Category: Faith

How Were People Saved Before Jesus?

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Chinese home

One of the most asked questions about Christianity goes something like this:

If Jesus is the only way to heaven, what about the people who lived before Jesus was born?

A corollary question is: What about the people who never had an opportunity to hear about Jesus?

I am no biblical scholar, but I have wondered about these things myself.

Jesus seems to leave us little wiggle room when he says things like, “I am the way, the truth and the light, and no one comes to the Father but through me.”

Some say that Jesus was a good moral teacher, but he wasn’t God. A person who made the claims he made (like he is the only way to God), however, doesn’t allow us room to consider him just good moral person, or even a prophet. As C. S. Lewis famously said, a person who makes the claims Jesus made is either a lunatic, liar or God. He not just a good man.

So if Jesus was right about who he said he is, what about the people before Jesus came who knew nothing about Jesus?

Continue reading “How Were People Saved Before Jesus?” →

Putting the Anger of God in Perspective: Part 2

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Sun in the Clouds

Speaking of God’s anger, we experience things that we perceive to be God’s wrath, but they are not. When tragedy strikes – a natural disaster, a terrible accident, cancer – we feel that God is being angry or cruel.

We wonder how He could do those things to people … especially if it affects us!

In reality, God has created a neutral universe in which things happen, good and bad. From our perspective it seems personal, but it’s just the way God made the universe.

It is also the perfect soil in the exercise of free will is given its space to operate. As a general rule, the universe is a neutral ground where favorable and unfavorable things happen all the time (the rain falls on both the righteous and the unrighteous). The important thing is our reaction to those things.

We see the world from a finite, limited perspective. In fact, we tend to think or act as if this world is all there is. Just as the universe had a beginning, it will have an ending. The end of each of us will surely come before the world ends, but end it will – at least in its present form. When life as we know it is stripped away, and the universe as we know it comes to an end, there will remain only eternity with God or eternity without God.

We tend to feel that the bad things that happen to us in our lives are expressions of God’s anger toward us, but it isn’t..

In fact, God’s wrath is not yet revealed. The wrath of God is coming. Colossians 3:6 The day of judgment is still to come (2 Peter 2:9), and, we are told that day will “come like a thief in the night.” 1 Thessalonians 5:2

If we are in opposition to God, with stubborn and unrepentant hearts, God’s wrath is stored up for us “for the day of God’s wrath,” (Romans 2:5) but, that day has not yet come.

In the meantime, we experience God’s forbearance, patience and kindness, allowing us time to turn around and align with Him. Romans 2:4 As the writer of Hebrews exhorted, if you hear His voice today, do not harden your hearts! (Hebrews 3:15 quoting Psalm 95:7) There is still time to change.

The world we live in is the soil in which we grow toward the life that is yet to come. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” John 18:36

Indeed, none of us get out of this world alive. We have the opportunity, while we still live, to plant ourselves in God’s soil, to die to ourselves and to live for God.

The ways we respond to the happenings in our lives guides our growth in the soil of this world. We are either growing toward Him or away from Him. The end of our days is not this world, but the next. Jesus told us that we should not be storing up treasures on earth where things rot and rust; we should store our treasures up in heaven.

Peter reminds us that we look forward to a new heavens and a new earth. 2 Peter 3:13 He exhorts us,

“So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.” 2 Peter 3:14-15

The Lord’s patience means salvation. 2 Peter 3:16 Bad experiences remind us we are not immortal, that there is an end to this life, that we should be considering where our treasures are.

Putting the Anger of God in Perspective: Part 1

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Lightning on Land Over Ocean - Copy

The anger of God in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, is inescapable. In fact, God’s anger and wrath is mentioned more times in the Bible than His love and mercy. We can not side step it.

I find myself, as I read through the Old Testament, tempted to want to explain God’s anger and wrath away. The accounts of God’s anger make me uncomfortable and long to get back to the New Testament.

Even in the New Testament, however, we find passages like this:

“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” John 3:36

“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.'” Romans 12:17-19

I have spoken with people who do not believe in God or who do not accept the Bible as true because of the statements and stories about God’s anger and jealousy. They say they can’t believe in a God like that.

It strikes me that God, the Creator of the Universe, is no less God if we do not believe in Him or do not acknowledge Him as He is. It also seems the height of folly to submit God to our judgment, which is essentially what people do who reject Him for being or appearing to be angry or jealous.

At the same time, I have long played with the thought, which I acknowledge is just my thinking and may be way off, that what we see as anger is really something very different. We experience it or receive it as anger in a moral and emotional sense, but it may not be what it appears to be.

God is God and cannot be anything other than who He is. We are the ones out of sync. When we are out of sync, we are like the opposite pole of a magnet facing God. We sense that tension. We feel it like the opposing force of north poles facing each other.

If we are to approach God in that state (opposed to Him), we would likely perceive the tension as anger from Him – a sense of repulsion (and being repelled). We can not stand in His presence when we are opposed to Him.

We can hardly stand in His presence when we are in right relation to Him! Moses had to hide His face. Isaiah cried out that was” undone” and “ruined” in God’s presence.

What we perceive as God’s judgment, a moral stance, is really just God’s character. He is who He is. God is the standard by which everything is measured. We can no more divine God to be something other than who He is than turn off gravity (or magnetism), and our judgment of Him is like the ant claiming the ground underneath the elephant’s foot.

The Bible reveals that God wants no one to perish. (2 Peter 3:9) At the same time, He cannot be other than Himself.

“As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways….” Ezekiel 33:11

Evil is whatever is opposed to God.

It is we who need to change and come into alignment with Him. He provided the way in Jesus and his atoning death on the cross. Through Jesus we are aligned with God and can stand before Him and experience His love. When we confess our sins, die to ourselves, accept the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, receive Him and, thereby, submit to God, we are turned around and aligned with Him.

I dare say that we should not gloss over the anger and wrath of God. “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom….” Proverbs 9:10 If we let the knowledge that God is an angry, jealous God creep into our consciousness, we have motivation to want to make things right with Him.

We can not change Him. “He is not a tame Lion,” as C.S. Lewis says. He can not be other than who He is. We must approach God on His terms. What we find, when we do, however, is that God is Love.

I continue with some additional thoughts on the subject in Putting the Anger of God in Perspective: Part II in the next blog post.

God Simply Is

We are here today and gone tomorrow. God simply is. God always is. God defines the rules.

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“I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” (Exodus 33:19)

13-6 Sugarloaf View 3

Did you ever stop and think, “If God is God, He can whatever He wants”? Somehow it seems politically incorrect to think like that. Should we not love all people? Should we not wish everyone well? Should we not be judgmental? Should not God be like that?

If you think about it without preconceived notions and with a little rational thought, is not God the one who decides those things? I can see why people would want to believe there is no God. “He is not a tame lion” as my favorite author has said. If God is God, we do not control Him. We have no say in the order of the universe or the laws that He put in place. There is no question of right or wrong when it comes to God; God simply IS!

As God instructed Moses when he sent Moses to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, tell them, “”I am who I  am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ”I am has sent me to you.”” (Exodus 3:14) God simply is.

We did not make God. He made us. We did not create the rules for the operation of the universe. God made those rules. We do not define how God must relate to us. God defines how we relate to Him.

God made us like Him. “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27) I suppose there should be no wonder that we would be like Him in wanting to control the universe and define it. The thing is, though, it is not our province to establish the rules or define how they work. We may want to control things, but we do not control them.

We are here today and gone tomorrow. God simply is. God always is. God defines the rules. God has mercy and compassion on whom He will.

I consider from time to time the possibility that things might be different. God might be a tyrant. God might be cruel and unmerciful. Some even think He is that way. If it were true, God would not be wrong. God is.

I am thankful God is not that way. God assures us that we will find Him if we seek Him with all of our hearts and souls. (Deuteronomy 4:29)

In the context of God is, however, we do evil when our hearts are not set on seeking God. (2 Chronicles 12:14) Still, even if we have followed after false gods, have worshiped idols and have sinned in the sight of God, if we humble ourselves, pray and seek God, He will hear; He will forgive the sin; He will heal. (2 Chronicles 7:14) I, for one, am very thankful that God is that way … because He does not need to be that way. God is, and He defines the way it is.

The ultimate evil is in not seeking God. We do not think of evil in that way, but it is not for us to define evil. In the context of God is, evil is not acknowledging Him, not recognizing Him for who He is, not seeking Him. Evil is ultimately being separated from the God who made us.

Atheism and Fatherhood

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Foggy River LighthouseThis interesting study in the affect of absent or flawed fathers and the incidence of atheism in the atheist population is another indication to me that people, even rationalists, are often influenced by non-rational, emotional and personal factors in arriving at their worldviews. I explored these things in The Idol of the Mind previously. I certainly do not claim that Christians or theists are less influenced by other than rational factors, but we do not claim to be rationalists. Rational thought is not antithetical to faith in God – far from it; rational thought is, however, not the sum of all things for the Christian. There is a realistic and honest understanding that we are finite beings; that we, perhaps, are incapable of getting our arms and minds around the vastness of the universe and should not presume to think that the wisps of mist that we are in the eons of time can expand to the beginning and end of time and space and prove (or disprove) the existence of a Creator of it all. Of course, we “err” on the side that God exists; while atheists do not believe what they cannot prove. The truth is, however, that many (most?) atheists appear very intent on not wanting to prove that God exits, or even to consider the possibility. I expect there are some honest atheists, but I also suspect they are precious few. I have never encountered any more dogmatic or inflexible a personality than an atheist.