This page was inspired partly by the late Rich Mullins’ and partly by the events of September 11, 2001. We all need to understand exactly what we believe about important things, and this is my most fundamental belief:
I believe that Jesus Christ is the only Son of a living God, and that He came to this world for the sole purpose of providing the perfect sacrifice God demands as the price of sin. By living a sinless life and dying on the cross, He opened the door of heaven to all who accept Him. I believe that God has spoken to us in His Word, the book we call the Bible. I do not believe that “religion”, attending church, performing particular rituals, saying particular words, or anything else outside of our acceptance of the life, death and resurrection of Christ will give us peace with God and everlasting life with Him. I believe that Christ is, as he claimed, “the Way, the Truth and the Life”. To enter into God’s kingdom, we have only to accept Him for what he did for us, personally, and to love Him with all our heart, soul and mind. (For details on both how to do this, and why we must, pick up a Bible in a translation of your choosing (my favorite is the NIV), ask God to reveal the truth to you, and read the book of Romans, which is just a letter written to the early church in Rome. If you believe what you read, then confess your sins, accept Christ’s sacrifice as full payment for them, and ask God to forgive you. His Holy Spirit will enter you and you will be a new creation. Find a body of believers (I like West Bowles Church, but there are many good ones), study His Word and pray for understanding.)
I believe that God’s Word will not be “proven” during this age, at least not by our definition. God requires one thing of us; faith in Him. Thus, He will never allow us to “prove” His Word, or even His existence. However, evidence of the Creator is found all around us: In the ability of a bird to fly and a fish to swim, in the complexity of the eye and ear, and in the capacity we have to love one another. None of these things can, to me, be explained away as the result of random events over untold eons. It is this inescapable conclusion that we are created that cemented my belief in the Creator.
I believe that most people, particularly secular Americans, don’t like the idea of Christianity because we want to be our own god. We struggle, as man has struggled since the dawn of time, against His authority in our lives. Obedience in children pleases us, but our obedience to anything other than our own will galls us. We dislike the idea of sin because it implies absolute standards and we prefer to set our own. However, I believe that the only real sin is unbelief, and it is unbelief that allows men to do the despicable deeds we see in the world, as well as the equally despicable – to God – thoughts, words and deeds we tolerate in our own lives. And it is by this tolerance that we actively participate in the evil we profess to abhor.
I assure you that I am not, in any way, a “religious nut”. In fact, if you know me, and find me to be unworthy of my own beliefs, I apologize. Do not judge Him though, judge me. For my failures are not His failures, and my only claim to righteousness comes not from anything I may have done, but entirely from what He has done for all of us.