a Christian worldview of eternal life

While there are varying views of heaven and the afterlife among evangelical Christians, most agree on how one gains eternal life.

If you want to read more than my little blurb here, pick up John Eldredge’s book, Epic : The Story God Is Telling and the Role That Is Yours to Play.

Disclaimer: This is a rough paraphrase of the story of God’s redemption of humanity as recorded in the Bible. It is what it is. The intent of this post is to answer the question of a guy that sounded like he honestly wanted to know. Questions are fine, but if you want a theological debate you probably know where to find them on the Web anyway. With that in mind…

God created Adam and Eve. They lived in a garden called Eden. Life was perfect then. They had total access to God. They walked with talked with God every day. God made things easy to exist. He gave them only one condition to live by. “Don’t eat of the tree of good and evil. If you do, you’ll die.” Adam and Eve gave in to the temptation of human pride and ate the fruit. It immediately caused a separation between them and God. They had to leave the garden of Eden. The result 0f their disobedience was separation from God, pain in birth, hard work, and unpleasant things like thorns and thistles started cropping up…not to mention physical death.

God didn’t give up on humanity. He made a covenant (literally “cut a deal”) and said that he would never leave or forsake humanity. In fact, he made a way for sin to be forgiven. A sacrificial system was put into place but humanity did a lousy job of following that. He knew the sacrificial system they were using wasn’t going to be the solution. The whole time this was going on, God was telling us there was much more to come. Much more of his forgiveness and love that is.

Enter Jesus Christ. He was God in the flesh. 100% God and 100% man. That’s a tough one to explain…it just is what it is. He was born of a virgin, impregnated by the Spirit of God. Very mystical, but, why shouldn’t it be? This is God stuff we’re talking about.

Since Jesus was God in the flesh, he lived a perfect life. No one in history can say that. He showed us what it meant for a human to have a perfect relationship with God in the midst of a world that was infected through and through with sin. Sort of a prequel to a new Eden…a new heaven and new earth. Religious people hated Jesus’ guts. They tried to kill him from the get-go. In due time. God had a plan for humanity to be redeemed through Jesus.

The religious freaks had Jesus sentenced to be crucified and he was crucified between two criminals. Then Jesus, doing exactly as the Father asked, took all the sin of humanity on himself. My sin, your sin, everyone’s sin was nailed to the cross and forgiven forever.

He was buried. He stayed there for three days. On the third day, he rose from the grave. Can’t explain the metaphysics, he just rose from the grave. After he rose from the dead, he spoke to his closest disciples and told them what they need to do…that was to tell everyone possible that their relationship with God could be restored.

When we believe this story, a story only God could pull off, God restores our relationship that was broken in Eden to brand new.

Our reaction to the story can be outlined like this:

- Admit that what we’ve been trying to obtain peace and forgiveness hasn’t worked and that we need God to forgive us of our sin.
- Believe that Jesus died on a cross to forgive us our sin and that he rose from the grave.
- Accept God’s free gift of eternal life. God gives you eternal life because you admitted that what you’ve done hasn’t worked and you’ve been humble enough to admit it.
- Commit to growing your relationship with God.

Another good thing to do is read the book of John in the Bible. It explains things really well. Go to www.biblegateway.com

Stopping the vicious cycle of religion

We are all infected and impure with sin. When we proudly display our righteous deeds, we find they are but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall. And our sins, like the wind, sweep us away (Isaiah 64:6, NLT).

I think Karl Marx may have been right when he said “religion is the opiate of the masses.” Now before you choke on your bagel or spit out your latte, let me explain.

Religion is addictive. Religion as an institution that realizes humans need to feel better about what they’ve done wrong. Protestants pay penance by attending church every Sunday, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. Catholics go to confession. Presbyterians give lots of money. Episcopalians have the best Christmas parties. No matter what their denomination or faith system, they get their conscience fixed one way or another (or not) and continue to be no different than the rest of the culture. It’s addictive. Live like you want, then numb your conscience with religious ritual. You feel good about yourself for a couple of days and then you feel the need for a fix. Do some more religion. Feel bad. Come back for more religion.

Most people have at least been exposed to the vicious cycle of religion. They’ve either experienced it first hand or they’ve seen how shallow it is from the outside. People move from religion to religion or church to church looking for the spiritual high that will last them all week. That’s why Isaiah 64:6 was written then, and that’s why it’s so applicable now.

The beginning point to stopping the vicious cycle of religion is to start a relationship with Jesus Christ. He alone can fix the core issue: sin. When we trust in Christ alone to solve our problem of repetitive damaging behavior (sin), the need for a spiritual fix goes away. It’s almost overstated in some circles, but knowing God is about a relationship and not religion. Jesus Christ makes us brand new…mind, body, and soul. “We are all infected and impure with sin.” Jesus cures our infection of sin. Religion simply numbs the pain of sin for a while.

“When we proudly display our righteous deeds, we find they are but filthy rags.” Outside-in religion gets us nowhere spiritually. Doing the right thing, saying the right thing, being in the right place…all the pious things that we think will bury our real problem of sin, end up being worthless. We leave the religious gathering with an emotional high that fades quickly. Or worse, we leave with no sense of encountering God at all.

So we begin again. But this time we realize that the issue isn’t the church or religion, it’s our sin. We realize that there is no quick fix for our souls. The cure for our sin sick souls is a relationship with Jesus Christ. We realize it will take consistent work on our part. It will be an everyday, every hour, every moment commitment. And God is there, all the time…waiting to show us His love for us. He accepts us unconditionally and challenges us to change without making us feel like dirt.

We can all stop the cycle of repetitive, damaging behavior in our life. The fix is inside-out, adjusting our character as we grow in a relationship with God.

Have a great day.

Ricky Williams and holiness

If you follow the NFL, you know that Ricky Williams has decided to play football for the Miami Dolphins again. He’s turned over a new leaf. He’s been given a new beginning by head coach Nick Saban. No more weed for Ricky. He contritely asked forgiveness from his teammates for leaving them in a tough spot last season. He’s a changed man. He’s gone from the narcissistic, tokin’ tailback to the total team player. When I read about and saw footage of Ricky’s comeback, I gave him credit for trying to make amends. In his own way, Ricky’s been on a quest for holiness.

Now there’s a word you don’t hear much about lately: holiness. I’m not talking about the Pope here. I’m talking about the lifestyle that Christians are supposed to live. This isn’t the prudish, Quakerish, what you do on Sundays kind of thing. It’s a state of being.

Holiness is hard work. Being holy is a lot harder than looking holy. Lot’s of people can fake it for an hour or two on Sunday morning. That’s easy. It’s also why a lot of people that claim to be Christians fake it. The whole time, we’re breaking God’s heart because the sincerity of our faith is a fraud.

But I’m not talking about you or me, right? We know that if you’re a genuine follower of Christ then you’ve been made holy by God’s forgiveness (Romans 3:24). You’ve been given the ability to approach God whenever and wherever (Hebrews 10:18-19). The hard work of holiness starts soon after your reorientation to what is good and right (Hebrews 12:1-12). Your conversion was a point in time (you were reborn; John 3) but the process of becoming like Jesus Christ is a continual process (2 Corinthians 2:15).

So what is holiness anyway? If it’s not the pomposity of religion or the arrogance of belonging to a moral country club, what does it look like in the everyday life of a Christian? To begin with it means you’re different…on the inside. The reorientation of your soul and spirit from self-centeredness to others-centeredness has taken place. Quite literally, you have been set apart from others. Not for pomposity or arrogance, but for serving. Your relationship with God has been sealed, but the process of changing your behavior has just begun. It’s a process that happens from the inside out.

The process is one that takes discipline and hard work. The process is initiated by God and then you and I participate in the process of becoming holy. Here are some principles of the holiness process found in Hebrews chapter 12: We have to consciously get rid of anything that slows the progress of becoming more like Jesus Christ (v.1a). We can’t give up on ourselves or God (v.1b). We must keep the example of Jesus in the forefront of our minds (v.2). We have to get used to the fact that holiness is hard work. It will take self-discipline and accepting discipline from God to keep us consistent (v.3-12).

Holiness is hard work, so we have to work hard at it. When we’re not consistent, God’s grace is there to forgive. When we are consistent God is standing on the sidelines cheering us on. Either way, God is on our side. His love endures forever. Keep working at being holy.

Have a nice day.

Beginning again…from the inside out

Things looked okay on the outside. It was a bit worn, but it looked reasonably intact. As you walked around the church their were signs that upkeep was needed but it didn’t look that bad. It seemed that way until a Southern Oklahoma thunderstorm opened all of our eyes to the truth.

I walked into the church on the blustery morning before church and heard water running. I thought it was a toilet that was stuck at first, but the sound was different in a way. Following the noise down the hall to a door that led to a storage room, I opened the door and found a four inch waterfall pouring from the ceiling. The deluge had broken through the roof, broken the ceiling tile and poured onto the floor. I immediately grabbed a barrel that was used to collect food for youth camp and put it under the waterfall. It was clear the makeshift solution wasn’t going to handle the deluge long.

Then I heard voices over the sound of the church’s new waterfall. Three very faithful men had followed the roar of the water and begin to survey the situation. Lucky for us, the church had let me store some extra tools in this room. Luckier still, one of the tools was an axe. One of the men took the axe and cut a hole in the floor straightaway. He poured the barrel, now 2/3 full of water, into the new hole in the floor. Problem solved. Sort of.

A wise old man in the congregation began looking around. He knew it was a symptom of a much larger problem. He found a problem that included six broken rafters, rotted flooring, an outside wall that was three inches out of plumb, and an auditorium roof that would cave in with the next good snow. His investigation resulted in the gutting the auditorium, tearing out a complete section of the church, replacing the entire roof (rafters and all) of the auditorium, and a complete restoration of the interior of the church.

We had to begin again. The process started with people admitting that things had been done wrong. They had let repairs slip. They had added on without thinking about how it would affect the rest of the structure. They realized the there was a need for a total renovation. The essence of the building had to be left intact, but the structure had to be restored and rebuilt. It was a daunting task. It would happen overnight.

Sort of sounds like our lives doesn’t it? We find out that our lives need restructuring and we wonder if it’s even possible. The great thing about God is that “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26, NAS). When we learn from our mistakes and restructure our lives, the storms of life don’t cause nearly as much damage. When we live our lives based on God’s ways it leads to a more consistent spiritual and emotional life. Here’s a verse I hope will make it more clear to you:

If you are wise and understand God’s ways, live a life of steady goodness so that only good deeds will pour forth (James 3:13, NLT).

Water came pouring into the church on that Spring morning. Mistakes had been made. We ended up spending a lot of time fixing things in our little world instead of letting the love of God pour out to our community.

Live a life of steady goodness by understanding God’s ways so you can help others enjoy and understand God’s goodness.

Have a great day.

"I’ll never do that again…"

I’ll never chew tobacco again. As a right of passage to make the varsity high school baseball team, I took a good chew of Red Man. Thank goodness it was at the end of practice on the way home. I turned three shades of green and then got sick. I promised myself I would never do that again. I didn’t do it again…until a year later. A good friend of mine said Copenhagen was smooth and he never got sick. He said I should try some. I did it again. I turned four shades of green this time and got more sick than I did the time before. It was awful. I said to myself…you guessed it…I’ll never do that again.

I actually never did use smokeless tobacco after the last time it made me sick. It wasn’t will power or a brilliant display of holiness on my part. It was a passage of Scripture from the Bible that taught me a powerful truth about learning from my past mistakes.

As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly (Proverbs 26:11, NIV).

Poignant, don’t you think? Those words graphically spoke to me how ridiculous it was for me to use smokeless tobacco. Others could handle it. I couldn’t. To continue trying it was just being stupid. I kept returning to my vomit, so to speak, and I kept playing the fool. Those words kept me from repeating that past mistake. The principle of Proverbs 26:11 kept me from repeating other mistakes as well.

Why is it so hard for us to learn from our past mistakes? Why don’t we learn from them? To keep doing something over and over again that causes us physical or emotional pain is foolish. We keep doing “it” because we don’t like to admit we’re wrong. We try to rationalize our behavior so we can continue the madness. However, the only way to stop the cycle of damaging behavior (sin) is to put wisdom in our mind and soul. To do that you have to ask God for wisdom (James 1:5) and memorize an appropriate Scripture that will help you refrain from doing “it” again.

My troubles turned out all for the best – they forced me to learn from your textbook (Psalm 119:17, MSG).

Make a point to memorize Proverbs 26:11 (the dog and vomit passage). It’s kind of gross, but I promise you it will make you stop and think next time you want to repeat a past mistake. God wants his best for you. He’s given us all the wisdom we need for life in the Bible. Put the Scripture into your heart and soul. The repetitive mistakes of the past will fade away and you’ll begin to understand the phrase “His love endures forever.”

Have a great day.