My Way or the Highway

As we near the holiday season, it often sparks conversations about religion and religious leaders, and their connection to it, even though we all know that many of today's modern holidays represent many different aspects of how people feel about and celebrate the holidays, from very religious to extremely irreligious.

And true to form, as I settled in for the train ride home from city to suburbs, my laptop open to a spreadsheet I hadn't finished, conversations were going on all around, mostly involving exuberant students. Someone in the seats behind me was discussing a moving story told by a Buddhist of how he was brought up and later in life had a life after death experience, and explained how he had met Jesus Christ in a vision and began to tell everyone why this was the only truth because it dealt with 'the sin problem'. It was all recorded and documented.

My seat mate, probably a student as well, popped to his feet and turned to kneel in his seat facing the talkers behind us and leaned over the back of his seat. I gave up on the spreadsheet and opened my word-processor to jot down a few of the interesting facts to check out later. Train travel is educational. The conversation went something like this:

"Hey, that's cool. Where'd you see that?"

"It's called The Remarkable Testimony of a Buddhist monk in Myanmar ( Burma ) who came back to life a changed man! by Athet Pyan Shinthaw Paulu on Bibleprobe.com."

I began checking for the site while they all seemed to be reading the story on someone's laptop or ipad. My seatmate found it on his ipad and start reading it himself. By this time I had found it and skimmed through it, and it was so fascinating, I copied it into an email and sent it myself at home.

Then a girl's voice piped up with "What a great story! It has brought up many questions. What I don't understand is why anyone is condemned to hell, even if they have never heard of Christianity? I always thought that God was God whether He was worshipped as a Buddhist, a Hindu, an islamist or a Jew. And do Jews (the chosen people) go to Heaven? They don't believe in Jesus".

A man's voice that sounded further back than those in the seats behind me, answered her question with:

"Well, this has two aspects since not all 'gods' call people to themselves for the same reasons (the doctrine of each religion is different). Some gods/religions demand perfection of their followers or you can't be 'saved'. Obviously man cannot give that, since perfection is beyond his ability. If he has chosen to follow such a 'god', then he has automatically chosen to doom himself to failure.

"Other gods/religions demand works to achieve salvation. Men are not good at such things and fail inherently. But if they manage to succeed to do all the works and achieve a feeling of salvation, there is still no confirmation that they have found the 'right god' or the 'right way' to heaven, until after they die, by which time, if they are wrong, it is too late."

The young people were pretty quiet listening as this adult continued.

"All 'gods' demand different rituals and behaviors of the men that follow them to be part of their 'religion' and many religions even say openly that they are just one of many ways to heaven. No God but the Christian God says 'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father (God) but by Me (Jesus).' You would think that people searching for the right way would be glad to hear that, wouldn't you, so they could stop looking? But instead, many turn away because of it, saying that is arrogance, thus it must be 'a wrong way'. Of course, that's only true if there are many ways to the same place. But what if it is more simple than that? What if it is simply God, Who cannot lie, telling the truth so people can find Him?"

There was flurry of excited conversation among them before the man continued.

"Secondly," he began again, "Biblical predestination is often misconstrued simply as the Creator's 'whim'. But God knows the hearts of His creations. It doesn't mean He picks arbitrarily those who will be saved. He just knows who we are. I often wondered if He confronts those-in the split seconds between death and judgment (since He owns time)--whom He knows did not have the opportunity to hear about how to find salvation. It may not be anything that would make it into the Bible since the Bible was given to those who would believe in Him and into whose hands the Gospel had already made its way.

"The reality of a perfect place like Heaven, in which there is zero sin, cannot be comprehended by creatures such as we - who have been born and grown up in this world. Yet God Eternal has always lived in such a place, until satan's rebellion. God's home was pure and perfect and sinless. But when satan and his followers rebelled, He threw them all out (and who knows if some ritual cleansing (or re-creation?) were necessary to make Heaven "pure" again. Sin is like bacterial contamination - it is "spiritual filth", not physical filth. Only God knows what measures had to be taken to make it a perfect place again."

There were a few more comments and an 'Ee-yew' and he continued again. The students seemed to be enjoying the man's input. I felt like a transcriber for the deaf as I tried to type all that was being said.

"You notice that in the course of creation, man was 'confined on the Earth' - a goodly distance from Heaven? For God knew full well that if men - God-created creatures like angels, created to serve God - could rebel under a situation of 'benign monarchy' such as on Earth, then without inward change that removed sin from the equation, given such freedom as exists in Heaven, mankind's behavior would be even worse. But then the man who "chose God" in this world would be so much more precious to God because of his choice and his steadfastness in this world of temptation.

You see, before Jesus came on the scene, the Old Testament saints were told to look for Him in the future- The Prophet, Priest, and King ' that would come'. The people that died before Jesus came to earth, went to ' Paradise ' or 'Gehenna' - located in the underworld in the center of the Earth. Jesus' parable about The Rich Man and Lazarus explained that there was a 'great gulf fixed between' Paradise and Gehenna (a place of torment for sinners where the rich man landed).

"When Jesus died on the cross, He went to Hell to defeat the evil demonic powers. They saw the sin He was cloaked in and drew Him down there, only to find out when they got Him there that He was sinless, and the sin He carried on Himself was that of the entire world of men. That was when He 'took the keys to death and Hell' and 'made a show of them openly' (KJV). Then, the Bible says that He was able to remove the believers from the underworld and take them to a place in Heaven when He left.

"The 'system' of God is that within the scope of knowledge that a person has, that is what he/she is responsible for. If one had heard the plan of salvation and not received it, he is guilty of rejecting the Savior. If one has never heard, but has a heart toward God, you and I needn't fear that God is unfair and will allow that person to be lost to Hell. After all, if Jesus came to do what He did-and die the awful way He died-to save us, He certainly has a plan to assure that everyone has some kind of choice to bring them near to God and away from evil, even if it doesn't conform to sermons we hear today. That is all the choosing any man has to do. Any small choice to follow God will bring a person to where God will open their path and bring them to knowledge of Himself. You can be sure that if you or I care where those people end up, God cares even more. That's why it is so important to read the Bible to get the facts from His book, to make sure you know everything you need to know.

"Doctrine as we know it, may not be identifiable - but God Himself loves each one so much, He would take anything, any thought or gesture that shows a person has chosen Him. After all, it is said many times in the Bible, "Jesus, knowing what they were thinking, answered them saying..." - so it's pretty clear that God knows our hearts and our thoughts and knows who are His from the moment they are born. And since He doesn't force anyone to follow Him, He must give everyone the same opportunity for choice, for our God is not unfair. Since we will all be together for an Eternity, perhaps much of it will be spent hearing the testimonies of those who are there in Heaven, and how God got His gospel to them in spite of ridiculous odds to the contrary.

"I once heard of a man who was in jail in an enemy camp during the war and he found out that the other prisoners had been given Bibles in the latrines to rip the pages out of to wipe themselves with. And he salvaged a page and used his own drinking water to pour over it to clean it so he could read it - and he believed and memorized it. Then he asked for the job of cleaning the latrines so he could get more. And he continued to find Bible pages, clean them, read them, believe them, and finally managed to even share them with other prisoners. This is beyond the realm of logic. But God reached him this way and got him saved through the circumstances he was in at the time. God's ways being higher than our ways, and the details of each man's life are up to God. We have to trust Him that His love for all men is greater than our own - and when it says 'He is not willing that any should perish,' then it's the truth. If someone wants to find God, God will move Heaven and Earth to get to him and help him succeed."

The girl's voice spoke up then and asked "But how can it be our choice if maybe we have never even heard of Christianity or been given a choice?"

The man's voice answered, "Anyone can choose righteousness over sin - those who do not receive His death on the cross as payment for their sins, cannot enter Heaven - they would defile it with the un-dealt with sin. He made it our choice - and if there is no human choice to deal with (reject) sin and accept the forgiveness of God, the sin remains. And sin cannot enter Heaven. It's like black and white-you can only have one or the other."

There was some talking among them, and I expected more questions - but she replied with this:

"That has always been one of the greatest questions in my life that I have never really asked anyone but my mother or father. I was young when I first started thinking along these lines. Something my mother said got me started. Thank you for taking the time and the thought to explain this to me."

At that point another girl's voice spoke up and said, " I'm sorry, I do see what you're trying to say, and I know how you feel, but it still doesn't make any sense to me. It's too conflicting and judgmental. From what I have read, Buddha didn't think he was a God, the child of a god, or even a messenger from a god. He was just a man who tried to be the best, kind, and patient human he could be, and he taught that if others followed his example, they could be better humans also. How could a good God put one of the nicest people that ever lived in Hell just because he did not believe in Jesus?

Furthermore, how could he even believe that Jesus died on the cross for us, if Jesus wasn't around for another 500 years? And what about someone like Mahatma Gandhi, is he in Hell too? What about the Muslims, they are all devout believers in God, are they all going to Heaven, but the nice people who don't kill anybody aren't?

So God offers a personal relationship with people and if someone doesn't take him up on it, they go to Hell? Or all people go to hell if they don't believe in Jesus. To me it sounds too much like "my way or the highway", and I always had trouble with arrogance."

"Did you know that Buddha knew about Jesus? It's recorded that in his later years he predicted the coming of a Holy One in the future and told his followers to look for Him. He described His wounded hands and feet, the scars on His face and head from the crown of thorns, and the spear wound in his side.

"But getting back to whether it's God just saying "It's My way or the highway," consider this scenario: You have a huge estate with beautiful fields and woods and natural settings. It's lovely, clean, and well... perfect. You put out tables of food for everyone and you leave the gates open (a little like the immigration issue) and everyone comes in and enjoys it.

"But a few people don't care that you invested everything you have in making it perfect and they strew the grounds with bottles, trash, and newspapers, and start fires too close to your house (to roast your little bunnies that they catch in their snares). Eventually, over generations, there are more of that type of people than the respectful ones... what to do?

"Now from a religious point of view (and I realize you probably don't like fanaticism, but if you want a "perfect" place, not just a "nice place", there isn't much wiggle room), perfection depends on perfect people - and no one can "be perfect" without a miraculous intervention (of God) and transformation (of us). After all, we started with the "nice place" right here on earth and look at it now; some good areas with "good people", some not so good areas with "not-so-good people", and some bad areas with some "rotten people".

"Those who like it 'as is' may die and spend eternity here - or in a place like here, I don't know. But personally, I want to spend Eternity in a place of perfection that the Bible describes Heaven as. You can have the occasional areas of trash to accommodate the people who can't live without doing that, if you like. But you can see from this world, that those people tend to take over by force and pretty soon it's all that way. My choice is perfection. And thank God I have that choice, because that is the kind of place where God lives. Could you imagine a perfect God that lived in a dump? Wouldn't you doubt Him - or maybe not like Him for that?

"After all, if you saw Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ movie, true to the Biblical rendition, you saw the terrible price paid by Jesus, the perfect God made-man, to make sure everyone who wanted to come in those Gates, could do so. No question, we are all sinful people. Definition: sin means we miss the mark of perfection, making us not only able to sin, but likely to, with a propensity to continually degrade in sinfulness over Eternity - and presto, wherever we are is no longer "nice", let alone perfect.

"Sinful means we carry degradation everywhere we go - and that is why God did not make us immortal in our flesh. We would live forever getting worse and worse. The history of earth speaks for itself - even technology simply increases ways to sin.

"The bottom line though, God being God, is that He is sovereign, so i.e., even if He were being unreasonable, He can do what He wishes. Heaven is His home and even here on Earth we allow people to have who they want in their homes and keep out those they don't want. If He is perfect, and has a perfect house, yard, lawn, planet, solar system, universe, called Heaven, why is this so different than immigration? Should not the Master of the House decide who to invite to live with Him forever?

"And getting back to Buddha, if he has his own religion, why can't he make his own version of Heaven and go there? After all, God is opening His Heaven to those who believe in Him, so why get mad at Him for make rules that people can't come in if they think someone else is God? Why is that 'arrogant'?

"God made man with choice. Then He said "You can't sneak across My borders or under My fences-My borders are impenetrable. You would age and die in a spaceship trying to use technology to travel the distance from Earth to Heaven. Of all those who are born here on Earth during a set period (according to the Bible approx 6,000 yrs, not the age of the Earth, or of Creation, but of civilized man), some will choose to come to Me and live there for Eternity. Others are rebellious, cruel, warlike, and want no part of the perfect life or Home I already live in.

This 2nd group will probably not choose Me, and I will not force them to. But I will let everyone make their own choice to receive My invitation. If there really are many gods to pray to and many heavens and many ways to get to them, you have no problem, do you? But if as the Bible says, I AM the only God, and there is only one Heaven and it's Mine to define, and Hell is just a place to live for those who don't want My Heaven, and it's characteristics are the complete absence of My goodness, then you have a problem if you think I am arrogant to tell you the truth about this, don't you?

The girl's voice said "I guess that makes a little sense."

The man continued, "God says 'The condition for you to live with Me is that you must be perfect - for if you aren't, your imperfection will defile My Home with evil, and since I am Eternal and have always lived here and will always live here, I will not allow My Home and My family to be destroyed.'

Then the man asked her, 'Isn't this what we expect our Senators, Congressmen, and President to say to immigrants who come here and destroy our country and bleed its systems dry so its own people cannot live as they wish to?'

"So God says, 'Since I know you cannot be perfect, and you would constantly break the laws of Heaven as you break the laws of Earth, I must do what you cannot do. You were created perfect (from Adam and Eve), and placed in a perfect place (Eden), yet in your first encounter with an evil choice, you (mankind) turned away from Me and all that I created for you. You became -- and the race of men is now -- spiritually tainted (sin is a spiritual flaw, not a physical one, and resides in the blood).

"But, God says, "because I love you SO much, I chose to purify you, by allowing Myself to be born as one of you. I am perfect, and if I am put to death by the evil ones among you when I have no sin, my perfect blood will cleanse all of you - all of you who want this cleansing. And it's true, many will not. But to insure that you can then continue in perfection, I will come and live within you - and your human spirit will be cleansed by My Spirit and you will no longer wish to have anything to do with sin.

"So the invitation to come to Me is open to all - if you choose to follow Me and My ways of life, light, and love. If you reject them, you will go to another place I must prepare-for eternity, for those who reject My love and perfection. It's called Hell. I will never send any man there. And no man will ever go there except by his own choosing. But I won't go there with you so there will be nothing there of Me - no life, no light, and no love."

The young people were all quiet now - no one seemed to have any more questions, so the man continued.

"This is God's 'Plan of Salvation' is a nutshell. I hope this explanation makes sense - it may have some failings as I am also not perfect. However, if the Bible is true (and there is more proof for the existence, death, and resurrection of Jesus than there is for the life and death of Julius Caesar), if someone chooses not to believe in Him for their hope of Heaven, they will simply find out if what they believe is true after they die. At which time, if they are wrong, it will be too late to change horses.

"After all, God isn't sending anyone to Hell, He has just made it so those who don't want to follow Him have somewhere to live and aren't just floating around alone out in space, I guess. Hell is like a virus vault - once there, nothing can get out and mess up the works.

"There are some real people who have died and come back - like this Buddhist priest you were talking about - and then wrote books about having gone to Hell, and said that there are compartments there that match the lives a person led here. It's like sending all the illegals back to their home countries, and keeping the U.S. for its own citizens so it remains the way we want it. Although the difference is that, as bad as some of them had it at home, I doubt the Hell version of life may be anywhere near as good as many had it here on Earth, since this world is a neutral place, neither Heaven nor Hell. Once everything is distilled down into a perfect place (Heaven) and then everything else (a total void of God's presence - which equals Hell), then perhaps the end results of each will make more sense.

"And those who don't want to live with God, or allow Him to live in them, well as much as they wouldn't like Hell, they likely wouldn't like Heaven either, so why is it an issue that they won't go there? Like the Real Estate saying, it's all about location, location, location.

"So it's not arrogance - arrogance is pretending to have power and/or authority you really don't have. If this is all true, it's not arrogance because God really has all power and authority. And if it's not true, it's not arrogance, because anyone who would say he was God when he wasn't, is a liar, or maybe a lunatic (and not responsible for his actions). That's why I laugh when people say Jesus wasn't God, he was just a great moral teacher or a prophet. That's just ignorant. As C.S. Lewis said, you can't be a great teacher - moral or otherwise - if you are a liar , and less so if you are crazy . So He's either God or he's not - and if not, then everyone is better off that he is gone. But if so, He and His books are worth looking into, because He really is calling the shots."

It was then I realized we had pulled into the station where I had to get off, and apparently where everyone else did too. We all gathered up our things and made our way off the train.

As I walked to the parking lot, I saw lots of people with coats and laptops and ipads who had been on the train with me, but I had not seen the faces of the speakers of this verbal exchange that had captured my attention for the entire ride. And now everyone was on their way to their homes, and I wondered if they had been as affected by all that was said as much I had been.