A Christian Atheist’s Faith
Sometime back in the 1800’s in London, Speaker’s Corner was birthed as a designated area for making public speeches. On Sundays, mainly on the NE Corner of Hyde Park, many gather to speak and to listen to speeches on many topics. Several years ago I was in London on a Sunday and had the privilege of experiencing this event. The original intent was to voice your opinion on governmental issues. However, when I was there many of the topics were religious in nature and most religions were represented.
As a sidebar, I had arrived before the event started as did an American theater student who desperately wanted to give his speech but had no audience, so he asked me to listen to his speech. This young man gave a very compelling speech on ‘Why you should respect short people.’ Needless to say, he was fairly short in height himself.
Aside from the speech about short people, the most interesting person that day, and the only speaker with whom I interacted, was a self-proclaimed Christian Atheist. He was preaching Christ as a great teacher but stopped short of Christ being God. His argument was, “A good Jew would never claim to be God.” My response, “Exactly.” I ended our discussion expressing to him that what he was preaching, that Jesus was only a good teacher and nothing else, takes a whole lot more faith than just believing Jesus was who he said he was, God. His response, “Hmm”… Mic drop moment.
John 8:58, Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
Exodus 3:13-14, Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
Jesus asked his Disciples a great question when he asked, “But who do you say I am?” To which Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Let me ask a follow on question, assuming you believe the same, how does that really impact your life? For the Christian Atheist in Hyde Park, he was content to adopt the teachings, but not to accept the teacher.
I sometimes find myself doing the same, sort of, in that I am often focused on the teachings but don’t give great thought to the teacher. Take a moment and try to really wrap your mind around the fact that Jesus is God and even more mind blowing, we can talk to God through our prayers, and even more mind blowing than that, he freely forgives us so that we can spend eternity with him. For every ‘but’ and excuse we came up with for not accepting his forgiveness, he shed a drop of blood to wipe it away. That is beyond mind blowing.
“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. - Romans 10:8-10
While I have no idea to whom to give credit, below is my favorite picture of all time because it captures the essence of who Jesus is to me. Is Jesus to you who Jesus is to the man in the picture?
