A netfriend asked:

For a start, could you please tell me why I _need_ God?

I responded: One reason: 'cos God says you need him (cf analogies of medical expertise and physical symptoms etc.).

Mark's response:

If God is the Ground of all being and "in Him we live and move and have our being" then you need God in order to exist.

This has nothing to do with guilt, sin, redemption or salvation. This is purely a philosophical existentialist statement.

Do you need to exist? Then you need God for the possibility of existence is only within God whether you believe in God or not.

Up to this point one does not need a bible or a religion or Christianiity.

Jesus' greatest commandment, loving God, is then a response for this gift of being.

Jesus' second greatest commandment, loving others, is then a response to recognising the gift of being in others.

This is where Christianity is of benefit in helping our repsonse to God through the record in the bible of other people's response to God.

My response to Mark:

Best bit of constructive evangelism I've seen from you Mark...

You start with God-the-ground-of-being, I start with Jesus...

I need to connect with a God-with-a-human-face (and if God is like Jesus, nothing's too good to be true, as the Jesus freaks used to say).

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Shalom! Rowland Croucher