I think there might be something very important to discover about life in the answer to these questions.

In fact, this may be a primary key to unlocking our capacity to be transformed into the person we were created, and then rescued by Jesus, to be! Hard things in life are everywhere; we can’t avoid them. Bad things happend to good people all the time. If we can understand what is going on, and how to live our lives so that these things produce life instead of death in us, that has got to be a good thing!

Here’s the punch line: the answer has everything to do with the Cross.

When I bring up the topic of the cross I know that for some people I’ve just stepped across the line into the strange and incomprehensible world of religious jargon and odd theological ideas.

“Obviously,” you may say, “by ‘the cross’ I must be referring to Jesus’ cross which the New Testament claims was used to kill him, even though he was innocent of any crime deserving death—the preiminent example of bad things happening to good people! But, how can an event that happened to someone who was living so far away and so long ago have any real affect on the life I’m living now?”

Here’s how:

First, its important to recognize that when the New Testament refers to the cross (Jesus’ crucifiction at the hands of Roman soldiers) it is reporting about an actual historical event, not a mere spiritual principle, a philosophical concept, or mythical story.

This is very, very important for us. The premise of the New Testament account is that Jesus’ death on the cross was an actual place in time and space where God was present and at work. While the things that happened to Jesus were so horrible that we can hardly conceive of them, nevertheless God was right there with Jesus and at work.

Why is that important? Simply this: when we face our own horrible experiences we need to know that God is with us and at work in our lives, too. I’m not talking about ‘with us’ in some vague, hyper-religious, ‘warm and fuzzy’ way, like we might say to someone who is about to face something difficult; “I’m with you, man!” when they are actually quite alone in what they are about to face.

I mean God is with us, both present and at work, really. I’m not alone, even though I’m suffering. This hardship or pain is not pointless, even though it may not make any sense. God is with me and I can trust him. I have reason to be confident of this in my own case because he was with Jesus in his.

Second, the New Testament claims that God was working while being present with Jesus during his ordeal, to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. This is another basis for hope and builds further on what I’ve just said about God’s presence. If we can see that we not alone in our trials, maybe we can trust God to accomplish something that we know we can’t do on our own! Again, if he did this through Jesus experience, we have reason to expect the same in our experience.

So, what did God accomplish through Jesus’ suffering and crucifiction?

1. Hebrews 9:23-28 (among other texts) claims that on the cross Jesus’ brought onto himself the inevitable judgement we all stand to face in the age to come. In other words, through Jesus’ death on the cross God placed the judgement for our sins on him in our place, so we might be forgiven and not have to face that judgment ourselves. What we were absolutely powerless and incapable of doing anything for ourselves, he did for us.
2. I Corinthians 11:25 says that he also managed to set in place the new covenant relationship that the ancient Jewish prophetic writings had been predicting and hoping for. In otherwords, on the cross God opened the door to us for intimate, personal relationship with himself. Again, none of us could have made that happen. No amount of human religion, ceremonies, self scrifice, asceticsm or good deeds could ever bridge the gap between our small, human lives and the awesome, incomprehensible entity that created everything there is out of nothing. Instead, he did it for us. Amazing!
3. Colossians 2:15 reports that on the cross, God dealt the overwhelming blow to the true enemy of humankind, Satan. Jesus went around Isreal and demonstrated that he had authority and power over demonic beings and all of thier doings. On the cross, we are told that he utterly and completely defeated them. The Satanic realm gave it their best shot, and Jesus’ took it and shook it off.Here in the West where our scientific mindsets pretty much deny and ignore the reality of the spiritual world (except in fantasy and imagination), we aren’t immediately in touch with our helplessness before these powers; that is not the case in other parts of the world. There are many people who are all to aware of the fact that they are virtually helpless to defend themselves against these powers on there own. It is good news indeed to learn that there is one who has overcome them all!
4. Finally, I Corintians 15:26 promises that Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is in effect and will ultimately prove to be the defeat of the ultimte enemy, death itself!

The first one is the “my behavior saves me” idea. This thought (or belief) leads you to live with the burden of performing for God so that He will observe your behavior, find it acceptable and then be obligated to reward you with … (eternal life, short-term rewards, etc.). In other words, I did what He required so He will do what He promised.

The second one is usually the aftermath of trying to live by the first; I call it the “my behavior has nothing to do with what saves me” idea. This idea is often the aftermath of the first one, because after a good, hard time of trying to perform for God it becomes evident that bad things do happen to good people, the experience of the joy of God’s presence doesn’t seem to directly correspond to our diligence and discipline in religious things, etc. It begins to feel like what I do in my daily life makes little or no difference —in fact, life gets harder, I percieve myself as less ‘holy’, less ‘redeemed’, less ‘spiritual’ the more I try to serve God and perform for Him. If and when God does bring good into my life, it seems to be totally capricous and without any correlation to what I do or how I live (this is really closer to the idea of ‘luck’ than anything else).

It would seem that this is what the Bible itself says. Consider, for example, Psalm 50:22,23 (in two different translations):

Repent, all of you who ignore me, or I will tear you apart, and no one will help you. But giving thanks is a sacrifice that truly honors me. If you keep to my path, I will reveal to you the salvation of God. Psalms 50:22, 23, NLT

Now consider this, you who forget God, Or I will tear you in pieces, and there will be none to deliver. “He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors Me; And to him who orders his way aright I shall show the salvation of God.” Psalms 50:22, 23, NAS95.

Read this passage from Psalm 50 (and many others like it) with the confused ideas noted above and you will either see a proof-text for your perceived obligation to perform well for God (to get the ‘good stuff’ from him), or you will see yet another reminder that this living for God-thing is actually be a cruel hoax offering false hope in hard times.

But there is a different way to read this passage, there is a different “idea” to have in your mind; one that spins everything in a different direction, in the direction of hope and optimism and renewed determination to follow God and expect good from your relationship with Him.

That is, we need to keep in mind the overarching idea of The Way of the Lord that threads its way through the scriptures. In summary, there is a path that God has prepared and revealed to His people that leads back home, back to the True Life we were created to live. Those who walk this path make the journey; those who reject the path end up somewhere else. In other words, ‘what we do, does matter,’ just not quite in the confused way of thinking that we started this post talking about.

God seemed to be small enough and limited enough to be constrained within the priorities and practices of our church and the lives of these people. God really didn’t seem to have much interest in more than us, our meetings, our church building, etc. I know this sounds strange, even egotistical, as though we were the center of everything. Really it was that I had seen and understood so little of what God was up to that I thought we were mainly ‘it’ for him.

With a few more years, a few more experiences with God, and a lot more time learning to think through the biblical material, things look very different!

Our little church with its meetings, members and all the rest are important and did have a place in God’s attention and affection. But there is so much more to the story.

Our church was always a part (an important part, surely) of a larger strategy that God was pursuing in this world he created. The danger, however, in not seeing the bigger picture is that we can miss the purpose and end up not really participating in the truly important things in life. If you have ever heard anyone talk about ‘playing church’ this is what they meant.

Here’s the larger story. Throughout the bible’s record of God’s rescue and restoration of lost mankind, there is a discernible strategy that God is following. Its goal is to return people to the life they were created to live. The flow of the unfolding biblical story culminates in a three-stage rescue.

1. Stage One: God reconciles people to himself through Jesus, the Messiah of the Jews and the Lord and Savior of the world.
2. Stage Two: God repairs and rebuilds these reconciled children, restoring them to the image of God using Jesus as the pattern, by leading them along the well-marked path of the Way of the Lord. All of this ‘reworking’ is accomplished through the powerful activity of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
3. Stage Three: God will ultimately transform their bodies so that they are able to handle the fullness of the power and life that will be restored to them at the Resurrection for an eternity of living, working and fulfilling God’s purposes. (Philippians 3:20-21)

When I only had on the ‘glasses’ of my small church experiences of my youth, it was easy to think that the goal of life was to attend church meetings, avoiding obvious errors and sinful behaviors, and hang-on till either we died or Jesus came back for us.

Now, seeing the bigger picture of what God is really up to, a lot of things look very different and the priorities of life have changed accordingly.

For example:

• My relationship with God is about much more than my escape from hell. It includes that, but is much more about a reunited relationship, a reconnected life, a restoration of something lost, something precious, something powerful and totally life-changing for me.
  • It is now very important to me to cultivate this relationship, to explore it, to grow in it with Him. Knowing God is the true treasure of my life; its not a neglected nic-nac relegated to a shelf somewhere in a corner of my life.
• God’s plan for my life is much more than mere faithful church attendance and reasonably good behavior. Becoming a follower of Jesus means that I’m involved in a radical redefinition of what it means to be human, to live a good life and to be a successful person.
  • It is now very important to me that I do more than ‘mark time’ in life. I have the opportunity to become what I really want to be, ‘A good person’, a ‘successful person’ if I will walk with God on the Way of the Lord and cooperate with Him in the remodel job He is undertaking in me.
• This is all going somewhere. This life I am to learn to live in God is a life of preparation for a future life that is bigger than anything I had ever dared to dream of.
  • How can I be content with the smallness of mere power and success in this world? So many of the things people are willing to sacrifice their lives, their families and even their health to achieve will very soon evaporate and be forgotten. But, I can give myself to achieving something that will have long lasting (even eternal) success-becoming the person I was created to be so that I can fulfill the purpose I was created for as child of God, a co-heir with Christ, and as a member of a holy priesthood with an imperishable inheritance in the Kingdom of God.

This situation produces awful fallout. The non-religious (or at least non-Christian) onlookers are generally unimpressed with the high sounding claims to truth and divine revelation brandished by these supposedly ‘born again, Spirit-filled, children of God.’ And, equally sad is the state of apathy and discouragement that these believers sink into as they find that their hopes and expectations for ‘new life’ are dashed on the rocks of their relatively unchanged lives.

The statistics are terrible. Divorce rates among Western Christian couples are nearly identical with non-religious couples. The same addictions to chemicals and sex are common to both groups (even among Christian religious leaders). Often, Christian people have developed horrible reputations regarding their honesty, integrity or generosity among their non-religious neighbors and business associates.

Now, to be fair, some of this bad rep may be due to religious persecution and intentional slander by those who want to harm or hinder the Christian cause because of religious disagreement or personal animosity. Truthfully, however, even with that factor taken into account the bottom line is this: something is horribly, horrible wrong.

I think part of the problem, at least among those in the Evangelical Christian communities of the West, is that the message given to the faithful day in and day out is mainly about the goal of getting to heaven and speaks only in passing about living life in the mean time.

Another contributor to this is the apparent accommodation that the Western Evangelical church has inadvertently made with Gnostic thinking. N.T. Wright has pointed out that there is a strong habit of thinking that the present, physical world is ‘bad’ while the future, spiritual world is the real good. Believers have their attention frequently turned toward death and the life to come (the hope of heaven) or the coming escape from this awful world (the Rapture of the saints). Neither emphasis produces much of an urgency to discover and master a new kind of living in the here and now.

This is why it is so critical that we rediscover the Way of the Lord as the basis for normal Christian life and practice. The 1st century saw a religious movement begin around Jesus of Nazareth which within three centuries had overwhelmed and transformed the Roman empire. This feat had much to do with how these disciples of Jesus lived their lives. They apparently did things very differently than the typical church member of our generation.

My hope is this; if God is real, and if he has revealed himself through the ancient Judeo/Christian scriptures, and more specifically in Jesus of the bible, then there has to be another way to do this.

Lets go back to the original sources, back past our recent history or religious experiences, and look again at God, at life and at what He might have to say about how this is all supposed to be working out in practice.

Feel free to respond to my ramblings with your own thoughts, questions, comments.

Remember, together we can accomplish what we could not do alone.