Paul,

Thanks for wrapping your thoughts on judgment so tightly around Christ, the one who has been made our righteousness. Most theological explanations of what is happening in our world simply leave Christ out of the equation, and yet somehow sound so Biblical or Christian to so many. Ironic, isn't it?

We have many pockets of logic neatly tucked away, as in mental filing systems, that lay mostly dormant until the harsh realities of life stir them to action. My religious deprogramming has happened mostly during the times those mental files have opened and I have been forced to ask what they had to do with the reality of Christ and Him crucified. Though the arguments in my head may have been roaring, the obvious silence regarding the truth of Christ has caused many of the bogus concepts in my own thoughts to fall by the wayside.

I think often of the clash between Christ and the religious mind as recorded in the Bible. If you examine these clashes it should become obvious that religious mind approached Jesus as if He denied or avoided reality as they saw it. The fact is that reality is hidden behind the smokescreen of fleshly appearance. None of it is hidden from God. In reading many of Jesus' replies I often wondered why He didn't seem to answer their questions, until I finally realized that their real questions were usually not the ones as stated. Jesus ALWAYS answered the REAL questions.

I know we are all faced with many questions that are demanding answers - because my confusion also poses such questions. Let us not be afraid of the questions we ask, but instead to be glad that many of our fears are surfacing in the form of some of these questions. Hold them up to the reality of Christ and Him crucified, and then let those questions that seek a Christ-less Christian answer fall away so as not to return as a hidden file in our logic waiting to resurface at the next tragedy. For each day has sufficient trouble of its own. Christ in you is the only true answer to any of those questions.

Love,
Jim