Letter 1 to Friend in Rehab

So I've begun to write my friend who is currently in drug/alcohol rehab, trying to relay some basic truths of life and Christianity while he is in a 'changing' state of mind. I understand that it's possible my letters could do more harm than good, and if any good comes out them, it is solely because God willed it so. So, as readers of this blog, please pray for my friend -- that God would take out his heart of stone and give him a heart of flesh. Anyway, bearing all in front of the world again -- here is my first letter:

I hope that this letter finds you doing well in your rehabilitation assignment. Three months can be a long time to be away from friends and family, hence why I decided to write you letters in the meantime.

My aim in this is twofold: 1.) to give you something to read while you are bored out of your mind and 2.) to communicate to you what Christianity is all about. I’m guessing in your mind you might have Christianity figured out by now and possibly want nothing to do with it. Well, that’s fine, but I ask you to hear me out for a few months, as I have a lot to write about, and I’m hoping by now I’m a guy you can trust to not feed you a bunch of useless junk. You’ve probably heard and seen an extremely wide variation of Christianity from family, friends, college professors, enemies, television, radio, movies, and music. You’ve probably seen enough hypocrites in your short life to turn you away completely. You’ve probably seen enough evil in the world to question to existence of a God at all. You’ve probably heard several conflicting views just from visiting different churches, possibly even in the same denomination. You might even think other religions sound just as good or even better. There is also a chance you might have a distorted view of who Jesus really is based on how he is portrayed in the media.

Well, for a moment, or for the next three months, please hear me out as I attempt to communicate Christianity to one I care for deeply. In my letters, please assume that there is a God, he always does right, and that the Bible is true. For some reason, I don’t fear that you have a huge problem with this. But sometimes it’s common for intellectuals such as yourself to think too much and begin to question things like this. Those are advanced topics and not where I really want to go right now.

My main goal in the first letter is to strip away a very common misconception. This misconception is the notion that for people to become Christians, they have to decide to stop doing things they shouldn’t, start going to church every Sunday, start reading their Bible, and above all, start doing a lot more good than bad before they take the plunge into Christianity. And then they say a little prayer asking God for forgiveness. And that’s it. They’re Christians. They’re going to heaven. All is well. This is not how Christianity works! I cannot stress this enough. This is the life I myself lived for 18 years, and I had no relationship with God, no peace, little joy, and basically no clue what life was really about. A person doesn’t wash himself before taking a shower. This analogy works well. What I’m saying is this: for a person to become a Christian, he does not have to get his life straight beforehand. We all have to come to God with all of our mess; otherwise, we might incorrectly assume that we earn or deserve a place in the kingdom of God. If a person truly becomes a Christian, a couple of things must be true: 1.) the person repents – or turns away – from sin, making a decision to try and do what God desires, 2.) the person trusts solely in the work of Christ (more on that later), trusting that his sacrifice and his righteousness is the only thing that can get someone into heaven, and 3.) God will start to change the person – here is when the change takes place -- after becoming a Christian, the Holy Spirit dwells within the believer for the first time, fighting to make the person more and more like Christ as the days go by.

Anyway, that’s all for now. In the next letter, I’ll touch on what “the gospel” is along with my personal testimony of how I became a Christian. The third letter will be on the person of Christ.