Howd’ya Like Fifty Dollars?

Okay. A guy sees you on the street, walks up to you, says he’s a millionaire and his hobby is giving money away. He offers you fifty dollars, no strings attached. That money could easily be counterfeit. You don’t know the fellow, but you could really use the fifty right now.

Question: Do you take the bill and check it out, or do you just dismiss it out-of-hand and walk away?

I’ll warrant you’d do what any sane person would do. You’d make darn sure that piece of paper was a fake before you tossed it.

I have just one appeal:

Atheist, agnostic, whatever—I implore you to just treat the possibility of Christ’s being authentic the same way you’d treat that fifty-dollar bill. If you read or hear possible evidence of the falsity of the Gospels or the non-existence of Jesus, be sure of your source, your information, before you dump the whole business. Just make sure! Treat the possibility of eternal life with the same gravitas, the same seriousness and respect you’d give that little bit of money.

That’s all.

I know I can’t convince, per se, as I have no empirical evidence. We’re in the deep water that has drowned even many a prodigious intellect on both sides of the Christ-issue, as far as getting an opposing position to budge.

All I can say is, I have tried to imagine eternity—and, of all the horrors I can think of, never-ending suffering, or separation from “all that is good” tops any list. Whatever we suffer here on earth at least has an ending! I just hope for you that when your final breath comes, you won’t be recalling this communication and thinking, Whoa! What if I’ve been wrong? I think that guy even described this moment in that essay!

You see, I don’t personally think (of course, I can’t speak for other Christians) that the loving God I believe in would be prone to punish someone who assiduously sought the Truth their whole life and just couldn’t come to belief. I can’t say that for someone who looked a gift horse in the mouth and didn’t even go to the trouble of making as sure as possible that it’s all a lot of who-shot-John before walking away from what was freely offered.

How often in life are you offered a gift with eternal potential, one that costs nothing and you have nothing to lose? The only potential loss in this whole exercise would be in not accepting.

You’d check out the fifty.

Why not eternal life?