Faith and a Room Full of Sandwiches

The Christian worldview is like a sandwich. A sandwich is made up of multiple ingredients. Bread alone is just bread. Mustard, tomato, and cheese by themselves are just mustard, tomato, and cheese. There isn’t a delicious sandwich until all the ingredients are together. In the same way, the Christian worldview can’t be understood until the major ingredients are put together to form a cohesive story. If we don’t back up and see how God, the meaning and purpose of life, human nature, Jesus, and the Bible all fit together, the Christian worldview will be difficult to believe.

A sandwich can also be made, yet not enjoyed. To experience a sandwich, we must do more than just look at it or smell it: we must take a bite. The freedom and love God wants us to experience is received through faith, which is believing in things which can’t be seen. Every worldview has unseen elements to it – beliefs in supreme beings, the soul, ideas, the past, the future, or what lies beyond death.

So let’s look at what forms the Christian worldview and how God can be experienced.

Without a Right View of God

Without God there is no story. Nothing but a material world would exist. Jesus can’t be God unless there is a God. The Bible can’t be a divine and trustworthy source of truth from God unless God exists and is personal.

Without a Right View of the Meaning & Purpose of Life

Without meaning and purpose this story has no plot. Meaning and purpose allow us to know what’s important, what is at stake, and what the point of our existence is: to know and love God.

Without a Right View of Human Nature

Without an understanding of our brokenness this story has no conflict. Jesus’ life and actions to heal and restore us have no point if we aren’t spiritually dead and in need of healing and restoration.

Without a Right View of Jesus

Without Jesus this story has no hero. Without Jesus we have no cure for our brokenness and no king to rescue and lead us.

Without the Bible

Without the Bible this story couldn’t be told. We wouldn’t know the characters nor the plot. The specific and critical truth of who God is, who Jesus is, and who we are wouldn’t be known.

Without Faith

Without faith we can’t be rescued into the amazing story God wants for us. The new and abundant life we desperately need is a free gift from God: it’s grace. Without faith in Jesus we can’t receive that gift of grace. When we try to earn God’s grace it’s like we’re starving in the middle of a room full of sandwiches. What we need is right there, right in front of us, but we refuse to eat. Why? The possibilities could include: we don’t see the free sandwiches, we’re fruitlessly trying to find someone we can pay for the sandwiches, we aren’t aware of our need for the sandwiches, we don’t want to give up our hunger, or we think the sandwiches will give us explosive diarrhea.

Grace is a real gift with real consequences. If we eat our fill of sandwiches, we will give up our hunger. If we receive the cure, we must give up the disease. Being a citizen of the kingdom of life means no longer feeling at home in the kingdom of death. Receiving a new, abundant life through Jesus means your old life will end: you’ll be a citizen of God’s kingdom for eternity, you’ll have a relationship with God, and you’ll experience freedom and an abundant life as God heals you. Grace is a free sandwich that changes lives. Faith is being willing to give up our old life and believe in Jesus for a new life.

Explore Your Perspective:

  • Of all these different elements of the Christian worldview, which ones are easiest and hardest to believe?
  • What do you think about receiving God’s gift of grace by faith versus earning God’s approval by being good enough or religious enough?
  • What thoughts, desires, or fears are standing in the way of you letting go of your current life and believing Jesus for a new life?
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