Why Do You Believe That

Join Mary Jo in a practical 7-session study and gain understanding and skill to share Jesus effectively with others, and you'll better understand your own faith. Answer your doubts, build your confidence, and start changing lives.

What was the first religion and where did it start? What is atheism? Why do some people wear turbans? Made for kids who ask the hard questions, this book gives answers to these and many more questions about religion. What Do You Believe? is a perfect introduction to all the main faiths, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The book traces the history of different religions and faiths around the world and deconstructs complex topics into easy-to-consume sections. From the oldest beliefs to new religious movements and modern spirituality, What Do You Believe? presents the facts in an unbiased way. Learn about different scriptures, know about places of worship, and find out why followers of some religions eat certain foods and wear specific clothes. This book for children promotes understanding, tolerance, and respect for people whatever they believe.

BestSelling Author Paul David Tripp Unpacks 12 Doctrines for Everyday Christian Living Doctrine—what Christians believe—directly influences how they live. The biblical truths about God, humanity, and the world are not merely about knowing more—they are also about loving God and making sense of this life and the life to come. But what happens when there is disparity between what believers confess and how they live? In his latest book, Do You Believe?, pastor and bestselling author Paul David Tripp takes a close look at 12 core doctrines and how they engage and transform the human heart and mind. According to Tripp, "true belief is always lived." To demonstrate, he unpacks each doctrine and presents its relevance for the Christian life. As readers explore topics such as the doctrine of God, the holiness of God, and the doctrine of Scripture, they will be fueled to fall deeper in love with and stand in awe of their Creator and Father—putting the truths of God's word on display for all the world to see.

For anyone who feels caught in the tension between the beauty of God's story and the ugliness of human hypocrisy, Why I Still Believe offers a stirring story of hope. Why would anyone be a Christian when there is so much hypocrisy in the church? Mary Jo Sharp shares her journey as a skeptical believer who still holds to a beautiful faith despite wounding experiences in the Christian community. At a time when de-conversion stories have become all too common, this is an earnest response - the compelling conversion of an unlikely believer whose questions ultimately led her to irresistible hope. Sharp addresses her own struggle with the reality that God's people repeatedly give God's story a bad name and takes a careful look at how the current church often inadvertently produces atheists despite its life-giving message. For those who feel the ever-present tension between the beauty of salvation and the dark side of human nature, Why I Still Believe is a candid and approachable case for believing in God when you really want to walk away. With fresh and thoughtful insights, this spiritual narrative presents relevant answers to haunting questions like: Isn't there too much pain and suffering to believe? Is it okay to have doubt? What if Jesus' story is a copy of another story? Is there any evidence for Jesus' resurrection? Does atheism explain the human experience better than Christianity can? How can the truth of Christianity matter when the behaviors of Christians are reprehensible? At once logical and loving, Sharp reframes the gospel as it truly is: the good news of redemption. With firmly grounded truths, Why I Still Believe is an affirming reminder that the hypocrisy of Christians can never negate the transforming grace and truth of Christ.

Informal, revealing, unexpected, this book is a captivating and thought-provoking meditation how faith, in all its facets, remains profoundly relevant for and in our culture. “When the Italian writer Antonio Monda sat down to talk religion with American cultural leaders... he went straight for the big questions.” —O, The Oprah Magazine Some of the most well-known and well-respected cultural figures of our time enter into intimate and illuminating conversation about their personal beliefs, about belief itself, about religion, and about God. Antonio Monda is a disarming, rigorous interviewer, asking the most difficult questions (he often begins an interview point blank: “Do you believe in God?”) that lead to the most wide-ranging conversations. An ardent believer himself, Monda talks both with atheists (asked what she feels when she meets a believer, Grace Paley replies: “I respect his thinking and his beliefs, but at the same time I think he’s deluded”) and other believers, their discussion ranging from personal images of God (Michael Cunningham sees God as a black woman, Derek Walcott as a wise old white man with a beard) to religion’s place in American culture, from the afterlife to the concepts of good and evil, from fundamentalism to the Bible. And almost without fail, the conversations turn to questions of art and literature. Toni Morrison discusses Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, Richard Ford invokes Wallace Stevens, and David Lynch draws attention to the religious aspects of Bu–uel, Fellini...and Harold Ramis's Groundhog Day.

Why do you believe what you believe about the Holy Sprit? Are your beliefs based on current trends of thought in the church or the world around you, or do they fit in with what the Bible and Christian tradition teaches? Does it matter? What are the consequences of your beliefs? In this thought-provoking survey, Graham McFarlane draws on the insight of ancient and modern thinkers to work out the implications of the biblical witness to the Spirit for the individual believer, and for the church as a reconciling community. Combining clear teaching with practical applications, this book encourages readers to think through their faith.

We all believe. Be it in love, God, Santa Claus, or the workings of an internal combustion engine, we all believe in something. After all, we’re only human. Belief, however, is hardly black and white. It’s one thing to believe in things we can see. It’s quite another to believe in things we cannot. And another task altogether to trust in things we cannot see. Like God. Faith isn’t easy. But it’s us: we’re finite beings. Faith recognizes our limits; it acknowledges life’s ambiguity. And it counters these with its understanding of what is most true—God. This book is a story about faith. It’s a story of learning to trust in a supernatural God in a material world. It’s a meditation on living with, as philosopher Soren Kierkegaard put it, “objective uncertainty.” It’s a tale of learning to live with an invisible God.