Re: In fact...
[ QUOTE ]
What I don't understand is that you can live a life of meaning, love, friendship, honesty, and forgiveness, without needing a belief in God.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think this is where the difference lies. Yes, you can love without being a Christian (I was not a Christian when I left home). Yes, you can be honest, forgive, have friends, etc. without a belief in God. Notice I left out meaning. This does not mean that your life had no meaning to this earth. For instance, I have no idea if Jonas Salk was a Christian or not. As far as the world is concerned, it does not matter because his work left a legacy on this earth...so his life did have meaning. Everyone leaves some type of a legacy, positive or negative.
The meaning that I am speaking of is much more deeply rooted than one's work. It is difficult to explain except to say that one day every person who lives long enough will wake up one day and wonder what he or she did it all for. I mean, people work their entire lives at jobs they hate just for the chance of a couple of years of peace before they die. Most of the time, we live on a fairly short time horizon. We think of today, tommorrow, the weekend, etc. I have always had a long time-horizon in that I can think a few years ahead...possibly that's why I had an internal crisis. I thought about graduation, going to work, and after a few years of that, I realized that I was nothing more than a monkey on a treadmill. This was deeply disturbing to me and so I began to search for answers. I feel fortunate in that most people keep their time horizon very short until something terrible or tragic happens while my long-time horizon showed me my "mid-life crisis" in my twenties. A lot of people, however, look back and wonder what happened to their life. Sometimes they look for answers and sometimes the bottom falls out.
And, after thinking it through this entire post, perhaps you are correct in the end. I wanted to know the object of the game before I got in over my head for the same reason that I didn't play 20/40 before I played 2/4. I wanted to know the endgame before I got started. I didn't arrive at out of a fear of hell, however. I arrived at that point because I finally figured out (after thinking years ahead and seeing no end) that I couldn't make it alone. Christians believe that everyone longs for God's love and seeks to find it. Christians believe that humans are created that way so it would be impossible, from a Christian perspective, to live a long life and be fully fulfilled apart from God because eventually the treadmill will wear you out. Remember, one of the things that is univerally cited as a human need as much as food, air, water, and shelter is hope. That hope is selfish in a way, but God basically says that is OK because it is impossible for us to be completely selfless...no matter how good our intentions. I sincerely believe that there are no atheists in foxholes. Most people believe they can make it until they find out they can't. They either admit that they need help or they don't...to ask for help is humbling (did you ever ask a poker question that you felt might be stupid). That is the most difficult part for most people, to admit that they have failed. People lie to themselves for decades to not admit their own failure.
|