If you feel abandoned, disappointed, angry, burdened, weary, guilty and afraid, you are missing the most important point of a true human being. As you will see soon after reading my article, true Christianity is not about keeping rules, rituals and traditions out of duty or out of fear of punishment. Christianity is also not about seeking peace, comfort and happiness through wishful thinking. Christianity is all about a loving relationship with the Creator of the universe and our very souls, experiencing explosive joy, thanks and freedom here and for eternity.
I became a Christian in my late twenties during my graduate study in theoretical physics. Before then I was an atheist and believed in myself. Let me start my story by discussing a fundamental difference between human beings and animals. I think the difference between them is much more than just higher intelligence. Human beings ask self-awareness questions such as “Who am I? Where am I from and where am I going? What is the meaning of my life?” I do not think animals ask these kinds of questions to themselves. No matter how powerful and intelligent future supercomputers could be, still they will not be able to ask themselves the above self-awareness questions. Self-awareness and intelligence are quite different matters. What makes this self-awareness that human beings have but animals or supercomputers do not? I believe that human beings have a soul while animals do not. Where did it come from? I believe that it is from God, because apparently it is not from materialistic things. Since a soul is a spirit, there is no way to prove or disprove its existence by a scientific way for which everybody readily agrees. But my belief is that there is a fundamental difference between human beings and animals because the former have a soul but the latter do not, and that the soul is from God.
Because a soul, God and heaven are all spiritual matters, it appears impossible to know and experience the spiritual world by the same way as we do in the materialistic world. In science we do the appropriate experiments to prove or disprove a proposed theory or hypothesis. But because the spiritual matters do not exist in the materialistic world, they can be known and experienced in ways other than scientific ones. As just one of many examples in our everyday life, think about the unconditional love of a mother for her child. How would you know or measure her unconditional love for her child before observing or experiencing its effects yourself? By studying the structure of her heart or of her neurons in the brain? I do not think you can do it this way. Although we cannot detect or measure its presence by scientific ways, we are sure there exists that kind of special love in a mother. The list goes on such as honesty, hope and integrity. Science has done a lots of things for human beings, but there are still some areas we cannot understand and approach by scientific ways because they do not exist in the materialistic world. Due to its nature, the presence of the spiritual world can be known by its effects or fruits, or in other words by interactions with other beings. “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the spirit (John 3:8)”.
Then can we know how the spiritual world works? Many people try to understand and approach it by speculation. They theorize, conjecture and guess it. They think that God should be the way they want it or do things the way they want it. But there is an alternative to speculation about the knowledge of the spiritual world. Revelation through the Bible. The Bible is God’s words written by the hands of people who were inspired by God. Because it was written and transcribed by human hands over many years, there could be some mistakes in words and phrases. But the core message, who God really is and what he has done such as the salvation of human beings from sin through faith in the Messiah, remains the same. Since the true characters of a being are revealed only through interactions with other beings, in the old testament God chose a particular group of people (Israel) as an object lesson to show the whole world who he really is. Through the relationship of God with the people of Israel, we come to know and understand the true characters of God, which could be quite different from your Genie whom you might have created by speculation. God is the creator of the universe including our souls, unconditionally loves human beings created in his image, at the same time he is also just and righteous. But the loving relationship between the creator and creatures was broken by our sin of disobeying God and following the evil suggestions of Satan. In spite of our separation from the love of God as a result of sin, God still desired to have a relationship with human beings so he devised an animal sacrifice where the blood of animals was shed to pay the penalty of our sins in our behalf. Since God is just and righteous, the consequence of sins must be paid for complete forgiveness. Here is an easy example to understand the justice and righteousness of God.
Suppose a thief stole a billion dollars from a bank, spent all of them, and later was caught. Is it just and right for the judge to release the thief simply because he confesses his crime with sincere remorse? No, then the justice would not be exercised the way it should be. The appropriate consequence for his sin must be paid by the thief or somebody else, and that is the justice everybody agrees. “Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished (Exodus 34:7)”. The animal sacrifice devised by God reveals the characters of God, both his righteousness (The consequence of our sins must be paid) and his love (The consequence of our sins is paid upon animals instead of us who committed the sins). In spite of God’s continuous forgiveness of their sins through the animal sacrifice, God’s people (Israel) again returned to the sin and rebellion after a short moment of remorse, revealing the persistent nature of sin in human beings. After the great fall human beings could not get out of the bondage of sins on their own in spite of their desire and effort. Despite the original intention of God (“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible”: Matthew 19:26), the people of Israel continued trying to keep all the rules and rituals in order to prove their righteousness before God. As I mentioned before, the old testament is a shadow of what would be fulfilled in the future by the Messiah for the whole human beings. Eventually the sacrifice of animals (without defect) in the old testament was replaced by the sacrificial death of Jesus (without sin) to pay the penalty of all our sins once and for all. When we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord, God comes into our heart to reside as the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6) to free us from the bondage of sin. “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:32)”. Then our heart becomes the holiest place in the world!
There are two important features in our salvation from sin. First, it is a gift of God for all human beings. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8)”. Our God of love and compassion is just like a loving mother jumps into the water to save her drowning child regardless of whether the child is obedient or disobedient to her. Her loving heart for the child is far from the petty conditional love (If you will obey me, then I will save and love you. Otherwise I will not save you). This unconditional love is possible because she shed her own blood with pain when delivering the child. The love of a mother for her child is just a shadow of the love of God for all human beings through the blood of Jesus. Second, it is obtained by faith, not by works. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9)”. Our salvation from sin is so precious that even selling all our possessions to give them to the poor would not be enough to earn it, although this is a good thing to do. It is what the people of Israel had done to earn righteousness by trying to literally and legalistically observe all the rules and rituals to be perfect before God. It is impossible to attain the high standard of righteousness by our own works (Matthew 19:26) so God provided for us another way of salvation, salvation by faith in Jesus Christ who fulfilled the whole righteousness on our behalf. Because salvation comes from faith in Jesus Christ, we are 100% sure of our eternity in heaven, free from the fear of our uncertain eternal future. The salvation by faith may not be the way you expected from your common sense (by speculation), but this is the way according to the revelation of God. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death (Proverbs 16:25)”. Then you may ask what is the point for good works. We do good works out of thanks for the grace we have received from our God, namely, the gift of the fulfilled life here and the eternal life in heaven which we have not earned by our works. Now you can see the difference. We do good works out of thanks to God, but not to compensate for our sins in order to earn salvation.
Have you ever experienced the joy of freedom from the bondage of sin with the help of the words of God? I will give you just one of many examples. On one occasion I arrived at a free pornographic site while surfing on the internet. Seeing a few dozens of free pornographic images was very enticing because it was free and nobody was watching me. There was nothing to lose. Seeing them or not was just my finger tip away. Then I was reminded of two verses in Psalm (119:9,11). “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you”. With the words of God I resisted the temptation successfully. What a joy of freedom from the bondage of my sinful desires of self-indulgent lust! The joy and freedom was hundred times greater than my temporary pleasure of seeing the images. Have you ever experienced this kind of joy and freedom? If not, you are missing your full potential as a true “free” human being. Overwhelmed by the mighty love and grace of God, I am 100% satisfied with and thankful for everything, absolutely everything. I even thank God for the cancer I struggled with recently. Because of the disease, I learned to love and trust my God more, learned to be more thankful for everything, learned to have more compassion for other people, learned to resist better the temptation of lust and selfishness! Overwhelmed by the unconditional love of God, my joy, thanks and freedom have exploded like a volcano everyday.
In summary, Christianity is not about keeping man-made rules, rituals and traditions out of duty or out of fear of punishment. Christianity is also not about seeking peace, comfort and happiness through wishful thinking. Christianity is all about a loving relationship with the Creator of the universe and our very souls, experiencing explosive joy, thanks and freedom here and for eternity.
For more complete story please read my recent posting at http://whyidonotleavechristianity.blogspot.com/?
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