My Faith

Yes, believe it or not, I am a Christian. And I don't believe Harry Potter is of the devil. The people who do think so have, first of all, not read the books. They simply know that they are about wizards, and think that means they are demonic. What they do not realize is that the books exhibit many good and noble qualities in all of the main characters.

*Disclaimer* Uh, oh, religious talk follows. Watch out! We couldn't have people actually hearing such things! If you don't want to deal with this, don't read.

Basically, I believe that we as humans are not perfect. That no matter how hard we try, without God's help we will always fall short. Why can't we be perfect on our own? Because God created us as creatures with the freedom to choose to be with Him or to separate ourselves from Him, which meant He had to give us the free will to commit sin. Which, I believe, is not only anything deemed "bad" by society's ideas of Christian beliefs like excessive drinking, swearing, lying, cheating, killing, but basically anything that separates us from God. We are given the choice to follow God or not, but if we choose to we must relinquish control to Him. That's why we cannot be perfect on our own.

So then why do we care about being perfect anyway? Because if we aren't, we can't go to Heaven, which, I believe, starts on earth once we fully place ourselves in god's hands. Why do we want to go to Heaven? Because that is, by definition, what we want. All the things we think we desire in life, the motives we think drive us, for happiness, for everybody to like us, for the joy we experience when doing the things we most love to do, are really echos of the thing we really desire, which is fulfillment through perfect closeness with God. this, I believe, is what Heaven is, whatever form it takes. So the fact that we can't be in Heaven if we aren't free from sin, that is, free from separation from God, is not simply because He's so demanding and mean that he won't let imperfect people in. It is because we simply cannot be in a state of perfect closeness to God if we are not in a state of perfect closeness to God.

OK so far? So, then, if we can't be perfect on our own, how can anybody ever reach this state of perfect closeness? In Old Testament times, God commanded his people to make sacrifices of their most perfect livestock to atone for their sins. But then He sent Jesus, somehow His Son and Himself, whom He loved so much that the love between them was manifested in the third part of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, Jesus, who was both God and yet fully human and as such subject to all the temptations and woes that flesh is heir to, and to the free will to separate Himself from God. And He never sinned, He maintained always a perfect a perfect acceptance of God's will in His life.

And yet, when He died, He experienced a forced separation from God He never deserved (Hell). He cries, as He dies, "Oh God, Oh God, why have you forsaken me?" He endures this separation for three days before He is allowed to return to his deserved state of grace. Then He returned to earth to tell His disciples the message of His sacrifice, which ended all need for the sacrifice of livestock because Jesus was the perfect Lamb. Jesus died for our sins and went down to Hell despite his perfection so we wouldn't have to. And all we have to do to gain the atonement of the sacrifice is to recognize that we need it and accept God's will in our lives, desiring in our hearts a closeness to him beyond what we ourselves can accomplish.

Once we have come to truly believe these things--not just be able to say them, but really feel within ourselves that they are true--then we can begin the work of becoming Christians. Because it is hard work. Once we have accepted our own weakness and come to desire God's will, we don't get to sit back and relax. We must constantly struggle to rid ourselves of the habits of a non-Christian life, of pride and judgement and selfishness and all the other fallings-away from God; we must constantly battle our tendencies to slide back into a more societally acceptable and understood lifestyle. But each battle over our sinful tendencies that we fight and win makes the next one easier, until one day we can walk with ease in Jesus' footsteps. For basically the coolest illustration of our walk with God within the framework of the Footprints in the Sand story you've probably heard, but with a beautiful twist you probably haven't, click here.

If you want good books to read, try, first of all, of course, the Bible. Then pretty much any C. S. Lewis books, especially Mere Christianity, The Joyful Christian, The Case For Christianity, and the Four Loves for commentary and understanding into basic ideas of Christianity, and The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters for cool fictional but religiously based illustrations of the idea of Heaven and Hell and a correspondance between two devils, respectively.

If you would like to have a religious discussion with me, feel free, and let's stay open-minded. E-mail me at dragonfyre52@hotmail.com.

Why is a Christian like a pumpkin?

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