This Fishing Trip Had the Shadow of Death Hanging Over It

My wife Annette’s family always loved fishing. Several years ago, her parents (Ron and Helene) treated her to an absolutely spectacular week at Bolton Lake, a fly-in fishing camp in northern Manitoba, Canada. Getting there involves a one-and-a-half hour flight from Winnipeg in a 20-seat plane to cover the 300 miles from that city. This place is so remote that satellite phones provide the only connection with the outside world. And forget about the Internet.

However, the payoff is huge. Anglers who make the trek are virtually guaranteed to bag several trophy-sized fish. This picture shows one of Annette’s. And, no, it’s not Photo Shopped.

Besides Annette and her parents, their party of twelve included several of her parents’ church friends. Although there were some younger people in the group, they were balanced out by the older folks who brought the average age to somewhere in the Medicare range.  The youngest participants were a businessman in his 40s and his ten-year-old son.

Before they booked the trip, Annette’s parents thought long and hard about the risks. Ron was in his 70s and, since he had been a World War 2 POW, he had lingering health issues. Also, he had been hospitalized a few times in the years right before the trip. The remoteness of the fishing camp was a concern, not only for Ron but also for the other elderly participants. The shadow of death truly hovered over this group.

Fortunately, there were no medical incidents, and the trip was such a success that they made it an annual event.

However, a few years after the initial outing, Ron and Helene called us with the news that someone from the first trip had died suddenly. Was it one of the church friends in their 70s? Was it one of the slightly younger but exercise-averse people? It turns out it was the businessman in his 40s who had collapsed while playing tennis. Of all the participants, he was the last one anyone would have expected to die.

This incident highlights the uncertainty of life.

Some evangelists and Christian speakers try to fearmonger their crowds, literally attempting to scare the hell out of them by milking, for all its worth, the idea of sudden death. Manipulation is never appropriate and should be rejected.

Having said that, none of us really knows what any given day will hold. Just this week, six road crew workers lost their lives when a cargo ship crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, plunging them to their deaths. As they left for work that day, none of them could have imagined what awaited them.  

I don’t want to get anywhere near the inappropriate tactics of some overzealous evangelists, but I do want to remind you about what the Bible says about the unfortunate human condition and what God has done to remedy our problem.

God loves us and created us to be in relationship with him. Unfortunately, our sin – either outward rebellion against God or indifference toward him – has separated us from him.

But the good news is that he has made a way to overcome the spiritual death resulting from our sin. Jesus – who is God, the second person of the Trinity – took on himself the penalty we deserve by his death and physical resurrection which we are celebrating this weekend. That forgiveness is available to anyone who recognizes their need, asks to have Jesus’ forgiveness count for them, and commits to making him their Lord. If someone refuses this option and continues in their sin, their choice to live apart from God becomes permanent once they leave this world.

Let me also point out that, beyond all his comforting teachings, Jesus had a lot to say about hell. By my count, nearly half his 40 parables can be considered parables of judgment, where some people or groups are ushered into God’s kingdom and others are relegated to eternal separation from him. Rather than avoid the topic of hell, Jesus seems to go out of his way to bring it up, often injecting it into conversations on completely different topics.

In today’s world, it’s popular to focus on the “nice” parts of Jesus’ teaching about loving our neighbor and not judging others. However, we ignore his complete message at our own peril. What better time than Easter weekend to bring up the reality of Jesus’ provision to rescue us from eternal separation from God? So, I ask you, where do you stand in relation to Jesus, God’s only provision for our sin?

A New Twist on Answering One of the Most Common Objections to Christianity

How often have you heard this one? 

“You’re telling me that only Christians go to heaven? What about someone who was brought up in a different faith or people from remote areas who never even heard of Jesus? How is it fair for God to condemn them to hell?”

This may be the single most common objection to biblical Christianity. How do you respond to that?

First, let me outline a tried-and-true, solid answer, and then I’ll extend that argument a bit.

The first thing to recognize is that God is absolutely righteous (i.e., fair) in his judgment (Acts 17:31). Next, Paul deals with the exclusivity question in Romans 1. He begins by explaining that no one who rejects God’s existence can accuse him of being unfair because God’s invisible attributes,

namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him (Romans 1:19-20).  

In other words, absolutely everyone should know that God exists.

Tony Evans takes this thought process to the next step when he explains that

God will judge people according to the light they have. Thus, those who sinned without the law (Romans 2:12) . . . will be judged according to the law that is written on their hearts” (The Tony Evans Bible Commentary, p. 1119).

Or putting it another way, people won’t be held accountable for something they don’t know about. Essentially, this is an argument from the lesser to the greater. Let me explain.

For the sake of discussion, let me arbitrarily suggest there may be eight or nine “levels” of belief involved in becoming a Christian. (There may be fewer or more.) The first step might be acknowledging there is some kind of god. The second might be that this god has a personality (as opposed to being a vague “force”). The third point might be that this god created us. And so on. The final step is acknowledging my personal sin that can only be dealt with by Jesus’ sacrificial death on my behalf and committing my life to him.

Here’s why this is an argument from the lesser to the greater. The thoughts are getting more and more specific. If someone denies the very existence of God (a pretty “mild” belief), there is no way they will surrender to Christ’s lordship (a very demanding one). This means that even if someone has never heard of Jesus, they can be held accountable for having “rejected him” (Step 8) if they deny that God even exists in the first place (Step 1).

This is a well-known line of reasoning and can be quite effective. My addition to this thought pattern is to push it to its logical conclusion. If someone rejects the Christian message as “unfair” to people who have never heard or were brought up in a different faith, they are rejecting Paul’s teaching in Acts 17:31 and denying God’s fairness. “I would never condemn someone for not responding to something they never even heard of.” But stop for a minute. They are implicitly claiming that their sense of fairness is greater than God’s. Do you really think it’s wise to go there?

This may be one of those “slow burn” thoughts that someone has to mull over for a while before they recognize how presumptuous it is. Although I have only shared this logic with a few people, I have yet to have someone be willing to admit that they consider themselves to be more fair than God is.

What do you think? Does this argument fly?