Hello, Out There #3: What is the Big Deal about Sin?

by Dan Phillips

[This takes up a was-going-to-be series started (and explained) in July of 2007 — then dropped after September of 2007. Always meant to come back to it. And now... I am!]

Stuffy old killjoys

Non-Christians are baffled by what seems to be the Christian obsession with "sin." To the non-Christian, "sin" often means "unauthorized fun," or "fun that breaks some dumb rule," or "fun that I don't want to have," or "fun that I really do want to have, but my religion says I shouldn't, so I don't want anyone else to have it, either!"

But it is the conviction of most of the non-religious that sin is not that big of a deal. In fact, sin isn't really bad. I mean, think of our language: if something better than just good, we say that it is sinfully good.

Sin is just some stupid rule. Stupid rules should never stand in the way of fun, of happiness, of joy, of self-fulfillment, of a life of freedom and self-realization. A hundred movies, a thousand TV episodes, tell tale after tale of some poor noble soul oppressed by joyless, loveless, graceless, dour, dessicated, usually hypocritical religionists.

A lot of the time, it has something to do with sex. Kids wanting to have sex with other kids, lonely wives wanting to have sex with better men than their horrid husbands. Lately, it's guys wanting to have sex with guys, women with women.

And why not? If that's what they really want in their heart, why shouldn't they? Isn't our heart our best guide? Aren't rules just stuffy conventions that each generation outgrows, varying from culture to culture? Isn't the Bible full of rules we don't keep anymore, anyway — like about slavery, skin disease, and shellfish?

The critical miscalculation

The problem with this line of thought is that it starts off with a wrong step, and never corrects course.

The way the world thinks about sin starts with the assumption that man is the measure of all things. Whether the talk is of "enlightened self-interest," or the heart's best impulses, or the "angels of our better nature," or what-have-you, the assumption is that man is both alpha and omega. Maybe an individual man, or maybe the human consensus of an enlightened society — but the assumption is that morality bubbles up from within. It can be divined by a poll, which often turns out to be a poll of one.

The problem with that is that "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). You see, with its very first words, the Bible turns our thinking on its head. We don't define our universe. We don't create meaning. We come into a universe already created, already defined, with already-assigned values and borders and lines and definitions.

That reality is absolutely fundamental to all thought.  Undervalue it, and wisdom remains under lock and key.

Were that not true, then common thinking is correct: man is both alpha and omega. However, since it is not true, neither is man-centered thought true. Before the whirl of the first atom, God existed: self-sufficient, self-delighted, the font of all perfection. When He created, He created. All things are His things. All creatures are His creatures. He owns, possesses, has rights over all things.

Including you, whoever you are. 

The difference it makes

You may pound your chest and insist you're an atheist. God overrides your vote. God exists in defiance of your notions. God owns you. You will answer to Him one day, for every thought, action and word.

Or you may be a religionist, a relativist, a post-modernist, or a nothingist. No matter. Those are all labels applicable to you, and they are all irrelevant to reality.

In reality, God is the center of the universe. He is its source, its creator, its owner, and its definer.

And so I think you can see: if He says something is right, well then, it's right. If He says it's wrong, well then, it's wrong.

But think further. What is the worst of crimes? It can only be crimes against Him. These are acts of high treason, crimes of deepest dye. Remember, it doesn't matter that you don't feel them to be such, and it doesn't matter if the majority of society doesn't feel them to be such. God requires no one's permission to be God. He simply is.

And that is what sin is, at heart. Sin is my refusal to deal with reality — specifically, with the game-changing reality of God. Sin is my insistence on being self-defining (as if there were no God), self-ruling (as if there were no God), self-pleasing (as if there were no God). In fact, sin is living as if there were no God. It makes me the opposite of the real Jesus Christ; it makes me an anti-christ.

In fact, sin is the desire that there be no God. Sin sees God as the great obstacle. Sin wishes there to be no such obstacle. Therefore, sin wishes there to be no such God as the God of the Bible.

Therefore sin is, at heart, a desire to murder God; and all sin is attempted Deicide.

Feel, don't feel — but deal

Many will read all that and shrug. "I just don't feel that way about it," they may say.

And in so doing, prove themselves worthy of Hell.

"What?!" you say. "Did I miss a paragraph? How did you get from A to Z?"

Simple. The thinking is, "I just don't feel that way, so I won't do anything about it. Because what I feel is ultimate to me. My feelings matter most. If I don't feel the need to change, I won't change, and I won't feel bad about not changing. And this sin thing? This God-thing? I don't feel it. It's not moving me. So I'm not moving."

All of which is simply to say: to me, I am God.

Which is a very, very old lie. Because, you see, the thing is: you aren't. God is.

And that's what makes sin a big deal.

What to do?

What a mess we're in. It's most natural for us, from birth, to have ourselves at the center of our universe. We've racked up a lifetime of crimes against God because of it. But we only do what we do, because we are what we are. So, if we're ever going to deal with the world of trouble we're in with God, and ever to have the least hope of knowing God, something will have to be done both about what we've done, and who we are.

Which is where the Gospel comes in.

But that wasn't what this post was about. It was about why you and I need the Gospel.

Because sin is such a big deal.

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Hello, Out There #3: What is the Big Deal about Sin?

The Larry King question (NEXT! #3)

by Dan Phillips

Challenge: So you think that all Jews who don't believe in Jesus are going to Hell?

Response: Well, that's what the Torah says. Jesus believed the Torah. I believe Jesus. So...you do the math.

NEXT!

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NT Christology (i.e. Jesus): mythical? made up?

by Dan Phillips



Tuesday's post was the second in the "Hello, Out There" series. As the comments tapered off, one came in which I think worthy of a more full (— Talbot grads don't say "f*ller"; to us, it is "the f-word") reply. To wit:

ShyGuy said... Speaking of unspoken premises, Dan, there's one thing that I simply can't get over, and it's the core assumption in both of your "Hello, Out There" discussions. Your assumption is "the Bible is true." The more I read on the topic, the more I try to get my faith back, the more I see the faultlines in the Bible. It just seems to make to much sense to examine Christology as a sort of mythological emergence; nothing was even really written about him for some 40 or 50 years after his death (a date I base on the current earliest known scrap of New Testament writing). It makes sense to me that the apostles, for reasons of their own, took a few unexplained things around Christ's life, magnified them, added many stories of their own, and built a mythology, a sort of rallying figure that might hold out promise to the fracturing Jewish nation. How can you believe all that as the divine revelation of God? I don't mean this arrogantly, it's just my biggest stumbling block right now (in fact, it has destroyed my faith; I no longer consider myself a believer). How can we believe that the Bible is true? 1:34 AM, September 19, 2007

First, I'm glad you asked.

Second, you're absolutely right. I don't write everything in every post. It's actually a temptation I have to fight — the temptation to try to say everything in every sermon, and write everything in every post. For me it takes discipline to try to pick one thing and focus on it alone. That's why this is a series. Lord willing, other things at other times.

Third, I have written at a bit more length about why I believe what I believe about Jesus and the Bible in an essay called Why I Am (Still) a Christian. Check it out.

Fourth, I wonder what study you've done on this subject. Taking you at your word, it seems to me that you've given up an awful lot for no reason at all. Let's take this apart a bit.

"Nothing"? You say, "nothing was even really written about [Jesus] for some 40 or 50 years after his death (a date I base on the current earliest known scrap of New Testament writing)."

This is simply a naked assertion. Not only does it have no supportive evidence, but it is contrary to a huge pile of evidence. The New Testament Epistles write about Jesus, and they were written as early as twenty years after Jesus' resurrection. Luke was almost certainly written before the mid-sixties (thus within 30-35 years of that event), and he refers to earlier written accounts (Luke 1:1-4). Thus, your premise is incorrect.

Nihilism? But let's put that aside for a moment. Have you thought this through at all? Your assumption is, "We cannot know anything about something documented 40-50 years after the event." Do you realize that no remotely credible historian alive would agree with you? Do you realize that this would lead to total historical nihilism?

Put it another way. When you read David McCullough on, say, John Adams or George Washington, or 1776, do you reject the whole as bosh because it is written more than two centuries after the events? Or when you read of the Pharaohs, or the Battle of Carchemish, do you shrug and say "Whatever" because everything is written millennia after the occurrences? Not likely.

Do you realize that most historians would (metaphorically, I trust) kill to have the sorts of resources, the staggering wealth of early manuscript evidence, that the NT historian has about the life of Jesus?

Plus (just in passing), you speak as if these documents came from a vacuum, and dropped into a vacuum. Christianity took hold when vast throngs of eyewitnesses still lived. It gripped people with its truth to the extent that they were willing to die, and often did die, for the proposition that its central tenets were historical.

How much is enough? Again, taking you at your word that this is the reason you class Jesus as a liar: how early would the documents have to be for you to believe? You say 40-50 years is too much of a gap. How about 39 years? But you're already there; Mark may well have been written within a couple of decades of the resurrection; Luke's sources certainly were written within three. 35 years? Already there. 30? Probably already there, in my judgment. What is your cut-off for historical certainty, how did you arrive at it, and on what basis?

To take that slightly differently, given that this was your stated reason for not being a Christian, and given that I've shown you that you were incorrect, will you believe in Jesus now? (BTW, a lot more documentation and reasoning is given in a book I reviewed last year.)

You see, I'll just be very candid with you. In a few decades of talking to people who say they've left Christ, I have found a common factor. The reason they give is never the real reason. They say "error in the Bible, Christians are mean, I hate church, God didn't obey one of my prayer-orders," or a dozen other things. And I'm sure those things feel, emotionally, very real to them.

But they're always red herrings. The real reason always comes from the world, the flesh, and/or the devil. Always it's really that they wanted to think, be, or do something they knew was wrong, and they'd feel a lot better about it if there were no living God such as Jesus reveals. They wanted to have sex with someone (or something) they knew they shouldn't, they wanted to take or become or do something they knew they shouldn't, and the only thing standing in the way was God. So they just attempt intellectual deicide, come up with an alibi, and try to move on.

Dead giveaway #1. The first dead giveaway is that the alibi almost invariably evaporates under the most basic examination.

I'm not saying that's you. I'm just saying that, so far, the stats in my experience are pretty high.

Dead giveaway #2. The second dead giveaway is that Real Central Unanswerable Challenge A, when it is knocked over, is immediately replaced by Real Central Unanswerable Challenge B ("Oh yeah? Well... well... where did Cain get his wife? Huh? Huh?") And Real Central Unanswerable Challenge B, demolished, is immediately replaced by Real Central Unanswerable Challenge C, and then D, and then E, and on and on.

Because the presenting issue is never the real issue.

As different as you and I may be, we share the same real issue; and that is something that I did talk about in the previous post. Our issue is that our desires are contrary to the will and nature of God. He stands between us and what we want, because what we want is to "be as God"; we want "thy will be done" to be addressed to us. So whatever we tell ourselves and others, we really don't want such a God as Jesus reveals. And that is why we characteristically suppress the truth that God offers us (Romans 1:18).

But that is why Jesus came. He came as the first man ever not to rebel, the first man ever perfectly to fulfill His Father's law in thought, word and deed. He fulfilled an intricate labyrinth of prophecy, lived a life marked off by the touch of God from first to last. He died under God's wrath, as a substitute, bearing the guilt of innumerable rebels, so that He might reconcile them to God.

The reason His death was of such infinite value is that He was God incarnate, as the Old Testament had said He would be (cf. Isaiah 7:14; 9:6). God the Son lived a perfect life empowered by God the Holy Spirit, made the perfect sacrifice to appease God's wrath; and God the Father signaled His acceptance of that sacrifice by raising Christ bodily from the dead.

So the great good news, Shyguy, is that whatever particular issues you may feel you have, your real issues and mine are dealt with in Christ. Agree with God about His Son, rest your faith on Him as your Lord and your Savior.

Now there's a rock you can build on.

(For more about how and why to know God, read here.)

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Hello, Out There #2: are Christians arrogant?

by Dan Phillips

PREFACE: for the meaning and aim of this series, see Hello, Out There #1: on Truth.

Those arrogant Bible-thumpers. I grew up not only not Christian, but enthusiastically not Christian. During my "BC" days, my buddies and I liked to go on and on about how arrogant Christians were. All these Bible-thumping Jesus freaks, claiming to know absolute truth, telling everyone else how to think and how to live, telling them they were wrong and going to Hell. Made us sick.

For our part, we were certain that you really couldn't be certain. And besides, if anybody could be, it wouldn't be these knotheads, most of whom were intellectually pretty dim bulbs.

(That was thirty-plus years ago. Funny how not much has changed, isn't it? Except back then mostly it was non-Christians making this criticism of the claim to know truth; now a lot of the critics profess to be Christian. But I digress.)

So what of it? Is it arrogant to say you know the truth? Are Christians arrogant?


The answer: well, yes.... Of course, some Christians are arrogant, and repulsively so. But I don't think we'll get very far in evaluating any world-view by some of its advocates, will we? I mean, if some people who think that murder is bad are jerks in other ways, while some murderers are nice to old ladies and puppies, does that say anything about murder? Don't we have to decide some other way than "who has the nicest salesmen?" If the product is bad, isn't it bad no matter how friendly the peddler is?

So let's ask whether the Biblical position is necessarily and inherently arrogant.

Definition. First we'd better define that position. I think we'd agree that, if the Christian position says, "We are right about Truth because we are smarter than everyone else and we did our homework better and reasoned better, so you'd better believe us" — that's pretty arrogant.

Or if the Christian position is, "We know Truth because we looked for it harder and better and more sincerely than the others. If they'd been as smart and diligent as we, they'd have found it too. But they weren't, so they didn't, and we did!" — that's arrogant. Stinkily arrogant.

But is that the Biblical, which is to say the Christian position? Hardly. In fact, that is the polar opposite of the Christian position.

God's design. For instance, hear Paul: "For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth" (1 Corinthians 1:26). Some? Yes; but not many! So far from boasting that Christians were the smartest on the block, Paul seems to take positive glory in the fact that they were not what the world would judge to be the sharpest scalpels on the tray.

Why? Paul explains:

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 1:27-31)

If I can break that down a bit, Paul is saying that in many cases God expressly chose people who would poll poorly, people who were not "Honor Student at ___," who were not on the Who's Who of his day. There may have been some bright lights here and there, but they were the exception and not the rule.

God's express design in this (Paul says) is precisely so that no one could look at them and suspect that they'd figured this out by themselves. ("Them? Surely not!") God chose a bunch of dim-witted, non-entity losers, drew them to Himself, and brought them into a relationship with Himself — so that the net effect is that He and He alone gets the credit for there even being a relationship in the first place.

So, you see, the Biblically faithful Christian position is violently anti-arrogance. Anyone who has a relationship with God either must confess that he never made the first move, that nothing good in him attracted God's attention, that God gets all the credit... or else he doesn't have a relationship with the God that the Bible talks about.

Put another way. The Bible teaches that none of us really wants to know the real God (Romans 3:11). Now, understand: we all want some belief-system that makes us feel better, and we'll call it "God" if that helps — but that isn't what the Bible means. It uses the word "God" very specifically, meaning a particular God in exclusion to any other. And that God, nobody naturally wants to know.

In fact, we're all naturally bent contrary to Him (Romans 3:10-18). So we're not going to find Him by ourselves, ever. Even the way we think is inclined to put things together wrong, so that we will never admit that we see God, even when His works are staring us straight in the face (Romans 1:18-32).

So according to the Bible, not only has no man ever figured his way to God, but no man ever can do it — and no man ever would do it!

So the whole superstructure necessary for arrogance is a non-starter, on the Biblical view.

So then, nobody knows God? But the same Bible that says that men don't want to know God, and that they won't admit to what they do know of God, says that there are some who do know Him.

How did that happen?

Three steps, to put it briefly:

1. Creation. God's works show that He exists, and that He is mighty (Psalm 19:1-6; Romans 1:18-20). Even big, bad atheists know deep down inside that things didn't make themselves. It's just that admitting what they know would ruin their party, so they don't. But though creation reveals important truths about God, it doesn't say anything clear about His character or nature or will; not clear enough that we can know Him. That requires...
2. Words and deeds. The Bible says straight-up that God took the initiative, and opened up to us. When Adam sinned and hid, God talked to him (Genesis 3). He's been talking from the very first, and He has said a final word which is still speaking to us today. Listen:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:1-3)

So God took the initiative and spoke in various ways from the very start; and now He speaks to us in Jesus Christ. In that, He has taken the initiative. He has put it all out there for anyone to see and to believe.

But we don't, because of the problem I talked about before: we don't want to. It bugs us. It threatens us, irritates us, insults us, makes us mad. We can't handle the truth.

So why can some people handle it? We already know it isn't because they're smart or good. We already know that it has to be in spite of the fact that they are bad and stupid and contrary. So how does it happen?

The only way it can happen.


3. Changed hearts. Once again, God makes the first move. As Paul said before, "because of him you are in Christ Jesus." That means it is a work of God. God takes our stubborn, hard, God-hating minds and changes them. He puts a new heart in us. Where it was absolutely natural for the first heart to run from God, it is absolutely supernaturally-natural for the new heart to run to God. And so, all the credit for this relationship, every bit of it, has to go to God.
   

So if you ever met an arrogant Christian, you met one who isn't being true to his faith. I'm sorry about it, but frankly I'd just encourage you to shrug it off. After all, if you only believed in things that only perfect people believed in, you'd never believe in anything, would you? And if you did, nobody else could believe that same thing, because you're not perfect either, are you?

But here's the thing: this whole Biblical package is the only worldview that one perfect person did believe in. Of course, I'm talking about Jesus.

Stepping back one more time. So we've seen that the position is not inherently arrogant. On the contrary, the Biblical position is the antidote to arrogance.

In fact, the truth of the matter is that all other positions are necessarily and inherently arrogant. All other positions necessarily exalt some non-God — self, experience (which is self), journey (which is self), rationalism (which is self), decision (which is self), choice (which is self) — over against God's self-revelation. All other positions say that the infinite-personal God is wrong, and they are right.

Now, that's arrogance.

Religious or irreligious, it is those "who wander from [His] commandments" (Psalm 119:21) who are arrogant.

In sum: the Christian position is not, "I am right, and everybody else is wrong." The Christian position affirms with Jesus that God has made His truth known.

The Christian position is "God is right, and all who disagree with Him are wrong."

Any contrary position is the heart and soul of arrogance.

PS — one glaring omission in this little (?!) essay is the whole issue of premise. A great deal of criticism of Christianity is based on an unspoken premise. What is said is, "You Christians are arrogant." What is unsaid is, "[Because Jesus is a liar,] you Christians are arrogant." The reverse also applies: when Christians say, "This is the truth," what we mean-but-too-often-don't-say is, "[Because Jesus is true,] this is the truth." This, in itself, probably warrants a whole post.

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Hello, Out There #1: on Truth

by Dan Phillips

Preface This is the first in what I mean to be an open-ended series of Hello, Out There© posts. The intent of these posts is not to preach to the choir, not to rehearse to one another matters on which we all agree. My aim is to create some posts to which Pyro readers can point folks they know who are not in "our" camp, particularly folks who have no Bible background to speak of. In other words, I hope some of you can send a link to a friend and say "Here, this is what I was trying to explain to you." I aim at using non-technical, non-shop-talk language to communicate some of those things we confidently believe to those who not only do not believe them, but do not even understand how any thinking non-stick-figure can believe them. Rather than explain further, it may be most useful if I just do one. This one will be on Truth.

Truth? Says who?

Can truth be known? What do you think?

Perhaps the most popular position today is that absolute, universal, unchanging objective truth cannot be known, if it even exists. The best we can do is to speak of "my" truth, or "your" truth. This is the tolerant, enlightened position. To speak of absolute truth, statements that depict reality as it really is whether we like it or not, is insufferable arrogance. Only ignorant would-be Ayatollahs claim to know "the" truth.

But wait a moment. Do you notice the self-defeating snare built into this position?

Is it really true that truth cannot be known? Is that true everywhere, at all times, and for all people? Is it true that one can only speak of his own truth? When I say, "No one can claim to know the truth," is that a true statement?

If it is a true statement, then it is a false statement!

Don't you see? If it is true to say none can speak of the truth, then we would be making a true statement that no one can make true statements. (Except for that one?)

The truth is, we can't even talk about truth without assuming that there is truth to be discussed. The bare assertion that truth is unknowable assumes that at least one truth can be known: the unknowability of truth! So, you see, this position collapses under its own weight.

If truth truly cannot be know, then the truest behavior would be to cocoon, to shut up all induction or communication, because the entire process is hopeless. (But if it is true to say that it is hopeless... then it is not hopeless!)

I think that most folks make these sorts of statements for one of three reasons.

1. They may say it because they know a lot of other smart folks say it, and they don't want to seem weird.
2. Or they say it because they're lazy, and have never really thought it through.
3. Or they may say it because in their hearts they know that truth is unyielding, and can be awfully unwelcome... and even unfriendly.

For instance, suppose I really like sleeping around. If unwed sex is really important to me, a moral stance that no one can say what is right and what is wrong is a very convenient position. I can do what I want, without feeling bad about it or worrying about judgment or wrath or anything like that.

So when someone tells me that my behavior is immoral, maybe I say "That's your truth," as a way of getting out of the discussion fast and cheap. I can seem tolerant, which is nice. What's more important to me, though, is that I can strong-arm the other fellow into tolerating my sleeping around—or my lying, or my thieving, or my selfishness, or what-have-you.

So what I am really doing is saying "I don't want to hear about it, it makes me feel bad." I am just disguising my dodge in a pseudo-philosophical clownsuit.

I can only get away with that sort of cop-out, however, if I don't think about it. If I do think about it, I'm in danger of asking myself some very uncomfortable questions. Like:

"When I say that his statement is just his truth, is that statement just my truth? If it is, then maybe his statement is my truth. Because if my statement is my truth and his truth, then I'm saying that I can impose my truth on him... in which case, maybe he can impose his truth on me! Aigh!"

Dangerous thing, this thinking outside our cultural box.

The Christian position

The Christian agrees with his non-Christian neighbors on one point: no mere mortal has the authority to create and impose truth on another. It is the Christian position that we are all finite: "we are but of yesterday and know nothing, for our days on earth are a shadow" (Job 8:9). Even the smartest man is limited in his grasp of the facts. Further, none of us has the infinite perspective necessary to assign the right meaning to those facts we do possess. We are bound into our own context, and lack a transcendent vantage point. The wise man says,

I have not learned wisdom,
nor have I knowledge of the Holy One.
Who has ascended to heaven and come down?
Who has gathered the wind in his fists?
Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and what is his son's name?
Surely you know!
(Proverbs 30:3-4)

Worse, we are all of us bent and twisted in the way we think, so that we are inclined to draw the wrong and most self-serving conclusions from what little we do know. We have access to the truth, but suppress it by means of our own delusions of godhood (Romans 1:18)

"But wait," you say. "I hear Christians yammering on and on about 'the truth' all the time. They all think they know The Truth, and they all imagine that they can tell everyone what it is. How can you say they don't?"

Good question. Here's the answer: I phrased myself carefully when I said that "no mere mortal has the authority to create and impose truth on another." But this isn't what Christians do, when they're being true to their faith.

A compelling source of truth would have to be infinite in its grasp of the facts, unerring in its analysis of the significance of the infinite array of facts it grasped, and pure in its assessment of them. It would have to know everything perfectly at once, without ever needing to learn (i.e. to evolve from less-truthful to more-truthful).

This description fits no mere man, Christian or otherwise. But it does fit God, and that is the Christian's source for truth-claims.

Listen:

After God spoke of old in many portions and in many manners to the fathers in the prophets, at the last of these days He spoke to us in the Son, whom He appointed Heir of all things, through whom also He made the ages (Hebrews 1:1-2)

You see? "God spoke...He spoke." It is the Christian assertion that the one and only Being who has a transcendent, unconditioned, unerring and infinite grasp of all facts and meaning—having Himself created all facts, and assigned all meaning—has spoken. God has taken the initiative. He has pulled off the veil, chosen His words and imagery carefully, and communicated truth as He sees it.

And truth "as He sees it" is real truth—true truth, if you will.

So the Christian foundation is not in philosophy nor discovery nor research, per se. The Christian claim is not that we have figured out the truth, nor that we have plotted or graphed or syllogized or reasoned out the truth. It is not the Christian position that we have reached upwards and grasped truth.

Rather, it is our position that Truth reached down and grasped us.

And so, you see, far from being a position of arrogance, the Christian position is one of utter humility. (Don't misunderstand: individual Christians, sadly, may not be very humble people; what I am asserting is that their position is necessarily humble). The Christian, insofar as he is true to his calling, confesses openly "I could never have figured this out, and I never would have. But God has spoken, and I can only embrace and echo what He says."

And what's even more fundamental, the Christian truth-anchor is both propositional (statements about truth) and personal. The Christian's fundamental conviction is that, when Jesus Christ said "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6), He was saying it exactly like it is.

This is the point of division between Christianity and every other worldview. The Christian position rests on the conviction that Jesus is truth incarnate, that His life was supremely authentic, and His words unerringly truthful and true.

So ultimately this truth-claim does not rest on the shoulders of any individual Christian, nor on all Christians lumped together. This truth-claim rests on the shoulders of Jesus Christ.

Any other position is not Christian.

Here then is the last implication I wish to draw from that. Jesus being who He is, and truth being what it is, this truth is your truth and my truth, whether we accept it or not.

Gravity has an effect on us, whether we believe in it or not. It is our truth. The consequences of disbelieving than be pretty disastrous, however.

No less, the consequences of disbelieving the truth of Jesus.

More on that, another time.

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