A Good Book

I always find it puzzling when people proudly exclaim “I have good morals…why do I need God?”

“I’m happy..I don’t need God”.

Transforming God into a checklist of amenities, and not much more, I imagine someone saying “Why should I buy a car? I have air conditioning and radio at home”.

I suppose the best reason to make God a part of your life is because God exists. But we’ll tackle that later.

Right now it’s best if I reveal why I believe Jesus is God.

Well, for starters, it’s the most important thing worth taking away from scripture.
(Even if you are the doubtful type who frowns upon scripture's reliability on such things.)

Being raised to respect the Jewish people I recognized early the intelligence and honesty of a people who for millennia have shed their blood for nearly every race of man on earth. It was a great discipline they used to preserve and later write down the accounts of Solomon, Elijah, Isaiah, and of course Jesus of Nazareth.

I do not understand when some say “The bible is not reliable as God’s word as it was written by men not God.” Since the bible is mainly a historical account of what Jesus said and did, it would be just as odd to say “all the first-hand accounts and 19th century books written about Abraham Lincoln are not reliable or accurate as they are written by men”.

Archeologists have unearthed over 5,000 copies of ancient Christian manuscripts. There are more separate, independent, first-hand accounts of Jesus than any other character in ancient history.

Within days of his death Christianity spread like wild fire across the known world. World population exploded from 200 million to near a billion and the perfect storm of a temporarily small world population, Roman rule and peace, and the incredible wide-spread testimony of the resurrection led 1st century rulers to wonder how and why all these Christians were popping up so suddenly?

There is not a claim about Yahweh that is not ascribed to Jesus. There is not a single glory withheld or power not shared.

God made flesh, manifest and humbled to lay down his life for man.

All scripture is inspired and "breathed" out by God through the lives and experiences of men. In it we witness both the hand of man and the creative force of heaven.

Man feels at once separated from his spirit but drawn to it. This invisible transcendence that has compelled mankind towards it for all of human history. And yet we feel its distance. And perhaps we feel our own brokenness. Fallen from a reality that should be but isn't.

Forever pushing towards a world that ought to be within our grasp, but always just beyond it.

For we live in a moral universe. A universe with laws and rules that are not "part" of God as they are part of us, but are indeed the very essence of God. Like love that emanates from the heart of heaven.

We live in a moral universe that God has revealed in the old days before the birth of Jesus and then revealed in Him. You see morals aren’t something we invented. They exist outside of us.

Eternal and external.

We discover them, we learn them, we ignore some and embrace others. But they obligate us always.

Greeks and other cultures used to kill off their own babies. Some Asian and Middle Eastern cultures treat women deplorably. We find that detestable but there are cultures ancient and modern that would find the way we treat one another deplorable. The way we treat our poor, immigrants and hungry, the manner in which we feast on every conceivable delight. Our incessant self fixation.

We can trade moral priorities back and forth as we see most befitting modernity, but beyond our grasp of the appropriate lies the Word of God. The Word made flesh. And that flesh is bridging the gap between our hatred (strong word but what else would you call it?) of God and His love for us.

Estranged as we are from God there is never a moment God’s blessings aren’t pouring from heaven for the sick, destitute, and suffering.

To the atheist life is meaningless outside of our combined desires. People learn, love, procreate, and die. People cry and suffer and die. People manipulate, deceive and feast. People do whatever they can in life and then pass. Yet amongst the hypocrisy of men the atheist cries out “Why would a God allow this suffering?” “How could God permit this suffering?” “Why are Christians so evil?”

Because what every other spirituality tries to cover up, what all philosophy and mortal wisdom wishes weren’t so, is also the most dangerous secret in the universe.

We are all contaminated with sin.

It oozes and bursts forth from our pores. It hangs on our breath and sticks to our teeth. And faith is not the cure for sin. The cure for sin is death. Jesus Christ is the cure for death.

And that’s why God chose to live among us, leave his story in the hands of 12 and die horribly in the hands of men. And rise again!

So his story would play out as history tells. 1st century Christians would explode in fervor, confounding the world’s power by dying willingly, eagerly for the promise delivered in Christ’s resurrection.

A miracle witnessed by hundreds who took that testimony passed the stones, through the whip, up the cross and to the grave.

So we could have our bible. Our words written by men.

Written by men for all of mankind. Inspired by God to tell us the story of a resurrection so miraculous that only witnesses who were either entirely mad, or untrue, or blessed of God could retell it!

Men, apostles, who lived humbly and willing to serve, to learn, and to teach, to give and to work, to pray and to love all they came across in honesty, victory and hope.

That is my faith. Reasoned through rationality, believed through experience.