Squeeee!

I got this! for my birthday!

Like Jason's favorite toothpaste, it does all the things! 


I'm just starting to learn what all the buttons do, but right out of the box, here are a few unedited pics:

It's so fun!

Considerations

I fear maybe this is all just a game

Our friends and our families all play too

Harness the young and give some comfort to the old

Cast out my doubts, please prove me wrong

'Cause these demons can be so headstrong

Make my walls fall, please prove me wrong

'Cause this resentment's been building

Burn them up with Your fire so strong

If You can before I Baal, please prove me wrong

Caedmon's Call, "Prove Me Wrong"

Still wrestling with doubt over here.  

What if it's all just a game--stories we tell ourselves of a baby in a manger, angels appearing, surprise and redemption on Easter morning?  Isn't that a nice thing to tell old people inching toward the grave:  that there's a better, brighter place to come?


I'm by no means the first to wonder.  Long years ago Peter addressed this very suspicion:

"For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty."

2 Peter 1:16

As in many cases, it comes down to the credibility of the eyewitnesses.  

Peter and the other first Christians gave unanimous testimony that Jesus was killed and rose from the dead--not as a zombie, but as the glorious Lord of Life.  

They clearly believed it themselves, judging from the amount of Christian blood running from Roman amphitheaters and various dungeons and crucifixion sites.  

That the early Christians were sane and reasonable is likely given a number of factors.  

One, the sheer number of them who proclaimed simultaneously to have seen Christ alive.  

Two, their ability to organize their company and systematically care for one another.  

Three, the writing and proliferating of the most studied and influential literary compilation the world has ever seen.  

Four, the dazzlingly rapid spread of Christianity among all classes of society, across cultures; including the poor and disenfranchised, but also the wealthy and educated.

Then why doesn't everyone believe it?


I think this is where I'm most hung up.


Smart people, thinking, wonderful people, people I respect and love.  Have they considered the claims of Christ and found them unreasonable?  Or have they never considered them, assuming someone who lived so long ago has nothing to do with my life now?

Or do they so love this world--or their own goodness--that the everlasting, life-giving, exhilarating offer of Christ holds no sway over them?  That they are perhaps willing to intellectually assent, but not to turn over their life to this Jesus, who demands single-minded devotion?


Perhaps picking a worldview out of so many religions seems like playing eenie-meenie-miney-mo.


Yet true, biblical Christianity is utterly unique.  Every worldview, religious or secular, holds a moral code of right and wrong.  Only in Christianity can you be judged acceptable on the basis of God Himself living it out perfectly AND paying the penalty with His own life to purchase your pardon for moral failure.


Every other worldview can only offer hope if the moral code is low enough to be attainable by clearly imperfect humans.

What a frightening prospect.


What if the rules are just a little bit beyond my ability?


What if I have a bad day?


Do I get to readjust the standard?


Christianity alone holds out both a gloriously high and perfect Law (reflecting the unchanging, perfect justice of God), and a whole-hearted, full acceptance, welcome, and even adoption of sinners who give themselves over to faith in a Lord who promises to care for their every need.

Does that seem too good to be true?

Could this be just the invention of man, who longs for total acceptance and moral justification?


It has all the features we could want in a plan of salvation:  Someone willing to give His life on our behalf, living forever in heaven, big powerful God on our side....  Does it seem fishy that men would claim divine revelation of a religion that conveniently meets all our deepest desires?

Maybe so.


But on the other hand, if Christianity is a hoax, why do we have these universal desires at all?


Why do we fear or sense our own inadequacy?  Why do we long for belonging?  Why do we want to be publicly justified?  Why do we suspect an afterlife?  Why do we want to know our Creator?


What if we are this way because we were made to seek the Meeter of our needs?

Lo! The Incarnate God, ascended;

Pleads the merit of His blood.

Venture on Him; venture wholly,

Let no other trust intrude.

None but Jesus,

None but Jesus,

Can do helpless sinners good.

Joseph Hart and Matthew Smith, "Come Ye Sinners"

"I do believe; help my unbelief."

Mark 9:24

Truth and consequences

When it's over

And you see it with your eyes

Would you rather

Have the truth or a lie?

-Caedmon's Call, "Manner and Means"

Last week a man died.

He was a member of our church for years and years, and a decades-long husband to one wife.  

Now he has stepped through the icy veil, that dark door through which none of us have yet peered.  

What is on the other side?

This man believed as a Christian, lived as a Christian, and died as a Christian.  He was put to rest with a Christian burial and memorial.  Pastors and friends proclaimed around his body the Christian hope of glory after death.


Are Christians right?


What if they're not?

What if there's nothing?

If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.

-1 Corinthians 15:19

Oddly, though our mortality rate is 100%, we prefer not to contemplate death and beyond.  This seems to betray a de facto belief that there is nothing coming, or at most, a vague neo-greco idea of shadowy spirits meandering a half-existent landscape.  Either way, live it up now, for tomorrow we die, and that's the end.


Either that, or, perhaps more commonly, we think that there must be a place of eternal happiness and a place of eternal punishment, and wherever the dividing line is between them, we're on the upper end.  Everyone we like will be in the happy beyond with us--and that other place is for Hitler and child abusers.


Right?


Again I wonder, are Christians right?  What if they are?


What if God is not the grandfatherly and aloof being we feel comfortable imagining Him as?  What if He is demanding and jealous as parts of the Bible describe?


What if we are misunderstanding ourselves?  What if we're not likable scamps making God chuckle with our escapades, but instead the hopelessly dry bones of Ezekiel, or the wicked and murderous vine-keepers of the parable?


What if God really did once give His law "in cloud and majesty and awe"....and what if He meant it?  Jesus said, "You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).  If there is a judgement waiting beyond that dark veil, is that a standard we are prepared to claim?


C. S. Lewis famously said that Jesus Christ--because of what He said about Himself--must have been either a liar, lunatic, or Lord.  Besides this, there were an awful lot of people who went to a torturous and gruesome end, simply because they refused to recant that they had seen Jesus alive after His death.


If Jesus is God--the Creator, the Almighty, the Holy--then He has a claim on my allegiance.


And if I don't submit my allegiance, there will be consequences for me.

It is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgement.

-Hebrews 9:27

It's frightful to think that Christians might be right; that there may be a God satisfied with nothing short of perfection, who waits to execute judgement on sinners.  And just that thought's distastefulness doesn't make it necessarily untrue.

But consider what it means if Christians are right about the rest of it:  that Jesus (God the Son) died in the place of sinners.  That He absorbed the judgement due and shielded His people from it.  That He offers a profound exchange:  our record of commandment-breaking put on Him; His record of perfection put on us, so we are covered in the judgement to come.  

Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.

-Acts 16:31

The formidable door awaits us all.  Funerals are no fun because they compel us to count the cost of what we believe.  My preference is to believe something that makes my life comfortable, be it lie or no.  But I concede, on that day when I pass from this life, I'd rather have the truth than a soothing lie. 

First Day of School pictures