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Christianity, as the name reveals, is about Christ at it’s core. If you understand Christ you get it. Christ is important because he sheds light on the most important questions a person can ask: namely, as to identity, value and purpose. Christ is unique because he does not just shed light and point to truth but embodies it – the message is the messenger.
Wise men debated identity, value and purpose for centuries but it was only with Jesus that their came an answer which was not from men and which was personal. Jesus says if you know who you are (identity) you will understand why you exist (purpose) and thus be in a position to perceive your own value.
Jesus’ life, death and resurrection confirm unambiguously that we were created by God, like God and for God. Each of us is thus valuable to God in terms of how we meet our individual purpose. Although the world will value people impersonally with a performance-based rating, God made the diversity we see and each person has a specific purpose. We cannot compare a handicapped person to a football star: each may be missing or fulfilling their purpose and only God can know this. Jesus says we are mistaken to judge the worth of others and calls us only to love them and help them find and fulfil their purpose (inter-dependence).
Yet how shall we discover our identity and personal purpose? By personally knowing the One who made us and can tell us. But God is distant and inaccessible in our natural state. Yet Jesus explains that he himself is ”The Way”. With Jesus we can be (re-)united with our Creator who can give us identity and purpose.
How does this work? God is spirit, our natural state can only see his natural creation. We must have a spirit breathed into us in order to communicate and experience God – we have to become new, spiritual creatures – a new kind of life. Jesus said he himself is ”The Life” which means that we must receive him in order to receive this spiritual life.
How do you receive Jesus, a person? Well, we receive guests by welcoming them into our homes, friends by welcoming them into our personal lives, our spouse by welcoming them into our beds and Jesus by welcoming him into our inner most being – our heart. We have to find our most sacred place, our control-centre where decisions are made and our will resides and say to Jesus: come in, you are welcome and wanted here.
What happens next? We are born into a new kind of life because Jesus, the Life, is in us. This life is spiritual and eternal and changes us radically on the inside. We are no longer enemies and strangers to God but like his own children because his Son is united with us. We are like his daughter in law and the image of marriage is used to describe the bond which cannot be broken.
Now, equipped with new life, unrestricted access to God we remain only to discover more and more who God is, who we are and what we are to do. We find our life consists not in obeying laws or meeting people’s expectations but in listening to the God who is there, in us, teach us individually how to live and love successfully. This personal coaching reveals our true self and calling and leads to peace and fulfilment in life which no impersonal philosophy or religion can give.
How liberating that ultimate Truth is a person and not a principle! Christianity is about Christ connecting us personally to God who comes to be with us and in us to help us live life to the fullest and show us who and why we are. The adventure begins!
The majority of wealthy modern people are practical atheists – living as though God did not exist – perhaps without actively considering why they do this. Here are some common reasons people give for being atheists or agnostics:
1. Because of science
Many people have some vague idea that Science has disproved and replaced God. Because we now understand the world we don’t need to invoke God to explain things. This assumes that God was in fact invented to explain the world and science has made Him redundant. History tells a different tale and the fall of religion with the progress of science has yet to materialise.
Christians believe that the universe is God’s creation in the same way a painting is the work of an artist. We marvel at the strokes and, with analysis, understand more about how it was done. However, even with a perfect understanding and lots of scratching around we won’t find the painter under the paint. We may learn something about the artist’s character and motive but He’s not part of the painting.
Science points to God in it’s most fundamental laws and it’s most complex processes – watch out for pseudo-science: the painting did not pop into existence for no reason and beautifully paint itself.
2. Because it appears intellectual and modern
We like to believe that new ideas are better ones and God belongs to old-school thinking. However new ideas are often published and broadcast because they are innovative not because they are good whilst old ideas survive because they’ve stood the test of time. New ideas come and go. The bright future promised by modern atheism’s Founding Fathers (e.g. Marx, Nietzche) has failed to materialise. People today are atheists not because of conviction but from indifference, distraction and confusion accelerated by mass media. Truth is not a democracy. Test the message.
3. Because everyone else is
Most practical atheists today are not bad folk and feel they are good enough to cover their bases in case God shows up. They assume God is congenial will accept at least 50% of his creatures into heaven and assure themselves (with sideways glances) that they’re doing OK – “At least I’m not like them!”. This whiter-than-thou thinking is sheep mentality which is comfortable but dangerous as they enjoy the social infrastructure laid down by believers oblivious to it’s erosion.
4. Because it’s liberating
It appears that atheism liberates in denying ultimate authority because that liberates humans to self rule. Is that a good thing? How are we doing at that? And who should rule – does might make right? Which ideas about society should be implemented (enforced) as policy? Atheism tends to breeds anarchy or despotism – twin evils in which some human or group of humans enslave the rest.
5. Because religion is …
Bad? Unnecessary? Boring? Incoherent? Violent? Oppresive? Repulsive? Well, so are many forms of atheism but this sort of argument is irrelevant because religion is not the issue. You can be a religious atheist or a child of God who shuns religion (like Jesus) – the issue is ultimately how you relate to your Creator by whom and for whom you were made because this relationship shapes your life here and your eternity.
6. Because it’s the default position
It’s debatable whether people are by nature atheists or theists. The fact that all societies recognise a god seems to point to the latter. Nevertheless, we need not remain atheists if we were born that way just as we grow from ignorance to understanding and progress from milk to solids. Our modern lifestyle feeds, distracts and desensitises us to our basic need for purpose and relation to our heavenly Father yet we must break these chains.
7. Because God is…
Bad? A bully? Unjust? Improbable? The God you don’t believe in you haven’t met yet. God is the perfect loving being knows you and who wants to spend eternity with you – He would and did die to catch your attention and give you a chance at accepting His offer. Forget the cliches and the presentations you have seen – seek Him alone and personally!
Miracles and Proof of God’s Existence
According to pop-Christianity, believing in God is the key to salvation and God wants all to be saved. You might ask, why doesn’t He show up and prove his existence? A couple of minor miracles captured on CNN would be all it takes and the whole televised world could be saved!
Essentially we have:
- If we could see, we’d believe
- If we believed, we’d be saved
This logic is fascinating because it’s basic and, in a sense, true but terribly misleading. Why?
- Because the kind of belief which saves does not come by seeing
- Because seeing is not always believing
Seeing is not Believing
In any experience which permits doubt, people will believe what they want to believe and not what they see. Any minor miracles would always be doubted and put down to trickery especially if they were only seen on TV. Each of us would personally need to see something amazing, like a dead relative rising up from the grave in order to be truly convinced that something supernatural has happened. However, even then, some of us would later consider the experience a kind of delusion and question our sanity or assumptions (was uncle Fred really dead?).
When Jesus healed a blind man (John 9) the man and his parents were interrogated by the religious authorities and various conspiracy theories were put forward. “The man was not truly blind”, they said. “It’s not the same man!”, “He’s a liar”. The consensus was that Jesus was a sinner and a charlatan and the authorities expelled the man and ultimately lynched Jesus. Seeing is not believing but even if one believes (in this sense) it’s simply not the key to salvation.
Pop-Gospel and Blind Belief
The pop-Gospel is “believe and you are saved” and is interpreted as: blindly believe these (crazy) things and you go to heaven instead of hell. Sounds ludicrous, as if God somehow prizes intellectual dishonesty above all other virtues. Surely God prizes people who question things (skeptics) and try to live a good life (moralists) above this cheap nonsense?
True Gospel and Personal Trust
True Gospel Christianity is radically different from other religions and worldviews. Christians are neither naive nor moralists and don’t only have belief in a set of propositions but uniquely and critically trust in a person. The oft quoted John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”. The preposition “in” (Greek eis) is not accidental and the word “belief” (Greek pisteuo) goes way beyond a mere nod of a head.
To believe in someone is to be convinced that they are something good and true and worthy of our faith. When a daughter says to her father “I believe in you” she is saying “I trust you, I know you are capable, faithful and reliable”. When we are called to believe in Jesus we are called to place our trust in Him – believing his words is part of that trust but this kind of personal trust goes beyond intellectual assent of his teachings. Thus Ghandi, who thought the Sermon on the Mount beautiful and true even if Jesus never lives, was emotionally and intellectually engaged by Jesus’ teaching and nature but not personally receptive to Jesus as a person.
Jesus makes it particularly clear in Matthew 7 when he speaks of judgement day and people being separated into heaven and hell based not on their belief but on whether He, Jesus, knew them personally (“I never knew you. Depart from me,”). He radically explains that,
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven
What has this all got to do with God’s hiding? We’ve said that God wants all people saved and that trust in His Son is the key. We’ve seen that miracles are not necessarily the best way to gain this trust. At best God could win our intellectual assent “Yes, you are powerful”, He could win our minds forcefully by proving his power and existence once and for all but is that the key to our salvation?
Salvation and do we want it?
Salvation is the point in a person’s life where they are rescued from the natural fate of death and brought into a new life which is from, in and for God with the promise of an eternity with Him. Imagine the person who has just seen proof of God’s existence: he’s seen the power but he’s also thought about the consequences of Christianity being true. God exists, He created me, He’s personal and just. Now, “How does God see me? I’m not such a bad person. Wait, God knows all I’ve done? He expects better of me? He demands my obedience? I must hand over my freedom to this sort of tyrant? Give me liberty or give me death!” It has been said that those who reject God would find heaven hell and not enter willingly.
Winning our Hearts
The point is that God may win our minds with miracles, perhaps even our approval with blessings but our hearts are trickier and require special treatment. His true aim is to win our hearts and as any lover knows, you can’t buy or force love because it is not love unless it’s given freely. No show of power will win our hearts as much as God patiently, progressively and lovingly revealing Himself to those who seek him whilst hiding his glory and power from those who do not seek him. God knows his face is terror to the proud and that people must first be humbled before they can look at Him. He knows that pride cannot break pride and that true humility humbles. He also knows that no love is greater than that which will die for a loved one.
The First Fruits
Thus the stage is set for God to descend to earth as a baby, to a poor family, in a backwards part of the world. A Nazarene man teaches, heals, serves, suffers and dies and the world goes on. The grave is empty and, for 40 days he is sighted. Many see, some believe. For the believers the world changes and life is never the same again. Their hearts are won. They are the first fruits. How can we moderns hear this and fail to be captivated and be left cold? Surely we are blinded! This picture of boundless love and self-sacrifice has the power to transform yet we pass on by.
Conclusion
God hides from those who are unwilling and unable to see him. He wants to woo us and win our affection. If we respond to the light we have, he progressively reveals Himself in a process only limited by our desire to know Him more. Our loving but shy God hides from those who do not wish to see Him. One day every eye will see and every knee will bow but not every heart will rejoice.
Faith must be one of the most important concepts in Christianity. After all, salvation is by faith alone as Paul repeatedly tells us. Jesus himself brings the good news that we can know God by faith in Him (Jesus) without doing anything difficult. But what is faith? Is it “blind belief” in things we can’t see or test? How do we get this faith which brings eternal life?
More Than Belief
The kind of faith Jesus speaks of is more than just accepting a proposition, it’s about accepting a person, Jesus, on his terms. Ken Boa explains:
But faith is more than intellectual assent; it is personal reception. God does not call us merely to believe a set of doctrines but to trust in a person.
Ken has also said elsewhere: Christianity is a relationship not a religion and it’s personal not philosophical.
Faith, Fidelity, Marriage
We speak of a spouse being unfaithful or betraying trust to their partner. Peter Kreeft echos Paul when he says that Faith in Jesus is like a marriage to God:
No religion outside Judaism and Christianity ever knew of such an intimate relationship with God as “faith.” Faith means not just belief but fidelity to the covenant, like a marriage covenant. Sin is the opposite of faith, for sin means not just vice but divorce, breaking the covenant. In Judaism, as in Christianity, sin is not just moral and faith is not just intellectual; both are spiritual, i.e., from the heart.
Faith Which Stands
We may all believe that parachutes bring a person safely to earth but the real test of this faith comes when we have to jump. Similarly Jesus calls us to believe in Him and His message not just when the sun is shining but when we are tested and persecuted or when God seems far off.
Reasonable Faith
The idea that faith is blind is bad rhetoric. This idea is not found in the Bible except in verses which describe how we hope for that (God, heaven) which we have not yet seen. Yet the Bible assumes that believers know God personally and have experienced Him. In fact the Bible is written as evidence of what happened so that we might believe. The Bible does not say “believe this” but “here is the evidence, we saw it happen, believe us, we’d die for this truth”. The “we” are the eye-witnesses who did, in most cases, die for their belief.
