Am I wrong?

I have a friend (I can't prove it) who has a website where he talks about Christian stuff and he gets Christians and non-Christians posting comments etc. I'm kind of jealous. The thing is, as you know, that I love a good discussion/debate or whatever you call dialoging about debatable things. It challenges me, and I suppose there's that little person inside of me that needs to feel like I know what I believe and why. Also, I sell radio ads, so I spend a lot of time selling, negotiating and persuading and it tends to come out in my non-work life.

Here is my formal request to please challenge me on what I believe. My passion in life is studying, following and telling others good news, I mean, THE Good News. Have I told you yet? 2000 years ago God came to the earth as a human, named Jesus. His Hebrew name is Yeshua, which would be Joshua in English speaking countries (I just learned that - pretty interesting, huh?). Jesus came to offer his life as a sacrifice for our sins so that our souls can go to heaven and be with our creator -- because we are too messed up to ever do enough good to make up for the bad we do. The conscience we have that we especially notice when we do something wrong comes from God. The fear of death and our desire for eternal life comes from God. The Good News is that we don't have to worry about doing more good than bad to live forever with God. The Good News is that Jesus paid for our sins (our past sins and future sins) by giving up his perfect life for us. God chose to live the most lowly, humble and persecuted life as a human and die a horrible death so that we would be reconciled with him forever. All we have to do is live for God -- acknowledge that we are not the ruler of our lives and acknowledge that God is. Accept his sacrifice and stop trying to "work our way to heaven".

This sums up what I believe to be true... it's an oversimplified, stream-of-conscious "statement of faith" but I think I'm saying enough to fire up any dissenters out there.

18-21The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It's written, I'll turn conventional wisdom on its head, I'll expose so-called experts as crackpots.So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.

1 Corinthians 1:18 (The Message) The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson