Conversation

(A conversation I had today with a co-worker. She is an anthropology major at a local university. She will soon be heading off to get a graduate degree in that field. She was raised in a fundamentalist church enviorment. I have tried to recapture the talk that we had as accurately as my feeble human memory will allow...)

Her: "I just get tired of people saying that I have to believe everything in the Bible to be a Christian."

Me: "Yeah, I understand that. I don't agree that to be a Christian one has to believe everything in the Bible. It seems that there are some foundational things you would have to put your trust in - but some of the secondary issues could be set aside and one could still be Christian."

Her: "What would you say those essential beliefs are?"

Me: "I would say that you most fundamentally need to believe in, and trust in, Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Of course, to do that a few supporting facts would need to be assented to. You need to believe in a transcendent personal triune God who created time and the material universe from nothing. He made man in his image and man willfully rebeled aganist him, condeming all people to eternal punishment. Yet, in his mercy he made a rescue plan and subsequently he prepared the way for rescue thru a particular nation and ultimately by a particular man - Jesus. Jesus was born of a virgin, fully God and fully man, and he led a sinless life that culminated in his death on a cross in our place - so that God might be justified in forgiving those who are saved. After his death Jesus rose from the grave and ascended to the hand of the Father, that we would have assurance of his mission and so that death would be forever destroyed - paving our way into the presence of God. Finally, he will come back to judge the world one day and to make all things new again.

Her: "OK, I believe all that. But, so many other things in the Bible have been distorted or misinterpreted. There is alot of allegory and metaphor in the book."

Me: "I am confused about how you can get over the first (and biggest) speed bump - that is, the idea of God - then, up and over the second bump - Jesus' ressurection - yet, you have difficulty with the other stuff. While I don't think you have to believe in the story of Jonah dwelling within a whale for three days to be Christian, I am puzzled about the reason you would reject that and accept the core beliefs."

Her: "Well, everyone has their own view of God."

Me: "Yes, we all do - yet, there is only one true objective God. Do you think that people can get to heaven outside of Jesus?"

Her: "Yeah sure, there are lots of people who never hear of Jesus - I can't see that God would condemn anyone who never even knew about him. If you have a general belief in God and you try to live your life in a moral way, you will make it to heaven."

(At this point I realized she was kidding herself about her professed religion.)

Me: "What if you looked at it as - people get condemned because they sin aganist God, not because they didn't get to hear about Jesus. And by their nature, people hate God and could never make it to heaven on their own works. Yet, in his mercy God has saved some people - turned their inner being into someone who loves him and seeks him - even though no one deserves that grace. Because of that heart change believers have the hope of working towards moral actions and holy ends. We will never realize our full potential until after death, but it will come. The idea here is that morality is a result of salvation not visca versa."

Her: "Then it seems as if we have no free will."

Me: "We do have free will - yet, our will is always going to act as a servant of our inner nature. If you like vanilla ice cream and you hate chocolate ice cream, given the choice, you will always choose vanilla. God dosn't remove our will - he simply directs our inner being so that our will can choose him over evil."

Her: "That sounds like a God I don't want any part of. If he is the one making all the decisions, why dosn't he save everyone from hell?"

Me: "I don't know the answer to that. Two things - one, we have no right (as clay) to question our potter. Two, he may save some and allow some to perish in order that both his holy wrath and his merciful grace can be displayed. By showing both he is more glorified than if only one was demonstrated. Its a hard questions that really boils down to faith. Does all of that sound foolish to you?"

Her: "Yeah, that is crazy. God is about love and he won't reject people if they try hard and believe in him. What an arrogant way to see God."

Me: "Please understand that I am not trying to be a jerk when I say this. I don't think you understand classical Chrisitianity. Too often these days the word is bandied about without any substance. The point of the message is grace - not law. God is love, but he is very clear on how to get on the road to be with him. You said you believed in Jesus and that you felt that belief in him was unnecessary to get to heaven right?"

Her: "Yup"

Me: "What about when Jesus himself says - I am the way, the truth, and the life - no man comes to the Father except by me. That is pretty unambiguous"

Her: "I imagine that is a translation issue. The Hebrew was probably translated by some scholar incorrectly. Furthermore, the writer who penned that had his own agenda and he was writing 60 years after Jesus death."

Me: "The New Testament was written in Greek not Hebrew and there is no reason to believe that there are any major translation issues that affect doctrine in any part of Scripture. Also, the writer certainly wasn't writing 60 years after Jesus death. No Gospel was written after 69 AD, because none of them mention the destruction of the Temple in 70 by the Romans. If we take Acts, it was probably written in the early 60's because it ends without a chapter on Paul's death. Luke wrote his Gospel before he wrote Acts, so we can date that Gospel in the late 50's or early 60's. We know that Mark was the first Gospel to be written - that puts Mark in the mid to late 50's. That is only 20-25 years after Christ's death. That is not very long to wait for a biography, much less four of them."

Her: "OK, but even if it was written that close, the writers all had different views on Jesus according to their agendas. You have to remember that as you read and not trust everything they say about him, like the "I am the Way" comment."

Me: "How do the Gospel writers have views which inherently cause us to question their reliability?"

Her: "Well, look at John - he sees Jesus as divine son of God. Meanwhile, Luke focuses on his miracles and Matthew shows him as the suffering one, which alludes to the sufferage of the Jews under Rome."

Me: "I don't see how this makes the writings unreliable. Just because four different people wrote four seperate biographies about a man and they all focused on different facets of his personality - that doesn't necessarily mean that they are fabricated or false. You need better evidence to sweep away the statements about Jesus that you don't like. It is intellectual dishonest to cut and paste out of the Bible. If you hold to the orthodox Christian faith then you would be hard pressed to simultaneously disregard those passages you disagree with. The faith is built upon that book and what it says, with supporting evidence in history. How do you reconcile your claim to be Christian and your incredibly secular and skeptic analysis of the Bible and biblical history?"

Her: "I don't know. I believe in God and I guess I worship him as Jesus because that is how I was raised. I try to live a good life and I think its incredibly arrogant when people walk around acting as if they know who is going to heaven or they have all the truth."

Me: "I think you hit the nail on the head. It is your upbringing that gave you a belief about Jesus and I think that it has been your secular anthropological education which has challenged those inherited views. In my opinion you are actually a Deist or Theist of sorts and you will probably realize that in the near future, at which point you will drop the Christian moniker completely. I would challenge you to do some serious study of Gods Word and of theology. There is a truth out there. Its a love story of undeserved grace, not our own efforts. If you can gain an unobstructed view of the reality we live in, portrayed by the Bible, your doubts and misgivings about some of these things will fade. I must tell you my sad history. I grew up with a mental assent to the divinity of Jesus, but that is not enough. The book of James tells us that even demons believe. Christianity is about a relationship with God, an intimate connection with the sovereign of the universe. That is a far better thing to study and experience than all of the anthropological journals out there. Give it a shot."

Her: "I think that the real problem is narrow-minded people who set aside good science to spend their days in theology schools discounting the truth we can find with our own hands. And I resent being called a Deist, although it might fit."

(At this point I was called away on another work project. This employee will be leaving us soon to move on. I will pray for her. I feel that I mishandled that conversation on so many points. Yet, I am resting in the truth that it is God who makes the seed grow.)