GOOD FRIDAY

PERHAPS THE MOST GALLING SWIPE AT CHRISTIANITY EVER UTTERED WAS UTTERED BY MAHATMA GHANDI, WHO SAID "I WILL BECOME A CHRISTIAN WHEN I MEET ONE." His implication, of course was that a Christian must be a perfect human being, according to what he percieved as Christian standards. His snide little remark has allowed who-knows-how many people to deny God the chance to forgive their sins. Some of them have no doubt died in their sin.

"Perfect human being" is the mother of all oxymorons. It is because of this that we have Good Friday.

Good Friday of course commemorates the day when God, who had taken the form of a man, died by the horrible method of crucifixion. He then was entombed and rose from the dead three days later. He, being the ONLY perfect human ever to walk the face of the Earth, in dying in such a manner; ABSOLUTELY INNOCENT of any wrong before Man or God; shed His Blood in a sacrifice for every sin; past, present, and future; of ANYONE who accepts the pardon by confessing with his mouth that Jesus is LORD GOD and that God has raised Him from the dead.

Christians do change their ways. Some gradually and some radically. But this change is not a requirement of Salvation but rather its inevitable final result. And everyone remains unto death in some measure imperfect.

Christians disagree on what this perfection is. I don't think drinking alcohol is a sin, but many of my bretheren and sisteren do. (I smoke and gamble, too; but I can't dance worth a hoot). Even so, there's always room for improvement, and I could use a little. Readers of this blog will be the first to point out that I use some pretty ripe language to get my point across, and I have a tendency to be cynical.

Perhaps Mahama Ghandi thought himself perfect, and assumed that a true Christian would agree with him on all points. But if Ghandi himself were perfect, then there would have been no need for God the Son (not "son of God" but "God the Son", and it isn't a fine distinction) to have lived sinlessly in a sea of temptation for 33 years and then die a horrible death by torture - being first brutally beaten and then whipped with a Roman knout with lead and sharp metal woven into the braids, having his beard pulled out by the roots and having a "crown" of 2-3 inch thorns pressed down on His head, then stripped naked and nailed through the wrists and ankles to a cross that was then raised and dropped into a post-hole, there to suffer for three hours; finally feeling the ultimate pain of Hell, abandonment by God.

It is not a perfect life that makes anyone a Christian. What makes a person a Christian is the bloody Cross and the empty Tomb.

Ghandi met many, many Christians. I hope in his last moments he realized it and joined them. If he didn't, his fate is horrible and will get even worse at the Judgment.