Perhaps?

I keep hearing lately, from all sorts of people, concerning Jesus, “We don’t really KNOW if, how and what happened two thousand years ago. I just want to know what the truth is.” I often wonder if they truly mean that or if that’s just a “polite” way to dismiss the pesky Christian.

As a result of all kinds of theories aimed to destroy the credibility of either the Church or the Scriptures, most of these resentful inquirers are not shy to dig into fictional novels, downright forged documents and whatever other conspiracy theory some enlightened guru on a bad acid trip has dreamed up, anything to just prove us all wrong. They call themselves spiritual but not religious, like that explains anything, and usually you recognise them by their smirk whenever they have the misfortune to encounter a primitive creature like the Christian. When they’re in a generous mood they regard Christians as deluded by an obvious fable and when enraged the Christians are viewed as accomplices in some ancient conspiracy to keep them all bound to some outdated morality. They’re willing to admit to some form of gnostic/ esoteric existence of a being that they magnanimously condescend to call “god” but if you push to understand what precisely they mean by “god”, you soon realise their definitions are not some self-standing propositions but just negations of whatever propositions Christianity puts forward.

Then the dreaded encounter. Behold the Christian! Ridiculous in his servile posture, grovelling before some cosmic tyrant and trying to convince you of all people that said tyrant loves you because some book told him so. Silly little amoeba on the scale of spiritual enlightenment, doesn’t he realise he speaks to a god? Who is he trying to teach truth to? After all you meditate daily, you’ve read all the great masters, even had outer body experiences. You decide to teach the silly Christian a lesson. You start with emperor Constantine, make frequent stops to all the awful popes in history, make sure to mention the Crusades and all the wars. Mention the council of Nicaea enough to make his eyes glaze over, mention the gnostic texts then for good measure bring up the Anunnaki, the tablets of Thoth, Zecharia Sitchin and Alan Watts. The Christian looks at you with all the comprehension of a monkey before an iPhone and you feel vindicated that all this religious nonsense can be dismantled in a matter of minutes with just a string of “facts”.

Here's a thought: maybe, just MAYBE, the Christian is not rendered speechless by the “overwhelming complex theories” that form the new thought/new age/ resurrected paganism. Maybe he’s not thrown back because you’ve just shifted his whole worldview BUT he’s gathering all his strength to still answer you in a loving way. Or MAYBE, the Christian is taken aback because he just remembers a time when he was wise like you, way back when he knew everything and the God of the Scriptures was just a ridiculous thought made up by even more ridiculous creatures. Maybe it takes him a little to remember that he has chosen the foolishness of God instead of this world’s wisdom. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Corinthians 1:25) Maybe if the Christian is silent, it’s not that he can’t refute your brilliant arguments. Maybe it’s because he just sees you as just another Pilate, among a sea of millions other Pilates, before whom the Truth is dragged in rags, beaten, pitiful and shaking.

There you are! A ruler in your own right. By hard work, through tough meditation you’ve accessed all your chakras, and you’ve realised you’re one with the infinite. It took you long to get to where you are. You’re your own man and nobody tells you what and how to think. You have all the power, and the silly superstitions of the plebs don’t faze you one bit. You know they’re all programmed robots, but not you! You’ve been enlightened! You know exactly what’s what. You don’t mingle with the robots. You’re free! You’re a god! Then the plebs demand that you examine this Jesus. Everything about it is unappealing to you, from their pious clothes to their even more pious voices, but you give in to their demands. And He’s presented before you. And you don’t expect much to begin with because all this business is clearly beneath you. You expect humble, but what shows up in front of you is downright pathetic. Bruised, beaten, clothes torn. Pitiful. Fine, you’ll play along, “Are you the King of the Jews?” (John 18:33) Maybe if you say it with the sarcasm it deserves, He’ll realise just how ridiculous you find that claim. “My kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36) Oh He talks! Maybe He’ll see reason if you taunt Him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:37) – What does that even mean? Is this double talk? What truth? So, you ask Him, “What is truth?” but you don’t wait for Him to answer. You’re a reasonable person and today it just so happens that you’re in a generous mood, “I find no guilt in him.” You decide to dismiss Him for a fool but just to be safe, have Him flogged. Put a crown of thorns on Him to let everyone know exactly what you think of His kingdom. Then parade him in a borrowed purple robe and make sure they all know how open minded you are and restate again that YOU do not find Him guilty. Point at Him. Yell loudly so everyone can hear you, “Ecce homo (Behold the man)” But they want you to either kill Him or bow the knee. Maybe if you repeat that you don’t find Him guilty, they’ll leave you alone. The more charges you hear against Him the scarier it gets. “Where are You from?” No answer. Maybe threaten Him. “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” (John 19:10) “Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” (John 19:11) Even as He knows you’re about to kill Him He tries to lessen your guilt and you despise Him for it. So, you do what you must. You crucify Him and be done with it.

My King, Jesus the Messiah, has been tried and sentenced many times throughout two thousand years. There have been many Pilates, great and small, geniuses and simpletons alike, rich and poor, of every kind, of every colour, of every age. He’s been killed in many hearts and consciences. You won’t be the first, nor the last. But for every Pilate, there are hundreds more that become fools in the eyes of this world to have the wisdom of God. And you can dismiss them like you did their Lord. Call them fools. Call them all hypocrites when you see them struggle, but like their Lord, they’ll still be standing long after all these recycled gnostic heresies pass away together with those that promote them.

This is not me charging you for having a different view. This is a challenge. I dare you to examine carefully the claims of Christianity. And by that I do not mean watch a TikTok video because you have the attention span of a five-year-old. I mean, truly examine. And if by an honest search you find it lacking, then fair enough. But stop building strawmen against Christianity with things it doesn’t even claim. There, that’s all I had to say, God bless you all!

“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)

by Cristina Pop 

Tested

 

My faith? When tested it got splattered all over my walls,

All my bold statements are mocked as pathetic scrawls...

I summon my hope and like a beaten animal at my feet, it crawls,

And I lay dumb and mute while the enemy doesn’t cower, but strolls!

                                  

 LORD! Rise up, assault my fears and tear them apart!

Remind my soul it’s Yours entirely not just in part!

Lay siege against all his fiendish predictions!

Destroy his plans against my convictions!

 

May the angel of The Lord pursue him and never give him rest,

 For trying to lay his filthy hands on my received bequest.

May the net he hid for me entangle him like a pest,

Break his strength, Lord and show him the meaning of oppressed.

 

Deliver my eyes from tears, oh Rock of my salvation!

For I am Yours, grafted in Your holy nation.

Let the walls crumble a hundred times as long as You’re my foundation,

I’ll build again a thousand times until I can withstand any accusation…

 

by Cristina Pop

Slave

“But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” – Romans 6:17-23

Being a slave to sin requires no effort. One might say it comes naturally. It’s pleasurable for the most part. It takes root almost ‘miraculously’ to the point it feels like part of your personality. A man prone to anger that becomes even violent and enjoys it will say, “it’s just the way I am”. A liar will find it so easy to embellish things that he won’t even see it as a flaw anymore, just a trait. Someone jumping from one relationship to another will say, “I just get bored easily”. I’m not sure if those are just excuses, or it simply is the proof of one’s slavery. Not so with righteousness. It doesn’t come naturally. It’s almost never the obvious choice or path. It offers absolutely no gratification to the natural man. It’s not pleasurable to your natural senses. It takes forever to take root and even then, you constantly have to tend it, or it withers and even after a lifetime of working it you still doubt that you have it.

If you’re at all a thinking person, sooner or later you must wonder, “hang on a minute! Yes, I believed. Yes, my heart is loyal to Christ. Yes, I long to do His will. If by default I become His slave, why aren’t I more righteous? I mean I’ve never pledged allegiance to sin, but when I was its slave, I obeyed it without question. Now that I’m supposedly a slave to God, why is it so hard to obey? Why, if indeed I am born from the Spirit of God the moment I bow the knee, isn’t the Spirit ‘miraculously’ making me act more righteously? Am I the only one that just fails to transform from a larva into a butterfly?”

If you’re reading this, the famous line might enter your mind “because The Holy Spirit is a gentleman.” I have no idea who came up with it, but I absolutely despise that maxim. I don’t know what people are trying to convey with it. I honestly hope they don’t imagine some 19^th century dandy. So, what are they trying to say? That The Spirit is polite? I find the opposite to be true. He’s always probing and searching even through the thoughts and intentions of my inner being without asking for permission. He’s forever revealing some hidden thing that I’d much rather never see or address, but He’s jealously claiming my every thought and feeling for my God. I would not call that polite and I don’t think politeness has anything to do with God’s way of working. What is it then if it’s not His Spirit holding back? If it’s true that “when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.” (Ephesians 1:13) then why am I not more… oh, I don’t know, godly? Why am I so very much still... me?

A possible answer might be that parts of me are still in rebellion to the new management. In that case there is no fake it until you make it, there is no compromise, there is no shortcut, there is just a complete cutting off that needs to happen. The Lord knows that even as I write that I have in mind every eye I had to pluck out and every limb I had to amputate just for the sake of having Him (Matthew 18:9). It sounds mad and I’m sure madness is a right description for it. You see, you can tolerate a little bit of sin in you that no one sees or hears about, after all it doesn’t hurt anybody, and you don’t want to become some crazy fanatical person. And you keep failing in the moment of testing and you can sit there and ask why for the millionth time, but believe me that The Lord was right when He said it, you just ruthlessly must cut it off. Completely. Uncompromisingly. Or sooner rather than later it WILL overcome you. Do not negotiate with it. “Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.” (1 Corinthians 3:18)

Another possibility is that you heard and believed the Gospel. Joy, peace, love, all of it is filling your heart. Then you fail. And fail again. It paralyzes you. “This is not working. Oh, God have mercy, this is not working!” Do not panic. Righteousness doesn’t enslave like sin. Sin easily entangles, all it takes is a thought at just the wrong moment and you’re caught. Righteousness is sown. Righteousness takes time. Righteousness must intentionally be sought after. Often, it’s in all the places you find boring to even look into. It’s hidden in all the places that you might have to dig deep to reach. But it’s the only one that has everlasting rewards. Everything else you might seek after will have an end. Either because you’ll lose interest along the way, or something else will lose interest for you and if lack of interest will not be the issue, the grave will make sure it ends all, even the memory of your fleeting passion. But righteousness is forever. By righteousness I do not mean morality, self-discipline, good deeds, although it is not less than that. No, righteousness is not good for the sake of goodness, it’s good for the sake of a Person. Not something one does to gain God’s approval, but something one does and is because they received God’s approval because of a cross and an empty tomb. “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” (Romans 3:21-22)

By “believe” I do not mean (nor did Paul who wrote Romans) a mental assent. It’s not a state of mind where you’ve reached a bunch of right conclusions about God. No. Believing is a way of life. It’s a lifelong commitment to follow through whatever He might lead, because He’s The Way back to the Father. And I want to get back to my Father!

The Spirit was given to us as a downpayment, a deposit as a guarantee (2 Corinthians 5:5) that whoever had a believing loyalty to The Son of God will also receive an inheritance with The Heir of all things (Hebrews 1:2), and that hope should take root in one’s heart that when compared to whatever sufferings we might endure in this life, it will still feel like pennies for a castle. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” (Romans 8:18)

Sounds too good to be true? Only someone that has uprooted lies from the pits of their soul only to see a harvest of truth in place knows what I’m talking about. Only someone that has torn down pillars of pride in their inner edifice knows what it’s like to see pillars of meekness that can support any offence thrown their way. Only someone that has covered over the deep, muddy wells of greed and ‘fame’ knows what it’s like to drink from the springs of living water. At first, while you’re in the process of weeding out, tearing down, covering up it seems like a tremendous loss, but God never causes needless pain, it’s always to give birth to something that you need instead of want. And only those that truly need know the difference between need and want. 

by Cristina Pop