Welcome Aboard!

Shalom, and welcome aboard!

This blog is named "Tough Questions Seekers Have".  Why so?  Please read on...

I was born into a Christian family and my late paternal great-granddad was a pastor.  In December 1978, at the age of 11, I attended the Billy Graham Crusade that was held at the National Stadium, went forward to accept Jesus during the altar call, and officially called myself a Christian from then on.

As a kid and teenager in Sunday School, we were taught many stories in the Bible: Joseph and his ability to interpret dreams, Moses parting the Red Sea, David slaying Goliath, Solomon building the Temple, Jesus feeding the multitudes, and so on. 

Besides listening to stories, I would also read the Bible for myself and truth be told, came across numerous passages that confused me.  For example, why did Jacob get away with cheating his brother Esau and his dad Isaac?  Why did Judah sleep with his own daughter-in-law?  Why was David allowed to marry Bathsheba, after he had cruelly arranged for her husband Uriah to be killed in battle?  Ok fine, you may say, these are all fallen men after all.

Then I came to the gospels and read passages that really super-stumbled me:  Jesus being rude to His earthly parents when they were hunting high and low for Him.  Jesus asking people to forsake their own family if they wanted to follow Him.  Jesus making excuses for His disciples when they were caught eaten grains of corn on a Sabbath by making reference to David eating the shewbread meant only for the priests.  Jesus creating a ruckus in the temple and chasing people out with a whip.

Having read these passages, I became terrified of the God I had given my life to.  He appeared to be extremely inconsistent.  At times He seemed to close one eye.  Yet at other times, He seemed to punish people for no rhyme or reason.  If I had any prayer request, I did not dare approach Him boldly but from a safe distance, just in case He may have gotten up on the wrong side of bed that day and zap me for bothering Him.

In spite of my fears, I continued to stick it out as a Christian.  After all, I wanted to go to heaven rather than to go to hell.  Just like the employee who puts up with an unpredictable boss who can be super nice one day and super nasty the next, because he needs the job to feed his family.

I had a lot of tough questions but did not dare ask my Sunday School teacher or pastor, as I did not want to come across as disrespectful, sacrilegious or blasphemous.  So I just suppressed those questions to the deepest recesses of my mind, and hoped that one fine day when I am in heaven, all would be revealed.

Some of those questions include:

1. Where did Adam and Eve's grandchildren come from?

2. How did dinosaurs enter the Ark?

3. Are there aliens in outer space?

4. Why did God punish some people yet allow others to get away scot-free?

5. Why did God choose women of disrepute to be in Jesus' genealogy?

God, in His mercy, has revealed to me the answers to the above, and many more.  I will be providing the answers via this blog, and my prayer is that as we go through this journey together, you will come to the same conclusion, which is that God is love and that He is consistent -- the same yesterday, today and forever.  It is our misunderstanding and misconception of Him that makes us think that He is unpredictable and schizophrenic, when nothing could be further from the truth :-)

Meanwhile, if you have any tough questions of your own which you are seeking answers to, please feel free to drop me a note, and we can use this blog as a platform to share and in the process, understand more about our amazing and awesome God and strengthen the relationship we have with Him.