Yesterday we had our first day of classes and a lot of things were discussed but there are just a few that really hit home with me. In the first class with the week’s evangelist, Tom McCall, he taught on Atheism. Now before you start panicking let me explain. Tom discussed what Atheists believe about God, or rather what they don’t believe about him. One thing Tom mentioned that really got my attention, he said that Atheists have an amazing insight about the world and the issues it faces today. Although Atheists don’t have a name for them, Christians call those issues sin. Karl Marx, for who Marxism was named after, says that religion is made by man, but Genesis 1:26 & 27 refutes Marx’s theory. As C.S. Lewis has said “creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.” What he means by this is that every earthly desire we have can be fulfilled. So if we have earthly desires that can be fulfilled by earthly means, then that also goes to say that our spiritual desires can be fulfilled by the Holy Spirit.
In the second class with Rob Lewis, his discussion kept leading back to two things, boundaries and things that identify us. Reading Galatians 2:11-20, in which Paul publically confronts Peter, gives you an illustration of those points. Without going into too much detail, Paul publically confronts Peter about his hypocritical actions and how they lead the other Jewish Christians astray. Paul used Peter as a reminder to the Jewish Christians that only faith in Jesus can make them right with God, not by obeying the cultural laws set by the Pharisees, stated in verse 16.
Three things to always remember:
- “Religion” may be man-made, but God’s infinite love is inconceivable by man.
- Jesus is the only way to identify us.
- Galatians 2:20-21 surpasses whatever cultural laws the world thinks we should obey.
