So What?

So what that the Bible tells me why the world isn't fair? I know that without reading the Bible, I know that by living. What the Bible tells me that the world doesn't is that it wasn't God's design or plan for our lives or for the world. It tells me how things went wrong from the start, and it tells me of the God who has the same ideas about things that I do when I am most idealistic. It tells me that I can have another standard other than the standard of the world and that it won't make life easier to live by that standard but it will make it better and give me the hope of a meaningful life.

Jesus lived by the standard God had in mind and what did it get him? What Adam and Eve wanted was to be like God and instead they brought death into the world, everything from then on was corrupted, nothing worked like it was supposed to work, that was the curse on man and the earth. By living in obedience to the standards of God, Jesus died but his death brought life into the world.

What Jesus did was give us the real hope of being like God if we do the same things Adam and Eve did in Genesis 3, the language is the same as we say every week in our worship, "she took of its fruit and ate." When Jesus was with his disciples on his last day of freedom before the crucifixion he said they were to "Take, eat; this is my body." The difference in the takings and eatings is the difference between rebellion and obedience. Rebellion brought death, obedience brings life.

No matter what popular preachers may say, living by the standards of God isn't the road to popularity and prosperity. In fact, Jesus said that it was exactly the opposite, the road to persecution and poverty (Matthew 5.1-11). He says we have to choose our path and that while the path of authenticity and integrity to the standards we believe are best may be hard, at the end of the road is an eternity where those standards are the order of the day.