Better Faith Than Sorry...

My wife and I attended a church service for the first time this year this morning. It was a good message, full of international perspective and optimism (the leader is a Brit who has obviously been involved in mission work and is up to date on the status of faith in a good number of countries world wide). Perhaps the most important thing I took from today was to be careful with my pessimism. I have on many occasions dismissed the idea of evangelizing while citing the 'narrow road' quote from Jesus. Narrow is the road to Heaven, and few will make it, and so forth. Logistically, that means that the minority of the people in the world will go to Heaven. Now, that may be true, but it occurred to me that I ought to look at it another way today. God is outside of time, and all time essentially exists at once for Him (or so we can only grasp). Given that, and given the relatively slow to moderate spread of the 'good news' over the past 20 centuries, it is certainly possible that the logistical minority of believers could still be yet to come, whereas the larger majority of unbelievers could largely have already passed. Say 51% will not be deemed worthy. Well, that could include 51% of people who have ever lived, not just who are currently living. We could exist in a day and age where literally all people could be converted and still have a smaller number overall than the total of the unbelieving past and current population.

Go figure that I would seize on something as bizarre and polarizing as this. Not that anyone reads this thing, but I find it ironic that of all the opinions I attempt to espouse here, there can be none more offending, at least to the bulk of the people I know, than my opinions when it comes to spiritual matters, particularly those of judgement. No one wants to hear about that. They assume because you believe it will happen that somehow you have something to do with it. As if believing it were a form of willing it to be. I don't wish it. Trust me. But I live in reality, and that includes some certainties of faith. Sorry.

In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. That's one way to say it. My way would go something like: In the end, we all get exactly what we ask for. I'll be darned if life has shown me a reason to believe differently.