Christianity Explored

The following are two excerpts from an interview with a funny British guy named Rico Tice. Rico has developed a course called "Christianity Explored" that intends to introduce non-Christians to what we believe. If this whets your appetite, the whole interview, "Using the Gospel to share the Gospel," is certainly worth reading.

I have to understand that God loved Jesus, but also at the cross God was punishing Jesus for my sin; that is how serious my sin is. And I will spend eternity in hell paying for my sin if I reject the death of Jesus. And particularly, I think the battle is to persuade people that right at the heart of sin is not believing in Jesus.

Now I have two nephews, Dolton and Patrick, and they’re lovely little boys. If they walked into the room now and you ignored them, cut them down, or were unpleasant to them in any way, we’d be enemies. We must get people to understand that they may think they are living thoroughly pleasant lives, but in holding God’s Son at a distance when he sent him to die makes them God’s enemy. It’s the heart of sin. We find in England ... we really don’t have a big enough view of sin. It takes weeks to persuade people that sin is the problem. We’re saying to people, “Jesus didn’t come for good people but for bad people” so the qualification for being a Christian is not are you good enough, but are you bad enough? Jesus said, “I didn’t come for the righteous, but for sinners.” And if they still think they’re okay, we say let’s look at Mark chapter 7. And see that the heart, Mark 7 in verse 20, is a fountain of evil. It’s what’s within us, and no good work can cover up. That would be like using a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.

And ...

What I do want to say, though, is that we are absolutely unashamed of the Bible. So from week one we say, look, Christianity is Christ, and it’s Christ as he walks off the pages of Mark’s Gospel. So what I am asking people to have the courage to do is say, Look, we are going to have a look at a Gospel. Please ask any question you want, but we want to give you the authentic document.

Now if I were investigating Islam and I was looking at the Muslim faith, I’d want to look at the Koran myself. I’d want to form my own opinion. So I think unashamedly I’d say to a neighbor, pray that they’re spiritually hungry, but say that we’re all going to be looking at Mark’s Gospel. There’s an English guy on video, and we’re going to get the talk from him, but there is going to be a bit of a study of Mark.
I have one story I need to tell. In week 2, we look at the passage in Mark 2 about the paralytic. About four years ago there was a photographer in the group. He was nowhere spiritually. He said, as we looked at Mark 2:1–12, “So this boy is paralyzed because of his sin.” Now, there was another man in the group, an atheistic doctor, who had come only because he was in love with a Christian girl who said she would have nothing to do with him unless he was a Christian! After this photographer made his comment, this atheistic doctor looked down and said, “No, I don’t think that is what it’s about.” He said, “I think Mark is saying that Jesus can forgive sin because Jesus is God.” He looked up and said, “I can’t believe I just said that.”

MH: He got caught up in the story.

RT: He was just looking at the story and saying, “What do I think this means?” It’s very exciting. The questions with the material are there to draw this out.