A lot of my posts lately have been light and fluffy. Their purpose is to encourage and warm
the heart. They have their
place. I’ll just preface by saying
that this post is not one of those.
Sometimes as Christians we need to encourage and lift up and sometimes
we need to speak the truth even if it’s hard to say or doesn’t sound pretty.
I had a conversation recently with my Dad that I’m going to
share. I’m fairly sure he won’t
mind. As a child my father worked
in a position where he often had public speaking engagements and stories about
my sister and I were numerous (and usually slightly embellished). Likewise my Dad published a book that
has content about me. So he owes
me one. He reads my blog so he
will read this ; ) Love you Dad!
Anyway, my Dad and I were talking deep spiritual stuff. We mostly agree when it comes to our
faith, but occasionally we don’t and on this particular topic we have not
always seen eye to eye. The topic
was about hell. Essentially my
father struggles with the idea that if you don’t prescribe to the belief that
Jesus died for your sins you will go to hell. After much discussion he said to me, “So you’re basically
saying that if you’re gay, or Buddhist, for example, you deserve to go to
hell?” You know what? That is a really good and really tough
question. I recently heard a
response to the likes of this question that I thought was a good one. The answer I heard and one that I personally
intend to give should this kind of question be asked of me again is this: It’s not that someone who is gay
deserves to go to hell, or someone who is Buddhist. The fact is, we ALL deserve to go to hell. I do and you do. We’ve all fallen short of
perfection. Generally speaking in
secular American society, while most people believe in a god and an existence
of heaven and hell; the over arching belief is that if you lead a good life you
go to heaven; a bad life you go to hell.
The Christian however believes that no one can measure up to the
perfection of God. No line in the
sand can be drawn between ‘good’ and ‘evil’. The Christian believes that we all fall into the category
deserving hell, but we believe the good news that God paved a way for us
through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.
When I accepted that, I didn’t walk into my relationship with
God feeling like everything that He says is wrong, really is. But I surrendered my life to Him and
over time He showed me something important. He showed me that my feelings towards something He says don’t
matter. Something might seem right
to me, it might feel right to me, but if He says it’s wrong, then it is. To this day I don’t look at all sin and
have a feeling of detest towards it in my natural sense. Some sins I do, but others I just
don’t. But that doesn’t
matter. I don’t trust in my
feelings to determine right from wrong.
I believe that my mind is infinitely smaller and less capable of
understanding anything compared to the creator of the whole universe. That said, only God gets to
determine right from wrong. We do
not. We are not called to pick
apart others or point or shake a finger at them. We are called to share God’s love and to share the truth
that we have all fallen short and point the way towards the cross.
So for anyone reading this who believes in God, but not in
anything else I just wrote, consider this: Is it possible that the way you feel about God and the
truths you have established for yourself might be wrong? Is it plausible that God is bigger than
who you’ve created him to be?
Maybe there is a supreme authority that trumps your beliefs? Maybe your feelings don’t matter?
For me the bible is my authority. It is accurate.
It is inspired by God. The
seeming contradictions do not actually contradict each other. It answers big life questions. It is worth reading, studying,
learning, knowing, and following, even the parts that don’t make you ‘feel’
warm and fuzzy.
"For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom,
and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." - 1 Corinthians 1:25 NIV84
Not the exact verse I used, but this cartoon sums up a lot of what I was saying:
This is one of my faves :)
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