It's All Just Words.

Image © by Brian E. Faulkner

One of the knottiest issues Christians have to grapple with in conversations with non-believers and even fellow believers is the “one way” idea.  That God has finally, completely and intentionally fashioned a single path to redemption in the person of Jesus Christ, who redeemed a great many people while on Earth and uncounted millions since.  He also upset more than a few cultural, political and religious apple carts, was executed in a mean and visible way and yet lived again to redeem … even us.

“I am the way, the truth and the light,” Jesus declares from the pages of Scripture.  “Nobody comes to the Father except through me.”

There lies the stumble stone for people who are repelled by the idea that Christianity claims the exclusive path to God, inferring (of course) that all other would-be paths to God are invalid.  Such an audacious statement either must be true on its face or completely without merit, as many skilled and holy Christian apologists have argued. But neither is it my intent – nor within my ability – to unpack the logic of this truth exegetically, except to wonder why God would have bothered creating just one more path among many and then have played it out in such an extraordinarily cruel way.  

I choose instead to present the reality of Christ’s singular way from a completely different perspective, one with the power to bring me to tears given the magnitude of its truth, the image of which has enveloped and guided my life now for a long time.

Abraham plays in my imagination, Abram as he was known then.  I see Isaac, his beloved son, carrying kindling up a mountain where his father planned to light the fire that would consume his boy (Isaac thought he was to participate in an animal sacrifice). Now, in the cruel garden of my mind, I see my own son, or perhaps one of my daughters or grandchildren.  I am forced to choose between them, to mark the one who will be sacrificed to the flames.  I am expected to do so as a matter of faith, trusting in God that no harm will befall any one of my precious offspring.   But I do not have the courage of Abraham, I do not have the faith.  I cannot choose.  I would rather die myself in some piteous, wretched manner than sacrifice my son.  MY SON …

God had a problem, symbolized by Abraham’s dilemma:  How can I redeem my people?  How can I forgive them of their lifetimes of sins against me?  How can I see my justice done?  I could wipe them out and start over.  I could kill their sons – as cruelly as Herod killed those boy toddlers in his deadly search for the newborn Savior.
 
“No!  I cannot do these unspeakable things,” God may have thought.  “I will kill MY Son instead.  My Son, the Light of the world, the One who existed since before there was time.  I will commit the unthinkable act.  I will choose Him.  I will have him beaten without mercy, place a crown of thorns on his innocent head and twist it until the blood blends with his tears.  I will turn my back on him.  And then I will hang him on a Roman cross in the bright light of day.  He will die slower than any sacrificial bull or lamb or goat and will have his side pierced by a sword to prove that he is dead.  I will sacrifice my Son willingly so that others, in embracing His singular sacred act, will -- in turn -- sacrifice their own lives on my altar and be born again.”

I do not picture God as a remote, larger than life character but more like a person you’d meet on the street.  He would look a lot like me.  Or you:  kind of average, approachable.  And after a few obligatory comments about the weather, he probably would get right to it:

“I do not ask your son of you,” He would say, “or one of your daughters or a grandchild.  That is far too much to ask.  Instead, in my great mercy, I ask you only for your obedience and surrender - in total trust.  I ask you for yourself, given over completely and irrevocably to me and my purposes: your hopes, your dreams, your future.  Even the ones you love so much more than yourself: your children, your grandchildren.  All of it, holding nothing back.  Like Abram.

“That’s step one,” he would conclude, giving me one of those smiles that only Michelangelo could paint. 

“Because until you do that, it’s all just words.”

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