What is the Christian message, at heart?
The Christian message (the "gospel" if you will) is that you are FREE! Free even to decide against God and his human form, Jesus Christ.
Why?
Because you have the power to make up your own mind. To DECIDE which way to go in life, and thereafter.
That power was given to you at birth. It did not come from your parent, who themselves received it a their birth. It is the result of the way you are made. All humans share this in common.
So IF you accept that there is a creator, whatever you prefer to call him (or "it", if you insist) you can't help but admit that your power to decide comes from him.
If he did that, this act of his makes him worthy of our respect, even of our love, for why else would he do that if not out of love?
That power to decide is true freedom. No one can take that away from us. Not by threat of force, not by imprisoning us, and not by any form of coercion. Even if we feel our will is overcome by superior force, we still have the power to resist, to simply say "NO!" It will have consequences - but so does slavish compliance.
So what does "Jesus" have to do with any of this?
He is the one who dealt with our foundational problem of human existence.
Christians believe (and when I look around in the world of men, I cannot help but agree) that man is infected with something called the "sin nature" from birth. This is not personal sin, mind you. A newborn baby has had no chance to commit any personal sins. Yet. But he or she has the capacity to commit sin(s).
Christians go even further.
They maintain that not only does every human have the capacity to commit sins, but they believe a human cannot help but to commit them!
That one is a really big thing that irks most believers in the innate goodness of man. They believe that "if only" this or that negative influence on people is removed from society, then humans can live in peace, freedom, and prosperity ever after. So far, history has proven them to be Utopians, no less than some of the more easily recognized ones (such as socialists, communists, voluntarists, etc.)
So, let's assume for a moment that this is true, that this condition is a "genetic marker" so to speak that follows us humans around wherever we go, whatever we do, as long as we are alive. There is no human way out of this. Therefore, there is a need for divine intervention.
Jesus Christ is believed by Christians to be the solution to that enigma. He is God himself, in human form (the "son" aspect of the holy trinity) who became human so he could take our collective sins (of all humans, past, present, and future) upon himself in order to have them "judged" in him so that we would have an OPTION.
The option we were given that way is to "accept" this offer, this supreme sacrifice by God himself on our behalf, and thus to escape the inevitable "judgment" that God will have to pronounce upon all those who continue to choose their sin nature while ignoring God's incredibly gracious offer.
We were given the option to "accept" this offer by faith. Nothing else could allow us to accept it. None of our own flesh-driven actions ever could, because everything we do or touch is by definition infected with the same sin nature that is in us.
This can never be proven in any scientific or logically supportable way because it was set up to be done only by faith. Faith simply means to express positive volition to: (a) the notion of the existence of a God who even cares about humanity, much less every single individual ever born in time, including you, and (b) the notion that this creator-God did what Christians claim he did in becoming man and literally purchasing our freedom from sin by his own sacrifice and suffering.
What was his "suffering"?
Not the Romans flogging him and smashing every facial bone of his human form. Not really. Not the hanging on the cross from nails driven through his wrists and ankles. Not the psychological torture his own people, the Jews heaped upon him by calling him names and ridiculing him and giving him up to the hated Roman overlord authorities. No. Not that.
His suffering came in a different form, but to understand it, you have to "accept" (or momentarily assume the truth of, for the sake of our argument here) of a few precepts:
a. You have to accept that Jesus Christ was both fully man and fully God (not a "demigod").
b. You have to accept that his birth to a virgin without a human father enabled him to be born in human form, but without the genetic sin nature that is passed down from generation to generation by the act of human conception (i.e., that it is passed down by man, not by woman (so much for the notion that Christianity is "sexist" and values man "over" women).
c. You have to accept that the human Christ was able to live a life that was totally free from both personal sin and the inherited sin nature, and that he (as "the Son") was therefore at all times "with" or one with God, the Father every moment of his life.
Once you accept these premises (only for argument's sake, of course), you can now understand the nature of his true suffering, at least within this context.
According to the biblical gospels, there was a three-hour time span when Jesus hung upon that cross, when the sun was blotted out and there was total darkness. That darkness was pierced by an inhuman shrieking of an agony that no man or woman has ever felt before that moment, and will ever fell thereafter as long as human beings exist. It was the shrieking in utter desperation of a man who had never known a moment in time when he was not also identical "with God" who had suddenly not only lost that status, but who was suddenly immersed in every single sin ever committed in human existence - past, present, and future - as our collective sins were poured into and through his body while he was utterly separated from God.
It was then when he screamed, at the top of his considerable lung and voice-box capacity: "Eli, Eli! Lams shabbachtani??!!" ("My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?")
His shrieking signifies (to Christians) that Jesus died two deaths on that cross: first the spiritual death of utter separation from God for the first time in his life. The second death was his physical death, when he finally expelled every last ounce of breath from his lungs and intentionally literally "expired" while hanging there (long before the Roman soldier's spear lanced his side, because when that happened, both "blood and water" came out of his wound - a physiological sign that death had already occurred hours earlier.
So: in Christian thought, God made us (and everything else), set us up with the greatest gift ever (free will), gave "us" (collectively in Adam and Eve) an opportunity to abandon him by providing an alternative belief system (Satan's) and then stepped into human affairs himself to provide us with a viable way out of that mess, if we so choose, by doing nothing more than believing him.
But that's not the end of the story. In a way, it is only the beginning.
Because, although expressing faith in God and what he did for us "saves" us from what is known as the "slave market of sin" in eternity (God does not go back on his word), it still leaves us wrestling with the problem of personal sin while we are still alive on earth (or possibly elsewhere) as human beings. But, there is even a way out of this.
We are told that by simply naming ("confessing")our (known) sins to him in the privacy of our own mind, he will forgive us those known since and cleanse us from all forgotten or not consciously recognized sins as well.
In doing so, he restores our capacity to have direct communication with him and to "live the spiritual life" he really designed for us. In that life, under the power of the third "person" (aspect) of the holy trinity, he allo3ws us to understand, put into context, and internalize (make our own by faith) the lessons we can learn (if we so desire) from the "stories" in the Bible.
I can tell you from my own personal experience that this kind of lifestyle beats anything I have ever known, read, heard of, or imagined. "Problems" that beset us and tormented us our for entire life can and do suddenly disappear into nothing, as if they never existed. Their ramifications are still there, but the "stinger" that tormented us before is suddenly gone. (I won't get into details here.)
So the point of all that is this:
1. True freedom comes from God (you cannot credit anyone or anything else with your ability to DECIDE what is best for you and your loved ones).
2. He WANTS us to be free - even from the consequences of our own personal and collective sin and sin-nature!
3. All you have to do to be free is to exercise your original gift of free will in favor of faith in him.
4. Even if you decide against him, your very ability to do so is a gift from him. That decision just has consequences (but those consequences are rather self-imposed because they are the result of our own free choice)
5. By not believing any of this, you are (theoretically) free from even those divine "consequences". Therefore the choice is truly yours. It cannot be coerced, because when it is coerced, your decision loses its validity to him.
All of this is the reason why there is such a battle going on for your mind, today.
All of the "political" and "cultural" influences you are exposed to by the so-called "world" (what we call the "establishment" is designed in one way or another to make you BELIEVE that you do not have this "free will" (or that, by exercising it, you are somehow "selfish" and not feeding into the greater good for the greater number).
If you "believe" in the "scientific" notion that you are just the sum of your brain functions and simply a product of your environment, and that free will is an illusion, you have no escape. (Interesting is that this still focuses on your BELIEF, i.e., faith. It is all about faith - one way or the other.
"Liberalism" or even "conservatism" (both forms of coercive statism) are belief systems that tell you you do not have this ability (or the right) to decide for yourself, or if you do, provide you with reasons why you should not exercise it to its fullest. (Even "conservatives" tell you there are certain thoughts or notions you should never entertain: for example that the US government had anything at all to do with 9-11. You are not allowed to question this in any shape, form, or fashion, or you risk being cast into the outer edges of conservative group-think darkness!).
Pure "voluntarism" is a great idea, but it is no more than that. it is utopian in its root because it fails to take into account the inherent fallibility of man. Controlled social experiments have shown the truth of the old adage that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Give a man or woman any kind of power, and he or she will figure out ways to abuse it . It's our human default programming to believe in these types of human solutions. Again: it's faith itself that is the issue.
On the Problem of Fear:
Fear is the opposite of faith in God. Fear of anything is the BELIEF that something untoward or painful could happen to you - something beyond any immediate and recognized danger. That's why fear is such a great tool in the tool chest of our (Satan-inspired) human controllers. Everything they do to control us is based on the deliberately fear-based action-reaction-solution paradigm where any particular action is calculated to cause the desired reaction in order to garner support for a preplanned "solution." In essence, fear is also a belief. It's the conviction that something evil will befall you unless you do "X".
Unfortunately, that human tendency has been widely abused by many religions, including "Christianity" in order to gain adherents, and that is what gives "Christianity" a well-deserved bad name. It has enabled to user human controllers to use religion (and especially religious "leaders" to drive people like cattle into their clutches. Chalk that up to the human default nature. Even believers are lead astray by their own fear-demons.
It should also be clear to everyone that the desire to control others itself is nothing more than a fear reaction. People with that desire pursue their nefarious schemes because they fear a loss of (perceived) control over their lives more than death itself.
Because they have no faith in God (whom they correctly suspect of being the creator of all freedom, which they fear like nothing else for the same reason) they have to protect themselves. Freedom for the masses is their biggest threat because it directly contravenes their sick desire for control. They are, therefore, the gate keepers to their own prisons, and they keep themselves locked in tight - all the while Satan watches in perfect glee, rubbing his hands together. He likes what they do.
The problem in what the controllers do is that they are also locking us into the very same prison, all the while deceiving themselves that by doing so, they reserve certain perceived "privileges" for themselves.
So what is the root of fear?
Spiritually speaking, the root of fear is our tendency to pursue something other than our relationship with God first, and to value that pursuit (whatever it is) as more worthy than God himself.
When we do that, me are condemning ourselves to the possibility of "loss" of whatever it is we assign such a high value to. This "something" could be the most benign and beneficial-sounding thing, human, or ideal in the world, and it would still be off the mark, because we are not made that way. We are all made to fill that emptiness we feel inside ourselves with the creator himself, not with one of his creatures.
So, the answer to fear is God. When you put him in his rightful place in your life, your fear goes away because you know you can never lose him. The only thing that can make you lose him is your own decision to value (believe) something or someone else more than God - and fortunately, you have the power to decide not to do that, just as you have the power to decide to do exactly the opposite!
The power is yours. Unconditionally.The one who gave it to you is God - unless you have a better explanation. You can call that which gave you that power something else, like ?nature" or "the universe", or whatever, but in doing so you only affirm that you have that power.
The Purpose of this Post:
The purpose of this post is not to convince you that God is real and that you had better follow him, or else! The purpose is to give you information. Ideas. Food for your decision-making machine. Maybe some ideas you haven't considered yet.
It should be clear by now, though, that what is a threat to human Liberty is not God (how could he be, if you don't believe in him and he therefore doesn't exist?) but, at the most basic and common-sense level, our tendency to believe in something that has the potential to cause us a loss of some sort.
Conversely, it should be clear that IF you believe in the Christian model of reality and human history, a firm sense of gratitude to and therefore faith in God can be the antidote to this otherwise seemingly insurmountable fear-problem. The point is that either way, the issue is faith. Your faith! Where do you put yours? In human reason? In the original goodness of mankind? In science? In the powers of your own intellect? In the greater good of the greater number?
As long as you are still subject to fear, can you be free?
(The following question is for believers in Christ, only):
If God wants us to be free, would he want you, and all of us, to live under a tyrannical government that wants to convince us of the opposite (i.e., that freedom must be sacrificed for state-provided "security")? Do preachers, pastors, ministers, priests, whatever you call them, who preach subjection to the state as "God's will" based on a lazy and incorrect interpretation of Romans 13 really preach God's word? Should you really listen to them? Should you even tolerate them to talk to you and your fellow church members at every sermon.
If you are a Christian pastor, minister, or whatever, do you still believe that preaching Romans 13 as God's commandment for you and your congregation? Should you not break out of this prison of the soul and encourage your followers to do likewise? Should you not preach LIBERTY instead, as God's will here on earth as well as in Heaven, and exhort your followers to hold their government officials accountable?
Should you not preach to them as the old fighting preachers of the American Revolution preached?
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