I will follow

Yesterday, I wrote a detailed post about my faith. In the past few years, I have come to re-assess a lot of things that I had been taught and had accepted as Gospel truth (pardon the pun), which is why I felt compelled to put in writing the actual content of my faith.

Today, I want to talk about the core of my faith, the Christian faith.

This core is the person of Jesus Christ. The very word Christian comes from the word Christ. At the most basic level, a Christian is someone who believes Jesus was who he said he was, and accomplished what he said he accomplished.

We believe Jesus is the Son of God become human. This is actually an amazing thing to believe in, because it means God is not some distant deity who cannot understand us or sympathize with our plight. He lived our life: he felt human pain, weariness, hunger, thirst, and emotions. He cried when a friend of his died. He was moved with compassion when he witnessed human suffering. He himself suffered torture and a slow, horrific agony. This means God knows what being human is like, what it feels like. Our God is close to us. He knows. He understands. That, to me, is a huge source of comfort, and one of the reasons I love him so much.

At the same time, he wasn't exactly a human like one of us. His teachings were both uncompromising and compelling. The virtues he details in the Sermon on the Mount seem unattainable, yet he lived up to them. He gave his time and energy to people, healing them, valuing them. He actually spent time with those society valued the least - the poor, the sick, women, and "notorious" sinners. He had little time for religious hypocrites, though, and didn't mince his words when talking about them. Yet, he taught enemy love and he let his enemies torture and kill him.  He showed us what human beings were supposed to be like: full of love, passionate for justice, passionate for God. 


Finally, he died. He announced his death beforehand and explained to his disciples that he would die on our behalf, as a ransom. A ransom is a price paid for someone's life, is it not? His life for ours. His life to pay the penalty for our sin, for our own rejection of God. His death to open the way to forgiveness and reconciliation. His death to defeat the power of sin and death over humanity. We Christians believe that when he rose again, he proved that he had indeed defeated sin and death. His death and resurrection mean we can enjoy a restored relationship to God.

This is huge. This is massive. This is amazing. This is compelling. And to me, the undeniable proof that God loves us.

This is the Christian story, the very core of it. This is what I build my life upon. Jesus is the man I will follow, and the God I will worship.