In fact, in a much earlier book entitled, Creed or Chaos? by Dorothy Sayers, she commented that most people outside the Church had a tendency to list important Christian virtues as “respectability; childishness; mental timidity; dullness; sentimentality; censoriousness; and depression of the spirits.” In other words, many thought that Christians were dull, judgmental, and lacking passion. Christians care more about not rocking the boat and being safe than anything else! Of course Sayers maintains that this perspective is wrong. But the fault lies with Christians, not with the world, as she writes, “Somehow or other, and with the best intentions, we have shown the world the typical Christian in the likeness of a crashing and rather ill-natured bore – and this in the Name of One who assuredly never bored a soul in those 33 years during which He passed through this world like a flame.”

Some years ago, I was trying to answer a list of objections to Christianity that a 19-year-old was leveling against Christianity. He had many intellectual and philosophical objections and I offered as best as I could equally solid and poignant rebuttals. At the end of the one hour conversation, I asked if he would follow Christ if all his objections were answered satisfactorily. He then revealed the real objection he had which was, “I don’t think so. I still want to have fun!” Someone or some church must have given him the impression that if one becomes a Christian, one is not going to have a blast, have fun, go to parties, eat, drink, and be merry! Are Christians really boring, humorless, and puritanical? Is the Church such a dead serious place? Is Christianity such a strict, legalistic, woeful religion? Or is it just a mistaken perception we have presented to the world in our effort to remain untainted by sinful pleasures and reckless living?

A couple of years ago, I was at Old Trafford watching the derby match between Manchester United and Manchester City. The iconic stadium was filled to capacity and the crowd was boisterous, excited, and thoroughly alive. They needed no prompting to sing their team’s anthem, wave their hands in the air as one, shout their heads off when a goal was scored, or jeer the other team’s players when a foul was committed. For millions of fans, football is indeed a religion. And that afternoon, I witnessed the vibrant worship and adoration of its adherents!

Sadly when compared to the typical Sunday service, the sermons are even more potent than sleeping pills and the worship seems so tried and tired. Indeed, why should anyone want to come to something that bores them? And we wonder why people aren’t flocking to churches? We wonder why people do not jump up and down when we invite them to church?

It is most likely that people who think Christianity is boring are people who have had some previous brush or contact with Christians and churches. When I became a follower of Christ in the 1960s, I was taught by many Christian leaders that going to the movies, listening to rock music, and drinking beer was considered worldly, carnal, unspiritual, and therefore totally taboo. My world of sterile and safe spirituality was shattered when the age of TV arrived. So what was wrong with going to the movies when we could be watching them on the tube? In our unreasonable and often uncalled for abstinence of so called pleasurable activities deemed unfit for the heavenly minded, we became of no earthly use as far as our mislabeled “pagan” friends were concerned.

A rabbi once said that when we arrive in heaven, God is not going to ask if we have done all the spiritual stuff. The question the Creator God will be asking is, “Did you have a good time?” Indeed, all of His creation is for our enjoyment and “fun.” So if we are not having a good time on earth, we are merely insulting the Creator.

Unfortunately one’s perception is one’s reality. So people have been inoculated against the real Christian message by being exposed to a dull, dusty, and dead version. But the real Christian message is anything but dull, dusty, and dead. Christians are to live a holy life; not a boring, legalistic, joyless one.

However, it is certainly not our job to counter attack those who stereotype us as boring and to trot out lists of immoral bad behavior (albeit fun, exciting, and thrilling) found among those who do not follow Jesus. So what can be done to dispel the misconception that Christians are boring and churches are uptight places to be in and therefore Christianity is dull, irrelevant, and not cool?

Firstly, go for authenticity not awesomeness. As one character in a cartoon strip said, “Today, I have removed the halo. It is no longer strangling me!” Be real not just super spiritual. We may be trying too hard to be good according to our own standards. No wonder Christianity is seen as having too many rules and regulations. Our “Thou Shalt Not’s” outweigh the “Thou Shalt’s.” It would not have been so bad if we had enjoyed ourselves more, laughed louder, put on those dancing shoes, banged our heads at a rock concert, watched the latest action flicks, or shopped till we dropped. And if you will notice, Jesus never said no to a party!

Secondly, go for reality not escapism. Much of today’s definition of boring is the missing out of adventure, excitement, pleasure, indulgence, and decadence. Bored to death conveys such a scary message that we seek thrills and spills to escape the routines of responsibilities and the humdrum of mediocre existence. Well, life with Jesus is not escapism. Life with Jesus is going to work, taking care of the family, washing the car, buying grocery. When we are in touch with reality, we will never be boring.

Thirdly, go for curious not cautious. There is a big wide world out there to be discovered. The late John Stott once said that Christians are living in a ghetto, sheltered, and out of touch with reality. We want to be immune to a messy and tragic world out there. Our mission is to so embody the qualities of a transformed life that we will face our doubts honestly and confront injustice and tragedy practically. Then we will be like the early disciples who were known as “those who have turned the world upside down” and there is nothing boring about that!

Some humans are quite boring. Many are just bored. But Jesus was neither for He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life!” Albert Einstein once said, “I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene…Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life…other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus.” Authentic followers of this Jesus can never be boring or bored.

Michael Tan is the Executive Vice-President of Eagles Communications. He likes to preach, write, play the guitar, and manage his staff!

Jiwa besar (Bahasa Indonesia: A life or heart that is large). Jiwa besar is a perspective of one’s self, others, and the world which brings out the best in us. It is a worldview that is not self seeking, petty or selfish. It connotes the joyful desire to be of mutual aid, see the bigger picture, work towards a common cause, and most importantly practice forgiveness especially with those closest to us. Jiwa besar is an approach to life that changes us as we choose to see ourselves and others as being better than we may seem to be.
Pontiac Land Group, “Thought of the Week October 2011.” ¹

And let your best be for your friend. If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also. For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live. For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness. And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
“On Friendship IXX” by Khalil Gibran

What inspires us to live a larger life? What compels us to act not out of emptiness but abundance? How do we give with an open hand and an unclenched fist? How do we practice this with those closest to us and extend it to our friends, neighbors, and the world in which we live? How can we be a true friend and brother or sister to one another?

My family has a saying: “to lose is to win.” This peculiar aphorism is best applied to close relations where graciousness sometimes strains to prevail in the clumsy choreography that typifies and satirizes family life. It is encapsulated by the term jiwa besar or literally a big hearted life. A jiwa besar life is characterized by gracious relationships and the seeking of another’s best interest above one’s own. It seems a quaint aspiration in our age of loneliness despite our compulsive sociability and connectedness. Amidst the fray, we desire to be accepted unconditionally, to receive without obligation, to love wholeheartedly, and enjoy the sweet fruit of a virtuous life: nothing to lose, nothing to prove, and nothing to hide. It is being full but not of ourselves. It is being as God is.

But for most of us, this seems a jihad of colossal proportions – a personal struggle to submit our unbending nature to the strong will of God. It seems like a struggle against seductive or comfortable idols that distract, deceive, and destroy.

The gift of inadequacy

The chasm between our aspiration and our reality has never seemed so stark and so wide. We are caught in the dilemma of Paul’s tormented confession:

“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing…So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” (Rom 7:14-24)

The internal struggle is palpable. The gap between knowing and doing and our current and desired state, seems irreconcilable. Yet we find redemption in Paul’s final denouement: “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin” (Rom 7:25). Who else would model such fidelity to be a ransom not for good people, but for the fearful, small hearted, selfish ones, like me. This is grace; on my knees, I receive the gift of inadequacy and am filled.

Solidarity not charity

While it is true that one’s actions speak louder than words, actions are ultimately judged by the fecundity of their fruit. Busy sowers do not always reap a great harvest. When I reflect on my life of unending engagements, of passionate advocacy, organizing, and mobilizing, I have come to know that the most valuable lesson is that solidarity, not charity, is needed to uplift the marginalized in society. My role models are modern apostles, who with few words, preach the Gospel that Christ loved and poured out Himself for the weak, the rejected, the mired, or trapped in sin, hopelessness, or confusion. They stand for justice and hold up mirrors to the institutions which have grown not to serve virtue but themselves. In their image, I desire not to be a doer of good; but to simply be the good work reflecting the ultimate hopefulness that lies in Christ’s finished work.²

To be as one, is to be taken into another as the other, yet reconciled and unified because we esteem each other as made in His image. Solidarity with another means we cannot help but both be changed. I have found that walking with someone and awakening the desire to feel the worn grooves of their soles is of greater ultimate value than a stream of temporal relief through acts of kindness. Solidarity is a gift that goes beyond what is convenient or soul satisfying. To choose solidarity is to choose an awkward discomfort and sometimes painful adventure over the safety of traveling well known terrain. It is not to debase the acts of charity and kindness that water tired, lonely, and thirsty gardens, but it is to reveal that the love God invites us to, is a love (Greek: agape) which Paul Coehlo elegantly defines as “the love that consumes, shared in the Absolute.” ³ This love is not an occasional visit but a relationship weathering life’s rugged topography of circumstance and chance.

A revolutionary selflessness

At Beautiful People⁴, we form friendships with teenage girls in transition and walk with them towards reintegration and wholeness as we too are restored and made whole through the process. We have established a typology of volunteers to help illustrate our journey: Type 1 volunteers view the girls as a social risk, as victims, as people in need of moral guidance, financial and social assistance or even as a means for assuaging one’s guilt of plenty amidst the drought. Type 2 espouses a normative view acknowledging but seeking to address injustice and inequality, recognizing that every individual, family, and community has assets and deficits, functionality and dysfunction. Type 3 embraces the girls and their families as our family, accepting and forgiving one another for our failings and celebrating one another as teachers and guides who refine our characters and awaken a deep sense of common destiny. We admit we all default to Type 1 at times. It is our steadfast defense mechanism in a morally and experientially chaotic world. But we ask our volunteers, and the Big Sisters especially, to be firmly committed to being Type 2 and to aspire to be Type 3, even though we have yet to fully understand it. It has meant we grow only at the rate at which we have resonant spirits. It is constraint on scalability that will only be broken with a revolution of selflessness.

* * *

Ultimately the jiwa besar life is perhaps less a struggle against our self than a surrendering of our self to being changed by another. Will we let our best be for our friend? Will we allow ourselves to receive lavishly from an eternal fountain and not strain to fill our own cistern? Will we trust the open hand extended to us to give freely? Will we allow Jesus to release us from prisons of guilt and shame?

Ultimately, our choices determine our destiny. Perhaps if we are touched by the hand of grace, we will realize the choice to lose our life is the openness to being reborn; to be loved and to love. Then we will abandon the barren pursuit of personal gain and return to walking simply as Jesus walked: loved and liberated from fear to be a true friend.

Melissa’s career has spanned the public, private, and community sectors as anthropologist, education designer, social innovator, and management executive. She currently serves as Vice President, Human Capital at Pontiac Land Group and oversees the investment firm for Capella Singapore. Melissa has also led several civic and advocacy organizations including Halogen Foundation, a youth leadership organization, UN Women Singapore, and girls mentoring program Beautiful People; and has served on many government and industry boards in education, tourism, and social policy. She was recognized with the Singapore Youth Award 08 and ASEAN Youth Award 09, one of World Businesses’ 35 Under 35 and was a Women’s Leadership Fellow to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC. She was educated at Harvard College and was a Fulbright Scholar to Nepal. She is an avid reader, traveler, and aunt of a pair of twins.

References:
1. Pontiac Land Group. www.pontiacland.com.
2. HOME: Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics. HOME…We Are One Family! www.home.org.sg. Prison Fellowship International www.pfi.org.
3. Coelho, Paulo. The Pilgrimage: A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992.
4. Beautiful People. Beautiful People: Because Every Girl Has A Dream. www.beautifulpeople.org.sg.

The New International Version of the Bible has been referenced.

He is a fine preacher, with a wonderful sense of humor which he regularly injects into his sermons. So I took what he said as a bit of witty hyperbole. (Although, I had just observed a person at the end of my pew, a few minutes earlier, checking her iPhone screen!)

In the Big Picture sense, though, our pastor was making a legitimate point. Social media is having an impact on almost every area of our lives. It hardly seems likely that preaching will be immune from that impact.

Certainly my working world – graduate level theological education – is being transformed. A year ago I called together about eighty Fuller Seminary people for a “marketing summit conference.” The invitees represented diverse segments of our seminary community: administrators, staff, faculty, alums, and student leaders. We spent a day at a retreat center, exploring together how we can more effectively use the new media in pursuing our mission. I learned a lot, more than I expected to learn. And some of my most effective lessons came from the younger members of our community – so much so that I appointed one of them to a newly created senior administrative position, Director of Seminary Integrated Marketing. (And to show you how savvy she is, she chose to attend, as part of her continuing professional education, the Eagles Leadership Conference 2011 in Singapore!)

In some respects, there has been no choosing whether or not an educational institution will make more use of the Internet in communicating with students and potential students. Sending out “hard copy” university catalogues is a thing of the past. And running “print ads” in magazines is no longer a highly effective means of telling the world about your programs. But it is not just about using new vehicles for doing what we have done in the past. We have to do new things in using those vehicles.

Some people are resistant to these new things. They even come off at times as disdainful of the newer technologies. Recently I heard a cranky type – a member of my generation – remark that he considers the term “social media” to be an oxymoron. I had no sympathy for what he was saying. In my life, the use of social media means a lot of “social” interaction! A few years ago, my grandson, eleven years old at the time, showed me how to set myself up on Facebook – he assigned me the gmail address and password that I still use every day. And a month ago, his brother, at age ten, showed me how to text on my Droid phone. All of this reminded me of the time, back in the late 1980s, when their dad taught me how to transition from a typewriter to a desktop computer. In my daily working life I rely much on staff people at Fuller Seminary who patiently correct my clueless ways on my laptop, teaching me some new tricks in the process. Again – a lot of “social!”

While I may be inept when it comes to employing the technology, I am no techno-phobe. I thank God for the way the Internet builds and nurtures relationships. Several of my wife’s cousins set up a Facebook site for the extended family, and we are reconnecting with family members that we have not seen for a decade or more. And we are meeting some new ones, like the teenage son of a cousin who kept us all informed on an almost daily basis about his motorbike trek with a friend across the African continent.

Some key characteristics of the present day communication culture stand out in this regard. One is immediacy. I have to take this seriously as a blogger. At first glance, writing shorter pieces about various topics of general interest is not a new thing for me. Early on in my career, I regularly wrote 700 to 1000 word editorials for magazines that reached beyond academic circles. In the old days, though, when I wrote something of that nature, I would have to wait about a month – sometimes longer – to see it appear in print. These days I can write a short “think” piece that will be seen by a fairly large reading audience only hours after I write it. This has an impact, not only on the subject matter I write about, but also on my mode of expression. Blogging is more “conversational” than editorializing on the printed page.

And it is more interactive. Not only am I writing to people who will have immediate access to my blog postings, but their responses come back quickly also. This points to another factor that stands out: spontaneity. Online communication is typically informal. How we say things in our emails is much different than the way we would have expressed ourselves when in the past we would be composing letters to those same persons. Similarly, when you write to an editor in response to an article that has appeared in the print edition of a national magazine, you typically craft it carefully, and think about what you are saying before attaching the postage and getting it to the local post office. When you respond to something published online, you can be short and sweet – or as we bloggers know, often not so sweet!

I believe that those characteristics, immediacy and spontaneity, are mostly positive things. And they relate in turn to a quality that is often associated these days in our “postmodern consciousness,” namely, authenticity. Not all that is authentic is admirable, of course – some folks would hold up Lady Gaga as a model of authenticity! But there is much to be said for not having to break through the barriers of pretense and stilted formality in understanding another person.

A few years ago, we enlisted a diverse group of students at Fuller Seminary to blog frequently about life in our community. We linked to these blogs from our main website, so that prospective students could catch a glimpse of what it is like actually to study at Fuller. Someone on our Pasadena campus complained to me about one of these bloggers, who had written about a “crappy” lecture the she had been exposed to on a given day. “Do we really want prospective students to read that kind of thing about Fuller?”

My response was that it was exactly what I wanted prospective students to know. I have studied at several wonderful academic institutions, but at each of them I also had to sit through the occasional crappy lecture. I get cynical when a school gives the impression that it provides students with nothing but happy experiences.

Of course, classroom learning itself has been influenced in positive ways by web based programs such as Moodle and Blackboard. In the traditional version of “class discussion,” where students sitting together in a room interact with each other and the professor, the conversation is often dominated by a few extroverts. When, on the other hand, all students are required to express themselves in online conversations, we hear from people who have much to say, but who would not contribute in the give-and-take of oral exchange.

Not that “social media” should ever simply replace “in the flesh” communication. Fortunately, we do not have to choose one over the other. One of Fuller’s most successful recent degree programs is the Master of Arts in Global Leadership (MAGL). Students – in cohorts of 25 from around the world – come to Pasadena for two weeks of intensive study together. For the next couple of years they study together online, and then return to a Fuller campus for two more weeks together. Follow-up studies have demonstrated that the combination of physical togetherness and online communication is a marvelous facilitator of communal learning.

And that points to the larger sense in which online communication can serve the cause of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. When – as has been the case in Fuller’s MAGL program – a youth pastor in Hong Kong emails a counterpart in Copenhagen about a problem he ran into in his youth group, this is not only a case of professional “networking.” It is a profound practical experience of the global Body of Jesus Christ, a community drawn from the tribes and nations of the earth.

To be sure, social media provides sinful human beings with new opportunities to serve our evil desires. But they can also function as gifts of grace – instruments of fellowship and service in Kingdom obedience. That is worth celebrating on our Facebook pages!

Dr Richard J. Mouw is President and Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, USA. He has been an editor of the Reformed Journal and has served on many editorial boards, including currently, Books and Culture. He is the author of 17 books and also serves as a panelist in the online forum “On Faith” offered by Newsweek and the Washington Post. Mouw is President of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) and is active in ecumenical and interfaith activities, and presently represents the Presbyterian Church (USA) as co-chair of the official Reformed-Catholic Dialogue.
Check out his musings at www.netbloghost.com/mouw/.

Jesus said in His Word that we Christians are in the world, but not of the world. What did He mean when He said that? Since we are “not of the world,” many Christians I know have taken a negative attitude towards the world culture and its activities. And they have many Scriptures to back up their stand on being set apart for God. How then do we reconcile with living in an era where the usage of the Internet is seemingly dominating our work and our personal lives as Christians?

The Bible tells us that “for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” not to “judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him” (John 3:16-17). Instead of seeing the world as something to stay away from lest Christians be deemed as being too secular, why not think of creative ways to exploit what the world has for the advancement of the Kingdom of God?

Christians should be very familiar with the Great Commission. Jesus said in the Bible that Christians are to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). The keyword to focus here in this verse would be “go.” This is a classic verse many would use when it comes to evangelism or discipleship in the Christian context. As much as we may have understood the meaning of this verse, we wonder why there are still so many churches today that are simply not growing in terms of numbers and their spiritual condition.

Ever wish you had an easy way to express to others the joy you have found in Christ? Ever regret not sharing the simple Truth because you felt inadequate? Are you feeling guilty now because your answers to the above questions are positive?

The truth is although we all know that we should be passionately sharing the Good News to everyone around us, we do not. Some Christians have a passion to share Jesus, making it a natural part of their lifestyle, but many find it difficult to connect their faith to everyday situations.

They do not want to appear “too pushy” and risk alienating their friends or loved ones. They fear being labelled as “weird” by their colleagues. They know it is important as a Christian to share the Good News and by not doing so, they feel quite guilty.

Most Christians will be fascinated by stories of missionaries serving in developing countries and may even be inspired by these missionaries for their selflessness in making a huge difference in the lives of the people whom they are serving.

Perhaps you and I may think that there has to be a special call from God in order to be a missionary abroad and those who have been called are the special minority. For the rest of us who are holding regular jobs, with regular commitments in life, we think we will never be in the league of touching heaven and changing earth.

Millions of people (Christians included) today are connected worldwide via the Internet through social networking sites, blogging, emails, etc. When the word “evangelism” or the subject of sharing the Gospel is being brought up, most Christians may think of street evangelism or friendship/lifestyle evangelism. Still, many Christians may find it awkward to bring up the Gospel topic to their friends, loved ones, and not to mention, strangers.

CVC Network Ltd (CVC), a not-for-profit Christian media organization, identifies with this struggle many Christians are experiencing and has developed a new initiative – yesHEis.com, to empower and encourage all Christians to share Jesus to their friends and loved ones, and perhaps even to strangers, anytime and anywhere. As long as you have a computer or a smartphone, you are more than qualified to be an online missionary for Christ!

Designed to look somewhat similar to YouTube and GodTube, the yesHEis.com interface is easy for anyone to share Jesus through many social media forms like Facebook, Twitter, SINA Blog, QQ, emails, and Instant Messaging, with the information one can find.

Factors that put people off sharing online, including the ability to find relatable content, were recognized and addressed, and yesHEis.com has pre-categorized content from around the world to suit anyone regardless of their age through personalization. Content is proactively served up as it arrives, at regular intervals or on-demand. The search for a suitable video to share Jesus in two minutes can be as easy as a click away.

Links from other sites can be included and bookmarks can be added to personal favorites to grow the pool of categorized content. Ratings and moderation are also done by full-time “gatekeepers” to enable what is best and relevant for potential end users to be constantly offered, pointing audiences to where the content resides, and building traffic to the site of the Content Producer. Links can also be proactively shared with its subscribers, based on their stated needs and interests. Whether on-demand or by periodic updates, subscribers receive the kind of free content that engages them and those whom they best relate. This process multiplies the value of produced content by providing a platform for viral distribution to the intended target – a synergy of activity that is a win-win for all.

Jesus tells us in the Bible that “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few” (Mt 9:37). Through social media, anyone with Internet access can interact with millions of people online. Research has shown us that an average person will require four to five significant encounters before they eventually make the decision to be a disciple of Jesus. With social media, Christians can now be “full-time” missionaries, capable of reaching the world for Jesus even without having to be “called overseas.” You can remain in your current geographical position, continue with your studies or your regular job, and yet be a powerful instrument of God to share Christ all over the world.

Hui Fang is the Creative Team Leader and Office Manager for CVC Singapore. She has been actively involved in youth and China missions work since early 2000 and is a mother to a ten month old baby. She believes the Internet is a powerful tool Christians should tap on to reach the world for Jesus.

The New American Standard Bible has been referenced.

For more information, visit www.yesHEis.com or email info@yesHEis.com.

It seems preposterous that someone who has prayed to receive Christ as his or her Lord and Savior could end up out of heaven. John 3:16 says that God “gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

In the book of Acts, when the Apostle Paul and Silas were in jail after an earthquake shook the foundations of the prison complex, Paul told the Roman jailer that he only needed to “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved – you and your household” (Acts 16:31).

But Jesus said: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Mt 7: 21-23).

We should be concerned with what the people did after praying the Sinner’s Prayer. Sadly, many church registers are filled with people who claim to be Christians but fail to show the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Many of them may even be actively serving in church but they do not show the fruit of the Spirit and are not leading others to Christ or making disciples. After all, many church activities are not very different from ordinary corporate jobs, and being filled with the Holy Spirit and living under His leadership is scarcely a necessary prerequisite.

But surely one cannot be prophesying, casting out demons, and performing miracles if one is not a Spirit filled Christian. However, people who do not have the Holy Spirit at work in their lives can still cast out demons as the power to cast them out and to perform miracles lies in the name of Jesus, nothing else (see Acts 3:16, Jn 14:13).

Similarly, people in such a state can also prophesy, as did the Jewish High Priest when he spoke of the role Jesus’ crucifixion would have for the people of Israel. We are saved by the grace of God to do great works for Him. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph 2: 8). Once we are saved, we are expected to continue to walk in a way that is pleasing to God. We should not think that living under grace is a license to continue sinning with no consideration of the consequences as Hebrews 10:26-29 warns, “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?”

We are saved by grace because there is nothing else that can save us, not our works or talents or accomplishments. But if we do not continue to walk in a way pleasing to God, we can walk out of our salvation. Again, Philippians 2:12-13 instructs, “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

The church in Ephesus from all outward appearances was a very spiritual church for it was certainly a church that was very active in the work of God. They toiled for the Lord, endured much, were doctrinally sound, and took a strong stand against the deeds of the Nicolaitans (Rev 2:3, 6). But the Lord saw past all that activity, good though it was, and said the church had “forsaken your first love” (Rev 2:4).

The Ephesian Christians had to reestablish their closeness and walk with the Savior, or they would lose their witness. They needed to return to the “things you did at first” (Rev 2:5) – the basic disciplines of fellowship and being in the Lord, confession of sin, prayer, Bible study, reading, meditation, Scripture memorization, fellowship with believers, being occupied with Christ, and re-focusing all of their life on Him.

The Lord told the church at Ephesus that if they did not do these things, He would “remove your lampstand from its place” (Rev 2:5), i.e., remove their presence from within their community. Sadly the church of Ephesus does not stand today. In His message to the church in Laodicea, the Lord said they were “neither cold nor hot” and He would spit them out due to their lukewarm character (Rev 3:15-16). Lukewarmness refers to Christians who are indifferent or apathetic because they are self sufficient and self satisfied, who trust in themselves and their wealth or what they thought their wealth could buy them.

The Laodiceans said they were “rich,” proud, and trusting in that richness as though wealth had the power to give them security and happiness. They added that they were “wealthy,” and “do not need a thing” (Rev 3: 17). The Laodiceans were so well off they thought they needed no help from man nor God, thinking money could buy anything. They sought their security in their talents, abilities, human resources, and financial wealth. As a result they neglected the Lord and biblical values. They neglected real service or ministry to others. Today the church in Laodicea is also no more.

Christians here have to take their salvation seriously and recognize God’s grace for what it really is – His unmerited favor on all of us despite our sins, failures, and backsliding. Our own works or talents cannot get us entry into Paradise (Eph 2:8), and God poured out His grace on us to give us a chance to be reconciled to Him. There are four steps to our salvation – repentance, profession of faith in Jesus Christ, water baptism, and baptism with the Holy Spirit.

God’s grace is not “cheap grace.” Instead, it was the hardest thing God ever had to do – He had to sacrifice His only Son, Jesus Christ, on the Cross so that the blood debt for our sins could be paid and we would be free. When we truly realize what God went through to save His creation from the clutches of sin, we then have to commit to remain in God’s will and ways by witnessing, making disciples, and living strict moral lives (Jn 15: 5-6, Gal 6: 7-10).

The New International Version of the Bible has been referenced.

Arulnathan John works for Singapore Press Holdings, and worships at Acts Centre, a daughter congregation under St Andrew’s Cathedral. He is happily married to Rebecca and they love music, watching movies, and going to the theatre.

Scriptural answers are seldom accepted without large amounts of proofs and in regards to this specific question, the scriptural answers are not very popular: A burning Hell or a magnificent Heaven?

Answering such questions will require research. In all cases, if something is true, the deeper you dig the more evidence you will find to support your answer. Fortunately, we now live in a realm where information is readily available and we can research almost anything.

What happens after death has been a perpetual question throughout history. Each civilization has come up with some answer other than, “It just all ends.” Some of these cultural ideas fill our museums with Egyptian mummies, burial artifacts from medieval cemeteries, and boats that take you into the next life. These kinds of things make great museum pieces but are laughable for the scientific mindset. Current thinkers admire themselves and how far they have come by abandoning these “immature and archaic ideas.”

Scientifically what can we say? Science is based on a process. First, there is a theory. Then if it is reproducible and consistent, it becomes a law. Gravity started out as a theory, but because it passed the reproducible and consistent test, it became a law. Scripture does show us a consistent concept about the afterlife. If we can observe it and see that it is reproducible and consistent, then we can answer the scientific mind in a way they are more likely to accept.

At first that can sound impossible, but there is more evidence mounting daily for the truth about the afterlife. Let us look at the scriptural description first and then the evidence available to all of us because of the capacity of modern medicine and the results of people that have been prayed back to life.
Hebrews 9:27 says, “Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment…”
Matthew 25:46 says, “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Matthew 13:40-43 says, “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.”
2 Corinthians 5:1 says, “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.”

Scripture clearly states a significant difference between the two afterlife options. The one thing they have in common is that they are eternal. No switches are turned off, but our consciousness is fully engaged in an incredibly horrible or awesome experience, depending on the outcome of our judgment.

In 1978, Dr Maurice Rawlings published a book based on his experiences as a physician in the cardio field. He began to document the accounts of his patients after their death and resuscitation events in his office. Working with heart patients gave him a steady flow of people who at some point would die and then be brought back to life. He was a pioneer in resuscitating patients who died in medical situations. As one of the first in the field, he began to observe, in quantity, things that others would only rarely see in a lifetime of medical work.

His patient’s vivid accounts caused him to begin documenting them, which ultimately reshaped his view of the afterlife. “An expert in resuscitation techniques, Dr Rawlings has witnessed many cases of resuscitation, and they have caused him to make a spiritual about-face. A man who formerly considered religion ‘all hocus-pocus,’ he had now turned to Christianity in light of his impartial investigations.”

What were some of these investigative results? Read some of the accounts he recorded from his patients’ experiences as described by them:

“Suddenly I felt relief from my terrible chest pains. Now I felt exhilaration. I can’t fully express it. I was floating into an area that looked like heaven. It was wonderfully bright with buildings and streets of gold and I saw a figure with long hair in a brilliant white robe. A light was all about him. I didn’t talk to him. I am sure that is was Jesus.”

“I knew I was dying. They had just gotten me to the hospital and then I felt this pain in my head and I saw a great light and everything was whizzing around and around. Then I felt free and at peace and an uncanny sense of well being. I looked down on the medical people working over me and it didn’t bother me a bit. I wondered why.

Then I saw what was behind him. It was a bright angel. An angel of light. I felt encompassed by this force of love from this angel that was searching and probing my deepest thoughts. I was being searched and then seemed to be allowed to sense the presence of spirits of some other loved ones who had died previously. Then my whole body jumped upward from the electric jolt they gave me, and I knew I was back on earth again.”

“One night I was crying and nobody listened. I took some Valium and told them I didn’t want to live anymore. They still didn’t listen, so I took a whole bottle of them—fifty of them. And then it was too late. I knew I had really done it. I was going to die! It was a sin—but so was living!
As I got drowsy, I remember going down this black hole, round and round. Then I saw a glowing red-hot spot getting bigger and bigger until I was able to stand up. It was all red and hot and on fire. The earth was like slimy mud that sand over my feet, and it was hard to move. The heat was awful and made it hard to breath. I cried, ‘Oh, Lord give me another chance.’ I prayed and prayed. How I got back, I’ll never know.”

Each of these are consistent with the scriptural explanation of the after death reality. The Internet provides us with many more examples:
www.near-death.com
www.nderf.org (Near Death Experience Research Foundation)
www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/life_after_death.htm
www.afterlife-knowledge.com

Thousands of documented cases fit the scientific criteria of reproducible and consistent. It is not just a Judeo-Christian cultural experience. These documented cases are from around the globe and the number of them grows daily. There is a variety in the description of the experiences. This is understandable, when you realize that each person, based on their background, exposure, and religion, would describe the exact same experience in different ways.

If we, or the person we are talking to have not experienced a life after death event, we are always going on the words of others. Having said that, the consistency of these experiences, and the fact they are also described in Scripture forces even the ardent skeptics (who are still open to truth) to reexamine their views. Whether they will become followers of Christ, we cannot say for sure. However, we will have removed one of the obstacles that the scientific mind sometimes places on the path to Christ.

When we die, do we just shut down like a computer? No, the evidence supports the scriptural explanation of the life after death reality.

Mark Schaufler, who has a degree in Environmental Science, is also an author and the founder of Finish-the-Race.org, a youth ministry training program in the United States. He also started and is the CEO of MST Ministries, providing evangelistic preaching, training, and resources; leading numerous short term missions on six continents since 1984. Visit www.mstgo.com to find out more about Mark’s ministry.

The New International Version of the Bible has been referenced.