Originally written July 2004

There is an incredible verse in Ezekiel that says, “So was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.” (Ezekiel 1:28) This is such an incredible verse.

Imagine knowing about someone who you really want to meet. It could be the president or an actor or a Nobel prize winner. Some might be honored to have a statue of that person to remind them of their character or their fame. That statue would undoubtedly cast a shadow on the wall. The verse in Ezekiel is showing us an appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. Of course, a shadow of a statue of a major world leader is not much to speak about. However, the appearing glimmer of God’s glory is remarkable.

This verse tells much about who God is. We are not seeing the fullness of God in this chapter. We are only seeing His glory, no, a likeness of His glory. Well, actually, the appearance of the likeness of His glory. We aren’t seeing God in this verse but we are realizing that just a shadow, just a glimpse of a part of who God is is really more than we can see at one time.

Not too long ago I was doing a project in Ecuador. We were able to see many volcanoes in all of their splendor while in country. While there, someone said, “It would be fun to try and climb that mountain in a day, but it is even more awesome that I know the God who created that mountain in a day.” Some of the people in Ecuador worship nature and they find their gods in the flowers and in the mountains. How much better to worship the God who created the flowers and the sun and the mountains. I don’t worship the appearance or the shadow of some likeness. I worship the God whose shadow is too holy to gaze upon.

What kind of songs do you want to sing to God?

What do I really believe? Here are a couple of one sentence propositions for you to mull over. I will try to keep each explanation clear and concise. However, I realize this will make each proposition open to much critique. If you think any argument is shallow or needs better articulation, please let me know.

Proposition #1 – Religion is man-made.
It seems that most people desire to connect with the divine. The problem is that most people believe we should “make our own path” and not force our beliefs on others. This opens the door for religions to spring up from virtually every corner. Some choose established religions, others create their own from scratch. In the end, they make God in their own image rather than believing that we were created in His. Each religion will have to stand on its own merit, but since religion is “man’s attempt to get to God”, I find myself very untrusting of religion.

Proposition #2 – Some religions must be false.
Thanks to the philosophical “Law of Non-Contradiction” not every religion can be true. In a broad sense, there are basically only three kinds of religions: those that believe there is no god, those that believe in one God, and those that believe in many gods. Not all of those worldviews can be admissible. Even without exploring the evidence for or against each of those concepts (atheism, monotheism, polytheism), we must immediately ascertain that two of them are false.

Proposition #3 – Assuming there is only one God, only three major world religions stand out (and they all were started by Abraham, arguably).
Without trying to convince anyone that there is only one God, I only want to argue here that there are only three great monotheistic traditions and they originated from the same person. The oldest of these is Judaism, but even within Judaism there is a prophecy of a Messiah that will come (some prophecies even place the coming of the Messiah on or near the year of the birth of Jesus Christ and put him in Bethlehem, born of a virgin, from the line of Judah, Jesse, David, Benjamin, and Abraham…hundreds of other prophecies point to Jesus as the Messiah).
Christianity is the second of the great monotheistic traditions and teaches that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God. Jesus teaches that He didn’t come to fulfill the beliefs of the Jews, not to abolish it. Jesus teaches that He is the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father but through Him.
Mohammed was supposedly the final prophet and he recorded the Koran hundreds of years after Jesus (and thousands of years after Abraham). Most of his story conflicts with the older Jewish and Christian texts and textually the stories are not consistent with any of the teachings of the previous “prophets”. At least with Judaism and Christianity there is internal consistency even if Jews reject Jesus as the Messiah. So, Judaism is fulfilled in Jesus and Islam is inconsistent with the historical, theological, and internal reliability of Scripture. Christianity emerges as the greatest monotheistic religion ever, both in adherents and in believability.

Proposition #4 – Jesus is revered as a great prophet (at the very least) by more than half of the world’s population.
Even if monotheism is rejected and Christianity (as a religion) is rejected, one cannot ignore the influence of the historical Jesus. Gandhi, a global Hindu leader, once said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Muslims believe Jesus was a great prophet on the same level as Mohammed, they just believe that Mohammed came last. Jews also believe Jesus to have been a great Teacher. Christians obviously believe Jesus to be much more, but the fact remains, many people believe Jesus to be an important figure in their faith.

Proposition #5 – Jesus is central to only one world “religion” but would prefer to think of it as a relationship, not a religion.
Christians believe Jesus to be the Son of God. It is His life they try to emulate. However, humans are only humans so Christians are susceptible to impurity and mistakes. Jesus was fully human, but He has also always been and will always be, God. Therefore, Christians actually believe Christianity is the only God-made religion and Jesus is the only one who could have created a legitimate “religion” (or way, path, journey, etc.) worthy of humans to follow. Many people view religions to be many paths to the same God. The problem is, this portrays God as very passive and humans as having to work to get to God some time in the future. Christianity, on the other hand, believes God to be an active God who has made it possible for us to know Him now through faith and not works.

Proposition #6 – The only way to know God in this life and the next is to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

These propositions are not meant to be a complete argument for Christianity. Instead, it is meant to provoke thought and conversation. Feel free to challenge me in any of these propositions.

I’ve got 2 cans of tuna, a package of spaghetti noodles, 2 boxes of cereal, some canned soup, a big bag of brown rice and a few packages of ramen noodles (I just can’t get seminary habits out of my pantry). In my refrigerator, I’ve got some summer squash and zucchini, milk, bread, cheese, and ketchup and mustard. I’ve got a lot of other things too, those are just the things that come to mind.

It’s very interesting to think that the perishable items in my refrigerator are fresher and probably better for me than what I have on my shelves. I am constantly restocking my refrigerator, but there are things in the pantry that I haven’t gotten to in years. However, if we had a huge blizzard (something that could still happen here in Boston even though it’s May 1) I would want to stock up on the nonperishable items. It’s amazing to see the shelves at the grocery store the day before a big storm. All the canned food items and gallons of water are gone! Forget for a minute that fresh vegetables and fruits are usually better for you, for this illustration, I am thinking more along the lines of the benefits of perishable versus nonperishable food items and also the fact that often fresh food tastes better but that’s not always an indication of it’s value. A fresh Snicker’s bar would taste really good right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s better for me.

What am I talking about then? It’s amazing to me that a crisis always brings people to God. People try to make it on their own and then when the world falls apart on them, they come running back for more of God. It’s the same in the grocery store. Walking down the canned goods aisle is boring, but walking into the fresh market section of the store is exciting. All of the apples are stacked with care. The little sprinkler system comes on and makes everything look appealing. But in a storm, no one thinks to stock up on bananas because they know that within a couple of days those will go bad.

I think this is much like our culture. Cultures are perishable. Nations come and go, but God tells us that His Word will endure forever. During trying times like 9/11 and the recent Virginia Tech massacre, people seek out God, they attend a Christian gathering for the first time in years. These are the storms of life where people need to stock up on the nonperishables. Again, it’s an incomplete analogy because in real life, fresh fruits and vegetables are usually better for you than canned fruits and vegetables. But, as I thought about my kitchen, I think about what I would need to survive and most of it is not in my refrigerator. What about a homeless person, what would you want to give him? Money? That’s perishable. Food? That’s perishable…he will need some more in about 8 hours. There is no point in giving him those things if you aren’t also willing to share with him the nonperishable truth of God’s Word. When people are in a storm of life, that is the best time to encourage to trade in their perishable plans and thoughts and beliefs that seem more attractive at first glance, and trade those in for the nonperishable truths of God that may not be as attractive at first, but are actually the essential ingredients to living an abundant life.

Michael Jackson is famous, but he’s dead. Johnny Damon is famous, but he’s hated by many (at least here in Boston). A lot of people love Kelly Clarkson because she’s famous, but how many people really know her?

I pray for the fame of God to be made known to the people of Boston and that His renown would spread around the world, but I think that is a limited prayer. God is already “famous” when it comes to people having heard about Him. Some think God is famous but that He is dead. Others hate God and are angry at Him for one reason or another. Still others love Him, but don’t necessarily know Him.

Most people in the world believe in a God, but don’t have a personal relationship with Him. My prayer is that God would be more than famous in people’s lives. I want to share my God with as many people as possible. You can know Him and know Him personally. He can be more than famous in your life. He can be your friend. I am praying for more than God’s renown. I want to pray for God to be known.

Miami (25° 45′ , -80° 12′)

So I wanted to let you know how things went on campus at Northeastern. The format was a little bit different from what I was expecting so I adjusted some of my remarks on the fly. The five minute opening remarks from the panelists was meant to be more of a personal note about our various religions. In other words, we were to share a little bit about who we are and how we came to believe in our faith.

I was still able to share a fairly thorough, but concise, presentation of the gospel. First, I got the crowd laughing a little bit, which was a welcome relief to the audience after hearing from some fairly stuffy religious experts.

Basically, after spending about two of my minutes talking about who I was and getting the audience to laugh a couple of times, I said this:

“I’m a little bit intimidated for a couple of reasons. First of all, because I am going last, but I also realize that many of you think of Christianity as the most close-minded and intolerant religion in the world. My beliefs are not intolerant of yours because you are free to believe what you want. I may have a harder time dissuading you from thinking of Christians as close-minded. GK Chesterton said, “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” As I have studied the religions of the world I have discovered something of substance that contains Truth.

Christianity also has a strike against it because of the events that are brought to mind from history like the Crusades or abortion clinic bombings. Unfortunately, a lot of evil has been done in the name of Christianity that has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ. I have been reading Mohandas Gandhi’s autobiography and he believed that “if all Christians acted like Christ, the whole world would be Christian.”

So, I believe that true Christianity is substantive and truthful because Jesus Christ, the Son of God said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father but through Me.” Because of this statement, many of you will write off Christianity because it seems to be narrow or close-minded and it is, but the good news from the Christian view point is that God the Father saw the plight of humanity and He made it possible for us to know Him. When all other religions tell humanity what they must do to get to God, Christianity believes that there isn’t anything that we CAN do to get to God, but that God chose to come to us.”

…well, that part was really clear and, pretty close to what I wrote, I think I sort of tapered off towards the end, so I didn’t end as good as the beginning and the middle, but I think I said something about enjoying what I do because I have a relationship with God or something. I’m forgetting some of it.

Anyway, I got to answer the question, “What was the reason that God created us?”
I said, “I’d like to answer that one [with a big smile on my face]. God created us to worship and glorify Him, which is hard to take when we desire to do things our way. The reason this is actually a good thing is because when we put our satisfaction in a career, for example, we can get laid off and then we are disappointed (for lack of a stronger term for when the world comes crashing down around us). God, in all of His infinite goodness and perfection knew from the beginning that the best, most satisfying thing God could do for us was to offer us a relationship with Him. He knew that everything else would “disappoint” us, but that He never would disappoint us or forsake us. Therefore, the most satisfying thing I can do is glorify God. [Thanks C.S. Lewis] When we find our satisfaction in God, God gives meaning to our careers and to our other relationships.”

A follow up question was: “But what was God’s motivation for creating us?” The Jewish rabbi answered that God needed us, the catholic priest agreed but said it was because He chose to need us. I said, “I might say it a little bit differently. Not that God needs us, but that God is a God of love, that He is a relational God, and He is a creative God. We are an expression of who God is. We were created in God’s image as creative, relational beings with a propensity and a need for love because Genesis tells us that we were created in the image of God. We were created because God is creative.”

Anyway, a couple of students came over afterwards and I was able to tell them some about my church. One girl, Jillian, said that she was Catholic, but is looking for something more and wants to come to my church. A guy named Jay is a freshman and a new believer and he asked me a couple of questions about my views on some random topics. All in all, it was a great night and I think that God was glorified in it. I give Him glory for enabling me to respond with Truth boldly and He gave me favor with the audience. He also calmed my nerves and allowed me to speak with clarity. It was a lot of fun.

Boston (42° 21′ , -71° 7′)

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Northeastern University Religious Panel

So I took this quiz at quizfarm.com about my theological worldview. This is not Barna quality, but I found my results pretty interesting. Leave me a comment if you happen to take the test. I would love to hear your results. Here are my results:

What’s your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com