| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Why Did God Fail?
00:03:46
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|
| Your book has has God failed you. | |
| Why did you tire to your book this? | |
| So as I started writing this book and feeling the pain of those out there who said, where was God when my child died? | |
| Or why did God let this happen to me? | |
| Or why doesn't he heal the pain that I'm in? | |
| Or why have my kids walked away from him? | |
| And it seemed and felt to them as if he failed. | |
| I said, I need this title to be bold. | |
| Because yes, we understand that God in his very nature cannot fail. | |
| It's the nature of God. | |
| We say he can do anything but fail. | |
| That's true. | |
| But many people feel deeply as if he has failed. | |
| It's their own perception that at the moment, even if, okay, the healing didn't come, but they're saying, but I didn't feel God's presence. | |
| I felt like he abandoned me in the most important times. | |
| Or when I go to the Bible and do what it says, it doesn't happen. | |
| So I felt we needed a bold title. | |
| And then, as Nancy reminded me, don't forget the people that aren't even sure if God is there. | |
| Hence the subtitle, Finding Faith When You're Not Even Sure God is Real. | |
| Right. | |
| You know, if we tell people just believe, it's like, I don't even know if there is a God. | |
| What am I believing? | |
| I don't want to trick myself. | |
| You know, one thing that Nancy explained to me from the atheist mentality was this desire for realism. | |
| I don't want to trick myself. | |
| I don't want to be deceived into something that's not real. | |
| So we don't just want to play emotional games with people. | |
| We want solid answers for the many, and it's an increasing number. | |
| Dropping out of church, turning away from God. | |
| I even heard of folks who were students in our ministry school. | |
| I mean, they were trained and taught by some of the finest faculty on the planet and experienced God together. | |
| Become atheists. | |
| How could this happen? | |
| Yeah, how is this happening? | |
| How is it happening, Dr. Harry? | |
| I just can't. | |
| Anybody would experience God. | |
| Yeah, I mean, look, you've been to Hell and Back several times, right? | |
| And you're here, and you would say, hey, I'm living proof that God doesn't fail. | |
| And someone else will say, well, that's not my experience. | |
| And what I find, there are three main reasons that people fall away or lose faith. | |
| And I try to address them all in the book with compassion. | |
| The first is experience. | |
| So it could be, you know, our child had leukemia, and we saw the promises of God. | |
| We prayed, had men of God lay hands on her, and women of God lay hands on her child, and she died. | |
| So the bad experience, that's always at the top of the list. | |
| And then another is the kind of theological, biblical problems. | |
| The Bible is under attack now. | |
| One of my friends, a professor, said, you know, years ago we used to be able to say it's true because it's in the Bible. | |
| Now we have to say it's in the Bible because it's true. | |
| That the Bible and the God of the Bible are under constant attack, that he's this bigoted, homophobic God that calls for genocide and how can you believe in this and the Bible is against women and it's this and that. | |
| So the intellectual, theological issues and then the larger philosophical ones. | |
| Why is there so much pain in the world? | |
| Why is there so much evil? | |
| And it's almost like the answers that work for one generation aren't working for another generation, especially now. | |
| Right now, statistically, what are called the nuns, N-O-N-E-S, those who have no religious affiliation, that's about 20%. | |
| Evangelicals are about 25% of the population. | |
| So one-fifth of Americans today say they have no religious affiliation. | |
| Not necessarily atheists, but no religious affiliation. | |
| They have dropped out. | |
| And many have dropped out because they haven't experienced God for themselves. | |
|
Objections Filter Down
00:00:27
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|
| And then they're not getting solid intellectual answers for their questions. | |
| So with the constant bombardment against God, against scripture, the best-selling books of the atheist from 10, 15 years ago, that's now become mainstream. | |
| Josh McDowell, the famous apologist, has said numerous times that the objections he used to run into with college-age kids, he's now running into kids that are 12 or 13. | |
| Because social media, the memes, things filter down. | |