A Little Project I Like to Call : "Not a Little Project At All"

I'm taking Dr.Bob's class Exploring the Christian Faith this semester at Bethel. For the end of the semester we had to do two interview papers. The first was asking someone what they thought of Jesus Christ... he asked us to ask just one "non-believer", but I wanted to take it a little further and ask just a huge variety of people on Facebook. I asked "believers" and "non-believers". Here are some of the answers:

I believe in him & i believe that know matter what your mistakes are, if your sorry, he'll forgive you & you'll go too heaven.

I'm going to be honest, it may offend but this is what I fell. When I hear of Jesus its not usually what i think of him. When I hear Jesus, it's usually in heated debates or in preaches in trying to alienate people to him. But his achievements were amazing. What he did was beyond legacy, but not many people see that, they might say they do but I think is usually nothing more than a fib.If you need anything else ill be more then willing to oblige. (Of course I asked for more!) I'm not a religious man nor is my family but we all do accept God and Jesus in to our lives. We don't go to church much but I like to think I think i have a good understanding of Jesus. I know that He was 100% selfless. Which is the most amazing thing of the man. One no else ever has or will ever be that generous. I don't think I can emphasize how much of an amazing trait that selflessness is. There are other things about him, but this my favorite part of him.

I think of Jesus Christ as a great figure in history. He did things that no one will ever do, and he was a man who lived the perfect life. Personally, I don't know if he IS the messiah, but I do believe that he was real person. So to sum it up, I think of him as a powerful and popular figure in our world's history.

I don't believe in Jesus.I think jesus could have been a person that people knew a great deal about like anyone else in history but i don't believe in a son of god. Good people who do great things don't have to belong to a specifically great divine power to me. i just began to study heavily into the sciences and i don't feel the need to believe in things like that anymore. I believe in spirituality and that people can do great things but I don't feel like christianity is for me. People are very greedy and selfish so I find it hard to believe that the stories in the bible are anything other than fables meant to teach us how to be good people.

Jesus Christ is our saviour who was sent to earth to save us from eternal sin. He is the Word of God made flesh, Who redeemed man by His Death on the Cross, and Whose Divine mission is continued by the ministry of the Church. He is one with the holy trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ isn't real. He was never alive, and there is hardly any evidence to prove it. The church, god, and religion in general is just a way of sugar-coating death and to make people feel guilty for anything wrong they do. Watch Zeitgeist online maybe it will help.

I think that Jesus was a very loving and compassionate man. I was fortunate enough to be baptized in the Christian faith as a baby and have never doubted for even a second my religious beliefs. I'm certain that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior!! As a child I learned about Jesus and all of his greatness--as an adult I see it--everyday!!

Well, I believe he was a person that lived, and he was a great speaker. I do not believe he is divine in any way, nor that he died for our sins. They say religion was born when the first idiot met the first con-artist, basically.I dont see one book as being significant proof of divinity. By the same logic you consider Jesus to be divine and a God to exist, I can say Gandalf is real because he is in Lord of the Rings.There are reams and reams and reams of scientific data that can explain most anything, and can be proven repeatedly whenever you wish to. Now, the thought of a God is comforting, and if you could prove it for me, I'd believe it, but religion as a whole is mostly an illogical fear of death.

"Now the thought of a God is comforting, and if you could prove it to me, I'd believe it." ...Is that a challenge I hear? Nope. I believe that's a soul pleading and begging for God, for something bigger than his own self.

Oh... now what? I can't just ask that question, get those answers and leave it. Some of these answers led to 4 hour long conversations... some led to sleepless nights tossing and turning, trying to figure out how some could believe there is NOT a god.

To me, it seems like it would take more faith to believe that there is not a god and that this all happened by chance, then to believe that there is infact a god.

This little interview has turned into my "thing" of the week.(I don't know what to call it becuase it certainly is not a "project". It's something much bigger than a project...) Or of the year. Or my lifetime. Or however long I'm told to keep by GOD this going.

alkjflkdsajflkdsfj. Some of these conversations heated up pretty quickly. Got my blood boiling. Made me really pause and think. Made me look real hard in to the facts. And I am thankful for that.

Some of the things these people said to me made me so angry, and then so sad. A part of me wanted to get up and punch them in the face for telling me that my God was arrogant and petty. That my God is manevolent. A part of me wanted to punch them for saying that about the very same man who died for THEM. But then another part of me just wanted to weep and pray for these people and love them.

I think it is no coincidence that in one of these conversations, when I stopped shoving quotes, facts, verses, and evidence down his throat, and actually showed him LOVE, is when things started happening. That was when he actually started considering, and pondering, and wondering. This boy that I thought was IMPOSSIBLE suddenly became more open when I showed him Christ's LOVE. At the end of the 4 hour discussion is when I decided to stop the arguing, send him a message about CHRIST'S love for him... and at that instant, what I thought was impossible was done throught Christ's power alone. He replied to me "I would appreciate meeting this God, but I wouldn't know how to go about doing that."

Ba da bing, ba da boom. It's not what I do or say, it's only Christ's love shown through me, and Christ's words in me, and Christ working on their hearts.

These people are not just "non-believers". We must not label them that. I hate that label. These people are Christ's treasures. These people are the one lost sheep that Jesus left the other 99 for. These people are treasures. God's children!

These people have been the center of my prayers since Thursday night, and now I'm asking that you join me in praying for them.

Remember Christ's heartbeat: "That none, should perish. That none, should perish. That none, should perish."