How weird…: just after I published the last post I stumbled over a post I had written a while ago but not published. It had the heading “authentic, passionate or schizophrenic?”. It said the following:
Is it possible to live with the following two attitudes at the same time?
- I am honest about not believing the bible to deliver a true description of God’s existence and nature. I admire the authenticity of atheists and agnostics.
- When looking at images from space and thinking about us little earthlings…..when comparing Blaise Pascal on his deathbed to Richard Dawkins on his deathbed………when thinking about how many of my religious friends are in line with what I intuitively sense life to be all about while many many non-religious friend seem to miss something deep, adventurous, true…….when thinking about the fact that I have only one life to live and not much to loose…… I aim at living with God as my counterpart.
The question is: Can I live it? And is it upright to live it?
I had even totally forgotten that the term “schizophrenic” occurred to me before…
Answer:
It depends on whose terms you’re willing to follow. If it’s yours, there’s a decent chance down the road you’ll let your self down. I mean let’s be honest, all of us disappoint ourselves every now and then. But let’s say you do live it to the fullest of your abilities, you’ve reached your goal. Now what? You made it all on your own there’s the pat on the back. You made it on your terms.
But honestly, when you meet Jesus sitting on his throne, can we really say, “Look, I made it on my own, with my own terms.”
We might as well be saying, “You really didn’t need to come down here and die for my sins, because I took care of my own problems.” reality is, we know we’re flawed and we don’t meet God’s standards, so that why He came down and died for our sins. Our penalty is on Him. He took it because He wanted to. So now He’s placed the terms and conditions of righteousness: believe in your heart. If we believe in Him, now we’ve met His terms. Jesus said No one can come to the Father except through me.
It makes it a lot easier.
I’m sure you weren’t expecting all of this!
have a great day!
Bob, I think a result of option (1) above is that one doesn’t necessarily believe that Jesus was who he said he was (or who others said he said he was). So one doesn’t necessarily believe that one will actually meet Jesus sitting on his throne. Believing in that meeting is part of the faith package.
You said “He’s placed the terms and conditions of righteousness: believe in your heart… It makes it a lot easier.”
I agree! But I feel I’m in a similar place to the writer of this blog. Our heads seem to rule our hearts, and our heads have reservations about what we’re being asked to believe. This does make it a lot harder, but the path of faith seems closed to me at the moment, so I have to tread the even harder path.
Incidentally, if you feel like a chat, the two things I have problems with in your comment are:
1. “we know we’re flawed and we don’t meet God’s standards” – I agree 100%. But isn’t that the way God designed us? I know the story of the Fall, but why design something that’s so easy to break?
2. “Our penalty is on Him.” Why does there have to be a penalty? That says to me that there is some higher power of justice that God must obey, higher than God himself. Otherwise he could just waive the penalty. If your answer to (1) is that we are designed to break so that we can be remade and experience a full relationship with God, then again why should there be a penalty, if it’s all part of the plan?
Best wishes,
Dan.
Something we talked about a while back… can’t find your original post, so will comment it here!
http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/801/