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This is an ongoing series in which I am addressing questions that internationals in AIF have asked.

Q: What do I say to someone who criticizes me for going to church?

 A:  The Short answer: Attending church is important … I can’t grow in Christ if I don’t go to church … I really enjoy it … I want to be with God’s people … God wants me to worship with His people.

If someone questions the fact that you attend church every week, any of these answers works, and you probably can think of others. In that sense, I don’t know that you need much advice from me. Listen to the Spirit and give them a simple, straightforward explanation of why you go to church. When people question you, they are generally not looking for a big, long discourse.

The Real Issue:  In most cases, people who criticize you for going to church are not genuinely interested in your reasons for going. They are more likely upset that you don’t do something else that they would rather see you do. Maybe they want to go shopping with you or watch a game or go to the park, but you tell them you’re going to church. Sometimes they have negative stereotypes of Christians and are concerned that you are spending too much time with “those” people. They don’t want you to become just like their stereotype.

The key to your response is not so much having the perfect answer but being OK with the criticism. You say people criticize you for going to church.  So what?  Let them criticize you. You have to walk with God, and the closer you walk with God, the less you will be swayed by people who want you to walk away from God. I am not saying, “Don’t care for your friend or family member.” Rather I am saying, “Don’t let the criticism get into your head.” Spend regular time with your local church, and if criticism comes, then criticism comes.

It is far more important for you as a Christian to understand that if you are to walk with God, you must be with His people regularly. If you abandon your local church, your faith will eventually wither away. In fact, if you abandon your local church, your faith has already begun to wither. You need the body of Christ.

Going Deeper:  I have given you the basic principle because your question is framed in the broadest way possible. But you might dig deeper. When someone criticizes your practice of going to church, you may have an open door for a spiritual conversation. They brought the topic up, so ask them what their specific issue is. You may have an opportunity to share more than just your reasons for going to church.

This blog is a continuation of a series of questions that internationals in our church have asked.

 Q: If someone asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you, how would you respond?

 A: I suppose I should begin answering this question by stating what my hope is. Biblical hope has certainty just as faith does. Biblical hope is not the sort of hope people mean when they say, “I hope it will be sunny tomorrow.” That’s something more like a wish. In addition, Biblical hope deals with the future. Thus, the hope that is in me is a certainty that my future will be glorious in Christ.

Now. To the question. What reason can I give for the hope that is in me? Lots of reasons actually. In fact I could give a thousand reasons, depending on the context of the question. Some of those reasons would deal with apologetics. Others would be personal. Some would deal with what I see in life. Others with what I see in the church. Still others with what I see in me. But, in the end, all of them would somehow deal with what I see in God through Christ as related by the Scriptures.

So why am I certain that I have a glorious future in Christ? First of all, the Scriptures promise me this. I have an inheritance imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for me (I Pet 1:4). I will see his face (Rev 22:4). I have eternal life (I Jn 5:11). We could go on. I understand that for some people, the Bible is not a reason, but you’re asking me for my reason, and that will be part of my answer because I’ve seen that the Bible is reliable.

Second, I see what Jesus has already done. If He loved me so much that He went to the Cross to pay for my sin, then will He not graciously give me all things? (Rm 8:32) The Cross is both the means to my hope and the proof that God will grant me that hope. I do not need to worry about the love of God for me. I see it plainly in the Cross.

Third, I have God’s Spirit, and His Spirit is like a down payment, a guarantee of a future inheritance (Eph 1:13-14). His Spirit gives me abundant peace and joy from the inside. Christ makes my heart bubble over. I see as plain as the sun that Christ fulfills what He promises here on Earth. How much more then can I trust Him for what He promises later?

These are the reasons I would first choose to give. These reasons may then initiate a conversation like “How do you know the Bible is reliable?” Or “How do you know Jesus died and rose again?” Those questions then take us into the realm of apologetics, and there are good answers to those questions, but they are not the question you asked me.

We have been addressing real questions posed by internationals in our fellowship.  Today’s question deals with suffering.

Q: How do I endure longsuffering/agony in this fallen world without falling into sin?

 A: This question certainly fits the theme of I Peter that we have been preaching through, and I suppose I need to begin with a disclaimer. When we deal with suffering, it is much easier for me to talk than to do. I make no claims of being one who suffers well. So as I point out a path, I must tell you up front that that path is hard.   It is easier to see it than to walk it just as it is easier to see the path up Mt. Everest than to walk it. Nonetheless here are a few principles that Scripture teaches.

Suffering is a Normal Part of the Christian Life 

If you know in advance that suffering is something God promises you (Jn 16:33; Ph 1:29), you will be better prepared when it comes. And, yes. It will come. If, however, you believe a prosperity gospel that says that suffering shows your lack of faith, then you will be ill-prepared when suffering knocks on your door. In fact, you will be questioning your faith. Therefore, the first thing I want to say is that you should not be surprised when suffering comes as if it were some strange thing (I Peter 4:12).

Focus on Eternal Things

Suffering is a consequence of sin. It is, thus, a reminder of the transitory nature of earth. Paul said, “our light and momentary afflictions are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (II Cor 4:17). Jesus said that it is in this world where we shall have tribulations. But Scripture shows us that when we leave this world “he shall wipe away every tear” (Rev 21:4). In other words, this world equals tribulation. Eternity equals peace. When an athlete focuses on the championship trophy, that focus helps him get through the grueling workout. He sees that the hardship is temporary, and the reward is worth it. He has a goal at the end. Paul strained for what lies ahead and pressed on toward the goal of the upward call in Christ (Ph 3:13-14). So must we.

Walk with God

This is easier said than done, and perhaps I am stating the obvious, but your overall walk with God affects everything. As I have said before, a healthy person handles stress better than a sick one. Spiritually, this principle is the same. Spiritually healthy people handle difficulty better than spiritually weak people. And just as physical health involves many different things — eating right, exercising, getting good sleep, shunning obvious dangers, maintaining healthy relationships, reducing stress, having a proper work balance — so too does spiritual health involve many different things. Spend time daily in God’s Word, put your heart into the Scriptures, pray from the heart, share your faith, show integrity in your dealings with others, give yourself to a local church, find a way to serve the body of Christ, abstain from the passions of your flesh, and more. If you have a heart given to Christ and not to your earthly desires, you will be better able to endure suffering without sinning.

Commit to the Process

Sometimes when people ask questions about how we should handle a specific situation, what they want is a magic formula — two or three specific steps that they can immediately practice. They want to take a pill and make the pain go away. But God isn’t really a God of the five steps to reducing stress. His solutions are deeper than that. He wants you. Heart. Soul. Mind. Strength. He is not particularly interested in a few magic steps. His method is to build men and women.   And frankly, one of the tools He most uses to build men and women is the suffering you mention in your question.

When a surgeon does open heart surgery, the patient willingly submits himself to having his chest cut open. Why? Why go through all the pain? You know the answer. It is because the patient believes that his heart will be better off with the surgery. The patient then must trust the surgeon. This is how it is with God and suffering. You see, your heart and my heart are filled with gunk, and God, in His mercy, puts us on the operating table and cuts us open in order to work on our hearts. And “suffering” is often the name we give to God’s surgery. It hurts, yes. But can you trust the surgeon? When you see that your heavenly surgeon is trustworthy, you will be more willing to commit to the process.

Q: If I do wrong again and again, I feel guilty. I think it makes my mind hard, but I can’t stop. What can I do?

A: People have written entire books on this question. Therefore, like many other questions in this series, my answer will stick to broad principles and merely scratch the surface.

What you describe is what Paul describes in Romans 7: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate … For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (vv 15, 18-19) Paul concluded from his experience that “sin … dwells in my members.” (23) In other words, he saw not just that he sins but that he is a sinner from the inside out. Your experience should make you see the same thing.

Imagine for a moment that a three-year-old boy tried to wrestle against the Olympic gold medalist in wrestling. The boy would not stand a chance. The gold medalist would defeat him, and after the boy lost, if he decided to wrestle again, the gold medalist would defeat him again. And again. And again. As many times as they wrestled, the gold medalist would win. He is much stronger than the boy. And much craftier in the art of wrestling.

Now you are the three-year-old, and sin is the gold medalist, and every time you get on the mat with sin, you lose. Sin is stronger than you. And craftier. We have to see this, and sometimes it takes the experience you describe of sinning over and over and being unable to stop ourselves to see how weak we are. The sin is not good, but when you begin to see the depths of your sin, that insight is a necessary step toward righteousness. This is when you begin to see the need for grace. This is when you begin to call upon God and say, “I can’t live without you!”

When you begin to see that you are sinful to the core, you need to deal with two things. The first is your feelings of guilt, and the second is the business of beginning to live in righteousness. The gospel deals with both these things.

First, let’s talk about your guilt feelings. Those feelings are certainly natural, but if you are in Christ, you need to understand that the sin is gone — it’s covered by the blood of Christ. You must believe this. You must hold onto it. The Cross is God’s remedy against overwhelming guilt. It is not an excuse to sin. We do not say, “Oh great! God cleanses my sin so let me roll around in it.” That thinking is an abuse of the Cross. But when we do sin, we confess it and say, “Praise you, Lord, that you have made me clean in Christ.” John said “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (I Jn 1:9)

Listen. You may be living in Romans 7 and may have committed the same sin for the 1000^th time. You may be tired of committing the same sins, and you don’t think God could ever forgive you for disobeying Him again and again. But if you are in Christ, you are clean. Period. You may not feel clean, but your feelings do not match reality. It’s time to see reality. Through the Cross, Christ has justified you, reconciled you to Himself, redeemed you from sin, and forgiven all your wrongs. Instead of doubting these truths, believe them. Praise God for them. That is how you fight the guilty feelings. You dwell on the love of God shown through the work of the Cross and you get back up.

The second part of your response will deal with living in righteousness. We must understand that while Christ may forgive our sins again and again, He does not forgive so that we may continue in sin. Forgiveness is true — praise the Lord it is — but it is not the end of the story. God is not interested in merely forgiving broken people. He wants to transform them.   The gospel is more than forgiveness. It is a new life.

From your question, however, I am guessing that sometimes you do not see this new life. This again is where the gospel comes in. In Christ, you are not just forgiven. You are new. And just as it may not feel as if you are forgiven, so too, it may not feel as if you are new. But you are new. Whether you feel it or not. The same Scripture that says you are justified and forgiven also says that you are dead to sin and alive to God (Rm 6:1-11), and that you are sanctified or holy (I Cor 1:2, 30; 6:9-11; Eph 1:4; Heb 10:10). This is your identity. Scripture says that in Christ you are clean, new, and holy. Those things are facts. We then need to align our feelings with the facts.

Please do not misunderstand. I am not saying we are perfect. Christians still sin, but even when we sin, we are still holy in Christ. It’s who we are in Him. The work of living out a holy life actually begins by believing that in Christ we are holy. We walk by faith, not by sight. So you can begin by believing that you are dead to this sin that you keep doing.

Next, it is important to know that fighting sin is not a matter of fighting sin. Think of it this way. In the beginning of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo likes a girl named Rosalind. He can’t get her off his mind. His friend Benvolio comes and tries to get him off of Rosalind, and Father Laurence chides him for thinking on Rosalind, but no one succeeds. That is, until Romeo meets Juliet. Then his passion for Rosalind disappears. “Rosalind? Who is she?” Romeo could not fight his passion for Rosalind until he found a passion for someone else. Fighting sin is the same way. You will not defeat sin by saying, “I won’t sin. I won’t sin. I won’t sin.” You will fight sin by finding a passion for Christ. Fighting sin is not a matter of keeping yourself from sin. Instead it is a matter of giving yourself to Christ. When you lose yourself in Christ you will begin to find your lifestyle changing.

Therefore, in this process of overcoming a sin that you keep falling into, I want to point you to Christ. I also want you to understand that in Christ your identity is new. You are no longer the old you who likes to argue or drink or view pornography. You are dead to those things. You are alive to God. God does not change us by changing our behavior. Instead, He changes our behavior by changing us. Therefore, do not focus on the behavior. Focus on Christ and on who He has made you to be through the gospel. Righteousness is His work, and if we will trust Him and passionately follow Him, then “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.” (Ph 1:6)

If you want to read more, the two best resources I have read on this topic are The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification by Walter Marshall (a puritan from the 1600s) and The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee (Ni To Sheng). The book by Nee is the easier of the two to read.

The following question came from an international in our worship service.

Q: One of my relatives passed away when I was back home. And we had a three-day worship for him …  I know this situation will come again in the future because of the culture and what people think. So do you have suggestions on how to deal with this problem?

 A: I’m glad you see ancestor worship to be a problem. Not everyone does. Sometimes people view ancestor worship as just a cultural way to express grief and honor to a relative who has died. You, however, see that while your cultural practices may indeed be expressing grief and honor, they are also doing something else.

What then do you do?

1.  The first thing I would say is that you need to commit your heart and soul regularly to the Word of God, to prayer, and to God’s people. These things are essential to walking with God. I am not talking here about a specific course of action concerning this situation. I am instead talking about maintaining your spiritual health. This is just common sense. Healthy people handle difficulties better than sick people. Spiritually it is no different. You will need specific direction and strength to do God’s will. Both those things come from God. If you are not walking with God, you will conform to the culture in most every practice, but if you are walking with God, you will be in a much better condition to honor God at this difficult time.   Maintain your walk with God. Don’t let that slip.

2.  I would recommend that you find a mature believer from your culture and talk to him or her about this. I have not walked through this issue personally, but that believer probably has, and he or she will be able to give you more specific counsel than I can here. My response will stick with broad Biblical principles.

3.  It is important in this situation that you honor your family. Your family needs to know that you love and respect them, even if you might not be able to perform every function they would like you to. This means that your attitude is important. You are not to be disrespectful or arrogant about burial customs, even if you disagree with them. If you must say “no” to something, let your family know that you love them and that you want to honor them. They may interpret your “no” as disrespect, but don’t actually be disrespectful, for then you give them evidence to confirm what they think.

In order to show respect, I believe it is important for you to participate in as many of the funeral customs as you can without violating your conscience. Then, if you must say “no” to the request that you pray to a dead man, your family will see that you are making distinctions. If you say “yes” as much as you can, you are buying some trust.

But what if every aspect of the funeral and successive ceremonies requires you to violate your conscience? In other words, what if you can’t say “yes” to anything? First, I doubt that will be true. When someone dies, you will have people to visit, care to give, arrangements to make, and all sorts of activities going on. I believe you will have an opportunity to help. Death is an open door for ministry. But if the main ceremonies violate your conscience, you may need to skip them. You need to be prepared for that, and if you do skip them, you need to find another way to honor and respect your relative and family. The Holy Spirit will be crucial in communicating to you where you have a green light and where you have a red light.

4.  Because you need to honor your family, you will need to communicate well. Your family will not understand why you refuse to hold a vigil for the dead. You need to be clear to them where your boundaries are and why. If you must skip something, let your family know that your reason has nothing to do with disrespect and everything to do with the fact that you see the spiritual reality in a different way. Because you see the spiritual reality in a different way, you show honor in a different way, and you need to communicate that. They need to know that you are not rejecting them. What exactly you say, I will leave between you and the Holy Spirit.

5.  Death brings out the spiritual side of the human race, and our funeral and burial customs often reflect specific spiritual beliefs.   What you want to avoid is personal involvement in or endorsement of an alternate spiritual system. Worship of the dead, praying to the dead, leaving food out for the dead to eat, holding vigils for the dead, burning incense to the dead, reading unbiblical spiritual writings, and other similar practices are tied to a spiritual system. In Christ, you do not want to participate in that system.

Of course, your family may perform such practices while not believing any of the spiritual stuff. That does not mean, however, that the spiritual stuff is absent. When you pray to someone who is not God, you are doing something spiritual whether you know it or not. And if your family does not believe the spiritual teachings, their unbelief may be a path toward helping them understand you. That’s common ground.

6.  Some questions to ask yourself to help navigate what you can and cannot do.

• Is the practice I am being asked to do tied to an alternate spiritual belief system? Not every funeral custom involves unbiblical spirituality. If someone asks you to bring food to the widow, you may be just caring for the widow. If a funeral custom involves viewing a body, you may be merely showing respect. If you are asked to give a speech about your memories of the person, you may be showing him honor. None of these practices is necessarily tied to an unbiblical belief. You can think of other such practices.

• How central are the spiritual practices to what I am being asked to attend? Let me illustrate. Are you being asked to attend a worship service for the dead? Or a memorial that may include objectionable elements? In the first situation, the whole point of the event involves an unbiblical spiritual purpose. In the second situation, the whole point of the event may be to show respect to your dead relative. In the first situation, your presence could be considered an endorsement of the spiritual belief system. That’s the point of the event. In the second situation, your presence is not necessarily an endorsement of the spiritual practices that go on. That’s not why you are there. You’re there to honor your grandfather. In reality, over the course of several days, you may be asked to participate in both types of events.

• Are you an observer or a practitioner? Are you watching someone burn the incense or are you burning it? Are you merely present when someone asks the dead for good fortune or are you asking the dead yourself? Do your parents have an altar to the dead in their home or do you have one in your home? Do you merely see the feast left to the ghosts or are you laying out the feast? It is true that in some situations, God may not want you even to observe, for sometimes observation is participation. But that is not always the case, and when you move from observing to practicing, you are going to a different level. Observing may be OK in some situations. You can’t control what other people do. But you can control what you practice.

7.  Be prepared for difficulty. Peter tells his readers that they are aliens, exiles, foreigners, outsiders in their land (I Pet 1:1,17; 2:11). Christ makes us an alien where we live. In the case of ancestor worship, you see this. In Christ, you have become a spiritual alien within your own family. This is not bad. In fact, you can love your family better because of Christ in you, but it does cause problems. Your family may be angry. Your parents may slander and insult you because of your stance just as the Roman culture in the first century slandered and reviled the Christians Peter wrote to (I Pet 3:9, 16-17). You may face difficulty, but in Christ you are victorious in the end. Let that fact encourage you. Be patient with your family. They do not understand Christ. And if you must suffer their scorn, do so with joy, for God sees your faithfulness and He will reward it in the end.

I pray that when this happens again, Christ will fill you with His wisdom, grace, and strength to honor Him and your family.

AIF has been preaching through I Peter on Sundays, and to make I Pet 3:15 practical, we took questions about Christianity last week and answered them. If you want to listen to those answers, go to the media page on this website and click on the sermon for Feb 19^th. On that day, however, we had many more questions than we had time for, and since we will not devote more time in church to those questions, I thought I would take time and address some of them in the blog. Today is the first week of that project. This means that I will be taking a break covering the Christian teachings on the human race.

Q: Why Christianity and not other religions?

A: Wow. That’s a hundred questions all in one. If a Muslim asked that, he would likely mean, “Why Christianity and not Islam?” If a Jew asked it, he would likely mean, “Why Christianity and not Judaism?” If a universalist asked it, he would mean, “Why Christianity and not any religion?” And my answer would be a bit different to each of those situations. Therefore, for the purposes of this blog, I will have to paint with broad brushstrokes, but please understand that I would not normally paint this way in a live situation with a real person. Instead, I would first ask some questions to see where this person is coming from: “Why do you ask the question? Which religion do you think is as good as Christianity? Why?” I would then address my answers to the specifics, but here I can’t do that.

So then, Why Christianity and not other religions? Here are some thoughts:

1.  Let’s turn the question on its head for a minute and ask, “Why other religions and not Christianity?” OR “Why no religion?” OR “Why all religions and not one?” If we are going to ask the question one way, we should be able to ask it any of those other ways as well. Now I’m not saying that a Muslim or a Hindu will give you no reasons to adopt his faith, but I am saying that if you see the question as a sort of criticism of Christianity, then it is equally a criticism of any belief —including the beliefs of the person who asks it.

2.  Why Christianity and not other religions? Let me give a short answer with an explanation. The short answer is Jesus. I know that may sound trite, and I don’t mean it to be. I’m dead serious.  You see, Jesus sets Christianity apart from all other religions. In no other religion will you find anything like the Christian teaching that God visited Earth to save people from themselves. This idea is radical. The Bible teaches that in Jesus, God came to Earth to die, that His death was the payment for sin, that He bodily rose from the grave on the third day, and that all who trust in Him are made new now and will inherit His future later. This death and Resurrection brings you to God, and the One who did the work is Himself your Creator, to whom you will bow.

These teachings are either true or false. If they are false, then Christianity is the biggest hoax ever played upon the human race. But if Christianity is true, then other religions will not lead you to God. If the problem of the human race is that “your sins have separated you from your God” (Is 59:2), and if God came to Earth to remove your sin and called you to trust in what He had done, then you cannot move toward God by praying to idols in your living room, by emptying yourself of desire, or by fasting at Ramadan.

Let me put it simply. If Jesus is risen from the dead, then all these other options are not options. If Jesus is not risen from the dead, then Christianity is not an option. You can’t have Jesus and other religions at the same time.

3.  Why Christianity and not other religions? Let me describe what I said above in reverse. Let’s suppose all religions could get you to God.   Why then would God need to send His Son to die on a Cross? If you were God, would you submit yourself to the pain of Crucifixion for no reason? If the Cross of Christ is not necessary for human salvation, why go through with it?

4.  Why Christianity and not other religions? I find Christianity to be the most realistic to the human condition and the most focused on God. I’m going to make general statements for the sake of space, but here is how most other religions work. In Buddhism, you practice the philosophy and reach nirvana. In Islam, you do good deeds, including the Five Pillars, and maybe Allah takes you to heaven. In Hinduism, you live a good life, worship the gods and goddesses, practice the right rituals, and you escape the cycle of rebirth. The central point of these religions is what you do. Christianity is quite the opposite. The central point of Christianity is what God has done. The Cross and Resurrection are God’s work, not yours. This is immensely freeing. This means that you do not have to perform to perfection in order to attain God. God has attained you. In Christ, God has given you a gift. Himself. In Christianity, our responsibility is not to perform but to say, “thank you.” It takes faith to say “thank you,” but when we do so from the heart, God comes to live inside us. He makes us new creatures, and we then go on to live new lives.   The new life does not bring us to God. God brings us to the new life.

This puts a greater emphasis on the glory of God. In addition, it is the simplest religion on the planet. I don’t mean simplistic, just simple. In Christ, salvation is a gift. This fact makes salvation accessible to everyone on Earth. A three-year-old with a right heart can do this.

5.  Why Christianity and not other religions? If you have been following what I said above, you see that you cannot have Christianity and other religions together. They operate on different principles. Whether it is Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, spirit religions, whatever, you are going to have to perform. You will have to be good in order to achieve the ultimate goal. You will have to perform the prayers or the incense or the rituals or get rid of your sin. But Christianity says that you don’t have to do any of that stuff. God loves you and has died for you while you were yet a sinner (Rm 5:8). Christianity says, “Come as you are. Confess your sin. Believe that Christ has wiped it away, and receive the gift of God.”

Christians call this approach grace, and the reality is that you can’t have a grace-based religion and a performance-based religion at the same time. The moment performance is part of your salvation, grace isn’t. These two approaches can’t both be true. You will have to choose which you think is the better approach. If you pick performance, I hope you perform well because God is holy. If you pick grace, you’re picking Christ.

Those are a few reasons why I would say Christianity and not other religions.

This past week my daughter, Rebekah, made a wreath out of paper roses. She made it for a purpose. She wanted to give it as a gift to my wife, and she wanted it to be pretty. Then on Tuesday, she made an apple pastry. It, too, had a purpose: she wanted us to eat it. The reality is that everything we make we make for a purpose. When Ford makes a car, the car has a purpose. When a construction company builds a home, the home has a purpose. A screw has a purpose. A broom has a purpose. A painting has a purpose. A doorknob has a purpose. Everything we make has a purpose. In fact, if no purpose existed, we wouldn’t make anything. And the purpose doesn’t always have to be physical. Sometimes the purpose is simply to show love, like my daughter’s wreath. Sometimes the purpose may be to learn or to explore. Sometimes the purpose may be to express beauty. But our experience shows that created things have a purpose, and based on what we can see, they have a purpose 100% of the time. When you find something created, you find a purpose. Period.

OK.  What then do we do with this universal human desire for purpose? The desire is certainly not proof that there is a purpose, but it does seem as if, deep down, we humans have yearnings you would expect us to have if we were created. Created things have purpose; we want purpose. Hmm.

Now this desire we have for purpose is not just generic. We do not want merely for life to have meaning in some vague sense; we each desire personal fulfillment in our own lives. Purpose gets personal. You want to reflect the purpose for which you exist. You do. This is what a fulfilling life would be. The pursuit of purpose is a pursuit of fulfillment.

Even the atheist wants this. He wants to be helpful, useful or good. He wants to positively impact people. He does not wish to let life pass by without living it. The pursuit of “the good life” is a pursuit of fulfillment. The grabbing of power, the quest for influence or fame, the indulging of pleasure are all attempts to gain fulfillment and purpose from life. The single woman thinks a husband will fulfill her, so she pursues one. The executive thinks that turning around a flailing corporation will fulfill him, so he pours his life into the project. The young couple think a better home and nicer vacations will fulfill them, so they work toward that end. A father and mother believe that a respectful son will fulfill them, so they live for him. When people pursue whatever they pursue, they are really pursuing fulfillment. They want purpose.

But this pursuit is hopeless apart from God. Without God all the money in the world will not satisfy. Fame, influence, accomplishments, seeing the world, sexual encounters, a husband and wonderful children all fail to deliver what we hope they will. Many of those things are good; but when we try to make them ultimate, they cannot fill the shoes. Ultimacy can be met only through that which is ultimate, and life on earth was never created to be that thing. The good things in life are just pictures. They are not the real thing. I may keep a picture of my wife on my computer and pull it up and look at her and derive some enjoyment from it, but the picture will not hold me, talk to me or care for me. If I want those things, I must leave the picture behind and go home to the reality. The pursuit of earth is an attempt to replace God with His gifts. It is pursuing God in all the wrong places.

You see, in the end, there is no purpose apart from God. Genuine purpose goes beyond a shallow survival of the species or a “let’s all be happy” mindset. Those ideas will give no purpose to your life, and deep down you know it. If you want real purpose, you need a Creator. Because … purpose … flows out of … creation.

“… everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”  (Is 43:7)

Lord, you have made me for your glory.  May I, by your grace, reflect that glory for which I was made.

Last week we talked about the fact that everyone is a moral creature, that we all believe some things to be right and some things wrong. Of course, every now and then, you hear someone say that moral absolutes do not exist, but these people do not believe what they say. If someone were to walk up to them and slap them in the face for no reason, what do you suppose they would do? Would they say, “That’s OK. You could not have done anything wrong since wrong doesn’t exist”? Of course not! Instead, they say, “Hey, you can’t do that!” But if there is no such thing as right and wrong, why can’t you do it? What’s wrong with it? As long as we are talking about vague, general theory, these people can convince themselves that right and wrong do not exist, but once we get specific and wrong them, they contradict their theory. Real life gets in the way. Deep down, they know right and wrong exist because deep down they are human.

Now once you start thinking about morality, you must begin to acknowledge the existence of some other things that go with it, like personality, authority and purpose. Without those things, morality makes no sense. Today, let’s talk only about purpose. Imagine a world that had no purpose. Why would it be wrong to kill my neighbor in such a world? You say, “Because killing your neighbor harms him.”

“But if there is no purpose, what is wrong in harming him? He had no purpose.”

And you may say, “But the human race cannot survive if people were to consistently behave that way.”

“But if there is no purpose, why should the human race survive? We have no purpose. You are still assuming a purpose.”

You could continue this dialogue a long way, but once you assume it is wrong to kill your neighbor, you also assume some kind of purpose that the killing violates. The purpose may be in you, in your neighbor, or in the fabric of the universe, but the existence of right and wrong seems to point to some bigger purpose in life.

Instinctively, we all sense this. We all desire life to have purpose, and most people believe it does. To be sure, there are scientists and philosophers who say we are nothing more than a collection of atoms, but they had to work hard to get their thinking where it is, for they have had to fight constantly a powerful and pervasive sense everywhere they turn that there is more to life than atoms. Such thinkers are in the minority even within their own fields. To think as they do is not natural. As long as humanity shall exist, such thinking shall be paddling upstream, for the stream of human experience flows against it.

Even the atheistic existentialists write of the despair that their thinking produces. It is ironic. They claim that life has no purpose and then despair of that belief. But the despair they write of is a curious phenomenon. It indicates that their very insides feel that their philosophy ought not be. Their despair arises from the fact that they desire meaning in life. They may believe no such meaning exists, but deep down they wish it did. They are human. This universal desire for meaning (held even by those who deny meaning) is difficult to explain if we are just atoms. Why should atoms care that life has purpose?

“You shall not … You shall not … You shall not …” Ex 20:1-17

Lord, we praise you.  You care for what is right because you are good.

Here in America, right now, many people are protesting the actions of Donald Trump.  We’ve seen marches on Washington, protests in many cities, placards, a refusal to cooperate in Congress, even a riot at Cal Berkeley.  Now I mention these actions not to argue for or against Trump but to illustrate a point.  You see, all of these protests, in whatever form they take, occur because the protester believes something is wrong.

Yes, it’s true.  Everybody believes in right and wrong.  Republicans believe Democrats are wrong, and Democrats believe Republicans are wrong.  We believe racists are wrong and that Hitler was wrong.  You believe it is wrong for someone to cheat you or lie to you.

We are a moral people.  I do not mean we are all good. I mean that we all have a sense of what good is like and we all know that we ought to be good. This sense is universal, for you will find it in communist China, Muslim Yemen, and Latin American Peru.  You will find it in ancient Egypt, medieval Europe, and 20th century Africa. You do not have to believe in God to believe in an absolute right and wrong.  The fact that there are laws and rules everywhere you go indicates that you are around people who think something is right and something wrong. Such laws may differ from place to place, but the differences tend to be more on the periphery than the essence of morality.

If you disagree, I challenge you to spin the globe and randomly pick a country. Then go there and steal something from someone’s home. See what the reaction would be. Repeat in a hundred cultures and observe the pattern. Or try taking a man’s wife for a week. Do her no harm. Merely keep her for a week so that her husband does not know where she is. Then return her and observe the reaction. Repeat in a hundred cultures and note the pattern. You will find that punishments will vary from place to place, that certain values will be emphasized more in one region and less in another, and that some cultures will be more amenable to special circumstances. But despite all these differences, you will find a universal condemnation of stealing and kidnapping. No one will tell you what a wonderful soul you must be for taking Abu’s only goat.

Even the atheist who touts the problem of evil as evidence that God does not exist must appeal to a sense of right and wrong which he understands and which he expects you to understand too. The problem of evil is not a problem if evil does not exist.  Nor is it a problem to us if we have no moral sense.

We are moral creatures, and our sense of right and wrong contributes to our understanding of the world. It also helps us know what the Bible means when it says “God is good,” and it gives us a framework with which to understand some of the specific ethical commands of Scripture. We approach Scripture with an inherent ability to comprehend moral right and wrong.  We are wired with a moral sense, and we can’t escape it.  Have you ever thought why?

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen 1:26-7)

You have made us, O God, and we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  Praise You!

Have you ever worked those puzzles that are mazes? You know, the ones where you have to draw a line from the start to the finish, but in between are all sorts of false paths. In order to solve those mazes, you must know two things: your destination and your current position. Traveling is like this. If a pilot wants to fly to Tokyo, he must know the coordinates for Tokyo, but he must also know where he is right now.

Walking with Jesus is the same way. To walk with Him we obviously must know about God, but we also need to know ourselves. Who are we? What are we like? Why are we here? What is our current situation? The answers to these questions are essential in order to determine the direction of our lives. In fact, the good news of Jesus makes little sense unless we first understand what the Bible says about ourselves. And the Bible has a lot to say. Over the next few months, we will be talking about God’s view of the human race.

Today we will begin that discussion with an amazing claim. Scripture says that when God created the human race, He created us in His image. That statement, by itself, is wondrous, crammed full with meaning, and we need to unpack that meaning a bit.

Let’s start by talking about what God’s image does not mean. When God made Adam and Eve in His image, He did not make new gods. Even when Adam was in a sinless state, the human race was finite, weak, dependent, and created. The Bible is clear that being created in the image of God does not make us divine, part of the divine, or able to become divine. In God’s view, a Grand Canyon exists between humans and God. God is separate from us, wholly unlike us in many ways, and He will be so forever. This means that Christianity cannot share beds with philosophies that talk as if people were part of God or can grow into gods. This eliminates such belief systems as Emerson’s transcendentalism (which has influenced modern Unitarianism) or contemporary Mormonism, which says that as God is, so shall we be (if we follow all the Mormon practices). These philosophies are not Biblical. They misunderstand what it means to be created in God’s image. We are not God and we never will be.

So what, then, does it mean to be created in God’s image? That’s not an easy question to answer, and I don’t pretend to fully understand all of the ramifications of being God’s image bearer, but an image gives a picture of something. This means that you and I, in some way, have the potential to reflect God. In addition, Genesis ties God’s image with God’s likeness.  In some ways, we are like God.  We share with God certain abilities, and these abilities help us know God and relate to Him.  Scholars may debate the details of what God’s image means, but at a minimum, it means this: God created humans with the ability to know Him. You and I are not just smart apes. We are qualitatively distinct, and we have some astounding capacities for knowledge, all of which help us know and reflect God.

We can see, hear and touch; we can think, feel and intuit. We can reason abstractly; we have a sense of right and wrong; we believe life has purpose; we have a desire for fulfillment and do not find anything on earth that meets the desire; we have a sense of the Holy and of beauty; we can love, and we desire intimacy. We are born with the necessary software for processing certain information. Some of that information is physical, some is abstract, some emotional, some aesthetic, some is personal, and some spiritual.

Concerning our abilities to observe through our senses and to reason, I need not write. But I ought to speak briefly about other abilities we have — like our sense of morality or our desire for purpose — for these abilities are part of God’s image. They point us to God and help us understand and reflect Him in ways that a monkey never could.  Therefore, for the next several weeks we will look at different capacities that come with the package called “the image of God.”