What Should I Believe?

People have long agonised on what to believe about the nature and character of God and on whether or not they should actually believe in a God of if there is indeed such a being.  If there is a God up there, out there, what would He, she, it look like?  Would a God be a loving kind of entity?  What if anything would a God expect from you and me?  Worship, sacrifice, love, obedience or more?  People have speculated and ruminated about whether or not a God would really be interested in us.  Some belief systems hold that God is a kind of distant entity, vaguely interested in the welfare and affairs of humanity but not overly concerned with their hopes dreams and aspirations or caring very much for example if they have some kind of catastrophe.  Some say that God isn't perfect.  The Late Spike Milligan for example said that he couldn't believe that God if He existed could be perfect given the amount of suffering he saw in the world.  Now the subject of belief is a very personal one, on which each and every one of us has to make up his or her own mind.

As you'd no doubt expect, having gone to the trouble of posting about it, I have very strong ideas on the nature and character of God, but I wouldn't want to impose them on anyone else.  If you don't want to believe in my version of God or you don't want to accept there is a God at all that's your choice, after all it's your eternity.  They say that there's no such thing as an atheist on the eve of a battle.  So if at no other time in your life or mine, we're likely to consider whether or not there is an afterlife of some kind when we're facing the biggest battle of all, in which there can be only one winner, death.  So just in case you're wondering what kind of God I believe in, it's the God of the Bible.  Yes that's right, I'm a born again, fundamental Jesus freak!  So there you have it, out front, up front so you can decide if you want to read any more of my wee posts.  (Yes I am really Scottish).  I believe as my forefathers of my land did, in the concept of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The triune God we read of in the pages of His inspired word.  I don't get hung up on any particular version of the Bible although there are some I avoid and yes like vanilla ice cream, which is still by far the most popular flavour of ice cream in the world, I love the Authorised or King James Version even though for various purposes I use other versions.  I hold firmly to the belief that it's not very sensible to try and introduce the Bible and spiritual truths, to people born in the late 20th and early 21st centuries which were written in Elizabethan English, the language of Shakespeare.

I believe in the validity of both Old and New Testaments of the Bible.  There's an old song titled Love and Marriage which go together like a horse and carriage and you can't have one without the other.  This is true of the two testaments of the Holy Bible.  The Old is the foundation on which the New is laid.  In the Old Testament, we have the promise of a Saviour, a Deliverer, a Messiah and in the New we have all the promises fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.  Far too many people make the false claim that Jesus set new precedents when He didn't.  In actual fact, He fulfilled the ones already set by God the Father.  These truths are manifest to us by that wonderfully mysterious 3rd person of the Christian Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  He always existed, He brooded over the face of the waters at the dawn of creation.  He inspired the prophets and psalmists.  He descended on Jesus the day He was baptised in the Jordan River.  He came into the world in a way He hadn't before on the first Day of Pentecost after Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead.  Whether or not you're aware of it the first person of the Godhead who spoke to you is the Holy Spirit.  He's the One who makes you aware of sin and you're a sinner.  He's the One who witnesses to the truth that Jesus is the Son of God and God the Son, the only Saviour and Redeemer of humanity.  I think this is going to be long enough for my first post.  I hope that you might continue reading the others I put up and together we'll learn a bit more about God.  I want you to find out a little bit about how the Divine and the human interact.  So many systems of belief ignore the human and in fact are totally oblivious and indifferent to human suffering, the total antithesis of Christian belief and thought.