#STRask

Questions about whether feeling uncomfortable when people see you pray means you’re ashamed, and advice for a single person who feels like church is pointless since it’s set up for couples and families.

Questions about how to balance hating evil and protecting the innocent with loving our enemy, and how we can be salt and light in the world while also resting in the fact that God is in control.

Questions about how Christians should regard the argument that the family structure should change and we should have fewer babies since the world is overpopulated, and whether charitable works like feeding the poor are acts of justice as well as love.

Questions about how to respond to a pro-LGBTQ pastor who says we can’t really know what Scripture says about homosexuality or other controversial topics since we’re not apostles or prophets, and how to understand and apply prophetic books of the Bible like Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

Questions about how to respond to an unbeliever who says the belief that we’re all broken is a sad way to view life, how to reconcile Zechariah and Elizabeth being blameless with Jesus being the only sinless man, and whether the psalms about delighting in God’s Law are outdated and legalistic.

Questions about how we know that God is one being instead of three distinct divine beings in perfect unity, and why God would give notable miracles to Oneness Pentecostals if their theology is truly heretical.

Questions about suggestions for a book to give a strong pantheist who’s a fan of Neale Donald Walsch, and how karma is different from the parable of the sower in Matthew 13 or the teaching about reaping what you sow in Galatians 6.

Questions about how the unity of the Bible can be evidence it’s from God if the books could have been cherry-picked later, whether the fact that some passages in our Bibles aren’t canonical means every part of the Bible can be called into question, and why the Gospels don’t tell who wrote them.

Questions about the claim that science explains things that happen and that’s why it can’t explain the supernatural, whether there will be morality in Heaven, and reconciling the idea that we all intuitively know morality with the argument that Christianity gave our culture its morality.

Questions about whether other religions are different expressions of the same God, and how to reconcile the idea that people who have never heard the gospel are guaranteed to go to Hell with the fact that God is a good judge who shows mercy on whom he chooses to show mercy.

Questions about how to reconcile 1 Corinthians 13:5, which says that love doesn’t keep a record of wrongs, with God keeping a record of everything we have done and judging us by it, and how the idea that people are condemned for their sin, not for lack of belief in Jesus, squares with John 3:18.

Questions about what to say to someone who finds it hard to believe in a God that lumps non-criminals in with murderers and rapists when he sends them to Heaven or Hell, and whether all receive the same punishment in Hell.

Questions about why God gave Moses the Ten Commandments instead of sending Jesus, and what it means to call Jesus Christ the “Lamb of God.”

Questions about how to deal with someone whose mission is to tear down everyone else’s beliefs about Jesus, how to help a child or teen who seems liable to turn away form God due to peer pressures, and how to reach a daughter who says she wouldn’t be a Christian even if it were true.

Questions about how we know God is who he says he is and isn’t lying about his character, how to trust God when it seems like he’s working against us, and how to respond when it feels like God hates you.

Questions about what it means to be holy, how to fight your sins without slipping into a works-based mindset, and whether, as a Christian, it’s better to be humble, meek, and self-deprecating because none of us does good or bold and confident because we’ve been saved by the Creator.

Questions about whether Genesis 1 indicates that humans are basically good and that we’ve emphasized sin too much, and how, if the heart is “desperately wicked,” anyone could believe in their heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and be saved.

Questions about how to respond to someone claiming the Quran is the true word of God and how one can discuss the gospel with a Baháʼí.

Questions about inspiration when the New Testament writers quote the Septuagint rather than the original text, whether we could add books to the Bible if new letters from the apostles were found, and how to handle passages like John 7:53–8:11 that were added to the original biblical text.

Questions about whether Christians are complicit in abortion if they shop at companies whose health plans cover it, the claim that putting up Christmas decorations at work discriminates against other religious holidays, and an employer that won’t work around an employee’s religious obligations.