| Jesus Saves My Faith |
| "Why am I a Christian?" I sometimes ask myself, and to be perfectly honest, the reasons reduce to two: (1) the lack of good alternatives and (2) Jesus. I tend to spend a lot of time pondering unanswerable questions such as the problem of pain or providence versus free will. Often, when I do so, the fog begins to drift in. But if I look at Jesus, clarity is restored. Jesus gave no philosophical answer to the problem of pain, but he did give an existential answer. I cannot learn from him why bad things occur, but I can learn how God feels about it. I look at how Jesus responds to the sisters of his good friend Lazarus (see John 1), or to a leprosy patient banned from the town gates (see Mark 1:40-45). Jesus gives God a face, and that face is streaked with tears. Why doesn't God answer my prayers? I do not know, but it helps me to realize that Jesus himself knew something of that feeling. He prayed all night over his choice of disciples, and still that list included one named Judas. In Gethsemane, he threw himself on the ground, crying out for some other way, but there was no other way. At its core, Gethsemane depicts, after all, the story of unanswered prayer (see Luke 22:39-46). The cup of suffering was not removed. Mostly, Jesus corrects my foggy conceptions of God, Jesus reveals a God who comes in search of us, a God who makes room for our freedom even when it costs the Son's life, a God who is vulnerable. Above all, Jesus reveals a God who is love. On our own, would any of us come up with the notion of a God who loves and yearns to be loved? Those raised in a Christian tradition may miss the shock of Jesus' message, but in truth, love has never been a normal way of describing what happens between human beings and their God. Not once does the Quran apply the word love to God. Aristotle stated bluntly, "It would be eccentric for anyone to claim that he loved Zeus" or that Zeus loved a human being, for that matter. In dazzling contrast, the Christian Bible affirms that God is love and cites love as the main reason Jesus came to earth: "This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him" (1 John 4:9). The story of Jesus is the story of a celebration, a story of love. It involves pain and dissappointment, yes, for God as well as for us. But Jesus embodies the promise of a God who will go to any length to get his family back. |