“You mean a serial killer who accepts Christ at the last moment of his life gets to go to heaven, while a good person who helped many during her life goes to hell because she didn’t believe in Christ?”
“And what about all those people who never had a chance to hear about Christ at all, you mean they are all doomed?”
“If God predestined who gets saved how is this an even game?”
“And if God knew that humans were going to sin why bother creating them to begin with?”
Last Tuesday I was with a group of medical and nursing students at an event that was aimed at allowing folks to ask tough questions about the Christian faith. We were divided into small groups of ten. There were two runs so I had the privilege of being questioned by two groups of students.
As I listened to the questions I realised that these were not questions I had dealt with in recent times. I realised that I was with a group of undergrads who were in their early twenties. It dawned on me that these were burning questions for me and my friends when I was their age. I realised that I was more than forty years their senior. Their questions were no longer that pressing for me at my stage of life. I had lived with those types of questions for a long time now. I had either come up with biblical answers I could accept, or for those answers that I still didn’t have answers to, I had learnt to entrust them to a loving and all-wise God.
As I interacted with those dear folks I had to remember where they were in their journeys and what concerns they were grappling with at this point in their lives. I feared that I would come across too glib; that my answers would roll too quickly off my tongue. Therefore I took time to acknowledge the validity of their questions and confessed that to this day I still struggle with some of them.
At some point I mentioned that the single event that convinces me about the Christian faith is the resurrection of Christ. Anyone can claim to be a Saviour but no one dies and comes back to life. The resurrection was the unique sign that gave credence to a unique claim. Christianity isn’t just a set of ideas. It is based on something that happened in history. I then shared briefly why I believe in the resurrection.
Yesterday afternoon I addressed a group of Third Agers, those aged sixty and above. I challenged them to continue to give their all to serve God at all chapters of life including the Third Age. Because of the success of Singapore’s health care system, there will be more and more Third Agers and we will age differently. Some will grapple with things like dementia and Parkinson’s disease. They deserve our love and care. But there will be many who are still fairly healthy and should still be actively serving the Lord with the years and the health that God entrusts to us.
Some of us will be serving intergenerationally with folks younger than us. Many of us will be keen to share our wisdom and experience with those who are younger than us, and indeed we have a lot to share. But we must remember where the young are at their stage of life, and we must understand and respect their questions before we give our answers. Indeed, their questions may guide us to look at issues we have ignored and should still be working on.
