The Good News

I love living in Northwest Portland. The Streetcar takes you right downtown in minutes for absolutely no price. I am taking advantage of everything I can before I start school and my already obnoxiously busy schedule gets busier.

A great addition to any city street are the street evangelists. Everyone loves to hate them. We love to write about them, and we love to watch them. Interacting with them is our last desire for fear of being trapped into their fascinating theatrics.

"The Good News man!" one said. "It's the Gospel! The Good News!"

He was preaching fire and brimstone before telling me about good news.

"What's the good news?" I had to ask.

"I'm glad you asked," he replied.

He went on to tell me that I was a bad person, and that before I could even do anything about it, I was a sinner; born in offense to God, the creator. He said that if I didn't accept Jesus into my heart that I would go to a place with "gnashing teeth" and fire.

Unfortunately, this is "the gospel" to most people. But how is this "good news?" I'm an awful person and unless I confess to Jesus I'll burn forever away from God? This isn't good news at all. In fact, this is pretty shitty news to me.

But this is the world we live in. We've westernized close to everything we've heard about Jesus. Turned him white, painted his eyes blue, and put him through a makeover at the make-up counter at Nordies.

Search the Bible, search the life of John the Baptist and Jesus. The "good news" was in no way a path to heaven or a ticket to the big show in the sky. The good news was that Heaven came to earth, and we could actually know God. And that our troubles will one day be delivered from us - lifted off our backs. The good news was a king came to earth, and that hope for a restored broken world is now more real than anyone could possibly imagine.

The "good news" has been turned into information of how to get to heaven, instead of transformation of the life you live now. Christ rarely talked about the future of earthly things going up to heaven, but he could not stop talking about heavenly things coming to earth.