It has got me thinking. It showed not just Billy Graham but also his friend Charles Templeton, who was also a preacher but then renounced Christianity. It was their respective reactions to WWII that made me think. When seeing the horrendous pictures of the concentration camps, Charles Templeton's reaction was to question God, 'how can a loving God allow that to happen?', he seems to have lost his faith since then, the doubts it caused being too many to keep believing. But Billy Graham's response was 'but man did that not God', and it did not seem to shake his faith much. He carried on believing in God.
What makes one man doubt and one man believe when looking at the same evidence. I thought the same when reading Richard Dawkins book 'The God delusion' and then reading a book called 'The Dawkins Delusion' by Alistair McGrath. Both men seem to point to the same evidence, for example the nature of our universe, and find proof of their particular view from it.
If much more learned people than me can not find definitive proof of the existence of God then maybe by looking at things from an intellectual, or reasoning point of view is not going to get me far. My trouble is that I can often see all parts of an argument, and consequently find it difficult to come down on one side or the other. When I hear Billy Graham I find myself thinking, 'Yes that is right, there is a God and Jesus is His son. etc', but then I listen to atheists and find myself thinking 'how can I be so silly as to believe there is a God'.
If there is no God, then I am left with a question about Jesus. Who was he? What did he do? Did he die on a cross at the age of 33 or not? If he died like that, did he rise again on the 3rd day or not? If he did rise on the 3rd day does that not prove he is God, so therefore there must be a God. Maybe he was just human. But if he was then he seems to have been an extraordinary one, if so many people follow what he said 2000 years after he died.
I find myself really wanting to believe in God but having these huge doubts that he really exists. But it doesn't seem to be questions of God allowing suffering that is causing me the doubts. I am not sure what is behind it. Maybe I don't need to know. I am trying to listen to both sides of the debate equally and then try to make my own decision. But the good thing is that I don't seem as anxious about my doubts as I was.
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