salvation

A black-and-white outlook on life and salvation is no good, or... I've found that so far. The idea that if you have a certain piece of knowledge or have had a certain experience that you are set, and if you lack it, you are doomed, just leads to clawing away and worrying and cowering in fear of God, who doesn't want us to fear (i.e. be TERRIFIED of a wrathful, vindictive god) Him, rather, just fear (i.e. know that He is Lord) Him.

I think if Jesus wanted us to fear Him, He'd have said something other than "my yoke is easy, my burden is light." Maybe something more like, "I'm going to torture you from the inside out until you realize you are destined to burn in hell."

There are a few examples of things that have torn me apart from the inside out, because I thought they were indicators of God and/or salvation... only to find later on that only God is God and Jesus is the only way. Sometimes, I'd be on the brink of giving up everything because what I believed was true was no longer true.

1. Intellectual "I know God exists"-ness
This much is evident from 99.9% of the time I spend in life. I desperately want to be right. This is visible in every part of my life, and particularly my religious life. Growing up, whenever an atheist or agnostic friend would challenge me with something about God's existence, I would beat them over the head with "A Case for a Creator," or some cosmological argument that I was sure was foolproof and had me convinced. My desperation to be right in this aspect fuels a lot of my insecurity. I'm the stupid one who will read through all 40 pages of comments on Youtube pages - debates between Christians and atheists - all the while praying that the Christian prevails. By the time I get to the end of each, though, I find no conclusion. No one has ever proved the other wrong.

It doesn't depend on the strength of your logic or how many pieces of evidence you pull up. It all hinges on faith. Atheists carry a deep faith that God doesn't exist; others carry a deep faith that God exists. That is the premise on which their arguments lie.. and you can never prove or disprove those premises.

This much is clear. When people cry "reason" and say that "reason" is the only way, they're lying. People aren't exactly rational. Like smokers, for example. You know it causes lung cancer; you know it's going to kill you, but you do it anyway. It just doesn't make sense. Sometimes, things make complete sense and yet we still don't believe them because we don't want to. And I just read somewhere that the scary thing about people is that they can convince themselves to believe whatever they want to believe. That's pretty true.


This isn't to say that my heart doesn't shake every time I hear some debate between Christians and atheists. I feel like I still need intellectual affirmation of my faith... and every time doubt seeps in, it's usually in this aspect - intellectual understanding of God, whether the whole thing makes sense or not. It's just hard to shake. 

2. Church attendance/reputation
"Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces." (Luke 11:43)

Yup. That's me.

This one's a relatively new development, because I've never been regularly to church until the past 2 or 3 years.

I live and die by my reputation. Academic reputation, athletic reputation, social reputation, you name it, I want to preserve my image. I care all too much about what people think of me and how far up I am on an invisible social ladder that I've created. Though I thought I scorned the success of the material world, my "success" shows itself in different ways. Like in church. Probably the worst place to decide that you need to be better than everyone else.

The truth is that faith isn't a contest. God loves us all just the same, and I am saved because of Christ, not because of my reputation, how many times I've been to church, or where I stand on the Christian hierarchy of wisdom and greatness. Doing that would be comparable to making myself a Level 23 Upper Echelon Scientologist of Power. 

3. Being good
Christians and people who identify as Christians are sometimes the biggest roadblocks to getting closer to God. You see the way that the Westboro Baptist Church calls themselves Christians, and then you see what they do. And then you wonder if believing in Jesus is worth it if it makes you a bigot or a crusader.

I put a lot of weight on how "good" a person is. I mean I spent my entire life trying to be good, and being Christian is just a means to that end. I think I missed the point. One of the most common comments I see from atheists is, "You can be good without Jesus, so you don't need him!"

Well, it just so happens, that yes, you can be a wonderful person without knowing Jesus. But just the same, I've realized that making yourself feel good by being a wonderful person is stupid because at least for me, I'd have to put on one heck of a show to be a good person. I mean it's really stressful and tiring to project some sort of image of a person you're not. On top of that, this doesn't really help with anything other than PR, because if you have some hidden problem, like pedophilia or a closet addiction to pornography, as long as the world doesn't know about it, it means you're still good. Since you're good on the outside, it doesn't matter who you really are. (And scarily, you really can convince yourself you're a good person. I do it all the time.)

And part of knowing Christ is knowing exactly who you yourself are... a shameful wretch of a person who deserves nothing, and being okay with it. Being okay that you're broken and not "good," and you never will be "good enough" (because you can't be perfect), because Jesus makes up for the 99.5% of goodness that you could never be.

I learned what grace means through how messed up Christians are. When I see Christians baring their souls and sharing what makes them broken, what makes them feel ashamed, and when they say it openly because they know that they are only fooling themselves by pretending they are fine, I see what makes a Christian different. Not that Christians are better or worse than the average atheist, but because Christians have a hope and faith that in spite of their failures, the only One who matters loves them exactly for who they are. No pretending. No shame. 

4. Emotions
This one's a rough one. Some days, I just get into sad, and contemplative emo mode. And then I start questioning everything. Like God, Jesus, the Bible, the whole thing. I go to bed, the next morning I wake up and I'm fine.

I used to think that the presence of God meant that I would have to come out of the sanctuary every Sunday crying and all emotionally charged because of what I just experienced. Otherwise, the Holy Spirit cannot have been in attendance. But I realize that the emotional high is more like a side dish to the greater entree of the love of God. You get it some days, some days not, but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter. It's a blessing. That's it.


It's like when I get pissed off at my parents and punch a hole in the wall, I am pissed off, but that doesn't change the fact that they love me. I may question their love, I may question their motives, but they just know better sometimes. And in my limited view, I think that they're holding something back from me on purpose because they hate me and want the world to fall on top of me, but that's just not true. Emotions lie. 

5. Correct theology/perfectionism
Simply put, if you've been a Christian since you were 23 but you didn't understand what the word "sin" truly meant until you were 40, does that mean you weren't a Christian when you were 23?

We're never gonna understand the whole thing. That's not to say we shouldn't strive to understand it. I think I get myself tied up in a knot because my perfectionism tells me, "If I can never be perfect, why try?"

But the truth is that we learn to be good because our Father loves us. We learn to live for Him and love Him back; we learn how to be His children. It's not the other way around - no matter how much we try, we can never earn His love; we can never make Him love us. When we do that, it just means we rejected free love in favor of our selfish and independent attempts. We miss the mark and spit on the love offered us.

It's because He loved us first that we learn to love in return.


Faith is really a relationship. There's nothing else to it. I don't hinge my relationship with my friends or family upon one thing or characteristic about them. That's why I shouldn't put my faith in anything other than Christ, because those things just melt under pressure.