ITS NOT ABOUT PERFORMANCE

The fundamental truth of Christian faith is God’s grace and what Christ has done for us - which is, everything. Too many preachers, communicators, writers are still harping on an exaggerated moralism, spouting off about intensifying your devotion - "Try harder, do better." It’s a preoccupation with performance. No, No. Stop it. Of course, take your faith seriously, but don’t get off track theologically. Christian faith rests on the love and sacrifice of Christ not our love for him. It’s not all about us. It’s about him.

QUIT ARGUING & START LIVING

Although I have written the past few posts with a view to distinguishing the plausibility of faith and the implausibility of atheism, I have another thought today.

I think that Christians in North America assume that all non-believers are convinced atheists or at least agnostics, so the assumed approach to them is refutation and defense and argumentation. In fact, we live in such an irreligious time that the majority of people of no faith, have simply never considered faith claims. They have little or no experience with the Bible, with Christians, or with church. They pay no attention to these. They simply live life. They may not require arguments to belief but rather winsome examples of life being lived by people who are thriving as they make sense of life by trusting God and finding his involvement at so many levels.

ATHEIST’S POSITION IS UNJUSTIFIABLE AND UNTENABLE

Atheists assert that believers’ position is specious, illogical, unsound. Easy to say, but what if that claim is redirected to atheists with a demand for actual evidence? Atheists assert that there is no God. However, it is untenable as a philosophical standpoint because it cannot be proven. Only an affirmative proposition can be corroborated. A negative proposition such as atheists make, denying the existence of something, perhaps God, cannot possibly be substantiated. It is impossible to be everywhere in the universe to ensure that God does not exist. It cannot be proven.

WHAT DO THE EFFECTS TELL US ABOUT THE CAUSE?

What would a God be like who was responsible for the created universe in which we creatures live. If God cannot be seen, it would be reasonable to think that we could understand God by examination of his creation. Creation would inform us that this God’s authority and power is not merely formidable but supreme. Further, this supremacy would be infinite which would infer that God stands alone without peer. Creation operates within cycles of time and parameters of space, so God would have to exist outside both space and time, that is, God would need to be super-natural. In other words, God would not be limited by space which God created, so God would be inexplicably present everywhere. Therefore, God would be immaterial, and God would be time-less. That would also insure that God would be change-less. The creation of personality insists that God is personal because the impersonal cannot produce personality. Creation speaks of purpose rather than randomness so God would have to be the deliberate cause. That would explain why moral law was integral to God’s creation because God loves what he has made.

THE ATHEIST’S DILEMMA

Not wanting to believe in God, the atheist must face the interpretation of honest science, which acknowledges that the universe did have a beginning. If the universe had a beginning, it cannot be eternal. That the universe had a beginning, compels the presumption of cause. That cause cannot be nothing, but must be something and the only conceivable eternal something is God. The human creature resembles its cause, and that cause certainly cannot be an amoral universe. Rather, only divine causation can account for created beings who have personality and are occupied with purpose, meaning, and moral values. It is unthinkable that random ‘nothing’ produces finely-tuned everything. It’s improbably that non-life produces life. It’s unimaginable that unconsciousness produces reason. Those are greater leaps of faith than is required to believe in God. Belief in God is affirmative not speculative.

EVIDENCE LEADS WHERE?

Something exists. The human is something. It is impossible for nothing to create something, that is, nothing cannot self-create. The human creature is not here as a result of self-creation. Something cannot exist prior to itself. Something has a cause. Evolution’s ‘spontaneous generation’ argument is dated and has been abandoned even by reasoning atheists because they know that something does not emerge from nothing. Nothing arises without a cause. Reality is not self-created. Therefore, that which is reality rather than illusion is either an eternal reality or it is a reality that has been created by something that is eternal whether that something is the universe itself or the Creator God. A necessary and eternal something exists. The question that then occupies us is, where does the evidence lead?

MIND BEFORE MATTER

Dissimilar to other creatures, the human has capacity to reason that his very existence points to a supreme power or being. Beyond mere instinct, the human creature thinks. She thinks and concludes her own existence is reality rather than illusion. She is something, a something extant in a universe of planets and stars. The universe too, is something rather than nothing. Convinced by thinking that her existence is not an illusion, she can reason that she created herself, or she must choose to believe she exists as a creation of an eternal universe or an eternal power/God. An atheist cannot evade faith, since if he will not believe in eternal God, he must believe in eternal universe. With either alternative, mystery remains profound, unexplainable. Did matter simply always exist? Or, did a Mind exist before matter?

ATHEISTS & BELIEVERS CONTEST OVER GOD

Does God really exist? Is there proof? Is there truly a way of knowing? Is there a conclusive argument for God’s existence? Intelligent people are positioned on both sides of these questions. Atheists have become militant within the past one hundred years. Believers have become impassioned evangelists.
Atheists cannot help but to demean believers and to depreciate their beliefs. Disciples cannot help but to love non-believers and to pray for their conversions. Either atheists are correct and believers are irrational, delusional purveyors of wish fulfillment thinking, or Christians have placed their confidence in the supremely logical fact that God is the creator of something as remarkable as an expanding universe into which he has seeded a race of free creatures with whom he chooses to engage because he is love.

POLITE AND THOUGHTFUL APOLOGETICS

I am weary of the old fundamentalist harangues against churches and lethargic Christians. There are better ways of discipling people than that. Blasting churches for their methodology or style and criticizing other believers for who knows what, and doing it in a public forum like Facebook is a sad attempt at evangelism or sanctification. It conveys judgementalism and silo thinking. It suggests an air of perfection unknown by everyone else but the spokespersons.

In an era of secularism such as ours is, when skepticism is normative, it is essential that believers in Christ become polite and thoughtful apologists. No, not that they apologize, but rather they engage people in careful assessment of evidence that points to Jesus Christ as creator and redeemer and in the process dethrones the philosophies of those who are antagonistic to biblical faith and replaces that with the timeless truth about Christ. Christian apologetics makes a case for authentic Christianity, defending Scripture, and presenting both scientific and historic apologetical proof which when empowered by God himself, persuades people.

IMITATORS OF GOD SPEAKS NOT OF DRAMA BUT REDEMPTION

The Bible speaks about likeness to God as something which Christians desire and seek, expect and experience, and hope and live for. (Take a peek beyond this point)

ACCOMPLISHING TRANSFORMATION

The purpose of the Christian life is like the purpose of creation: that one should be like God and enjoy all the powers which He has placed within His much loved creature child. Romans 8:29 “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He (Jesus) might be the firstborn among many brethren.”

Godliness, or Godlikeness has always been the standard toward which God wanted the human to live. That is, God fashioned the human in his own image, after his own likeness. To overcome the impairment of that image due to personal wrongdoing, this Image-bearing has been made possible through reclamation, redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ. The recovery or restoration takes place like a transformation, much of which takes place here and now as we are living life. It is a lifelong process. Changes will be made throughout our lives. That’s not even the entire story. What is truly neat about this transformation is that Christ himself lives within us by virtue of His Holy Spirit inside us.

Three big theological terms tell our story, Regeneration, Sanctification, and Glorification

FIRST MAN AND FIRST WOMAN

That act of rebellion by the first man and first woman defaced the image of God in the human in various ways. Human intelligence was impaired so people constantly erred in their reasoning. Morally and socially humankind no longer reflected God's image, being unable any longer to distinguish between good and evil but rather began to exploit others. Human mental, emotional and relational health has been damaged ever since. And you can’t fix those areas first and then hope to have a relationship with God.

God’s good news is that because God made humanity to reflect him and that image was marred by sinfulness he determined to restore the image bearing capacity and to do that he sent his Son into the world where the Son, Jesus, lived such a perfect sinless life that he revealed the exact image of the invisible God, actually God in human flesh, and the plan all along was that this sinless one would give himself as an atoning sacrifice to atone for the sins of the world. This is the great recovery of the image bearers.

When the resemblance was distorted, God went to an extraordinary length to rescue us. And from the moment that you place your faith in Christ’s atoning death for sin, you are redeemed through Christ and you begin to bear the image of His Son. Jesus modeled that life. Your life now corresponds with God’s creation purpose that you should be like God and enjoy powers that God puts in you. It is what it means to be truly human.