I thought I was the only one who knew the darkness of my heart . . . the lies and lusts and craving for the approval of others that made my inner world a torment even as a child.
My parents were dedicated believers who took my siblings and me to church several times a week and lovingly taught us the Bible at home. We had a generally happy home life, one I am thankful for to this day.
Yet I lived under the weight of the wrong I had done . . . not because my church or parents were condemning in their attitude towards me—if anything, they considered me a “good girl” who did all the right things—but because the God who made me and knew my heart inside and out was lovingly showing me the utter misery of going my own way.
At one point, plagued by bad dreams and the inevitable internal upheaval that pre-adolescence brings, I remember wishing that I could run away . . . but where would I go? The thought of living on my own scared me, and anyway, wherever I went I’d have to take myself with me. Then one day I realized that the “good news” I had heard about all my life was not just a collection of beliefs about where we came from and how to determine where we are going after death; it was the truth about Jesus Christ, who had died to pay for my sins.
Who is this Jesus Christ, anyway—the one humanity has been fighting for or against or about for the last two thousand years?
How could a humble teacher from a tiny Middle Eastern country who never owned his own pillow, much less sat on a throne, have anything to do with me and my problems? Yes, He claims to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The Bible says He created the universe with His word. He said that He and His Father are one. And in proof of His divinity, He fulfilled hundreds of detailed prophecies recorded by men of God over hundreds of years prior to His coming to earth. But as a middle-schooler, I wasn’t that concerned about prophecies and proofs. It was what He did for me that made me love Him.
You see, I knew without a doubt that what I had been taught all my life (though perhaps never in so many words) was true: God made me, and He had a right to tell me what to do, just as if I painted a painting, I could decide what to do with it, or if I designed and built the first car, I could decide where to drive it.
There are two differences between God’s relationship with people and an artist’s or inventor’s relationship with his work, though. First, God gave us laws not merely to satisfy some divine whim, but both for His own glory and because He knows what is truly best for us—just as He knows everything, perfectly and without having to research or wait and see what happens. Second, unlike the painting or the car, humans have free wills and can decide whether they are going to cooperate with the Creator or no. If we scribble on ourselves with permanent marker or drive ourselves into a ditch, His heart might break, but He will not completely prevent it. In His mercy He often puts speed bumps on the slope to self-destruction, sometimes even places a wall for us to crash into that makes us come face to face with our need for Him—but if we repeatedly get up from those crashes and walk around the wall to keep going our own way, He will eventually let us go (see Romans 1:18ff).
So I had a crash or two, and I came face to face with my own heart in a way many people don’t like to consider. Someone explained it to me this way: it is as if each of us has a “book of sin” listing all the wrong things we’ve ever done or thought or said—both the things we’d never want anyone to know, and the respectable sins that others laugh off, but that God promises to hold us accountable for.
“Honor thy father and thy mother” said God, but I often dishonored mine with rolled eyes, angry words, and a bitter heart.
“Thou shalt not kill,” said God. Okay there! But Jesus added, “whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.” Ouch—guilty after all.
“Thou shalt not covet” said God, but I had enviously desired my friend’s home, a classmate’s boyfriend, and an acquaintance’s seemingly perfect family.
And in this figurative book of sin, my sins were all written down. “Mild” sins? Perhaps in our eyes, but God said “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10). Romans 3:12 says “They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” My seeming innocence wasn’t due to a pure heart, anyway—but merely to the fact that I had been graciously spared many opportunities for greater and worse sin.
And what would my Creator God do with me when He saw all my sin? “For the wages of sin is death;” He said, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). “He that believeth not is condemned already” (John 3:18), which means that if nothing changed, I was already on my way to hell. It was as if my sin book was held up in front of me, so large that it blocked the path between God and me. He is “of purer eyes than to behold evil,” and cannot even “look on iniquity” (Hab. 1:13), so any possibility of a relationship with Him was gone.
But God loved me so much that He had His beloved, only Son take my “book of sin” on Himself on the cross. He claimed all the wrong I had done as His own, so that I could now be free to have a relationship with the Father. Even though all the good I had ever done was like “filthy rags” in His sight (Isa. 64:6), Jesus took those rags on Himself, and stood ready to hand me His pure, clean robe of righteousness to wear in its place.
But that gift of forgiveness—though free—was not mine automatically. Let’s say a driver with a semi truck full of bread, meat, fruit, and vegetables had parked just outside my neighborhood, opened the back door, and announced, “It’s all free; come and get it!” If I was really hungry or needy, I’d be glad to take him up on his offer. But if I considered myself an upper middle class success story, I’d likely be too skeptical or too proud to accept anything that smacked of charity. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,” said Jesus, “than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25).
The only requirement for this salvation gift was being willing to take it—which meant turning from any attempts to save myself by good works and instead trusting the Lord Jesus Christ as my only Savior. He was willing to wash my sins all away and give me a new life if I would trust Him. So I accepted the truths revealed in the Bible—that Jesus Christ lived a perfect life, suffered a cruel death, was buried, and rose again the third day. I believed that His death was for me—in payment for the sins I now despised. And I trusted that He would keep His promise to save me…and He did!
“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:1-2).
Peace. Grace. Hope.
Where do they come from? From the God who created us for His glory. Who says that our best attempts at being good are like covering our nakedness with filthy rags. Who gave His precious Son to die for us when we were still His enemies. And who calls—yes, commands us to come to Him and drink freely of the water of life, to have our sins washed away in His precious blood, to put on His robes of righteousness and be no longer His enemy, but His beloved child.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what I (or seven billion other people) say—after all, there will always be someone else with a different opinion. What we must seek is truth, the absolute truth by which the universe runs. Truth cannot be created, because humans can never create anything without using some kind of raw materials—and without an absolute standard from outside ourselves, we will always end up using whatever mixture of truth and error most appeals to our personality, or seems most convenient at the time. But custom-designing “our own truth” never satisfies because it doesn’t line up with the way life actually works, any more than an engineer who casually makes up his own formulas for the forces of gravity or friction will have any success designing a jet engine that gets off the ground. Just as engineers must acknowledge and work by the laws of science if they want to design anything that works, we must acknowledge and live by the laws of our Creator if we want to have a life that works as it was intended.
Where do we find those laws, that truth which we can never change but can only choose to accept or reject? In the word of God—the book that has been described as a love letter from our Creator, our instruction manual for life, our milk and meat and honey, our sword, and our light.
I challenge you to read it for yourself and find out what the One who made you has to say about your heart, your purpose, and your future. The answers to life’s greatest questions are all there, if you’re courageous enough to search for them. If you’ve never read the Bible before, try starting in the books of John and Romans…and feel free to let me know what you find.
If you have deeper questions about the veracity of Scripture in the light of science, consider reading the helpful articles at AIG. If you’d like to find out how ancient Chinese provides an interesting clue to the historical accuracy of the Bible, take a look at “More Than Chicken Scratch.” And if you still have questions, I’ll try to answer any sincere, signed email—but I urge you to first cry out to the Author of the Bible and ask Him to keep His promise and answer your quest for truth:
“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7).
“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13).
