Life

I believe there is a God—a Creator of all things, including ourselves.  He created us for love, for relationship.  But love without choice is not love at all.  It is either rape or robots.  So, we have the choice to love Him.  And we chose to not love Him.  We chose to love ourselves instead.  We refused to acknowledge Him as Creator of all.  Instead we created our own story of the world, where randomness and chaos reigned.

These choices necessarily separated us from God.  If you choose to not be with someone, it only follows that you would not be with that someone.  If that Someone happens to be the source of life, then you choose to be dead.  This is the most basic logic.

This, ironically, led to a self-fulfilling prophesy of sorts.  The claim that we are nothing more than physical creatures that will die into nothingness is now true.  Our spirits cannot live without connection to the source of life.  We do become empty physical shells that rot right out from under us.

But God is a God of love, life and relationship.  He is merciful, even when following the fundamental laws of nature and logic.  So he sent His Son to live on Earth.  This Son had the same choice we did—agree with God or not; Jesus could love one more: God or Himself.

Obedience is an offensive word is some circles.  Let’s call it agreement.  Imagine a husband says that he thinks the mortgage should be paid this month, and the wife writes the check.  You can call that obedience or agreement.  She acknowledges the wisdom of her husband, trusts he is wanting the best for the both of them and agrees to carry out what he proposes.  Jesus did the same.  He knows God is good and loving and wants to bring life to all.  Jesus agrees this is a good thing and carries out what God proposes.  (The relationship between God and Jesus and a husband and his wife have a peer quality that is missing in the relationship with God and other humans, which changes the dynamics of the relationship.  Nevertheless, because of free will, we can choose to agree or disagree with God’s plan.)

So Jesus agreed with, or obeyed, God’s plan and allowed himself to be separated from God.  Humans walked away from the source of life, leaving themselves dead.  Jesus allowed himself to be torn from the source of life, then conquered the power of death by coming back to God.  Because of this act, death is dead!  Death can no longer rule over us.  Everything is reset.  We get to choose again.  Life or death?  Love or hate?  Togetherness or solitude?  Each human gets to choose.