A Lie, a Truth, and a Gift

The Lie I Believed, the Truth I Discovered, and the Gift I Received

Growing up in the church, Easter was always my favorite celebration. I loved the spring weather, the sunrise service on the beach, new Easter outfits, often handmade by my mother, the gifts, and the Easter baskets. I was deeply impressed by the sound of an entire congregation of people standing in unison to recite the Apostle’s Creed. These were the comforts and traditions of childhood.

As I became an adult, life became complicated by difficulty and hardship. I learned that the guy wearing the white hat isn’t always the good guy, the Santa ringing the bell for charity isn’t always charitable, and sometimes bad things happen to good people. In a time of darkness, brokenness, and confusion, the comforts and traditions of childhood were no longer sufficient. My faith failed.

This time of darkness and confusion was the catalyst for my journey to find truth. I had to ask some hard questions: do I claim to believe in Jesus simply because I have been indoctrinated since childhood? Or is Jesus the living Lord? Have I been taught the truth about who God is and what He is like? Or am I following watered down platitudes passed on from one generation to the next?

I enrolled in university and earned a degree in Biblical Studies so that I could seek the truth about God for myself. My studies taught me how to read the bible correctly and exposed me to thinkers and teachers with understanding that was beyond my Sunday School training. What I have discovered through study and searching is that I had for many years believed a lie. I have since become aware a life-changing truth and as a result, I have been given a gift.

The big favor I ask of you today is that, even if you don’t believe in an afterlife or the claims of Christianity, please read through to the end. My hope is that you will understand that the Christian God that you have heard or read about may be a misrepresentation of what God is really like. Holy things in human hands are often tainted by the humans who handle them. If you do believe in the spiritual life and the claims of Christianity, please accept my testimony of the revelations that I have discovered on my journey: a lie, a truth, and a gift.

The Lie

Although I had been raised in the church, I did not accept Christ as Savior until adulthood. I remember sitting up the night before I was scheduled to be baptized, crying late into the night. I had it in my head that the best I could do was to sneak in the back door of heaven and catch crumbs from the banquet table like a homeless thief begging for leftovers. I felt like heaven was an exclusive club and there was no way I could pass the background check. I’m not sure where this idea came from, either because grace wasn’t talked about much or I hadn’t been listening, but I had a clear notion that I didn’t deserve heaven.

The root of this thinking was that I believed a lie about God. I believed that God was an angry, vengeful tyrant waiting for people to mess up so He could punish them. I could never understand why in every Christmas pageant the angels would announce “good news of great joy”. In my thinking, Jesus had rushed in to stand between me and an angry God to prevent me from receiving punishment. Jesus “covered” me so that God couldn’t see me. If God could see me, God would strike me down. When I prayed, I prayed to Jesus because God was scary. It made me sad every time I was told that Jesus had to die because I’m a dirty rotten sinner.

Years later, I was still trying to appease an angry God and earn a better place in heaven. I trusted Jesus to get me in, but after that, I thought I’d get what I deserved. As a result, I was always working in the church. I had developed anxiety, exhausted from the effort to do enough for the angry God and frustrated by trying do it right so that He wouldn’t be angry with me.

After much study of the scriptures and teachings of people who are mature in faith, I discovered an amazing truth that has changed everything.

The Truth

God isn’t mad at me. God isn’t mad at you. He is on our side.

In fact, God has been chasing after us. In the whole of human history, God has never stopped trying to have a loving relationship with mankind. He made us with free spirits, free thought, and freedom to choose relationship. He gave us the freedom to say no to Him. But oh how He is anxiously waiting for us to say yes!

My studies in school gave me an amazing new perspective. God’s loving nature caused God to set an ancient plan into motion. He knew we would make wrong choices, go the wrong direction, run away from Him. And God wanted us to be able to find our way back to Him.

His ways of doing things and His plan seems hard to understand at times. God planned for Jesus to be the one who made things right. The idea of blood sacrifice is foreign to modern, non-agrarian cultures. But in ancient cultures, spilling the lifeblood of something precious was a way to show remorse or make amends for doing something wrong. In our terms, it means that we can’t just say “sorry” when we have done something wrong to someone. We have to make it right, make restitution, restore what was broken.

God knows that we don’t have the ability or the power to make right what has been broken in our relationship with Him. God set out to make it right Himself. The holy God of the universe left heaven and put on mortal flesh to come to our world and be Immanuel, God With Us.

“When we were enemies, you see, we were reconciled to God through the death of His son” (Romans 5:10).

We know God in the flesh as Jesus and He is the “good news of great joy” that the angels sang about. Unto us a Savior was born. God came to earth as Jesus, in the flesh, to provide the blood sacrifice needed to make things right. God and Jesus, working together with one heart saw the plan through to its painful end. That’s how bad He wanted to have relationship with us. God accepted the lifeblood of Jesus as the restitution for our wrong choices. Because of Jesus we are made right with God.

“But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8).

That’s not something an angry, vengeful tyrant would do.

That is something a loving Father would do.

I now realize that the good news of great joy is the greatest gift I’ve ever been given.

The Gift

What difference does it make if I believe that this man, Jesus, who lived two thousand years ago was killed?

“I passed on to you what I received, of which this is most important: that Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures say; that he was buried and was raised to life on the third day as the Scriptures say” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

Jesus is alive.

Just as God is the only one in the universe who can give life to all earthly, mortal things, God is the only one in the universe with the power to give eternal life. God raised Jesus from the dead and Jesus is alive right now with God to live forever.

Imagine holding a rock in your hand. Can you say to the rock, “Be alive. Grow roots and limbs and become a mighty Redwood forest.” You can put that rock into water, bury it in soil, expose it to sunlight. It would still be dead. The rock can’t do good things, give money to the poor, choose good over evil or do anything other thing to earn its way to becoming a living being.

Just as that rock exists but is dead, people exist in this life but are spiritually dead. They can’t do good things and think good thoughts to earn their way to becoming eternal beings. Only God can take something that is dead and give it life.

Eternal life is not a place where you go after your body dies. Eternal life is a gift that you are given by God. Your soul is reborn the moment you accept the gift and changed from temporary, mortal existence to that which lives forever with God. This is the good news of great joy: Jesus made us right with God and God gives eternal life to everyone who asks for it. God chose us so now we must choose Him.

God is far from the angry tyrant I once believed He was. He wants everyone to receive the gift of eternal life.

“The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

God leaves the choice up to us. Good relationships are built around the freedom to choose. Do we want relationship with God? Do we want to accept His gift of eternal life?

“But for all who did receive and trust in Him, He gave them the right to be reborn as children of God; He bestowed this birthright not by human power or initiative but by God’s will” (John 1:12-13).

Easter gives me much joy now. I no longer believe the lie that an angry God is out to punish me. I know the truth that God’s love compelled Him to make things right for me through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And I receive with the gladness the gift of eternal life.

There's no better Easter gift to give to Jesus than to simply say: "I believe in Jesus and I accept the gift of eternal life!"

I pray that you know and receive the “good news of great joy” this Easter.

“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Copyright 2021@ TA Boland