Love Wins: A Book Excerpt

Some Jesuses should be rejected.

Often times when I meet atheists and we talk about the
god they don't believe in, we quickly discover that I don't
believe in that god either.

So when we hear that a certain person has "rejected
Christ," we should first ask, "Which Christ?"

Many would respond to the question, "Which Jesus?"
by saying that we have to trust that God will bring those
who authentically represent the real Jesus into people's
lives to show them the transforming truths of Jesus's
life and message. A passage from Romans 10 is often
quoted to explain this trust: "How can they hear without
someone preaching to them?" And I wholeheartedly
agree, but that raises another question. If our salvation,
our future, our destiny is dependent on others bringing
the message to us, teaching us, showing us-what
happens if they don't do their part?

What if the missionary gets a flat tire?

This raises another, far more disturbing question:
Is your future in someone else's hands?

Which raises another question:
Is someone else's eternity resting in your hands?

So is it not only that a person has to respond, pray,
accept, believe, trust, confess, and do-but also that
someone else has to act, teach, travel, organize, fund-
raise, and build so that the person can know what to
respond, pray, accept, believe, trust, confess, and do?

At this point some would step in and remind us in
the midst of all of these questions that it's not that
complicated, and we have to remember that God has lots
of ways of communicating apart from people speaking
to each other face-to-face; the real issue, the one that
can't be avoided, is whether a person has a "personal
relationship" with God through Jesus. However that
happens, whoever told whomever, however it was done,
that's the bottom line: a personal relationship. If you
don't have that, you will die apart from God and spend
eternity in torment in hell.

The problem, however, is that the phrase "personal
relationship" is found nowhere in the Bible.

Nowhere in the Hebrew scriptures, nowhere in the New
Testament. Jesus never used the phrase. Paul didn't use
it. Nor did John, Peter, James, or the woman who wrote
the Letter to the Hebrews.

So if that's it,
if that's the point of it all,
if that's the ticket,
the center,
the one unavoidable reality,
the heart of the Christian faith,
why is it that no one used the phrase until the last
hundred years or so?

And that question raises another question. If the
message of Jesus is that God is offering the free gift of
eternal life through him-a gift we cannot earn by our
own efforts, works, or good deeds-and all we have to do
is accept and confess and believe, aren't those verbs?

And aren't verbs actions?

Accepting, confessing, believing-those are things we do.

Does that mean, then, that going to heaven is dependent
on something I do?

How is any of that grace?
How is that a gift?
How is that good news?

Isn't that what Christians have always claimed set their
religion apart-that it wasn't, in the end, a religion at
all-that you don't have to do anything, because God has
already done it through Jesus?

At this point another voice enters the discussion-the
reasoned, wise voice of the one who reminds us that it is,
after all, a story.

Just read the story, because a good story has a powerful
way of rescuing us from abstract theological discussions
that can tie us up in knots for years.

Excellent point.

In Luke 7 we read a story about a Roman centurion who
sends a message to Jesus, telling him that all he has to
do is say the word and the centurion's sick servant will be
healed. Jesus is amazed at the man's confidence in him,
and, turning to the crowd following him, he says, "I tell
you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel."

Then in Luke 18, Jesus tells a story about two people who
go to the temple to pray. The one prays about how glad
he is to not be a sinner like other people, while the other
stands at a distance and says, "God, have mercy on me, a
sinner."

And then in Luke 23, the man hanging on the cross next
to Jesus says to him, "Remember me when you come
into your kingdom," and Jesus assures him that they'll be
together in paradise.

So in the first story the centurion gives a speech about
how authority works, in the second story the man
praying asks for mercy, and in the third story the man
asks to be remembered at a future date in time.

In the first case, Jesus isn't just accepting and approving;
he's amazed.
And in the second case, he states that the man's words put
him in better standing with God than God's own people.
And in the third case, the man is promised that later that
very day he will be with Jesus in "paradise."