Christians are pretty strange people. They believe that the Bible isn’t just a book of nice children’s stories. They believe that this guy named Jesus who lived 2000 years ago was actually God. And for some reason they get up really early every Sunday morning to sing songs together and get yelled at.
Why?
Why would intelligent, rational people - Cornellians you live and work with - believe something so seemingly absurd? Is it just blind faith? Is it just a product of childhood indoctrination? Is Christianity just a coping mechanism?
Or is there something more?
What could motivate an overworked, under-rested college student to give up their Sunday mornings and Friday nights to go learn more about Jesus? What could motivate your friend to give up his or her summer to go help poor people in China or Africa? Or to spend Spring Break helping poor people in Ithaca, NY? What causes someone to reject the “American Dream” and devote their lives to helping and serving the poor throughout the world?
It actually all comes back to that Jesus guy.
Everybody worships something. It’s wired into us. We worship cars. We worship video games. We worship money. We worship status and fame and success. We worship stability and security and safety. We worship them in two ways: 1.) We praise them. We tell others how great they are. 2.) We get happiness from them. They give us satisfaction, and so we pursue them.
Christians believe that Jesus is the one that deserves to be worshiped above all other things. He is the one that really satisfies. He’s the one that gives us the most happiness. And, like other things that give us happiness, it makes perfect sense to tell other people about him AND to pursue him for ourselves.
Maybe one of your friends pointed you to this blog post. Maybe you saw a chalking or got a quartercard in the mail. It’s really easy to get turned off and think, “Oh, they’re just trying to convert me.” Well, you’re right, but you make it sound so negative, and it really is so, so positive.
Think of it this way: you really like juice. You drink a certain type of juice everyday. Your friend also really likes juice, but he drinks a different type. One day, he sees you drinking your juice and decides to try some. Immediately he realizes that his juice is so much better. Doesn’t it make sense for him to tell you about it and let you try some? Wouldn’t it be unloving of him not to tell you about it? Wouldn’t you want him to try to get you to start drinking his type of juice?
It’s the same way with Jesus. We’re all human. We’ve all lived life without Jesus. But now we’re living life with Jesus and telling you that it’s so much better this way. Really, from our perspective, it would be cruel and unloving NOT to tell you about him and show you how satisfying he is. And really, the superior satisfaction brought about by Jesus is so much greater than the satisfaction brought about by new juice. After all, who would give up their Sunday mornings and Friday nights for juice? Who would give up money and fame and security for juice? Clearly, there must be something about Jesus that causes people to do that - something that differentiates him from simply being “better juice”.
So we invite you to join us for Friday Night Live. It’s on October 12th at 7:30pm in Olin Hall 155. We’re going to do a couple of things. We’re going to hear a talk about who Jesus is - explaining a bit about this guy who we claim is the best thing about our lives. We’re also going to hear a hardcore atheist-turned-Christian share his story and explain just what about Jesus got him hooked. And yes, we have an awesome band who’ll be playing not-your-average-church-songs to give you a taste of what we usually do on Friday nights and articulate lyrically more about who Jesus is.
So yeah, it’s all about Jesus.
