Month: September 2014

Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

Some people are attracted to Christianity, but have been saddled with a misconception that has caused them to hesitate to draw closer to the God Christians talk so glowingly about. The specific misconception I speak of is the idea that they must “clean up” their lives prior to embracing Christ. In actuality nothing is further from the truth.

Many who become Christians only do so after a lifetime of bad moral decisions have left them in a desperate condition. One thing people in this position often come to realize is that they are so at the proverbial “end of their rope” that self-improvement is quite beyond their grasp. By this I mean they have no strength to reform themselves and they know it. This is especially true with people who are in the death-grip of some addiction.

When we find ourselves in such a condition, and are honest about it, we come to understand deep-down that the idea of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps is patently absurd. In our desperation the only thing we can do is seek help outside of ourselves. This is actually exactly where God does His best work, so to speak, and is often the point of conversion for many a Christian.

Numerous times I have heard testimonies from people who came to this place of exhaustion of self and desperation and then called out to Christ for help. Sometimes their testimony includes an amazing experience in which they are delivered from some addiction or other life-threatening situation in an immediate and miraculous way. While this does not always happen in such a manner I mention it to make a point about what it means to become a believer.

These recipients of miraculous relief will tell you one thing is for sure: they did not and could not have accomplished this on their own. They were helpless to change what was wrong with their lives, and that was the whole point. They did not change and then come to God. They came to God and He made the changes.

Christ does not expect us to do on our own what we are incapable of doing. It is a basic fact of human nature that
“Self-help” is no help at all. We cannot in any way reform ourselves to become acceptable to God. Our reformation comes through surrendering our lives to Him and trusting him for the power to change once that surrender happens. This is part and parcel of becoming a Christian.

Never let anyone tell you that you must clean yourself up to come to God. He is the one that lovingly enables us to become different and better people. If you want to come to him come just as you are and He will give you the strength to become a new creation in Jesus Christ

Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

In a pluralistic world in which numerous belief systems, specifically religious or otherwise, vie for our attention why should we give heed to only one? A particular faith or philosophy may contain teachings that seem true as true to our experience as the next one. Further, in a world in which electronically conveyed information is more accessible to more people than at any other time in human history, why not choose the best from each philosophy and eclectically mix and match our way into “custom” belief system that works best for us?

Sounds good doesn’t it? In a world in which the only absolute truth has become the belief that there is no such thing as absolute truth there seems to be no good reason to hold to one “Truth-claim” over any other. In fact the religions that persist in making such claims, beyond seeming terribly passé these days, may actually be dangerous as far as our freedom to live as we want to live. They often appear to attack the very foundation of our hard-won individualism, telling us that we are somehow beholden to a Being that created us rather than to ourselves.

The problem, though, with this objection to belief systems with exclusive truth-claims is actually found in the above mentioned statement about absolute truth. When we claim that absolute truth cannot possibly exist we effectively contradict ourselves. We find ourselves making a statement that destroys the validity of the very point we seek to make. It is impossible for absolute truth to be absolutely impossible. Natural reason and common sense makes it obvious that this statement is self-canceling. It is non-sensical. The honest spiritual seeker has to eventually butt up against the logically incontrovertible fact that no one can prove that absolute truth does not exist.

Once this happens that seeker must become intellectually open to the possibility that there is such a thing as “Ultimate Reality” and now they are forced to face a further daunting realization; if such capital “R” reality exists then, by its very nature, it must preclude the validity of any competing philosophy that contradicts it. Follow this line of thought to its reasonable conclusion and we can no longer claim that all religions basically say the same thing. At the very least “smorgasbord” spirituality must divest itself of the claim that all world religions can be added to the mix.

What does all this mean for the truly sincere seeker? Among other things it means this: do not think that one religion in particular, Christianity, a religion whose founder claimed that he is “The Way, the Truth and the Life” can be casually added to the spiritual mixing bowl.

Because of its unique truth claims Christianity must stand alone and be accepted, or not accepted, as such.

Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

One of the most strongly held tenants of those who disdain religion is that Secularism is the true promoter and guardian of human progress and happiness. An example of this deeply entrenched assumption is the idea that the historical advancement of human rights is based on the shedding of religious dogma in favor of a man-centered world-view. While it is true that some belief systems have and continue to mitigate against human dignity it is difficult to prove that Christianity has often been one of them.

In fact Christians have been in the forefront of many movements in the Western world to improve the condition of human beings. This has been self-evident since the early days of the faith and continues to be self-evident today for those who are willing to study history with some objectivity.

Things first began to happen when the numbers of those who gave there lives to Jesus Christ rapidly grew during the time of the late Roman Empire. When, by sheer numbers, Christians started to have influence in Rome and the provinces a movement began to end the practice of blood sports involving the killing of human beings as mass-entertainment in the arena. Thus the days of persons being literally thrown to the lions came to an end. While we may today have our own form of “bread and circuses” in popular media the deliberate murder of human beings as part of a culturally sanctioned spectator event is no longer present.

The slow eradication of slavery in Western Europe and the United States was a direct function of agitation against the practice by Christians of many denominations. In England believers like William Wilberforce led the fight against the slave trade. In America the Abolitionist’s of the Civil War era were largely motivated by religious conviction. A century after physical emancipation was secured the civil rights movement of the 1960’s sought to bring about true equality and integration for blacks. The effort found its moral compass in its Christian leaders, most notably the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

During our own time followers of Christ continue to work to end injustice and suffering. In the early 21st Century among the most vocal supporters of the battle to eliminate the international sex-trafficking of children are the churches. In the aftermath of natural disasters around the world some of the most effective relief provided for its victims comes not from governments but from Christian relief agencies.

The basis for Christianity’s ongoing emphasis on human rights and relief has always been grounded in the Bible’s consistent message that people have tremendous intrinsic value based on there having been made in the image of God. Beyond this Christians believe that the creator of the universe so loved his human creation that he was willing to actually become one of us through his son. For this reason those who claim the name of Christ have a continuing mandate, grounded in God’s love for human beings, to work to relieve human oppression and suffering.

That this is part of the outworking of the Christian faith is not religious propaganda. It is a fact of history.

Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

One of the more currently fashionable criticisms of Christianity is that countless human beings have been slaughtered in the name of the Christian God during the last thousand years of human history. It is no doubt true that in the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Salem Witch Trials people who called themselves Christians took part in the deaths of those who they considered to be heretics, or believers of other faiths. That such abominations actually occurred I will not take issue with, but I would like to point out a troika of salient facts that often do not see the light of day when accusing conversations on this subject are underway.

First of all, all three of the above mentioned atrocities were committed by people who lived in a time when civil government and religion were, so to speak, “in bed together.” Every time the church and the state become so deeply blended the result is a corruption of the church. As a 21st Century Christian my biggest point of agreement with those who are today in favor of a separation of church and state has far more to do with my concern for the church’s purity than the state’s wellbeing. When Christ and Caesar, the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man, are forced to intertwine the result is always people in government who are Christian in name only and who wear the cross only to gain raw political power. Such was the case in the days of the Crusades, Inquisition and the witch trials. Political and ecclesial power were in a truly unholy union, and great evil resulted.

The second point I’d like to make is that I have never met a follow Christian deeply in love with Jesus Christ and in intimate spiritual union with Him who would ever consider murdering anyone in His Name. The very idea is repulsive. Why? Because the very core of the faith He brought to us two-thousand years ago is one of love. Every true believer knows that the only way we have been commanded to appeal to others to believe what we believe is by loving them, even if they make themselves our enemies. In fact if they harm us we are called to literally “turn the other cheek” and then pray for their souls. Telling the truth about who Jesus is and doing so in love are the only weapons a true child of God has in his or her arsenal. Anyone in history who tried to convert through threat of physical harm does not belong to Jesus Christ and, in fact, does not know Him at all.

Finally I want to point out a profound fact of history. The number of people killed in the three horrors perpetrated in the name of the fatally compromised “Christianity” of those times numbered, at most, in the tens of thousands. That is altogether too many, but please compare those numbers with the monstrous slaughters carried out by three of the worst despots of the 20th Century, Hitler, Stalin and Mao, all in the name of two socio-political philosophies, Nazism and Communism. It has been estimated that over 100 million human beings lost their lives at the hands of these men and the systems they propagated. The stark fact is that what I call the “Atheistic Religions” (or in the case of Nazism one that was nominally Pagan) of the last hundred years ended the lives of such a vast number of men, women and children as to make those lost to a perverted version of Christianity pale by comparison.

The ultimate point I’m making here is that true Christianity is a religion of life, not death. In my next segment I’ll take this conviction one step further and seek to illuminate what the faith I call my own has done to bless Western Civilization throughout its history, another fact that has been ignored by those who reject, out of hand, the way of Jesus Christ.