Originally Posted by
ianporter
One of the underlying traits of this thread is the assumption by so many that God exists simply to give us a comfortable life. He is to keep quiet and leave us to our own devices, but he is to be held responsible for anything that goes wrong! It is not surprising that so many reject such an idea of God - indeed it ought to be rejected because it is untrue and so doesn't make sense.
If we want to try to understand God and therefore come to understand this world and the purpose of our lives, it is a big mistake to see our own egos as the yardstick by which all else is to be measured - of course things inevitably go wrong from there.
When I was 19 I realised that I needed to come to grips with who Jesus claimed to be. I knew I had to answer the question - Did Jesus rise bodily from the dead? My response to him would be determined by my conclusions. In the course of a clinical, objective, 'judicial' inquiry I found the evidence to be overwhelming and totally compelling. I felt that he only honest response to my convictions was to become a Christian, which I did 33 years ago. I have never regretted that decision. The Apostle Paul said, "if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1Corinthians 15:14-19)
The New Testament was written because of Jesus' bodily resurrection - an event witnessed by hundreds of different people in different places and times within a six-week period after his death and before his ascension. None of them expected it to happen but its reality and power transformed their lives (and ours) forever.
It has been said, 'Religion is man's answer to God - Jesus is God's answer to religion'. If you want to encounter God's answer to religion, have a long, close look at the real Jesus in the pages of the New Testament. He's so very different from the 'soft-roader' that people always seem to want him to be.
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