A young man named Alberto told me how he had pretty much written off the Old Testament after I initiated a Gospel conversation with him while grocery shopping. “Christianity doesn't make sense to me. I don’t believe in God, and even if I did I wouldn't like him”
“Now Jesus on the other hand, I think he’s pretty cool” he said. He didn’t like what he knew of the God of the Old Testament, but chose to like what he wanted about Jesus in the New Testament. He said “I believe Jesus was all about love and forgiveness”.
So I reminded Alberto that Jesus’ teachings were much stricter than the Law of Moses: “Not only is adultery wrong, but we shouldn’t even think lustful thoughts. Not only is it wrong to murder, but Jesus said we shouldn’t even hurt people with our words, and Jesus warned that the punishment is the fire of hell.” (Matt 5)
As we talked I found out why Alberto rejects belief in God. “Why should I believe in a God who would throw people in hell for eternity just for not believing in Jesus? he asked. He found it totally unreasonable to believe in a God who would condemn a “good person” like himself for unbelief -and I agreed- because it’s not for unbelief that we are condemned in the first place.
“If you jumped out of an airplane” I said, “you wouldn't die because you had no parachute. You would die because you defied the law of gravity. Don’t blame the parachute! Well the Bible talks of another law, called the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:2) God warned that the result of sin is death. But the way to life is to trust in Jesus, who took our punishment for us when he died on the cross. God gave us a conscience – we know right from wrong – but we choose to rebel against God’s law anyway. For this we were condemned in the first place, not for unbelief.”
These were just a few key points of our much longer conversation, which took away Alberto’s initial excuse that “Christianity doesn’t make sense’,
I offered to give him further info, but he refused it, saying “No offense, but I’ll probably just throw it away anyway”
Maybe now that the Bible was starting to make a little too much sense, I believe it left Alberto with no reason not to believe other than that he just didn’t want to.
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