Following Christ

I originally wrote this for a slightly different context 3 years ago.

"When I was around nine years old I got saved in my cousin’s closet. We had ended up talking about God and Jesus for about an hour, and I decided to ask Jesus to forgive my sins. I had known some things about Jesus before, but I didn’t understand how one could accept His salvation. However, after this, I did not become apart of a church and did not really fellowship with other Christians for about eight years. I didn’t really mature in my relationship with Christ. Then during my senior year of high school a friend invited me to her church, North Cleveland Church of God. I remember liking it, so I started going somewhat regularly. I started to become convicted about certain things in my life (or the lack of them) because of what I was being taught about following Jesus. One good example would be prayer. A little while after I started going to my friend’s church, she invited me to a ministry call The Ramp (a ministry I, unfortunately, can no longer recommend to others, but for reasons I will not talk about in this testimony). It is a ministry mainly for people in college and high school. They did weekly services and had regular intercessory prayer meetings that would last two or three hours on average. The first time I went to one I could only pray for about five minutes before I didn’t really want to pray anymore. I came to the realization that I lacked compassion. I asked God at that meeting to give me compassion, and I started to develop a heart for prayer in the following months. I came to understand it as an absolutely integral aspect of Christianity (personal, petitional, and intercessory prayer) and learned that God can do wonderful things through it.

At the same time, I began to understand that Christianity was about much more than I had thought it was. This knowledge led me to develop the desire to fully follow Jesus. I used to think Christianity was about being able to go to heaven, attending church services, and not doing immoral things. I found out that eternal life was actually knowing God and having full life in this life and after that (John 17:3 and 10:10 respectively). Even my conceptions of the afterlife were refined. I found out about the future resurrection of everyone and all that it will entail. That is, the saints will only be in heaven till the resurrection, and then when they are given their new bodies at Jesus’ return, they will have work to do in the redeemed creation. I also began to realize what “church” is really about. It is basically any local group of Christians who commit to treat each other like family. This means they spend time with another, teach one another, encourage one another, and rebuke one another in order to become more like Jesus and help each other do good, especially in persuading people outside the church to follow Jesus. It is also a group who has leadership, a group that holds itself to God’s moral standards, and practices baptism and communion. I now understand David’s joy in Psalm 133 when he said, “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!” I have learned that the fullness of life is experienced by accepting his gift of eternal life through faith then living a life of good works and obeying His commands (not just the strictly moral ones) by faith.

I learned what worship actually had a lot to do with how one lives his life. It includes not only singing to God, playing instruments to God, dancing for God, or praying to God, but basically living the life God wants one to live. This involves offering one’s life as a living sacrifice to God (Romans 12:1). It is a sacrifice because living the life God wants one to live will involve giving up things and activities temporally or permanently (whether the things or activities are sinful or not). It is a “living” sacrifice because one does not of course literally sacrifice himself, but uses his life to partner with God in His work. God will of course, if we let Him, bring us to enjoy worship because the sacrifice that it is to live a life of good works and obedience, while painful, is what enables us to experience God’s best for us. Furthermore, since I realized God had saved His people to do good works (Ephesians 2:10), I came to develop a social and environmental consciousness, at a personal and political level. Of course, many non-Christians already have a deep social and environmental consciousness (and because of the good they do, they typically put most Christians to shame in this area of good works). As for me, if it weren’t for Jesus, I likely would have never developed this concern. I am amazed at all the wonderful works God saved us to do. Not only do they include some of my above examples, but other activities as well, and ones I haven’t even thought of or considered.

I was learning all this at the end of my senior year of high school. I had come to the point where I knew I wanted to follow Jesus completely, so I ended up getting baptized in April 2006. A few months later I started going to college and became a part of a church called Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship. I have come to see from the lives of the people there how much more I can become like Jesus. I’ve been challenged to do things I didn’t feel like doing because they were hard, but ended up helping me. During these last two years of college, I have also been learning about why Christianity is true, and why one should really follow Jesus. This has made it easier for me to be a witness and has motivated me to be more serious about the study of the Bible. Basically, I found out one should only follow Jesus if He truly is who He claimed to be, and if the person realizes he needs him, not someone he just wants to “try” (Mark 2:17). I learned that Jesus is shown to be the Messiah and Son of God only if He did rise from the dead. If He didn’t, then Christians should be pitied above all others because they believe something that isn’t true (1st Corinthians 15:12-19). At the same time, I learned about the evidence for the historicity of Jesus’ life and resurrection. It was a bit of surprise to find that God had given so much to help us come to accept Christ.

Finally, through all of this, I have developed a firm foundation on how one comes to be saved and receive eternal life. I had some ambiguity in my understanding of it, so I resolved to find out how the Bible says one gets saved. The problem is that we humans are no longer righteous before God once we sin, and since everyone does, no one is. God cannot fellowship with us once we aren’t righteous because of His nature, so we can’t know Him. Thus, we cannot even begin to walk in the fullness of life He has made us for. We are separated from Him by our sins. However, God showed His great love for us by coming to Earth as a man and gave up His life freely to endure the punishment of separation and shame that we deserved. This cleared the way for us to be considered righteous by God, so all we have to do is place our faith in Jesus (Romans 3:22). That should bring up the question of what the people who wrote the Bible meant by the word “faith”. Unfortunately, some people these days can have a bad understanding of it because there is now almost a 2000 year disconnect between our culture and the culture of the ancient near east. However, a little research can help one get a good idea of what they meant by faith. It is not just merely believing certain things about Jesus, asking for forgiveness of sins then moving on (although one accepts His forgiveness through faith), or a “blind leap of faith” even though one thinks there is no evidence or evidence against their faith. A good summary definition of it would be that it is a pledge of loyalty and trust based on evidence of performance. The evidence was chiefly Jesus’ resurrection then His miracles and teachings. All one has to do to accept this wonderful gift Christ has given us called “eternal life” and join in on this adventure with God is pledge one’s loyalty to Jesus and place one’s trust in Christ for salvation and everything that comes after."

Next, I'll quote a whole blog post I wrote from a certain angle on the Christian life.

"It's been too long since I've last blogged. Grad school can easily get in the way of things sometimes. Hopefully I'll be able to start posting at about my old pace again. Today, I'd like to talk about some of the implications of a good definition of faith. As I have said elsewhere of the Greek word that is translated as faith,

The typical usage in the NT is described on pages 72-75 in Handbook of Biblical Social Values by John J. Pilch and Bruce J. Malina. They point out that it was understood as a commitment of personal loyalty to someone that had shown himself to be reliable.

This idea that a major component of faith is loyalty immediately helps us see how faith must naturally result in good works. Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised that this aspect of faith was well understood by those who first started using the English word "Lord" to refer to Jesus. When I think of the words "loyalty" and "Lord," I think of one particular group of people who served lords in medieval times: Knights. I think they are a good metaphor for the Christian life because of how they help us understand what kind of mindset a Christian should have.

They were to be fiercely loyal to whoever their lord was, and when we think of an ideal knight, he was not only loyal, but demonstrated this by going out and performing great exploits in battle for the one he served. This should be our attitude for doing good in the world and fighting sin in ourselves (James 1:27). Paul also speaks of having a militant attitude with regard to these things.

Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

-2 Timothy 2:3-4 (ESV)

This should solidify in our minds the fact that Christian life is not about having an easy-going life waiting for heaven, but one where we must endure a war before we can go to our home country. And our longing for home should be focused on the One who is there whom we serve on earth and will meet. The writer of Hebrews says of him,

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

-Hebrews 1:1-4 (ESV)

Let us go out and do great exploits for the King, Jesus, who is at the right hand of the Majesty on high, much superior to angels and with a name more excellent."

To add a few more thoughts on the wonder of the Christian life, I'll borrow from C.S. Lewis. He called this world we can see the Shadowlands. I agree with this idea because if Christianity is true, then Yahweh and the things of him are the most real. Those realities matter more than what can we see.

Quite an interesting testimony. I find a parallel in that both of us, as we grew up, more or less solidified into the group we were already part of; me into lack of religion, you into Christianity. neither of us have much "street cred" as a former member of the other team, so to speak. Also, we both went from there and "took" the reigns, so to speak, and rather than passively just "joining" our respective ideologies, we became active researchers and proselytizers. Lest this sound too self-congratulatory, we cold also say that we both became OCD.

A few things I wonder, though:
-How influential were your parents in this development of your faith?
-How much have you encountered religious skeptics before, and how has it impacted you or your faith?
-Your feelings on a few specific concepts, like the Virgin Birth, the Rapture, the Devil, Exorcism, Transubstantiation, The Flood, and Creationism. Oh, and who goes to hell? (It's several big cans, I know -- you don't have to go into detail or support, we can do that in debate [though feel free], just some quick evaluations would be fine)

James - Atheist Admin wrote:
How influential were your parents in this development of your faith?

Not very. I still remember first having heard about the concept of getting saved and asked them about it. They said I should wait till I was older. I could've understood it then though.

James - Atheist Admin wrote:How much have you encountered religious skeptics before, and how has it impacted you or your faith?

A good amount through apologetics articles, forums, and conversations in person with people in college. It kept me from ever going through any serious phase of doubting because I never found their arguments compelling.

James - Atheist Admin wrote:Your feelings on a few specific concepts, like the Virgin Birth, the Rapture, the Devil, Exorcism, Transubstantiation, The Flood, and Creationism. Oh, and who goes to hell? (It's several big cans, I know -- you don't have to go into detail or support, we can do that in debate [though feel free], just some quick evaluations would be fine)

Virgin Birth: I think it's historical...

Rapture: Most of the ideas associated with this are from the "premillenial" camp. I'm in the "amillenial" camp, however. Basically this means everything predicted in the Gospels, and most of the everything in Revelation (tribulation, the beast, etc.) is held to have occurred in the first century. The "thousand years" of Revelation 20 is symbolic for a long period of time which started in 70 AD, and we are currently in. The world is to become more and more Christian during this time, then an apostasy will happen, after which Jesus will come back and raise everyone from the dead and judge them.

Devil and Exorcisms: Revelation 20 says Satan is bound in a certain way for the thousand years. The level of his and his demons' activity is up to debate.

Transubstantiation: I don't have that view of Communion.

The Flood: I think the text allows for it to be a local flood.

Creationism: I take Genesis to be historical narrative, but I also don't think that's mutually exclusive with evolution. I don't have a problem with it being true. I share John Walton's view articulated in

The Lost World of Genesis One and his Genesis NIV Application Commentary.

His slideshow at the link below gives a rundown of the view though.

Slideshow

Furthermore, since I don't believe in a natural/supernatural distinction, I don't call myself a theistic evolutionist. I explain more in my blog article linked to below.

Theistic Rain and Theistic Pregnancies