Terminating the Veil

So, since I'm jobless (not by choice) and have no life going on right now, I watch a lot of TV :). Last weekend, I think it was Saturday night--remember, no life right now--I was watching the Terminator II. I thought it was pretty cool, you know, seeing Arnold in action again. Well, I didn't think much of it until Sunday when I was at church.

I went to this different church than I normally do to try it out and to see if I wanted to be a regular attender. It was okay, but one thing that really struck me was during the sermon when the pastor was talking about how he became a Christian.

Now, if you're reading this you may not know the exact definition of a Christian the way it's meant to be lived--it often gets lost in this jumbledness of the world. A Christian is a person looking to Christ as his or her personal savior and dedicating one's life to following God in his or her life. A Christian is not a person who's parents were Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, etc. A Christian is not a person who attends church on Sundays, even Bible studies on Wednesdays, or even church functions any other day. Christ defines the Christian--not the person.

Anyways, the pastor was talking about the veil that covers our eyes--the one that separates us from knowing God and Christ for who They are and for what They've done. He was talking about how Satan is the one who holds this veil over eyes until enough is done that this veil is tore down and everything suddenly, makes sense. Well, I thought that was interesting and then all of a sudden, the Terminator starts playing in my mind--awesome. haha

What was kind of interesting was the way God was helping me to visualize this idea. The movie has this cyborg dude who is made of some type of pretty awesome liquid metal/mercury type deal that makes him unstoppable. When you shoot the dude, homeboy just morphs back into his little human front while barely even slowing down. He just keeps coming back--it almost seems impossible to stop him!

Well, at the end of the movie, good ol' Arnie has this huge shotgun that he's using to blast this dude. Every time he shoots him, the guy stumbles back just a little bit at a time and his human-like appearance is shattered more and more. But here's the thing, there is a huge cauldron of molten metal at the edge of this platform that the cyborg is inching towards each time he's shot. Right when he's getting ready to go over the edge, one more shot would obviously do it, Arnie runs out of ammo. Ah shoot! The mom, kid, and Arnie thought they were defeated until someone (I honestly can't remember who) pulls out a gun and shoots the dude to make him plunge to his ultimate demise. Game over. He doesn't come crawling back on this one. He's dead. Defeated. Gone.

This is EXACTLY how it is when we share the love of Christ with strangers, family members, friends, co-workers, whomever. We keep shooting at the veil, that cover that shields their eyes from knowing Christ for who He truly is. We get to a point where we feel defeated because it seems like it's impenetrable, an unstoppable force that we just cannot seem to kill once and for all. It is a process, it is something that we have to keep shooting at, keep speaking truth into that veil to make it burn until it is no more. I tell you, it is not impossible. It is not unstoppable. It is not impenetrable. Don't give up hope, don't lose sight, and for the love of God never stop sharing the best thing that ever happened to you!