Dogs & Doghouses

If I’m wrong about all this Bible stuff, let’s say there really is no heaven or hell, and that once a person dies it’s just a big long, dreamless sleep I still haven’t lost out on anything because I’ve lived a good life.


It’s easy for us to say something along those lines (I know I’ve said it myself a time or two). That’s a common attitude and a quick way for Christians to dismiss people who question the idea of having faith in Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul, when working through a similar scenario, came to an entirely different set of conclusions than we do. Consider I Corinthians 15:13-19.

Paul concludes that if Christ never rose from the dead then:

• Preaching and faith are vain (meaningless)
  
• We are false witnesses (liars)
  
• We are still in our sins
  
• Those who have died before us are gone forever
  
• Believers would be the most miserable people on the planet
  

The big question is how come Paul’s thinking is so different than ours? We’re tempted to wonder what was wrong with Paul, or how come he doesn’t agree with us. But since his conclusions made it in the Bible and ours didn’t, let’s be careful.

• Minus the resurrection, how come a life of love, devotion, satisfaction, and helping others isn’t a good life?
  
• Concerning this big ‘what if’ question do you see the significant gap between our understanding and Paul’s?
  
• How are our lives of faith different than Paul’s life of faith?
  

Part of the reason we have the attitude we do is because we have it good, anyway. Our fallback position is to just shut up and go the couch (and the potato chips). Paul’s fallback position included jail, an unceasing desire to preach the gospel, and the fact that his conversion on the road to Damascus so completely changed his life that there really was no going back.

• Again, do you see the significant gap between our lives and Paul’s?
  
• Do we have a tendency to just ‘pick up’ salvation along the way and keep going along?
  
• How much of a radical, no going back, change, has salvation made in our lives?
  
• Paul’s life included many voluntary sacrifices and sufferings (2 Corinthians 11:24-29). Do ours?
  
• What would it take for us to realize something like this, “If Jesus isn’t real then I’ve lived a life of ridiculous sacrifices.”?
  

Most of the time when we play “What if” we end up losing. Paul was quick to note:

I Corinthians 15:20 - But now is Christ risen from the dead, [and] become the firstfruits of them that slept.

So all is not lost and Paul is persuaded that everything he has done has been worth it.

• Romans 12:12
  
• II Corinthians 1:12, 6:10
  
• I Thessalonians 2:19
  

But the initial idea still needs to challenge our understanding of the way things are in our own lives. Granted, we’re well off, immensly so. But doesn’t that only mean Christ should have an even greater impact in our lives than He does? What parts of our ‘good life’ have we put on the line or foregone in an unretrievable way?

Luke 12:48… For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.