Whether it was directly at a service in some church, or talking with a Christian friend, you have already heard the statement: You need to accept Jesus.
I grew up hearing this. Every Sunday night, after 2 hours of service, the pastor would close with the “opportunity” to recognize Jesus as savior. I remember as if it were yesterday the day my dad “raised his hand” at the Baptist church, and accepted Jesus. It was a magical moment, the whole family had been waiting for that moment for years. Dinner at my grandparents’ was like a celebration.
I grew up and spent years “offering the opportunity” to thousands of young people to “accept and recognize” Jesus. I used the same jargon I learned as a child, the same way of “presenting salvation.” We learned (dirty) tricks like: “don’t ask them to raise their hand, call them to come up front, offer them a gift, and before they realize it, they’re already accepting Jesus”… that’s how we tallied up countless “conversions” each month, although little of it was reflected in our society as something really different.
After turning 25 I started relating to very smart people, with whom besides these “tricks” not working, I really had an interest in debating my faith. Presenting the reasons why I “accepted Jesus”.
This year, while I was talking with one of my friends and “presenting the plan of salvation” to him, he told me: I don’t accept this, I don’t agree with the idea that you are a bad person. You are one of the most “good” guys I know.
I went home, wrote those words down in a notebook and meditated on them for the last 4 months. I do that a lot in recent years: I put myself in the place of others, I try to understand their “habitat” as well as the path that took them to that moment. And so I kept trying to find a way to look at myself and look at the situation through my friend’s eyes. I even came to agree with him. Looking from the outside, I must be a pretty good guy. I got married a virgin, have stayed faithful to my wife for almost 10 years, pay my taxes, try to be fair and honest in my work, am ‘generous’ with my belongings… it is hard to accept that someone “like me” deserves the same hell as a murderer or a pedophile… On top of that, you still have to believe in all that Christian ‘mythology,’ that God became flesh, and died for us, and that’s where I want to try to demystify these two words: recognize and accept.
Recognize
When I’m walking on the street, and on the other side my sister passes by, I recognize her by some signs. The way she walks, her hair, her clothes, and finally her face and voice.
To recognize, according to the dictionary, is to identify something or someone.
If you go to Google and search for “how to recognize,” you will see various completions like: how to recognize a controlling person, how to recognize an alcoholic, how to recognize that you are stressed, and so on.
With Jesus it’s the same thing. The ancient Jewish prophets always spoke about the coming of a messiah and a savior of humanity. Where he would be born, how he would grow up, the things he would say and do. All these promises are fulfilled in Jesus, all of them, 100%. The miracles he performs, the cities he visits, and the way he dies, all of it references the ancient promises.
In Jerusalem there was a group of wise scholars whose only objective was to set up “investigations” to evaluate possible messiahs. There were many who every couple of years would call themselves the promised messiah. Jesus was the only one they could not refute, to the point that some of them became his followers.
That, simply, is to recognize Jesus. It is to recognize in him the promised man. It is to recognize that he, although human, fulfills all the ancient promises and therefore “fits” the role of messiah and son of God perfectly.
Accept
This is a much more complex step. Recognizing in Jesus the result of the promise given to the Jews is even simple, because it is logical and clear. Promises + Fulfillment of Promises = Jesus. It’s simple, there’s not much to argue. That’s why 90% of the people you talk to will say: I do recognize that Jesus was a really good guy and that he taught a lot of interesting things, but to accept that he is God himself …
Accepting Jesus goes beyond accepting him as Almighty God incarnate. It is accepting that I am a sinner, that I have erred. That I was created for a purpose and failed at that attempt. It is accepting that I need help, and that a God became flesh to pay for my mistakes and in this way prevent me from being condemned.
There’s another point: as much as you accept that Jesus is God, and that you sinned and need help, you must accept (allow) that someone died in your place. To be honest, this is one of my biggest difficulties. I don’t like anyone paying my bill, or someone getting hurt for a mistake of mine. I always learned to take responsibility for my own actions, and accepting that someone innocent suffers for me is pretty hard.
Lastly, you need to accept that there is no more bill to pay. To accept that Jesus paid the dinner bill, that you can eat what you want and leave, the restaurant won’t charge you, and the cab home is paid for too. To accept that even if you wanted to, you wouldn’t have enough money to pay the bill, and that someone greater than you did this, for free, without getting anything in return.
In Summary
As I said, recognizing and accepting Jesus goes way beyond a simple prayer made in half a minute without any idea of what is being done. It goes way beyond a trick to count saved people. To recognize and accept Jesus is a philosophy of life, that will accompany you forever, and that you must practice daily.
Looking at the Jesus of history and seeing an Almighty God who created the world and decided to become flesh is like looking at a person you talk to on Skype. You see the image on your computer and you know that what you see there is the person, even though it’s not the person. In the end what you see are pixels, on the LED screen of your computer, reflecting the image that was captured somewhere else in the world. You know that the object there in front of you is not the person, but you also know that it is the person, communicating with you.
I know all this is much more complex and much simpler than it seems. That’s why although recognizing and accepting Jesus is more than a “trick” to go to heaven, it is also very simple. You just decide to do it, and then “adhere” to that philosophy of life. Similar to Yoga and Carpe Diem, recognizing and accepting Jesus is something that will accompany you forever, and once it touches your life you will start offering it to those closest to you.
My wish is that this Christmas, you may recognize Jesus as the God who agreed to become flesh so that we could understand him, and that once you do that, you may accept the fact that even though he didn’t do anything wrong, he preferred to die as a saint so that we could live as sinners.
Merry Christmas 