"Well, since God can do anything, I guess He can change the rules if He wants to, and then we can all get in. Hmm?"
By that line of reasoning, God could then just change the rules and not be bothered by sin. But then He wouldn't be God.
"Man, I don't know where you get some of this stuff. Of course God would be God. I may not go to church very often, and I know I don't pray unless I really need a favor - and that's not counting when I'm looking down the bowling lane at a 7-10 split - but I do know that God is God and has always been and I guess He always will be."
So if God is unchangeable, I guess we could change, right? I mean, if there's one thing we humans do well is adapt. We are constantly changing based on the situations around us and what's happening in our lives.
"Well, I like to think I can figure out most problems pretty well, but I don't think I can change my DNA, and I'm not just saying that because I slept through most of my high school biology class. If I'm following you right, I would have to become something other than, what, human?"
Maybe you would have to become a superhuman.
"Like Superman? I can guarantee you that I am no man of steel. My six-pack has turned into a whole keg, in case you hadn't noticed."
If you are traveling east and need to be traveling west, what do you need to do?
"Turn around and head the other way, I guess. Why?"
In the Bible, to "turn" means to "repent," and the next letter on your fingers is "T" which stands for Turn.
Jesus talked to lots of people while He was on earth, and one time He told them - this is in Luke, Chapter 13, verse 3 - "... unless you repent (turn) you will all likewise perish." In today's language we would say "Unless you turn to God, you, too, will die." And then He told them a story about a tree.
Here it is ... this is from The Message version of the Bible:
"A man had an apple tree planted in his front yard. He came to it expecting to find apples, but there weren't any. He said to his gardener, 'What's going on here? For three years now I've come to this tree expecting apples and not one apple have I found. Chop it down! Why waste good ground with it any longer?'
"The gardener said, 'Let's give it another year. I'll dig around it and fertilize, and maybe it will produce next year; if it doesn't, then chop it down.'"
"I may not be the sharpest crayon in the box, but I'm confused now."
For centuries God has been trying to get man to produce the fruit He created him for, but man has always resisted. Jesus is the gardener, pleading our case, putting His job on the line for us, so to speak, asking for one more year to get us to produce. "Unless you repent ..." - turn away from the sin you were born with and try something different - "... you will all perish." You see, it's not enough to just turn away from our sinful nature, because we will simply go in a circle and come right back to it. Alone, we can't change course, we can't change our spots. We need to turn away from our selfish sinful nature and turn to something else. You always hear about people trying to "find themselves." They're really trying to find the piece that fits in the God-shaped hole in their heart. They're trying to find out how to produce fruit before the gardener chops down the tree.
"I don't know what to say. I can identify with that feeling of wanting to find yourself, but I just don't know that the churchy-life is for me."
You can look the whole world over and try every religion known to man - even make up your own! - and you'll still be just as lost. The only thing that will fit in that God-shaped hole is God.
"So which is it? God or Jesus?"
That's really simple and unbelievably complicated at the same time. On a really simplistic level we could just say that Jesus and God are the same mind in different bodies. When Jesus' disciples asked Him that same thing, He told them "Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father." Jesus is the physical puzzle piece that fits in the hole that is our need for God. Is that fairly clear?
"I think I get it."
In the Apostle Paul's first letter to the church at Corinth he wrote: "I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me--that Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and He was raised from the dead on the third day, as the Scriptures said." By "the Scriptures" Paul means the Old Testament prophecies. Jesus fulfilled the prophecies that the Jewish people had been waiting on for hundreds of years. The most important part of that is - just as Paul said - "that Christ died for our sins." That's why we say that a person needs to turn away from themselves and their sin and trust in Jesus - because He paid the penalty for our, my and your sin. Even while we were still sinners, Christ died in our place so we could go to Heaven. And the way that we accept that gift - and get God's forgiveness - is this verse from Romans 10:9 "For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."
The Message says it like this: "Say the welcoming word to God - "Jesus is my Master" - embracing, body and soul, God's work of doing in us what He did in raising Jesus from the dead. That's it. You're not "doing" anything; you're simply calling out to God, trusting Him to do it for you. That's salvation. With your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: "God has set everything right between Him and me!""
"Jesus came to fix things up between me and God so I can go to heaven? I thought He came to teach us how to do good things for poor people and to start a bunch of churches and stuff."
He came to make sure that YOU have a way to get into Heaven, which is where God wants you to live in the hereafter. Heaven and Hereafter both start with "H," which is our next letter. Your next - and last - finger, please.
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