God Is Just Like Any Other Dad! (Except, well...He's God.) - Chapter Seventeen

17. Don’t Miss The Party!

               How does God decide who goes to heaven, and who goes to hell?

               When the Great White Throne Judgment comes at the end of the final battle with Satan (in Revelation 20:11), who takes the "up" escalator with the sheep, and who's on the "down" elevator with the goats?

               The kindergarten answer - "Good people go to heaven, and bad people go to hell" – is wrong, of course. This greatly irritates many folks, especially the so-called "Christians at heart": the Christmas & Easter churchgoers, the deeply humane and kind atheists, and anyone else with what they consider substantial accreditation in the field of "good". 

               To them, the true answer, Christ's answer (and pardon the bluntness, my friends, but He would definitely know the right answer on this topic), is callous and unjust. John the Baptist summarized that answer succinctly in John 3:36: "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him."

               Translation (as if the learned reader needed it!): Believe and obey Christ, and go to heaven after your earthly death. Fail to do so, and you go somewhere other than heaven – a place where the "wrath of God remains upon" you. Colloquially, that 'where' is called 'Hell'.

               But, why?

               Why, goes the standard argument, wouldn't a 'just and merciful God' simply look into a man's heart (as of course, He certainly could), and determine who's been naughty and who's been nice, like theoretical Santa theoretically does?

               Many theologians, most much wiser than I am, have eloquently expressed the standard, godly response to this - we are all sinners, there is no such thing as a righteous man, and it is only through the propitiation of Jesus, through His sacrifice on the cross at Calvary, that we have been granted absolution from our sin debt in the eyes of God, that any man could be viewed as being sufficiently clothed in righteousness for the Lord Almighty to accept into His sinless Home of heaven. Be you a pastor, a pope or a king, it doesn't matter: only by accepting Christ as our Lord and Savior can we be accepted into heaven after our earthly life has expired. 

†

               However, my personal preference among the various descriptions of the situation for the uninformed strays towards a reframing of the definitions of "heaven" and "hell" as "being eternally with God" and "being eternally separated from God". For, no matter how "good" you are by whatever arbitrary standards you choose to judge yourself by (and, just out of curiosity, what standard of "good" are you using if not the Biblical one?), the essence of heaven as revealed in the book of Revelation is basically the eternal worship of the omnipresent Lord – and if in your earthly, "shadow" life you chose not to open yourself up to even the comparatively marginal presence and level of praise Christ asked of you here, would you not be absolutely miserable spending eternity in the place where that's seemingly ALL that goes on? Wouldn't "heaven" be hellish for you?

               Another way to consider this version of the question is as follows: When it's your turn at the Great White Throne, perhaps it's not so much that you will be "judged by what was written in the books, according to what (you) had done" (Rev. 20:12), as much as you might be asked one single, crucial question:

               "Did you choose Christ?"

               I mean, really choose Christ… chose Him as your guiding light by which you led your life? Or, did you not?

               Simple as that.

               If you chose Christ on earth, you chose to live with Him after the end of earth. If you did not, then you chose not to live with Him. "On earth, as it is in heaven." None of this, "Were you a good enough person?" hogwash. That's not relevant; if you really did choose to obey Christ while you lived, your actions would have said so. (I am absolutely convinced that it's impossible to make the saving choice to obey Christ without it showing up in almost every aspect of your life. If someone who's born again can spend even a day with you and STILL has to ask if you're a Christian… then you're not one.)

†

               I'd like to suggest another angle on this whole "heaven or hell" topic. It's not that different, except that the viewpoint is flipped – away from the human deserving (or not deserving) to go to heaven, and towards God’s perspective for a change.

               Imagine, for a fleeting and idolatrous moment, that YOU are the fourth member of the mythical "quadrene God" - Father, Son, Spirit, and You. (Don't get too comfortable: it won't last long enough for You to blaspheme about Your new role.)

               At the end of Time, You are going to put on an Eternal Party – we'd call it a “sleepover”, except there will be no need for sleep ever again! – at Your Place. You know... Your Place – Heaven.

               Who are You going to invite?

               Personally, if it were me, I would only invite the people I liked. But that's not God's way – excuse me, that's not YOUR way of doing things. The God of the Bible is the God of Love; so if You are truly as loving as the Father is, You will probably make it an open invitation to anyone and everyone. That sounds more like Your style! (But don't get cozy! This isn't going to last!)

               So, You issue an open invitation to every human who has ever lived:

               "Party at Our Place! Starts immediately following the Millennium! Lasts forever! No cover charge! All the gold you can eat!" (See, now, just listen to yourself! I told You not to get too comfortable! The Other Three are going to throw You out any moment now!)

Here's the catch:

               "All you have to do is simply accept this Invitation sometime before your death, and agree to abide by Our House Rules."

               Think about it.

               If you're throwing a party in your own home (notice the lower case "your"? Oh well, it was Fun While It Lasted...), those are basically the two conditions your guests would reasonably expect, right? Let you know they're coming, and follow your house rules. Pretty basic etiquette, I'd say.

               For a party in your earthly domicile on, say, Super Bowl Sunday, for example, that translates into, "we need to know how many pizzas to order, so tell us for sure if you're comin', brah!" and, "Hey, don't put that glass on the tabletop, you slob! Use a coaster!" Nothing outrageous; but it IS your party, and you have every right to exclude gate crashers and to expect some common courtesy.

               For a Party At His Place, a.k.a., Entrance Into Heaven, God expects the same thing. If you're planning to attend, He's looking forward to seeing you There... providing that you RSVP and follow His rules.

               The RSVP to accept His open-to-all invitation is written in Romans 10:9 - "Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead." Consider that your password into the “speakeasy”, if you prefer. (That word sounds a touch sacrilegious to me, but whatever. A minute ago, you were God, so “speakeasy” is the least of my sins in this essay.) This way of thinking about heaven also justifies God’s accepting deathbed conversions, too. Heaven is not so much a reward for being good as it is a thank you for choosing to follow the Lord. (So, if you choose to believe in and follow the commands of a different deity, it’s their responsibility to provide a life-after-death for you, assuming they can find a way around the whole “fire-and-brimstone” arrangement already in place. And, if you choose not to align yourself with any deities, then you have no spokesman to work for you in the afterlife business. It’s probably like dealing with a government aid agency on your own….)

               The house rules are, admittedly, a bit lengthy, but they're easy to find – why, you probably have at least one copy already in your home! After all, it IS the best-selling book in history, and it’s available as an app for your phone or tablet now, too.

               And if you don't want to do one or both of those things, or you simply don't WANT to go to His stupid party anyway! – you don't have to. There's another option. The Lord is certainly not going to force you to come into His Home if you don't want to – hey, I mean, we wouldn't force you to come were it our party! The last thing you'd want to see at your party, in your home, would be some party crasher who can't follow your rules, right? "Hey! You! Get off my table! Put the cat down, you jerk! I'm calling the police!"

               Of course, God won't need to call the police. He IS the police. And this will be one Party that will never need to be broken up by the cops!

†

So, hey...

...while we're on the subject...

…Have you accepted your invitation yet?

It's going to be a whale of a great Party!

I'd really love to see you There! I mean it, man.
I'd really LOVE to see you There.

Don't miss It. Please.

                                                                                                                        -gps

God Is Just Like Any Other Dad! (Except, well...He's God.) - Chapter Sixteen

16. When Do You Give Up?

          So, you’re a good parent. (I tend to believe the best in people until they prove themselves otherwise. So let me also jump to this assumption about you the reader, if you don’t mind.) Yet, despite your best efforts, your child is not – well, he’s not as obedient to your teaching as he should be. In fact, just for the sake of the argument, let’s say that your child is downright disobedient –

          At what point do you give up on him?

          In the book of Matthew, Jesus references this situation as it applies to the Trinity and its “disobedient children” in the Parable of the Vineyard Owner, in chapter 21, verses 33-40:

            “Listen to another parable: There was a man, a landowner, who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. He leased it to tenant farmers and went away. When the grape harvest drew near, he sent his slaves to the farmers to collect his fruit. But the farmers took his slaves, beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Again, he sent other slaves, more than the first group, and they did the same to them. Finally, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. But when the tenant farmers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance!’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes… what will he do to those farmers?”

          In case you’re not one of the elect and don’t understand all the analogies within our Lord’s parables: “the man” represents God the Father; the “slaves” he sent were His various prophets who warned Israel throughout the Old Testament of her blatant sin and the penance that was forthcoming if they didn’t change their ways; “his fruit” is the saved; and “his son” is…, well, His Son. Christ was telling the Pharisees and chief priests – the very people He meant by the “tenant farmers” charged with caring for His elect – that they had killed his prophets, would soon kill even Him (doesn’t that take juevos?), and asked them, point blank, “What will God do with you?”

          The Pharisees’ answer was clear and concise, not to mention precisely what they would have done.

          “He will completely destroy those terrible men,” they told Him, “and lease his vineyard to other farmers who will give him the produce at the harvest.” (Matthew 21:41)

          And that would undoubtedly be our reaction too, wouldn’t it? The Pharisees – or at least the smart and cognizant ones who had put the puzzle pieces together – had to know that what Jesus was threatening (or at least predicting) was their complete and utter destruction were they to go through with the killing of this Man that they knew, deep down, really was the Christ (they even go so far as to admit in verse 46 that they at least believed Him a prophet).

          Their conclusion didn’t differ terribly much from His own, except in the critical distinction that the Lord considered the earthly death of Jesus a necessity for building the new covenant (“Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the Scriptures, The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.’ (v. 42a)”), and more importantly, the Pharisees were NOT His true children:

         

            39They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, 40but now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. 41You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” 42Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of My own accord, but He sent Me. 43Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear My word. 44You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me.” (John 8:39-45)

As He did throughout the Old Testament, God showed a remarkable lack of caring about the life or death of those peoples and cultures which weren’t part of His Family:

          “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing its fruit. Whoever falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whoever it falls, it will grind him to powder!” (v. 43-44)

          So, yes, our Father was completely ready to give up on the leaders of Israel. But by this point, He had expanded His grand design beyond the Jew – the primary purpose of Jesus’ ministry on earth (and more crucially, that of His disciples after Him) was to expand the reach of the “God of the Hebrews” beyond the city limits of Jerusalem, to “all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8 – Jesus’ final earthbound words to His disciples). God was taking earthly control of the Kingdom of God – His elect – from control of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the dead-as-the-Dead-Sea priestly class who had long ago lost their way with Him, and turning it over to the Gentile “nation” which could better “produce His fruit”.

          What’s the moral of this parable, and this story and chapter? When did God the Father give up on His children?

          Never.

          And He never will.

          Even when He has to cast Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden…He clothed them and protected them, and saved them from eating of the tree of eternal life which would have doomed them to an eternal life of sin, rather than allowing Him to provide the opportunity for heaven beyond our earthly death.

          Even when sin had so enslaved the world because of this first attempt that it seemed certain that Satan would win before the battle was even engaged…He saved the one family He knew could best preserve the essence of His Image, of the Holy Spark which He had imbued His creation, while flooding the rest of the world and allowing Noah and his family to make a fresh start of it.

          Even when Israel and Judea had so abandoned Him that Baal reigned freely in His temples, in His land, in the very places that He promised to Abram those many generations ago, that He had led the Twelve Tribes to…He didn’t destroy them. He didn’t allow anyone else to destroy them, either, or even to disperse them beyond recollection. Rather, He gave them a “cooling-off” period in other nations, time to realize the error of their ways, and then allowed them to return to Israel and make another go of it.

          Even when they killed God the Son, though many of His elect were still wise and pure enough to recognize their deity when they met Him on the road (unlike the classic instruction to Buddhists), and He allowed Rome to completely demolish all apparent signs of the Jewish faith, and with it the fledgling Christian faith as well…He never let either spark die. The Christians were preserved primarily by the teachings of Paul, the former Pharisee superstar student of Gameliel who Jesus converted on the road to Damascus from the greatest persecutor of Christians in the known world into the greatest Christian missionary in history. His teachings started dozens of blossoming churches throughout Asia Minor on into Rome, where three hundred years later Christianity became the dominant religion of the dominant empire on the planet. And as for the Jewish faithful? Despite the most blatant pattern of persecution any one group of people has ever faced for the longest period of time possible – literally since its inception, but for our purposes here certainly since “they killed our Messiah!” became the rallying cry of the newly dominant Christian religion seventeen hundred years ago, climaxing (hopefully) in the Nazi Holocaust of the 1940’s – the Jewish people not only survived, but somehow, divinely, re-created their homeland nation and language into modern-day Israel.

          [Side note: Mark Twain was once asked how he knew God existed. His answer was, “Because the Jew still exists”.]

          God will never give up on His children.

And as our role model, we must learn from His example.

          There will be a time…when your son will want to run away from home, and you’ll be more than glad to let him.

          There will be a time…when your daughter will scream in your face how you’re the worst mom or dad in the entire world, and you’ll feel like it, and wonder if it wouldn’t be possible to simply start fresh with a new child (and perhaps an owner’s manual this time!).

          There will be a time…when you discover drugs in your son’s bedroom, and you realize you’re going to have to confront him with it, and sooner rather than later – and you pray for God to take the problem away from you because you know you can’t possibly handle it like a parent should.

          There will be a time…when your daughter brings home “the love of her life”, and you take a few moments to decide whether it’s the skull tattoos, the smell of bad cigarettes, or the fifteen-year age difference that scares you the most.

          There will be a time…when your son lands in jail, and you find yourself trying to decide what length of time is most constructive for helping him learn his lessons before you go to bail him out – again.

         There will be a time…when the Prodigal Son of Luke 15:11-32 leaves your home, vowing never to return to the ‘prison’ you’ve created for him (or her); and weeks, months, or even years later, he might show up on your doorstep again, begging for another chance. And even though Christ told us that every time one of His flock returns to the fold, there is a celebration in heaven, you don’t feel like celebrating. You are tempted to lean more towards the feelings that he hurt when he left. You are tempted to say something along the lines of “you made your bed; now sleep in it”.

No matter what the Lord has told us to do, the temptation will be there.

It will always be there.

            Don’t give in.

            God didn’t give up on us. And He won’t.

            Don’t you give up, child of God.        

Intermission - glancing at football's slowest weekend

Except for the Army/Navy game (the FOLLOWING FOOTBALL calculators say that game has a sixteen point spread, but Vegas is probably right at six taking the loss of their QB and RB into account), the only college games are the FCS quarters:
>> Eastern Washington over Richmond by 8 (Sagarin says it's twenty; I disagree).
>> James Madison over Sam Houston St by 4.5 (Sagarin cuts that in half, and my guts like SHS)
>> ND State over SD State by 7.5 (Sagarin pushes that to 11.5, and they may be right)
>> Youngstown St over Wofford by 7 (Sagarin says it's just 3.9 - I'd disagree, but then I thought Wofford would lose both of the last two rounds. PS - listen to Wofford's radio team - they're great!)

Meanwhile, the NFL has some semi-interesting games, tonight's Oakland/KC game tops among them (we say KC by four; Vegas says by three). Here are the rest...
>> Arizona @ Miami (we like the Cards by two; Vegas likes the Dolphins)
>> Atlanta @ LA (Falcons by six)
>> Chicago @ Dettroit (Lions by 8.5 or 9)
>> Cincinnati @ Cleveland (Bengals by 6 or 7 - by the way, not only are the Browns 0-12, they're only 2-10 against the spread)  
>> Denver @ Tennessee (we say Broncos by three, Vegas likes Tennessee by half a point)
>> Houston @ Indy (Colts by three, Vegas says it's six - I think that's because the Jets lay down)
>> Minnesota @ Jacksonville (this time we have the Vikes by six while Vegas says three)
>> New Orleans @ Tampa (Tampa by 2.5 in Vegas; we'll double it)
>> NY Jets @ San Francisco (we see a tie; Vegas actually like the Niners by one. Really?)
>> Pittsburgh @ Buffalo (we think Buffalo by two; Vegas disagrees)
>> San Diego @ Carolina (we all think Panthers by one)
>> Seattle @ Green Bay (Seahawks by three)
>> Washington @ Philadelphia (we think the Eagles win; Vegas disagrees)
>> Dallas @ NY Giants (Cowboys by two or three)
>> Monday night, Baltimore @ New England (Pats by 7).  

Made some headway in the battle against Vegas' picks last week, winning by two, but we're still trailing by eighteen for the season (most of which came from two weeks ago, when we just won one game!). Here's hoping!

God Is Just Like Any Other Dad! (Except, well...He's God.) - Chapter Fifteen

15. Saturday

A short story by Gordon Paul Smith.

(But loyal readers have already READ this story! If you're new to Act II Ministries, or you'd just like to read this again in context, here are the links to the three segments of this chapter as we presented them earlier...)

Part One - "Saturday"

Part Two - "Saturday"

Part Three - "Saturday"

God Is Just Like Any Other Dad! (Except, well...He's God.) - Chapter Fourteen

14. The Three-In-One

          The concept from the end of the last chapter – that the Lord somehow suffered through the crucifixion from BOTH perspectives, as Father AND Son, is on the surface not only bizarre but counterintuitive for humans to grasp with our mortal, linear way of thinking.

One of the hardest things for humans to grasp is the very concept of the Holy Trinity – the Three-In-One Godhead, the Father/Son/Holy Spirit. There are false sects of Christianity which don’t know how to deal with this difficult Reality, and so they don’t – those who try to argue that Jesus must have been mortal, or that God existed solely within Christ’s body instead of on high for the length of Jesus’ earthly ministry, or (here’s the wildest one to me) that somehow Jesus’ “God-hood” departed Him moments before He “died” on the cross. OR, they’ll blaspheme the other direction, and argue that there are simply three separate entities ruling the cosmos – that God the Father is completely separate, distinct and discrete from God the Son, and from God the Spirit. Both positions are not only inaccurate but deny one of the most basic tenets of Christianity, and as such neither can rationally be called Christianity at all.

          But just because we don’t completely understand something doesn’t mean that it’s not true. (See: Physics, Quantum.) God is Three, and God is One.

          Many analogies have been put forth to help our poor mortal minds cope with this seemingly contradictory concept, but in keeping with the purpose of this book, let me give an example that I think is not all that far from reality:

          Think of a husband and wife.

          An aside: Don’t try to stretch this analogy too far, or it’ll snap – I’m not saying that either God or Christ are filling the male or female roles per se, nor is God Almighty strictly speaking anthropomorphic and gendered at all, even though we almost universally refer to “Him” as male.

          Here’s the analogy: Within a marriage, a husband and wife are individuals, two people who work together for usually common and agreed-on purposes. But outside of the marriage, the married couple is often treated like a single entity – “Mr. and Mrs. So-And-So”. In a strong marriage, working with either spouse should be much like working with the other – “Whom God has joined together, let no man tear asunder.” Our children used to honestly claim that my late wife and I were somehow symbiotic, because anything they told one of us, even in passing, the other one seemed to automatically know. In a court of law, in fact, not only are you not required to testify against yourself, your spouse is similarly not required to testify against you, so seriously do we take that legal bond of marriage.

          In Genesis 2:24, the Lord says of the first marriage, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Far from being the first dirty joke, God means that the two of them are literally to be considered as one unit. The wife is to obey the husband’s every decision, BUT the husband is to make every decision with his wife’s interest foremost in his mind, so that the couple’s decisions are going to be made in harmony with both individuals’ beneficial interests. (At least, in a good, Godly marriage. Not every human marriage fits that description, I realize.) Here’s the passage in Ephesians 5:22-31 where Paul addresses this very subject – notice the parallel he draws between the marriage of husband and wife, and the marriage of Christ and the church – very much along the same lines of our present discussion:

22Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

25Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30because we are members of his body. 31“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

          This giving-receiving nature of the marriage partnership, this sacrifice for one another quality holds Biblically even in matters of the flesh, as we see in First Corinthians 7:2-5 à

2But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

How does this relate to the Trinity?

          From the outside, we see the Godhead as more or less indivisible – if you didn’t live in first century Samaria, you probably never saw Jesus Christ in the flesh, and so to you (and to me), the members of the Holy Trinity are all “out there” and “inside me” and “all around us”, more or less indistinguishable from each other. We pray to all three (or at least I do), and while we credit different faces for different aspects of our lives – for example, we might praise God the Father for the magnificent sunrise, Christ for intervening in a difficult situation for us, and the Spirit for guiding us through a rough meeting at work – we’re still likely to describe all three events to friends as a “God-thing”.

          But within the Godhead, we see countless examples throughout the Bible of the different “aspects” of God communicating and interacting with each other, the most striking example being at the baptism of Jesus in (among other places in the Gospels) Matthew 3:16-17 à

And when Jesus was baptized, immediately He went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on Him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

All three members of the Trinity appear (settling the question, by the way, of the existence of three separate entities). You and your spouse are separate entities as well, of course. But we treat the Trinity as one interconnected God in virtually every situation. Your children need to treat the two of you as one interconnected partnership, and you need to work together as one interconnected partnership.

If your child(ren) can play the “if Mommy says it’s okay, can we?” game against the two of you? You two have some work to do.

If your child(ren) know which one of you to ask to get the answer they want? You two have some work to do.

If your child(ren) don’t get essentially the same “fear/love” vibe from both of you? You two have some work to do.

If either of you has a reason to vent to someone besides your partner about your partner? You two have some work to do.

If either of you has more interest in your hobby or job or outside interest than in your partner? You two have some work to do.

If either of you cares more about your child(ren) than your partner? Believe it or not, you two have some work to do.

If either of you has any interest in other partners outside the marriage? You two have some serious work to do.

Any conflict between you and your spouse takes place outside of your children’s sight – the two of you are a team with a unified goal.

The successful raising of your children.

As partners.

God Is Just Like Any Other Dad! (Except, well...He's God.) - Chapter Thirteen

13. Would You Die For Your Child?

          What would you sacrifice for a stranger? If there was someone in the city you lived in who was, let us say, dying from a disease which required massive blood donations... Would you donate blood? You might. How about money? Maybe, if the cause was presented to the public well enough. But if it got into the territory of bone marrow? A kidney? Probably not.

          All right then...but what if it was a friend? Well, then, sure. You'd be much more likely to donate a kidney to a good friend. Bone marrow becomes a much more feasible call now, too. But would you give up something permanent - an arm, or a leg, or an eye? Hmmmm. Doesn't seem like the stuff we'd do for just any old friend.

          But...you'd do that for your child. I just read about a young Chinese married couple whose baby boy was born blind, two dysfunctional eyeballs preventing sight. So in order that their son could grow up sighted, they chose to each give up one of their OWN eyeballs, he the left and she the right, so the boy could have two working eyes as he grew up. Amazing, and merely anecdotal evidence, of course. But most people would at least consider the possibility if presented to them in a similar situation. We would do just about anything for our child. Just about…anything.

          But…would you die for your child?

          God would.

God did.

You’ve probably read about it. It was in all the papers, or, at least, in all the Gospels. “Jesus died for our sins.” We all remember that from Sunday School when we were kids.

But what does that phrase really mean? First of all, there are a couple of qualifications we might want to examine more closely before we start checking off that particular box – did God really “die for his child” in the sense that we mean when we say we would die for ours?

We first have to accept that Jesus is God, which some sects who call themselves “Christian” don’t necessarily take as a given. (Yes, yes, we had this conversation earlier in the book. It bears repeating: it’s that important!) So let’s get this out of the way first: the very definition of the word “Christian” implies a worship of Christ; and if you’re worshiping Christ, as the name says, that implies that you must believe that Christ is God – not “godlike”, not anything short of the genuine article. As we discussed briefly in the chapter called “Faith, Not Works”, Jesus Christ was fully man AND fully God in his incarnation on earth two thousand years ago; without being fully human, he could not have paid the price for human sin debt, and without being fully God, he could not have led a perfectly sinless life and therefore been able to pay that debt.

There’s a very Fatherly analogy here too, of course: how many of you parents have had your child get into some very serious situations – for example, in need of a complicated surgery? Hasn’t every single one of you said something to the effect of, “If I could take their place, so they didn’t have to go through this terrible thing, I would”? It’s a classic parental feeling, one which non-parents may never understand.

Isn’t that what God essentially did on the cross?

Didn’t He, as God the Son, take the place of all of His human children who owed an impossible debt that they (WE) couldn’t pay…but which HE could, and did?

Explaining the Trinity as both One God and Three Entities is difficult to the point of impossibility (we’ll take a stab at it in a few pages), but accepting it is critical to your understanding of your faith as a Christian. God the Father and God the Son are one – AND separate. But however you wrap your mind around that part of the issue, never doubt that our Lord Jesus Christ is indeed God. That’s probably THE fundamental detail that makes a Christian a Christian, and not Jewish or LDS or any other sect.

In fact, regardless of the current discussion, the very terminology we use demands that anyone who doesn’t believe that Jesus and God are part and parcel of the same Entity cannot call themselves a Christian. So, those of you who fall into this category, you’re excused. Please pick up your things on your way out the door. Thank you.

†

OK, next: did He really “die” in the same sense that we mean that word? When He “died”, He came right back three days later! We won’t do that! How much of a sacrifice did Jesus – who is God – really make here? He spent forty more days ministering in and around Jerusalem before He ascended to Heaven.

What will we do?

Well, when we die, we’ll… um… go to Heaven, too. (Most of us, anyway. If you’re reading this, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt as far as that conversation goes.)

Hmm.

So, except that He made a pit stop to do some work on the way, we both went to the same place. So much for that argument.

Yeah, but when I die, it’s really going to be miserable! I mean – death, y’know? Painful!

Oh, you mean you’ll suffer like Jesus suffered? The beatings of the Roman guards, the berating of the Pharisees and the masses they incited, the thirty-nine lashes with the scourging whip (which had all of those barbed tips laced throughout it, so that it took literal chunks and strips out of His hide), and then being nailed to a cross and left out in the sun to die? You’re right – your death will be much more painful than that. [Sarcasm alert.]

Er…um, can I take that part back?

Now, let’s add to that: Not only is Jesus suffering as no man had probably ever suffered – remember, there was a purpose to that suffering. Do you remember what it was?

Um…yeah. To pay the price for our sins.

Right. So we could be made holy enough to be allowed into Heaven when we died, since otherwise we would be condemned to Hell for all eternity.

So…God really DID die for us, didn’t He? He saved us – not for this life, so much, but for the much-more-important eternal life we get once we die.

Right.

Now: flip the scene. Picture God the Father, in heaven, having deposited the entirety of humanity’s sins on the shoulders of His Only True Son. (BTW, what do those sins look like? Did He carry a flash drive with a hundred GB of downloaded sins on it? Just curious…) Christ prays to You at Gethsemane, in Matthew 26:39-44, and You cannot answer Him, at least not as He wants You to. The plan’s in motion; You can’t change it now. (Strike that – read, “won’t” change it. God can do anything, but this particular plan’s been in the works since at least Genesis 3:15. And Jesus knew it.)

You watch as Your Son is (wrongly) convicted of blasphemy by a kangaroo court…as He is hauled off to Pilate, and then to Herod…as He is scourged within an inch of His life (and who’s to say You didn’t keep Him superhumanly alive under that savage beating? The cross is a much cleaner, easier symbol for Christianity than a cat-o-nine-tails scourging whip!)…as He is virtually dragged through the streets of Jerusalem towards Golgotha…as He is literally nailed to the crossbeam of a Roman torture device.

And You – All-Powerful God, the Lord Almighty – for the only time in Your Infinite Existence, You are powerless to do anything about it. You are powerless to stop His Pain.

Because if You are forever separated from us because of our sin nature – and for this brief moment in time (twenty-four hours, tops), Your Son bears ALL of their sin – You cannot even touch Him. As much as it must pain You to see Your Son suffer such literally excruciating pain (literal because “excruciating” comes from “ex-crucis” – “on-crucifix”). You cannot bear to even look at Him.

You can’t even answer His pleas to You… Even when He cries out on the cross, nails through His flesh, “Father, Father, why have You forsaken Me?” …You cannot answer. The barrier of sin is too great, even if it were Your desire to somehow stop the millennias-long plan moments from its completion – even if Your desire to rescue Your Son overwhelmed Your desire to rescue humanity itself.

Sacrifice? Oh, yes.

God sacrificed for His children.

God sacrificed – died – for us.

And His sacrifice was greater than we can possibly imagine – both as Father and Son. 

My two cents on the College Football playoff conundrum

Here's the question: do you take conference champions over all other criteria, or do you take the four best teams?

The CFP committee claimed at the beginning (two-three years ago) that while the conference titles were the MOST important criteria, they wanted the BEST teams in the playoff. (Sweet talk for taking a wishy-washy stand in the middle somewhere.)

HERE are the FOLLOWING FOOTBALL rankings and tiers as of Saturday night, Dec 2, AFTER all the conference title games have been played:

 

	FBS End of Season	Rating
1	*Alabama	A+9
2	Ohio St	A+5
3	*Clemson	A+4
4	*Washington	A+2
5	*Oklahoma	A+2
6	Michigan	A +
7	USC	B +
8	Wisconsin	B -
9	LSU	B -
10	Florida St	B -
11	*Penn St	C
12	Auburn	C
13	**Western Michigan	C
14	Louisville	C -
15	Oklahoma St	D +
16	Western Kentucky	D +
17	Houston	D +
18	West Virginia	D
19	Virginia Tech	D
20	Stanford	D
21	Navy	D
22	Colorado	D -
23	North Carolina	D -
24	Miami-FL	D -
25	Washington St	E +

 (The entire list, #1-128, is available on the College Football tab.)

So, IF you want the four BEST teams, my list says it's going to be the same four I'm certain the CFP committee announces tomorrow: Alabama #1, Ohio St/Clemson #2 and 3, with Washington at #4. Three are conference champs. Ohio State is head and shoulders better than Penn State, despite a three-point loss. (But then, they beat Michigan and Michigan stomped the Nittany Lions...so who cares?) 

But if you want the four best conference champions, our list says take Alabama, Clemson, Washington, and Oklahoma. Penn St is ranked eleventh, well behind the Sooners on our list. 

I don't care which you take. If you're insisting on conference champs, there's NO point in scheduling outside of conference any more. WHY would OU have played Houston and Ohio St? They should've gone Washington's route and played Idaho, Portland St and (the hardest of the three!) Rutgers! If you're going the four best, do away with the extra week of title games - they only provide a place for the Clemsons and UW's to LOSE another game! Ohio St rooked the system, if that's the case! (Of course, two years ago, they NEEDED that 59-0 rout of Wisconsin to get IN, so either way....) 

Pick your poison and stick with it. But do NOT go to eight teams to 'solve' the problem! Does anyone really think #8 or #9 could beat Alabama? No. All we care about is the title. Let Penn St go to the Rose Bowl. Let OU go to the wherever the XII champ goes. Enjoy the Cotton Bowl, Western Michigan. (We have them #13, the highest of the Group of Five, but we also had WKU just three spots back!) Pick your forty bowl game winners and your 5-7 team matchups based on graduation rates (for once, that actually MEANS something!) and enjoy the football over the holidays!