The {Pop-Up} Story of Redemption

When the first Russian cosmonaut went up into space {1961}, he came down and said, "My atheism has been confirmed. I went up in space, I looked around, and I didn't see any God." Shortly thereafter, C.S. Lewis wrote a little essay, commenting, "If there is a God who created everything, that god would not relate to us the way a person on the second story relates to a person on the first story. God would relate to us the way Shakespeare relates to Hamlet. Hamlet's never going to find anything out about Shakespeare by going upstairs or backstage. The only way Hamlet's ever going to know anything about Shakespeare is if Shakespeare writes information about himself into the play—revelation."

Christianity asserts that not only did God provide revelation {the Bible}, but he went so far as to insert himself into the story. He looked at the mess we had made of the world he had created, and instead of closing the book, he wrote himself into the midst of that mess. Despite his right to be a comfortable observer, he subjected himself to being one of us and with us in the story, experiencing suffering, torture, and death to change the ending.

Tim Keller, C.S. Lewis