What Is This, Really?
So far as I know, this site is visited primarily by invited guests. Last night, I invited a man to visit, and I began to think, what will a stranger make of what he finds here? Perhaps I should explain.
This site contains a few observations about life in general. Some of those observations reflect my early life in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Others describe my failures, and the pain that they have caused. The latter are published solely in the hope that, through reading them, even just one of my readers might be influenced to avoid making the same mistakes.
This site also chronicles a transition between two vastly different worldviews. The first is driven by values that are set by the world around us, by man’s standards, and in many cases, by man’s lust. The second is a Bible centric worldview, which is centered on God’s perfect plan for your life and mine. This change required that I transition my life from what I will call an experience base, to an experience that is faith based. But I had doubt. To allay those doubts I looked into each of the following:
- The reliability of the Gospels
- The historicity of the Bible
- Authentication of the Biblical account, based on secular writings from the same time period.
- Fine tuning of the universe (fine tuning is readily acknowledged by science, but, almost always, not attributed to God)
- The relationship between creation (the instantaneous occurance of time, space, and matter), and the existing laws of physics.
- The vast improbability that the living cell could have “self-organized” (abiogenesis).
- Evidence to support the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ
With this insight, I found it easy to acknowledge a Creator God, and to accept the Bible (God’s Word) as my “absolute truth.” Faith follows naturally when dealing with that which we know to be true.
When God’s Word becomes our truth, then it is easy to establish rules for living a “God centered” life. Once we are God centered, the attributes of Christianity flow naturally from one’s life. One begins to see the Bible in its completeness, from creation (Genesis) all the way to the new heaven and the new earth (The Revelation). It is from that perspective that a Biblical worldview can emerge.
Why do I care that you hear about this? I care because, as human beings, we are by our very nature, sinful. We are, at birth, cut off from a Holy God. Yet, in each one of us there exists an eternal spiritual component. The very essence of Christianity is the process of ensuring that our spirit component is aligned with our Creator God and will exist with Him eternally. God, Himself, designed the process by which this transition is accomplished. He sent His Son (Jesus Christ) to die in our place, thus bearing the punishment for our sin. All we must do to inherit God’s gift (of eternal spiritual life) is to believe that Jesus was fully God and fully man, and that He died in our place … that he paid the penalty for your sins and mine. Belief is, in its most basic form, simply a conversation between you and our Creator God. I have described this simple process in a webpage entitled Such as I Have, you can see it here.
It is a widely held belief that people will be somehow judged for the life they have lived. The Christian Bible confirms this is true. Christians will be judged for their performance as believers, with a view to reward. Non-believers will be judged quite differently. They will stand before a God from which they are separated, and be reminded of the many times that they have rejected Him. For the two groups, the outcome is quite different. As a believer, one of my greatest concerns is for those who will stand judgement as non-Christians. That group of people are the greatest motivator for this website. I would ask you to approach what I have written here with an open mind, and please … give Christianity a place in your life.