Chapter 3: Edit 1: Update 1

Chapter 3: On Santa Claus and the Resurrection of Jesus.

I've never been crazy about music. I know this makes me a freak, and suddenly extremely uncool, but it's true. I never buy music for myself, because I don't care much for music. This makes me a very moral person, because I don't illegally download any music. It's not really related to my ethics, though, but just to my lack of musical desire. The irony of this is the fact that I wish I had the opportunity to be a professional singer.

The other day, somebody asked me what kind of music I liked, and I sat for an uncomfortable period of time thinking about how to respond to this person. Finally, after a period of searching deep within my soul, I had an answer. “CHRISTMAS MUSIC!”

I love Christmas. Not just in the typical “I love Christmas” sort of way. I must admit that Christmas is more of an addiction to me. I have drunk my coffee every day in the same Christmas mug for about 6 years now. This year I switched to a different Christmas mug, because the truth is it's better than the previous Christmas mug. Every once in a while I return to the original simply because I don't want that mug to feel neglected and abandoned.

Coffee tastes great in a good Christmas mug. I have a friend who believes he can taste the filter in Mr. Coffee. If this is in any way true, I think some engineer somewhere failed in a major way. He only drinks his coffee in a French press. I don't believe him, but I think it's cool that he really believes this. I, on the other hand, am absolutely convinced that coffee tastes better in a good Christmas mug.

As for music, I start listening to Christmas music in June. This is due to the fact that I'm married, and my wife has this thing against Christmas. She believes that Christmas music ought only to be played after Thanksgiving. She's wrong, but I don't tell her that, because I love her. I pretend that she's right. I do this with a lot of other things too... but that's another story.

I know that Jesus is the reason for the season, but that's not all I like about Christmas. I like all the other things too. I like the trees, and the lights and the gifts. I know that I'm supposed to like giving more than receiving, but I think I actually like receiving more. Giving is not that fun, since I don't get anything in return. Maybe giving would be a lot more fun if every time I gave, I could get something... like a brand new car.

I'm also a natural Christmas tree guy. I know it kills the ozone, or something like that, but it makes my house smell nice. I like putting all different colors of lights on the Christmas tree. This also drives my wife crazy, because she thinks that you should choose either white lights or colored lights. I tell her that it's just that she doesn't like Christmas. If she really liked Christmas, she would like all the lights. I also like garland, but she thinks it's tacky. Again, I tell her she's right.

Even though I've always liked Christmas, I've never really believed in Santa Claus. Maybe it's because as a kid I thought I was a genius. Geniuses see through the flaws of the Santa Claus story. Who can believe that a big fat man flies around the World in less than 24 hours and delivers presents through people's fireplaces. We don't have fireplaces in Costa Rica, so there was nowhere for him to come in. It may have also been due to the fact that my parents always put the gifts under the tree weeks in advance.

My brothers and I used to look at all the gifts and try to figure out what they were. This was fairly difficult to do, because we could never get the wrapping to look exactly the same after we opened and closed them while my parents were gone. In order to avoid that distress, we started looking for the hiding place before they wrapped the gifts. One time we discovered that they were in a locked suitcase. We found the key to the suitcase and opened it. When we closed it, for some reason it locked. After looking for the key to return it to its proper location, we realized we had left it inside the suitcase prior to locking it. When my mom asked about it, my brother was able to pretend like he didn’t know anything about it and made her think that it had been her own mistake.

One thing that made my experience at Bible school really tough was that one day I began to question everything that I had ever been taught. I wondered if the Christian story was kind of like the Santa Claus story, except that instead of a jolly old man breaking into your house in the middle of the night, you had a little baby born in a manger, to whom the angels sang.

If you think about it, the Christian story is a little ridiculous. If you believe the Christian story, then you believe that a young virgin got pregnant by God. You believe that her baby was somehow God and Man. You believe that this God-Man person chose to keep that secret to himself for thirty years. You believe that when he decided to tell people the secret he revealed it basically to twelve losers. You believe that he and these losers walked around an insignificant country for about three years doing miracles. You believe that he died, because he was doing these cool miracles. You believe that because of his death all sin that you committed against God has been forgiven (his death kind of paid for your actions even though you didn’t come around until a few thousand years later.) You believe that three days later, he came back from the dead. You believe he flew to heaven. You believe that just like he flew up, he is going to fly down one day. You believe that he simply has been waiting to fly back down for close to two thousand years.

Now if you can believe all that, you might as well believe in a jolly old elf, who lives in the North Pole, making Christmas gifts to deliver to all the children in the World, by riding in a sleigh on Christmas Eve, pulled by reindeer, and sliding down people’s chimneys.

I know that to some people that might sound sacrilegious or perhaps even blasphemous. Nonetheless, I think that when we as Christians try to pretend that the story completely makes sense, we might just be trying to fool ourselves. Maybe the whole point is that it doesn't make perfect sense. If it made perfect sense, we wouldn't need any faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God.

When I started questioning all this at Bible school, it became like a catalyst to another million questions. Does God exist? Did God create the Universe and everything in it? Was there ever a flood? Did the walls really ever come down at Jericho? Is Christianity true? What if Muslims are right? Is anyone right? Is anyone wrong? Is there really a Hell? How could a loving God send people to Hell? How could a loving God bring down the walls of Jericho, causing the death of everyone in that city? And of course, all those questions about Jesus. Did he really perform miracles? Did he rise from the dead? Is he ever coming back? How can I really know that he is alive? What if he was nothing more than a good person?

This was a very difficult time. When you have a belief system, and find it faulty, you realize that you are left with nothing to believe in. This is a terrifying prospect. Everybody needs something to believe in, even if that something is nothing. Sounds like a Poison song, I know. But it’s not just a cheap knockoff.
But you can't just choose to believe in nothing. You need to prove that nothing is the truth. Nothing has to bear the weight of the same scrutiny that your previous something had to bear. The problem is that nothing is often more impossible to prove than something, because in order to prove that nothing is true, you need to test all the different somethings. Who has the time to do that? What people usually do, is that they begin to believe in nothing, because, it's either easier to believe in, it justifies their lifestyle, or somebody gave them a really good explanation as to how nothing is true. But, I wonder if they ever question whether that somebody did the full test of all the somethings in order to prove that nothing is true.

How you believe often defines how you live. If you choose to believe in nothing, then you are left with no way to establish your life ethic. It becomes a matter of choice. I'm no sociologists, but I don't think we humans have a great track record for how we live our lives if we are left to no defining system of belief. Now, of course, someone could argue that it's the different systems of belief that have led to some of the atrocities committed by people over the centuries and they would be absolutely correct. But if there truly is nothing, that means that those systems have been men's attempts to create something out of nothing, and therefore, human nature has led people to invent systems that are terribly destructive forces in humanity. In the end, everybody has a system of beliefs, and that system will define many aspects of how they live their lives.

Some people have called this “worldview”, but when I think of worldview, I prefer to think of the astronauts out in space, looking on the world through a little window. I guess you could say that a worldview is the window in our private spaceship through which we look, to get a glimpse of Earth.

This is all very confusing and is giving me a headache, so I will continue with my story. We were required to read our Bible at this particular Bible school, and I was a very faithful student. While reading my Bible, I ran into a verse that ironically told me that it was O.K. to stop believing in Jesus if my belief in Jesus wasn't true. I don't know why this made me feel better, but it really did. This verse comes from the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15.

Paul seems to be a little bit of a radical man. He also dedicated himself to saving the World in the Bruce Olson sort of way, and suffered much more than a tapeworm in his stomach. As a matter of fact, he gives a whole list of things that he had to suffer in 2 Corinthians 11. I haven't ever really suffered much for Jesus. I did kind of get laughed at once for not drinking when my friends were. But they stopped laughing at me when I started making fun of them for thinking they were going to pressure me into doing what I didn't feel like doing at the moment.

In this passage, Paul gave up a lot for Jesus. He says at in the book of Philippians that he counts all that he was like crap in comparison to gaining Christ. I’ve already deleted the word crap from my book multiple times, so as to not offend people’s olfactory sensibilities. Yet, I can’t really go deleting the word from this instance, because it is my understanding that Paul’s choice of words is best translated as crap, or even stronger. But of course, I’m no Greek scholar and you’ll need to ask them if this is true. In the same letter he says that for him to die is better than to live, because he can be with Jesus.
You’ll understand my amazement when I read this same Paul giving me permission to abandon my faith and walk away from Christianity. It doesn’t seem to make sense. You would think he would be defending the reasons for following Christ to the death, not telling me to go ahead and leave.
Read the words. “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” (1 Cor. 15:14) Now, if my faith is useless, you can pretty much say that I should abandon my faith. Otherwise, my faith would be very useful. But Paul doesn’t just tell me to go ahead and walk away. He says that if Christ didn’t rise from the dead, my faith is useless. The only thing I realized was that I needed to look at the question of whether or not Christ had risen from the dead.

There is a man called Pascal. He was this French guy, who figured out a lot about science. Apparently he was a very smart man, because they named a computer language after him. I don't think he ever had a computer, since he lived in the 1600's. If he did, it must have been like an Apple IIC. That was my first computer and it was really old. Although he was a scientist, Pascal was also known for his beliefs in God. Pascal presented an argument once that, in summary, said this. Either there is a God, or there isn't. If there is a God and you don't believe in Him, you are going to Hell. If there is a God and you believe in Him you are saved. If there isn't a God and you don't believe in Him, you’re fine. If there isn't a God, and you do believe in Him you are fine. Since going to Hell is the worst of the cases your best bet is to believe in God.

This sounds pretty reasonable, except that I have a few problems with it. First and I think very importantly, it brushes aside the element of truth. Basically it tells us that following the truth is unimportant. Pick the best of all the options and go for it. If it's not true, then you'll live a happy life being wrong. I know that knowing for a fact that what we believe to be true is really true is really difficult. Nowadays it seems that you’re being all out arrogant to even claim that you may have been let in on the cosmic secret about what is true. We’re kind of expected by society to let everybody figure out what they think is true and not question anybody’s understanding. If I may use the word once more, I think this is crap. It sounds cute and cuddly and everything, but it really isn’t functional in the real World. If I walk up to the cashier at the grocery store and she tells me that I need to pay $40, I don’t turn to her and say that I believe it in my heart that I only need to pay $20. Or worse yet, I give her a $20 bill and tell her I truly believe that it is worth $40. I know what you’re thinking. “This guy fell asleep during his apologetics class, if the $20 bill is the best argument he could come up with.” You’re not far from the truth (but whose truth?) But my point is simple, there are some facts that we live by in life that are completely objective and have no subjectivity to them. There are some facts that we bet on, and can’t see at all. We can’t quite see gravity, but we pretty much bet on the fact that if an airplane is overloaded, and the wind direction is wrong, we’re pretty much dead. I’m not raising my hand to be the guinea pig to prove that right or wrong. I think that spiritual matters do not fit into the “whatever you think is true” category, because if there is truth to the teachings of Jesus or Mohammed for that matter, and we are following the wrong guy, we’re pretty much dead. I’m not at all implying that the truth is easy to get to, but as Fox Mulder would say, “The Truth is Out There.” (I’m full of cultural innuendos. This makes me so relevant, I should start my own Church.)

A second reason I have a problem with Pascal’s wager is that it sounds reasonable for us in the western hemisphere where believing in God does not imply having to say goodbye to our family and friends. Perhaps being disowned. Perhaps being killed. But if there is no truth to Jesus’ claims and a Muslim, for instance, would suffer death for becoming a Christian, I would say that he's better off not believing in Jesus. In other words in the nice comfort of our reclining Lazy-boy, eating chips and salsa, while drinking a beer (or not depending on your Christian persuasion), it’s easy to assume that being a Christian is a good choice whether its true or not. But for the missionary who has abandoned it all to follow after Christ, if that Christ isn’t real, then it’s about the stupidest thing he could do. I expressed this to a friend of mine who claims to be an atheist. When I let people know that I was leaving a career in engineering to pursue a future as a Bible teacher, he told me that he thought it was good that I was following my heart. I told him that if he really felt this way he could no longer be my friend. A little bewildered he asked “Why?” I responded, “Because I just told you that I’m leaving a career that has a future, for something completely unknown, on the basis that I believe God is calling me in that direction. If God exists, that’s a wonderful decision. But if he doesn’t, I would be making the worst mistake of my life. If you claim to be my friend, and you truly believe that God doesn’t exist, you would be doing everything to convince me I was making a huge mistake.”

The final problem I have with Pascal’s wager is that it seems to go against what Paul is saying. If Jesus isn't really who He said He is, then we better find a better way to spend our lives than talking about Him, or living for Him, or making decisions like going to England, or becoming Bible teachers, because He is directing us. Paul states it in even stronger terms than this. If such an affirmation about Christ's resurrection is false we should just “eat and drink, for tomorrow we will die.” This famous apostle and missionary was telling me that I could abandon my faith and pursue my own hopes and dreams. Finally I could be my own God. I could seek pleasure as the ultimate gain. I could give myself to my own lusts. From then on I would have sex with all the women that I wanted to (or as would let me). I would get drunk as often as I could. I could try to become as rich as I possibly could and use my money however I wanted. I would eat fatty food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and gain like 600 pounds. I could finally do whatever I wanted to do with my life.

There is only one condition. I just needed to prove one thing, and then I would be free. I needed to answer the ultimate question. Did Jesus rise from the dead, or not?

I no longer needed to ask all those other questions that I had. I just needed to ask that one question. Really, when you think about it, that question answers a lot of other questions. I'm no Blaise Pascal, but I know a few things. I know that people don't usually go around rising from the dead. If a friend of mine died today. I went to his funeral. I saw his body. I saw the casket being lowered into the ground. Then, three days later, I run into him while he’s having a frozen cappuccino at some coffee shop. And he gets all excited to see me, and says, “Hey Marco, I came back from the dead. I now know what's on the other side. I was there for more than an ‘out of body experience’ time. I was actually there for three days and talked to a whole bunch of dead people. Oh yeah, and I saw God, and I spoke to Him.” I would actually really listen to what he had to say. I figure that he would have a lot more knowledge about the here and after than I do, seeing as how I've never really risen from the dead. As a matter of fact, I've never really died either.

My philosopher friend says that there are two types of knowledge. There is that knowledge that you gain from reading a book, and the knowledge that you gain from experiencing something. I could read all about snowboarding. I could even look at pictures. I could tell you how you need to lean, or what moves you should do. But I went snowboarding once, and had I read much about it, it probably wouldn't have helped me. My experience knowledge tells me that snowboarding is a lot like eating snow. It's not really that fun, unless you're into eating snow.

In the same way, you could read a lot about God. You could read a lot about Heaven or Hell. You could read a lot about eternity. You might even come to know a lot. Still though, if a guy comes back from the dead and tells you that he knows what's truly out there, you should really pay attention to his words. If, before he died, he let you know it was going to happen, and then it happened, I think you could trust much of what he said prior to dying. If this same guy told you he was going to die and come back from the dead, and then he died, but didn't come back... you could pretty much throw away all that he said.

So if Jesus came back from the dead, after three days; if this really happened, I think we can pretty much trust what He had to say, and we can trust what he trusted. I don't know how the flood came about, and whether it has to be universal to be true. I can't figure out where dinosaurs fit into the whole thing. I don't have a clue how old the universe is, and whether we have to believe in six creation days in order for the Bible to be accurate. I don't know how a little rock, could kill the jolly green giant. I don't understand why good people have to suffer. I don't know why criminals get away with murder while laughing at the victims families. There are a lot of things that don't make sense to me if God exists. But if Jesus did rise from the dead, and he assures me that the God of the Old Testament is the same God today. If he tells me that He Himself is God, and that He was born of a virgin. If He tells me that God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life. If He lets me know that He is going to fix me up a nice house in heaven, and it will have a 42” plasma TV so that I can watch TBN all day, with the people and the funny hair, for the rest of eternity. If He says that the Holy Spirit is going to come into my life. I can believe him because He rose from the dead. He knows a lot more than I do, even if He hasn't read the same books.

So I went on a pursuit of that question. I read a few books here and there. I liked C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, for instance. There he makes the point that Jesus would have had to be a liar, a lunatic, or really the Son of God. I spent hours asking myself questions. But where I finally came to an answer was from the simplest source.

The story started when I read the book of 1 John. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched.” I know people question who the authors of the Bible are, but I am not going to get into that here. Believing that John, the disciple, was the author of this book, something hit me for the first time of my life. Whether or not the disciples, and later apostles, were right, they really believed what they said they believed. They believed it so much that they were willing to die for their belief. They believed it so much that they left loved ones behind to share this belief with others. They believed it so much that they were willing to cross, as never before, racial, cultural, academic, gender, financial barriers so that others could know about Jesus. They didn't have the scholarly knowledge of Jesus. They had that experiential knowledge. They had seen a man die on a cross, a very slow and agonizing death. Then, three days later they had seen him in person. This is why they were willing to go to great lengths for him. This is why they considered everything they had, and all their credentials and titles like crap in light of the knowledge of Jesus.

But were they simply wrong? So I set out to read the Gospels again. For the first time, I read them not as Sunday School stories. I read them as eye-witness accounts. It made all the difference. Maybe there is a huge lesson behind every one of Jesus' miracles. Maybe we can learn about faith. Maybe we can learn about mercy. Maybe we can see principles that can tell us how to treat our neighbor, and how to treat our neighbor's cat. Maybe. But maybe, they are just awesome in themselves. Maybe, the only thing the authors want us to know about the five loaves and two fish is that there was no food, and then Jesus prayed, and then there was lots of food. Maybe, when Jesus approached them on the boat, while walking on water, they just want us to know that it was amazing that Jesus could walk on water. Maybe when he hushed the winds and the storm, we should say, “Cool. He can stop the storms.” Maybe.

Maybe, when they saw him taken before the authorities, they got really scared. Maybe, when they saw him beaten, they knew it was over. Maybe, when they saw him die on the cross, they were heartbroken because their hope was gone. Maybe, they had to run for their lives, even while leaving their clothes behind, because they knew they were next. Maybe, when the women went to anoint his body with perfumes, they were really expecting to find him dead... and awfully smelly. Maybe when Peter ran into the tomb, and saw the clothes lying there...

What? Why were the clothes lying there? Why does the Bible mention this?

Something really interesting happened to me when I got to that part. In Luke 24:12, it tells us that Peter found the linen lying there. For some strange reason, this simple, small verse troubled me for days. I kept reading the gospels, but I couldn't let go of the thought. It kept pestering me. Day after day after day after day after day, I kept thinking about this short comment. Finally one day I decided to seek the reason behind why this verse was bothering me so much.

I wish I could say that my moment of understanding came after reading one of the World's greatest apologists, or even better, one of the World's most renowned skeptics. Or I wish I could say that I had an incredible Spiritual experience. The heavens opened up, and a voice spoke to me. Or that I saw a great miracle. Some kid got killed before my eyes, and I prayed for him and immediately he was healed. I wish I could have something really big and important to base the most decisive moment of my life. Nonetheless, maybe to those of us who think ourselves too big, we need to come to Jesus because of something really small. Luke 24:12 did it for me.

It was this simple. If he were still dead, either his body was stolen, or we would know where he was. Since his body had to have been stolen, and moved, nobody in their right mind would have bothered to unwrap his body. They would have simply stolen him. If the author of Luke was dumb enough to believe those miracles, he wouldn't have been smart enough to include such a small detail that would have otherwise seemed insignificant. If Jesus rose from the dead, he and the angels that ministered to him would have probably unwrapped his garments and put on new ones. Where did they come from? I don't know, but He's Jesus. If he could walk on water, and calm the storms, and rise from the dead... just maybe, He can make new clothes out of nothing.

I still believe that this was the most defining moment of my life. This simple, meaningless verse, is the reason why I can't just eat and drink, because tomorrow I will die. It's because of this verse, and what God showed me about the resurrected Jesus, that I now have to live my life in order to please Him.

As I write this, Christmas is approaching. Lights are being put up. Trees are being loaded on cars. There are poinsettias in all the stores. Christmas music is in the air. I love it. But beyond the music, and beyond the lights, and beyond the gifts, there is the Truth of the living, indwelling Savior, who came into the World to seek and save that which was lost. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.