i'd still pick 'im.

Sometimes I question whether this whole Jesus thing is just a psychological need we've invented to allow ourselves to believe in hope in some pretty desolate stuff.

This whole "real world" thing hit pretty hard about 3 years ago and it hasn't stopped sprinkling itself intermittently throughout my life since. It was like the dam was broken and a major rush of water came, then it slowed down a bit, but still kept flowing more casually... or perhaps it just wasn't such a shock any more so I got used to the intensity.

Life flows hard. Stuff doesn't go the way we want. People cheat on people. A good Christian person struggles with severe depression. Cute girls stop eating. Moms and Dads forget that they are just that. Young people hafta become an old soul too fast. Alcohol brings faux relief to some very hurt folks. And people croak.

Welcome to "the real world". And when all this stuff hits, it so natural for us as humans to need some sort of compass. To believe that there is a way to get through the sense of drowning. And people have come up with many different ways to do this. And have been coming up with these survival methods for thousands of years. We are in desperate need of hope.

So there's two ways of looking at this Jesus thing:

1) Because evolution has happened, people die and people live. And because we all die, and it's kinda unknown what happens, we can invent Jesus so that we can feel better about death and believe that we really get to keep living without all the crappy stuff and with loads of good stuff... which represents Jesus. So we can get through the world today, because after we die, we get Jesus.

And this seems valid logically to a point... until present life questions hit. If the skeptics maintian this line of thinking, then they have got to pull themselves up by their boot straps and get on with life and just start eating, and just be happy, and just stop cheating and just stop drinking. But they don't just stop. Because they can't. Maybe they switch between things. They allow another thing to be their coping mechanism. But they don't stop. Just ask 'em.

So this second way of looking at Jesus has begun to make a little more sense to me after seeing and experiencing a little bit of the death that comes throughout life: the kind that doesn't literally stop the coronary artery, but that stops a person's heart, their hope. The kind of death that doesn't make someone go into a hole in the ground forever, but the kind of death in life that makes them want to.

2)The second way of Jesus touches "that stuff". It says Maybe There's a God, who saw some serious pain both in life and after (the free will thing allowed all that). And so he had a logical plan to offer some people a little hope... first through some Old Vows stuff where if they put their weight in a few things God said, people could outwardly get some confirmation of inward struggle, and then through the New Vows where he gave people an opportunity to be relieved from the inward struggle and let it move outward by experiencing some serious rest found in hanging with a God Guy who was living in rest, trust, and hope. Jesus offers us this whole "life to the full" thing. Not just after we cease living in our bodies. Not a euphoric existence when we're in the body. But a life, an open and hopeful experience of the good and messy, in a lifetime. And maybe this whole "saved" word or this whole "redemption" stuff isn't some churchy language... but maybe it can touch us when we're in a very dark time in life, where the future isn't desireable and we say... man I need a Savior. Because there's something inside of me that has tried desperately to do it on my own but I can't. I need something big. Or someone who has something big... to live in someone else's strength and energy and power... the whole Vine and the Branches thing. Cuz, apart from him, we can try for a while, but really we can do nothin'.

After questioning whether this is some psychological invention of ours to offer hope after death, I've decided that even if it is... I'd still pick 'im. I'd still believe whole heartedly in my Jesus. That someone was really creative in offering us a concrete life then an abstract spirit that keeps livin' and givin' hope when nothing current seems to offer it. And I believe that Someone was God. And even if I'm wrong... I'd rather live a genuine life, not drown out by stupid stuff like bein' drunk or gettin' it on w/ every other person or being bitter with someone (the dreaded "do nots"), but a life lovin' on people and learning to accept and let people off the hook. Letting folks be imperfect by grace but havin' a little bit of hope that we don't gotta stay that way, hurting ourselves and others. I'd rather be able to be honest about what's really going on because there's Someone saving me from the mundane, whose using it for a bigger purpose, the deeply dark both now and eternally, rather than having to minimize it so I can move on or ignore it because it is what it is... hopeless. Because Jesus offers me the hope that this reality isn't the only one happening. And sometimes, I need that.

Bottom Line: Even if you skeptics are right... I'd still pick 'im. Not religiousity, not distant salvation done by a prescribed prayer, but living in Full belief of God and Jesus that offers some purpose, some love, some anticipation, and some Truth that hits life both now and later if i let it. It just seems like a better life to me.