By GF Herrin
Biblical Christianity has a uniqueness that sets it apart from all other World Religions and world views.
The religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Humanism, Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses are all dependent on man working his way to some enlightened state that is dependent on what the individual has done. Humanists stress a belief in oneself as the great key to achieving success or self-actualization in life. Indeed, go to most any middle or high school function and inevitably you will hear a message stressing that belief. Humanists and most mainstream media beat a drum to glorify humankind and its achievements.
Christianity, though, stresses the fact that humans have failed and are inherently sinful and cannot lift themselves out of the sin pit that we have fallen into. The Bible gives us a portrait of a unique God who is knowable, findable and merciful and who promises the repentant sinner “You will seek me and find me when you search for Me with all your heart”.
This God became man to show us how to live and to die as a substitutionary atonement for our sins on the cross. But His journey did not end there. We can take comfort in our daily life that the resurrected Lord Jesus is a suffering servant who can understand our problems today because of the pain He underwent in His life. He is a high priest that we can pray to because He is a “man of sorrows acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3) who experienced the pain of life and had to overcome great trials.
If you are a born again believer in Christ, when you encounter trials (rest assured you will) be comforted in knowing that you can pray and cry out to Him who experienced every kind of human pain, trial, and humiliation possible.
This is not a distant aloof God who is not knowable but as Paul said to the people in Athens, “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us” (Acts 17:26-27).
What kind of God is this? He is a God who is Righteousness, Holy, Merciful and Good. Rest assured, you can cry out to Him today through Jesus to be set free and to be comforted and healed.