Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

I was thinking about light and darkness, and realized that darkness cannot extinguish light. Yet light can pierce darkness. In a way, this is an analogy for good and evil.  The light of God's word - the good news of Jesus - cannot be extinguished by darkness (i.e. by Satan or by anyone else). Sure, evil can oppress people, but it does not change the fact that once you have heard the good news, you've heard it. Once you accept the gift of eternal salvation, this light cannot be extinguished by darkness . By contrast, light can pierce darkness. A small amount of light is visible in pitch-black surroundings relatively easily. In the same way, the good news can still be spread even in oppressive times and places.  It's actually quite reassuring to realize that a light in the darkness cannot be put out by the fact of the darkness. In other words, light can change darkness but darkness cannot change light.   If you found this post interesting, you might also like these rel...

The expectations of society, of the local community, can be a very powerful force. People who do something different to the usual customs in the local area may experience prejudice, criticism and negativity from others around them.  In the case of a new Christian in areas where Christianity is not readily accepted, these new Christians are exposed to a very challenging set of circumstances. Some may have family members who no longer wish to have a relationship with them. Others may experience discrimination in the workplace, socially or in other parts of their lives. As extremely difficult as this is, it can be encouraging to remind ourselves that surely Noah (who was a Jew, the same as everyone else back then) had even more societal pressure. Why? He heard God's call for him to build an ark. His friends and neighbors must have thought he was crazy. And his ark was a very public thing. Even if he had desired to hide it from strangers and just let a few trusted people know about t...

There is much written in the Bible about false prophets. These are people who claim to be prophets but they are not getting their information from God - instead they are spreading things that they made up. Today, we also have false prophets in Christianity. These people spread misinformation. Often this misinformation is poorly interpreted Bible readings, but sometimes it can spread outside the sphere of the spiritual and into political things.  This is why it's very important that each person, whether a Christian or questioning, should read the Bible for themselves and compare it to what is being said by someone else. As a concrete example, some false prophets will claim to be Christian but they say racist things. Racism is not compatible with Christianity (I have written more about that here ). It is made abundantly clear in the Bible that salvation is made available for all people who choose to take this free gift of Jesus's sacrifice - not just certain people or certain ra...

Most people are familiar with at least some of the content of the end time prophecies in the books of Daniel, Revelation, and some of the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).  Yet Isaiah also had a very specific prophecy about Egypt: 1 An oracle concerning Egypt. See, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud      and comes to Egypt; the idols of Egypt will tremble at his presence,      and the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them. 2  I will stir up Egyptians against Egyptians,      and they will fight, one against the other,      neighbour against neighbour,      city against city, kingdom against kingdom; 3  the spirit of the Egyptians within them will be emptied out,      and I will confound their plans; they will consult the idols and the spirits of the dead      and the ghosts and the familiar spirits; 4  I will delive...

I was reading in the news media about someone who had betrayed someone else. If I had been the victim, I confess I would have had difficulty with keeping my focus on the main thing (God and Jesus). It would have been all too easy to fall into the trap of bitterness and misery in that situation.  Even if I make a conscious effort to rise above the bitterness and misery to keep my focus on God and Jesus, I would still have not liked the person and would have avoided them. Which is OK! Christianity says you should forgive the person, but you need not continue any relationship with them (I talk more about that here ). Your forgiveness is in your heart, between you and God. There is no requirement for you to see the person again or for them to know of your forgiveness. You can cut off contact with them for the sake of your future physical and/or mental health, even if you have forgiven them. Forgiving someone for a specific past event does not equate to you needing to place any trust in...

Some people think that Jesus is just for certain people but not for them. Nothing could be further from the truth! Jesus came for all people. No-one is beyond salvation, no matter what they have said and done in the past, no matter their social standing, no matter how disliked or well-liked they are by others. If they believe in Jesus and repent of their sins, they are saved. Here are some verses that prove that Jesus came for all people . Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered. Isaiah 56:8 The above verse shows that even those who might consider themselves outcasts, or those who others might consider outcasts, are still gathered to God. Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’; and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.’ For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me...

This past autumn, I was cutting down annual plants which had finished producing and placing them on top of the soil to eventually decompose.  I was rejoicing that this decomposition process would improve the soil. I thought to myself "Decomposition into existing soil improves it so that it is much better than soil that has never been used."  This struck a memory for me of a quote from C.S. Lewis: "For God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity would have been..." - C.S. Lewis, Miracles 1947, in Chapter 14 "The Grand Miracle". In other words, C.S. Lewis believed that man who is redeemed through the death of Jesus is somehow intrinsically better than unfallen man. I found it a bit easier to see this viewpoint using the gardening analogy. It's not a great analogy, but it was concrete enough to help me. Soil that has never been used is never going to be as good ...

Doomsday bunkers will not protect anyone at the End of Days. Between now and the End of Days, there will be natural disasters, war, and other horrible things. Although doomsday bunkers will exist, they certainly won't protect anyone from the End of Days. Two prophets in the Bible have clearly prophesied about people hiding underground at the End of Days. Let's take a look at these two different readings from the Bible. One is from the prophet Isaiah, before the birth of Jesus, and the other is from the prophet John of Patmos, in the book of Revelation, the final chapter of the Bible. These different prophets from distinctly different time periods both have the same message for us: Enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground, from the terror of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the earth. On that day people will throw away to the moles and to the bats their idols of silver and their idols of gold, which they made for th...

Keeping the main thing, the main thing is a challenge. It is all too easy to look backward and forget to keep our eyes on what is important. The writer of Philippians makes this very clear for us: that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 3: 11-14 I particularly love what he wrote "But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead"... This is a vision we should all have. Our goal should be always to go forward toward God. In fact, often we don't feel like we can or should go forward to God because our sins are too great. But this t...

I was reading the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. You can read the full parable in Matthew 16: 19-31. There, a rich man who feasted each day did not share even scraps with a poor man called Lazarus who was hungry. They eventually both died, and the poor man went to heaven and the rich man to Hades (hell).  There, the rich man was in agony and asked Abraham in heaven to relieve him, but Abraham said there was a great chasm between the two places so it was not possible. Then the rich man pleaded to Abraham to at least send Lazarus to the rich man's father's house to warn his five brothers so that they would not wind up in hell. Let's examine what happens next: Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’” Matthew...

At the end of times, Jesus will come again. It will be sudden when it happens. Here are some scriptures about this event: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for th...

God still wanted to be with us, even though we are sinners. Let's take a look at when Moses led the people out of Egypt. As they trekked through the desert, God gave instructions to Moses: And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. Exodus 25: 8 I was struck by how amazing that was. God didn't say "well, I'll keep a good distance away from these crazy sinners of humans." Instead he told Moses to make him a sanctuary so that God might dwell among us. Among us?! That's amazing that He would want to do that! He is perfect and we are not, yet he still desires to be with us. This is why He made a path for us to be with him in heaven through Jesus. That way, we can be with Him. Yet He wanted people to choose this path freely. God did not force us to accept the sacrifice Jesus made. This is why it is so important to make our own choice about this. Don't wait until it's too late! If you found this post interesting, you may also like thes...

 As Jesus was dying on the cross, he said some important words to the disciple whom he loved, thought to be the youngest disciple John. but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. John 19: 25-27 After Jesus died and rose again, he was later seen by his disciples and he had an important commandment for them: Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Sp...

I know I've covered a bit about forgiveness before; what it is and isn't. But here, I also want to cover more about why and even more importantly, how we should forgive. I have mentioned before that forgiveness forgives someone for a past hurt. It does not require you to have that person in your life again . The person does not necessarily even need to know you have forgiven him or her; that's between you and God. It also does not require you to put any future trust in that person. Here I'd like to cover the motivation for forgiveness. It's simple: we should forgive because God forgave us first. Consider all the sins I've done against heaven; there are countless of those. Because these sins are forgiven via Christ's death on the cross, then surely likewise I should forgive those who have sinned against me. Indeed, the Lord's Prayer says ..."forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." The word "as" is key here....

Many people have a fear of missing out. They are insecure and don't want to be left out of something that's going on. Yet, I've noticed that fear of missing out is almost always applied to things like parties and get-togethers, but almost never to anything crucially important. For example, what about being saved? You'd think many people would have a huge fear of missing out on that. You'd think the people who were worried about missing out on something as minor (in the long term) as parties would all flock to churches so as not to miss out on the good news of Jesus. You would expect they'd all want to be saved. Of course, fear of missing out is not a good reason in and of itself to want to be saved by Jesus. We should want to be saved because we truly believe in Jesus, not just out of a fear of missing out. Missing out on a party only affects us in the here-and-now. But if we miss out on salvation, it affects us for eternity. This is something that w...

Lately, I found myself wondering exactly what I would say to a close friend if I was to explain what the Christian beliefs are.  It is actually pretty simple to explain. God the Creator God is the creator, and created everything in the universe. He also created Heaven. Heaven is a real place, a place of happiness where there is no sickness and no death. The one thing that can separate us from God There is only one thing that can separate us from God: sin. Sin is when we do bad things. God hates sin (he does not hate us , he hates our sin) and does not want to be around it. This is a problem for us, because we all have a sin nature. Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, fell into the temptation of sin. We all have that same nature, so we all sin, even though we try to be good. None of us are perfect. None of us can meet God's standards. A path for us to be saved While this sounds like quite a hopeless situation, it's not, thanks to God. This is why: God made a way fo...

Even if you are not concerned about your own soul, what about your children's? Did you know that there is a huge battle going on, over your child's soul? I know that to you, it seems literally unbelievable. But if you will, just for a second, pose the (admittedly scary) question "What if?" Just because you don't believe in something doesn't mean it's not real. Imagine us trying to explain the existence of the atom to someone from the Middle Ages. We can understand why that person simply won't believe it, but the atom was still 100% real in the Middle Ages - regardless of whether the people of that time could a) detect it or b) believe in it. Let's switch over a little. Have you ever watched the movie "The Matrix"? It is set in what seems to be a very real world, but in fact turns out to be a virtual world surrounded by an external, real, world. Right now, the Earth, planets, galaxies and everything in it are like the inner world o...

Whenever there are times that I don't have the best attitude about life (e.g Monday mornings), I remind myself of the following. Any that have links refer to an experience that you can explore in more detail: I'm alive! I'm on the planet! I'm human, which means I'm one of God's chosen people . Jesus paid the price for my sins already. It's already been paid up. My chains are broken, and I've been set free . Evil has no long-term power over me unless I choose to let it. My chains are broken! I have nothing to lose (except for earthly things which are anyway ephemeral) and I have everything to gain. I need to live accordingly! By the time I've gotten through this checklist of reminders, WOW, I feel like a whole new person all over again. If you found this post interesting, you might also like these related posts on this blog: Straying Blindly Does Reading the Bible and Praying Have Results? Are We Today Those to Whom Much Has Been Given...

I used to be jealous that I wasn't "chosen" by God for things. I used to be jealous of Adam and Eve , of Jesus' disciples and apostles , and of the Jews (God's chosen people). Since I was none of these people, I used to feel like I wasn't chosen by God for anything. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. As members of the human race, all of us are chosen by God to be his people. He even sent his only Son to die for our sins on the cross! His love and his grace and mercy have been given out to us, to humans. It doesn't matter if we do not play a role that is written in Christian history. And frankly, I know that I wouldn't have always been willing to choose to follow God in those roles even if I had had the opportunity to experience them.  So instead of being jealous of how many things I wasn't chosen for, I now am so joyful to be a member of the human race. I'm part of God's chosen people: we all are. He wants a re...

I realized that it is easy to be straying from God without even being aware of it, which is why I have called this post "Straying blindly." This is what happened to me for a while. I think in a way, this is a lot more insidious that when we knowingly stray. When we knowingly stray, we might not be going to church for awhile, and/or not be praying or reading the Bible daily - not making the time to have a relationship with God. Or perhaps we might be involved in unethical activities. Either way, when these situations happen, we often feel guilty and are aware this is happening. Sometimes we even feel trapped. In any case, in these situations, we know we're straying. However, it can also happen that we are straying without really being aware of it. Like the sheep who thinks the flock is nearby, we might wander off a little further each time, never really realizing that we are away from the Shepherd. In a sense, that is more dangerous because we don't know we have st...