As a global spiritual conversation starter, I posed the question:
"Do you believe that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is sufficient?"
Sufficient, meaning sufficient for eternal reconciliation and resolution of the believing person.
There are three conversational answers: No, Yes, and I'm not sure.
Many will answer,
"No, I don't believe that Jesus is sufficient."
People who have already thought this through to a confident conclusion of "no, I don't," either have an alternate spiritual solution, or believe in no spiritual solution.
So, for example,
I have friends who are believers of Islam, Jain, Buddhism and Judaism who love me dearly, but are quite sure that Jesus is not sufficient. Most notably they don't believe in his deity and therefore he alone is not sufficient for any eternal purposes. He is, in fact, insufficient to their way of thinking, since what a person does and how they live is also important to their eternal equation.
That's exactly what you might expect from some globally known religions.
But some of my self-professed Christian friends also squirm a little at the sufficient-question. They too have yet to reconcile whether belief in Jesus' (and his atoning sacrifice on the cross) is truly free of any conditions...truly sufficient. Truly a free gift of Grace. They've even said to me, "well, I hope I'll spend eternity with God in heaven, but I guess we can't know for sure until we die."
So...they're not really sure if Jesus' life, death and resurrection are sufficient. And, they're not all that different in that manner from my friends of other global spiritual backgrounds.
Of course, a confidently believing atheist believes that none of the worlds' spiritual beliefs are consequential in anything other than a social or political context; therefore Jesus is clearly insufficient for any supernatural purpose.
In Part 3, I'll look at the "I'm not sure's"
What do you believe?
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