Bertrand Russell said that he decided between good and bad by his feelings. But in some cultures, people love their neighbors, and in others they eat them, both on the basis of feelings. Does that matter to you? It sure would if you were travelling to such an area. Feelings are unreliable.

As to personal salvation, there is no grade curve. God has already told us in John 3:3 that there are no exceptions for “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” That includes everyone, even religious leaders!

“If anyone is going to heaven, it will be Nick since he is a leader of the people with great responsibilities. He’s also very dedicated. He goes to church many times each week, tithes on all his income, prays many times daily, fasts often, always obeys the law–man’s and God’s, and is willing to get up from sleep and go help the concerned, confused, condemned soul. Yep, Nick will be sure to be in Heaven.” No, Nick went down the street to speak with Christ about salvation and Christ told him, “Ye must be born again.”

But God doesn’t grade on a curve and Nicodemus had to have an experience with Christ that changed his life and his destiny.

Additionally, comparing oneself with another is foolish, fruitless, and fatal.

After personal salvation, one is capable of doing good; but even then, it is a lifetime battle to obey God in our daily walk through a difficult, dark, and dangerous world. The Apostle Paul confessed in Romans 7:21: “…when I would do good, evil is present with me.” He was saying that even as a Christian, we struggle between good and evil all our lives.

We are told in Matthew 12:35 “A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.” He is telling us that good people do good things and evil people do evil things. No surprise there. Admittedly, good people at times do evil things and evil people do good things, but both are an anomaly; neither is a permanent lifestyle.

God sets His standard as to how each person is expected to live and everyone is held to the same standard; there is no curve. The Apostle Paul reveals that standard in Phil. 4:8: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” If most of us lived that way, it would change the world!

It is far better to pursue the above standard and stand alone for veracity, value, and virtue than to stand for error, enmity, and evil in a crowd; however, few are willing to accept the jeers for righteous living. Everyone prefers cheers.

Most people don’t want any kind of personal accountability and in spades when it is spiritual and eternal. They wrongly think since they don’t believe in God, there is no accountability. They are wrong. Consequently, knowing there is a right and wrong, they align with wrong because it feels good; or it is profitable; or it delights friends; or it is the “normal” thing to do. They live in darkness seeking to hide their evil life.

Sigmund Freud was an atheist who agreed with my last statement. He said that people who appear to be decent often have a dark side when looked at in depth. Most people don’t look into the depth of their souls because men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. They seem to think if they don’t see and admit their evil, it doesn’t exist.

Unregenerated people take a firm stand with their feet planted in mid-air! Anything goes. After all, who is to judge? Well, God judges and He doesn’t grade on a curve. To plead that there are worse people won’t cut it. Or “I didn’t really know any better way” won’t work either. Mankind just doesn’t get it: a day of accounting is ahead of everyone.

Many people are like the man who said, “I’m not the best guy in the world but I’m not as bad as Peter. I’m so respectable, I’ve been chosen as an officer of the group. Peter is always spouting off about something and spends much of his time extricating his foot out of his mouth. He has a foul mouth and has been known to curse when confronted with his sins. He’s cocky–even arrogant and he’s spent time in the slammer. In fact, he carries a sword all the time and is willing to use it if pushed too far. Yea, I’m as good as Peter or my name isn’t Judas.”

If Judas ever had those thoughts, he was counting on Christ grading on the curve. He doesn’t. His Word is the standard for goodness.

However, men want to compare themselves with others since they experienced that during their school days. They always wanted the teacher or professor to grade on a curve. The curve mentality is still with us in the spiritual or religious world.

The curve is often used in academia but not in the real world. In the real world, the curve is a disaster.

What if student pilots were graded on a curve? The top ten percent of the class are chosen by ABC Airlines but none of the group is qualified to fly! The airline hired the “best” but who wants to fly with them?

Man has a responsibility to God (to worship, attend church, work hard, help the poor, study the Bible, obey the laws of God and man, love people, follow instructions, etc.), so an honorable person will fulfill his responsibility to God whom he loves. He is overwhelmed with gratitude toward a loving God for providing an eternal salvation after a lifetime of peace, purpose, and a perfect plan for his life, even through rough times. Wow, that’s winning here and hereafter!

Whatever one’s lot in life, whether great or small, he will be held to an account one day. Few people understand that and order their lives in that way. Few are committed to duty, a four-letter word not heard any more–or practiced. C. S. Lewis said it well, “When the Lord returns, it matters not whether we are in a great crusade to free the slaves or whether we are tending the pigs. The important thing is that we would be found at our posts.”

It doesn’t matter if you are preaching or slopping hogs (for liberal preachers, not much difference); writing books or tilling fields; doing brain surgery or clerking in a store–are you at your post?

How much better this world would be if we spent as much time being good as we do looking good. Of course, being good as defined by God.

But mankind meanders merrily through life with Frank Sinatra’s mindless boast on their lips, “I did it my way.” but your way is the wrong way and always ends up in the wrong place.

Don’t count on God grading on a curve. If you do, your final grade will be F and F is for failure, folly, futility, and finality.

And you’ll never get to “take the test” again.

Boys’ new book Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! was published by Barbwire Books; to get your copy, click here. An eBook edition is also available.

Those who are Bible-oriented and Bible-directed have problems with her chosen life of perversion. Yes, I could have been less direct and offensive but some slow readers would not have comprehended my message which is Bible-sourced in Rom. 1:26: “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.” The Bible teaches that when a person comes to Christ, he or she is a new person. Old things pass away and everything becomes new. New includes a bed partner of the opposite sex to whom one has made a lifetime commitment in marriage, or no bed partner.

From my limited reading about her, she seems to be very sincere and very dedicated to helping the displaced, the discouraged, and the diseased. All very commendable, but the social gospel (where social work is emphasized and the true Gospel is eliminated) has never worked, is not working now, and will never work. It will serve some helpless, hopeless, and hapless people but such activities did not take my grandmother or “Mother” Teresa to Heaven and good works won’t help Sara.

That said, my big concern is her “conversion” experience. Now, all conversion experiences are not identical; however there are some common denominators: the risen Christ; the Word of God; repentance; and belief. It doesn’t have to be in church with an organ playing and the choir singing “Just as I am” but it does have to be a New Birth experience. If not, there is no conversion. Sara gives no indication of such a Bible experience. In fact, she said that “Salvation is not an experience; it is a journey.” False! The New Birth is comparable to the physical birth and all birth certificates have a name, place, time, and parents listed. Rather definite like the New Birth. Both births are the starting point of a new life.

Sara wrote, “Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I’d scorned and work I’d never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not a symbolic wafer but actual food—indeed, the bread of life.” What a twisted understanding of the Gospel. There is no salvation in a ritual. It is the old Roman Catholic heresy of the bread and wine actually becoming the body of Christ. A reviewer of Sara’s book, Take this Bread: A Radical Conversion, wrote, “But she ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed.” Afraid not. She became a doer of good but that is not salvation. Good works proceed from the New Birth; they do not produce the New Birth.

In The Jesus Freak: Feeding Healing Raising the Dead (Rob Bell said: “one of the most inspiring books I’ve ever read.”) she writes, “that Jesus has given us the power to be Jesus.” No, He gives us power to live so that we remind people of Him. Such godly living would determine our sleeping arrangements. Christians cannot become “little gods” or “human Christs.” Such teaching is heresy. Sara continues her heresy when she wrote: “You have the authority to forgive sins. Raise the dead.” No, that is not true. No human can forgive sins, only God does that. Additionally, Christ gave authority to the Apostles that He did not give to other followers. And none of her Episcopal or Catholic fiends are raising the dead either.

She compares John the Baptist (calling him a “nutcase”) to an unwashed guy with “skanky dreadlocks” sleeping at the library entrance. She shows no understanding or appreciation for the local church that Christ died for.

One reviewer wrote, “Sara Miles shows genuine transformation and her life has clearly been changed. Repentance in the Bible is often NOT about contrition but about ‘metanoia’ which means ‘to live in a new direction.’ Miles seems to display this in clear and meaningful ways as a part of her conversion and encounter with Christ.” The shallowness is appalling. Yes, there was a change in her life. She stopped being an atheist but that commendable change did not make her a Christian. When a person becomes a Christian, change follows that experience.

Furthermore, the reviewer’s differentiation between repentance and contrition is bogus. Paul clearly wrote in II Cor. 7:10 “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation.” Repentance is a change of mind and heart that results in a reverse of direction. It means “to change one’s mind, repent, a fundamental change of character.”

Christianity Today, in a review, was unable to be judgmental about Sara’s conversion and her subsequent lifestyle; however, it can be very judgmental about Fundamentalists! It reported, “Miles became pregnant. She and the father, Bob, another journalist, settled in San Francisco, where their daughter Katie was born. Here Miles’s life took on a new domesticity, rooted in one place. Bob, ‘who had come out as a gay man,’ lived nearby. And Miles and Katie…began to share their home with Martha, an editor with whom Miles had fallen in love.”

The review continues, “But it would be a shame if such lapses kept evangelicals from reading Miles, who has no doubt been at the receiving end of plenty of caricatures (not least, the preposterous claim that living arrangements such as hers constitute a great threat to ‘the family’).” Yeah, a real shame.

So, Christianity Today recommends her books and even defends her lesbianism (although characterizing such as “lapses”) saying it is “preposterous” that such a life could be a threat to “the family.” I wonder if the magazine could muster up enough courage to declare that such a life is not conducive to a normal, Christian family? Does the magazine recommend that homosexuality be accepted and recognized as normal? Just asking.

Maybe someday CT will acquire enough biblical certainty, courage, convictions, and candor to make a judgment about sin even if it agitates, angers and alienates their subscribers.