Who wants to live forever?

We see in the New Testament a few areas where Jesus is shown to be offering eternal life -- those who believe in Jesus have it. Or Paul saying that the wages of sin are death, but the free gift of eternal life comes from Jesus (or is something God offers to us through Jesus).

Yet we also have the concept of heaven and hell. Both hold the concept of an eternal existence. You either are eternally in Paradise, or eternally in a place that is rather unpleasant. Technically speaking, doesn't one have this eternal life regardless of where one ends up?

After all, that is what life is: existence. So wouldn't we logically say that when if God is offering someone eternal life, He is offering them the opportunity to exist forever? And if someone refuses this chance, that person will not in fact live forever? They'll cease to exist?

Except based on the heaven/hell theology, the person ends up in hell, which means the person is still existing. Does this mean we end up with a situation where while it does say that Jesus offers eternal life, "eternal life" means something other than the standard definition? Because if someone came up to me and said that s/he is offering me the chance to live forever, the implication is that I don't already possess the capability to live forever.

An Uber-Literal moment.

I was reading a book that had some paragraphs discussing marriage in this life, and how it carries over into the resurrected life. The argument was that there would be no married people when the Christians are resurrected, and pulled from the example of Jesus saying that the woman who had the seven husbands would not be the wife of any of them in the life to come, for people are neither married nor given in marriage.

Then it made the mention that above all else, a Christian husband and a Christian wife are a brother and sister in Christ. Which, if I take to the literal extreme ... means that a brother and a sister have married.

It was a rather odd moment for me.

Love Bomb.

Whenever I see someone essentially say that they aren't going to evangelize to a person (preach about Jesus), but rather just express the love of Christ to the person, I end up interpreting that sentence in the following way:

"I, the Christian, am loving you in order to get something out of you."

Essentially, the love has an ulterior motive. The Christian is hoping that the way s/he lives their life, or interacts with unbelievers, will be done in such a way as to make the unbeliever want what the believer has.

I can't help but find that to be a manipulative motive for loving a person. The intention is to produce a very specific result: get the unbeliever interested enough to make the unbeliever convert.

I don't get the same reaction if someone says that they love humanity because God created people, or they love others because of how much God loved them, and so how can they not express that love to everyone else?

I'd even prefer in your face evangelizing to the "convert them through love" approach. At least the former is being forthwright about his/her intentions. And while I doubt that every single Christian who has done the latter approach sees it as a backdoor approach (or maybe they do), it's also incredibly ... it's almost deceptive, in a way. The Christian is still trying to convince the unbeliever to convert, on some level.

Free will freeforall.

I recently saw a comment on free will that I'm trying to wrap my head around: God loves people too much to violate anyone's free will. So if a guy named Eric wants to kill Harry, and Eric is stronger, more capable than Harry, and really just has the power to do so, then God will not stop Eric from killing Harry. God does this out of love for all human free will.

I'm utterly at a lost as to how this type of God can be reliable or trustworthy. If God favors human free will that much, then how you can possibly rely on this God to protect you from anything in this life? Say Harry is a Christian -- why would he even bother praying to God to help save him from Eric? Or stop Eric? Isn't that essentially telling Harry that God loves Eric's free will more than he loves Harry's safety?

Or let's say Eric is about to abuse his five year old son. God loves Eric's free will more than the five year old's safety? Seriously?

Not only that, but if you truly love someone, there are times when you step in and violate their free will. If you know your best friend is about to commit suicide, you would try to get that person help, even take away the method of suicide. If you knew that your best friend was Eric, and about to kill Harry, wouldn't you do everything in your power to stop Eric? Plus, when you're in a relationship with someone, there is this trust that the other person will step in when you're about to do something stupid, or dangerous. That the other person loves you more than your ability to exercise your free will.

I deserve nothing, but I totally deserve to keep my money.

I had a recent thought about the connection between conservative Christians and the horror felt over a concept of "spreading the wealth." It's a generalization, yes, but one sparked by the recent US presidential election.

In many cases, I think we can say that conservative Christians are also Republicans, and also felt rather angry over the response to the infamous question from Joe the Plumber: how Obama wanted to "spread the wealth" and all that.

From what I've seen, the conservative Christian theology tells you that you deserve nothing more than to simply go to hell, but Jesus took the punishment you deserved, suffering the horrible fate that you deserve, all so you can go to heaven -- a place that you really don't deserve. Your good works, no matter what they are, earn you nothing. If you're really conservative, they're nothing more than "filthy rags," unless one has Jesus.

Yet much of the anger I saw in terms of Obama's comments was that Obama was taking their hard-earned money and giving it to people who did not earn it.

I'm wondering if that anger is a backlash against the theology that teaches someone they deserve to be tormented eternally, that they are filthy disgusting creatures in God's sight and can do nothing to remove that filth on their own. That any good works they do are from God, and yet anything bad they do is their own personal responsibility. Maybe there's a latent sense of injustice over that, which then translates into another sphere such as finances? Even though "spreading the wealth" somewhat echoes the concept of grace, which gives mercy and help to those who deserve it the least.

Especially when looking at those who did favor Obama's tax plan, which placed a higher burden on the wealthy, and wants a safety net for the poor and unfortunate. Many supporters of Obama would say that good works would count for something in the afterlife, that we do deserve good things in life.

Like I said, this is a generalization. Not every Republican would feel that no one deserves anything good, nor would every Democrat feel that we're all good people. But in watching how Sarah Palin motivated her crowd -- much of whom were conservative Christians -- and the words she used, it makes me wonder.

Credibly seeing.

I saw a comment on a blog recently about credible Christians leading by example -- if someone says that hating people is wrong, then we would see the Christians consistently try to not hate. The whole idea of "walk the walk, not just talk the talk."

A comment in response to that essentially said that Christians cannot that credible, because they're as sinful as everyone else. The real focus should be on announcing Jesus and what Jesus has done for everyone -- that would be much more valuable than trying to be credible.

I didn't post a response on that blog, as my response would've been a tangent. Yet this idea I see - Christians as sinful as everyone else - is the same problem I had with Tim Keller's book. Mr. Keller was going with the idea that you should actually expect non-Christians to behave in a better fashion that Christians. The idea in this comment is that Christians will behave no better and no worse than non-Christians. An idea we all certainly see in everyone we encounter ... yet then where's the validity behind the conversion experience? Not only that, what's the value in the salvation? There's no evidence at all of this "healing" in this life? Then what confidence does one have for something in the next life?

If someone says that Jesus saved them, gave them a new life, a new mind or a new heart ... shouldn't we see evidence of any of this? Otherwise, how can you back up your claim? It would be like an overweight person claiming that drinking Slim-fast would help you lose weight, just like it helped him. However, a year of Slim-fasts later, the overweight person still weights 300 lbs. You'd have no "faith" in Slim-fasts ability to do what was claimed.

Plus, isn't the whole idea of what Jesus did tied to making the believer the "new man?" That we would know his disciples based on their love for people, that there the fruits of the Spirit that should be evident in believers. I mean, if one is going to proclaim that Jesus has done this great thing, that claim has to be backed up with credible support.

But if becoming a Christian means that they won't be credible in their message, that the message in fact doesn't deliver upon what it says ... why would anyone become a Christian? It becomes empty rhetoric.

I am an old, old man.

“We know that the man we once were has been crucified with Christ, for the destruction of the sinful self, so that we may no longer be the slaves of sin, since a dead man is no longer answerable for his sin.” Romans 6:8

“Give up living like the pagans with their good-for-nothing notions. Their wits are beclouded, they are strangers to the life that is in God, because ignorance prevails among them and their minds have grown as hard as stone. Dead to all feeling, they have abandoned themselves to vice, and stop at nothing to satisfy their foul desires. But that is not how you learned Christ. For were you not told of him, were you not as Christians taught the truth as it is in Jesus? That, leaving your former way of life, you must lay aside that old human nature which, deluded by its lusts, is sinking towards death. You must be made new in mind and spirit, and put on the new nature of God’s creating, which shows itself in the just and devout life called for by the truth.” Ephesians 4: 17-24

“ … now that you have discarded the old nature with its deeds and have put on the new nature, which is being constantly renewed in the image of its Creator and brought to know God.” Colossians 3: 10-11

“If you are guided by the Spirit, you will not fulfill the desires of your lower nature. That nature sets its desires against the Spirit, while the Spirit fights against it.”

To the best of my knowledge, Paul has very little complimentary things to say about a person prior to that person finding him/herself in Christ. It's very simple for him. The old man was someone who was full of vices and negative lusts and essentially just not a pleasant person. The new man -- the one created new in Christ -- is a reformed, more pleasant person.

So the unsaved is the "old man." Therefore, if we go back to person A (the unsaved) and person B (the saved), when person B is praying that person A receives salvation, does that not put person A in the category of the "old man?" For surely person A cannot qualify as the "new man," for person A is not saved.

Yet person A is also claiming person B to be a close friend, and accepts person A just as s/he is. Based on how Paul tends to describe the old man, who in their right mind would accept that type of person as a close friend? And if we take this exactly as Paul describes the old man, does this not mean that Person B is supposed to view person A as this lust-filled, vice-seeking, nature-fighting-against-Spirit ... person?

In many cases, I don't think evangelicals follow this black and white thinking, and divide people into these neat, organized categories. On the other hand, maybe they do, as I've seen the reason why an unsaved person is better behaved is because the person secretly believes in God. Or there's the idea that people are better behaved than Christians because that's what their religion teaches them -- they receive heaven based on good works, and thus the good behavior is really just driven by selfishness. And there are evangelicals out there who do view the world in these narrow compartments, absolutely convinced that that all unsaved people are just soaked through and through with sinsinsin, and are just waiting to burst forth and do all that sinful stuff.

I think person B falls into the category of an unnarrow viewpoint, to some degree. However, I'm also thinking that person B has no idea of the implications behind the sincere desire that person A be saved, and what that entails about person A's character. That it means person B is calling person A an "old man" and Biblically, that's not the most complimentary thing to say.

But person A is left with the feeling that person B cannot one the one hand say that person A is a very close friend, and wants person A to trust person B, and then at the same time hold this belief that person A is only the "old man." And that's not even getting into the idea behind certain Bible verses about how the only reason why one rejects Jesus is because of this burning desire to cling to the darkness. It's a little hard to maintain any sort of deep friendship when person B's theology leaves little room to see something positive in others.

Yet, I'm also wondering if maybe person A is just being a little hypersensitive.