Yes, God is behind all those things, but the skeptical intellectual stops looking at the point where God begins. He can't see Him. He can't measure Him, therefore, he can't know Him. “Blessed, however, is the man who can believe without seeing.” Jesus said that after Thomas was convinced of Jesus' return from the dead by touching His wounds. Thomas was able to intellectually grasp Jesus' reality because he was able to see and touch the evidence. Today, we can't do that.

We know why the skeptical intellectual can't grasp the reality of God. He stops just short because he can't seem to go beyond where his reasoning lies. He can't go past what his frail and faulty carnal mind can grasp. But, in order to find God, it is imperative we be willing to go past the five senses and recognize that there is more to life than just what the eyes can see and the ears can hear. Why stop searching at the point where God begins?

The skeptical intellectual prefers to witness only the obvious portions of God's order. He wants to attest only to what can be seen, touched, tasted, smelled, and heard. Due to limitations on his accrual of data, he has no inkling of what he is missing by not being willing to allow God to show him what is beyond this physical world.

Skeptical intellectuals may grasp that we have spirits because, when a person dies, something that was there that caused the mechanism (body) to be animated is now not there. The mechanism ceases working. Our essential selves are spiritually based. We can surmise, by the above fact, that “we” leave the mechanisms when we die. Because something invisible animates our bodies, the skeptical intellectual can grasp the concept that something does exist beyond what we can sense.

These spirits (or souls) can't be the Creator because they were created. (According to scripture, we are unable to produce or reproduce gods.) So who is the Creator? I know it seems an oversimplification but the Creator is God.

Many skeptical intellectuals seem to have the mistaken belief (if they do believe in God), that He is stupid and that it is necessary to manipulate Him to get what they want. The problem with that is what we think we want in this carnal world is different from what God knows we need. So, it is with a rebellious spirit that the skeptical intellectuals attempt to get their way by taking words and organizing them so that a strong positive (or negative) statement of desire is declared. If they repeat this statement over and over in their carnal minds, they build a type of faith and belief to the extent that, often, the desired item or event actually comes about. Those who follow this type of belief system will recognize that life becomes an almost endless stream of trying to achieve this goal or obtain that item. Satisfaction is always short-lived. Naming and claiming, unfortunately, needs to be done as often as wants and wishes and needs continue to slide into the skeptical intellectual's world. Therefore, skeptical intellectuals who follow this approach to life are never satisfied for long and must continue this process indefinitely.

Will satisfaction ever come? Will the skeptical intellectual ever find true peace and happiness in this way? No, because our wants and needs on this earth are greater than the amount of days we are here. It is futile for us to keep on striving for things, for businesses, for self-improvement, or anything because we don't know, truly, what is going on here. We think life is all about these external things and comfort, but it isn't. Our ultimate purpose far exceeds these petty things that occupy most of our time and efforts. It is necessary, however, to use our will to submit to Him and allow His transforming ideas to replace our worldly ones.

For now, though, we need to consider that God is not stupid and it is not practical (nor really possible) to manipulate Him in order to get what we want. By manipulating our carnal minds, we may achieve what we want but worldly gain has no eternal value. God wants our minds to have free will. He desires that MORE than He wants to rescue us from ourselves and our wishes and all our little, disjointed fulfillments that come in this world. He loves us as He created us (through Christ), not what we have made of ourselves, nor what we have accumulated here on earth.

The one thing God has that we haven't, is time. He is not caught up in it at all. He resides in eternity. He can easily wait for it to dawn on the skeptical intellectual that worldly happiness is elusive and, ultimately, unfulfilling.

The skeptical intellectual can break free of the never-ending cycle of wanting and getting, but never being truly satisfied. The skeptical intellectual does not need to stay enmeshed in the world of appearances. The skeptical intellectual does not need to be so concerned with the world, nor does he need to be a victim of it. How can he be set free from the world's bondage?

God sent His Son, Jesus, to die for us. Much of this world doesn't make any sense and its endless ups and downs and futile accomplishments, its wealth and poverty, its wars and rumors of wars, its melting ice caps and terrible storms--none of it makes any eternal sense. Christ does make sense, however--eternal sense.

To grasp what Christ said and what He ultimately did requires an open mind. It needs to be open a lot further than the typical skeptical intellectuals allow. It can only be opened by God and it will only be opened once our firm grasp on worldly conditions and worldly things is relaxed. God will not jerk our fingers from the world's pacifiers. He respects our freedom of choice too much to do that. He will calmly wait for us to realize the futility of the world's operations.

Once he realizes his need, the skeptical intellectual will become aware of a Light that was sent to this world to save us. This Light is Jesus Christ. On the cross and by His shed blood, He redeemed our rebellious souls. Our rebellion did not end 2000 years ago when Jesus walked this earth. There are many people today who refuse to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. Thomas had his needs met when he was able to touch Jesus' wounds but today, as I stated earlier, we can't do that. We need to be willing to accept Jesus Christ as our Savior on faith and confess our sins to Him.

Transcending our intellect or human understanding, a peace will descend onto us and prepare us for a joyous life of a Christian. The world's pains and barbs and jabs will still impact our lives, but our hearts will no longer be troubled. Christ (and His Holy Spirit) will lift the burdens of the world from our shoulders. And God, it will be discovered, is far from stupid. He simply does not have to defend His position at all. He merely waits patiently and lovingly for us to turn to Him through Christ.

Even the skeptical intellectual believes that we can choose to be happy or we can choose to be sad. But there is a third choice. We can choose to allow Jesus Christ permanently into our hearts. We can choose to allow His joy and light and love to issue forth from us into the dark and angry corners of this frustrating and unfulfilling world. That is a better choice and the only truly sane choice we can make.

Our minds have accumulated debris and cobwebs from a lifetime of believing everything the world has said was true. Paul said in the New Testament to “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” It is at this point that we must allow our will, a God-given gift, to consciously give up poisonous thoughts and surrender our precious minds to Christ. When a negative, worldly desire or temptation comes up from our hearts, we need to ask Jesus to do with our thoughts what He did with the moneychangers in the temple. At our request, He will put together His whips and, with our willingness to conform to God's ways, He will drive those undesirable thoughts from our holy altar within and allow them to be replaced with God's thoughts of truth as found in the Bible. If we truly desire it, He will not let us defile our temple any longer! Praise God.

God will support our efforts to change our thinking (another way of saying, “repent”) and He will give us a shower of peace and joy that will make all of our efforts toward this goal very worthwhile. The satisfaction that will come when the choice for Christ is made will be far greater than any other choice the world or our own selfish desires will offer. Why? Because ultimately our only reason for being here on this planet at this time is to glorify God and make Him attractive to all by shining His light through our eyes into this dark and unforgiving world. We must love the Lord our God with all our hearts and souls and minds and love our neighbors as ourselves. This is our purpose.

If you are a skeptical intellectual, I'll swear on a stack of encyclopedias that you will have no problem rejoicing and being glad in this goal because God ordained it for you.

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