This subject is in the very first rank of importance.
In writing this I hope to be able to communicate with both Believers and Unbelievers… which is difficult because the two extremes favour different approaches… one tends to run away when bible verses are deployed… assuming they are about to subjected to a nutty Bible bashing, yet the other tends to think that unless a post has a bible verse every second line that the post is some sort of Satanic plot!
Yet as has become my style, I will speak in plain ‘Natural’ terms as much as possible yet will stitch in scripture as I deem appropriate.
I believe this topic has value both as a means by which both Unbelievers and believers may gain important insights.

The whole theme is very much one of the most essential aspects of the proper relationship of any thoughtful person to the Almighty.

I will talk about how to deal with ‘struggles and issues’ in believing in Gods good character in due course, yet first I must present the basics of why Faith in his good character is essential.

There are many many vitally important reasons why it is *Faith* that puts us in the right relationship with God, and why he has made it the key to our relationship with himself.
One of the most interesting.. and telling facts is that *Faith in Gods Good Character* has always been… and always will be essential… even after/when we are in his very presence and have walked and talked with him simply because of our Limited capacity for knowledge… and his Infinite Divinity.
There will never be a time when we have full understanding of all things about the Almighty, and thus even though we may have a massive understanding… and countless proofs of his Good character… there will always exist a gap between what we know of him… and his full Glory… and thus Faith will always be needed to bridge this gap.

Then for the well versed and philosophically minded it is also understood that ultimately… all our knowledge… even scientific knowledge rests upon unproven assumptions that are accepted by faith!
At the very heart of the History of the Philosophy of science was the foundational ‘articles of faith’ that came directly from monotheism and is why Theists were responsible for the birth of modern science and why they occupy the Chief seats and hold the chief honours for virtually every branch of modern science… as the Founders.
Primarily the impetus to scientific discovery and secular explanations was born of the belief in a single Creator of everything who made the universe and ordered it according to Divine plans that may be rationally understood, and that the universe functions via Fixed Divinely established Laws… that Man may investigate and understand… because these laws are themselves rational and a testament to the truth and rationality of God Almighty.
Facts like this are not open to debate as they stand as Empirical reality… facts of the history of the philosophy of science… rather than on mere hypothetical intellectual ideology and bias.
One of the greatest delusions people like Hitchens, Dawkins, or Tyson have foisted onto the gullible atheist sheeple is the notion that the advance of Science has been synonymous with the advance of atheism… and the discrediting of faith in the Bible.

So far-be-it from being true that Christian faith… is as Atheists present the idea … as being a ploy to suck in the gullible to abdicate their minds and blindly swallow the delusions of religion… these atheists are displaying an abject ignorance of the dynamics and logic that underpins the Christian call to faith.
That *some False Prophets and priests may plot that way is not a justification to say *All Faith is Irrational and for fools*… and in fact to be an Atheist requires a heck of a lot of faith!
Atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris display both rank ignorance and patent dishonesty when they fail to acknowledge the debt science owes to Theistic cosmology.. yet of course their entire arguments fall over if they were to admit the truth!
They prefer to sell books like ‘The God delusion’… ‘God is not Great…how religion poisons everything’ etc etc.
And millions of chumps who hunger for any reason not to believe the bible swallow their Atheist delusions by the ship load.
Most of these people have blinders over their eyes and hands over their ears… they cannot be reached via reason… and in fact Spiritual truths are completely alien to them.
This being so any reader who has even reached this paragraph in my post and is honestly contemplating what I am saying… has hope!… as their hearts are not as hard as impregnable stone.. and they are more open to Objective discourse.

The Bible’s call to faith is not only Philosophically profound, it is also beautifully exemplified in its explanations as to how and why the world is the way it is…warts and all.

That Faith has always been… and always will be essential is shown to be true by the Fall of Lucifer… who was not like us in that we have never seen God…. He not only existed, came and went from the very presence of God… he also held the most exalted place in the hierarchy God had established In Heaven… and on the original Pre-Adamite Earth.
Lucifer had it all…. except the worship that was due to God alone.
It was the dark seed of Pride in Lucifer that caused him to feel he was worthy of greater honor than what he received that caused him to hate God… ie he began to question the goodness of God’s character.

Satan Seethed with envy… and was overcome with a delusion that God was treating him unjustly.

And Lucifer began to tell them (The Angels) lies.. and so under the weight of his Cunning…it was a naive lack of faith that allowed him to deceive many of the Angels into rebellion against God… and as Satan later on… also deceive Adam and Eve into disbelieving Gods word.
… yet I will mitigate the fall of the angels and of Adam and Eve in this one sense… ‘They were like Children in their innocence’… apart from the wiles of The Devil… the father of Lies…these matters might never have entered into their minds before Lucifer sowed his own mis-trust in the goodness of God’s character into their hearts… like a disease.
Yet still had they maintained faith in the goodness of God, Satan would never have been able to cause them to sin….

That Trust in God’s Good character and his right to be Lawgiver and Judge is clearly seen in the test and singular law that God gave to Adam with respect to the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.
Adam (and Eve) were free to enjoy the fruits of the Garden except the one in the midst which God deemed to be prohibited… and it is a prima facie demonstration of how Satan works.

Genesis 3 King James Version (KJV)

1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

From the above we see that Satan was able to sow distrust in Eve about God’s Good character by suggesting God was deceitfully withholding good things from them and had lied to them!
Satan said “Ye shall not surely die…” in direct contradiction to Gods word… and instead of trusting in God Good character and right to make binding laws upon them… she was decieved by this ruse… and fell into sin.

^ in those few words we find why Faith between Conscious Moral Free agents and our Creator is essential… even when unlike today… Humans and Angels dont have to have faith in God’s existence because they experienced him empirically!
They walked at talked with him!

In those few words we also find the key modus opperandi of Satan!
If he can get you to question the Good character of God Almighty and get you to think that God’s word cannot be trusted… Satan has you exactly where he wants you… and in such a condition of accusation against God… Against his word… and against his right to be Moral Lawgiver and Judge… it is impossible for you to please God!
You have switched rolls!
You now claim to be the Judge of the Almighty!
You now think *you can decide* whether or not you will be subject to his Laws and Authority!
You doubt the truthfulness of his word.

And that Satan is now ‘the God of this fallen world’ is demonstrated every day by the perverse Global phenomena of Mankind in their arrogance asserting that The Lord is Unjust… that his judgments are unfair and tyrannical… and that Mankind ought to be allowed to write their own rules… if any!
And there is plenty of Material for the children of Satan to continue to employ to ensure the next generations perpetually believe the God of the bible is a moral monster!
And it is Godless Humanity that have turned this world into a cesspool of filth and violence!
The Height of Human vanity, depravity, and delusion knows no bounds!

I will add links to this post that will some degree expand on many of the monumental points that I have touched upon above only briefly, yet without making this post extremely long I wish to tie in all this with some personal dilemmas I myself wrestle with… and how … knowing the dynamics of faith … I choose to deal with them.

The philosophical and explanatory power of the Book of Genesis is so Gigantic as to be a fingerprint of divine truth!
When contemplated with a sober mind it is not surprising that this text has remained one of the Greatest philosophical/theistic texts of all time!
Not only does it enunciate with clarity the origin of the Universe and humanity, but of equal importance it explains one of the great challenges to faith in the goodness of God’s character… the existence of Evil… and what we today describe as ‘Natural calamities’.

These are things that Satan, and his children constantly use as wedges… as darts … to fire at the innocent and unlearned… and the foolish and rebellious… to undermine any faith they might entertain that God is Good and just.
These accusations require their own rebuttals and The bible contains sufficient facts and demonstrations That God is Holy, Just, and Loving, etc… none the less it cannot be denied that there are things not only in reality but especially within the scriptures that even bible believers like myself *Dont like*… and these test my faith… yet I do not do what so many so-called Christians do… and that is deny the validity of these scriptures… and come with sophisticated excuses why they should not be believed!
The last century saw a massive falling away from bible believing faith… a sad and unnecessary retreat in the face a relentless rationalist onslaught.
Many Christians were deceived into believing the theory of evolution was a scientific fact that conclusively disproved the story of Adam and Eve.
Many were fooled by sophisticated arguments that the God of the Old testament was Cruel and unjust… these people succumbed to the wiles of the devil and instead of clinging to the scriptures and trusting in Gods Goodness and supreme Justice… they caved in and abandoned the very core of their faith.
Had they held fast to their faith… they would not have had to endure long before the evidence would mount up that evolution was a false hypothesis, and that the very complexity of the cell and DNA discovered by the advance of genetics would utterly vindicate the story of Adam and Eve and of Intelligent design. (though of course atheists still refuse to abandon their superstitions and sadly many Christians also have not returned to faith in the book of Genesis as they in fact still have not accepted that a Good God could judge the world by flood)

Now I would never suggest that the question of the existence of Evil and of Natural calamities should never be contemplated!
I believe such questions to be very important… yet we must take extreme care with how we walk on this treacherous soil!
There are great snares and pitfalls that await the stumbling fool.
Satan appears as an Angel of Light!
He and his minions will always present pseudo-moral arguments in accusation of Gods word and contend that believers are guilty of accepting atrocities.
Such as is common with Rationalists who assert the story of Noah’s flood is not only a myth… but also as being a clear demonstration that the God of the bible if he were real… would be a monster!
And falling for these sorts of vacuous… yet powerful delusions has caused untold millions to abandon faith in the Book of Genesis… the very foundation-stone of Gods word!
And I will not deny that the story of the Flood is chilling to the bone!
I will not deny that it would be very satisfying to think that this story is just a fable invented via superstitious and manipulative Priest-craft… and to thereby self-vindicate simply writing the whole business off with the waive of the hand… and then to mock those who cling to these scriptures as Cretins.
And thus thinking we have strong enough science… and moral arguments to subdue *any reasonable debate* We can proudly declare ourselves liberated from Tyranny and myth!
And there is no shortage of Rationalist material… even from so-called ‘Christians’ who argue the Book of genesis is not to be trusted… that it is just allegorical, etc… even though that is not how Jesus or Paul our Apostle saw the Book.
They were Bible believers!
They Knew God was Holy, and just in his judgement, and that his word is trustworthy!
Abraham lived Post Noahs flood… there was probably plenty of empirical evidence for the Flood all about him and when God called him to leave Ur and go to a land in which he would show him… and that God would bless him and make his children innumerable… Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness… saith Paul

Yet still!
Knowing all these things does not fully take away many things that I struggle with… things that I still dont like… things I know are true… yet wish were not.
Yet I accept that Reality and Moral truth are not Subject to my will, and that there are many Objective truths and realities that do not require my assent.
I know that any person who cannot accept the possibility of such objective realities … and still not trust in the Good character of God … but deem anything they dont like as proof that Either The God of the bible does not exist… or that if he does… then he is Not loving and good… to be the height of vanity and self delusion!
These people are the very definition of subjectivists … the very height of Ego-mania… in that they think they… in their ignorance and folly… can stand in judgement of the Almighty!
They have fallen into Satan’s trap.
And the greatest proof of this can be easily found when you investigate what ground it is upon which they base their own moral authority!
Any cursory examination of their moral foundations reveals their feet firmly ensnared in a swamp!
Ie They have no higher moral ground upon which they can justly claim to stand in moral Judgement of the character of God!

And when I read the scriptures I find that most.. if not all the objective realities and Biblical truths that I dont like are also things that God himself has expressed great sadness… such as the Righteous judgement of the lost in eternal torment… and in particular of many of my own friends and family whom I love and sympathize with!
and it is when contemplating this that I begin to understand the terrible burden that is God’s alone to bear.
Who among us would desire to Judge the deeds of humanity with Absolute justice?
None of us are even worthy to throw a stone at an adulterer.
Such Judgments can only be done without hypocrisy by an absolutely Holy Judge.
Yet still who would deny that Evil cannot be allowed to go unpunished?
Indeed another of the great deceptions of Satan and his minions has been the accusation that God seems to allow so much wickedness to prevail… and go unpunished.
Here we expose another gigantic hypocrisy and contradiction in the Atheists contentions against The Lord.
With One hand they curse him for letting the destruction and misery upon the innocent of Sin go unpunished, yet on the other they Curse God for executing Judgement and justice upon the wicked!

Though I would dearly love to believe in the Heresy of *Universal salvation* …. or that the Damned will simply be annihilated… etc etc… I know that this is not the true doctrine of the scriptures… and it is out of the knowledge that Judgement is coming for the lost… for their wickedness… esp the wickedness of rejecting Christ’s sacrifice on the cross… that I busy myself with trying to share the Gospel of the grace of God, and attempt to win souls to faith in the trustworthiness of the Bible as a Divinely inspired and preserved Revelation from God to us.
This entire post has been written in the hope that even a few souls might grasp the truth… and share it with their friends, neighbors, and loved ones.
I am painfully aware that I am a very unworthy vessel of these truths… and that many of my own character faults and evils do not reflect well on Christ or the Gospel… nonetheless I dare not remain silent… my time is short… and my burden is heavy with Fear for the lost… esp for My Friends, neighbors, and loved ones.
I also have no doubt that some of my interpretations and assumptions are still cloaked in ignorance… and I look forward to the day that God himself dispels many of my fears with his light.
Even though I know the gospel truth… That Christ has taken away my sins upon his cross…I still fear my own evils and worry about standing before the Holy and Almighty God… the righteous Judge of the wicked!
All I can do is trust in the gospel truth… and rest in my faith in Gods Mercy and grace is sufficient for a wretch like me!

When I am confronted by challenging moral criticisms or supposed scientific ‘facts’ that are presented as ‘proof’ the Bible is in error for which i have no immediate counter-argument, I have learned to rest in my faith and to search out an answer… and in the 30+ years that I have been a Bible believe *Never* has any such challenge ever proven to undo my rational belief in the scriptures.
Most Often it is not long before the supposed ‘Evidence’ against the Bible is exposed as vacuous… sometimes it may take years before I discover the answer and yet sometimes the criticism is found to be valid yet in these cases they expose an error in my own thinking… and actually help me to discover greater truths that were there all along in the Bible… yet may have been buried under some false doctrine I had picked up along the way!
It is always wonderful when I learn new, and deeper truths as they tend to increase the harmony of the scriptures and dissolve cloudy areas that needed exposing to the light of truth.
So it is that the Christian and Bible believer has nothing to fear from giving skeptical arguments a fair hearing.
For me this has been an ongoing process that has strengthened my trust in the scriptures and made me wiser.

^Not anonymous! Its Proverbs 3vs5,6!
That is in essence the Ultimate position of Faith for the humble soul who knows the limits of his own wisdom yet understands the Truth… that the bible is to be believed… for valid reasons.

I know that I dont know everything, and that I must trust in God in respect to my struggles… and to hold tight to his word no matter what storms of controversy I must face.
I do know God Almighty is Holy, Just, Loving, and good, and that as God he must judge sin… and yet out of love has provided a way for the humble who admit their own sin to be forgiven and saved… by pure grace.
“For God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners…. Christ died for us”
“And whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”.

“Faith is the power of an optimistic possibility thinker whereas Doubt is the power of a pessimistic impossibility thinker”
Robert H Sheuller.

The Greatness of the Bible in its explanatory and Value instilling powers is truly Mind-blowing!
Esp when compared to the inescapable nihilism which is what atheism offers!
Faith must overcome skepticism.
Compassion must be stronger than Hatred.
Hope must be greater than despair.

Trust in Gods Word and Good character must overcome the wiles of the Devil.

We have Jesus Christ…and the Gospel of the grace of Grace of God.

Tim Wikiriwhi
Christian Libertarian.
King James Bible believer.
Dispensationalist.

More from Tim….

The Rock of Divine Revelation.

Death of an Atheist. Follow the evidence.

Life and Death. Hope and Happiness. A Tribute to Rev John Steele Clark.

How can a Good God exist when there is so much evil in the world? (part1) Atheist Nihilism.

How can a Good God exist when there is so much evil in the world? (part 2) The Thirst for Blood.

Horror stories. How can a Good God exist when there is so much Evil in the world? (Part 3)

How can a Good God exist when there is so much Evil in the world? (Part 4) Interlude.

Seether: Know Thyself. How can a Good God exist when there is so much evil in the world? Part 5.

‘Good Atheists’ and the seriousness of sin. Good God/Evil world. 6

Hell is for the Self Righteous, Heaven is for Sinners.

The Gospel of God’s Grace.

The hope which is In Christ. Terrible grief shall be turned into great joy!

Car Crash.

We are not Robots Ayn Rand. We are Moral Agents.

Monism: Evolutionary Psychology and the Death of Morality, Reason and Freewill.

The Rusty Cage: Scientism.

Defunct / Archaic Western Dogma blindly insists : ‘Whatever does not fit the Naturalistic Materialist Paradigm is Illusory’. Entity Attacks

The Lies of Atheist Pseudo Science.

Pasteur’s Law, Creation Science vs Nose Bone Atheism.

Biomimicry… Plagiarizing God’s designs.

Sick Puppies.

Thorns in the Flesh.

Rapturous Amazement! The Advance of Science Converts The High Priest of Atheism to Deism. A Flew.

The Walls are closing in on Atheism… not Theism.

Faith, Science, and Reason. The Pomposity of Atheism.

Materialism renders Man Nought. Meaning-less, Value-less, Right-less
Dispensational Truth. 2Timothy2vs15, Ephesians 3vs1-9

Willful Ignorance and the Limits of human reason (without Divine Revelation.)