In typical "Jeremy" fashion, I spent way too long writing this in a comment on Facebook. The Gospel is meaningful to me and I like trying to find fresh ways to explain it. I've decided not to edit out the relatively more prolific use of ...*ahem* ... "informal" language from this because the value of a word is found in its context. In this case, I'm explaining the Gospel. Most un-churched people don't understand "Christianese." A lot of people in the church don't understand "Christianese." Though not to be regarded as a scholarly authority in hermeneutics, I aim to offer food for thought to point in the right direction. This is my blue-collar summary of the Gospel: a description of my faith in "sinner" language, if you will.
1) I believe that the universe was made by an intelligent and infinite creator. Regardless of HOW it was created, I cannot find a logical explanation for all of this that is more reasonable than the existence of a higher power. I can't imagine a "big bang" without someone starting it and I can't imagine macroevolution without a genius designer. I'm not threatened by those theories.
2) As I can't imagine being omnipotent and NOT wanting someone to notice how cool I am, God creating a world to interact with seems fairly reasonable. God created us to be friends with him and gave us the option to NOT be friends with him. This way, our relationship with him is meaningful because we do so by choice - not by default.
3) God is the creator of all life and without God, there is no life. Without life, there is death; therefore rejecting God is death. Choosing death is what we call "sin." When we use our free will to reject God, we embrace death: that is what we call, "law."
4) Because we are God's crowning achievement and prized handiwork, he does not want us to die, but leaves that option open so that we will be friends, not slaves. Sex is good and so is God: sex without mutual consent is rape and God is a gentleman who gives the objects of his affection the right to say "no." So, if you will, the "law" is God's honoring the boundaries of consent.
5) Because the natural consequence of saying "no" to God is "not-God" (aka "death"), we can mend the relationship by offering sacrifices that demonstrated our remorse for being shitty friends and showing how much we still really want him in our lives (much like demonstrations of sacrifice might keep a girl from dumping a guy for being a shitty boyfriend). These sacrifices essentially pay the penalty that would otherwise be paid with our own lives.
6) Jesus's life, death, and resurrection served one primary purpose: to spare us death. By sending God's own son (or God, himself, incarnate) Jesus to earth, being completely free of wrongdoing, and being tortured and killed; God wrote the only check big enough to pay the debt we owed, to save us from death. Not only did he do that, but:
a) He did it in such a way that demonstrates how important WE are to GOD.
b) It was done publicly so that there would be LOTS of witnesses.
c) Jesus rose from the dead and appeared before hundreds of witnesses on numerous occasions, presenting proof to them that he was the same one they had seen crucified and buried just days before.
7) This act of sacrifice maintains the integrity of God's law, but makes it easier for us jackasses to maintain our relationship with God. This is good news for us because all we have to do to be spared the death is to CONSENT to Jesus paying off what we owe. What this boils down to is that we don't have to do jack shit to be saved: all we have to do is give God the go-ahead to save us (because God's a gentleman who doesn't force himself on us without permission).
8) "Repent" is an often misunderstood term. When we understand how little we had to do to be saved, repentance is the natural response. If you won the lottery, would you dance? Repentance is like that lottery dance. Once you truly get what has been done for you, it changes the way you think and your habits start to reflect that evolution of mindset. Repentance doesn't save you, it's the way you celebrate the news that you've been saved.
9) The ultimate result of our friendship with God is that when this life ends, we will begin a new life that is free of all this horrible suffering bullshit that's going on in the world we're in today. Again, just because some dude says there's an after life doesn't mean anything to me; but if hundreds of independent eyewitnesses have verified that he was brutally murdered on Friday and then just showed back up a couple days later, eating with his friends and family and appearing before the same eyewitnesses who had watched him be killed; I weigh the probability much more heavily that he may be a more reliable authority on the matter than your average Joe.
10) Comfort in this life isn't a promise. What God has done for us already through Jesus Christ is more than enough. If you hear someone saying that God wants to make you rich, don't listen. God has no interest in that kind of stuff. He may make you rich and he may not, but his only purpose in doing so will be to make himself famous. Be comforted: he will make you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, but not in this life. The riches he promises his followers are in Heaven, where our blessings will truly be eternal.
11) "Gospel" = Good news. If you hear me talking about the Gospel, I'm talking about the fact that better news could not be told than this: This shitty life is not all there is. A MUCH better life awaits us, one which will never end, which is just given to us if we accept the invitation. I cannot possibly imagine a better reality than that.
12) There's no performance requirement. Any possibility of an audit of our actions in life is eliminated by the fact that any and all outstanding debts have been paid off by Christ. We can only be saved by Jesus, not by ourselves, therefore we cannot be "not good enough to be Christian."Jesus paid the price for even the worst of us. That's what makes the real Christian message the best news EVER and that's why I talk about it so much. The Gospel is the antidote for the poison that runs through our veins. I'm letting everyone know about the cure and who has it; not because I have to, but because the truth could not be any sweeter.
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