Your Right To Say It

As you know, Ryan and I started answering some questions from the book Tying Rocks To Clouds: Meetings and Conversations With Wise and Spiritual People by William Elliot, this is the second question I have decided to answer. It is pretty simple for the most part, I encourage you to answer this as well in the comments section. The question is: What makes you happy? Sad? Angry?

What makes you happy?

What makes me happy? Well, little bunnies playing in the front yard has always made me smile. But seriously, seeing Gods love makes me happy. What I mean by that is this, when I see someone do an unselfish act of kindness for someone else. When someone helps another person stranded on the roadside for no other reason other than the fact they need help, or anonymous donations to charity. I imagine it is these things that make God smile. Another thing that makes me happy is seeing pure joy. On our wedding day was the first time I truly saw pure honest joy. As Jenny and I stood up at the alter and I looked into Jenny’s eyes, as they were tearing up, I saw pure joy, joy in knowing we would be together forever. The only time I think I will experiance joy like that again is when we have children. These are the things that make me happy.

What makes you sad?

When I see the flaws in humanity through myself. When I allow myself to do things I don’t want to do and become something I don’t want to be. I sin, I don’t want to but I do, that makes me sad. When I fail to be the person i want to be. Also, when I see God’s design destroy itself. On 9-11 God’s design attacked itself. We are all God’s creation, and we failed. God does not want war, he does not desire his creation to be destroyed. The war in Iraq is sad. How do I support it then? That is a discussion for another time.

What makes you angry?

This one is hard, I hold this close to the same level as the previous question. I get angry when I see the ones I love fight. I get angry when I see others hold life as if it is nothing. When there is nothing I can do to help someone in pain physical or emotional, I feel . I get agry at situations more than people, I don’t know if that makes sense.

What about you? What makes you happy? Sad? Angry?

Here is my answer to the question, sorry it took so long.

1. On What Main Beliefs (Or Truths) Do You Base Your Life?

I don’t know why this was so hard to answer, it’s a simple enough question, but I guess as soon as I start thinking about it my mind starts racing. The first that comes to mind is God. I believe the Bible to be truth, and the Bible was God breathed, and therefore God/Jesus is truth. I believe God is a loving God who wants a relationship with us. He has wanted this from the very beginning, He created us to walk with him and commune with him, and we did… for a while. But sin was introduced. God, being a perfect God, and just God could not look upon sin, so he had to punish us. But that is not the end. God still wanted that relationship with us, so he provided ways to do so, rules and guidelines. But we as humans could not live up to these standards, we kept turning away. There was no way we could ever be good enough, no way we could ever do enough good things to get ourself in the relationship God wanted. Like I said God is a perfect God, and a just God, he is sinless. If he allowed sin into heaven, it would no longer be perfect, so we as sinful people cannot step into heaven. God realized this and in his continuing effort to be in a personal relationship with us, he sent someone to take our place. Enter stage right Jesus Christ. Jesus not only came to teach us about God but he came to take our punishment. As I said earlier, we as sinners cannot step into heaven, we have turned away from God, so our just reward is hell. Jesus lived a sinless life, and was crucified on no grounds. Upon his death our sins were placed upon him. He bore our sins for us. He descended into hell. But that is not the end either. He beat the system, he beat death/hell. He arose three days later, to give us the hope of eternal salvation though him. The Bible teaches that this was a gift to us. All we have to do is accept it. Like a Christmas gift, when your grandmother gives you a gift on Christmas do say oh thank you grandma, and then take out your wallet to pay her back for it? I think not, all you have to do to receive that gift from her is hold out your arms and take it. But if you don’t hold out your arms, you will never receive that gift, it will just sit there. We have to “hold our arms out” to receive this gift of salvation, the gift is sitting there waiting to be opened.

These are the truths on which I base my life, God is the center of my life, and I want to have the relationship he desires. God calls Christians to share this good news with everyone, so that is my goal. I will not always share it like this, but I will share it.

Well it’s been a while since anything has been posted here, for that I am sorry. Ryan and I have been really busy lately with our own things. I know Ryan is currently working on a post for here so we could have some discussion so I hope that goes well. Otherwise, I am curious to see if any of you have some ideas for topics or if you have some questions for us, if so you can either comment here or shoot us an e-mail at righttosay@gmail.com. Hope to hear from you guys!

I also posted this over at TCRA, but I thought that it would make for a good disscussion over here as well.

I have written on this topic several times, however, I never seem to get tired of discussing it. Religion is a very touchy subject, that’s because everyone believes something. Everyone has a religion; yes, even atheists are part of a religion. Whether you like it or not it takes just much faith to believe in evolution as it does to believe in God, but that’s a discussion for another time. I have been reading up on different beliefs recently and I came across “The Theosophical Society”, who believes, as far as I understnd, every belief system is correct, They are all just differant paths to take. That’s a great thought, believe whatever you want and do good things every once in a while, and you’ll be okay in the end, but is that possible? Can every religion be true in the end; is it all like the spokes on a bicycle wheel, different paths with the same destination? This is the question I am out to tackle. I have tip toed around this subject a few times, but now I want to settle it once and for all. If at the end of this you have any questions or ideas you would like to add, feel free to do so.

Christians believe that there is only one way to get to heaven and that is through Jesus Christ. We get this from the Bible when Jesus himself says, “no one can come to the father except through me.”

This is what Paul E. Little had to say on the subject in his book “Know Why you Believe”, he is speaking on the fact that Christians believe Christ is the one true way:

“Christians believe this, not because they made it their rule, but because Jesus Christ and the Bible, their source, state it. In fact the core message is woven through both the Old and New Testaments. A Christian is not giving his or her own bias but is explaining the biblical facts.
If we should say we would like to change this truth and vote in something more inclusive, here is our dilemma. We would be changing something that is not humanly changeable. It is fixed and is either completely true or completely false.”

If we changed the fact that Jesus is the only way then that would negate the entire religion of Christianity and thus saying Christianity is wrong. If Christianity were wrong, then, the belief that every religion is right would be wrong as well.

Little goes on to explain that there are certain laws we can change, for instance, the speed limit. If we all decided to change the speed limit that’s okay, we could go faster and there would be no penalty for it. But lets say we all got together and said we didn’t like gravity, lets do away with that. So we all took a vote and said gravity does not exist, no one in his or her right mind would go out and jump off a building to test it, right? Gravity is a law that cannot be changed; the same is true with religion. Just because you don’t believe something does not mean it isn’t true, likewise, if you do believe something that does not make it true. “You are entitled to your own private opinion, but you are not entitled to your own private truth” as put by Erwin W. Lutzer.

All religions claim to be true, how then can all the religions be true if they all contradict each other? Buddhist’s believe in many impersonal gods, and Christians believe in one very personal God, Can these both be true? Either one of these is true or they are both false, they cannot both be true. Lets say I believe with all my heart that I am a pink rabbit, but you, with all your heart, believe I am a red rhino, are we both right just because we believe it with all our heart? Or a person who sees hallucinations, he believes they are there but we all know they are not. Just because you want something to be true that doesn’t make it true.

I am not using this to convert all of you to Christianity, I am just doing this to help you realize there is a truth out there, and it needs to be found. It is not a personal truth but a universal truth. As Erwin W. Lutzer puts it in his book, “Christ Among Other gods: a Defense of Christ in an Age of Tolerance”,

“Mathematics is transcultural; it is foolish to say 2+2=4 is simply a western idea. Science and technology rely on universal principals that apply in every country, in every era.” He goes on to say: “Logic requires that if there is one God then there is not two, three, or ten. If what Christ said was true, then what Baha u llah said was false.”

You know something, I don’t know what to think of this whole thing. I want to say I truly believe his apology, but I don’t want it to seem like I’m just saying it because he is a Christian. I have read and heard his apology several times now and it seems that he truly is sorry. He states everything he did wrong, and states why it was wrong. He knows what he did. My feelings are that he has some problems whatever they are, obviously stemming from his fathers beliefs, but he really wants to change that, I find it hard to believe that he likes being that way. I read a interview with him in reader digest, yes readers digest what of it? It was right around the time passion came out and he was asked about his father and weather or not he believes the Holocaust really happened, His answer was something like, he loves his father, but his father has issues.

Anyway like I said I don’t know what to make of it right now.

Welcome to our new blog, I just wanted to start out by telling you a little about myself:

I grew up in a Christian home going to church on a semi-consistent basis, the thing I remember the most about my younger years in church was falling asleep. I believed in God but it didn’t really interest me that much, I couldn’t see him so I never thought too much about him.
Then one day my mom brought home a movie, it was one of those old cheesy religious movies made on zero budget, called “A Thief in the Night”. I must have been around nine or ten because looking back at the movie it was terrible, but at the time I was terrified. The fear of not going to heaven became real to me for the first time. I began to cry, full out tears. I was so terrified about never seeing my family again after I died. My mom brought me into the other room and sat down with me, I told her every thing I was thinking, all my fears. She began to explain that I don’t need to be afraid, there is a way that I could know for sure that I will go to heaven. She began to tell me about how God knew we would never be good enough to get ourselves into heaven so he sent his son to die for our sins, in our place. It was a gift; all I had to do was accept it.
I know what you are probably thinking, “Nick, you were at most ten years old, how could you fully understand that?” and honestly I probably didn’t. But I never forgot that night and that conversation, and now it has fully reshaped my life. It has shaped the way I think, the way I act, and the way I live.
As I got into high school I started getting more serious about my relationship with God, but I also started realizing how intolerant people are of Christianity. If you say you are a Christian, people will start calling you a bible-thumper or other names. The teachers would even join in on the intolerance, hiding behind the lie of separation of church and state. In Biology they would tell you Christianity was a “pseudo-science”, but evolution was gospel. It was this, though, that made my faith stronger.
It was also in high school that I met Evan Smith, a great man who took me under his wing and showed me how to truly live for Christ. I was in a weekly Bible study with him and several other students; we would get together and talk about God and whatever else was on our minds. Evan encouraged me to do more in ministry; I never thought I could do that. He had me start to lead lessons and various things like that, I loved it, but I still doubted myself. Since that time I have grown a lot, spiritually. My wife and I are now the outreach team leaders at our church, and I am training for Eldership at my church. I still doubt myself sometimes.
This has been a brief history of my spiritual walk. My political walk is significantly easier to explain. I am a Christian, and because a lot of those beliefs coincide with conservative beliefs, I am a conservative.