Dinner with a Perfect Stranger by David Gregory

Author:David Gregory
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307446305
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2008-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

8

“WHY DOESN’T GOD just show himself to people?”

The waiter had walked off with our dessert plates. I had resisted the urge to scrape mine with my fork as I usually did at home. Waiting for coffee, I decided it was now or never to get some of my remaining questions about God and life answered. This one seemed like a decent place to start.

Jesus wiped his mouth with his napkin and returned it to his lap. “What would you have me do?”

“I don’t know—appear to everyone personally.”

He chuckled, and seeing the irony in my statement, I couldn’t help but join him momentarily.

“No, seriously,” I said. “Most people don’t get a dinner invitation.”

“I did appear to humanity. I became one of you. That’s about as personal as it gets.”

“But that was two thousand years ago.”

“It doesn’t matter. Most people didn’t believe then, either. You don’t have to see with your eyes to believe.”

I rested an elbow on the back of my chair. “At least God could perform some kind of sign that would show he exists.”

“I did that, too. They still didn’t believe. My Father did that at Mount Sinai with the Jews. They turned away from him within six weeks.”

The waiter appeared with our coffee orders: a cappuccino for me, regular coffee for him. He used a little cream, no sugar.

“It’s not a matter of further visual evidence,” he continued. “People have all the evidence they need. It’s a matter of the heart. Do they want to trust God and humbly receive the gift he offers, or do they insist on proving themselves good enough and doing it their own way?”

Somehow his statements about “people” seemed to have a very personal application. I wanted to keep the conversation on a more impersonal level.

“But how can you say people have all the evidence they need?”

“They have creation to tell them that God exists. Humanity knows more than ever before how intricately designed and finely tuned creation is. People have me to tell them what God is like. That’s one reason I came, to reveal the Father. They have my resurrection to prove I am God. They have the Bible as God’s message to them.”

I took my first sip of cappuccino, licking the foam off my lips as he drank some coffee. “My religion professor said so many copying errors were made over the years that we don’t really know what the original Bible said.”

He shook his head slightly as he put his cup down. “He doesn’t do much research, does he? As I said before, he would find the opposite is true. It’s been painstakingly copied. The number of places where you have a question of any consequence is minuscule.”

I had to admit I hadn’t done the research, either. I forged ahead. “But what about all the contradictions?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Like…I don’t know specifics. I just know there are supposed to be contradictions.”

He smiled. “I’ll give you one. One gospel account says I healed two blind men outside of Jericho. Another says I healed one.

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