Letter to Auntie W.

Dear Auntie Wxxx:

Earlier this year, a neighbor started chatting with me about Christ and invited me to one of their Friday Bible study. I haven't stopped going since. However, it wasn't him who brought me back, but Him. It all started last year around October, when one night I was surfing the channels and stumbled upon an Asian-looking TV Evangelist preaching away. He is a Singaporean pastor named Joseph Prince.

What Pastor Prince spoke about Christian belief turned my prior understanding of it upside down, and lit a fire in my heart that has not ceased burning since. Instead of condemning everyone as sinners and calling first for repentance, all he does is revealing the loveliness of Christ in the Bible -- Old as well as New Testaments -- and the divine grace His suffering, death and resurrection, the one and true testament of God's great love for His precious children.

Like the warmth of the sun, the revelation of Christ in His myriad manifestations of beauty and tenderness melted my stone cold heart such that my repentance (changing of mind) was once and complete surrender instead of repetitive and perfunctory. The veil lifted from my eyes like the rending of one in the temple when Christ breathed His last that forever brought down the wall separating man from God, no longer a stern, distant judge, but a doting, loving father.

I understand the doubt and struggle in your faith. God's way seems to constantly prove contrary to man's natural order, and man's wanting to rationalize faith first leads to either cynicism or confusion. The origin of life and man clearly illustrates this contradiction between science and religion -- specifically Christianity. In our logical mind, material existed before life; the Bible says God (source of all life) created the world. An unbeliever says man is the crowning glory (god-like) of evolutionary advancement from lowly single-celled amoeba; in the Christian view we are princes and princesses of an infinite and divine being. Man explains the world in a similarly bottom up theory of building evidence and argument one on top of another and deems truth capping out at the limit of his understanding; God places a hole of infinite depth in our hearts, and a seed of faith to search for answers only an infinite God can fill -- and by faith we shall be complete and satisfied.

The origin of man determines greatly how one views life and death, and ultimately if there is meaning and truth. Even die hard atheists admit the limitation of man -- most evident the inevitable death of the flesh (and ultimately the universe). The very written finality of our existence on earth leads to either despair or denial, the most joyous occasion or highest achievement aware of one day all being naught, and everything returning to earth with not a trace left. The most comfort one can hope for is to have lead a "good life," and submit peacefully to the reality that what is made by earth shall return to earth.

However, what is made by life shall return to life. Let me explain: Our existence in this world is being alive, which is a physical being with life. We can observe signs of life, but we can not see life, nor measure it. When one dies of a natural cause -- that is, without sickness or injury -- the physical being remains the same from one minute to the next when life departs. The cells didn't break, blood didn't drain -- all the necessary "components" for being alive remains, but life is gone. This is evidence that life is not contained nor generated by the material. On the contrary, it is life in the presence of material that makes earthly life; which is why only life can create life. The material can only mimic being alive (as in robots), but it is the will that is the unique hallmark of higher life. Therefore the creation of life is a willful, and not random, act. And being that material cannot create life, the first life on earth was created by a greater life with a greater will.

Therefore, if it is a great will that created us, we can not fully comprehend it, nor rationalize it fully. For how can the finite know the infinite? How can the imperfect grasp perfection? Can we gaze upon the sun and not be blinded, how much brighter then is God? Can the mind of man, no matter how intelligent, comprehend the heart of God? No, we are connected to Him by our hearts, and only in the submission of mind. The Bible says, "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." It is not by thinking that we gain faith, but hearing His word, which is Truth made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. When we hear and receive revelation of the son of God, our faith is revived and renewed daily. The Bible is filled with references to Jesus Christ, especially in the Old Testament, which is Christ concealed; the New Testament is Christ revealed. From Noah's Ark to Abraham sacrificing Issac, the story of Joseph to the building of the Ark of the Covenant, and so much more, God's mind is constantly on His son, whom He planned to sacrifice on the cross for our salvation even before the creation of time.

After His resurrection, Jesus walked beside two disciples saddened by His death on the road to Emmaus. He didn't reveal His identity to them, but instead showed them the scriptures beginning from the books of Moses all things concerning Himself. Jesus died once, and is sufficient for all eternity to redeem the lost, and He revealed Himself in the flesh once, sufficient for all times, recorded in the Bible by the Holy Spirit. When we look for Him in the Bible, He is revealed to us much more than in the flesh, for how many eyewitnesses of Him ended up betraying Him, but those who seek Him in faith shall see Him much more in glory.

Finally, regarding your feeling about being fair to all religions, I agree that we need to respect each individual to have faith, but the belief can and should be up to debates and challenges. Ultimately, what is religion seeking? Isn't it the great truth of our lineage and destiny? If one doesn't believe in truth, then this is meangless; but if you believe that there is truth, then it must be in the singular -- Truth. To subscribe to many truths voids all, and is essentially religious/moral anarchy. Many truths exists only in the many hearts and minds, but in the general there is one truth only. Our personal task is to search out that one truth among numerous imposters. Wisdom, philosophy and fine teaching can be found in many sources, but man's path to the true God remains narrow.

The question then is...which one or none of the above? If God has a will and loves us, would He want to reach out to us in a way that is accessible? If one believes in a higher being, wouldn't He already have made a way for us to come to Him, and have already written the way in our hearts and minds to receive Him? I think so, which means we don't need to climb every mountain, ford every stream to seek Him (and worse still to look inwards!) but just look to the major religions in the world today. And in doing so, see which belief comes alive in one's heart. In our earnest search, we find that only one God who loves us so deeply and intimately that He is willing to lay down His life for us to save us. Wouldn't any loving parent do the same for his or her child...and in that one act of ultimate sacrifice is found our true Father in heaven.

I really hope you will find Him once more alive and real, and would love to share my revelations of Christ with you!

Blessed in Christ,

Jim