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While it does seem true that we have innate aptitudes, most of our "aptitude" is directly proportional to how clearly we are able to understand the main idea. I have been attempting to improve my golf game. After reading a year's subscription of a golf magazine, I was only further confused. Then I met someone who really understood the main idea for the golf swing. He repeated it over and over (some of us take a while to catch on) until I believed what he was telling me. I had to believe that the club would do the work of hitting the ball. My job was to keep my body quiet through the swing and focus on a few simple principles. Getting the main idea straight and trusting that it is true, establishes a sort of memory pattern. Whenever I duff (mess up), which I do rather frequently, I return to the basics--the main idea.
Many of us feel like duffers when it comes to Christianity. We try our best to swing, but it doesn't feel natural at all. So we do some reading, but that often confuses us. What we need is a clear grasp of the main idea.
To get started, consider some world events that have occurred around the time of this writing. TWA flight 800 was destroyed early in its flight. All aboard were killed. There was no insight as to who was responsible. Across the ocean, two eight-year-old girls were discovered, starved to death by a pedophile. Outrage found a home in every heart. Justice must be satisfied, we demanded.
"Atonement" is satisfying the demands of justice when a crime has been committed. We are left with a deep sense of unease when there is no atonement. OJ's trial is over, but there has been no atonement for the deaths of two people.
The main idea behind the death of Jesus is "atonement". Instead of our heart cry for justice, it satisfied God the Father's heart cry for justice.
From the beginning, God created us to be connected to Himself and to live in deep community with one another. He warned Adam and Eve, the first people: If you trash your sacred relationship with Me, if you choose to centre life around yourself, it will tear you to the core of your soul and eventually lead to death. All creation held its breath as Adam and Eve made their choice. Would they be struck dead? Would God wink and say, "I was just kidding--you don't think I would implement capital punishment for apple eating do you?"
He didn't wink, and He didn't strike them dead. Instead, they began to experience a continual tearing of their relational world. They lost their connectedness with God, with each other and with their children.
As the heaviness of life weighed on them, God then did something startling. He killed an animal. For the first time, they watched a part of creation in its death throes. They heard the rattle of a final breath, then complete stillness. Then the skins of the animals were made into a covering for Adam and Eve. The animal "atoned" for their choices.
Around 800 B.C. a prophet named Isaiah said something that made people's hearts stop: "He will be wounded and crushed because of our sins. . . . All of us were like sheep that had wandered off. We had each gone our own way, but the Lord gave Him the punishment we deserved" (Isaiah 53:4-5, the Bible).
People didn't know how to respond. It sounded like God was going to send a person to make the ultimate atonement. Wasn't the slaughter of animals bad enough?
Jesus was born. As He grew up, there were increasing signs that He was in fact this person. One day, around the age of 30, He went to hear a prophet speak. John saw Jesus at the edge of the crowd, stopped in mid-sentence, pointed to Jesus and said "Look, everybody, this is the lamb of God who will pay for the sins of the world."
A couple of years later, Jesus said very plainly that He was God in the flesh and that in a few months He would be killed on a cross. He was arrested, tortured and hammered to a wooden cross. This time, it was the death throes of Jesus that people watched. Wrenching shallow breaths out of His pain-wracked body, He eventually cried out, "It is finished".
Justice had been served. Our brokenness, our bent toward disconnectedness and self-centredness--our sin--was covered by the death of Jesus. The Bible says that we are so loved that God Himself made the atonement for our sin.
Do you see the main idea? Every other religious system I know of is based on performance expectations. If you don't measure up, you had better try harder. Out of fear, we struggle to come up with the right payment to get in.
Jesus died because of His incomprehensible love for you and me. He opens the door to living as we were meant to live--connected with God, in deep community with one another. Once we grasp this, we can live life with a deep sense of joy and utter gratitude. Jesus says: "I will give My life for you. I will pay the whole penalty for you. You can be free, forgiven and connected to a great family community!" Aptitude is not what it is about after all. It is about gratitude. This main idea has transformed my life! Do I still duff? Do I still mess up? Absolutely. Each time I do, I return to the basics. I am accepted, forgiven and loved. Nothing can separate me from the love of Jesus Christ. My joy is restored, and gratitude spills out. There is no greater way to live. My new life is summed up in a few sentences from the Bible: "I was living in this world without hope and without God, and I was far from God. But Christ offered His life's blood as a sacrifice and brought me near God" (Ephesians 2:12-13, the Bible).
I invite you to meet with someone you know, who is a Christian, and discuss this article. Ask your questions. Jesus Christ honours the process of seeking.
Paul Wartman is pastor of The Meeting Place, a contemporary church in Winnipeg.
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