What is ENCOUNTER?
The primary purpose of ENCOUNTER is to provide a service for those who are seeking spiritual truth and to help to stimulate others to enter this search. Competing religions and secular beliefs and their arguments will be evaluated. Competing views and arguments may not be present in every article, but they will not be difficult to find in the topic list or table of contents. Usually we will also provide links or references to opposing views.
As the name indicates, we seek to provide the reader with an encounter with well thought out arguments, reflection, and dialogue. But ultimately, we also hope to aid you in coming to encounter the one we believe to be our Creator, the source of our greatest possible fulfillment.
Our orientation is biblical Christianity and we believe that anyone who honestly and earnestly seeks spiritual truth from God, on nothing more than the possibility that God is there and deserves our highest love and commitment, will discover that this position is true. But the truth or falsity of this claim must finally be determined by your own inquiry. The first step is simply and honestly to seek God. Simply say, "If you're there, I want to find you. I only seek the One who deserves my ultimate commitment and my deepest love. If you're there, I give you all that you ask of me, all that you have right to from my life. I desire to have the truth and I will accept and act on it as you show me."
From our own experience and the testimony of others (some documented herein), we think that if you honestly and humbly ask this of God, you will be given the truth. Whether it comes directly through some kind of encounter with God or more indirectly through information and evidence God allows to cross your path, we feel very sure that it will come.
We can't put a time limit on how soon one will discover the truth of God's existence or Christianity. Some have claimed that for them it has taken years (see Richard Morgan's experience) and some have claimed that God has revealed it almost immediately. If you’ve spent any amount of time seeking God and you have not yet sensed that you’ve discovered any spiritual truth, we would encourage you to continue seeking. It may even be that for the time being you will need to simply maintain a life of honest agnosticism living a life of respect and care for others while you seek God. Read the Gospel of John—read the whole New Testament if you have the time—and ask God to show you if any of the claims you’ve read are true or not. Do it with any other scripture or writings you like, do it with the Gita or the Qur'an if you want, but don't neglect the Christian scriptures and don’t stop seeking God.
If you've honestly made the prayer we’ve suggested above, much of the material in Encounter is intended to help answer questions and to provide some of the evidence you're looking for.
We want you to reach your own conclusions, so we intend to present the various reasons for and against the different positions as objectively and forcefully as possible. We use interviews and debates with influential and knowledgeable religious and non-religious leaders and thinkers. Also, we want to continue the discussion far beyond the initial article, debate, dialogue, or interview. So we do welcome your comments and critiques, your agreements and disagreements and discussion. Please comment by email (see Contact Me at bottom of page). You can also call or text: 303-363-REASON (303-363-7327). We won’t be able to answer a call directly but we will call back if you leave a message.
What is Christianity?
We have stated that our own search has brought us to believe biblical Christianity to be true. We need to be very clear as to what we believe this means.
We were created to know, love, and worship our creator; to become one with our God in the deepest relationship possible. God created us to know the greatest good, the good, the joy, of knowing God. Because God is love, God wanted there to be conscious beings, sentients without number who would know this joy. This is what infinite love and infinite goodness require. This is why God created us. Our creator is not a tyrant who wants to dominate or abuse us. God is the source of all existence. How could such a God want to harm that which God has created? The deepest part of our being can never be replaced by any created thing. The uncreated one, the primal source, that which is pure existence and consciousness unconditioned and unmodified by any other thing, this is the one we cannot be separated from without losing ourselves.
Above all else this means that we were created to know our Creator and that the deep relationship with God we were meant to have can be restored. All that separates us can be removed because of the death of the Messiah, Jesus. This can be ours if we seek and entrust ourselves to God, committing ourselves to and trusting in Jesus and his death to accomplish this, and forsaking all that separates us from God. Our sins, past and present, separate us from God. Our thoughts, words, actions—even our desires and inclinations—which harm others and ourselves or which deny or usurp that which rightfully belongs to God, ourselves, or others would be called sin.
But how is it that this relationship with God can be restored? The God we seek must be absolutely perfect. Anything less would make God unworthy of our ultimate commitment and love. But our sin alienates us from such a perfect God, removing the close relationship we need. Sin must be removed, yet we cannot erase what we have done nor completely cease to do evil. We must find One who is able to remove the sin that we cannot remove. God's Son—a sinless man and yet one who is more than a mere man—was able to remove our sin by becoming our substitute, bearing in our place our sin and death. So God provided the means by which God can see us as sinless.
We come to recognize the extreme cost, the extreme pain God endured. All that Jesus endured, the One he called his Father also endured. God did this to reconcile us and to keep us from the judgment we deserve for any harm we have done to others. Once we are aware of what God has done, we are drawn to seek and to love God, to follow God's will, and to keep from anything that would alienate us from God. God's will is that we cease from evil and that we become deeply involved in the needs of others. Because of God's sacrifice we come to recognize the unimaginable worth of each person, including and especially those we would consider to be of least significance.
We will never be without sin in this life, yet for the follower of Jesus this effort becomes a continuing process. We are to continually seek God's deliverance from anything that would draw us to evil, to harm anyone, to deny anyone's essential human rights.
A popular meme on the internet (the image in the meme below is a slight alteration of the original image) portrays Jesus knocking at the door of someone’s heart asking to be let in. The dialogue goes like this:
Jesus: Let me in.
Non-Christian: Why?
Jesus: So I can save you.
Non-Christian: From what?
Jesus: From what I’m going to do to you if you don’t let me in!
The meme, though humorous, distorts the teaching we find in the New Testament and only offers misleading half-truths. A more accurate depiction of the Christian claims is portrayed in the following meme:
If the second image is not visible on your display the text reads:
Jesus: Let me in.
Non-Christian: Why?
Jesus: So I can save you.
Non-Christian: From what?
Jesus: From being without Me. There is no life without Me.
“God is our Father, a good Father who loves us. God is Love. That is why God created you. God made you so there would be more who would know the greatest possible joy, the joy of knowing God. I and the Father are one. To be without me, your creator, is emptiness and despair. I couldn’t have made you any other way. I became a man to die in your place to bear the punishment your sins and rejection of me deserve—if only you will accept my offer. There is no other way you could be reunited with me than by my sacrifice. I loved you so much, I had to do this. Will you let me in?”
The first image was created by Justin Jensen and entitled “Last Day.” Description: Jesus in a mountainous wilderness. A gray figure holding Jesus’ hand comes out of the earth as if being delivered from death or the grave or bondage of some type.
