Jesus, who is our true salvation, healed and taught many willing listeners throughout Jerusalem. He encouraged people and showed immense compassion for the pain others were going through. People who force people to do things by threatening them are, ultimately, counterproductive. Making others follow your rules is an expression of our baser, carnal nature which Jesus Christ came to eradicate by His commandments to love God with all our hearts and to love others as we love ourselves. Jesus taught us to pray for those who were persecuting us (that also includes those who were bothering us by their controlling ways). Also, His Golden Rule needs to be studied and kept, because it encourages us to be thoughtful of others. A forceful manner of teaching is not the way we would want to be taught, therefore it is not the way we should teach. God didn't legislate a forced national religion upon all people. He has always wanted us to come to Him by choice.

Muslims and some fundamentalist Christians have strict codes of behavior they expect others to follow. They often treat offenders with disrespect and even death. Fundamentalism is a type of lens that people, who are insecure in their relationship with God, view the world through. It is a far deeper problem than mere religion can cause. People who were prone to this type of thinking often will take religion and make it their way of expressing their distorted thinking. But the problem of fundamentalism is over-simplified if we define it as only a religious problem.

When Christians behave hatefully, they are not being Christian and should not be held up as examples of Christianity. When an atheist behaves cruelly, he or she should not be pointed to as an example of atheism. The atheist doesn't have the truth, but it doesn't mean he is automatically either good or evil because he is an atheist. (I personally know two atheists, one is arrogant, racist, angry and bitter. The other is kind, gentle, compassionate and generous.) On the surface, one could blame religion for aberrant fundamentalist behavior, but this stops short of the problem's origin. As the Christian religion has pointed out, we are born with a depraved nature. It can be denied, but it can't be eliminated by ignoring it. It makes itself known all too often, by rising from our depths at the slightest provocation, manifesting itself as anger, hostility, and a desire to control and if that is not possible, a desire to kill. It also manifests in other ways as envy, jealousy, irritation, and greed. These traits and more can all lead to atrocious behavior.

Some, if not all atheists feel that all these problems can be handled by our civility, by our own efforts. They feel we do not need the help of a god. We Christians, however, recognize how helpless we are. When that carnal behavior rises up in us, or we see it in others, we are (or should be) more likely to go down on our knees and weep to the Lord for help. We should storm heaven with our prayers. Many Christians, however, act in a self-sufficient manner, too, trying to handle their problems by themselves (or ignore them). All should realize, and if they honestly tested it out, they would understand that crying out to God produces results, for God eliminates sin from our hearts as we forgive others. This corrects the problem where it originates. Within each of us.

The drug culture tries to inject happiness into its veins with disastrous results. They, all too soon, realize their self-fix is not working. The New Ager tries to make themselves into gods and the atheist tries to eliminate God altogether, all in the hopes of getting "pain relief." Everyone needs more, but somehow fails to recognize that "more" is spelled J-e-s-u-s. They are repulsed by the idea of a savior, feeling they are too sophisticated for that silliness, but the results of our self-sufficient society lies like a corpse in the road. Look at the mess our globe is in. Selfishness, violence, greed and hate abound. We do not have life, God's abundant life, because we fail to reach for Him with all of our hearts. What hope can the atheist really offer our troubled human race? It seems that the more Christianity is rejected and ridiculed, the worse this planet gets. God said:

Isa 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, says Jehovah; though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool. (MKJV)

How obvious it is to a believer, that God injected His Son into this world, and yet so many people refuse to see that it happened. They go back and question the origin (saying that Jesus never existed), denying the waves and waves of that origin, (the visitation of Christ) and its results, (the historical effect and influence upon our society) reverberating down through the ages. That is like denying that a trigger will work in a bomb, after it has exploded. It is very myopic and narrow minded to treat the Savior's journey to earth in that way. How can the proud, who claim to have all the answers, ever be reached by Christ, through the Christian? God requires of us a humble heart. To be humble and dependent on God is distasteful to people who have built huge towers of "worldly knowledge" on this earth. These structures of self-proclaimed knowledge and understanding appear to keep them safe and sound, and yet, their temporal towers are held together by paper clips and clothes pins. The end-of-the-age winds of adversity will cause them to crumble. The humble who pray to the Lord for help will be able to see God and His amazing results. Those who attempt to place themselves in God's position will find they serve a weak and faulty god because every human is prone to error and weakness. But, as I've stated before, it only needs to be tested out, using the scientific method, to see that an awakening takes place in the heart, when we no longer worship ourselves, but allow God to take over our lives. It's an amazing grace we receive and an amazing relief to realize that we do not have to be in control. Nor do we have to be controlled by others, because we can pray to God for relief and find that God does answer prayers—despite "scientific double-blind studies" that Mr. Dawkins, reported in his book, The God Delusion. By the way, those so called "scientific" experiments on prayer are a farce and a sorry testimony to the lack of understanding on the part of those who performed them. If they had the least bit of knowledge about how God works, they would see the absolute folly and inevitable failure of experiments that are missing several basic conditions and elements. Those include a personal concern over the people being prayed for, a genuine relationship with God, a pure and sincere heart and the humble expectation of a miracle. Last but not least, an acceptance of God's will and plan for all involved.

Those whose hearts are determined to believe that something (like prayer) is ridiculous, will find their methods of persuasion and be able to prove it to themselves and those gullible enough to believe them. They are unable to see that they are being controlled by their own hard-heartedness, and are oblivious to the truth that will set all of us free. What concerns me about the self-proclaimed scientifically "honest" mind of the atheist, is his complete unwillingness to try to have faith for a few weeks or months to determine for himself whether this God stuff is true or not. Amazingly, the answer to this God dilemma rests, not in some far distant land, inaccessible by boat or air, nor does it rest in the planets and stars, or galaxies drifting through the universe, all too far away to visit, but in your very own mind. You can just go to your room and get past all your preconceived notions of faith's illegitimacy, and have faith. That's it! No pills to swallow, nothing to inject, and, though this faithfulness comes with an instruction manual (the Bible) even that is not required for God to come into the now open door to your heart and mind. Just let go of what you think you know and let Jesus take your hand and your heart. Then watch the windows of heaven open, and the riches of His Spirit come cascading through your whole being. There is nothing like it on earth! If you have truly let go, you will soon be reading God's Word afresh. It is incredibly short-sighted of an atheistic scientist, to not try faith in Jesus Christ to see if it produces a different and far more helpful "truth" to live by. What scientist would proclaim, "I have never seen an elephant, therefore, they do not exist." The scientific atheist is telling himself a lie, over and over again, and is unwilling to embrace the truth which is so near—and yet, so far.

In the next chapter I'll share with you a testimony of a case where prayer proved to be a very powerful tool.

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