A happy ending

It's hard to imagine anyone but the most hard-core of people not liking stories with a happy ending.  It seems as though everyone I've ever met or heard about seems to like them.  Whether it's a huge volume like Lord Of The Rings or the Narnia series - the books or the movies - or whether it's something very Hollywood like Pretty Woman or wonderfully inspiring like Rudy or the recent movie The Blind Side, there's just something that draws people of all cultures, belief systems, and socio-economic status to stories like this, real or fictional.

It's almost as though we all have this built-in desire for true justice and for things to work out right in the end.  But as soon as the book is shut or the final movie credits start to roll, we're forced to come down off the high and step back into reality.  'Too bad things couldn't be that way in my life', you might think, or 'If only things like that could really come true'.  Sadly, these are thoughts we're more apt to think in our youth.  By the time most of us reach our thirties, we don't even entertain thoughts of any such wonderful things happening in our lives.

But is this true?  Is there really no happy ending for our lives?  (Most of you know where I'm going with this, but bear with me.)  Is life really nothing more than "death and taxes"?  You know, even speaking as a Christian, there are days when I lose perspective and really get bogged down and even depressed about life.  Hey, I'm only human after all - even the most spiritually inclined people can get down about things.

Before I decided to put the full weight of my trust in the promise of the Bible - eternal life to all who believe in the name of Jesus Christ - I must admit that I had no hope of anything and I got regularly discouraged and depressed.  Thoughts of suicide entered the mix on occasion.  Sure, I was working toward a university degree and my future was full of promise, but because I thought I'd be extinct at the end of my life span, I didn't know what I was ultimately working toward.

What was the point if this life here on earth was all there was or would be?  What would be the point of trying to leave a legacy when I would have no recall of it once I died?

But now, seeing things through the lens of the Bible, I see this life entirely differently.  I've never really had a "bad day" since I asked Jesus to forgive me and to become the Lord of my life; it's more like a "few bad hours" at most.  And I realize that life is so much more than money and achievement, although at times it's easy to lose perspective of the important things in life.

The non-believer thinks that people like me are living a fantasy, trying to think "happy thoughts" to ease the pain and burden of this life through belief in a make-believe deity, a figment of my imagination.  I've never been a happy-go-lucky sort of person, but rather a deep and reasoned individual.  I devote a great deal of time and energy into things before making a decision about them, and my decision to accept God's gentle nudges in my life in order to believe in him - as much as I tried to resist at first - were no different.  God was gently pounding away at my thick, narrow-minded, assumptive skull for about two years before the reality of his existence became glaringly obvious to me.  And once that occurred, only then did the promise of eternal life - of the greatest happy ending imaginable - also become glaringly obvious to me.

I know that non-believers think people like me are deluded, brainwashed - whatever - to believe in what the Bible has to say about anything, let alone this promise of eternal life to those who put their faith in some historical figure named Jesus.  But even though I've mentioned this in a previous post, it bears paraphrased repeating now:

What if the Bible is for real?  What if its claims are actually true?  If this is the case, what do I have to gain by believing what it says about Heaven and Hell, for example, and what do I have to lose by not believing?

I realized that if I was wrong and the Bible was right, then I'd be paying the price for an eternity, one of separation from God in a place the Bible calls Hell.  Could I have rationalized Hell out of existence if I didn't want to believe it wasn't for real?  Likewise with Heaven?  Did I want to take the chance and not believe in God and the Bible because I was arrogant, prideful, or afraid of what others might think of me?

I eventually decided that I'd rather assume that God and the Bible are for real - the price would be too great and horrible not to! - and in so doing I accepted Jesus into my life.  Since then, the confirmation of the reality of God and his unfathomable love (not fear of him anymore!) and the absolute truth of the Bible (and no other documents claiming to be "scripture") has been very real and very immense:  God's Spirit living within me has been fast at work revealing these things ever since.  And therefore I have the most unshakable, most confident assurance that by one simple act of faith several years ago - a moment, really - my existence will indeed have a happy ending on the basis of the claims of the Bible, not on fantasy.

Although this conclusion seems foolish to many, I live day to day with this assurance that they will never have apart from Jesus Christ, and therefore I don't fear death - or life - like they do (even though they don't admit it).  If this hope is my "crutch", so be it.  But I'd rather have a crutch like God in my life than the meaningless and non-eternal crutches like status, possessions, career and/or climbing the corporate ladder, drugs, self-help books, atheism, evolutionism, New Age gurus and the like that non-believers put their faith and trust in.

Why don't people believe? Part II

Part I of this topic explained how some people don't believe in God because they like to do things their way, regardless of how immoral some of these things are. And people will do the immoral things ("evil", according to God's definition) because they "love" living in "darkness" apart from God instead of in the "light" of God's forgiveness and presence in their lives.

With this recap, I will suggest another reason why some people don't believe in God (or more accurately, choose not to believe in God). Some people simply get upset by how Jesus claims to be the only way to know and come to God. Jesus explained it this way:

"I am THE way, THE truth, and THE life. NO ONE comes to the Father except through Me." (Capitalization added for emphasis.) -- John 14:6

The hornets' nest is stirred up even more when they read claims like:

"The one who has seen Me [Jesus] has seen the Father [God]." -- John 14:9

Jesus equates Himself with God even more blatantly in the following passage:

"The Father [God] and I are one." -- John 10:30

As you can imagine, most Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and followers of other religions and cults who don't use the Bible as the scriptural basis for their beliefs are upset - and some even completely outraged - by such statements. They accuse the Christian of being "exclusive" and "narrow-minded", among other things. They accuse Jesus of being a fraud and of being delusional. Such statements also fly in the face of modern spiritual thinking that there are "many ways" to God instead of "the way" that Jesus Christ claims to be.

So who's right: Is Jesus the only way to God, or is He not?

There are so many ways that this question can be explored. One can look at the mountains of archaeological evidence that give credibility to biblical names and places and use this to conclude that the Bible and whatever is written therein must be true. One can look at the extra-biblical accounts of Roman concern over the unrest caused by the ministry and teachings of Jesus and use this for evidence in His existence and in biblical credibility and teachings. One can look at the number of biblical prophecies fulfilled by Jesus and the infinitesimally small possibility of them being fulfilled by one man alone and use this to form the basis of their faith in Jesus. (Here's a great article about the odds of Jesus being this man.)

But rather than going on a search for evidence at this point - something that you can embark on if you wish - let me instead suggest that you first consider the following:

What if Jesus was right?

What if He was actually for real and was actually in the presence of His Father God in heaven, since before the dawn of time, before being placed into the womb of a Jewish teenager and living on earth as simultaneously the Son of God and the Son of Man for 33 years before being crucified on a Roman cross (according to God's plan and purpose) then bodily rising from death from a guarded tomb and appearing to 500 of His disciples at one time - and also His apostles, including one who actually touched one of Jesus' crucifixion wounds - and others over a 40-day period, then taken up into a cloud into heaven in the presence of several people and even two angels? (Whew!!)

Is it possible that all other religions of the world and the cults have gotten it all wrong? Is it possible that all of their attempts to worship and please their gods are totally in vain because their gods do not even exist? Well, according to the Bible and the words of Jesus, these things are the case!

The saying "Pride comes before a fall" is taken from the book of Proverbs, chapter 16 verse 18 (Proverbs 16:18). Humans love to acquire wealth and power and prestige and self-achievement and so on, and the root and result of these things is none other than pride. Pride likes to thumb its nose at others - and God - and say, "Look at what I have done. Look who I am. Look at what I have accomplished." Pride makes dependence upon anyone else - especially God - impossible. Pride also never wants us to admit that we might actually be wrong.

The reason why so many people throughout history have been insulted, angry, and even enraged to the point of murder about the claims of Jesus is not so much because they fear Him being right, but more so because they fear being wrong. They simply don't want their pride to be dragged through the mud of truth. In the case of people who have risen to religious prominence apart from the teachings that Jesus is God and the only way to come to God and that the Bible is infallible, they also risk the loss of wealth and power and prestige if Jesus is proven correct. The hyper-religious Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus' time are prime examples, and they stopped at nothing to kill Jesus (or so they thought) and his followers. Modern-day Pharisees live on in the form of the non-Christian religions and cults of this day.

Before you decide to protest or complain about what you have just read, just remember that it's no use shooting the messenger, me in this case. I'm only re-stating what Jesus said and what the Bible records. Your real issue is not actually with me or with this blog, it's with God. Your anger is actually anger towards God, whether you believe in Him or another god or not.

And you need to ask yourself why, exactly, you are mad at God: Are you mad at a Christian or someone else who claims to know God who wronged you at some time in the past? Are you mad at the suggestion that you might actually be wrong, whether you're an atheist or a member of another religious group? Or are you mad at the possibility that God actually did make Jesus the only means by which we can come to Him and know Him?

If you disagree with the claims of Jesus, what I suggest you do from here is really start to ask some serious questions about your current beliefs. If you decide to close your mind and live and die on your current assumptions that you're right and God/Jesus/the Bible is wrong, then the consequences for you as outlined in the Bible will be eternal, and I wouldn't wish these on anyone.

Please don't assume these claims aren't for real without giving them a serious look. Please don't let your pride lead to a fall that will last for an eternity.