My brief embarrassment is a trifle compared to the unfortunate scenario described in a book on life choices I once read. The author introduced the common “climbing the ladder of success” metaphor, then asked, “What if, when you got to the top of the ladder, you discovered that you had it leaned against the wrong wall?” Your past choices seemed right, reasonable, and filled with promise when you made them, but now looking back, you feel foolish. What do you do? Can you start over this late in the game? How do you reclaim your best years or the resources spent making that errant ascent?
Would it have made any difference if that elevator had been filled with other passengers who, like me, faced the wrong way? Would there be any comfort in knowing that many others had their ladders leaned against the same wrong wall? Your embarrassment might be lessened, your choices given a modicum of justification, but the outcome with its consequences, though shared, is yours alone to address.
The Bible teaches that “it is appointed to a man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” You leaned your ladder on the wall of atheism, then upon departing this life, discovered that it had been leaned against the wrong wall. What the Bible teaches is that there is no going back, no “do over.” “Not so!” say those who have leaned their ladder on the belief that we die and come back many times. From their ladder it seems plausible but for the lack of valid proof. Perhaps you believe that there is no wrong wall, that each of us has a wall right for us on which we can lean our ladder. That certainly is a popular belief today that seems very agreeable from where we stand on our ladders. The proof will be what happens when we die.
Christ Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me.” In our life-ladder scenario, he is saying that he is the only wall against which we must lean our ladders if we hope to stand before God as a child before his Father, not as the condemned before his Judge. Christ bore the judgment for those who will trust in him alone. Lean on him.
