"Be, that I Am."

“Come on, Phil,” Charles shot back, “just listen to yourself. How could that possibly work in society? Without a set of written laws, laws set down by God, I might add, how would there be agreement about what is right and what is wrong? For this new way that Jesus proposed to possibly work, God would have to be in someone’s heart. I mean, if we were internally guided, and all guided into a common understanding, God would have to be present in every heart. Is that what you are suggesting? Are you saying that through Jesus, everyone should be as God?”

“No, that’s not what I was saying,” Phil said with calmness, “but that is correct. You said it much better than I could, exactly and precisely.”

“But don’t you see, Phil?” Harold pleaded, “That’s the whole problem. If each individual is led by a personal conviction, then each person is God! You know. GOD! The Holy Father. Jehovah. The Great I Am. Him! How would that work, Phil? Do you really think we should each be that?”

“No, Harold,” Phil said defiantly. “A heart conviction is from God, or of God. It’s not our personal conviction. We don’t decide on our own. We are to seek that conviction. That inspired truth. God will make it known to us.”

“And see, Phil, if you will,” Harold said smugly. “What you have described is the source of all the division and chaos in God’s name that followed Christ! The individual with conviction sharing those convictions with other individuals with similar convictions, that run counter to the convictions of other individuals in other groups with their own set of like-minded convictions. Then each group breaks free in its own direction, claiming to follow God’s truth as they have determined it to be. It’s God’s Law breaking down into mob rule!”

“No, Harold! You got it all wrong. It’s not a matter of how the individual sees it, as you say. It is the truth as God has shown it to each of them!”

“Well certainly, Phil. Of course it is. And thank you for making my case. You see, that takes us right back to the very source of the division of the faith in God. That source, by name, is Jesus Christ. Didn’t he say that he was the truth? If he were the truth, and the truth was from God, and all should know it without need of the Law, well then, doesn’t that put him above the law?”

Phil had run out of ways to say it. He was frustrated and about to lose his temper. “Harold, I don’t know what else to say. Call it a victory if you want, but I can’t answer that. I know this is what you study at college and you have apparently mastered the subject. All I got to back me up is a lifetime of learning things the hard way.”

Harold slid back in his chair. He’d made his point. Now it was time to pull back. He’d learned from the experience of encounters with numerous Christ followers, especially older ones, that when their defense and logic fell apart, they always fell back on their personal testimony of faith. Faced with overwhelming truth and lacking evidence to support their beliefs, they would always fall back on telling you what they knew in their hearts. All of it invariably, learned the hard way.

“I used to wonder about life and my place in it,” Phil slowly began.

Harold resisted the temptation to roll his eyes or show a smirk of victory. Phil was about to tell his story. The same old story it seemed every truly lost, Christ following, death-cult believer ever told. He knew its basic structure of living right, but unfulfilled and knowing about Jesus, but not understanding the way. It would be the tale of suffering to seek Christ, and increased suffering once you found Him. He bit his lip and listened.

“I tried to do more good than harm,” Phil recalled. “Always tried to live the way I’d been raised. You could say that was out of respect for my elders, but it was more than that. I knew the difference between right and wrong. Wasn’t any heartfelt conviction about it or anything, I just knew to treat people the way I wanted them to treat me. Knowing, though, didn’t help me any when it came to figuring out what my life was supposed to be about. My folks had always said Jesus would show me the way, so I decided to read the Bible again. I’d read it often as a boy, but never as a man. Not as my own man, anyway. All the stuff I had read before suddenly made sense to me. It was really strange how it all hit me as new! Not long into that new reading I decided to ask Jesus to come into my heart. He did and from there—”

Harold couldn’t stand to hear the story told again. He’d heard it so many times he almost had it memorized. “Yeah, I know what happened next. Let me say it for you. You were led through trials and convictions, the shadows in the valley of death, temptations, evils and untold sins. That about it?”

Phil wouldn’t get sucked into another verbal dual. “Yep, son, that about sums it up. It’s an old story. Mine’s no different from all the rest you must have heard, but let me ask you something. In all the times you’ve heard the same old story from so many different people, did you ever stop to wonder, why we all had the same story?”

Harold said nothing. Everybody was suddenly interested in what Phil had to say. Harold had all the answers up to now. They realized they didn’t have the answer either. Harold threw his hands in the air, showing no interest in even guessing at an answer.

“Funny, isn’t it?” Phil asked the group. “If people all around the world all gave the same story of how they’d been abducted by aliens from outer space, that would be the question everyone would ask. Why do they all have the same story? It just might give you reason to think it was true!”

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