Absolutes are always dangerous.

This one is true…… or very close to true.

Every American really likes at least a part of Christianity.

Everybody likes having the day off on Sunday. It may be the only one of the ten commandments that we will never consider abolishing. Everybody likes Christmas……at least the party and the gifts. Can you imagine a politician trying to abolish weekends and Christmas in the name of “separation of church and state”? It would make reforming social security look like child’s play.

On the other hand, there is a lot of the Bible that a lot of people don’t like. In our abortion clinics, Americans ignore “do not kill” about 3000 times a day. I can’t pick up my phone without seeing a friend share a Facebook post that is untrue……”do not lie”. We have a very real problem with “love your neighbor”…………especially if he or she doesn’t vote like we do.

Just about every one of us, even atheists, pick through the Bible and pull out ideas that we like. The rest we discard. How else can you explain pro-abortion Christians? We tend to accept the parts of the Bible that agree with what we want. In a way we create our own custom religion and use bits and pieces of the Bible to endorse the things that we already believe……things that we would have believed even if there were no Bible.

There is a James Taylor lyric:

“we got holy scriptures here that prove us to be right
In believing out loud what we wish to be true”

I’m not sure of where he stands with God……but I think he hit the nail on the head.

It’s easy to pat ourselves on the back for promoting the parts of the Bible that tell us that God supports us when we do what we were going to do anyway. Today, I’d like to roll back the rock and take a peek at the parts of the Bible that are often rejected.

Today I’d like to challenge you……..to have an honest look at the parts of the Bible that you might reject:

Recreational sex…….. The Bible clearly says that sex is to be confined to a husband and wife.

Homosexuality…….the Bible does not say that a man cannot love another man……..but it unmistakably prohibits same sex intercourse.

Abortion……..there is no question that abortion kills a child……the Bible prohibits taking an innocent life.

Charity………we are told that it is our responsibility to care for widows and the downtrodden, the guy on the corner with the little cardboard sign……….to visit those in jail.

Love……..love your fellow man………possibly the hardest command of them all. I’m not talking about loving your child or grandchild, who adores you. I’m talking about loving the unlovable. I’m talking about a Democrat loving Trump……a Republican loving Pelosi. How about loving a member of antifa? How about loving a Portland style anarchist?

Trust me……..if God can love these people, so can you.

So, my challenge for you is this. Study the Bible. When you find something that you don’t like……..and you will, don’t try to twist the Bible around until it supports what you already believe. Don’t try to make the Bible conform to your appetites. Instead, see if you can adjust your beliefs, your appetites, to bring them into alignment with the “owners manual”. This will not be easy.

When I hit an impasse, I go back to rule #1…… Love God……..and rule #2……… Love your neighbor. This always seems to clarify things for me.

“Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man.”

Abraham Lincoln, commenting on the Bible

“Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.

Moses, NIV

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus, NIV

With the election coming, this post is timely.

First of all, I want to be clear about what I mean by a lie.

A lie is something that someone says that is factually untrue.

A lie is an untrue statement that is meant to manipulate or deceive you.

But, a lie can also be a lie of omission. If I make 10 statements, all of them factually true, but omit truths from the other side……and if I do it with the intention of misleading you and manipulating you, then the sum total of my work is a lie.

This bears repeating:

A lie does not have to be factually untrue. It only has to be intentionally misleading.

Journalists are masters of the lie of omission.

If you want to see a lie that is factually untrue, scroll down your Facebook page. You will find one on every other screen.

If you want to see a lie of omission, watch Fox or CNN.

Taken together these two categories of lies could very well account for half of the “information” that we consume every day. The people, the journalists, who spread these lies are highly skilled. They want you mad. They want you to attack THEIR enemy. They want to manipulate you into making their enemy into your enemy. They want to turn you into a “hater”.

Judging from the quality of our current public conversation, they have been highly successful. And it will just get worse until the election. Hopefully, this will improve after the election. However, it didn’t improve after 2016.

What to do?

First, we must critically assess the things that we are told. If a “talking head” or an internet post makes you mad, that is a red flag. The probability that you are being manipulated is very high.

The factually untrue statement is fairly easy to deal with. There are fact checking sites on the web. They are sometimes biased, but they are better than nothing. Use them on every post that you share, especially the ones that make you mad.

The manipulative but factually true lie, the lie of omission, is much more difficult. It is hard to spot, especially when it supports something that you believe, something that agrees with your appetites. We love the lie of omission, because it tells us that we are right and that the other guy is evil. The key to spotting the lie of omission is to look at the body of work of the journalist in question. If Jim Acosta has nothing positive to say about Trump, ever, then he is an omission liar. If Sean Hannity has nothing positive to say about Biden, ever, then he is an omission liar.

Ideally, we should stop consuming information that comes from factual liars and from omission liars. If we all did this, then their sponsors would go away and then they would go away. This is going to be hard to do without cancelling our cable TV subscription and our internet service.

This sounds hopeless; but, I find that when I am facing a confusing and difficult problem, there is often good advise in the “owner’s manual”, the Bible.

When all else fails…… Read the instructions.

Love God
Love your neighbor

When you are in the process of reacting to a piece of information, run it through those two filters first. Does YOUR reaction reflect both a love for God and a love for your fellow man? If not, you may want to change channels…..or better yet pull the plug and go for a walk, play with your child, pet your dog. Maybe you need to get a dog. Trust me, his reaction to the “talking head” is far healthier than yours.

An evildoer listens to wicked lips,
and a liar gives ear to a mischievous tongue.

Solomon, NIV

No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one who speaks falsely will stand in my presence.

David, NIV

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.

John, NIV

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

John, NIV

But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person.

Jesus, NIV

I get up around 5am every morning. I go out on the patio, light a fire in the fire pit, and sip my first cup of coffee. I read the Bible, pray, and write these posts.

Yesterday, the sun rose on a cloudless, crystal blue sky……it was beautiful. Today, it is cloudy, threatening rain, and cool……almost fall-like……….it is beautiful. Soon it will be very cold with a light frost, and later……. snow………and that too will be beautiful.

We get deeply immersed in our to do list. We are so busy pulling on the levers…….running the machine that is our daily life, that we fail to sit back, take a minute and appreciate the beauty that is our world…….at least the part of it that God created.

Have you ever just sat on your porch and watched a thunderstorm? Better yet, I once experienced a hurricane, up close and personal. The power, the glory of it was awesome.

I have come to realize that nature, the direct result of God’s creation, is beautiful……all of it.

There is no such thing as a natural disaster.

A wildfire may destroy homes in California. A volcano may destroy cabins in Oregon. A hurricane may flood a city in Louisiana. The human stuff that is destroyed, the lives that are lost is tragic. But the storm itself, in its power, is majestic.

We get upset…….because our human plans are disrupted. We get upset……..because our man made stuff is destroyed. We forget that these “natural disasters” are one face of our creator. They are a reminder of his power and glory. They are a reminder of how small we are…….and of how inconsequential the things that we build are. In 1000 years there is not a thing that we have built that will still be here……..except, perhaps for our waste. If there are still people around, they may read about us, but they will not remember us.

So we need to decide what we will focus on as we go about our day….. the temporary life we are living and the stuff that we are accumulating and maintaining……..all of which will soon be gone……or the power, glory, and majesty that is our creator……who is eternal.

Do we focus on the lower eighth ward in New Orleans?
Or do we focus on the storm?

I can assure you that we will rebuild New Orleans. I can also assure you that it will again be destroyed someday. Katrina, or another storm with a different name will return every year for as long as this planet exists.

So…… where is this going?

There is a critical truth hiding here.

The conflict between our stuff and the storm is the same as the conflict between our temporary society and God’s eternal society.

Our earthly lives and our temporal stuff will not survive.
The storm will prevail.
God will prevail.

We have to choose which to focus on.
We have to choose which to put our treasure in.

In a way, we must choose which to worship…….the temporal…….or the eternal……………our stuff……..or the storm.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Jesus, NIV

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Paul, NIV

In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end. The children of your servants will live in your presence; their descendants will be established before you.

David, NIV

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.

Paul, NIV

I’m getting old……… I’m probably well past my “best used by” date. Recently a friend, also about my age, commented, “In a few years, all of the stuff I’ve accumulated will either belong to somebody that I don’t know…..or will be in the dump.” It’s a sobering thought………but true. I’m a firm believer in the truth, so this post is about facing that truth.

Soon……….I’m going to die.

I really don’t get too sad about dying. But, I have to admit that the thought of my woodshop being sold at auction to a bunch of guys whom I don’t know and carted off in pickup trucks saddens me. Even worse, somebody will fill MY shop up…….with THEIR junk. Instead of being neatly organized, it will probably just sit there in piles……..makes my skin crawl. They probably won’t weed my garden either.

So how do we……the baby boomers in particular, but everybody else as well, even the very young……deal with the reality……the truth……… that we are near the end of our lives?

I’m a Christian, and I pray every morning. As a part of my prayers, I include this:

Lord,

I thank you for all that you have given.
I trust you for what you have taken away.
I praise you for what I have left.

But………the truth is that soon………God will take away every earthly thing and person in my life. I can get mad at God……I can ignore him or deny him……. I can struggle against my fate. But, that won’t change a thing. My daily trip to the treadmill may buy me a few more days…….but my end is not in doubt.

Or, I can go back to my prayer. I can trust God. He has given me many promises. The first is that he loves me. The second is that he has prepared a place for me. After he takes away this present amazing place, I have to believe that a creator who loves me and has prepared a new place for me, has something nice in mind. If he takes care of me any thing like the way I take care of my children, I’m in for a treat.

The best guess that I can come up with goes like this. My day begins sitting on the porch drinking coffee and talking with people that I love……Jesus, my wife, my sons, people that I don’t know yet. I then spend time in a woodshop where I make beautiful things……where the chisels don’t get dull, the bandsaw blade never breaks, and where there is no sandpaper…….none.
Jesus stops by and gives me a few pointers. I break for lunch where I enjoy more fellowship. In the afternoon, I take a long walk with a friend. Dinner is with my mom and dad. I get a good night’s sleep with no midnight trips to the toilet and no CPAP machine. Then I start all over.

The key here is to love and trust God……..and his promises.

The alternative is dispair.

There really is no other choice.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Jesus, NIV

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

Jesus, NIV

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

David, NIV

This post is directed primarily at believers……..Christians. If you don’t accept Jesus as divine, then this will mean very little to you. On the other hand, I have found the teachings of Jesus to be trustworthy. Maybe you should read on, and consider the possibility that Jesus may have been on to something.

In the Bible there are two men named Lazarus…….two unrelated stories. The first is the one we all know. Jesus’s friend Lazarus dies and Jesus raises him from the dead. This contains the famous “shortest verse in the Bible”…….”Jesus wept”. This is an account told by Luke about Jesus and the things that he did. The second Lazarus story is not nearly as well known………but it is arguably far more important. It is a story told by Jesus……possibly a parable……..comparing a poor beggar named Lazarus and a rich man. More importantly, it is a brief description of heaven, hell, and the relationship between the two. It is a summary of Heaven and hell, spoken by the Creator. As such, it deserves our attention.

The cliff notes version is this:

Heaven is a place of comfort.
Hell is an agonizing burning fire…….a place of torment.
Both are permanent.
Whichever you land in, you are there for eternity.

I hear a lot of Christians say something to the effect of, “I believe in Christ, I believe in heaven, but I don’t believe in hell”.
A more common statement by Christians is, ” I can’t believe that an all loving God would send Aunt Jane to hell.”

These Christians are wrong. You cannot be a Christian and deny the existence of a burning hell.

Why?

You must believe in a burning hell………because Jesus did.

If you are not a Christian, and if you don’t believe in a burning hell, and if you are wrong……..then you are headed for a lot of pain.

Here is the other Lazarus story……..as told by the Creator.

“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

I believe that the worst pain that we can experience as human beings……….is when we are unfairly attacked……..by someone we love. When the attack is fair, when we deserve it, it’s not so bad. When the attack comes from an enemy, it’s not so bad. But, when it comes from someone we love, it is devastating.

I used to tell my sons, “you can only truly hurt the people who love you”. There is some big league irony here. But, this is one of the greatest truths that I know.

To be clear here, I’m not talking about forgetting a birthday. I’m not talking about some unintentional slight. I’m talking about intentionally hurting someone who loves you. We seem to know the power of this. Often, we save our most devastating attacks for those who love us. It’s not hard to do. The people who love us are typically close to us. We know them well.

We know just where to stick the knife.

And this is tragic.

So you are saying to yourself……”that kind of person is a real jerk…….I would never do that!” And, for the most part, you and I don’t attack those who love us.

But, if you honestly think about your relationship with God, you probably don’t have to look too far to find an episode where you threw him under the bus.

Used his name disparagingly.
Lied.
Took something that was not yours.
Disrespected your parent.
Lusted.
Was jealous of another.
Used Sunday to catch up on work.

And that is just working through the commandments.

How far back do you and I need to go…….to find an episode where we failed to love our neighbor? Not far……probably today……….probably the last time we read an inflammatory political post on Facebook…….or watched the evening news.

So…….here is the hard part.

God loves us with an otherworldly kind of love…..a love that is far beyond our understanding. Try to imagine his pain, when we intentionally attack him by ignoring his teaching, by ignoring him, by denying his very existence.

This is hurting someone who loves you……..writ large.

We do it every day.

And yet, God stands there with open arms, with a heart filled with love……..and, I suspect, with a tear in his eye.

The bad news is that we are guilty………just about every day. Guilt is not very fashionable these days. But, it has a purpose. The purpose of guilt is to guide us away from destructive behavior.

The good news is that God does not hold a grudge. He is just like any other parent. When we get finished attacking him, when we turn back to him, he is still waiting and his love is still there.

God’s love is not diminished because of our failures. His love is not diminished because of our attack. His love is not diminished because we simply are not capable of understanding it.

This makes no sense to me……..but it makes sense to my father. And that’s good enough for me.

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,”

God, NIV

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Paul, NIV

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul, NIV

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