Essay/Term paper: Truth about god

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Religion

Truth About God


"You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was
there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who
predicted the coming of the Righteous One." - Acts 7:51-52
The Jews have always been afraid of the radicals of God. They have always
dwelled in the safety and understandings of the past and fear the effects of
these radicals. But when these radicals like the prophets arrive, they
persecute them because they are uncertain about the truth. An example is when
the Jews didn't want to believe Stephen in Acts 7:56-58, " Look,' he said, I
see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.' At this
they covered their ears and yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed
at him, dragged him out of the city and stoned him."
A lot of potshots have been taken at the Church over the years. In spite
of its obvious imperfections, the Church is the means that has been chosen to
carry the message of the Gospel to the world. One wonders why a better system
could not have been devised. Then one realizes that any system that has people
in it is going to be imperfect.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote in the Gulag Archipelago that it was in prison
where he learned that the line separating good and evil passes not through
states, not through classes, not through political parties, either, but right
through every human heart and through all human hearts.
When we give ourselves serious evaluation, we find things hiding in our
hearts that, if we could choose, we would remove. Our hearts have been
described as "a zoo of lust, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem
of fondled hatreds." Yet the Church, by its very nature, must be made up of the
likes of us.
"Imagine yourself as a living house," wrote C. S. Lewis. "God comes in to
rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He
is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on. But
presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and
does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is
that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of --
throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers,
making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little
cottage; but He is building a palace."
And thus is the message of the Church. The gospel is carried to imperfect
people by imperfect people. Then those imperfect people are to band together to
help one another grow to spiritual maturity, Salvation in Christ, and growth to
Christian maturity. Warts and all.