A Few Thoughts From Van Robison
In four months I will be 71 years of age. In my short life span I have come to believe that human leaders of men, have no more comprehension of what the truth about God is, than a jackrabbit. After many years of church attendance, which not only included 12-years at Ambassador College in Pasadena, but also charismatic, pentecostal, Baptist and other groups, I have to conclude that all churches are man-made institutions. Churches are very divided as to what "truth" is and every group sees "truth" from a different perspective. Anyone whose shallow and extremely narrow religious experience, only includes the Worldwide Church of God or any one of its many splinter groups, has very limited thinking and perspective. The same of course applies to all Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses and all other groups, where the church goer has never spent years attending other groups.
It is a shame that so many people limit themselves, probably because of FEAR, more than any other reason. How often I have read of personal accounts of various church goers, who lived in fear and only with great struggle were able to be set free from years of some church cult. There is no greater feeling of freedom, than to be free from the indoctrination of church cults. While being sincere is a good quality, at the same time sincerity is no guarantee of truth.
Like many others, I too have struggled with my own thinking and I don't pretend to have all the answers. All I have are my own personal convictions based upon all my own experiences in life. For whatever reason it would seem that God is not the Person that the church world thinks He is. God has not intervened and stopped all the insane and diabolical wars, nor has He intervened and stopped all the sicknesses, diseases, accidents, trauma and horrors that human beings experience in life on earth.
God has never stopped the religious fraud in His name, nor the endless parade of propaganda that inundates the world. God has not taken down the wolves in sheep's clothing who stand in pulpits and pretend to speak for God. God has never put a stop to all the confusion in the world of religious beliefs. God has not even answered prayer for many who died or suffered in spite of zealous and very emotional prayer. Why??? No human answer ever satisfies the deep down desire to know the reason for the agonies of life.
Human suffering is the ultimate question and no one really understands why it is or must be. It is easy to understand why many turn to atheism and the church world is in part responsible for causing many to turn away from belief in God, all the while the supposed purpose of church, is to turn people to God. Human beings are creatures of habit and it is a habit to "go to church" and to stop thinking. Church goers don't think because the whole concept of church going, is that the pastors of the churches do the thinking, while the church goers simply nod approval.
I am sure that I will continue to question as long as I live and I have learned from life, that to trust pastors, preachers or church rulers with "truth" is a major and serious mistake. Nor do I believe that God/Jesus Christ expected human being to blindly submit to religious rulers of men, as if they speak for God. And that is also why I question the validity of the Bible itself, because after all it was compiled by men, edited endless times, "translated" from other languages, interpreted by human reasoning, and made to appear as if God authored it.
Perhaps some day and it most likely will not be in this life time, we may know the truth, which seems to be very flexible in the human realm.
Van Robison