Thinking and working

So I'm on a diet. South Beach, to be exact, and my doctor has recommended it countless times. I'm in the early stages of it and it's awful. But, five pounds in 36 hours! Can't beat that, even if it is all water weight!

I've been thinking a lot too. I've talked some about my views on healing and I've mentioned before that my faith has taken a lot of hits over the years, and I'm trying so hard to get back on track. I think my trouble comes in that I pray and I just don't feel like I'm "connecting". It's a hard and frustrating thing to go through.

So here's my question: Christians have this unwavering belief that Jesus was the Son of God. As a kid that idea didn't bother me. It was simply Truth, and I didn't question it. As I got older, and especially here more recently, I've started asking more questions.

It's not that I doubt God. I wonder, sometimes, just how involved God is with the day-to-day of us common folks, but I know God exists. I feel Him around me. I see Him in the world that surrounds me. I can't question His existence.

What I wonder about is Jesus. There were a number of other men, some during Jesus' time, who claimed to be Messiah. Some even performed what appeared to be miracles. Some had rather impressive followings and had small congregations devoted to them for a while. Then there's Muhammad, who Christians are so quick to dismiss as being a crazy guy who spent too much time in the sun. But millions (or billions?) of people follow his teachings. Not viewed as a messiah, exactly, but you get what I'm saying.

What makes Jesus different from these guys?

All we have, historically speaking, are the writings of people who were dissatisfied overall with the way their world looked. Much like people today, they were looking for anyone who had some answers. Some people latched on to Jesus. Others latched onto some of the other claimants. I forget which one it was, but one of them was supposedly pretty popular and the main reason people went for Christianity instead of his little following was that A) somewhat more was written about Christ and B) Christianity was similar enough to the Mithras cult that was popular in Rome that practitioners of it could convert without changing a lot of their overall beliefs and practices.

So of course it's easy to follow someone who has been the subject of quite an amount of writing. It's sort of like learning subjects in school--most people have an easier time when they have textbooks on hand to study from.

There's also the issue of how the Jews view Jesus. To them, He doesn't doesn't fulfill the prophesies. Many of the prophesies Christians say He fulfilled the Jews say don't mean what we've translated them to mean. They've got quite a few compelling arguments.

So in the midst of my spiritual quandary this has been the central question. Why Jesus? Why Him instead of all these other guys who claimed (or were speculated to be) a messiah? If we're supposed to ignore the claims of all these other people, why are we supposed to so quickly and easily accept what Jesus said He was? What about the arguments the Jews present against His messiah-dom? I think a lot more people would wonder if so many churches didn't solve the "problem" by simply insisting "because the NT says so". And if that argument is valid, then to me it never made sense that all the rules God laid out for us are suddenly invalid because Jesus said so. What about what the OT says?

I'm not trying to start any debates or arguments but I've felt like I was between a rock and a hard place for a long time now. Obviously Christians believe that you lose out on salvation by not believing in Jesus, but that seems a bit harsh if someone still believes in God and obeys His commandments. In the OT it doesn't say anything about believing in the Messiah in order to obtain eternal life so I think we can hardly say it was clearly commanded by God. So you can see my obvious problem--wanting to believe but having hard-to-answer questions and feeling all the while disconnected, and like my soul is in limbo or even potential jeopardy. Unfortunately, in the highly conservative background I come from, ministers hardly entertain these questions.

If anyone has any insight feel free to share. Maybe I read too much. Maybe I ask too many questions. But I miss feeling secure like I did as a kid. I miss that sense of just simply knowing. And I still have that where God is concerned but as far as the subject of Christianity I'm not as sure as I used to be. And I hate being in limbo.