Jesus' death

Why did Jesus actually have to die? Couldn’t God just have forgiven everyone and be done with it?

On the surface it seems like a really straightforward question, just pull out the standard doctrine, “well Jesus had to die for our sins so we could be made right with God…” But when a friend really questioned this issue, it actually struck me as having a lot more to it that that. Why couldn’t God have just forgiven everyone? It’s a very fair question.

I believe that as humans we have a soul, our innermost being, beyond our physical body. This is the essence of what it means to be ‘human’ rather than just another animal, and what sets us apart as a special part of God’s creation. Our soul is a gift from God, and that is the part of us that is in the image of God. Through free will we chose to ‘sin’, or rebel against God. This sin separates us from God, because we have ‘contaminated’ ourselves with it.

But to get to the crux of the question – why can’t God just forgive us? To look at this we have to get into quite heavy spiritual stuff, delving into the areas of God and Satan which can often be hard to comprehend or seem strange and theological. The reality is that (in the Christian understanding) there is God, and there is Satan, the Devil. When we sin, we owe a big ‘fine’ – death. Romans 6:23: “the wages of sin is death”.

I see the issue of forgiveness or ‘salvation’ (though the term often makes me cringe because of the way it’s used) as having two core parts. The first is God’s personal forgiveness for our sins. Because of sin we aren’t able to enter into God’s presence. It’s kind of like the magnetic fields on a magnet – when you put the magnets a certain way, they will repel each other. God is pure and perfect, and our sin ‘repels’ us from Him. We need to be forgiven in order to meet fully with God.

But the second one I think explains why God can’t just forgive us and be done with it. Death isn’t simply a punishment God gives, but it’s a claim that Satan makes on our lives. You could say Satan’s like a gaoler, and he can ‘hold’ us in death because of our ‘crimes’, or sins. This is something that can’t be overcome through God just forgiving us and forgetting about our sins. Because Satan has a hold over us through sin, someone needs to take our place, or pay our fine. Thus Jesus death is not just so he can forgive us, but it is paying a ransom to Satan for our lives, taking our place. In Matthew 10:41 Jesus says he came “to give his life as a ransom for many”. This is what it boils down to – that Jesus didn’t have to die only so that God could forgive our sins, but so that through his death, Satan would have no claim on our lives, as that claim had already been paid for.

So in essence, there’s a lot more to this question than God forgiving us. We have to be made right with God, but we also need to have our ‘fine’ paid to Satan. And that’s what Jesus did in his death, by taking our sins upon him when he hung on the cross.

The whole concept of Satan, evil, and all that stuff is a huge one that I have only just touched on here, and hope to look at a bit more in the future. Bear in mind this is only a part of the big picture.

Faith for the 'unreached'?

What happens with people who haven’t heard about Christianity?

Lots of people ask this question, and I have asked it myself. And it’s a bit of a tricky question when you get into it deeply. I’m going to give you my ideas here, but I don’t claim to have any divine revelation on this matter, so take it as you will! Quite simply, this is the way I understand it to work. Also bear in mind that this is taken from a Christian perspective, and works on the assumption that Christianity is true in its basis and beliefs.

The core of my ideas regarding people of other faiths is that God searches the heart of every person, and not only what name they know or worship. So rather than having to know the name of God, and follow strictly Christian practices, I believe that God looks for people who show a yearning to know their creator, a yearning to love and serve their god, whatever form he might take.

I’ll look at ancient Greece as an example. Before Christianity in the area, Greece had only a polytheistic (many-god) religious belief, observed by the majority of the population. But as with pretty much all faiths, this was carried out with devotion and commitment by many of the worshippers, whose aim was to come before a higher being (or beings) and recognise that they were created by and overseen by them. While they didn’t know the name or identity of God as we do, many of the people of ancient Greece demonstrated a yearning to meet with their creator, and I believe God recognises this. God is a god of grace and love, and just because the people of Greece couldn’t name him as God, and instead gave him the form of their Olympian gods doesn’t mean He will reject them outright.

Also worth noting here is that when Christianity came to Greece, it was progressively accepted by the population, and today forms the main religion of Greece. This shows that when they were shown the identity of God, they readily recognised Him and left their previous understandings of religion behind them. This shows that the people of ancient Greece were not caught up in a religious practice that dominated their lives by its rigid polytheistic details, but rather that they were searching for the truth. When this came in the form of Christianity, they accepted it and modified their faith traditions accordingly.

I will make the point that there is a big difference between people who don’t know of Christianity and follow other faiths, and those that do know Christianity, and choose instead to follow such faiths. These are quite different scenarios. The issue of other faiths like Islam and Judaism today are a whole other topic to be looked at another day, but I think many of the same ideas apply. God looks at the heart.

So my argument is that God will accept any who willingly search for Him and yearn to follow their creator, even if they don’t know who He is. That means it’s not impossible for a person who has not heard of God to be accepted by Him, but instead that God is willing to accept any who honestly search for their maker.

This is a challenging idea. Not everyone will accept it. But I think that we need to understand above all else that God loves His people - all people. And thus will see all those who seek the truth as people ultimately devoted to Him. The important thing here is searching for the truth. It means not simply accepting whatever is presented, whatever faith it may be, but actively seeking God.

Faith over time

Why is it that people leave the Church? And more importantly do these people leave the faith? (Note the difference between Church and faith). The National Church Life Survey* indicates that for adults who have left the Church, 55% who have left in the past four years maintain the core Christian beliefs. This drops, however, to 15% for those who have been away for more than 30 years. Why is there this decline in faith? While it is easy to say that they have not been nurtured in a faith community, I want to look at it at a deeper level – if God has called them, how can they have fallen away?

First and foremost I want to assert that God calls everyone to follow Him, and will give every person the opportunity to know Him, and accept Him if they so choose. Thus these people who have left the Church have done so generally having been called by God personally, and at some point made a commitment to follow him to some degree, at least to the point of going to Church.

The way I see it is that people who have left the Church, and ultimately left the faith, are people who have known God, but have then decided to put other things in their life first.

As a hypothetical example, ‘Joe’ is a regular Churchgoer, who has a personal relationship with God, a life devoted to prayer and service. However as life continues, he becomes increasingly affected by his daily life, such as his workmates who regularly go to the pub for a good night out. Slowly, as time goes by, these relationships he has draw him further and further from God, not simply because of their presence in his life, but because of his personal decision to put them first, above God. Maybe he slept in on Sunday mornings because he had too much of a hangover from the night before, the exact reasons matter little. While he remains a Christian, and knows he should be doing more as a Christian, every time he puts another thing above God, he is drawing further away from Him. This is not a failure of God to meet with Joe, but a failure of Joe to commit to God.

Eventually, Joe may have put so many things above God that he has largely forgotten God’s calling in his own life. At this point he may well ‘cease to believe’, not because of any lack of God’s presence, but because of his willingness to walk away from God, whereby eventually God becomes so low on his list that He essentially ‘ceases to exist’ for Joe.

Therefore, the way I understand a loss of faith for an individual is not one of God failing to call them personally, or a failure of God’s existence, but the personal choice of an individual not to put God first, which leads to their loss of faith. It’s much like the story of the wealthy man in Matthew 19:16ff, who believed, but was unwilling to sell his possessions in service to his God. He was unwilling to place God first in his life, and was risking that these worldly things could draw him away from God.

This is a possible explanation of the reason why people of a strong faith can ‘fall away’ and leave their faith behind, not because of a lack of faith in the first place, but because of a lack of commitment, which leads them to make God less and less important, until he essentially fails to matter.

What are the repercussions of this? It shows us how important it is to put God first in our lives, without failure. Whenever we put something else in first place, we not only offend God, but also choose to put God lower down on our list, and thus open ourselves to falling away from God of our own doing. It’s not up to God alone to pull us back to Him, it’s something we have to be willing to commit to ourselves. It also shows how our Christian community is important, as it does nurture us and help us to stay focused, even though the ultimate choice is ours.

*http://www.ncls.org.au/default.aspx?sitemapid=6151

Flawed.

If Christianity is true, then why are there so many views? So many extremes? So many disagreements?
Why is the Christian Church so fragmented if we have God on our side?

How is it that you can have two Church ministers talking, one who advocates homosexuality, and the other who says it's a sin? One who leads a Pentecostal 'happy-clappy' church, and one who says they are misguided and wrong? One who says the tsunami was an unfortunate natural disaster, and one who says it was an act of God against an unrighteous world?

Big questions. Big differences. A hard topic for Christians and non-Christians alike. I've struggled with it too.

I don't pretend to know everything, or to be able to say which (if any) of the ideas in the questions above are right. But I am willing to put forward a reason for why these different opinions occur, whilst still maintaining that God is God.

Simply, we're flawed.

No Christian is perfect. No Christian is even anywhere near that! Christians merely try to live lives that are right by God. But inevitably we will fail. Every day there are temptations and challenges of the world, and every minute of our existence we fail. My argument is that first and foremost it is a failing to meet with God, and discern what God wants, and secondly a failure to accept what God wants and let go of our own ideas and prejudices. That is why the Church is so often divided, why there are so many divisions and disagreements.

I can say confidently that if everyone prayed earnestly and willingly, and was prepared to let go of their own values and prejudices in order to discern what God wanted, there would be no disagreements. But at the same time I know that no-one can manage that completely. I know I fail continuously. Every time someone buys something they don't need instead of giving to the needy, or speaks harshly against another person, they are failing. And that includes me. What I want to stress here is that the Christian faith is not broken because God is broken, but because we as individuals are broken.

There are some terrible things happen in the world under the name of God, many of which are clearly not God's will, and it's tragic to see these things happen, and to see how they reflect on Christianity as a whole, but that doesn't make the faith wrong. Just as you can't say a parent is fundamentally flawed because of some mistakes they've made, nor can you say the whole Christian faith is flawed because of some mistakes Christians have made. Sure there are often a lot of mistakes made, but that reflects on us as individuals, and not on God.

So when you see someone saying something or doing something contrary to their faith, or with a differing opinion, it's not because God is broken, but because we are. Remember that whatever is said, whoever is judged and however someone represents or misrepresents Christianity, it is because they are flawed, not God.

An introduction

Welcome to "an impossible faith?"! This blog is a new venture from me, with the hope of discussing some really tough questions about Christianity, aiming at exploring the faith deeply and meaningfully. I don't promise to give answers in my blogs, and I think some may end up more as a series of questions to ponder, but I hope it's helpful and meaningful for whoever reads it.

I pray that God's Spirit will be with me as I write, and also with you as you read what's offered, so that all can come to have a better understanding of the Christian faith, whatever they themselves believe.

God bless!