For those who may not have read any of my previous writings, I should explain that I am a Christian, a rather devout one I think, though I know I am not doing all I could or should be doing for God, and it’s all because of where my head is at. I’m always talking in my journal about how I’m a Christian, trying to be a man of God, and trying to follow the path that Jesus paved for me to follow, in His footsteps. The Book of James dwells on this somewhat, talking about how a true Christian can be spotted by his deeds, and if those deeds are dead, so is the faith. No, your deeds will not get you into heaven; you cannot earn your way there. Heaven if given by grace, through belief in Christ, yet there is more to it than that, because demons believe as well, and they, of course, are not going to heaven. There must be more than just hollow belief – there must be trust and love and a relationship with Jesus Christ, and our deeds will be a reflection of all that. He will know us by our fruit. (See Matthew 3:10, 7:20, 12:33, John 15:2, 15:16, Galatians 5:22, 23, Phillipians 1:11) Yet I see a chasm between me and God, and why not? This concept is mentioned throughout the New Testament and in numerous Christian songs whenever Jesus is painted as a Bridge. We are not God, and we are separated from Him by our sin, and Jesus is the Bridge that crosses that chasm.

But am I seeing a gap where none exists any longer? As a believer, I become a new man in Christ. Christ has helped me cross this gulf between me and God, and yet I’m still living and acting as if the break is still there, talking about how I’m still trying to be a man of God. Well, if I truly believe, then I already am a man of God, and I just need to let that continue to grow. As much as unbelievers may see us Christians as exclusionary, the fact is that this is how God designed it. As a believer, I am saved. Can I help it if that’s exclusionary? Can I help it if they have not made the leap as I have? It’s up to each individual. This is the bed I’ve made. They will have to lay in their own.

This is what one of our interim pastors talked about this month at church, and I found it to be wonderfully enlightening. He painted the same picture of a Christian trying to be godlier, without even realizing that he already is godly. He explained how there is nothing anymore separating God and me, and that instead of looking at God across a chasm, God and I are on the same side looking across it at the rest of the unsaved world. The point is that God and I are on the same side. We have been ever since I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. All I really need to do now is to realize this, the rest will come as a result.

Our pastor gave a great analogy. He said in one of his visits to a foreign country, he was just blown away by the local elephant show. These elephants performed and gave rides and painted pictures, and he was amazed, and perhaps a little leery, wondering if these elephants might someday snap and go berserk. Yet, as he explained, there’s little danger of that happening. You see, these elephants are trained from a very young age. They would put a shackle and chain abound the elephant’s foot, and the elephant could never go more than just a couple feet from where it was tethered. Over time, these trainers discovered that if they removed the chain but left the shackle, the elephant would still never go more than a couple of feet from its current position. So in the elephant’s mind, it was still shackled, even though, truthfully, it was free. For us, when we become Christians, when we believe, the chain is, in effect, cut, yet we still feel the shackle, and still imagine the chain. We start out with a chasm between ourselves and God, but when we become born again, Jesus bridges that gap, and we find ourselves with God, yet mentally, we still picture ourselves on the other side of the canyon. This is a hard thing to get past. After all, we’re still here on earth, the playground of Satan, intermixing with all the unsaved sinners, making wrong choices, even sinning still, and following in Jesus’ footsteps only little by little, bit by bit. Yet we grow as Christians the more we realize that the chasm that separated us from God no longer exists, and that we are free spirits in Christ Jesus.

Another interim pastor gave a great sermon concerning a subject I’m fascinated by, namely dealing with the nature of choice. In his sermon, he defined our choices as being one of three: Predetermined by God, moral, and personal, and then went on to discuss the meaning of this versus the meaning of the undefined moral relativism of this world, and to do so, he used an analogy every bit as thought provoking as the other pastor’s analogy about the elephants.

On everybody’s program, he printed the image of a ruler, and asked us to imagine that, with this ruler, he was going to have us build a bookcase. Then he told us that the measurements on everybody’s rulers were slightly different, and that there were actually three different rulers used. No further explanation was necessary, for I got the point loud and clear, yet he explained: With three different rulers, all with slightly different measurements, the bookcase would most likely turn out to be a disaster. What is needed is a consensus, an absolute, an agreement that the measurements all be the same. In Paris, there exists a Bureau of Weights and Measures whose job it is to maintain the absolutes of measurement, so that all rulers use the same dimensions, so that things built use the same proportions. If a mile is different to one person than another, how would we ever make a map? If two different people use two different thermometers, how will we ever make any kind of definitive decisions on the weather? And his ultimate point? The same kind of thing applies to truth. Relative truth is never definitive and can change on a whim, but absolute truth doesn’t change, and remains the same for everyone, every time.

I myself liken this to a helium balloon. We experienced a few deaths in the family recently, and my sister had her daughters write messages to their grandpa on helium balloons and then let them go into the wind. We did the same on a departed friend’s birthday last year, and the balloons went wherever the wind took them. Liberals are like this. Just like those balloons, they are free to go wherever the winds take them. For Christians, however, God imposes moral boundaries and absolute truths that do not shift with the winds. Christians are still like those helium balloons, yet they are tethered to God. They are free to shift with the winds just like the untethered helium balloons, moving around in the winds of change and time, yet able to go only so far because they remained tethered to God’s rock solid, absolute foundation. So while the liberals can shift with changing tides, we Christians should remain anchored to our Rock, our Safe Harbor. And we should still be happy, and unapologetic, to do so. So why are we not? Why are we always trying to fall in line with the politico correctos over on the left? Why are we ashamed to say we are saved in Christ, or do we pick on those who aren’t afraid or ashamed to say it? Why do I have to defend myself at work against the two men there who claim to be my Christian brothers? Why are they judging me and my walk as a Christian? Why are they floating in the wind with all the untethered liberals, looking down at me because I choose to remain tethered to God?

Well, nobody said it would be easy. In fact, by all accounts, this Christian walk, especially in the here and now on the late, great planet earth, is quite possibly the most conflicting walk we could choose to take. It’s not a lovely stroll through a rosy, sunny park, let me tell you, but more of a mad dash through a hostile battlefield, with bullets ripping through the air. What we need in this walk here is protection. In both Superman and Superman Returns, there are scenes where Superman keeps walking while bullets flip off his chest like they weren’t even there. That’s what we need. We need Superman, and it’s telling that in both these films, Superman is used several times as a deliberate Biblical allegory for Jesus Christ. Because what we need here in our walk with God is Superman, and that’s exactly what we get in Christ, only He’s real. In Superman Returns, Lois Lane wrote an article called “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman,” echoing the liberals’ sentiments about Jesus. There are lots of analogies we could derive from this, yet nothing seems to trump the fact that, in the end, no matter how cynical and self-righteous Lois may have become, no matter how much the world had moved on, they still needed Superman to save them. Well, the same thing applies here. No matter how cynical and self-righteous the world may have become, no matter how much they may have moved on, they still need Jesus to save them.

They always will.