Saturday, May 5, 2012

Why Waste Your Time With God?



dark empty class

Why God?

Let's start from the beginning: you are a human being. You have a sense of self:your personality, why you love what you love,etc.--this is called a soul, without it, you'd be a toaster. Now with it, you have a sense of right and wrong, most call this a conscience.

This is where the debate begins, because different people in different places define morality differently right? Not really. You see, there is no society on the planet living without a system of morality. The best way to think of it is that we are all attempting to fulfill the same list of virtues but just define them differently.

For example, two men from two different cultures could find themselves at war with one another. Though when one is surrounded by the enemy, he quickly takes his life, while a man from the other culture will choose to endure imprisonment. Both men show the virtue of Courage, neither wishing to be labeled a coward, the wrong they wish to avoid.

The Truth About Right and Wrong

The idea of right and wrong could be easily explained as some evolutionary instinct if it didn't inconvenience us or endanger our own well being. Imagine a women in her 90s, slowly pushing a shopping cart full of groceries down the sidewalk, as you drive your sports utility vehicle. As she struggles to push the heavy cart, she trips over an untied shoelace. Her cart launches into the street, groceries spilling all over the pavement, as she falls directly into the path of your vehicle. Do you brake or drive on? Do you stop to help or take a detour, with the fallen woman in your rear view? Regardless of your choice, there is an inner confirmation that you did right or wrong. Stopping to help, provides you zero benefit, in actuality, it makes your life more difficult. Why is that want to do good there?

The same reason, the universe exists, it was put there. The best science we have confirms that our universe began in a great explosion, emphasis on the word began. You know, the same sort of thing happens when a car starts, a mysterious explosion brings the engine to life but there must be a key and a hand behind it. God is the reason the universe (and you) exist.

So what's the problem?

The problem is that humans can't do good all the time...its utterly impossible. Don't agree? Sure you do. When's the last time you felt safe walking the city streets alone or going to sleep with the front door unlocked? Unless you live on some family farm compound in the middle of utopia, probably never.. Anyone who's attempted to follow a fad infomercial diet, realizes there is a gap between what we want to do and what we actually do.

See, God created the world perfect but,where things go well, you can always expect haters. Satan, God's jealous ex-employee, decided he would devote the rest of his life to corrupting everything God created, and that includes all of us. By tricking us into thinking that rebelling against God would be to our benefit, we did, and now rebel instinctively. Even the good we want to do gets corrupted by selfish motives. That stuff we do against God both knowingly and without knowing is called sin.

But God is a personal God. He talked to men and women for thousands of years, trying to develop relationships with them so He could set them straight. God even came down to Earth as the person of Jesus Christ, to complete the deprogramming process.

Jesus is God.

Why Should You Care?

Because as we've discussed, Jesus opened this establishment called Earth. Its full of folks that try to listen to what he says and those that refuse. Any store or business owner that finds visitors behaving inappropriately: wrecking their stuff, cursing them out and hurting others, has the right to take action when necessary. God has refrained Himself for years, sending multiple representatives to warn the rabble-rousers to listen up before they get in trouble. He has been kind in handing out warnings for centuries, but soon, He'll close shop and oppose them to their faces. God will reward the ones that changed their ways with a paradise called Heaven, however, sentence those that thought he was 'full of it', to an eternal pit of torture called Hell. He would rather not send folks there, but their abuse will no longer be tolerated.

As a part of God's current grace, He provides us a handbook for living called The Holy Bible.

Why Study the Bible or the New Testament?

Because God Wants To Love You: God doesn't just want you to obey Him, but to know Him. The Old Testament was God's way of introducing or revealing Himself to humanity, and the New Testament is the story of the crazy lengths to which God will go to save humanity from sin, death and themselves.

Because of its historical accuracy: Of course Christians would back up the Bible as true, but what about those that have not accepted Christ's message? For the last two millenia, much of the Bible's historical data has been proven true by non-Christians: atheist archaeologists like Sir William Ramsay who spent 25 years investigating the book of Luke and Acts, the ancient Jewish work the Talmud and ancient historians Josephus, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger (Ramsey became a believer by the way).

For the New Testament alone, there are over 5,000 manuscripts in Greek, 8,000 to 10,000 in Latin and 8,000 more in other languages such as Slavic and Armenian, totaling to about 24,000 nearly identical manuscripts. When compared to ancient works like Homer's Iliad, with 650 manuscripts or the writings of Plato with 30, the New Testament remains the best attested writing of antiquity.

Because folks couldn't make this up: The Bible has some good things in it, though often relates some messed up stories. Why? Simple: God knows people are messed up, and He wants to show humans that messed up people change when they follow Jesus . No one has to stay God's enemy, we can now choose to be His friends.

"No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you."
-John 15:15 

In Him,

Jean-Marc

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