I'll make no bones about, this is not a particularly unbiased or equal-opportunity religion site. I have very definite beliefs, and I hold them strongly; what's here offers an insight on what I believe, which can be very briefly summarized as follows:
- The world was created perfect by an all-powerful supreme being (God).
- God also created mankind, who, at the time of creation, was also perfect.
- For reasons mysterious, God intended humanity to be companions for Him, and equally mysterious, He gave His creation the opportunity to turn away from Him.
- The opportunity was not missed, and when the first man disobeyed God, bad things happened; the most far-reaching being that all of God's creation (since man was at the heart of it) was knocked off track and fell from perfection. Every human being since has been born malformed, as it were...imperfect. The religious term is sin, and all humanity is inherently sinful.
- God takes this personally. Disobedience and imperfection are an affront to Him; it's not how He made us, and He won't put up with it. This puts us in a bit of a dilemma, because what God won't put up with, He condemns.
- Contrary to popular belief, doing more good than bad won't help. God wants perfection. Being a better person than most doesn't cut it, and no ritual, habit, heritage or allegiance will make anyone good enough to satisfy God. The best person on the planet, who does the most wonderful things, is not up to God's standards. This is a very big problem.
Fortunately, He is a very big God.
- God saw His creation fall away, and decided He would not let it stand that way. The nature of God is such that He does not change; once He decides something should be, it will be that way. There is no appeal, no recall. What's important to this discussion is that He decreed that disobedience and sin (any sin, any disobedience, even the tiniest in our own eyes) is punishable by death. Because God does not change, and will not remove the penalty, He decided instead to take the penalty on Himself. Since humanity was at fault, He did this by becoming human Himself, and this incarnation of God we know as Jesus Christ. Jesus' death on the cross was the substitutionary death for all of humanity's sin; since Jesus was God, He could bear this penalty that would destroy any of us completely. And so He died for us, and later rose from the dead. Sin was paid for.
- You might now be thinking something like, "Whew, glad that's done with, now I can get on with my life." Don't run away so quick, there's an important proviso. The point of God paying for our sins was that we could in no way pay for them ourselves. There would be no purpose to Him paying for it and then just stepping aside to let us continue in it. He wants us to be free from sin, and paying the penalty is just a start. If we are not changed by Christ's death, why did He go through with it? The fact is, most people go on merrily in their sin and suffer the consequences. What happened to the payment? It is not applied to each and every person. It is only applied to those who ask for it. What's more, God vehemently rejects any request for forgiveness that includes some bargain or attempt by the solicitor to pay some of the price him or herself. God does not think much of anything we can do, and any attempt to pay part of the price ourselves is an affront to Him. We have to come before Him humbly, admit to Him that we need the payment provided by Christ, and accept it, no strings attached. And for God to make us sin-free, we have to yield to Him in all things, entirely submitting our very lives to Him that He may fix them. "What?!", you say? "That sounds like I have to pay with my soul after all!" Yes, that is what it sounds like, but it is not what it is. This is about being right with God, and if we cannot be right with Him by any effort of our own, it only stands to reason that He must do the job, and to do the job, we have to be subject to Him. God will save us no other way.
That is the heart of my faith. Beyond any doubt, there is a lot more to it, but frankly, if you cannot accept what I've written above, the rest will make little sense to you, even if I could put it on a web page. It's taken me nearly thirty years to come to understand what I do now; don't expect me to impart it to you in just a few minutes!
You may easily think I'm crazy or fanatical; you may just brush this off as something that may make me happy, but is certainly not for you. Well, don't think I'm here to twist your arm. I've been around the block once or twice, and it's likely I've tried, or at least observed others trying the things you do now to find the 'truth.' What I've written here is tried and tested, and I am not the only one who will tell you, it is the only way to make any sense out of life. You can (as many do) disagree. I think you'll burn for it, but that's your decision.
Where did I get these ideas from? Well now, if I believe in God, and I believe He cares about what happens to us, I would certainly have to believe He made provision for us to learn the truth about Him. That truth is found in the Bible. I know there are a lot of versions of the Bible out there, and a lot of people have come up with all manner of ways to interpret it. Forget what people say about the Bible - pick one up, and read it yourself! Make your own decisions about what it says. You can ask someone else about parts that don't make any sense to you, but check out what they say. Check out what I've said! The message of God's love and the way of salvation is repeated throughout the Bible in so many ways, that it's really pretty hard to lose, unless, of course, you want to lose it.
Links to other Christian sites
These links are here because I believe they have some value to those interested in Biblical Christianity. Not everything found at these sites is guaranteed to be right and true, and not everything listed in them is guaranteed to be listed in a manner that I would deem appropriate. But, for the most part, I think there's some good stuff here.
- Intouch Ministries
- The web home of Charles Stanley
- Zola Levitt Minitries
- Christianity from a Jewish point of view
- Insight for Living
- Chuck Swindol's radio show