I’m sure that a great many of us would die to save our child……or our spouse………but would you die to save somebody who treats you badly?

As a conservative, would I willingly die to save Nancy Pelosi?

As a liberal, would you willingly die to save Donald Trump?

Would Trump willingly die to save Pelosi?

Would Pelosi willingly die to save Trump?

Ludicrous, isn’t it?

Our nature is that we are far more likely to wish our enemy dead than to sacrifice our life to save him. And yet that is exactly what God did. We have all sinned. We have all done enough wrong to separate ourselves from God. We have spit in his face so many times that we could easily qualify as his enemies. We pat ourselves on the back and call to mind some act of kindness. But the truth is that we have lied, stolen, dishonoured, coveted, lusted, and far more. On God’s scale of rightness…….on God’s scale of goodness…….on God’s scale of purity…….we are as far removed from him as hell is from paradise.

And yet……..in the person of Jesus…….he willingly died a gruesome death. Why did he do that?

He did it to save us from pain…….he did it to save us from damnation.

What was he thinking? Was he temporarily out of his mind? We would never do something like that for a friend………much less an enemy.

WHY??

The fact is that God is not like us…..he is not like me.

This bears repeating.

God is not like us.

He is so different from us that when we try to understand him, using our rules…….our standards……we fail completely. Our rules just can’t handle this situation. Even worse, we are so satisfied with our rules, our way of operating……..we are so sure that we are right………we are so confident………that we decide that God must be wrong. Some of us even decide that God doesn’t exist……….he can’t exist, because he is so different from us……. because he doesn’t operate by our rules……..how’s that for tolerance?

So……..why would God do something so completely crazy……. something that we would never do? Why would God subject himself to crucifixion?

Love.

Love is the very essence of God. God loves us in a way that is so far beyond our experience that we cannot understand it. Because we cannot wrap out heads around this kind of love, we reject it…….we reject God. And that is the greatest failure, the greatest loss we will ever experience.

Enter faith.

At its heart, faith is the act of accepting the reality of something that we cannot understand. We tend to think of faith as a Sunday kind of act. But, the truth is, we act on faith many times every single day. We do not understand why gravity works; but, we trust that when we toss the dog a ball…….it will fall to the ground. We like to believe that we are rational, scientific creatures; but, we can’t get through an hour without acting in faith on something that we do not understand.

I don’t understand how my computer works.
I don’t understand why the cut on my thumb heals.
I don’t understand how the glue in my shop works.
I don’t understand the love of my granddaughter.

And yet, I forge ahead, acting in absolute confidence that I can rely on these things…….and countless more. I act on faith.

I cannot understand why God, with all of his power, would endure crucifixion……….for me.

I simply accept……as an act of faith……that God loves me with a sacrificial, parental love that operates by a set of rules that I am blind to. I accept this, not because I can measure it or prove it. I accept this purely on faith……..and I forge ahead…… absolutely confident that I can rely on the love of my creator.

I cannot understand it………..but it works……..and my life is far richer for it.

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

John, NIV

“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

God, NIV

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends,”

Jesus, NIV

I once saw a cartoon. A mathematician was trying to solve a complicated problem. He had written dozens of equations on a blackboard, each logically following the one before. Then, on step number 30, he wrote ,”something magic happens”. He then went on with more equations till he reached his conclusion.

It was a joke. But, the point is that the “magic” step nullified the entire exercise. Science has a similar problem…….actually, it has several:

The big bang……. We have no idea what it was like, what caused it, or what preceded it. It is a “magic” event that we created to fill a gap in what we know……….in what we want to believe.

The origin of life……. We have no idea how life began and even less of an idea as to how it propagated. We talk about lightning striking the primordial ooze and causing simple molecules to assemble themselves into a living, reproducing entity. But, this has never been acheived in a lab………it is just more magic.

The diversity of life…….We have no idea how we wound up with billions of different intimately interconnected life forms. We trot out Darwin and his theory. But, we cannot document the creation of a new species. More magic, masquerading as science.

Why do we do this?

Like the mathematician in the joke, we have a starting point and an end point. We are looking for a logical, scientific path to explain how we got to where we are. The trouble is that there isn’t one. So we invent “magic” steps to fill in the gaps.

The trouble is that, just as in the joke, the “magic” steps nullify the entire exercise. Without the “magic” steps, science fails to tell us what we desperately want to know.

So what do we do……….when science fails to answer the greatest question of all……….”how did we get here?”

The answer is…….that we must look outside of science.

Enter religion.

But, you say, that’s just more “magic”!

If you define magic as things beyond the limits of current 21st century science, then you are right. Religion is “magic” too.

But, that really isn’t the issue. The real issue is: “is it true?”

I’m a Christian. So, for me, the real issue is: “is the Bible true?”

I say yes…… that there is enough historical, archeological, and eyewitness evidence to support the truth of the Bible.

And furthermore, the Bible gives me a moral framework to live by:

Love God……Love you neighbor.

Science and Darwin tell me:

There is no God……eat your neighbor.

If you take a good hard look at our current political conversation……..it is driven more by scientific morality than by biblical morality. How is that working out?

There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.

Solomon?, NIV

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Jesus, NIV

WARNING

If you are a big fan of “fairness”, you may not like this week’s post.

My sons often would come to me with a complaint…….it often ended with the statement……..”It’s not fair!” I would say to them, “check your contract…….where does it say that life is fair?”

The fact is that there is very little in life that is fair. A two year old kid gets cancer. A bike rider is mowed down by a careless 80 year old woman. A dynamic woman who is the pillar of her family gets ALS.

It’s not fair!

So what does this have to do with hell?

We have all done things that are wrong…….some more than others. In a perfectly fair system, you could make a case that we are all doomed to hell. But, fortunately, fairness has nothing to do with it. You and I might not approve of this………but we don’t get to make up the rules. God does.

So what are the rules for avoiding hell?

Recognize Jesus as God.
Accept his gift of forgiveness……blanket forgiveness………for every single rotten thing you have ever done….or thought about doing…….even the stuff you got away with…… or thought you got away with.

It’s just that easy.

Or you could deny his existence……his divinity. But, if you do…..you had better be right. I worry a lot about my friends who deny God……..without ever considering what it might cost them…….if they are wrong.

What are the practical implications of these simple rules?

The dividing line between heaven and hell is not goodness(an extremely common misconception)……it is forgiveness.

This bears repeating.

The dividing line between heaven and hell is not goodness……it is forgiveness.

And that’s not fair.

On the other hand, absolute fairness could mean universal damnation.

So………

Heaven will not be full of good people. It will be full of forgiven sinners.

Hell will not be full of bad people…….it will be full of unforgiven sinners.

What follows is one of the greatest ironies of life.

The people in hell will not be substantially different from the people in heaven. Some of the people in heaven will have been far less “good” in their lifetimes than some of the people in hell were.

Some of the people in hell will be really nice people. Some of them will be your friends. Some of them will be members of your family.

One of them will be a real Prince of a man……..the nicest guy in hell.

It’s not fair……..but, hey, nothing is.

So, do you know somebody really nice…….a guy who would give you the shirt off his back…..a guy who would drop whatever he was doing to come to your rescue…..a guy who doesn’t believe…….a guy who is a candidate for the nicest guy in hell?

Something to think about.

Christians spend a lot of effort trying to “save” people who are “bad”. Maybe we need to invest some effort in the really nice people. Maybe we can help create the nicest guy who is NOT in hell.

all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Paul, NIV

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus, NIV

Jesus is “ ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone .’ Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved .”

Luke, NIV

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul, NIV

“so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus/John, NIV

Finally, here it is……..the post you have all been waiting for.

What is the secret of life?

James Taylor says that it is: “enjoying the passage of time”.

I’m a big fan of his…….and he is close……. but, Sorry James……”No Cigar!”

The great secret of life is that it’s eternal.

If you think about it, there are two possibilities. When we die, either the lights just go out………or we transition to something else. I believe that the great truths are written on our hearts. We are born with them. Our creator put them there to help us along. Love, hope, an understanding of beauty, an understanding of right and wrong, an odd sense that we are incomplete, and the sense that there is something after death.

According to a recent Roper poll, 80% of people believe in an afterlife.

You can call this wishful thinking, but can you think of anything else that 80% of people agree on?

Faced with eternal life, the brief 70 years that we spend on earth is the blink of an eye……it is nearly inconsequential. And yet we spend 99% of our time and effort managing this temporal life…….and less than 1% of our time managing our eternity. We tend to ignore eternity because we don’t like to think about death. We also ignore eternity because we believe that we have no knowledge of it and we believe that we have no control over it. Both of these things are untrue.

If you ask 100 people to describe eternity…… paradise, you will get just about the same thing from every one of them……. a field of grass with happy people enjoying nice weather…….familiar faces, lots of smiles. You get the same image from everyone you ask because this knowledge is written on all of our hearts…..put there by our creator. In a way, it is a beacon calling us home. So……..if you search your heart, you already know what paradise is like. But now……I ask you to look deeper. In your vision of paradise, everybody is happy……. everybody is nice. Where is all of the bad stuff? We don’t seem to have a hardwired vision of hell……but the absence of bad things in our vision of paradise suggests that the bad stuff must be somewhere else. It is a fair assumption that that place is bad……. probably very bad. In the Roper survey, 67% of people believe in hell. Frankly, I’m surprised that the number is that high.

We will spend essentially our entire existence in eternity. We will spend essentially our entire existence in a place that is either very nice or in a place that is very bad. We will spend essentially our entire existence in either paradise or hell.

Going back to the hardwiring in our hearts, nobody seems to believe that we can go back and forth between paradise and hell. If that were true, then the bad stuff would creep into paradise. When we die…….we go either to paradise…….or hell……. forever. The choice between paradise and hell is not random. God does not just toss a coin. The choice between paradise and hell hinges on how we handle our brief life in this temporal world.

Time for some honest reflection.

Think back over the last week……maybe two weeks if you are a saint. Call to mind something that you did, or said, or thought that was rotten. Do you see people doing that in your vision of paradise? Probably not. If you are honest, you are left with the nagging doubt that maybe you don’t belong in paradise.

So……what determines who goes to paradise……..what determines who goes to hell? There are two schools of thought.

I’m a good person.
I do some rotten things…….but not too many. I’m “good enough”. I’ve earned a place in paradise. In this school of thought, I usually damn the guy just a bit below me on the goodness scale to hell. After all, I don’t want him taking my parking spot. This is the most common belief among the people you meet.

I’m a broken person.
I have made mistakes…..done rotten things……..but my creator loves me. He has decided to let my rottenness slide. This is what God teaches in his instruction book. There is just one tiny catch……..you have to recognize God and accept his “get out of jail free card”.

So……..the secret of life?

It is eternal and you get to choose where you will spend it……..today.

What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

James, NIV

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Jesus, NIV