I do not intend to delve onto personal topics on this website often, but I truly believe that there is a personal God who wants a relationship with you, and there is an eternity of suffering for those who reject it. Jesus Bar-Joseph of Nazareth taught that all people should be respected and are free to live as they want, but true freedom from suffering would come from submission to God’s will and acceptance of His free gift of salvation from sin and death. Most people I’ve met in life believe in God as deists or at worst agnostics. I would like to try to briefly highlight why it’s logical to believe in a personal God that has shown Himself to mankind.

Why consider Christ?

1. The Existence of Love and Morality
   • Self-sacrificial love, where individuals willingly put others’ needs above their own without apparent evolutionary advantage, suggests a transcendent source. We talk about what things “should” and “aught” to be, which appeals outside ourselves. This capacity for selflessness aligns with the concept of a loving and compassionate God who instilled such qualities in humanity.
2. Order from Order
   • In math, there are things called Axioms, things that are unexplained but taken to be true in order for a logical argument, such as 1 = 1. One will always be itself, and we simply have no reason to think otherwise. However, some things seem convenient and orderly to be coincidences, such as neighboring planets taking asteroids that would have decimated our population, and that the shape of the universe is flatter than expected from a single point of expansion. The intricate order and consistency observed in the universe, from the precision of the alignment of planets and stars to the complexity of living organisms, implies an intelligent designer. The idea that order begets order, with intricate patterns and laws governing the cosmos, points towards a purposeful Creator who established the fundamental laws of the universe.
3. Modal Causality
   • The philosophical concept of modal causality posits that everything in existence has a cause. If the universe were eternally pre-existent, we would never reach the present. That is the same as being on the center of a train with no cab or caboose. The existence of God serves as the uncaused, necessary being that initiated the chain of causation, providing the foundation for the existence of all contingent things.
4. Life of Jesus
   • Jesus Bar-Joseph of Nazereth, at the very least, was the Man who split time into two parts and why we refer to years BC and AD/BCE and CE. Aspects of His life are documented in historical records of the Roman Empire and the New Testament. He lived a uniquely sinless life and taught that humanity’s greatest commandment was to love one another as they did themselves and God. Many religions require rituals or follow the concept of “do more good than bad”, but Jesus taught that no person could work their way into Heaven, they could only accept God’s free gift of salvation. Jesus’ teachings, miracles, sacrificial death and resurrection are the lynchpin of western morality and culture, even as our values shift. After He died, the Christians, Romans, or Sadducees could not locate his corpse, which would have easily snuffed out what would become Christianity. Over 26 people who knew Jesus firsthand were executed for proclaiming He is Lord.
5. Manuscripts of the Bible
   • The Bible, particularly the New Testament, is supported by an extensive collection of manuscripts that have withstood the test of time. It is composed of 3 major styles; Historical narratives to show the human condition, allegories and poems used to convey teachings, and prophecies showing the desires of God. Over 5,800 manuscripts allow for comparison and dating, highlighting the consistency of the biblical narrative. Being man-written, there are translation errors and misspellings, but there are no direct contradictions when read in context. Despite being written by multiple authors over millennia, the coherence of the biblical story, coupled with historical context, provides compelling evidence for the existence of a personal God that wants us to choose a relationship with Him. It’s also interesting to note that God’s chosen people, the Jewish diaspora, survived over 1,900 years with most of their cultural identity until Israel was recreated.

The Implications

If you truly believe that there is a personal God wanting a relationship with you, make an effort to seek Him out. God does not pine away hoping that we will one day focus on him. At the end of time, we will be judged on our works, and if we do not have a personal relationship with the God who gave us a cosmic “get-out-of-jail-free” card, our finite works are not enough for an infinite reward, and we’re left to devolve into selfishness and suffering. Christianity teaches that God exists as three persons with a single will and fulfil different roles in an example of love and glorification we are to emulate.

Jesus’ perfect obedience let us turn from unattainable laws and mimic His life to the best of our imperfect ability. No matter how moral and lawful, we hate, hold contempt, and help ourselves when things become “us-versus-them”. Left to our own devices, humanity becomes spiteful, and we cause each other to suffer. By following Jesus, we gradually shed our sin nature and become free. No unclean food, no wrong way to observe, no rules to keep. We are not asked explicitly to “be a good person” or to be unselfish, but in sacrificing to love others we become more selfless and better people.

There are some interesting things in the bible that aren’t often touched on. For example, the Holy Spirit is regarded as a third person of the trinity rather than “the force” or some kind of power to tap into. His role is our helper on earth, who protects us from curses, convicts us of guilt, and prays to God the Father on our behalf. Jesus lived as a man but submitted to God the Father’s will, and the Holy Spirit submits to Jesus’. Disciples of Jesus are called to emulate this in the covenant of marriage, where the wife submits to the husband, the husband to his wife, and ultimately to God.

Purpose

We as followers of Jesus are tasked to be beacons of light in a dark world. We are to love and serve our communities. Everything we should do; we should do as if it were for God, from any rung of the ladder, at work, home, school, or anywhere else, and the Prescence of the Holy Spirit keeps us mindful of this. Everything good we do can be a reflection of how God treats us. When we forgive, it reminds us we have been forgiven, from the person who cut you off on the interstate to the criminal who repented and turned his life around. Pets bring to mind our dependency on God to provide. Clocking in to the job reflects our desire to do honest work. On the weekend, we rest just as God did in the story of Creation. While it is hard to grasp the supernatural, and harder to grasp God as a person that is individually invested in us, alternatives feel less logical. Who knows, maybe everything is a series of random coincidences over billions of years. I think Simulation Theory is funny, as it’s just creationism in secular terms.

Give it an honest CPU cycle. All are called by God, and those who answer are expected to share. Only one person can save souls, and we just point them in the right direction. It is humbling to think of where we or anyone we interact with day-to-day might be in 80 years. I want no one to hear “I never knew you” from the Great White Trone of Judgement.

Do not become a Christian. Christians are ignorant, rude, hateful, and arrogant. Christians go to church once a week, or maybe on Easter and Christmas and then go back to their real life. They harass communities and constantly bring negativity to the front of any conversation.

Be a follower of Jesus, hold the Church in your heart, and be mindful of His influence in everything we do. We should focus on what is pure and immediately be clocked through our actions as changed beings.

Nerdy Tie-in

I have a childish obsession with scripting and programming. I dream about perfecting my regex triggers, optimizing functions, and watching the terminal output as it iterates through. Obviously, I am sure there are people out there that could code circles around me. But it is fun and my reason to wake up. I enjoy automation, and God set up cycles to manage water, rock formations, nitrogen content, etc. I like to think that writing code is a reflection of how God created us in a logical manner.

Our DNA is the one of the most obvious forms of code. We assign letters to protein sequences we find, and see the patterns form tissues for different purposes. Eyes and Skin tend to be regenerative, and scar tissue is strong. Some people have conditions that make the wrong tissues occur, as if functions were called at the wrong time in a script.

I find it interesting that Jesus is considered the Word, and through words, everything came to be. Is God not the Ultimate Coder?

function CreateWorld {
    $universe = @{
        "light" = $true
        "firmament" = $true
        "heavens" = $true
        "gravity" = $true
    }
 
    $earth = @{
        "waters" = "divided"
        "vegetation" = $true
    }
  

    $creatures = @()
    for ($i = 1; $i -le 2; $i++) {
        $creature = @{
            "name" = "creature$i"
            "type" = "fish"
            "status" = $true
        }
        $creatures += $creature
    }
    
    for ($i = 1; $i -le 2; $i++) {
        $creature = @{
            "name" = "creature$i"
            "type" = "animal"
            "status" = $true
        }
        $creatures += $creature
    }
    
    $humans = @()
    for ($i = 1; $i -le 2; $i++) {
        $human = @{
            "name" = "human$i"
            "type" = "human"
            "status" = $true
        }
        $humans += $human
    }
    $earth["creatures"] += $creatures
    $universe += $earth

    Write-Output("It is good.")    

}

CreateWorld
Start-Sleep -Seconds 86400