We don't need God in order to live a good life
Mahatma Ghandi probably did more than anyone else to avert a bloody civil war in India. And he did it by the sheer force of his ideals and his blazing sincerity. Many of his ideas were founded on the teachings of Jesus. But he was not a Christian.
Bob Geldof has lived a much less saintly life. Yet he has worked tirelessly to save lives in famine-ridden Africa, and raised an unbelievable amount of money for his cause. But he is not a Christian.
Faced with examples like this, many people assume Christians are being big-headed when they claim that the Christian faith changes lives. Surely, they argue, we all know upright atheists, loving agnostics... and crooked businessmen and rascally traders with a perfect church attendance record! Obviously, you don't need God in order to live a good life.
Now we have already made the point that comparing one person against another doesn't prove anything. But that aside, you might be making three wrong assumptions if you really believe this statement. Let's look at them.
First, you might be assuming that this is all Christianity is about - making people good. Oh, certainly it's one important result of becoming a Christian - a new moral force comes into your life, a new power to do the right thing instead of thewrong thing - but it isn't the whole story. Christianity is not just a beauty treatment course for the personality; it's the only escape in the world from God's condemnation. People don't become Christian just in order to cure themselves of their annoying bad habits - like being hypnotized to stop smoking - but in order to accept God's forgiveness for the evil in their lives, and put their lives back into the hands of their rightful Owner. So even if you are right to feel confident that you ae living a morally wonderful life, you may be missing out on the most vital thing in the world by not becoming a Christian.
Second, you might be assuming that goodness is easy to define. What is 'good' anyway? Most People would agree that Hitler was 'bad' and Mother Teresa is 'good'. But they are pretty extreme examples. Most of us are somewhere in the middle - a mixture of good impulses and bad habits, occasional selfishness and sporadic generosity. We feel good some of the time and wicked the rest of it. Sometimes we're pleased with ourselves; sometimes we're so ashamed we could die.
So you have to ask: how good is good enough? Who can lay down laws about how good we ought to be? Obviously no human being can. But if there is a God who made us, he would have the right to decide. And, if the Bible says, he has decided. His standard is perfection! He made us to be like him - without flaw or fault. And none of us is like that. This is why the Bible concludes, 'There is no-one righteous, not even one... there is no-one who does good, not even one.' Judged by God's standards, even the best of us looks pretty pathetic. That's why we all need his forgiveness.
Third, you may be assuming that 'being good' is enough to take you to heaven. And if so, all I can say is: you've missed some very important points in the previous topics about our God. So go back and click on "A God of Love will not let his people go to Hell" and read it carefully now. It may be the most important thing you ever do.
Being a Christian makes your life tame and uninteresting
Who wants to be a pale, spotty adult version of the Milky Bar Kid, interested only in burying their heads in books, dressed dreadfully in their mothers dresses, off to bed every night at nine-thirty with a cup of cocoa and a digestive biscuit? Not many of us probably. Yet this is the idea of Christianity that many people carry round in their heads...
Where did they get it from? Well, let's admit quite openly that there are boring, tame people in the church. There are also exciting, lively people in the church. Neither side has a monopoly; Christianity is for everyone, not just one type of disposition. You can understand the appeal of Christianity to people who want to find safety, peace and security; no wonder tame people join. Mind you, God has a way of stretching them nd changing them when he gets hold of the - putting them through alarming adventures, giving them more confidence in themselves and other, helping them to blossom as personalities. God love dull people, but he doesn't want them to stay that way.
We have to make another admission. There are even people who were once quite lively but have become tame and uninteresting by becoming Christians. This should not happen. But it does, sometimes; because they become so absorbed in their new life that they drop all the previous activities which made up their life, see less of their friends, spend their days in a monochrome world of prayer meetings and hymn singing sessions. God does not intend us to become spiritual freaks, and such people are jus temporarily unbalanced. They tend to adjust again after a while; but meanwhile, unfortunately, others may have got the message, 'So that's what Christianity does to you. No thanks!'
If you really think that 'being a Christian makes your life tame and uninteresting' I think that maybe one of four things is true of you. First, maybe you have yet to meet any interesting Christians! If I could introduce you to Brian Greenaway - who used to be President of a chapter of Hell's Angels - or Jim Wallis - a social rights activist with a passionate Christian commitment which has got him in trouble with the law more than once- you would be unlikely to find them 'tame'!
Second, maybe youdon't know what Christians can do. Life is not a narrow round of Bible conferences and choir practices! Every few months, there are huge youth gatherings here where I meet scores of wide-eyed, shocked non-Christians who have naively assumed that Christians are forbidden to get involved with any activity not specifically mentioned by name in the Book of Leviticus. And surrounded by the riot of colour, exuberance and creativity that makes up a youthful Christian celebration, they have to rub their eyes in disbelief.
Third, maybe you are confusing pleasure with fun. It isn't true that certain activities automatically lead to having fun - or that you can't have fun without them. You can spend your whole life in pursuit of pleasure without actually enjoying any of it. Jesus Christ adds a new dimension to living which means that every part of your life - not just the pleasure-seeking bits - takes on a new, enhanced quality. So you don't need to go out and get drunk, or chase women, or gorge yourself silly while the rest of the world is starving. These things will probably not be much fun anyway in the end; real contentment start with Jesus.
Fourth, maybe the Christian life seems dull because you don't yet understand what Christians enjoy. Nobody in his senses wants to spend time in a prayer meeting - if all that happens is that you shut your eyes meekly and sit on a bench for half an hour. But if you are a real Christian, and prayer means talking to God, and you know you may emerge from the meeting having actively influenced situations thousands of miles away around the world - or having met God in a new way, so that you're shaken rigid by the joy and holiness of his presence - suddenly it's not so boring!
Being a Christian makes your life tame and uninteresting? You have no right to make that charge until you've tried it out for yourself. But then you'll know better.
Christian standards in sex and marriage are impossible for most people today
This is a subject which requires a lot more space to answer but I need to say a little about it here because this is such a major area of misunderstanding for so many people. Since the sexual revolution of the sixties, Christian ideas about sex and marriage have gained the reputation of being repressive, unrealistic, narrow-minded and joyless. Do they still make sense today?
People who say 'No' often feel, 'Christian standards are impossible for us because we are more liberated now.' But it's a questions of what you mean by 'liberated'. Is there really more freedom in sex without commitment - no deposit, no return relationships, in which either partner can move off at a moment's notice? Hasn't the married partner more freedom: freedom from comparison with rivals for your lover's affections; freedom to grow old, secure in a love which will not end as soon as your charms fade; freedom to enjoy total intimacy with another person, without fear of an abrupt ending; freedom to be natural with the other sex, knwing that friendliness is much less likely t be misinterpreted a a chat-up? Freedom to say No to sex occasionally without feeling tha you may lose the relationship unless you give in?
The pressure from the culture is strong not to be chaste. People simply feel about as satisfied after casual, perfunctory sex, as after a sneeze - a momentary release of tension, that's all. There is a great deal of evidence that when youngsters involve themselves too early in sex they never learn to fuse loe and sex and it remains two separate things. One is physically ready to have sex much earlier than one is ready emotionally...
Is 'liberation' really freedom - or just another way of tying yourself up in chains?
Sometimes, too, people think, 'The Bible was written centuries ago. We know more now.' About the physiology of sex, yes. About how to achieve the perfect orgasm, possibly. But about relationships? And the pain of guilt, betrayal, jealousy? We have just as much heartbrak and disillusio as ever there was. We can describe what goes on in sex, clinically, and illustrate it with colour photographs, but we're no better at making it work emotionally. Even a sex goddess like Marilyn Monroe once confessed to a sexual partner that she was never sure she was doing it properly...
This is where the Bible's incisive understanding of human nature, and it's clear rules for faithfulness and dependability, can still form a solid foundation for sexual relationships in our century. And don't assume Bible writers knew nothing about sex, either. Many standard textbooks on veneral disease mention Moses as an unbelievably progressive Medical Officer of Health, in view of the rules he laid down for Israelite sexual practice. He seems to have centuries ahead of his time. But then he claimed that God had told him what to do.
Finally, people sometimes object, 'But we are more understanding now.' We know that there are many more homosexuals than anyone had imagined; surely we should just live and let live. We know that people often do sleep around and have affairs; surely it's only human, and we shouldn't judge too harshly. But homosexual experience is only a pale caricature of what God intended sex to be, and Christians who have battled with homosexual impulses (and in some cases lost them completely) have found much more fulfilment in facing the challenge of Christian living than in going along with the unsatisfying half-world of th gay scene. And thanks to our 'understanding' attitude to irregular sexual liasons, w have a sophisticated culture crippled by fear of AIDS and hepes; unable to hold its marriages together (on current figures,over one in three is ending in divorce); and obsessed by sex, but unable to find real contentment within it.
Christian standards are not impossible today. In fact, there's not much else around that works - is there?
Why doesn't God do miracles today?
Wouldn't it be easy to believe, if you saw water turned into wine? Or lame people healed in an instant? Or five loaves and two fish feeding five thousand people?
Or would it?
The interesting thing about Jesus' miracles was that they led some people to belief. And left some people unconvinced. In other words, if you were ready to believe, the miracles formed an additional piece of evidence that helped you reach the right conclusion. But if you were determined already that Jesus had to be an imposter or a rogue, all the miracles in the world wouldn't make any difference.
Miraculous events often don't convince people - because they find it had to trust the evidence of their own eyes. Often they are reluctant to admit to themselves that anything has really happened. We have been studying parapsychology for over fifty years now as a university discipline, and despite decades of tests costing millions of dollars people are still arguing about whether extra-sensory perception exists or not! That's how difficult it is for us to make up our minds about phenomena which are bizarre and outside our normal experience.
A few years ago, at Garabandal in Spain, a young girl claimed to have had a vision of the Virgin Mary. Many people believed her, and a new church has been built, thousands of pilgrims visit the spot every year, and some tour companies make their money exclusively by running trips to Garabandal. Yet the young girl herself is now unsure whether or not she genuinely did have a vision - or whether she dreamt it. The experience was so unusual that, although at the time she was convinced, now she is much less sure. Miraculous events don't necessarily provide conclusive proof of anything.
And that, I think is one reason why there are fewer miracles today than happened in the time of Jesus. His miracles were a kind of megaphone drawing attention to the way God was at work, and to the claims of Jesus, demonstrating graphically his power and his concern for human misery. But they were not conclusive proof, automatically accepted by everybody. Jesus told a story about a man who died and found himself facing God's punishment. This man begged for someone to go to earth and supernaturally warn his brothers not to fall into the same fate. But the answer he received was terse and realistic: 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'
This is why it doesn't make sense to argue, 'If God wants me to believe in him, he'll have to work a miracle. I will believe in him only when he does something indisputable.' Because miracles aren't indisputable; and anyway what right have you got to hold God to ransom in this way?
Finally, don't assume that there are no miracles, and haven't been for two thousand years! People are still healed, suddenly and dramatically, today. Those who have had deep, dark oppressions and behaviour problems in their lives, caused by supernatural evil, are restored to health. Christian workers who are in desperate need of some piece of equipment, or a specific sum of money, still find God answering their prayers in unforeseeable and incredible ways. God is still very much in business.
And the greatest miracle of all happens when a human life is opened up to allow Jesus to take control. Thinking back over ex-drug abusers, murderers, thieves and desperate potential suicides I've known, who have come to know Jesus and have found a new dimension to life through him, tge question starts to sound more and more silly. 'Why doesn't God do miracles today?' Whatever made you think he'd stopped?
How can I be sure it was all true?
For many people, this is the Number One problem. They can see that there is good evidence supporting Jesus' claims. They can understand why the Bible's ideas about human life make sense. They have noticed a change for the better in the lives of friends who have become Christians. But how can they be sure? Might it not all just be a plausible fantasy?
Two things are obvious. First, you need more than just a convincing argument. I have a friend who is a maths teacher, who has shown me three ways of proving by algebra that two equals one. Now we all know that this is rubbish, but nonetheless the calculation is extremely convincing. There's a tiny hidden error in it, but it's so plausible that you might never notice. Similarly, if I tried to make you sure of God's existence by giving you some abstract arguments, it wouldn't be enough. Your mind would never be quite at rest. You would spend the rest of your life looking for the flaw in the calculation.
But second, you need more than an experience or a feeling. Miracles and bizarre experiences don't prove anything. If God suddenly manifested before you on a flaming cloud, you might be impressed and overawed at the time. You might feel thoroughly convinced. But half an hour later you might be asking yourself, 'Was it real? Did it happen? Was it hallucination? Did I just go mad for five minutes?' You'd never be sure.
Or you might wake up in the morning with an odd, choking feeling in your heart that Jesus was God. You just know it's true. Would that be convincing enough? No, because feelings can be deceptive; Hitler 'just knew' six million Jews to die; the Yorshire Ripper 'just knew' he had to murder prostitutes. People like that may be totally sincere but they are also grotesquely misguided.
How, then, could you be sure of God's friendship and reality? I'd suggest that there would be only one way. Suppose God were to stay invisible (because there's no point in blowing your mind with a bizarre experience). But suppose he were to become real to you as any other friend does - communicating with you, allowing you to talk to him, sharing your life experiences and helping to shape your life for you. Answering your prayers. Putting a new power inside you to help you overcome evil with good. Giving you a new quality of love for other people, and especially other Christians, with whom you suddenly discover a shared understanding of experience. And suppose God were to do this, not in a blinding flash, but steadily over a period of weeks, months and years, so that you gradually grew in confidence into a natural reliance upon his faithfulness and dependability. Wouldn't that convince you?
It convinced me. And it has convinced millions of others down through history. It is continuing to convince people right around the world day by day. Not just an abstract argument, not just a fluttery feeling inside - but a God who is constantly there and active in the daily affairs of your life. It's exactly what Jesus promised:
If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
Prove it!
I can get it all straightened out before I die
Sure you can. Always provided, of course, that you know exactly when that will be. Just when precisely are you planning to leave us?
Quite apart from that little problem, there are other good reasons for not waiting too long before you sort out your relationship with God and find his forgiveness. One is that you may not even reach your death date - even if you knew it! The Bible claims that one of these days human history is going to be wrapped up, and that then there will be no more time to decide.
This is what Jesus was illustrating when he told the story of the five girls who were shut out of the wedding feast because they had fallen asleep, and weren't ready to meet the bridal party when it arrived. People will be left behind, Jesus was saying. It will all come as a tremendous shock to many people who felt they still had years and years in which to make up their minds. But the Bible makes it clear that the time to respond is now. No guarantees are given that the offer will still be open next Tuesday.
Furthermore, if you are eventually going to face up to Jesus Christ and make up your mind about him, is it sensible to delay the process? If Jesus really offers a new quality of life and a security in this troubled world which you'll never get from anywhere else, what's the sense in continuing stubbornly to battle through life without him? All you need is there for the taking. Is there any good reason why you should wait?
Again, the Bible talks about rewards for faithful service once Christians reach the presence of Jesus. If you intend to be ther some day and meet his appraisal, wouldn't it be more sensible to stand before him with a whole lifetime of faithfulness behind you, rather than just a hasty beat-the-clock commitment cobbled together in the last five minutes on your deathbed? What is the proper response to someone who died for you anyway - to give all you have in his service, with deep gratitude and wonder; or to delay taking advantage of his tremendous sacrifice until the last possible moment, when you can't do anything useful for him any longer?
Think again!
I'm not good enough for God to accept me
This is perfectly true. In fact, none of us is good enough for God to accept. The Letter to the Romans makes this painfully clear. 'There is no-one righteous, not even one; there is no-one who understands, no-one who seeks God.' The whole human race has gone on the run from God. We've tried to exclude him from having any say in the way we live our lives and the decisions we take. Because of our rebellion, none of us is good enough for God.
This means that we are all heading for God's punishment. For if God is a fair, just law-maker - and he is - he must apply the proper penalty when his laws are broken. And that's what the Bible means when it talks about 'hell'. All of the human race stands under God's condemnation.
There is only one way for us to escape that condemnation, and become right with God again. And it's not through anything we can do for ourselves. Our only hope is that someone else would take our place and suffer our punishment for us.
And that - says the Bible - is exactly what Jesus Christ did when he died on the cross. He stood in our place and bore our blame:
You see, at just the right time, while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly... God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Notice he didn't die only for those who were of a superior moral standard to the others. Christ died for the ungodly - full stop. So no matter how evil or unworthy you may feel, Jesus Christ is still willing to accept you and forgive you - just as you are. You don't need to go through some kind of qualifying round first. You have no need to be cleaned up to make you ready to accept him. You can come just as you - like the dying thief on the cross, who got there with almost his last breath. If you're willing enough, you're good enough.
So what will you do?