I kind of left some unfinished business on my blog about Christianity being unfair. So I wanted to tie up loose ends here and call it a day. Some things to think about.
When my kids were little, my oldest who was about three at the time, took a stick while playing in the yard and he tried to put it in the keyhold of my brother's brand new car. Of course this resulted in scratches around they keyhole. My brother who was single and not familiar with little kids was furious. He screamed at Bobby and was more than a little upset at the fine scratches around that keyhole. Bobby felt terrible. I don't remember now how we resolved it at the time or if anything was done.
Many parents run into this with their own children. What can they do? How do you explain the significance of what they have done and the cost that was involved to a three year old? Do we demand they pay for the damage? Is that fair? Maybe, but very unrealistic. How can a three year old understand what a two or three hundred dollar repair bill means? Not only wouldn't the numbers register but they would in no way be able to account for it.
So what do you do? Sever the relationship? Demand payment? Rant and rave? Well I guess we all do that one. No, we can just explain the best we can the significance and tell them not to do that anymore. You still love them and we pay for the damage ourselves. The only thing left in this situation is grace and mercy even if it means that we have to pay for it.
See God sees our sin as a debt we can't pay. He knows there's no point in asking us. Being good doesn't pay the bill. We can't be good enough to pay this large bill in the same way our three year old couldn't be good enough to cover the repair bill. My three year old putting his clothes in the hamper or cleaning up his room is a nice gesture but it doesn't pay the bill.
Christianity teaches us that instead of God being fair, he opted for forgiveness instead. Instead of justice, we received mercy. He gives us much more than fair. Paul said that when we were yet without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly. This means we could do nothing about our situation much like our three year old. We were without hope and needed someone to intervene on our behalf.
I started this whole series with the question do good people go to heaven? The answer is no because there are no "good people". We are all sinners. Granted, some don't seem quite as bad, but sin is sin. Sin is an offense against God. So coming from God's perspective we've all scratched the body of God's vehicle (Christ) wiith our sin and we can't begin to pay for the damage done. We can try to do better. We can clean up our rooms (our body is the temple of God) but we can't pay God back.
So what did he do? He forgave us and paid our bill. He went beyond Fair and paid for our sins. While good people don't go to heaven, forgiven people do.
Is Christianity fair? You decide.
Everybody is welcome
Everybody gets in the same way
Everybody can meet the requirement
The requirement of course is belief. That's the only requirement. But we must be careful because even the demons believed in God. Believing means placing one's trust in the fact that Jesus is who he said he was and his death accomplished what he claimed it did. To pay a bill we couldn't pay. To save a people from the one that was more than willing to collect our souls for nonpayment. And that's one bill collector I am not willing to meet.