“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

Genesis 1:27

I have met many believers passionate about evangelism. I have met many others who have been ministered to by them, have adopted Christian practices, but have no real change of heart. There is no surrender to Christ, just a reaping of the benefits, and when asked, there is a lot of confusion as to why they should be following Christ in their soul. There’s no evidence that He is in fact worthy of worship, if following external behaviors is sufficient for a fulfilled life by they world’s standards.

Jesus is a good man, a good teacher, and a good therapist. He’s approachable and His teachings are worth following, but he in Himself is not needed for “a life to the full.” (John 10:10)

Sometimes I walk with my dog in the mornings, when I feel well and can dedicate the time. The route is about an hour to walk. And recently, God has graciously revealed it as a perfect time to pray. This morning, I lifted these souls that I knew had met the followers of Christ, but had not yet met Christ Himself.

The thing that stood out to me when thinking about them was the confusion they experienced. They felt pain. They felt temptation and the temporal reward of sin. They then felt the guilt after, knowing that it is sin in these circles, and found guilt was a bad feeling to experience. They had heard the case presented by the world, mocking Christianity, “disproving” its validity, and didn’t know what to believe. The tangible, they found, although not satisfying, was far more reliable, even in its unreliability for real hope and answers. Why was Christianity proposed to be the only way when they found it lacking? What made the most sense, then, was to adopt a marriage of Christian values with worldly philosophies.

Where did this confusion stem from?

This is not merely an issue in the unbeliever’s life, but in the believer’s as well. If God is good, if He is loving, and if I am following His commands, where is this pain and strife coming from? Why is it that God’s ways look pretty obviously unfair, distant, even cold and selfish? Why do the ideologies and lifestyles of the world seem so much more fruitful and even logical? Is God ignorant, outdated?

I have seen believers, myself included, walk a shallow Christianity because the depths are too complex or difficult to face. We’re afraid of the answers we may find when we ask questions of doubt and hurt, because what if God is in fact not fully gracious as He claims to be? What if, like we’ve seen in humanity, there are things He simply will not understand or cannot address in His two-thousand-year-old Scriptures? And what if the answers given just simply do not satisfy us?

This is a very valid concern. Because if the claims of God are untrue, then He is not a God worth giving our lives to. If Christ is how our doubts and experiences portray Him, He’s not worth following.

Christ is not worth resting in if He does not give us what is absolutely best for us.

Christ is not worth hoping in if He is not fully sovereign over tragedy and, ultimately, death.

Christ is not worth trusting in if His stance on what is sin and what isn’t, and how He responds to us in our sinful state, changes with evolving culture or our preferences.

Christ is not worth worshiping if He is not fully God.

Like the other gods of the world, He would simply be someone to observe and credit for some wisdom and world events.

We Are Reflections

A common ground in these expressions of doubt, fear, and pride is the unbelief that God is fully God. When approached about Christianity, the unbelievers will narrow the discussions down to specifics of day-to-day struggles. Questions of science and human tragedy will come up. It’s for those same reasons why many Christians won’t go deeper. The answers are difficult – they aren’t immediate. They take time to dwell on and understand. When not answered correctly or sufficiently, they seem to reveal God to be lacking in His divinity. You could say the unbeliever jumps into the depths without a source of light guiding them, and the Christian floats on the surface without exploring its rich treasures beneath.

“So God created man in His own image.” This is where we started in our existence, so it is where we must start today when faced with these questions. Unlike any other god, God made us. He came first. He exists outside of our limited understanding. And we are not made as clones, but images. Not the creators, but the created. We are not the source of light, but reflections of it.

This means we cannot base our idea of God on what we see in mankind. We need to base our idea of God on God Himself. Not hearsay, not interpretation, and definitely not our assessment. If we have experienced selfishness or deception from mankind, we cannot assume God is selfish or deceptive, because we are seeing a distorted view and basing our view of the light on its reflection. Likewise, we cannot assume God looks over a sin we commit because someone else looked it over without offense. (I am not saying that God is not forgiving, but even traits we in our limited human knowledge deem as good, we cannot assume they are traits of God unless we find them there in His word. We must return to the source.)

And when we start here? This will change every result, it will silence questions, it will calm the soul.

The Source of Light

One of my favorite Psalms is Psalm 131. It’s one of the shortest psalms (if not the shortest) and is a perfect one to start prayer with. It expresses a quiet, humble heart in the face of chaos and potential despair. It surrenders the unknowns because it recognizes the basis of faith.

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
    my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
    too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
    like a weaned child with its mother;
    like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord
    from this time forth and forevermore.

Psalm 131