The ancient man approached God as the accused approaches a judge, with a healthy fear and a sense of inadequacy. In those days, the Christian message was unmistakably the “good news,” as it promised healing to those who knew that they were sick. But as the Whig-Clio debate of Monday night revealed, there are many people on this campus today who think evangelism to be an undecidedly bad thing to the general health of this university.

            The general thrust of the opposition’s argument was that it has been very intolerant on the part of Campus Crusade to propagate a message which purportedly condemns and judges people to hell. Wouldn’t we rather have a version of Christianity which accepts and affirms everyone? After all, we all know that good works are the most important thing, far more important for instance than petty details such as whether someone follows Jesus or Buddha. We don’t like a world of heaven and hell. Isn’t a world where everyone is a Good Samaritan far more preferable?

            But the broad, sweeping assertions made by the opposition ranging from, “I’m a good person, and that’s what God cares about,” to “There is no hell in my version of Christianity”, reveal an interesting role reversal. Man, not God, is now the one with authority. We paint our individual perfect worlds, decide for ourselves what is important, and then wait for God to fall into line with us. We decide what characteristics God should have, and then we expect him to conform to our expectations. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it’s not our prerogative to decide what God is like. If he truly exists in objective reality, as most of us would believe to be true, then his character is completely independent of any of our individual conceptions of him, just as no one can arbitrarily decide one day that another person has assumed a different identity.

            No, it seems to me that my knowing anything about a transcendent God depends entirely upon him choosing to communicate this knowledge in a form that is understandable to me. And the question I would pose is, “What if God doesn’t want us all to be in the dark, but has actually spoken clearly to his people? Would we listen to his message even if didn’t strike us as entirely agreeable?”

            And Christianity claims that God has spoken clearly. It claims, in fact, that he voluntarily confined himself in human form, that he clothed himself with flesh and lived among us in space and time and history. And what was Jesus’ message? “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already.”

            What if it is true that the world stands condemned already? What if every impure thought, feeling, action, or motivation on our part really is offensive and repugnant to a holy God? What if it is true that no one is good enough to reach him? I like to think that I am, but what if I’m not? The prophet Jeremiah writes, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick.” Those who are convinced that they are healthy will find this unwelcome diagnosis offensive, but what if this message really does come from God? Then we are all sick whether we acknowledge it or not. If I am on a train to Boston, and everyone else on the train convinces themselves that they are actually going to Chicago, will I end up in Boston or Chicago? If I tell other people that I think we’re actually headed for Boston, might I expect a response such as, “How dare you say we’re going to Boston. That’s so intolerant. Boston is a terrible place. I’ve decided that I want to go to Chicago, so that’s where I’m going.”

            And Jesus claimed three things. First, that he was in a position to know where our train was headed, second that indeed we are all headed straight for Boston, and third that if we would come to him and surrender and lay our destiny at his feet, that he could and would put us on a new train to Chicago. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick,” he said. “All you have to do is acknowledge your illness and desire to be healed, and I can forgive you and reconcile you to God.”

            Now it would be quite comical for me to walk around forgiving people their sins. I don’t have the authority. Who can forgive sin but God alone? But Jesus told the paralytic after forgiving him, “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, I tell you, get up, take up your mat and go home. The miracles I do in my Father’s name testify to my authority.” In the same way, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead was God’s stamp of approval declaring to the world that this man speaks only the truth. If he was not raised and just a man, then the forgiveness he claimed to provide is ineffectual, but if he really is God then we must accept his whole message and come to him that we may be forgiven. 

.           Now as a Christian, I’m not going to put it past God to save people from their sins through Christ without them recognizing who it is who saves them. Christianity teaches that many Old Testament Jews were saved through faith in God’s future provision for their sin. They didn’t yet know the name Jesus.

            But for those of us who have heard about Jesus, it seems to me that none of us can be saved through him unless we accept him for who he claims to be, the one true God of the universe. It is as if we all are swimming helplessly in a sea of human confusion and despair. Our energy is dissipating, and we will eventually drown. But now on the horizon we see the captain of a ship, who mercifully tosses us a life preserver.  Through the ages, wise men and religious leaders have suggested better ways of floating or swimming so as to make the current situation more bearable, but they have offered no long-term solution. The life preserver is the only possible means by which we can be rescued. No one else has even suggested an alternate means by which we may be saved.

            And what is our response? Do we rationalize and convince ourselves that we’re not really drowning or that we can somehow reach the boat on our own efforts? Do we refuse to be rescued until the captain explains to us how he plans to rescue every other individual? Do we immediately turn our backs claiming a priori that the captain and life preserver are illusions because never before have they appeared to us in history? or do we carefully test the life preserver to see if it might bear our weight, and if it does to so give praise to the one who has saved us?