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Saturday, February 7, 2015

Loving my friend - is he right? Am I an insignificant particle of dust?



"If you're right, it doesn't matter. If you're wrong, it doesn't matter. You are an insignificant particle of cosmic dust in a universe that was here before you arrived and will be here when you've departed."

This was a response of a friend whom I reminded of Pascal's Wager.

Pascal said that the sensible position is to live a life devoted to God. If one is wrong, he or she has only lived a joyful life. If right, the bliss is endless for an eternity with God. Denying God, and being wrong, has staggering, eternal consequences as a most fiercely regretted separation from God.

Wow! My friend just might be onto something. I must admit, God's Word does say, "All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return." Ecclesiastes 3:20

Moreover, the Bible has a lot to say about God's using and uplifting  insignificant people.


Added to that are admonitions on humility, as in Micah 8:6 -

"No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you:
to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

So I am exceedingly grateful to my friend for affirming the glorious, dynamic, living power of God's Word!

If he intended otherwise, this is HUGE. If he is right - apart from God - and I truly mean this: he could only be right without acknowledging the Bible if he were, in fact, GOD HIMSELF! If he is right, then I should worship him, because only a deity would have a complete grasp of the universe and beyond the boundaries of time to know this. Short of his deity, this simply is unknowable to a mere mortal, outside of what God has revealed of Himself and His creation in the Bible.

My friend, in deeming himself a deity, has little choice but to give sovereignty to his thoughts. Are they valid? Here's what C.S. Lewis says (whom my friend admires).

Let's assume that some deity named "Chance" created the universe, even though "Chance" has the power to do, well, nothing. But if Chance created the universe (and made us "insignificant," he committed a serious mistake: Chance created a longing in my friend - and in all of us - for significance. How cruel for Chance to develop a creature who (in my friend's perspective) is insignificant but who has a strong desire for significance. To paraphrase my friend, I can't believe in a god like that.

I'm afraid my friend (who admits to being offended by so-called Christians who weren't practicing what Jesus teaches) is more like a (inadequate parallel) flea trying to fight up the Niagra of evidence for a God who loves him. Scores of intellectuals (including lawyers) have tried to disprove the Bible and have become believers. Dr. Gary Habermas can get the most hardened skeptic to the plain, scientific fact of the Resurrection of Jesus.

Lest we look down our noses at such an assumption of deity, let the world know that Jesus thought of my friend before the beginning of time, knew him yet unborn, loves him supremely and longs for a relationship with him. See Psalm 139. And though he vigorously opposes me and denies the existence of God (I cannot for the life of me understand why he ducks the joy of a life in God - "exceedingly, abundantly above all we can ask or think"), I still love him. Some may think of him as unlovable, and it is the God who speaks to me and lives in me who enables me to love my friend.

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