Unconvinced: Exploring Faith As A SkepticSample

When you read a book, you usually start on page one. When you read the Bible, page one is a tricky place to start. The people, the events, and even the God described in the Old Testament are hard to relate to. 

Yet to fully understand why Jesus lived and why he had to die, it’s worth backing up to the very beginning. Because the entire Bible—all of those complicated Old Testament narratives included—tells the single story of how God has been trying to win back us sinners since the very moment we first sinned.

The three major faith traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have a good bit of overlap in how they view the origins of humanity’s relationship to God. All three agree that God created us in his image and gave us the free will to say yes or no to our Creator. And they all agree that early in the history of humanity, somebody said no. When that happened, sin entered the world and nothing since then has been as good as it was intended to be.

The introduction of sin into the human experience forced God to make a choice: destroy this sin-infected world and start over, or roll up his sleeves and go to work fixing it. Again, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all agree that God decided to wade into the mess we had made. And he began the cleanup process by making three promises to a man named Abraham. 

Abraham wasn’t a perfect man. Genesis records that he lied and cheated. But Abraham’s sin didn’t prevent God from using him. (Yours doesn’t either.) God didn’t ask Abraham for perfect behavior. He asked Abraham to trust him. And Abraham did. He believed that what God promised, God would do. 

His belief sets the stage for one of the most important statements found in the Scriptures: “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” Abraham was given the same rights and privileges with God that a perfect man would earn through perfect behavior. Except he didn’t have to earn it. He couldn’t—he was already a sinner, just like us. Abraham received a right standing with God because of his faith.

As we read today in Paul’s letter to the Romans, the unconditional acceptance God showed Abraham is available to all of us. The only requirement? A single expression of faith.