My struggle was hard. For almost the entirety of the semester I felt hopeless, lifeless, depressed, apathetic, as if there were no reason to live, as if God were not real, like I had no relationship with Him if he was, and as if I had no faith. I pray, if you were ever around me then, that by the grace of God you couldn’t tell just how much I struggled and the amount of tears I cried. Instead I hope that you saw joy, peace, and above all Christ. The joy of my Lord was truly my strength, which enabled me to live and to not give up.
The biggest reason for my difficulty was the teaching of some professors. I like to believe that if someone says they love Jesus that they really do. I cry when I have reason to believe the opposite is true. God does not want any to perish and neither do I. However, not all that cry “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven and this was the truth I wrestled with. My professors taught things that confused me tremendously. I couldn’t understand how what they believed even came close to what I believed. Which meant that either I didn’t know God, or even how to know him, or they didn’t. The first couple months I spent confused and crushed. How could a professor at a Christian university, who many love, be teaching false doctrine? Surely, this wouldn’t happen. Surely, others would notice? Right?
My professor taught, “The intention of creation was incarnation. Not the intention of incarnation was salvation.” This means that Jesus did not primarily come to die for our sins, but only “accrued” that mission. In his paradigm the cross was not central and its meaning was substantially lost. He claimed that Jesus could have died any other way, that the literal cross was not that important. He claimed that Christ could have come at any other time—he only came when he did because Mary was the first one willing to let the Holy Spirit work in her. He taught we are saved by faith and works. He taught that you are disobedient to God if you do not speak in tongues. The problem with all of this is it doesn’t really line up with scripture, but then he doesn’t believe in scripture the way I do. He sees it as a witness of the Holy Spirit, which means the cannon is not closed and the bible is not the final word.
I want to know the truth. If I am wrong I am willing to be corrected. So, I really wrestled with what he taught to know if it was true or not—to know if I was wrong or he was. Through all of this I concluded that he and I believe in two completely different Gods. I believe in the God of historical Christianity and he believes in a false god. His teaching on the cross is far too a deviation from what Christians have testified since the time of the apostolic fathers. We know God’s love for us only because he died for us while we were still sinners. Not to mention Christ tells us in John 9:39, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Christ came because of sin. The intention of incarnation was, in fact, salvation.
I hope, my friend, that you can see how our God has preserved me. Last semester was the most trying time in my faith thus far. I had to decide what I really believe in, but in these past couple of months God has lifted me up. I’ve never felt more sure of what I believe before which makes me feel tremendously free. “Ah, what a relief it is to be in Christ He's the life that I need to live!”
| Ah what a relief it is |