the reasons I believe: transforming love

Reason #1: Looking at the world and being disappointed.
Reason #2: Creation.
Reason #3: The cross.

Reason #4: The transforming love of God.

I listened to a sermon at my church a few weeks ago and was struck by one sentence which I jotted down immediately.

The Christian has experienced God's love and has been transformed by it.

This feels like an appropriate reason to follow Reason #3, the cross of Christ, an event and a symbol of God's great, self-sacrificial love for us. As Romans 5:7-8 says, "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

But it doesn't stop with the cross as an event. The power of the cross is the power of a love so great that it is tangible to me, a 23-year-old in 2010, and it has been tangible to me throughout my life. The love of a God I can turn to again and again, a God who forgives me again and again, who continues to bless me despite all my failings; a God who saw me running away, fought for me, and ran to greet me with open arms as I stumbled back towards him; a God whose love has been so immediately present, so real, so comforting, in all the most horrible moments of my life.

It's not something I can quantify because it is so all-encompassing and it's so personal. I cannot prove to you the depth of God's love. A frail example would be like trying to prove that my mother loved me - unmeasurable by the fact that she fed me, clothed me, looked after me when I was sick, although that is all part of it.

However, it is something that I have seen in other people's lives, and the proof is in the transformation. I've seen proud, strong, angry people brought to their knees by God's love; men who used to drink and fight and hit their wives, lives transformed, stand before a congregation every week and declare "God is so good"; people whose actions led them to be rejected by society come in humility and shame before a God who forgave them. I've seen this in people I know, and I've seen it in me, and there is no explanation for it that does not take into account a force outside of these people, a God who loves them.

the reasons I believe: the cross

Reason #1: Looking at the world and being disappointed.
Reason #2: Creation.

Reason #3: The cross.

I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross… In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolises divine suffering. ‘The cross of Christ … is God’s only self-justification in such a world’ as ours.

I almost don't want to write any more, after this quote (from John Stott's The Cross of Christ). It is, for me, one of the most meaningful and wonderful things ever written that isn't included in the Bible. Because it captures what for me is IT, the essential kernel of Christianity that has me hooked.

I am so often confused, so often bewildered, by life; so often unsure of my own ability to understand; so often horrified by what is happening in the world and what has happened in the world. I don't know why I believe. I doubt. I object. I am overcome by fear of the largeness of it all and by the sting of death. I worry that God cannot possibly love so disappointing a creature as I and that my sin is too large for it to be forgiven.

And then I look to the cross. It answers all my questions.

The God who could crush me like a beetle loved me and "humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross!" That is no frail love. It is more powerful than my sin and is enough to save me.

When I have moments of terror - I don't want to die! - I am suddenly hit with the memory that Jesus was terrified too. He went through everything I go through and more. He did not want to die, yet he did it, for me, and I cannot ignore such love.

Love so amazing, so divine - demands my soul, my life, my all.

the reasons I believe: creation

Reason #1: Looking at the world and being disappointed.

Reason #2: Creation.

In a sense the debate about evolution vs. creation is, for me, supremely irrelevant, and completely fails to address the substantial problem of existence: origins. (Add to that that I'm just not all that interested in science.) Regardless of the age of the earth, of the adaptation and evolution of human kind, of my personal interpretation of the book of Genesis, evolution cannot explain the philosophical problem of the spark of existence.

How is it that something is here at all? Our knowledge of the "Big Bang" alone makes it very clear that something hasn't always been here, and I don't think belief in a designer is all that far-fetched when you consider the other options.

And then there is the astonishing, amazing unlikelihood of the universe. To provide you with a cliche, standing at the top of a mountain and surveying everything around me is something that, for me, minimises the possibility of chance by rather a lot. Seeing something of the order that governs even the smallest organisms. Watching a child grow. Wondering how such beauty could simply evolve of its own volition. Viewing by chance the raw power of nature and our own defencelessness. It's strange, given that my other reason to believe so far is a rejection of the reality of the (social) world as it is. The (natural) world, as it is, is so wonderful that I do not think it is possible without a Creator.

All this makes the following Bible verses really resonate with me:

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well. Psalm 139: 13-14

For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:20

For these reasons, if I ever tried to be an atheist I would be a very bad one. I cannot get out of my head the sense that there is something too amazing here to be a fluke.

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So far, I am aware that my reasons to believe lead only to belief in a God, identity unknown. The reasons I specifically chose to follow Christ will come soon.

the reasons I believe: looking at the world and being disappointed

No. 1 reason to believe in my series on faith: Looking at the world and being disappointed.

I cannot get over a feeling, when I look around me, that something has gone terribly wrong. I study history, and the history I study is only of the last eighty years or so, and yet there is so much evidence of human evil that it would be enough to persuade me.

Here's what this says to me. SIN MATTERS. I know it's an unfashionable word, but it seems to me to sum up a reality - that human beings know that the Good is preferable, but for some reason the Bad remains a fundamental part of our reality. We can't get it out of our system. I certainly can't get it out of mine. I am part of the problem, and I'm never going to be able to solve it. The evil we commit is not excusable. And the evil we commit may be "small", because most of us have been lucky enough to be placed in contexts in which our actions affect few other people, but it is nonetheless evil.

I could, having come to this conclusion, live miserably and guiltily, try hard to do good, but wallow in guilt whenever I, inevitably, stuff up. I could stop caring, and just live for myself, taking, taking and taking, and making myself the centre of the universe.

Instead, I've found a God who gives hope in the midst of this disappointing, crazy world. He offers forgiveness for sin, because he took human evil seriously enough to send his Son to take the punishment we deserve so fully. He gives me strength to fight my natural selfishness, and he gives me assurance that when I stuff up, he'll take the blame off my shoulders. He gives me encouragement just to keep swimming, as Dorie in Finding Nemo says, struggling along hand-in-hand with the Creator who made this world and who one day will restore it.

faith

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6

You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder. James 2:19

Lately on this blog my posts have been rather "negative", in the sense that they've been arguing against something (in the last two cases, atheism or, more accurately, atheists). I want to change this. And I've been thinking a lot lately about the reasons I believe, and what it is that I believe in.

And this is just it, really - faith. There are so many implications about our views on faith displayed in the way we Christians do things that I'm not sure are always right. We are ashamed of doubts. Or we slam other denominations for not believing exactly the same doctrine as ourselves. We hold up actions above faith; we hold up faith above actions.

And I look at the two verses displayed above - seemingly contradictory to someone without faith, perhaps - and try to take in both messages, messages which are like two hands joining.

So I'm going to start a little blog series about faith. Not an all-encompassing diatribe covering all time and all space. Just on how faith works itself out in my head, in my life, in my confusion, in my moments of clarity. I will say no more now, but I will leave you with the verse that has been running through my head for weeks now:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2