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I was given this link about Mike's project, portraying Jesus in photography. I must say it was really well done (600K USD of his own money. If it is not well done...goodness!)
The link: http://www.thejourneysproject.com/Gallery.aspx
Then I happened to click on 'Embrace' in his Parables Collection and this is what he says
"Jesus’ statement, “No one comes to the Father except through Me,” has been accepted by Christians to mean that only those who accept Jesus as Lord will live with Him in eternity. Yet, if Jesus came as the Savior of the world, for all people, for all nations, where does that place all other religions? Assuming His statement is properly understood—that everyone must come through Him to spend eternity with Him—then what is God’s plan for the two-thirds of the world’s population that is non-Christian?"
At least Mike got it right. He died for all who has sinned. That means Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Chinese, Africans, Indians...all ethnic groups, all cultures.
And what is God's plan for 2/3 who are not Christians? Mike's answer
We are God’s plan! For everyone who knows the Gospel story, Jesus commands that we “go tell all nations the good news” He has shared with us. If we will not take time to love and reach out to the people of other religions, how will we ever find a way to share our faith with them?"
That's so true...we are called to spread the good news. To make disciples of all nations. Jesus great commission for us.
So what's there to complain?
Well having a Methodist background I have been trained in the 4 spiritual laws of salvation.
That's the thing...even when we share about Jesus, there is 'law' involved. There's a compulsion to do something. I am not saying Jesus is bad and compulse us to do something against our will, I am saying religion is making us feel inadequate if we do not share about the gospel.
You know what will lead me to share about Jesus? Relationship with Him. it is not about the doing, it is about the knowing.
Just the other day I was 'talking' to a sister in christ and during the conversation where she shared about her fears, her disappointment and frustrations in life, I just share Jesus, His plan for us and His hope in us. What I am surprised is not about the content of the sharing, but my transformation that I can just share like that.
Once you KNOW Jesus, you have stepped on the way to heaven, you have gone through the door to heaven. And when you do so, you have tasted Jesus, and it will be a very very easy task to talk about him.
Doing God's work, especially His great commission, is not using our strength and our puny wisdom but to use His Words, use His power and use HIS wisdom to share, to talk and to pray for the people around us.
And in this case, Mike's photo of Jesus amongst the people of different religion is a powerful statement and one that will help to lead you to talk about Jesus easily.
Don't be scared of letting go of the 4 spiritual laws when sharing God's LOVE. Love is not encased in words alone...it is in touching of the listener in his or her heart...it is talking about you as a disciple and beloved of God...that is more compelling than any 'laws' or 'guide books' about sharing Jesus.
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
The Blasphemy Challenge
Does God Exist? That's the question put forth before Kirk Cameron with Ray along with the team from the Rationale Response Team.
Does not need a rocket scientist to know which side I am on.
After watching the video in Youtube, I gingerly 'walked' over to the blasphemy challenge website and take a look.
One of the video took me by 'shock'....a lady just say "Well I guess...see you in hell."
I was like, do you really know what hell is like? Do I really want to see you in hell (either by self preservation or out of love for the lady which I both are applicable).
Let's take hell to the extreme won't we? Because hell is in essence the absence of love. Imagine that. You are totally abused by everyone around you. No one cares for you. No one put you first. There's no relationship to speak of. Everyone just exploits everybody. It is a dog eat dog world. And because it is a free for all, there will be no justice because it will be a jungle out there. Worst is that you won't die therefore you cannot escape from the hurt, the pain. Just the last point alone will make this world look like heaven.
Now why would people actually think that Hell is cool? I blame it on the misinformation of the modern media. Where "go to hell" is the common refrain in the movies.
Do think in proper terms what you REALLY want in life. All the hurt and all the pain is an indication that our world is not what is meant to be.
One can say that religion is scaring people shitless in order to accept the salvation. Then let's be REAL won't we? What are the two main motivators for human beings to act? Positive motivation and negative motivation.
Positive motivation: I will get to see my loved ones in heaven. All that I crave on earth will be realised definitely on earth AND heaven. I will have tons of fruitful relationships that will enhance my eternal life.
Negative motivation: You will be tortured. You will ask for death and get none. No mercy can be given.
I put to you this. Only a person who loves you will give you warning. Even strangers who has a bit of human goodness will do the same to anybody. But God loves so much that He is willing to be misunderstood by people claiming to be atheists so as to warn those who are willing to listen.
Now the question is this: "If God is so loving why would he send people to hell?"
That is a very good question. The answer is still love. Why would people cry for justice in this world? It is because everyone wants to be treated fairly and being treated fairly is also a sign of love as it shows that people cared. Now if God wants to send people to hell because He is evil, He won't even cared to give the 10 commandments in the first place thus enabling MORE people to go to hell. In reality, He gave the 10 commandments, therefore He cared!
So what does the 10 commandments do? To shackle us? No. It is to show how evil a human being can be. It is just 10 not 100, 1000, or even a million. It is just 10. These 10 shows the BASIC terms that will not harm relationship between humans and human and God. And if ANY of these 10 are breached, then the seed of evil towards other people is being sowed. So we cannot even keep 10 perfectly, everytime, all the time.
The current financial crisis is based on this seed of selfishness and has breached one or many of the 10 commandments.
But people has this notion that God deliberately gave the 10 commandments to fail people. If one is a real and careful reader of the Bible, God gave because He was forced to even when He offered grace (that means despite what people has done, He still accepts them.) The Israelites says they are able to meet all criteria. God, a respector of human decision making power, thus acceded much to the horror to the human race.
God loved so he gave ONLY 10 to show us we are unable to meet those criteria. Hell is imminent unfortunately.
Thus comes the positive/negative motivation.
Pain is a motivator to keep one alive. Would you hold on to a hot pot of tea despite the pain? No, the pain will make you let go of the pot and preserve your hand.
Fear is also a motivator to keep one alive. Would you go through a dark alley in the middle of the night, in a neighborhood teeming with gangsters? You wouldn't because you cared for your own safety.
Therefore to put across that religion puts fear so that it makes people accept religion is well founded (I can sense the surprise). Why is it well founded? Because religion, as in any system or organisation, can be both good and bad or truth and falsehood. Fear in this case will be bad if one is being led into a religious system that manipulates people.
But what if that fear pushes one into a system that ACTUALLY saves? And if true Christianity is the answer...it is not a system of dos and don'ts...and it is certainly not a system of tradition and hearsays or myths. (Christianity as a myth, will leave it for another day).
So how does HE saves without being seen as an unfair judge which he cannot be since He is good. In order to be a good guy, you have to be a fair guy.
In summary
- 10 commandments shows that we ALL failed one way or the other. One do not need to murder to be bad. We just need to disobey our parents for just ONCE. Unfair since humans are imperfect? Then it leads to this.
- God knows that we are imperfect all thanks to Adam and Eve and also the horned one. We are imperfect because we are given the knowledge of good and evil (conscience and morals) and yet we do not do what is necessary either out of fear or greed. So to be able to meet his criteria of perfection and yet be fair, He need a substitute for us...to meet the criteria that our bad deeds are erased so that He can be seen fair that our deeds are answered and meet his criteria of love, so that He can bring us all into heaven.
The only thing is that we need to accept the substitute.
But there are people who are too chicken to even accept the substitute, saying that there is no God.
I am sorry to say that, to really SAY and BELIEVE that there is no God in this world and also the Universe means one has to exhaustively search the ends of the Earth AND Universe and beyond to conclude that. To say that God do not exist means committing intellectual suicide since one cannot be sure as a person can't conclude that there is no God conclusively.
But the other end holds true: There is a God. For us to be where we are today, need a creator and a creator of this magnitude can only come from a supernatural being.
Let's not talk about the physical like evolution. Let's just say one can evolve from a cell to a complex being like an ant. It still cannot answer the question of morality, the ability to know what is right and wrong and not to mention LOVE.
For an atheist to cry justice means he knows the right from wrong but the very notion that he can ask for Justice just bares the fact that there is a God for the atheist knows love, knows justice, knows bad from good, knows right from wrong.
It is just a self defeating proposition.
Does not need a rocket scientist to know which side I am on.
After watching the video in Youtube, I gingerly 'walked' over to the blasphemy challenge website and take a look.
One of the video took me by 'shock'....a lady just say "Well I guess...see you in hell."
I was like, do you really know what hell is like? Do I really want to see you in hell (either by self preservation or out of love for the lady which I both are applicable).
Let's take hell to the extreme won't we? Because hell is in essence the absence of love. Imagine that. You are totally abused by everyone around you. No one cares for you. No one put you first. There's no relationship to speak of. Everyone just exploits everybody. It is a dog eat dog world. And because it is a free for all, there will be no justice because it will be a jungle out there. Worst is that you won't die therefore you cannot escape from the hurt, the pain. Just the last point alone will make this world look like heaven.
Now why would people actually think that Hell is cool? I blame it on the misinformation of the modern media. Where "go to hell" is the common refrain in the movies.
Do think in proper terms what you REALLY want in life. All the hurt and all the pain is an indication that our world is not what is meant to be.
One can say that religion is scaring people shitless in order to accept the salvation. Then let's be REAL won't we? What are the two main motivators for human beings to act? Positive motivation and negative motivation.
Positive motivation: I will get to see my loved ones in heaven. All that I crave on earth will be realised definitely on earth AND heaven. I will have tons of fruitful relationships that will enhance my eternal life.
Negative motivation: You will be tortured. You will ask for death and get none. No mercy can be given.
I put to you this. Only a person who loves you will give you warning. Even strangers who has a bit of human goodness will do the same to anybody. But God loves so much that He is willing to be misunderstood by people claiming to be atheists so as to warn those who are willing to listen.
Now the question is this: "If God is so loving why would he send people to hell?"
That is a very good question. The answer is still love. Why would people cry for justice in this world? It is because everyone wants to be treated fairly and being treated fairly is also a sign of love as it shows that people cared. Now if God wants to send people to hell because He is evil, He won't even cared to give the 10 commandments in the first place thus enabling MORE people to go to hell. In reality, He gave the 10 commandments, therefore He cared!
So what does the 10 commandments do? To shackle us? No. It is to show how evil a human being can be. It is just 10 not 100, 1000, or even a million. It is just 10. These 10 shows the BASIC terms that will not harm relationship between humans and human and God. And if ANY of these 10 are breached, then the seed of evil towards other people is being sowed. So we cannot even keep 10 perfectly, everytime, all the time.
The current financial crisis is based on this seed of selfishness and has breached one or many of the 10 commandments.
But people has this notion that God deliberately gave the 10 commandments to fail people. If one is a real and careful reader of the Bible, God gave because He was forced to even when He offered grace (that means despite what people has done, He still accepts them.) The Israelites says they are able to meet all criteria. God, a respector of human decision making power, thus acceded much to the horror to the human race.
God loved so he gave ONLY 10 to show us we are unable to meet those criteria. Hell is imminent unfortunately.
Thus comes the positive/negative motivation.
Pain is a motivator to keep one alive. Would you hold on to a hot pot of tea despite the pain? No, the pain will make you let go of the pot and preserve your hand.
Fear is also a motivator to keep one alive. Would you go through a dark alley in the middle of the night, in a neighborhood teeming with gangsters? You wouldn't because you cared for your own safety.
Therefore to put across that religion puts fear so that it makes people accept religion is well founded (I can sense the surprise). Why is it well founded? Because religion, as in any system or organisation, can be both good and bad or truth and falsehood. Fear in this case will be bad if one is being led into a religious system that manipulates people.
But what if that fear pushes one into a system that ACTUALLY saves? And if true Christianity is the answer...it is not a system of dos and don'ts...and it is certainly not a system of tradition and hearsays or myths. (Christianity as a myth, will leave it for another day).
So how does HE saves without being seen as an unfair judge which he cannot be since He is good. In order to be a good guy, you have to be a fair guy.
In summary
- 10 commandments shows that we ALL failed one way or the other. One do not need to murder to be bad. We just need to disobey our parents for just ONCE. Unfair since humans are imperfect? Then it leads to this.
- God knows that we are imperfect all thanks to Adam and Eve and also the horned one. We are imperfect because we are given the knowledge of good and evil (conscience and morals) and yet we do not do what is necessary either out of fear or greed. So to be able to meet his criteria of perfection and yet be fair, He need a substitute for us...to meet the criteria that our bad deeds are erased so that He can be seen fair that our deeds are answered and meet his criteria of love, so that He can bring us all into heaven.
The only thing is that we need to accept the substitute.
But there are people who are too chicken to even accept the substitute, saying that there is no God.
I am sorry to say that, to really SAY and BELIEVE that there is no God in this world and also the Universe means one has to exhaustively search the ends of the Earth AND Universe and beyond to conclude that. To say that God do not exist means committing intellectual suicide since one cannot be sure as a person can't conclude that there is no God conclusively.
But the other end holds true: There is a God. For us to be where we are today, need a creator and a creator of this magnitude can only come from a supernatural being.
Let's not talk about the physical like evolution. Let's just say one can evolve from a cell to a complex being like an ant. It still cannot answer the question of morality, the ability to know what is right and wrong and not to mention LOVE.
For an atheist to cry justice means he knows the right from wrong but the very notion that he can ask for Justice just bares the fact that there is a God for the atheist knows love, knows justice, knows bad from good, knows right from wrong.
It is just a self defeating proposition.
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