Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 22:43 (Autumn 2009)
Article: A Critical Perspective: Orthodoxy, The Right Jesus, And Eternal Life
Author: Lon Gregg

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JOTGES 22:43 (Autumn 2009) p. 93

A Critical Perspective: Orthodoxy, The Right Jesus, And Eternal Life

Lon Gregg

Director of Chaplains

Denver Rescue Mission

Denver, CO

I. Introduction: Error And Christian Faith

Many years ago, before YouTube, before even “Candid Camera,” television host Art Linkletter made a big hit with the “Kids Say the Darndest Things” segment on his weekly show. Children would say cute things that struck his studio audience (and millions of homemakers tuning in for the late-afternoon show) as just crazy enough to laugh Mr. Linkletter all the way to the bank. Now those “kids” have all grown up, but they have not changed a bit. I know, because I have met them. In church. Christians still say (and believe) the “darndest things.” Recently I learned that one self-styled Christian group was teaching that degenerate descendants of the cursed seed of Ham were still alive in the Northeastern United States. Why do we not hear about them on the news? They congregate only at night, and they travel only along the open spaces under high-tension power lines.

Of course, these haywire beliefs make great job security for theologians; without them, would anyone believe correctly? Someone must straighten out the multitudes. Of course, there is the small matter that such thinkers contradict each other on points far and wide, large and small, from the number of angels on the head of a pin to the age of the universe. Even so, we may yet turn the others around before too long (although to say so may add one more “darndest thing” to the growing list).

JOTGES 22:43 (Autumn 2009) p. 94

Fortunately, haywire beliefs need keep no one from eternal life. Readers of this journal hold that faith in Jesus Christ for eternal life is a sure bet. I will argue in this paper that as it is Jesus Himself who offers that life, He lets neither the quality of belief about Himself (orthodoxy), or quantity of these beliefs (ignorance), stop Him. Jesus Himself gives eternal life to anyone who simply comes to believe He can do so. In other words, “the right Jesus” is the one who gives life to anyone who can believe it so, just as He promised. Jesus is exactly the “right kind of Person” to be able to do this, and He is unhindered to do so by any other beliefs, haywire or not, or lack of beliefs, which we may hold.

This perspective is, of course, far from universal. To some, the idea that one can be certain of eternal life without knowing a substantial theology of Jesus Christ is itself a “haywire belief,” to be resisted as if it were cultic. (Having recently written on this topic,1 I have quickly be...

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