Stairway To Heaven

These last few posts have focused on the love of God. As I have been writing, I have thought a lot about the reality that He really is Immanuel, which means God is with us. He is not a god after the world’s religions, which create stairways to heaven out of law and religious practice. Though He does call us to heaven, He also descended to earth to rescue us with a pursuit that is real, intentional, and incredibly personal.

The reason it is important to meditate on these issues, is because the real heart problem in our modern culture is not individualism, or secularism, or moral relativism, or even evolutionary influence. It is the same as it was before the modern era or Darwinism. Look at any person who claims to be a moral relativist and you will see inconsistency in the way they actually live. Note also, that Darwinists don’t really follow survival of the fittest to its natural end in euthanizing whole cancer wards or allowing entire people groups die in Africa without aid. People don’t live as though they don’t believe in the existence, or sovereignty of God. When faced with great enough suffering and pain, our deep calls out to Him.

I recently heard the story of Leonid Brezhnev’s funeral. He was a powerful and violent Soviet communist who had killed many of his own people and eradicated freedom, economic development, and religion. George Bush, who was Vice President at the time, was the American diplomat who attended this funeral. Bush reported that Brezhnev’s widow stood motionless by the open casket as the funeral came to a close. But then, just before the top was lowered, she reached over him and made the sign of the cross. “There in the citadel of secular, atheistic power, the wife of the man who had run it all hoped that her husband was wrong.” {Gary Thomas, in C.T., October 3, 1994, p. 26} Brezhnev had done away with the open practice of religion in their land, and yet in his death, the widow’s prayer over his soul was demonstrated by the symbol of an ancient Roman torture device which has throughout the world come to mean hope and life and peace with God.

Etched deeply in the fabric of humanity is the realization of the existence of God (Romans 1). There is no logical basis for morality, purpose, or ethical community, in a world without a Creator. Faith—the means by which we receive the unmerited gift of salvation— often lacks, not a belief in a God, but rather a trusting relationship with the God who actually exists. Christians believe not only that He is in part knowable, but that He has revealed who He is through Scripture and in the person of Christ. To relate to Him therefore in a way that is untrue to who He actually is, would be as ridiculous as if someone interacted with me who, despite my correction, still thought of me how they wanted to perceive me. Think of how absurd it would be if we interacted with a developing mortal as we do with the changeless, immortal God. What if someone said to you: “well, I just like to think of you as a man named Oliver who professionally base-jumps and lives half the year in the Himalayan foot-hills.” “But that’s not real,” you’d protest, “that’s not who I am at all!”
If God is real, he certainly has more consistent and defined characteristics than you or I, since He is eternal and un-created. It is the work of men, not to define Him after our preferences, but to discover Him as He really is. As the Psalmist wrote: "Let us press on to know Him."