Learning library
Pretend God Exists: 30-Day Challenge
Do what Jesus taught for 30 days, pay attention, and write down what happens. An honest experiment for skeptics.
You have probably heard of the challenge: act as if God is real for 30 days and see what happens. This is that experiment, built around the actual words of Jesus instead of guesswork.
It rests on one sentence Jesus said:
If anyone is willing to do God’s will, he will know whether my teaching is from God or if I speak on my own.
John 7:17 (OTB)
Knowing follows doing. So here is the whole deal: for 30 days you read, you pray an honest prayer, you try to actually do what you read, and you write down what happens. This class does not promise you a feeling or an experience. It makes the promise the Bible makes to anyone who looks honestly:
You will seek Me, and you shall find Me, when you choose to search for Me with all your heart.
Jeremiah 29:13 (OTB)
About 15 minutes a day. Once a week, a chance to talk it over with someone, if you want to. Everything you write stays in your own browser. Start with the welcome, then Day 1.
Chapters
0 of 31 complete
- Start here: how the 30 days workWhat this is, what it is not, and what a day looks like.
- Day 1: An unknown godPaul speaks to a city full of altars, one of them to a god nobody could name.
- Day 2: In the beginningThe first page of the Bible, and the oldest question in it.
- Day 3: Dust and breathA closer look at the first people, a garden, and one rule.
- Day 4: Where are you?The one rule, what happens to it, and what happens next.
- Day 5: KnownA song by someone who could not find anywhere to hide.
- Day 6: Lost and foundThree stories Jesus told to people who complained about the company he kept.
- Day 7: Talk it overNo new reading today. Take the week to someone else.
- Day 8: The WordJohn begins his account of Jesus before Bethlehem, before anything.
- Day 9: Deep waterTired fishermen, empty nets, and a stranger who tells them to try again.
- Day 10: Through the roofFour friends, a man who cannot walk, and something Jesus says that nobody in the room expected.
- Day 11: A dinner partyA religious leader hosts Jesus for dinner, and an uninvited woman walks in.
- Day 12: At the wellA midday conversation between two people who were not supposed to talk.
- Day 13: The stormExperienced fishermen in a storm they cannot handle, and a question they cannot answer.
- Day 14: Talk it overNo new reading today. Take the week to someone else.
- Day 15: On the mountainThe start of Jesus's longest recorded teaching, and who he says is blessed.
- Day 16: How to prayJesus on praying without an audience, and the prayer he gave his followers.
- Day 17: TomorrowMoney, worry, and what Jesus says to do with both.
- Day 18: The measure you useOn judging other people, on asking, and the rule that sums it all up.
- Day 19: Two roads, two housesHow Jesus ends the sermon: with a choice between two ways of building.
- Day 20: Who is my neighbor?An expert in religious law tests Jesus, and Jesus answers with a story.
- Day 21: Talk it overNo new reading today. Take the week to someone else.
- Day 22: Who do you say I am?Jesus asks his friends a direct question, then tells them what is coming.
- Day 23: The crossThe execution, as Luke tells it.
- Day 24: The first SundayWomen at a tomb, two travelers on a road, and people who did not expect what they found.
- Day 25: ThomasOne of the twelve says he will not believe without proof.
- Day 26: Not aloneThe night before he died, Jesus makes his friends a promise.
- Day 27: Fifty days laterWhat happened in Jerusalem at the next festival.
- Day 28: Talk it overNo new reading today. Take the week to someone else.
- Day 29: AskJesus tells his followers to ask, and says what the Father gives to anyone who does.
- Day 30: What did you find out?Back to the verse this whole challenge was built on, and back through everything you wrote.