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So last night, I had a dream. Creepy way to start, right?
Sheesh. Oh well, you’ll just have to deal with it. Anyway, back to the
narrative:
My dream started on a racetrack. I had a racecar, and a
terrible view. The track twisted, curled, crossed, and drove over and around several small knolls, so it was
impossible to see the whole thing, only one or two turns at a time. Since I
often have doomsday dreams, the plot was that at the end of the race, God would
determine which racers got into heaven and which didn’t. But I didn’t know that
as the race was going. I didn’t know what
the goal was.
The judge of the race brought me in, and since it was a
dream we didn’t speak, and I didn’t see him, but I suddenly understood that I
had lost. I hadn’t followed the rules, and was therefore disqualified. I
protested that that wasn’t fair because I didn’t know the rules. It turned out that the whole time, the judge was
more interested in my behavior and my attitude on the track than he was about
whether I succeeded or not. All the terrible things I’d done to cripple the
other drivers in my attempts to get ahead were what the judge was concerned
with.
When I protested that it wasn’t fair, the judge didn’t say
anything. He didn’t have to explain himself. He simply showed me to a door. I
spent the rest of the dream assuming that my protests had been heard and that I
had been let into “heaven” after all. The rest of the people who were with me
assumed the same thing. Yet somehow, the dream ended before we got to our
destination.
You see, in this race, everyone was subject to the same
rules, whether they knew them or not. The whole time, it was up to the drivers
who knew the rules to tell the other
drivers about the rules, as well as the ultimate goal of the race. After that,
it was up to those who were told, whether or not they believed the other
drivers, and started to obey the
rules.
In the race of real life, most people just assume that the
goal of the race is to get ahead of everyone else and cross the finish line successfully.
But little do they know that the entire time they’re racing, there’s a judge
who is going to measure them against his own standards. That’s why there was
never a finish line in sight. To get to the end was never the goal. The real
goal is to meet the standards of the judge of the race. He’s the one who
organized it, so he determines the rules. That’s why it’s fair to disqualify
people even if they never knew the standards he was measuring them by. In this
race, not everyone wins. Those who lose are the ones who don’t play by the
rules of the judge.
By now I hope my Christian
friends at least have seen the real meaning behind this dream, and are reminded
of the importance of their role in
this race. I also hope they are seriously considering whether or not they are
fulfilling that role well. I know I am.
For those of you who maybe don’t know what all this
signifies, I’ll explain it.
Let’s start with the race. As you may have guessed, the race
signifies our life. Sometimes, it feels like we were thrown in without anyone
telling us what we were supposed to be doing. Sure, lots of people have
opinions, and they’re more than willing to impress those opinions upon you. But
have you ever stopped to consider the question, “Why am I here?” Could it be
that what you believe is actually
wrong?
Now let’s talk about the judge. The judge in this dream
represents God. He’s the one who put this “race” together. He created the
rules. When he started out, everything about the world met his standards.
Everything he created, he called “good.” Except humans. When he created humans,
he called them “Very good!”
Back then, his rules were simple. He only had one, actually.
He told the first people, Adam and Eve, that they were to never eat the fruitof the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yet, those people were deceived
into thinking that if they did eat
the fruit from that tree, they could determine their own rules for the race.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, when they ate it, they disobeyed God.
They had broken his one rule, which meant they fell short of his standards.
See, the thing about God is that he is holy. If anything
enters his presence that is not also holy, his very holiness destroys it. Think
of a fire: if there’s anything in its path that is flammable, it is lit on fire
and consumed. That’s kind of like what God’s presence is like. If anything
comes before him that is contaminated with sin, it is consumed, and it dies. That
includes imperfect people.
But God is also merciful. He does not want anyone to die. So instead of killing Adam and Eve right off
because they broke his only rule, he banished them from his presence.
So because all humans come from flawed people, all people
are flawed. Suddenly, there are hundreds
of rules to follow if we want to be holy enough to enter God’s presence and be “good”
again. Those are the rules that the Law of Moses in the Old Testament lays out.
You see, God didn’t just throw us into the race without telling us the rules.
He gave us a rulebook: The Bible. We just have to read it.
There’s just one problem: in order to be let into the
presence of God, we have to follow those rules perfectly. Otherwise, we’ll still “burn up” when we enter his
presence. But following the Law perfectly is impossible, right? Of course it
is! We’re broken. We’ll never accomplish anything without making mistakes. The Law is simply there to make that fact obvious. God tells us his standards (if
we want to meet them ourselves), but all that does is show us all the places
where we’re going wrong.
But here’s the key factor to this story: God loves us. He wants us to be in his presence. And he knows we can’t get there
ourselves. So here’s what he did: He came on the racetrack himself. He had a
human racecar, but put his son Jesus in the driver’s seat. Jesus had two
objectives:
- MeetGod’s standards perfectly, to win the race and get to the winner’s circle. Jesus was human, and so was subject to every temptation that humans face. But as the Son of God, he was also divine, which meant that he perfectly resisted every temptation and lived a perfect, sinless, holy life.
- Sincewe’re technically disqualified, he took the punishment of that disqualificationon himself. He paid the price to win tickets for us all, so we can join him in the winner’s circle. You see, back at the beginning of the world, God had told Adam and Eve that if they ate the “forbidden fruit” the punishment was death. When he banished them, that didn’t mean he was changing his mind. He was only delaying their punishment. Ever since that time, the punishment for every sin has always been death. It’s what we deserve: to be separated from God for eternity. That’s what makes hell so terrible. Everything good in our lives comes from God. Take that away, and it leaves only the bad. But I digress. The punishment for sin is death. But since Jesus never sinned, he was the only human being to ever live who did not deserve to die. But he did, so that his death would turn the wrath of God away from us. He took our punishment on himself. He served our sentence to win our freedom.
But that’s not the end of the story. Jesus didn’t just die.
He came back to life. If his resurrection had been immediate, people would say
he never died. But no, it happened three
days later. You see, death never had power over Jesus. He let himself be killed, but he always had
authority over death. So when he had fulfilled all the promises that God had
given to people about him, he threw death off of himself and walked out of his
own grave (well, technically, thegrave was borrowed). And since he had power over his own death, he proved that he
has power over ours as well.
So what happens now? Now, we’re faced with a choice: accept
a free ticket into the winner’s circle, or continue to race the way we think we should. Either we ask God to
forgive our sins, and to count Jesus’ perfect life and sacrifice as our own, or
we continue on our way, looking for the finish line around every corner. By
now, you probably already know which choice you’re
going to make, and I pray that it’s the right one.
If you want to make the choice to accept Jesus’s life and
death as your own, first let me say, YAHOO! *Ahem.* Pardon. Next, we can get
down to logistics. Here’s the basic principle: Tell God you are sorry for your
sins, and that you believe that Jesus’ death paid the penalty for them. Ask God
to accept Jesus’ death as your own, and ask him to enter your heart so that he
can make your life look more like
Jesus’ life: holy and perfect. Don’t get me wrong, Christians aren’t perfect.
But we are being perfected.
If you want to know more about God’s rules and Jesus’
sacrifice, I can refer you to two places: the Bible (especially the books Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John, as well as Romans to start), and the Church (meaning,
anyone who is a Christian—including me—and who believes that we’re “saved by
grace.”). Once you’ve made the decision to ask Jesus into your heart, you need
to get plugged in with a community so that you can learn more and grow under
the guidance of someone who has been racing this way for a while. You need a
crew and a coach. That’s why Christians attend churches.
Anywho, that’s all I’ve got to say! Except one last thing:
if you did accept Jesus, I really,
really, really want to know about it!
So please tell me!
