Truth Begins ...

A gift is something you cannot earn, you may not deserve, and you are free to return. So it is that the saving of man from his own evil was devised as a gift of God to His erring creations, namely us. It was not because we deserve it. We openly and freely rejected God, we broke trust with Him. Our lives and our actions remain in this state from Adam to me. But love was larger than justice, love was greater than evil. And so Love found a way to redeem us from our first decision and the slavery that would follow. And Love knew it must do all the work of our redemption, for it relied upon us, we would remain doomed. You cannot trust an addict to voluntarily give up his drugs, so are we with our nature to please ourselves.

Evil would not be content to just let God bring us all back to Himself. Far from it, Evil had to find a way to mask the plan of Salvation, to alter it just enough as to keep it from being effective. And given our nature, it was not hard to accomplish this. A simple insidious plan to introduce self into the core of the Christian religion has been slowly introduced over the years. Instead of accepting the gift of our freedom from evil, sin, and ourselves – Satan altered the design by insinuating that the work of removing evil from us, was up to us. Catch phrases like “Sanctification is the work of a lifetime” and mis-applying scriptures like “Faith without works is dead”, have led Christians to believe they too have an important work in the saving of man. Over a period of time, we adopted the idea that we must be responsible for ending our own bad behavior. If we are failing at it, it is because we are praying too little, reading too little, or trusting too little. We were told to try harder. No matter the reason, we would be held accountable for our failures in a coming judgment.

The very definition of Salvation went from saving man from evil and himself, to strictly “going to heaven”. This removes the timing of getting rid of sin until a far future date. It sets expectations of perfection to a far off distant future, and given our abject failure at getting rid of our own sins, it seems more than reasonable. People start getting obsessed with when Jesus will return, because they pin all their hopes on a better life with less pain on “going to heaven”. We have consequently placed self at the core of our religion, and have thus robbed it of both its good news, and its power; time for truth to re-emerge.

Christ said “come unto Me all ye who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” It was Christ who defeated evil, paid the penalty we deserved, and in so doing won back our chance for freedom. We were condemned to the evil we chose, our guilt was never in question, but remarkably our defense attorney (Christ), upon hearing our sentence decided to take it upon Himself in our place. He would offer us as a gift, what we could never earn. He would do the work it takes to remove the sin from our lives, if we would just let Him do it. We would have to choose to allow Him to save us, but in so choosing, HE WOULD SAVE US. The plan of salvation was not enacted to make us free TO sin, but rather to make us free FROM sin. We do not need another excuse to continue in the pain we choose to inflict on ourselves, we need a method of escaping it. We need a reform of our thinking. We need a recreation of our very nature, of our desires, of our souls. And this is what Christ offers us each one.

His work in our souls is highly personal, as each of us is highly unique. We learn differently, we respond differently, we have different motives and thinking on almost everything. How He removes our sin and changes our thinking is a mystery, but the fact that He does only rests on our willingness to let Him do it. Think of it folks, REAL relief from real pain that has infected your existence since birth. It is available to you right NOW, right here, no matter your condition, no matter how deeply you dug yourself into the hole of pain you wallow in; there is hope and immediacy in the relief in Christ. Stop trying harder to kick a habit you cannot kick. Stop trying to put your own strength in a place God never intended it to be. Instead rely on the only God capable of beating evil, and of recreating the heart of man. You need only take His gift and submit your own will to His.

The key to changing our lives, and ending our pain lays not in how strong we are, but is made perfect in our weakness as He does what must be done in each life. Christ removes our pain. Christ changes what we want, and how we think, so that the nature and causes of our addictive behavior are ended permanently. We begin to wonder as time passes, how we ever wanted the things of the past, and why we did not allow Christ to end them sooner than we did. This level of freedom brings rest. We can give up the fighting, and turn over the battle to the only one who can win it. We need not judge each other any longer, nor condemn each other pointing out obvious flaws in each other, for Christ can fix all of this. Our witness transforms from condemnation and guilt, to redemption reclamation and joy. Our vision is opened up. We begin to see truth on an entirely deeper level. The mis-application of scripture begins to fade as we no longer look for a club to beat people with, we look for love to save people with.

When someone throws the phrase “Sanctification is the work of a lifetime” at me; I respond yes it is, it is the work of submitting our will and our desires over to Christ so that He can change them forever. Even in this, I depend on His strength to cover my weakness, as God is both the Author (creator of) and Finisher of my faith. When someone says “Faith without works is dead” to me; I respond yes it is, and it is like life without breathing in the air. When you have the one, you cannot help but have the other. The works follow the faith, for it is the nature of faith, to redefine our actions, our motives, and our behaviors. This text is merely a statement of the obvious, not a condemnation of those who do not try hard enough.

I can accept anyone in any condition, not because I endorse their particular sin or pain, but because I know Christ can fix it in them, as He does in me. I am free to love without condition or prerequisite. I am not constrained to love only those who think like I do, but to love those who disagree with me, or even those who hate me. I have no need to preach to people, for I have nothing of value to say. But I can answer questions about how my life has improved and why I am so happy being connected to the source of all love and happiness, and how you can achieve it too. The good news of the gospel has returned, for saving us from evil is truly a gift once more. The power of the gospel has returned in that real change can happen right here and right now, by the miraculous redeeming power of Christ’s love. This is exciting. This is the birth of truth.

Stop the Pain ...

It is nearly impossible to appreciate truth when suffering excruciating pain. Our lives are full of it. And sadly, most of the pain we endure is primarily due to the decisions we make ourselves. The irony of self interest, is that the more we try to serve only ourselves, the more we make ourselves miserable. But to stop this downward cyclone of horror we must first recognize the truth about evil, and our relationship with it.

God is love. He is omnipotent and pure. He is only comprised of everything that is good. He is life, love, and joy. So it stands to reason that anything that is not God is also not good. Any deviation away from the source of life, leads to death. Any deviation from the source of joy, leads to misery. This was the knowledge of good and of evil that Lucifer discovered when he stopped looking to serve others and began to serve only himself. It was not murder that comprised the first sin in our universe. It was not sexual immorality, or theft. It was something far more insidious, it was internal, it was pride. It was a deviation away from God’s perfect order of service into the horribly destructive world of self interest. Serving self is at the center of everything we have to come know about evil.

Because of the history of our world according to our Bible, man gave up his dominion over himself and planet earth to Satan. In breaking trust with God, we gave up our ability to have control even over ourselves. In short, we were bound by sin and evil. Our nature is to act in the perseverance of self, and further in our own self interest. Evolutionist’s call this survival of the fittest, yet these are the acts behind every horror history has to offer. It is not acts of love and sacrifices for others that mark the hallmarks of atrocity in our world; it is rather acts of naked aggression, of insatiable lust, of quests for more and more power over our fellow man. All these traits share self-interest in the core of their motivation.

Each act of self interest however carries with it a degree of consequence and pain. The consequences and pain may not be felt immediately, however the longer they are delayed, the more severe they usually are when they inevitably are realized. Getting lung cancer from smoking cigarettes is not a punishment from God, it is simply cause and effect, fill your lungs up with enough tar, and you get cancer. Cancer hurts. Cancer spreads. Cancer kills. And the pain of cancer is not restricted, whether we are talking physically inside the body of its carrier, or emotionally to the entire circle of friends and family who share the pain of the afflicted, and his/her loss. Evil is much like cancer. It seems inconsequential at first. It might come wrapped in a pretty package and even feel good in the short term. But underneath is death incarnate, underneath is pain on a stick, underneath is cancer just waiting to spread and make life a living torture factory for you and everyone you know or care about.

So why on earth would any logical thinking human being choose to participate in evil, knowing the outcome is what it is? Are we clinically deranged, do we all have a death wish, are we at heart masochists - perhaps. More likely, we are all just a bunch of junkies. We are literally addicted to our self destructive behaviors. Those that believe they can stop when they want to, never seem to find the time to actually make that decision. We are as we have always been, bound to our evil, slave to it, addicted in every way that matters. It is the only logical explanation to an illogical set of facts. We know we should not choose to do it again, but we do anyway, over and over and over again. Christians take their sins to the cross and ask forgiveness, but even though forgiven, they seldom cease from the behavior that requires them to go back to the cross again and again.

And thus pain runs rampant in our lives. We hurt ourselves. We hurt our victims. We hurt those who care about our victims. We hurt those who care about us. We make a ripple of pain in the pond of our world, and the ripples carry with intensity for a long way. So what hope does a slave have in light of the overwhelming evidence of our slavery? What hope does the addict have, when at rock bottom they finally realize their own condition of helplessness? We need outside help. We need a savior. And fortunately for our desperate need, God has provided just what was needed to break this horrific cycle of doom.

We will discuss later the process of how being saved from evil works, but for purposes of this discussion the fact that there is a way to end the pain is the significant point. Most of the pain we feel in our lives is due to the decisions we make. Sometimes it is due to the decisions others make but this is far less the case. The reason why we are the major supplier of pain to ourselves, is that our very nature and very addiction cause us to make poor decisions, repeatedly, and often. This condition must end, if our minds are ever to see truth. This condition must end for us to be able to rest. This condition must end, if the world around us is ever going to be changed for the better. This is the final battle. It is the battle for our souls, for our selves, and for our very nature. It will be fought in the mirror. And it will be won or lost depending on who we choose to align with in the coming fray.