Examined Christian Faith 'Take it or Leave it' 2.6 What is Christainity

Atonement, that’s where I left off, on the previous post, really there has only been one perfect atonement, one perfect surrender and humiliation; that which was undergone by Christ.  Perfect because He was God, and humiliation because He was a man.   Christians believe that if they somehow share in the surrender and humiliation of Christ then we will also share in His conquest of death and find a new life after we have died, and in it become perfect and perfectly happy.   So when will this next step in to something beyond man happen?  When is the next step in the evolution of mankind?  Christians believe it has already occurred, in Christ a new kind of man appeared, and a new kind of life which began in Him is to be put into each of us.  But how?

Just as you came into this world with the natural birth, so we Christians are born again in Christ.  Not in the natural sense, but by baptism, repentance and actions.   But do not confuse those three things as something that can replace the Christians individual attempts to copy Christ, because that is what we strive to achieve.  

However, just as your natural life is derived from your parents, that does not mean it will stay there if you do nothing.  You can lose your natural life by neglect or suicide.  You have to feed your natural life, and take care of it, but remember you are only keeping it, your parents made it.  In much the same way a Christian can lose the Christ life which has been put into him, if he does not make efforts to keep it.  Just as a live body in not one that does not get hurt, but in fact is one that can to some extend repair itself.  Likewise a Christian is not someone who will never go wrong, but is instead a person who repents and begins over again after each fall.  It is the voluntary death to self, the willingness to surrender and accept humiliation (a kind of death) which Christ enables him to do, that propels the Christian forward. 

It is this idea, of Christ being in him, which is the driving force when a Christian admits that any good he does, comes from the Christ life inside him.  A Christian does not think that God will love us if we are good; but rather that because He loves us, He will make us good.  I think I need to be clear on this point that when a Christian speaks of being “in Christ” it is not something merely mental or moral.  They mean Christ is actually in them and operating through them, that they are simply part of a much larger organism, the body of Christ.  That they are the fingers, legs and arms of Christ.  Which explains why this new life can not be simply baptism, or baptism and repentance, but it also includes bodily acts as well.  It is not just the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution upwards.  

I have heard on numerous occasions (frequently from those questioning Christianity), how could this new life be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the simple truth is that God has not told us what His arrangement is for the other people.  We do know that no one can be saved except through Christ; but we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him. 

My advice to those who worry about that; is that if you are worried about the people on the outside, the most illogical and unreasonable thing to do is to remain on the outside themselves.  If you want to help those on the outside, it is best done from the inside.

The other “question” I hear is if this is enemy occupied world, why did God land in disguise.  Why didn’t He just land in force?  Why this sort of underground society to undermine the devil?  Christians believe He is going to land in force, He has said He will, we just do not know when.  But I can guess at why He is delaying … He wants to give us the chance to join His side freely.   It is not a matter of if, but when will God invade.

However, I wonder weather people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world today, really realize what it will be like when He does.  When the author walks onto the stage, the play is over.  When that happens, it is the end of the world.   What good will it be to say you are on His side, only after He has invaded?  When you see the whole natural universe melting away and something else, something none of us can even begin to imagine comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some and so terrifying to others, then none of us will have a choice left.  God will not come in disguise, and His coming will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature on earth.  It will be too late to choose your side; no one can in all honestly claim that they are choosing to lay down when it has become impossible for them to stand up.  

No, that day will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, weather we realized it before or not (and I fear a great many of us are in for a horrible surprise).  No one is promised tomorrow; today, this hour, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side.  God is holding back to give us the chance to choose His way; but He will no delay forever.  We must take it or leave it.

Examined Christian Faith 'Getting Out of the Hole' 2.5 What is Christainity

All this leaves us with a frightening alternative.  Either the man I have been writing about was and is exactly who He said He is, or he is a lunatic.  It seems obvious to everyone that he is not a lunatic, so however strange, unlikely or terrifying it may seem, one is left with the inescapable conclusion that He was and is God.  God in-fact ahs landed on this enemy-occupied planet in human form. 

But why?  What was the purpose of it?  What did He come here to do?  To teach us, to correct our view on numerous, far and wide ranging issues.  However, you can not escape the current that runs through the New Testament, that always there is the discussion about something different - about His death and His rising again.   Christians believe that the primary point of the story of Jesus lies right here.  The main reason He came to earth was to suffer and to be killed and in the process His death somehow gave us a fresh start.  His death put us right with God once again.  

Christians believe that the death of Christ is that one moment in human history that something absolutely unimaginable from outside the universe shows through into our world.  We struggle with trying to picture the atoms of which our world is constructed, how can we possibility grasp and picture something like this?  We can not possibility understand it, and that is exactly the point, if we could then it would show that it was not what it professes to be – the inconceivable, the one thing that wasn’t created, the thing beyond nature and our universe, striking down into a broken world like a bolt of lightening.  But we do not have to understand it fully, just as I eat dinner every night without fully understanding how that food nourishes me.  A person can accept what Christ has done without knowing how all of it works.  How His death, gave me a fresh start with God.  

We are told that Christ suffered, was tortured and killed for us, that His death has washed our sins away if we believe and obey; that by dying He disabled death itself.  That is Christianity.  But if God was prepared to let us off, why didn’t he just do it?  What possible point could there be in punishing an innocent person instead?  I can’t see any, if you think of punishment in the sense of police –court- prison sense.  On the other hand, if you think of it more as a debt, there is a huge point in a person who has assets paying it on behalf of someone who does not.  

This is just my viewpoint, my picture of how this works.  Think of it like this, a person who has gotten themselves into a hole, usually needs a friend to get them out.  That is exactly the sort of hole that we got ourselves into.  We tried to set up ourselves; we behave as if we belong to ourselves.  In short, we are not a creature who needs improvement, but instead we are rebels who must lie down our arms.  This is where it gets tough, laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, admitting you are on the wrong track and are ready to start over again from the ground floor – that, that is the only way out of the hole we have dug.  This process is what Christians call repentance. 

Let’s be perfectly clear, repentance is no fun at all, surrendering your will to His will, shifting your direction into full speed astern is much, much, much harder than merely saying “I’m sorry”.  It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have trained ourselves into, it means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death.  In fact, it takes a very good man to repent, and that’s the catch; only a bad person needs to repent, and only a good person can repent perfectly.  The worst you are, the more you need it, and the less you can do it.  The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person- and he would not need it.  

Keep in mind that repentance is not something God demands of you before He will take you back, it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like.  If you ask God to take you back without repentance, what you are really asking Him is to let you go back without going back.  It can not happen, no matter how much you what to pretend it does. 

The same badness that makes us need repentance so much is exactly what makes us unable to do it.  Can we do it if God helps us?  Yes, but we need God to lend us a little of His reasoning power, a little of His love.  God loves and reasons and holds our hands while we do it.  We need God’s help in order to do something that God, in His own nature never does, to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die.  Nothing in God’s nature corresponds to this process at all.  So the one road we need God’s leadership most of all is the road that God, in His own nature has never walked.  God can only share what He has: this thing in Hi sown nature, He does not have. 

But suppose God became a man, suppose that our human nature which can suffer and die was combined with God’s nature in one person- then that person could help us.  He could help us, He could surrender His will and suffer and die, because He was man, but because he was also God, He could do it perfectly.  Thus you and I can go through this process only if God does it in us.   Just as our thinking can succeed because it is a drop out of the ocean of his intelligence, we can not share God’s dying unless God dies; and He can not die except by becoming a man.  That is the sense in which He pays our debt and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer. 

I have heard some say that Jesus had an unfair advantage, that His suffering and death must have been easy for him as He was God and knew the outcome.   That the perfect submission, the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus because He was God, but were possible because He was God.  If that is correct or not I do not know, but what I do know is that if I am drowning in the ocean and a man who is on a jet ski offers me a hand which will save my life, I will not shout at him “No, it’s not fair!  You have an advantage; you’re on a jet ski”.  The only reason why he can be any use to me is precisely because He has an advantage.  Who will you look to, if not to one that is stronger than yourself?

Like I said this is my own way at viewing what Christians call the ‘Atonement’.  But it is really only a picture; do not mistake it for the thing itself.  And if it does not help you, just dismiss it. 

A great resource to add to your library is "Unless I See... Is There Enough Evidence to Believe?"  by   Patrick Zukeran

UNWATCHABLE

UNWATCHABLE

This will interrupt my  current series on an examined faith.  However I went to a meeting tonight in which the topic was what was going on in the Congo.  The video link above will show a video of what it would be like if it was happening in Europe or the United States. We know it is going on, we just don't care.  The video is called unwatchable for a reason, It will bother you, view discretion is advised.   How can we choose to do nothing? If you chose to watch it, then examine your faith.