To believe that a God that we can't see or empirically prove to exist. Who created the Heavens and the Earth and who desires a relationship with each one of us is absurd to the rational natural mind of man. The apostle Paul put it like this in I Corinthians 2:14 "But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." Thus the non-believer cannot accept that there is a creator God who is responsible for the creation of this universe and everything it contains including the Earth, mankind and every other kind of life on this planet.
Further, a God who has a problem with our unrighteous ways and calls it sin is obviously intolerant and unreasonable. Very many people find that a hard and bitter pill to swallow. Surely we aren't that bad? Add to that that the fact that Christians believe that God was so moved by the catastrophe of the fall from grace of Adam and Eve and it's disastrous consequences. That He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to live a perfect human life and become a sacrifice for our sins. That is not something that the secular humanist movement finds particularly palatable, especially in 2022.
Why should anyone believe that they are sinful or unrighteous? Why would we believe in this supposed creator God who loved us enough to sacrifice His Son for us on the Cross. A Son who died to redeem us and restore our righteousness and our perfect relationship with Himself. To the unbeliever this perspective of the Christian faith is simply unbelievable, irrational and illogical. They view it as dangerous religious extremism and the province of the backward thinking. So how do we get the faith required to accept the fallen state of man and that we have a great creator Yahweh. Who so loves us that he gave His only Son that whoever believes on Him will not perish but will inherit eternal life?
The answer is that to believe we must have faith. I made a comment on a Facebook post a few years ago. The post showed and astronaut in space holding a sign which said "I don’t see God up here." I noted that you only had to look around you and you can see the work of God everywhere. Another person commented on my comment that they only saw physics and science. So my conclusion is that we only have faith in what we believe to be the truth. So to believe in the Christian God you have to have faith that the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ are true.
This is where things get interesting because Jesus said "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day."(John 6:44) So we can't accept Christ Jesus as our Saviour unless God, the Father, draws us to Him. Ephesians 2:8 tells us "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God…"
There are at least three perspectives about the issue of Salvation by Faith and how we come to be saved or elected to become the children of God. Many people like myself believed that we heard the gospel and made a choice to believe in Christ Jesus as our Saviour and Lord. When we read the bible or heard bible teaching we may have noticed that Jesus spoke of many being called but few being chosen and thought nothing of it. The gospel goes out to many but only a few believe and go on to be genuinely converted children of the Living God. That seems reasonable.
However, there is quite a commotion about a thing called the Doctrine of Election. Opinion ranges from those I described above of which camp I belonged and those called Calvinists and their opponents the Wesleyan Arminians. The Calvinists believe that everything relating to Salvation is given to us in the Grace of God and by ourselves we bring nothing to our salvation and neither could we as we are so depraved as to be unable to even consider accepting Christ's work on our behalf.
The Wesleyan Arminians believe that our Father in Heaven draws us to Christ Jesus through the preaching of the Gospel and that Grace enables the lost to respond to the call of the gospel to repent and accept Jesus as our Saviour. Thus Grace gives us the ability to make a choice for or against salvation in the name of Jesus Christ.
Personally, I would consider myself to be in the Wesleyan Arminian camp at the moment. This is because as you grow as Christian and develop an understanding of the scripture. You come to see that things are more complicated than you first thought. Thus your perspective changes as you become more knowledgeable of the scriptures and the things of God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Now while I understand the Calvinist view which states that there is no choice, rather God chose you and gave you salvation. You had no choice but to have faith in Jesus Christ and the work He did for you on the Cross because God chose you and you had no choice. However, I believe that choice is important to God because it is the one thing that the angels who fell exercised when they rejected God. For this reason I believe that God wants a people who would choose to follow Him even if He had to give them the ability to make that choice through Grace. This is where faith comes from, God gives it to us in Grace that we might choose Christ Jesus and have Salvation and Eternal Life. That is my opinion in any case.
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