What if … the world really is 4.5 billion years old and has been populated by humans for 6.5 million years? Does that mean that God doesn’t exist?

What if … Jesus isn’t really the son of God?  What if he was just a man who may, or may not, have had a special relationship with an unseen Being?

What if … the Bible isn’t the certified, authentic word of God?  What if it’s just a collection of writings by men whose minds wandered beyond the cosmos?  Is there any hope for us?

What if … some of us got the plan of salvation wrong and end up in fiery eternal torment?  Just because we didn’t say the magic words or believe the right stuff?

What if … it turns out that doctrine isn’t important and God just wanted us all to get along and help one another?

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My conviction is, that, near or far off, in ourselves, or in our ancestors — say Adam and Eve, for comprehension’s sake — all our ailments have a moral cause. I think that if we were all good, disease would, in the course of generations, disappear utterly from the face of the earth.

What a remarkable concept! I had read this story several times and obviously overlooked this gem. All of Christianity is pretty much in agreement that disease and death were a result of the “fall” in the Garden of Eden. But what if Adam and Eve weren’t kicked out of the garden because they had sinned, but rather because they continued to sin? And this started the pattern of sinning that they passed on to future generations.

Disease, then, is directly connected to practiced sin — whether outward or hidden. Does that mean that a person’s sickness is an indicator of personal sin? The greater the sickness, the more sin present?

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To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Hope is a state of mind.  It sets the course of our day or days to come.  It embraces the anticipation of things ahead.  Hope sets the desire that something good will happen (I hope I get that raise.) or that something bad won’t happen (I hope it’s not cancer.).

The antithesis of hope is despair.  The killer of hope is apathy.  I don’t care what tomorrow brings.  Or I have no hope, just the monotony of my pitiful life.

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How true. But as I drove past that particular church, seeing the sign, and knowing something of the doctrine of that particular denomination, I could only shake my head and say, “But they don’t really believe it.”

How could I possibly make that claim? Because their reference to “no one” is, at best, limited, and, at worst, conditional. No one applies only to those who are living in this world. Does God still love any who have rejected him? Sure, they say; God will continue to love them, up until they draw their last breath. But, what happens when they die with rejection still on their lips and unbelief still in their hearts?

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For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

From my youth, and for several years after, John 3:16 has been the cornerstone verse for all of Christianity.  However, today, if you ask an acknowledged Christian to recite it, many can’t.  It still is a foundational verse for me, and I would like to share some thoughts about it.  To do so, let’s break it down:

For God so loved the world …     Year after year, throughout the ages, human beings have wondered about the existence of God, let alone whether or not he cared for them.  What makes John 3:16 so special is that it was spoken by someone who knew firsthand about God’s love.  Jesus was well aware that his Father loved all that he had created.  But they weren’t getting it.  At this point in history the only people left who believed in the one true God were being oppressed by the government, and their own religious leaders were making matters worse.  

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