’ve had the questions you have. I’ve asked them. I’ve researched, studied and read. But all of the studying amounts to nothing in the light of trying to understand with our feeble intellect an omniscient living, breathing, Creator. We simply can’t, not in this form, not in our frail humanity. [see Ecclesiastes 12:12-13]

The reason Christians seem so weak to atheists is because our intellect isn’t our god. We’ve learned, as Paul shows, to seek the mystery of God in spirit, not flesh. The reason the Bible makes sense and can be proven to me, is because I haven’t just read it. I live it. The things I don’t understand, the paradoxes and contradictions that seem apparent, I ask my Maker about and I wait for Him to reveal. My answers will seem weak to you. They won’t make sense because your intellect cannot perceive spiritual dynamics. If you really want to know God, you can. If you want to experience Him, you can. You don’t have to neglect your intellect, you just have to put it in the right place: in submission to the spirit.

As always, this has gotten too long. I think your heart is honest, and I think you’re asking honest questions. This is the fastest way to get your answers, if you can receive it. As always, it’s a joy dialoguing with you.