The 'tract' (or essay) I wrote - "What is Christianity?"

The following is the 'tract' that I wrote and handed out to people on the street (I referred to this in my last post.) Feel free to use and reproduce this for ministry purposes.
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It is NOT…

…a political agenda or a vision for the optimization of the human condition, although it does speak about right and wrong, justice and injustice, and therefore can have implications for those in government.

…a purely social philosophy that seeks only to end relational problems among humans and their organizations (i.e. personal fights, divisions, and wars), although it does speak to the relationships between people as a matter of primary importance, seeking to bring peace, mercy, justice, and reconciliation in the human world.

…an opiate for the masses, a comfort pill for intellectually weak people to swallow so that they don’t have to deal with difficult facts, although God and His truth are the greatest sources of comfort and refuge in the universe.

…a philosophy that empowers some people to exploit and subordinate other people or cultures for their own selfish gain, although it does give us a justification and motivation for systems of legitimate human authority and governance whose purpose is to serve all people by establishing peace and justice.

…defined by individuals or groups for themselves. Instead, it is defined by the absolute standard of the Word of God, the Bible.

…simply a system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules, which is what most people identify as a ‘religion.’

It IS…

…a personal relationship with the one true, living, present God through His Son, Jesus Christ.

To understand where we are as humans in relation to God, we must understand the history of God’s dealings with man. The majority of the Bible consists of the account of this history. In the midst of this historical record is God’s revelation of who He is, who we human beings are, what actions God and mankind have taken, and what we ought to do now.

Before the existence of the universe, God existed forever from eternity past; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit had fellowship among themselves, and this fellowship is called the Godhead, or the Trinity. God is all-powerful (omnipotent), all-present (omnipresent), and all-knowing (omniscient.)

God created the universe from nothing. He spoke, and the universe, including matter and energy, existed.

God created angels as well as some other beings who were in His own image, humans. Being in God’s image means that humans possess certain attributes of God such as being an individual person, having a spirit and soul (emotions, will and mind), the ability to love and have relationship with others, as well as a multitude of other attributes such as creativity and the desire for pleasure. Yes, that is correct, the desire for pleasure is one of God’s attributes that he has shared with us; I will speak later about how God fulfills this desire that He created.

It is clear that in the process of creation, God retained all authority, the rightful ability to command all things, both that which is without a will and those who have wills. In the former case, God exercises both authority and control; all creation except for humans and angels instantly conforms to His command without exception. In the latter case, God exercises authority but not complete control. He chooses to delegate a measure of authority to humankind over the rest of the creation. He willingly partners with human beings and shares the authority over the creation, for the most part giving autonomous control of themselves to human beings. In so doing, He initiates fellowship and friendship with humankind while God and human mutually derive pleasure from the creation. He glorifies Himself both through the display of His power in the process of creation and through the display of His love in fellowship with humans.

In contrast to the irresistible commands God gave to the rest of creation, the commands He gave to humans were able to be disobeyed because of the measure of autonomous control He granted them.

God is perfect, not because He conforms to some external standard, but because He Himself is the standard of perfection. Humans were created perfect in the beginning and remained so as long as they remained in unadulterated fellowship with God. When humans chose to disobey God’s command, they were necessarily choosing to break fellowship with God. Once their fellowship with God was broken, they were by definition ‘dead,’ since God is the source of life. He is life; nothing can be ‘alive’ that is apart from Him. Although their bodies were originally intended to persist forever, the death that was wrought in their spirits because of separation from God eventually manifested itself in their physical bodies. Also, because of the authority God had given humankind over creation, the physical condition of the universe was tied to the fate of humans and therefore manifested the same death in the form of decay, most notably identified by the second law of thermodynamics.

Although their fellowship was broken, God’s love for humankind lived on, as strong as ever, unfading, unrelenting, and not willing to give up. God passionately pursued a renewed fellowship with humans in the same way that a man pursues his bride.

After the break of fellowship, the fall of humankind, some humans sought fellowship with God, even though it was imperfect because of their fallen condition. I don’t know why this happened with some people and not others; my best guess is that it was attributable to some combination of God’s calling individuals and the response of those individuals. No one but God knows the full extent of how or whom He attempted to have relationship with or to what extent various people sought Him or responded to Him. One thing is for sure, and that is that God is just and merciful. To whom He directs favor, calling, and mercy is completely up to Him, and He does not choose on the basis of the merits of the person called. He chooses according to His own purposes, which is completely right for Him to do. We must realize that God’s highest regard is for His own glory, not for the glory or pleasure of humans, and rightfully so. It would be wrong and unjust for Him to have an ultimate regard for anyone or anything above Himself and His own glory, because He is the highest and greatest of all, the most beautiful of all, and the One in whom all things have life and existence.

It is with this in mind that we should approach the subject of God’s choosing of the nation of Israel to be the bearers and preservers of His truth and desires for the benefit of all humankind. The Jews were and are no better or worse than the rest of humankind. It is God who is glorified in their choosing, not the other way around. There are volumes that could be written on this topic, but we will summarize the points that are pertinent to a basic understanding of God’s pursuit of reconciliation with His beloved creation, human beings.

First, the very process by which He chose Israel to bear His Word for the world’s benefit is intended to show how God freely and arbitrarily extends His plea for reconciliation to all people. The Bible tells us that Abraham, the physical ancestor of the Jewish race, became God’s friend through having faith in God, or in other words, believing that whatever God said was true and whatever God commanded ought to be obeyed. It was because of God’s personal, yet imperfect, relationship with Abraham that God decided to set Abraham’s descendants apart as the bearers and preservers of His Word. If God’s choosing one man’s descendants to be set apart for a special purpose seems unfair to you, it might help to think of this from a personal perspective. Although you may care about all the children in the world, is there not a special place in your heart for the children of your close friends?

Second, the people of Israel were chosen with a purpose and a plan in God’s mind to reconcile every single human being (both Jews and non-Jews) to Himself. Through the physical lineage of Israel, God chose to incarnate one of the members of the Trinity, the Son, Jesus, in order to save the world. The lives and circumstances of the births of those in the genealogy from Abraham to Jesus were intended to be prophetic pictures of how God would repair the relationship between Himself and humankind, with the intent that by reading those accounts, we might better understand God’s plan of salvation for us. In particular, certain recorded events in the lives of David, Ruth, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were orchestrated by God to show us over and over again that He would bring reconciliation between Himself and humans simply through faith; it would not depend on the good works of the individual. Through the lives of these Israelites, He showed time and again that His calling of all people to be reconciled to Himself was completely born of His own desire and choice, not prompted by any merit or goodness of the humans he was calling and irrespective of their good or bad deeds (Jacob), their social or economic standing, or their race (Ruth.) Just as in the process of creation, God is using the process of reconciliation to display His glory, both through His power and His matchless love for all people.

Third, Israel was the bearer and preserver of God’s revealed Word. In order to let humans know the truth about who He is and what He wants from them, God has spoken to a variety of individuals throughout the centuries, prompting them to write down what He has spoken as Scripture, and the collection of Scripture is the Bible. God supernaturally revealed some key points in human history to Moses, as well as the specification of the manner in which God was to be worshipped and His strict law was to be obeyed. Again, much has been written on these subjects, but I will draw out the points that will help in understanding the path to reconciliation with God.

First, we must understand the Law and its purpose. The Law was full of all sorts of minute details and technical requirements as well as more general and overarching moral principles. To obey it required total dedication, and yet no one ever was able to go through life without breaking it. Why did God hand down a seemingly impossible set of commandments? The apostle Paul explained later, in the New Testament, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that the strict detail of the Law was meant to show us that God’s standard was absolute perfection and that every human being falls short of that standard. But one should not stop there! Paul says this realization of the impossibility of perfection that the Law brings is intended to compel us to seek God’s merciful redemption and salvation – His free gift of atonement for our sinfulness, the only possible remedy and the only possible path to reconciliation between God and man. He said the Law was his “schoolmaster” to bring him to Christ. Just as without the nerves in your hands, you wouldn’t feel pain from touching a hot stove which tells you pull your hand away, without the Law, we wouldn’t know that we were sinful and in need of salvation. And without a nation of people who would faithfully pass down the written Law from generation to generation, all of the rest of the world would never get to read it.

One important, yet often confusing, part of the Law was the many sacrifices that God commanded the people of Israel to perform ritually and perpetually. There were multiple purposes for the sacrifices, which included incense, drink, grain, and animals. The most important aspect of the system of sacrifices was that God commanded animal sacrifices to be made where the blood of the animal was spilled because of the sins of the people, their breaking of the Law. God never said these sacrifices actually absolved the people of their sins – it is clear that the blood of animals never could satisfy God’s perfect justice on behalf of the sins of the people. So, why did God command the sacrifices for sin to be made? The answer is that it was a picture of the true salvation to come. It is amazing how analogous the details of the Jewish rituals that God had ordained are to the way Jesus came to save humankind. Just as the people of Israel were commanded to offer a pure, spotless, innocent lamb, spilling its blood and killing it as a symbolic sacrifice for their sins, Jesus said He is the “Lamb of God,” lived a perfect, sinless life, and was slaughtered, spilling His precious blood as atonement for our sins. Unlike the blood of animals, however, the blood of Jesus does actually atone for sin and can make us righteous in the sight of God regardless of what sins we have committed. The whole Old Testament system of sacrifices was set up so we could understand this slightly odd arrangement when it happened. In contrast to other religious teachers throughout history who showed up on the scene and spread a new message, Jesus was the fulfillment of several thousand prior years of prophecy and revelation.

So this is how God fulfilled His plan to restore His relationship with us, His human creations. He could not have simply ignored our sin and invited us back without consequence, because His perfect justice would not allow it. But because of His great and awesome love for all of us, both Jew and non-Jew alike, He bore the consequences of our sin on Himself so that we wouldn’t have to be separated from God forever as we deserved. No one but God can perfectly describe this transaction in an exhaustive way that dispels all mystery, but we can understand the basic fact of the matter: Jesus received the punishment for our sin on Himself in order to reconcile us to Himself.

The description I have made brings us to this day in history and the choice that stands before you. God has extended His love and grace to you and awaits your response. Will you be reconciled to Him? Would you turn away a neighbor who came to you and said, “Please be my friend?” How much more should you receive the friendship and adoption of your Creator who has loved you and sacrificed so greatly in order to make reconciliation possible?

There is another factor that you should consider: time is limited. Each of you knows that your life is short, finite, and like a vapor that appears for a little while and vanishes away. You do not know how long you will live, maybe 90 or 100 years at best. I urge you not to put off or postpone this decision, because today is always the best day to be reconciled to God. You may wonder why urgency is required. The answer is very important, and it is an often misunderstood part of Christian faith: the judgment of God.

Before understanding God’s final judgment of the world, you must understand that God’s desire is for every single human being to be reconciled to Him, to be ‘saved.’ Those that perish in God’s judgment will have nothing to attribute their condemnation to but their own hardness of heart, because on God’s part, there has been no lack of proactivity and sacrifice in His attempts to bring them close to Himself. This judgment sounds incredibly harsh and inconsistent with God’s mind-blowing love unless you understand of what exactly eternal condemnation and eternal life consist. The worst part about eternal condemnation, the real kicker, the thing that makes it ‘hell’ is that the people in it are forever and hopelessly separated from the presence of God. Likewise, the very best part of eternal life is not the pleasures of golden streets, mansions, etc., but rather that those who partake of it get to enjoy perfect and intimate fellowship with God forever. They get to see His beautiful face and rest in His arms! Once you understand this, it is painfully obvious that, simply understood, God’s final judgment is to solidify for eternity the choice that each individual has made, to be or not to be reconciled with God. As I wrote previously, God created us with the desire for pleasure, and eternal fellowship with Him is the fulfillment of that desire.

I beg you and plead with you to be reconciled to God today! There is no complicated process or church membership that is needed, because God promises that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus, the man born in Bethlehem who lived about 2,000 years ago and was crucified by Pontius Pilate, is God and you believe in your heart that God the Father raised Him from the dead, you will be reconciled to God. You will be ‘saved.’ If you truly believe these things, you will want to tell God that you are sorry for the sins you have committed in your life such as (possibly) hating other people, lying, cheating, and being selfish. Start to love and obey God’s commands which are for your benefit and are found in the Bible (I suggest you start with the book of Matthew.) Your salvation does not depend on you or any other person, but rather on God’s unshakeable promise which you have received though faith in Jesus Christ. God sees everything that is in your heart, and He is eager to hear your prayers. He has been waiting for you, calling you, and longing for your friendship.

Written by Sam Peterson