Is it a Sin to be Weird?

Asperger's/Autism, Ministry, Others' stuff, Insights
A Classic Illustration of Sin Obsession.
And its cure.

This was a post in a social media group for autistic Christians. Most of the Christians whose posts I read in that group are Evangelicals, and the discussion is very often about ‘sin’. What is a sin, what is not a sin, what is forgiven, when is it not forgiven, what about the ‘unforgivable sin’, all that sort of thing.

In some ways, this is a typical absolutist autistic comment in a faith already recognised for its black-and-white thinking and attitudes, and which is probably not helped by the group being autistic people; one common trait among autistic people is that of black-and-white thinking, which doevetails nicely with culty Evangelical thinking. But still the principle holds: sin-obsession, even to the point of being worried that an aspect of one’s personality is in and of itself a ‘sin’, sin-obsession itself is a very real problem and is a major trip hazard for neurodivergent and neurotypical people alike when it comes to their faith walk. And so, even neurotypicals among my readership may gain some benefit from considering this question with me today.

Nevertheless, the post was genuine, and reflected to me the heart cry of a person who is struggling with ‘sin’ and also struggling with his uniqueness in his autism. As autistic, neurodivergent people, we are different – different from non-autistic (neurotypical (NT) people) – but we are also different from each other. No two autistic people have the same wiring in their brains, despite them both being autistic. To be autistic is, in many ways, to be alone with your uniqueness. Personally, I actually like being like that, but many autistic people struggle with it. And I get that. But, in short, we are all weird; each of us uniquely so.

Of course, there are no Bible verses about ‘weirdness’, nor about it being a ‘sin’. In fact, the Bible is actually strangely non-specific about ‘sin’ in its pages; rarely is a particular action or behaviour identified as ‘sinful’, and in fact the whole concept of ‘sin’ is not clearly explained at all.

But anyway, I saw here an opportunity to encourage the original poster (the ‘OP’), as did others in the group. All of the answers that expressed an opinion said that ‘No’, it is not a ‘sin’ to be weird. I especially liked a comment where the person said,

“No Bible verse, but I’m coming here to say that “weird” is needed to be a space for other “weird” people to be welcoming and connected to as they embrace one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. We are a spectrum of humanity, and I think God loves that! And when Jesus came here, he was beyond “weird” in terms of not conforming to what was expected of Him at the time. It got Him crucified. So weird in itself, no not a sin as long as your weird isn’t to sin”.

And so that person kind of turned it around, from it being a sin to be weird, to saying that the only sin would be if your weirdness made you sin. Or something like that. And also, more importantly, gave it a positive feel by giving it a context of humanity. Very nicely done!

But, naturally, I, with of course my own brand of autism, noted that the emphasis in people’s comments was, while rightly being on the question itself, was also quite heavily on ‘sin’ too[1], which, as we know, is pretty typical for sin-obsessed Christians. And so I thought I’d put in my two penn’orth, with an emphasis on freedom from the worry of sin and the benefit of that mindset. Unlike my normal practice, I also gave quite a few Scripture references[2]. This was because a) the OP asked for Bible verses; and b) I was fully aware that my audience would comprise many people who would need Scripture verses for every. damn. thing. else they wouldn’t listen. Plus, the teaching I gave was the sort of thing that is hard for many Christians to accept (e.g. Jn 6:60; 2Pet 3:16), and so, the more I could back it up with Scripture, the more they’d benefit from it. I also phrased it to make it clear that although I have some solid ideas, I too am on a learning journey. At least, I hope that’s how it came across, anyway. Here’s what I wrote:

Is it a Sin to be Weird? 

No. It’s not. And there doesn’t need to be a Bible verse for that!

However, let me give you, as a Bible verse, a possible interpretation of Hebrews 12:1, ‘Let us throw off the sin that so easily entangles…’.

I now interpret that to mean that it’s not the sin itself that entangles, like addiction or compulsive behaviour or similar. That is part of it, yes. But my current understanding of that passage – which understanding may not be for everyone, I appreciate – is that it is the obsession with sin itself that is the entanglement. (There is actually a modern translation – the Mirror Translation – that translates it like this: “As with an athlete who is determined to win, it would be silly to carry any baggage of the old law-system that would weigh one down. Make sure you do not get your feet clogged up with sin-consciousness.”)[3] And by this, I mean that if we are sin-conscious all the time, then there is no room in our hearts for the ‘focus your thoughts on things above’ (Col 3:2), nor for the ‘Whatever is true, noble…think on these things’ (Phil 4:8).

Focusing on these higher things, especially according to the Colossians verse (Col 3:2) is our privilege and indeed our right, resulting as it does from our position as people raised up in Christ and seated with Him in heavenly places. Being sin-conscious – being constantly fretting about whether we are sinning or not in any particular situation – is one of the main things that cripples Christians from walking in the Spirit; such people are so sin-conscious that there is no room for them to be Christ-conscious. The verse ‘consider yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus’ (Rom 6:11) is referring to exactly that. We were made to walk free in the forgiveness of the Cross: all sin, past, present and future is forgiven. That’s what ‘It is finished!’ (John 19:30) means, and it’s also what ‘I will remember their sin no more’ (Heb 8:12) means too.

So the question is not so much, ‘Is [insert action of choice] a sin?’, but more ‘Where are we going together today, Jesus?’. One is a set of rules. The other is a way of life. I know which way I’d rather go.

Actually, on further consideration, there actually are a couple of Bible verses for you, on the back of what I wrote above. The first is the classic Romans 8:1, that “…there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”. If you are in Christ Jesus – and remember that it is God Who has placed you in Christ (2Cor 1:21), not you, so that’s a relief! – then there is no condemnation for you. So whether ‘being weird’ is a sin or not, that’s not the point any more; the point is that no matter what, if you are in Christ then there’s no condemnation. The second verse is in Romans 14:17, that the Kingdom of God is not about food or drink, but about righteousness, peace and joy in the Spirit.

Again, as I said above, being part of the Kingdom is not about following rules – “do not handle! do not taste! Do not touch!” (Col 2:21) but about what we already have in Christ. All that a sin preoccupation does is to distract from, and dilute, who we are in Christ!

Do you see the contrast? Rules about unclean food and things are the old wineskin; freedom in Christ is about realising the righteousness we already have in Christ, the peace that He gives, and the joy of the Holy Spirit. It’s life in a different dimension; rather than living to please the Law and follow its rules, we leave all that behind and just live for Him. And that’s why the old wineskin will burst; it cannot contain a freedom as huge as that!

People sometimes ask me (usually in an accusatory tone!), ‘So then, do you still sin?’ And my answer is invariably, ‘I don’t know! It’s been a while since I looked!’ I’m too caught up with following Jesus to worry about that. That’s why He set me free from it, so I could follow Him without having to worry about things like that. That’s what ‘freedom from sin’ actually means. If God has forgotten my sins (Jer 31:34, Heb 8:12), then why should I dredge them back up again?

And by walking in the Spirit, not thinking about sin or being concerned by it, that means that I do not fulfill the desires of the flesh (Gal 5:16). Walking in the freedom of the children of God (Rom 8:21) means that sin is no longer a problem because I am dead to it; conversely, I am however alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rom 6:11), hallelujah! It is Grace that teaches us to say no to ungodly desires (Titus 2:11-12) and by walking in that Grace which includes the free gift of God’s perpetual forgiveness (Jude 24), sin is no longer our natural way of life. A new heart He has given us! (Ez 36:26; 2Cor 5:17)

Well, that’s what I said. So far, no-one has reacted in any way to the post, but as usual I am not discouraged by this! The people who needed to see it; those who needed to hear its message, will have done so and will have been blessed. In fact, I would estimate that some people are afraid to react positively in public to that sort of teaching, because it’s not exactly mainstream with regards to the belief structures of the group as a whole. And that’s ok. It is nevertheless a viewpoint that is fuly supported by Scripture, and, for those who have the ears to hear, it will be a source of great blessing.

And, of course, there’s you, my readers, seeing this here today. Only when I stand before Him will I know how many people have been helped by what I shared with the autistic brother that day, and by my re-sharing it on here.

Grace and Peace to you all!

I haven’t included this article in the series, ‘The Problems of Evangelicalism‘, because ‘sin-fixation’ isn’t a problem which is confined only to that branch of Christianity. It features heavily in it, of course, but it’s pretty widespread in the faith as a whole. So I thought I’d leave it more open than just saying this is an Evangelical quirk; it’s not.

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Yes, I do realise that ‘sin’ was part of the question and therefore valid for comment!
⇧2 Hopefully, that wasn’t proof-texting, because I wasn’t trying to prove things, just to support. Proof texting is where someone rips a verse out of context in order to force a point of view; this was much more gentle than that. But I’ll let you be the judge!
⇧3 Hence my use of an athlete sprinting, as my header picture!

Spring Forward, Fall Back

Humour, Personal
By the time you read this, it might be too late!

If you went to church this morning, you may well have noticed some regular congregants sneaking in at the back about an hour after they would normally have arrived. They’ll have been looking quite sheepish, I’d have thought.

In fact, you may even have been one of those sheepish people yourself; you’ll know by now why this happened, and this post is indeed too late for you!

My apologies for being completely unhelpful. 😉

Last night, (or, more accurately, this morning at 02:00), daylight saving time came into effect here in the UK; the clocks went forwards by an hour. This means that everyone who forgot about this annual event[1] will have been running an hour late today until they realised what was going on. Spring Forward, Fall Back. In the Spring, you move the clocks forwards an hour. In Fall (autumn) you move them back an hour. Nice and simple, or so you’d have thought!

When I led Sunday worship on a weekly basis, at my old church in Leeds, on that last weekend in March there were always some people who came in an hour late. Always! I was usually strongly tempted to welcome them by name, as they tried to sneak in unobserved at the back[2], and even maybe invite them to come and sit at the front like naughty schoolchildren 🤣 Believe me, the temptation was almost irresistible![3]

Despite the ‘lost’ hour, depleting our precious weekend by sixty irreplaceable minutes (you’ll see why they were ‘irreplaceable’ in a minute!), we were never once treated to an hour’s shorter sermon[4] on one of these Spring Forward weekends. Or even no sermon at all! But of course that never happened either.

And what makes it even funnier is what happened at the other end of the year, in the autumn, (usually the last weekend in October) when the clocks go back an hour so you get to spend an extra hour in bed if that’s what you want to do. Or, maybe you might want to take things a little easier on the Sunday because, if you think about it, you’ll actually be going to bed an hour later that evening and you’ll be wondering why you feel tired!

But not with our church. Oh, no. In our church, on the ‘Fall Back’ weekend, we were ‘invited’ to turn up an hour early for church, so as to be able to engage in an hour-long prayer meeting before the main service. The idea was to ‘redeem the hour in the Name of the Lord’, for goodness’ sake[5]. You’ve got an extra hour to spare (a huge assumption at the best of times!), so, then, why not come and join our prayer meeting!

Now in some ways that would be fair enough. Spend an hour in the presence of God, in the company of fellow believers, and all that.[6]

But my problem with it was that yes, let’s spend that hour in a prayer meeting, but then why not return the favour in six months’ time by, as I said above, reducing or even removing the sermon so as to pay us back? Now there’s an idea! That really appealed to my sense of fair play, if I’m honest; at least, it would have done had they actually done it. But they didn’t, of course! 😂This is Religion we are talking about here! Novel, inventive or original thought is not, generally, a feature of the Religious mindset.

Still, at least in a sermon of over an hour’s duration, and considering that we’d all had one hour’s less sleep on the previous night, we still might have got the chance to recover that lost extra hour’s sleep that we’d forfeited those six months previously….

As long as the beady-eyed pastor doesn’t spot you, anyway! 🤣

Grace and Peace to you!

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Some might argue it’s a biannual event, but it’s not; I’m only talking there about the clocks going forwards in the Spring!
⇧2 Of course, as the meeting leader I was always facing towards the back, so I spotted them coming in even if no-one else did!
⇧3 There was a dear couple in that church, with whom I am still in regular contact, and they were notorious for never being on time for anything. They were reliable in terms of attendance, in that they rarely missed a meeting, but they were always late. For everything. And they still are. They are very dear to me, and they often come down to Devon on holiday, so we invariably arrange to meet up. And they are always at least 20 minutes late at our pre-arranged rendezvous. For us, if someone in the church asked us before a meeting, “Are [the couple’s names] coming today?, my reply would usually be, “Yes; if they haven’t arrived yet, that means they’re coming!”
⇧4 Anyone who has been to an Evangelical church on a regular basis will know that in some instances, sermons can last over an hour. It’s enough to make one believe in Hell 😉
⇧5 As if God lives to a strict timetable…
⇧6 And to be really fair, I actually enjoyed prayer meetings; the sense of God’s presence was really strong there – as it should be! – and in fact I used to go to a weekly early-morning prayer meeting at 0600 on a Monday morning in Otley, a town a few miles from my house (I got a lift there with another church member  who went there regularly too). At a certain point in the meeting, I would get up and leave in order to go to the bus station, which was just around the corner, to get the first bus into Leeds City Centre where I worked.

Thinking In The Box – Reblog

Insights, Humour
This entry is part 23 of 23 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

Eight years ago, I published this essay about how Evangelical Christians can’t seem to ‘think outside the box’. Because I have an upcoming essay on how Evangelical Christian leaders seem unable to answer perfectly reasonable questions[1], I thought that, in preparation for the publication of that essay (in a couple of weeks’ time), I would whet your appetite with this little gem. Enjoy!

About twenty years ago, my lovely wife Fiona was making enquiries about going to a Bible week[2] – can’t remember whether it was Stoneleigh or New Wine, or even something else – and she was going to go with her friend Yvonne. In the end, they didn’t go, for whatever reason.

Anyway, as part of the ‘registration’ process, there was a couple of pages of Rules. Like, please keep quiet after 10:00pm, no cars allowed on site after initial unloading, no alcohol, please don’t block the toilets, that sort of thing.

One of the Rules, though, was a bit of a Legalism thing. Bearing in mind that, at the time, I had just begun my major detoxification-from-Fundagelicalism event which lasted fifteen years, so it was a bit of a trigger…

This particular Rule was that no unmarried, mixed couples were allowed to share a tent.

So, I guess if you’d wanted to go along with your fiancé/fiancée, forget it: it’s separate tents or no dice.

Quite who was going to police this Rule (and how they were going to do it) was not specified 😉

Anyway, I simply couldn’t resist it. I wrote to their admin people and asked if it was alright if I and my gay partner were allowed to share a tent, despite not being married (I don’t think gay marriage/civil partnerships were even a thing back then!) pointing out that given the Rules as written, we would still be ok as we were a same-sex couple/unmarried, rather than a mixed couple/unmarried..

No reply was forthcoming.

And so I wrote to them again expressing disappointment that my question had not been taken seriously/answered, and emphasising that because we were not a mixed couple, we would be abiding by the Rules and therefore where’s the problem?

Still no response.

I wonder why.

Maybe those religious people were in a ‘box’, perchance?

Still, that lack of any response was a great help for me in my deconstruction, illustrating that not only were such Rules ‘doctrines made by men’ (Mt 15:9) but also that, when it really came down to it, nobody in those religious groups ever think things through to their logical conclusions, probably because they’re not allowed to.

I still laugh about it now, of course. And it makes an excellent after-dinner joke amongst like-minded believers 😉

Here’s a link to New Wine’s website. At the time of the publication of my original essay eight years ago, thir camping events were called ‘United’, and I doubt it bore any reference to any football team. It’s more likely to mean that you had to fit in in order to be allowed to go 😉

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 As I write this, that essay is in draft, and I am performing an experiment and narrating it in real time. So the essay can’t be published until the experiment is concluded! All will be made clear in a couple of weeks!
⇧2 For those who don’t know, a Bible Week is a sort of Christian rally where thousands of Evangelical (usually) Christians have like a camping week, usually at an agricultural showground (because of good space and facilities). It’s usually in the summer, and it usually rains. The program normally goes something like this. Mornings: workshops and/or seminars where people can attend teaching sessions or learn basket-making. Or how to lead worship or write songs, as if people can do that without the proper gifting… Usually the workshops are quite arty-farty things and very rarely anything scientific (of course), although one I went to in 1984 (Festival ’84) at Staffordshire County Showground did, uniquely, have a workshop on Amateur Radio, which led me on to eventually qualifying as a Radio Amateur; Afternoons: Free to roam the surrounding area just like normal tourists; Evenings: An extended worship and sermon session (very much like a long Charismatic church service, which is not normally as bad as it sounds. In fact, they were good fun (although the sermons were usually boring) and we always used to learn lots of great new songs there. Then, after a week of that, its pack up your tent and join the traffic jam to get off the site. That’s a Bible week.

Twisting the Scripture

Insights, Others' stuff
This entry is part 22 of 23 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism
How Evangelicalism twists Scripture in order to support its most evil doctrine

One of the favourite things that modern-day Pharisees, the hard-hearted religious types, love to do is to trot out various Scripture passages that apparently justify their hard-line viewpoints, while at the same time belittling those they have a beef with by claiming that their victims’ faith is somehow ‘wrong’.

Scriptures like ‘…the whole counsel of God’ (Acts 20:27), ‘Many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord…’ ‘ (Mt 7:22), and, ironically, ‘Preaching another Gospel’ (Gal 1:8)[1] and, specifically for this present essay, ‘Twisting the Scripture to their own destruction’ (2Pet 3:16). These ‘Pharisees'[2] love to accuse people, with whom they have Biblical disagreements[3], of ‘twisting the Scripture’. I mean, who’s to say who is twisting it? Who’s to say who’s ‘right’, if indeed anyone is? Anyone could twist any Scripture, and to accuse someone else of doing it means the assumption that a) there is a ‘right’ way of reading a Scripture, and b) that person doing the ‘twisting’ accusation is assuming that they have the (only) correct interpretation! Well there are methods for exegeting (determining the meaning of) Scripture verses, and context is one of the main tools used by serious Bible readers to determine that exegesis.

When misused by these Pharisees, most of those oft-misused Scripture verses mentioned above are not only twisted out of their contexts but are also simply quoted by rote, by NPCs,[4] without any regard for their context, their relevance, and without any useful explanation for their use.[5] And, in any case, no-one – myself included – has the right to accuse anyone else of not believing ‘the right thing’. When it comes to the things of God, we are all of us on a learning journey and, while I am sure many of us have some good insight, none of us really knows anything for sure – at least not to the extent that our beliefs give us the right to impose our beliefs on others, nor the right to accuse others of believing ‘another gospel’ or other such nonsense. And accusations of incorrect exegesis are simply another way in which the modern Pharisees misuse the Bible to harm others.

The reason that this essay is included in my series on the Problems of Evangelicalism is that this sort of thing is rife within the ranks of Evangelicalism. And so, I am here giving an example of how a Scripture passage can be twisted and then accepted without any thought by other believers, and used to create and support Evangelicalism’s most evil doctrine – the diabolical concept of humans suffering everlasting, conscious fiery torture in Hell if they die without ‘coming to Jesus’. This doctrine is known as the doctrine of ‘Eternal Conscious Torment’ and I will abbreviate it to ECT for the purposes of this essay[6]. I have written reams on this subject before; suffice it to say that I do not believe in such a place nor in such a fate for most of humanity – or indeed for any of it.

The Scripture passage in question, then, is the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus[7], found in Luke 16:19-31[8]. And the reason I chose that passage is because that is probably the main Scripture that supposedly informs and supports the ECT doctrine. There are others, but that’s the main one. This Scripture really has to be twisted in order to generate the ECT doctrine from that parable – and how they excuse their twisting is that they claim that it’s not actually a parable, but is a true story. Believe it or not, that’s what they do! The reason for this is that they acknowledge that a parable should not be taken literally, so in order to accept the Rich Man and Lazarus passage as being literal, they have to claim that it’s not actually a parable. Makes sense in a way. And, in doing this, they have indeed ‘twisted the Scripture to their own destruction’ as well as, diabolically, the destruction of others as well.

And so, in response to all this, I would like to give you a few reasons – evidence if you like – why it is plain, to me at least, that this passage of Scripture is indeed a parable, and from that evidence you can then decide for yourself if it should be taken literally or not, and therefore whether or not they are twisting that Scripture in order to make it fit into their proofs for the ECT doctrine. I hope that makes sense.

The first argument for this passage being a parable is from Scripture itself. In Matthew 13:10-13, it says, “The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” [Jesus] replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables:

‘Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand’ “.

In the entire context of the Rich Man and Lazarus story, in Luke chapters 14 to 16, Jesus is teaching a mixed audience; crowds comprised both of His disciples, and of people who were not His disciples. Even though, then, the ‘Parable of the shrewd manager’ at the start of Luke 16 begins with the words, ‘Jesus told His disciples…’, there were also Pharisees present (and likely others too) who were also listening to the story (Lk 16:14) – and Jesus knew they were listening[9]. And this therefore strongly suggests that He was speaking in parables at that point, because His disciples were not the only people who were listening. Even just looking at the mode of speech that Jesus was using there is evidence that the stories He was telling were used figuratively – parables – in that section of Scripture. And there is no contextual reason to suppose that all of a sudden, by the time we reach the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, that Jesus had ‘switched mode’ and was suddenly telling a factual story and not a parable. This is a section of mixed teachings including parables and non-parables; even Evangelical hardliners agree that the story parts of the written account are all parables, except for when it comes to the Rich Man and Lazarus story, simply because they don’t want to admit that it is a parable.

That’s the first point.

Secondly, I recently read an excellent piece by my online friend Andy May, where he looks at the Rich Man and Lazarus story and explains why it cannot be a story which is meant to be taken literally – i.e. it’s a parable. Here’s what he wrote:

Why the Rich Man and Lazarus Cannot Be Literal

If you insist that the story of the rich man and Lazarus is literal history rather than a parable, you inherit a set of theological conclusions that contradict the rest of Scripture, the character of God, and even basic moral reasoning.

Here’s why the literal reading collapses under its own weight.

1. A literal reading teaches salvation by socioeconomic status, not by faith.

In the story:
– The rich man is never described as wicked.
– Lazarus is never described as righteous.

If literal, the message becomes:
– Rich → hell
– Poor → heaven

This is not Christianity.

It’s fatalistic classism.

It contradicts Abraham, Job, Joseph of Arimathea, and every biblical teaching on salvation[10].

If your interpretation makes Abraham—the wealthy patriarch—someone who would be damned under his own system, your interpretation is broken.

2. Abraham becomes cold, unmerciful, and unrecognizable.

In the literal reading, Abraham refuses to give the rich man even a drop of water.
That means:
– Abraham shows no compassion
– Abraham denies mercy
– Abraham refuses even minimal relief
– Abraham endorses eternal suffering

This is not the Abraham of Scripture.

It is not the God of Scripture.

It is not the gospel.

If your interpretation requires Abraham to behave like a villain, the interpretation—not Abraham—is the problem.

3. The saved must watch the damned suffer forever.

In the literal reading, Lazarus and Abraham can see and hear the rich man’s agony.
That means heaven includes:
– Watching people burn
– Hearing their screams
– Feeling nothing about it

This is not a biblical picture of heaven.

It is a moral nightmare.

If your doctrine requires the righteous to enjoy the sight of eternal torture, your doctrine is not coming from Jesus.

4. The story uses impossible imagery, proving it is symbolic.

Literalists must explain:
– How people in heaven and hell converse across a cosmic canyon
– How souls have tongues, fingers, and bodies before the resurrection
– How Lazarus is physically carried by angels
– Why the damned can request errands from the saved

These are narrative devices, not metaphysics.

Jesus also speaks of:
– Logs in eyes
– Camels through needles
– Trees thrown into fire
– People swallowing camels

No one insists those are literal.

Why insist this one is?

5. The story fits perfectly into Jesus’ parable pattern and Luke’s themes.

It begins like a parable.

It uses reversal imagery like a parable.

It uses symbolic names like a parable.

It delivers a moral warning like a parable.

The only reason to deny it’s a parable is to protect a doctrine—ECT—that the story itself does not actually teach.

6. A literal reading destroys the moral message.

If literal, the message becomes:
– You had comfort in life, so now you burn forever.
– You had suffering in life, so now you’re rewarded.
– And no one will help you because you deserve it.

That is not justice.

That is not mercy.

That is not the gospel.

That is not Jesus.

The parable makes sense only as a warning about indifference, not as a map of the afterlife.

Conclusion

If you insist the story is literal, you must accept that:
– Wealth damns
– Poverty saves
– Abraham is cruel
– Heaven includes watching torture
– No mercy exists
– No repentance is possible
– No relief is allowed
– God endorses eternal suffering without compassion

If that is the theology you want to defend, then you are not defending Scripture—you are defending a doctrine at the expense of Scripture.

The parable reading is the only one that preserves:
– the character of God
– the integrity of Jesus’ teaching
– the coherence of the gospel
– and the moral logic of the story

 – Andy May, shared with his kind permission

I would also like to add these follow-on thoughts too. Literalists would also need to explain how the story can be read as if it were intended to be true, when Jewish thought at the time was that the dead go to ‘rest with their fathers’ (e.g. 2Chr 33:20, 1Ki 16:28), in the place called Sheol (e.g. Ps 16:10) – the abode of the dead; the grave or the ‘pit’ – which was thought of as the shadowy world of nothingness where the dead await the final Resurrection. The whole idea of Hell as a place of torment[11] was not an accepted part of Jewish thought at the time. Here’s my essay on why this is apparent from Scripture. And how would Jesus have been able to say with any authority what happens to people when they die, given that at this time He was still subject to human limitations and not all-knowing despite being God in the flesh? (e.g. Mt 24:36) Given that His listeners did not know anything about Jesus’s true nature, they would never in any way have expected Him to talk about any afterlife ideas, as if they were truth, with any real credibility. They would have had no reason to imagine that He’d do that. And even if they did think that He was telling them ‘what really happens after death’, then why did His listeners not question Him about this; after all, everyone wants to know what happens when you die! If this hadn’t been a parable, they would have questioned Him as to where He got His facts from, as well as asking after the source of all that knowledge about after-death experiences! No, this was never intended to be taken as a true story, and the listeners at the time knew that full well. This argument is a great example of what is known as ‘cultural and historical context’, where factors outside the actual written text are taken into account[12].

Another time, I wrote a short piece to try to explain to a sincere questioner about this parable, where he was asking why Luke 16 should not be used as a proof-text for the existence of a literal, fiery Hell. Here’s what I wrote:

[My friend], I think the thing with this passage in Luke 16:19-31 is that it has always been used as a ‘proof-text’ for Hell, because of the vivid description of the fiery fate that happened to the Rich Man.

The problem with proof-texting, amongst others, is that it generally ignores the context and is simply a set of ‘magic words’ that people use to deny others’ arguments.

With this in mind, then, it is well worth looking at the context of the entire adventure in which Jesus gave this parable. Firstly, there’s the parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the Prodigal son. Then, the ‘shrewd manager’. Then a couple of bits about adultery and whatnot. Does the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus connect with the adultery teaching and the other parables? It’s not clear; however, what is clear is that Jesus has been talking in parables for the last chapter at least. Therefore it is a very reasonable assumption that this too is a parable. (My opinion is that it is more about the way in which the Jews had been keeping their religion and God to themselves, rather than giving it to those who needed it).

Of course, the thing about parables is that the very last thing we should do with them is to take them literally. They are not meant for that, and to do so does them an injustice; rather than contemplating the parable and getting all the richness out of it, it is easier, and lazier, but far less fruitful, to simply accept what it says at face value. Could you imagine taking the Parable of the Sower at face value? We’d all be out in the fields throwing seeds all over the place.

It’s also worth noting that the idea of an eternal furnace of torture was not in the Pharisees’ minds at any time during Jesus’s ministry. If they had believed in Hell, they would have threatened Jesus with it at every opportunity. For today’s equivalent of the ancient Pharisees – judgmental Christians who hate everyone who doesn’t agree with them – it’s always their first weapon of choice when someone says something they don’t like. But they didn’t. Therefore if this parable was about Hell, then it would have gone completely over their heads.

I also consider that the context of the Lost Coin, Lost Sheep and the Prodigal son are included before the Rich Man/Lazarus story because the writer wanted to set the scene of God being loving and willing to rescue even the one who ran away and/or was lost. For those who would say ‘Well yes, so Jesus was saying what would happen if people *didn’t* respond to God’s love’, that’s not what this is about at all. There is no storyline link (except for the context) between the loving/searching/returning parables and the Rich Man/Lazarus parable; nothing saying that if that lost coin refused to be found, then it’s off to Hell. If anything, the Prodigal story is more about the response of the ‘obedient’ son, who thought of the Father as a tight-fisted taskmaster rather than a generous giver.

And finally, remember that the Rich Man/Lazarus parable has a number of differences from current Evangelical theology as to how to avoid the Rich Man’s terrible fate. Firstly, Lazarus just died and went straight to ‘Abraham’s bosom’. There was no Sinner’s Prayer, no forgiveness of sins needed; nothing. And Abraham is not the Father; he’s not Father God. The word Jesus used for ‘Hell’ is Hades, which simply means the ‘grave’ or ‘the pit’; it is the Greek word meaning the same concept as the Hebrew word ‘Sheol’, which is a dark shadowy place of restless spirits; not a flaming torture chamber. The Old Testament – which is what Jesus’s theology would have been founded upon, as well as that of his listeners – does not refer to Sheol/Hades as being like that. I don’t know why Jesus added in the torment detail for Sheol; maybe it was added later by the church? No, Lazarus’s ‘salvation’ is nothing at all like how evangelists today would describe it. Whatever he received in Abraham’s bosom, it likely wasn’t ‘Heaven’ and the converse, missing out on Abraham’s bosom and ending up in fiery Hades, is therefore also not the point of the story. Jesus wasn’t saying ‘If you die righteous (or very poor) you go to Abraham’s bosom; if you die rich you get burned. Also it doesn’t say that the fiery torment lasted forever either.

So you see there’s so much wrong with the Luke 16 passage being used as a proof for Hell, because in so many ways it just doesn’t fit with its use as a proof-text.

Hope that helps. Sorry it was so long.

In short, if you’re going to use Luke 16 as a proof-text for Hell, then you also have to accept that the standard Evangelical ‘salvation model’ of saying the ‘sinners’ prayer’ is not relevant to whether or not a person ‘goes to Heaven’.

Well, I think that’s enough for us to be able to draw some conclusions on whether or not this passage has been twisted to make it fit in with Evangelical doctrine. Of course, if it has indeed been twisted, then it raises the question of what other Scriptures they have twisted in order to form and/or support other key doctrines? And it also makes me ask whether or not these people actually look into the Scriptural basis of any of their doctrines in any great depth? Personally, I think that those who do so enquire are few and far between. I think they generally just believe what they are told, without questioning it. And then regurgitate it to order when challenged, giving out the standard line on any issue without actually owning their answers. Because only when you have thought things through can you say Yes, this is my belief; this is what I really think, and not just what someone else thinks recited parrot-fashion.

So there we are. Yet another Problem of Evangelicalism – the twisting of Scripture in order to make it say not only what it doesn’t really say, but even to make it say anything that we want it to say. If you know your Bible well enough, you can quote a Scripture verse to back up any assertion you want!

Jesus said in John 16:12 that He had so much more He wanted to tell His disciples, but that they weren’t ready for it just yet. He then said that He’d send the Spirit of Truth in order to lead His people into all truth; that the Spirit would take from what belongs to Jesus and make it ours too. (Jn 16:14)

Listening to the Holy Spirit, then, is far and away the best way to form any ideas about God and His ways.

And She does not twist the Scripture – She doesn’t need to. Anything beyond that is ‘doctrines taught by men’ (Mt 15:9), and Jesus had no time for that sort of thing. None whatsoever!

Grace and Peace to you!

Header image shows a tornado storm system; a ‘Twister’, probably one of the most locally destructive, eerie and terrifying forces of nature in existence. And the deliberate twisting of Bible verses can have a similarly catastrophically destructive effect on people’s spirits, hence my use of the picture here.

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 The irony here is that usually the people using that Scripture are legalists; those who think that righteousness before God is based on our behaviour instead of on the free gift of God’s Grace – and the letter to the Galatians is all about Grace and not about Law. In that letter, St. Paul is writing specifically against the ‘other gospel’ of legalism – hence the irony of legalists using that verse against people who are living free from religion and its hidebound, legalistic rules.
⇧2 I put ‘Pharisees’ in inverted commas because they are of course not, strictly speaking, members of that very specific ancient Judaic sect, but they are of the same spirit!
⇧3 Which, let’s be honest, is probably just about everyone outside their own particular group!
⇧4 Non-player characters; people who just recite programmed scripts as if they are bots in a video game. See this article for more on this idea.
⇧5 Scripture-bombing, the weaponization of Scripture for the harm of others, would be a good case in point here!
⇧6 It’s actually known as ECT in general theological terminology anyway; I’m using the abbreviation here because it is a well-established concept for discussion.
⇧7 Also known as ‘Dives and Lazarus’, it’s always mispronounced by people who do not know any Latin. You see, the Latin word ‘dives’ means ‘riches’, hence the ‘rich man’. And it’s pronounced ‘dee-ways’, not ‘dyevs’ (rhyming with ‘chives’). If people are going to try to show off their supposed knowledge of classical languages, they should at least learn the correct pronunciation! 🤣🤣
⇧8 Here is the link to the full passage in case you’d like to read it.
⇧9 At that time in the ministry of Jesus, people just couldn’t get enough of His words: the general crowds because His teaching was blessing them so much; the Pharisees for quite different reasons.
⇧10 All these three men were described in the Bible as being wealthy.
⇧11 In the Rich Man and Lazarus story, Jesus referred to the place where the Rich Man was as ‘Hades’; the Greek word equivalent to Sheol, so He was referring to Sheol – which I have already explained above.
⇧12 Many Fundamentalists discredit this type of context, notably in cases where they disagree with conclusions reached using this method; in cases where they agree, they will accept its arguments. They do the same with science and also with anything else they sometimes agree with, and sometimes disagree with. We agree with science; science good! We disagree with science; science bad! Typical unsurprising religious double standards! 😂

Against a Dark Background – Reblog

Insights, Ministry, Reblogs
This entry is part 21 of 23 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism
A Second Essay to encourage gentle souls blighted by online Pharisee trolls

As I said I would do in the previous post in this series, this following reblogged essay (originally published in 2019) builds on some of the ideas in that earlier essay, but from a slightly different angle. Once again, the objective of this piece is to encourage you when you try to build up people damaged by the rabidly religious Pharisee trolls found scattered liberally across the Internet.

Enjoy!

Would you believe that there are Religious people on the Internet who think of themselves as ‘heresy hunters’?

It’s true. You may even have encountered them yourself.

They are the people who prowl the social media sites, faith sites and forums looking specifically for people with whom they can disagree. They castigate those people who believe different things to what they themselves believe (even if only slightly different!), lambasting their victims with vicious messages of rejection, condemnation and judgmentalism. And usually the occasional threat of ‘hell-fire’ thrown in for good measure, and all ‘said in love, brother’, of course 😉 .

It seems that they see themselves as the people who hold the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven; imagining they are God’s ‘gatekeepers‘ and that they have the (God-given, of course) right to say who gets in and who doesn’t. They strike hard and fast, hang around for a short argument and then go on their happy way, leaving a trail of bruised and broken people in their wakes.

Some of these people have actually opened their Facebook accounts with the sole purpose of the online hunting down of ‘heretics’ like me. They are easy to spot; you go and look at their Facebook profile and the last time they posted was like May 2017 and that was just a photo of their washing machine or something. Sad, sad people who create their own Hell by living in a world of judgementalism and critical spirit, not finding the joy in their own salvation (which I have no reason to believe is not genuine) and at the same time trying to not allow anyone else to find the joy in their ‘salvations’ either.

Now, we ‘hunted’ heretics are in good Company. Jesus Himself was followed everywhere by groups of Religious heresy hunters – the Pharisees – who did things like this:

“So they watched Him closely, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him” – Mk 3:2 (NKJV)

Yep, you’ve got it. These people had nothing better to do than to follow Him around all day and pick fault; missing out on the amazing truth that Jesus healed people – and even ignoring it! – they concentrated instead on whether they considered He was following their Religious Rules or not.

Sounds familiar? 😉

I also find it incredible that bad-news mongers will even contradict direct quotations from their Rulebook the Bible, which, remember, they hold to be inerrant and infallible, when those Bible quotations do not reflect their doom-and-gloom mindsets. For instance, last week, I saw on Facebook a post where a chap said that he’d simply posted the famous verses from Romans 8:38-39 on nothing being able to separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus. Here’s what he wrote:

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

“I put no commentary on it, just that. I am frustrated by the fact that multiple people felt the need to reply with things about how WE can separate ourselves from the love of God through unrepentance and so forth. Why do people have this immediate urge to qualify the good news, to make it less than it is?”

As far as the Bible is ever ‘clear’, this verse is about as ‘clear’ as it gets. NOTHING can separate us from God’s Love, not even stuff we do ourself. That’s what makes it unconditional!

Apart from its being incredible, I also find it very sad that such people not only choose to believe (and it is a choice) the worst news about God that they can (while still probably claiming that ‘God is Good, All the Time’ (talk about cognitive dissonance!), but also that they feel the need to get on the Internet and spread their horror and darkness so others can join them in their misery. Misery loves company, as the old adage says!

And I just don’t get that. At least, not from people who are supposed to be spreading the ‘…good news of great joy for all mankind’ (Lk 2:10). Some indeed seem to prefer the bad news over the good, and furthermore they will do all they can to negate whatever good news you try to give to them or to others; they are thus not open to Really Good News at all, and this mindset is therefore one of my definitions of ‘hell’.

As G. K. Chesterton wrote,

“…pride cannot rise to levity or levitation. Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One “settles down” into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness. A man “falls” into a brown study; he reaches up at a blue sky. Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one’s self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.”

No, they can’t cope with levity, nor can they lose their seriousness. And so, when they happen across a thread where the idea of Grace (the unearned, light, completely full and free favour of God) is being put forward, they go absolutely ape. Cries of ‘Licence to Sin!‘ ‘Cheap Grace!’ and other such rubbish abound, usually touted by those who haven’t actually read the original post properly anyway.

Who’d want to live like that?

So, I have set out the problem at some considerable length. How to cope with these people?

Well, first up, we need to remember that they are usually in it only for the argument. They are interested only in putting across their point of view and not listening to anyone else’s. Like only the most diehard religious zealots, they are convinced that they are not only right, but that they have a divine commission to ‘go forth’ and fight what they see as heresy. Therefore, arguing/discussion with them is usually pointless, if your reason for participating in the discussion is solely to have the chance of influencing them towards your point of view. But there is another reason why such open and visible ‘discussion’ can be good, as I  will be getting to – eventually!

They mistake courtesy (from their victims) as weakness. They mistake the lack of people biting them back, as being that their victims don’t actually have a proper argument, when in actual fact the Grace-filled person is usually being just that – Graceful (Grace-full). Let your speech always be graceful, seasoned with salt and all that (Col 4:6). They’re giving that heresy hunter the benefit of their Christike gentleness and not sinking – and it would be sinking! – to their level by going back at them with the same sort of stuff. And it’s lost on them. Behaving like this violates so many of the heresy hunters’ ‘Biblical’ Rules, which they feel they can conveniently ignore or justify away with the sorts of argument that only the terminally religious could come up with.

It can be soul-destroying, though, listening to their endless naysaying and negativity all the time. I don’t know how Jesus coped with being followed around by these leeches in His day because, make no mistake, they are exactly the same type of people. Were the concept of reincarnation actually true (I personally am convinced that it’s not!) then these people would simply be the reincarnations of Jesus’s Pharisees 😉 I suppose His attitude was simply to get on with God’s work – doing what He saw Father doing (Jn 5:19) – and if the Pharisees got some of the splash of God’s power and joy, great; if not, He wasn’t going to let that stop Him blessing those who already needed it. When He said that it was the sick that needed a doctor, He meant that the Religious, the Pharisees, didn’t feel that they needed Him because they thought they were ‘all right’ thank you very much; whereas those who realised their need of Him were the ones who actually received the blessing. And so He didn’t let the Religious stop Him blessing those who needed it. Interestingly, some Pharisees actually did become Jesus-followers, and, equally interestingly, were almost as legalistic afterwards as they were before, albeit a little less unbendingly so. Check out their story in Acts chapter 15, where it relates the story of the ‘Council of Jerusalem’.

I have written before on the idea of why Grace-preachers like me continue to post messages of Grace on Internet forums, in the face of people like these bad-news mongers.

The first reason is that our posts bless more people, and bring more people into wholeness, healing and freedom, than we will ever know. I call these people the Invisible Listeners. I would repeat here a comment sent me by someone in New Zealand, that was mentioned in that blog post above; I repeat it here because it applies to you as well as to me:

“One day, when we are in His Presence, you will find out just how many people were encouraged by what you are doing”

The second reason, for me, is that it shows our Invisible Listeners that not all Christians are harsh, disapproving and judgemental. I mention that in my article linked to above, but I have reiterated it here in case you don’t want to follow the link.

I also asked a good friend and fellow Grace-preacher, who regularly engages publicly with Pharisees online (yes, they actually follow him around on his Facebook profile!), how he puts up with the hassle of the online Pharisees.

His reply was firstly that he doesn’t let it bother him, as he realises that they are all at a different stage in their faith-walk. He, like me, is a strong proponent of the various theories of faith development, and this helps him to recognise these faith-stage dynamics and the types of behaviour they elicit.

Secondly, he very wisely told me that he believes that all the naysayers do is to provide a dark backdrop to the beauty of the Good News he preaches; the Good News of Grace, and that dark backdrop makes the precious diamond all the more obvious in its magnificence.

For those ‘invisible listeners’ who read his work without commenting – I estimate that for every person who comments, there are another nine or ten who do not[1] – this is the stuff of life. In fact it’s completely life-changing, in the sense of changing their lives from being nearly empty to being full; full of Life in Christ.

And it’s enhanced, not detracted from, by the negative comments.

I mean, how cool is that? It’s an idea which is utterly, utterly golden!

The idea that the ‘enemy’ – and by that, I do not mean the modern-day Pharisee people themselves, but the ‘accuser of the brethren’ (Rev 12:10 (KJV), be that an actual spirit, a ‘satan’, who actually accuses, or simply the accusing consciences of some believers – the ‘enemy’ has its accusations turned against it and used for the benefit of the saints, for their upbuilding and encouragement – is simply priceless. The love and power and Grace of God are emphasised because of the dark setting in which they are seen! The fury that must exist in the hearts of the heresy hunters when/if they see their judgmentalism turned against them, well, it must burn like Hell, literally Hell, no cuss-word intended. Again, this is part of my definition of Hell (I must do a piece on that some day!)[2]. One hopes that this pain might help them to see sense, but I suppose that in this case most of the good fruit is not visible online because it is borne in those Invisible Listeners I talked about earlier.

So, if you are a Grace-preaching blogger or forum poster, please be encouraged. You are reaching, and blessing, far more people with your Grace message than you will ever know. And all the Pharisees’ comments do is to make your news even more glorious. Boom!

If you are a self-styled ‘heresy-hunter’, firstly kudos to you for reading this far without blowing a gasket; and secondly, remember that every. single. time. you respond to someone bearing a good-news message of hope, healing and reconciliation with one of your condemnatory, judgemental, divisive and possibly infernalist[3] replies, all you are doing is to provide the black background setting that emphasises the beauty of the very diamond you are trying to tarnish. But there is hope for you too – God is nowhere near as mad with you as you imagine, and remember that some Pharisees were actually Christ-followers. He accepts all sorts, and He accepts them unconditionally. He knows how lost you are in your Religious struggles to conform, and He came to offer you His yoke which is easy and light. (Mt 11:28-30 (Message) )

And if you are someone looking for a message of Love, Hope, Healing, Comfort in your weakness or in your sadness; a message of Reconciliation and/or a definite sense of ‘coming back’ to God, then rest assured that He has already accepted and welcomed you, without any cost to yourself, without any conditions (that’s what ‘unconditional’ means), with His arms open wide and a huge grin on His face. Read and believe the Good News messages, and use the Bad News messages, thoughtfully provided by the modern-day Pharisees, simply to highlight just how good the Good News is when compared with the struggle of having to keep up the appearances of Religious ‘good behaviour’ and conditional love that they try to push. Because that’s not the way that God is; not at all!

Be encouraged! Grace is there for the taking; it’s freedom, it’s light, it’s life in its fulness!

And it never ends!

Grace and Peace to you

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 I estimate it by looking at website statistics. Am I sad or what 😉
⇧2 I do not believe in Hell as an afterlife place of burning torment for those who do not [insert Religion-based qualification/requirement for not being thrown into Hell] before they die 😉
⇧3 That is, someone who does believe in Hell as that afterlife place of burning torment for those who do not [insert Religion-based qualification/requirement for not being thrown into Hell] before they die 😉

The Invisible Listeners – Reblog

Insights, Ministry, Reblogs
This entry is part 20 of 23 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism
An Essay to encourage gentle souls blighted by online Pharisee trolls

A good few years ago now, I wrote a blog piece that, later, also featured as a guest essay on the ‘Unfundamentalist’ website.

Because my present series on the Problems of Evangelicalism is very much a critique of the way in which Religious people, by their actions and attitudes, drive away those who might otherwise come to faith in Christ, I have reblogged the essay here because it is just so relevant, and may hopefully give encouragement to those engaged in ‘blogsphere combat'[1] with online Pharisee trolls who would ‘shut the doors of Heaven in men’s faces’

“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people ‘s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in!” – Mt 23:13 (ESV)

These kinds of people are a proper pain in the rear end. They are ‘blind guides'[2] and they themselves deserve all the misery that they try to dish out to others from the wellspring of darkness in their own hearts. “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” Lk 6:45 (ESV); Mt 12:35 (ESV). It is easy to tell where the evil lies just by looking at its fruit (Mt 12:33)[3]: the evil treasure produces rejection, sadness, despair, darkness, guilt, condemnation, hopelessness, and above all fear; whereas the good treasure produces light, hope, healing, love, freedom, laughter, lightness, righteousness, peace, faith and joy. This is easy for everyone to see; everyone, that is, apart from the blind guides themselves. You could almost have taken that from the list of the two lists of the fruits of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit, found in in Galatians 5:19-23; although the lists are largely different, the principle is there as plain as day.

And so, I would like to re-present this essay for you today, hopefully as an encouragement for those who come across this ‘brood of vipers’ (Mt 3:7 and Mt 12:34)[4] on a regular basis. As you read this essay, I recommend that you keep in mind the good and wholesome fruit that your comments produce in your readers, as opposed to the rotten and putrid fruit that the Pharisees’ comments produce. And the obvious gentleness of your own comments when compared with the hard, unbending harshness of those Pharisees’ comments. In that way, you will see the good you are doing, and be encouraged in the process.

Be blessed!

This post is written to those believers who write on the Internet about Grace. People who write to encourage others, to build them up, not tear them down.

I am a member of several Facebook groups where people of the Spirit voice things from God, things new and old. Old widsom, and new wisdom. Things for the building up of the Saints (Eph 4:12). Jesus Himself said that there was so much more He wanted to tell us (Jn 16:12), and this kind of publishing is part of that. Much of this stuff is the prophetic Word of God for today. You can tell by the fruits manifested in their readers that these words are bringing life to those that read them.

But there is also huge discouragement, and often even despair, for those who write. If you are one of these writers, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. On public posts, you are torn to shreds by (sometimes well-meaning) Religious people who don’t like what they read. The Scripture says that people would be offended by the message of Jesus, and this is for several reasons. Mostly, though, the offence is found in the simplicity of the Gospel message, where St. Paul simply preached Christ crucified. Jesus has accomplished all that is necessary for the way to be open to God, and He invites us into His Presence. And this is counterintuitive. We humans naturally feel that surely there must be something we have to do, some sacrifice we have to make, something we can feel, think, do or say that somehow will make God more pleased with us.

But, actually, no, there isn’t. He’s already more pleased with you than you can possibly imagine! And that’s what is so offensive to people: that nothing they can do – or not do – will make them any more or less acceptable to God.

And so, I would like to encourage all my readers here today who write for Jesus.

People like me, who share regular blog posts containing what we believe to be the truth about God and how much He loves us, and how especially fond He is of us. People who write occasional pieces just expressing how they are feeling and how God is meeting them right where they are at. Or people who just build up others by sharing simple, gentle encouragement, whether in forum replies such as on the Patheos website (my favourite channel being ‘Unfundamentalist Christians‘[5] ), or even just in gentle Facebook replies.

To all such people I would say this:

Listen: your posts are encouraging far more people than you realise!

You are blessing hundreds and thousands of people simply by writing your gentle words of Grace!

When I post on the Patheos forums, and my posts are torn to shreds by the Religious gatekeepers; the Pharisees, or maybe just those who are secretly uncertain of their faith and feel that my words shake their foundations – and reply with violence because they feel threatened – I don’t worry about it.

Because I know that my posts have been read by my intended audience – not the Pharisees, but those who are broken, hurting, feeling rejected by the prim-and-proper religious elite. Those of ‘different’ sexualities. Those who have received abuse at the hands of those who should have been healing them: corrupt church leaders; antagonistic judgemental people pointing out their ‘sin’; ‘Sin-police’; those who deem themselves ‘fruit inspectors’. I take these people on, not to try to turn them or convince them – God will do that for them in His own time; indeed, only He can do it anyway – but to let those thousands of ‘invisible listeners’ and ‘lurkers’ know that not all Christians are like those people who cause harm. There are indeed Christians who gently manifest the presence of Jesus in their writings, and, to those bloggers like me who want to be that gentle, I would say, “Keep it up!” You are touching many more people with God’s love than you can possibly realise!

I leave you with a comment that was sent me by a man in New Zealand, to encourage me about my other website, ‘VintageWorshipTapes‘. On that site, I restore and make available electronic recordings of old worship tapes from the seventies, eighties and nineties. The comment still moves me to tears even now. Here’s what he said:

“One day, when we are in His Presence, you will find out just how many people were encouraged by what you are doing”

Wow! And I think that’s today’s take-home message 🙂

An edited version of this post was published on the Unfundamentalist website on 7th May 2018. Click here to see it on that site.

The next essay in this series will reinforce these concepts with ideas from a slightly different angle. Something to look forward to 😉

Grace and Peace to you!

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Ok, ok, I just made that phrase up, but I’m sure it will mean something to those who have the ears to hear!
⇧2 “…so ignore them. They are blind guides leading the blind, and if one blind person guides another, they will both fall into a ditch.” – Mt 15:14 (NLT), emphasis mine.
⇧3 Note how these three verses I have used from Matthew’s Gospel are all from the same context. So: fruit; overflow of the heart; treasure
⇧4 That Matthew 12 context again!
⇧5 Which sadly now appears to be defunct; there have been no new posts for quite some time now – Ed.

Apocalypse – Reblog

Insights, Others' stuff, Reblogs
This entry is part 33 of 33 in the series About the Bible - Inerrancy, Infallibility, Inspiration and Revelation

Some years ago, I published an essay on the Book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible. At that time, I referred to the ideas of the early Church Fathers, where I said that,

“The early Church fathers, in considering whether to include the book of Revelation into the Canon, took the decision to include it only under the following strict conditions: 1) It was not to be used for any major doctrine or in any liturgy of the church; 2) It did not have the canonical authority of the other New Testament writings; and 3) It was never to be taken literally in any way, but only metaphorically, as an encouragement for Christians about to undergo major persecution and bloodshed”.

Since that time, I have read and discussed this concept with other believers, and have also discovered a source for the concept from Canadian teacher and scholar Dr. Brad Jersak, where he kindly gave me his rationale for those ideas. I reproduce the rationale in a footnote below[1], and I have also modified the essay slightly to allow for that sourcing.

But still, the essay is worth looking at again. It is good to re-publish such good and informative essays so that my readership can see once again the useful things that God gives us. So, here is the essay once again, tidied up a little and also with a bit of new text in there too.

Enjoy!

The book of Revelation, sometimes also called ‘Apocalypse’, ‘The Revelation of John’, or even (incorrectly) ‘Revelations’ (like ‘Trivial Pursuits’, ‘Cliff Richards’, or ‘Tescos’; all pluralised words that definitely shouldn’t be 😉 ) is probably the most confusing book in the entire Bible, and it is certainly the most confusing in the New Testament.

Its weird imagery often reads more like a nightmare than anything else. And, in fact, so uncertain were the early Church as to its origins or relevance, that it was almost left out of the Canon of Scripture that we know today. Indeed, many early canons did not include the book at all.[2]. The early Church fathers, in considering whether to include the book of Revelation into the Canon, took the decision to include it only under the following strict conditions: 1) It was not to be used for any major doctrine or in any liturgy of the church; 2) It did not have the canonical authority of the other New Testament writings; and 3) It was never to be taken literally in any way, but only metaphorically, as an encouragement for Christians about to undergo major persecution and bloodshed. Naturally, these conditions have been conveniently forgotten, or more likely never even heard of, by those in the church today who love to misuse this book to the detriment of others.

Of course, because of what I call ‘Chalke’s Law’, which states:

“There are some people who will always find the angry verses in the Bible to confirm their obsession with anger and exclusion” (Steve Chalke)

…the book, with its weird and (on the surface) violent imagery is just perfect for those certain Christians who rejoice in – and indeed savour with eager and gleeful anticipation – the idea of the horrific mutilation, deaths, slaughter, and then endless torment of those who don’t agree with them, to the tune of rivers of the blood of the ‘unrighteous’ to the depth of a horse’s stirrups[3]. Yes, that imagery is there in Revelation, but of course it doesn’t mean what it says on the surface.

This is because we need to remember that much of Revelation is written in the ‘apocalyptic’ style (which is why in some quarters it’s referred to as the ‘Apocalypse'[4]), and as such it is written in a sort of code, some of which has been lost to antiquity, but some of which can be inferred by its historical context, and from whom the book was written to. In fact I think this is why, in some apocalyptic writings, the author is instructed to ‘seal up what is written'[5], because it concerns things that need to be worked out properly. A good example of this would be in Daniel 12:4; the second half of the book of Daniel is written in the apocalyptic style, as are parts of Ezekiel. For more on this subject, I would far rather defer to more learned scholars than myself, who know far more about it than I do. For example, N. T. Wright’s ‘Revelation for Everyone’ would be a reasonable starter; it is a very informative book and is written in a style that is very easy to understand.[6]

However, the worst thing that can be done with apocalyptic literature like Revelation is to read it literally, because it was never intended to be read as such, and indeed the misuse of this book by ignorant people (ignorant in both or either senses of a) not knowing, and b) being unimaginably unintelligent) has caused untold harm to millions of people all down through history. Indeed, I would say that no book has been misinterpreted and misapplied to others’ detriment as has Revelation. And all because people haven’t a clue what they are doing with this most lethal, and yet potentially most blessing, of all the books in the Bible. The very last thing we should do with most of this book is to take it literally.

And yet, so much of modern theology, in terms of both ecclesiastical theology and common theology, is based on passages in Revelation. Without discussing these ideas specifically here, the concept of Heaven as an afterlife idea and the concept of ‘hell’ being a lake of burning sulfur, are both concepts which are strongly based on passages from Revelation. Even the ‘Pearly Gates’, where St. Peter is traditionally employed as a receptionist; even they are entirely from Revelation. Reference for the Pearly Gates? Revelation 21:21 is where that comes from. Go and take a look 😉

So, read in the light of the idea of an angry, retributive ‘nasty god’ like that found in much of the Old Testament, Revelation will of course be seen as incredibly bad news for most people, most of whom are going to be sorry they were born, according to the gleeful claims of those ‘certain Christians’ I mentioned above.

However, read in the light of Jesus, the Prince of Peace and the King of Love, the book can in fact instead be seen as excellent news for everyone. Again, I have here neither the time, the knowledge, nor indeed the inclination to expound on why this is the case; instead I would again refer you to people who really know what they are talking about. However, I would like to share with you today a brilliant piece by my friend Mo Thomas, where he presents an opposite view to the Evangelically-accepted ‘violent’ view of Revelation. No-one should read Revelation without having to hand several huge pinches of salt, and the definite guidance of the Holy Spirit to glean what it means for us today, and, more relevantly, what it means for you personally today[7]. Formation of major doctrine from Scriptures in Revelation is a serious error, as we have already seen. Personally, I happen to think that formation of any major doctrine, or at least dogma – a doctrine which is considered to be essential and non-negotiable – is also an error, but that’s just me 😉 I’d far rather live a life in the Spirit, completely unbound by others’ doctrines, rules and strictures. I’ll listen to others’ ideas, of course, but let’s just say there’s a lot of bones I spit out while I eat the meat 😉

Anyway, less of the masticatory[8] digressions; I will hand you over to Mo:

The term for “Revelation” is the Greek “Apocalypse”, or the “unveiling”. John’s revelation then in the scripture is primarily about the “unveiling” of the Person and Work of Jesus, not primarily the symbols, timelines, and events. But once seen through this lens…the symbols, timelines and events start coming into focus.

The subversive nature of the apocalypse can trip up many who are looking for a violent overthrow when Christ returns, much like the Messianic expectation of those in the 1st century. This type of overthrow requires a calamity-filled blood-soaked eschatology, which unwittingly fosters a perspective of escapism – with no authentic desire to engage and participate in God’s Kingdom here, now.

Here’s the thing. The book of Revelation may just be the most non-violent war scroll ever recorded in the history of apocalyptic literature. But we can’t ever see this unless we read as it would have been interpreted by those 1st century folks. It would have filled them with hope in the midst of evil Empire, Roman oppression. Victory is achieved – not by the methods of war and violence, but by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.

What better way to motivate hope for our role in the Story than to paint an optimistic view of the Shalom and Care of God for all that He reconciled to Himself, for His Cosmos.

The subversive way of the Slain Lamb continues to make its way forward.
________________

“Jesus is not coming back to renounce the Sermon on the Mount and kill 200 million people.

If that’s your reading of Revelation, what can I say? Lord, have mercy.”

– Brian Zahnd
_________________

The brilliant, subversive narrative we find at the end of our Bibles hinges on the throne room scene in Revelation chapter 5, where John hears an announcement for the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He turns, expecting to see a ferocious beast that tears His enemies apart, limb from limb, as Israel had long hoped and expected.

Instead, John turns and sees a tiny Lamb, looking as if it had just been slain. Ahhhh… the crucified Christ! From that point on, we no longer see ANY mention of a lion. But 29 more times, we see the Lamb of God, the prevailing theme of the Story.

This is masterful apocalyptic literature.

Yes, this King is victorious, and He reigns in power. Yet, this power is most clearly and succinctly displayed on the Cross, where we see that He would rather die for His enemies than kill them.

The book of Revelation is the Apocalypse, the “unveiling”, of Jesus the Christ, who displays His Power as the Crucified and Risen and Victorious Lamb. Don’t distort the brilliant subversion by making it a literal book about “end times” and Anti-Christ figures and the necessity of bloody violence.

Make it about our Beautiful King, the Crucified One who overcomes.

Rev 5:13. And I heard every created thing in heaven and on earth and under the earth [in Hades, the place of departed spirits] and on the sea and all that is in it, crying out together, To Him Who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb be ascribed the blessing and the honor and the majesty (glory, splendor) and the power (might and dominion) forever and ever (through the eternities of the eternities)!

Come, let us worship.

Shalom

– Mo Thomas

Regarding the return of the ‘Warrior Jesus’, and regarding a couple of other Revelation points, I once put it like this:

“If it is true that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8), then it follows that He will be the same Jesus when He returns. The angels at the Ascension said that ‘this same Jesus…’ will return (Acts 1:11); they never said He’d return as someone different. He won’t be, indeed He can’t be, a different Jesus than the gentle, healing and loving Jesus depicted in the Gospels. In addition, the passage (in Revelation 5:6) about the Lamb on the throne describes Him as a Lamb, not as a Lion. He will return as a Lamb, because He left as a Lamb. That whole scene is about the literary bait-and-switch of the throne of a mighty King, the King of the Universe, in fact, being the Lamb looking as if it had been slain in the centre of the throne. The power and right to rule comes from the power of God, which is the power of the Cross – as in, the submission of the Lamb to the point of death, thus showing where true power actually lies, in the self-giving nature of God and NOT the desire to lord it over others.

“Furthermore, Revelation is very much a book of metaphysical imagery and weird Apocalyptic, coded writing. To interpret it literally would be a mistake, for most of the book at any rate. I personally think that Revelation is something where John was seeing things that were very hard to describe from a human point of view, and so they need to be taken with a very large pinch of salt. Or a dose of magic mushrooms”.

As one final comment, and as a general tip for reading Revelation, I would say that if you come across a passage in that book that the Spirit does not make come alive for you[9], then by all means feel free to set that passage aside until such time as She does make it come alive for you. Some of it you may never understand, and this is not surprising as the book was in fact not written to you anyway (Rev 1:4). But that’s all right. We don’t have to ‘get’ it all; not by a long chalk.

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Yes, the way I wrote that (probably in an appendix to a book by Hardin?) makes it sound very deliberate and collaborative, but I’m really distilling something quite messy, so in citing that, I would recommend saying that this is Bradley Jersak’s interpretation of a series of important factors that are not proof-texted directly.

Where I draw them from is from logical inference (some completely airtight) and from what we are warranted to say from what we know of various Fathers.

For example, we KNOW that the Nicene Creed (the dogma of the church) was finalized in 381. And we also know that while various significant theologians (like Origen and Athanasius) include it in their personal lists of NT Scripture, others (like Gregory of Nazianzus and Cyril of Alexandria) did not. This latter point is very important because Gregory also presided at the second council where the Nicene Creed was finalized. Here’s a bit of the messiness:

‘Chrysostom never quotes from Revelation, leaving the modern world no clue to his thoughts on the book of Revelation. Gregory of Nanzianus and Cyril leave it out of their listings of the canon. Moreover, the Nestorian churches still leave Revelation out of their canon. Revelation has never held a very secure place in the Eastern Orthodox canon. The Syriac Peshitta omits it, and the Council of Laodicea did not recognize it. As late as 850, the Eastern Church listed the book as disputed. They still do not read from Revelation regularly. [It is not at the altar with the Gospel or the reader’s stand with the Epistles].

(canonicity – What historical reasons resulted in Revelation being included in most Christian canons? – Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange)

Thus, the church did not collectively recognize it as canonical (complicated: Canonicity and Acceptance of Revelation (in Revelation) – Anabaptistwiki) until AFTER the Creed, meaning that the dogmas of the faith were settled BEFORE the book was received as authoritative, and therefore, the Book of Revelation CANNOT have been used to establish the dogmas that came before its reception.

The rest of the story are the sort of details one can read between lines or by reading the sermons and liturgies of the church.

BUT my point is NOT that we reject Revelation as canonical. It is now recognized as part of our canon. My point was that the church did not use it to generate the essentials of Christian doctrine and therefore, must not be used that way today. Any doctrinal statement drawn from Revelation would be derivative of and in alignment with the Gospels or Epistles that were used to establish that doctrine in the first place.

– Brad Jersak

⇧2 I think I’m right in saying that there are some of today’s denominations that still regard Revelation as not being canonical, although I could be wrong.
⇧3 Which would be about 1.0 to 1.2 metres or so
⇧4 The modern word ‘apocalypse’ and its derivatives such as ‘apocalyptic’ means things that are of world-ending, or at least world-shaking, importance or magnitude. This is because Revelation is seen by most literalistic interpreters as describing the end of the world, or at least ‘end-times’ stuff, and indeed to the general reader it really does read like that!
⇧5 Yes, that’s why there’s a sealed scroll for the header image. Much of Revelation is still sealed for many people, including myself, and the ‘Secret of the Lord‘ notwithstanding 😉
⇧6 Even then, you should always ask the Spirit to explain, interpret (for your upbuilding!) and apply anything that you read in that book, or indeed any other source – including this blog! Always remember that God speaks to everyone in different ways, and it is perfectly ok to ‘eat the meat and spit out the bones’. If something doesn’t sit right with your spirit, then feel free to set that thing aside.
⇧7 Technically, really, all Bible reading where you actually want God to speak to you through the Scriptures; all of that should be done under the tutelage of the Spirit anyway. Why risk missing out on His riches?!
⇧8 Related to chewing. Just so you know.
⇧9 Another reason for reading the Bible under the Spirit’s guidance!

Prayer and Parking Spots

Insights, Others' stuff

I don’t need to add anything to this great little essay by my friend Heather. There’s so much meaning and so much to think about in here that I think it’s better if I just leave it alone and let you chew it over for yourself![1]

Over to Heather:

I’ve been thinking lately about how people criticize people who pray for a good parking spot. And I think that the criticism CAN be justified, if people are just always praying about selfish, petty things and don’t care about anyone else. And I get how it can seem to an observer to be really messed up to think that “God gave you a parking spot but God didn’t heal that kid from cancer.”

But I think more often the people who are bothered by people who share they were grateful God gave them a good parking spot are misunderstanding the inclination and heart of people who weave prayer into mundane things of life.

So let me turn this around and share my perspective on silly little prayers like praying for a parking spot.

First, it might not always be proper to pray for a parking lot close to the store, sometimes it might be more fitting to pray for a parking spot near a neighbor you need to meet or that gets you the right amount of exercise for the afternoon. But sometimes we really need one close to the store too, so YMMV.

But I think learning to pray about random little things in an ongoing way is actually a way to align yourself in obedience to the Lord. And a mode of consecration.

It’s consecration to learn to involve God in everything, and to refuse to leave Him on the sidelines until cancer shows up or until Sunday morning. It’s consecration to cultivate our mind towards recognizing God in potential randomness, and it’s obedience to recognize the scriptural injunction that believers are called to learn to live a life where conversation and communion with God is meant to encompass everything in life.

And it’s daring to learn to act like God cares about hearing you, and loves you enough to entertain your mundane life details; but it’s an expression of faith in a God who would send His very own Son for each and every one of us to act like your every day life concerns are worth His ear.

So in fact, asking for a parking spot can be a declaration of faith in the death and resurrection of the Lord.

But most of all, it’s an expression that is meant to be humbling. That when we share our personal joy that God showed up to us in something seemingly ridiculous, mundane, and even selfish, and others don’t understand, we are choosing to testify anyway. We are naming where we have seen Him glorified in moments that would otherwise pass as meaningless and forgettable. And we are willing to do that even when others try to collapse that glory back into coincidence, or render it insignificant altogether.

But as believers we are joined spiritually to the Lord. And to proceed through life without involving Him would be to deny that connection. So when we pray for a parking spot, we are ready to look foolish to ourself, to any invisible spirit listening, and to anyone else in the car, that we won’t even do something as simple as park without involving the One we love and who loves us.

Our joy when suddenly the parking spot is there is not because we can’t bear to walk a few more feet to the store, but our joy is seeing God peek His head out into the random background noise of small details.

And when the parking spot doesn’t show up? At least His name was remembered on our lips for one more moment than it would have been had we just depended on our own selves to park.

That, in and of itself, is worth it.

– Heather

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Except maybe to add a little background: some Christians like to share the little things that they believe that God has done in their lives, like finding them a parking spot, and others feel this sort of sharing – or indeed, this sort of praying – is frivolous, trivial and unimportant. And maybe it’s because they themselves can never seem to find a parking spot … 😉

Josie

Personal

This is Josie, our Miracle Chicken.

In October last year, Josie was free-ranging in our large garden when she was attacked and left for dead by a fox. I know it was a fox because I saw it myself and chased it off, then went to look for Josie.

I found her under the bushes in the garden in a state of shock and surrounded by a pile of feathers; she had at least three deep-penetration wounds: two bite marks in her back and a big one under her back end. We immediately treated her for shock, and arranged to get her in urgently to be seen by the brilliant Ollie at Dart Vale Vets here in Devon.

Ollie agreed to try to save her, although he gave her a less than 50% chance of survival. He cleaned her up, sewed up the wounds as best he could (on the biggest wound, there wasn’t enough skin to be able to close the wound fully) and gave her some antibiotics and pain relief.

We kept her in the house for three weeks – she’d always wanted to come in to the house and now she had to be indoors! – and gave her her treatments. Chickens don’t like to be given oral antibiotics so that was a struggle every day! But she survived.

She survived.

Now, she has a secure walk-in run and cage out in the garden; sadly we can’t take the risk of letting her out freely any more because the fox still visits; we see it regularly on our overnight security camera footage, so we know it can still get in.

And now she also has two new sisters, both rescued from industrial egg farming just like she herself was rescued four years ago.

In this picture, Josie is perched on one of the ladder perches in her cage, about to begin devouring a tray of bird seed, a treat that she and both her sisters love.

She really is a Miracle Chicken, and we are so glad that we saved her life that day. Poor little sweetheart can’t go out free-ranging any more, sure, but she’s still lovin’ life and you really can’t tell that anything ever happened to her.

Dear little Josie. We are so proud of her! ❤️

Ideas…

Quotations, Insights, Others' stuff
This entry is part 19 of 23 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

As part of my series on the Problems of Evangelicalism, here’s a slightly different approach to the subject.

This post is comprised of an eclectic collection of ideas about common Evangelical misconceptions, and some responses to such misconceptions which show up the misconceptions[1] in their own right. They are a bit like the Proverbs in the Bible; seemingly random and unrelated sayings and concepts which nevertheless have a common, underlying theme.

Many if not most of them are my ideas; nevertheless, maybe think of it like one of my ‘Quotes’ pieces; indeed, some of the ideas are taken from such articles.

Enjoy!

For so many, the thing that ruined Jesus for them wasn’t the lure of sin, but the lovelessness of Christians.
– Chris Kratzer

I have to jokingly say that [a preacher from a church I used to attend] would be a preacher I would invite to speak if I thought the congregation was getting too happy. He’d soon put the kibosh on that.
– Me

I hate when they talk about ‘hyper-grace’, when they want to teach about grace but don’t like the idea of it being freely given without asking anything in return. The idea of grace is too much for the religious mind; it cannot comprehend grace, because grace is free, and religion is work. There’s no such thing as hyper-grace; there’s only grace. Grace is by essence hyper. It’s like the “color” white. White is white. There’s no hyper-white, there’s just white. If you add anything to white, it becomes something else, it becomes a shade of an other color. Grace is grace; if you add anything else it’s not grace anymore.
– Yorick Videlson

Plus they are likely trying to twist [a Bible verse’s] meaning to their own ends. How many churches’ signs have we seen where they are called ‘Grace [whatever] Church’ but of course it’s a bait-and-switch for a den of legalism.
– Me

Religious people are good at using terms they don’t understand. Actually, using terms at all to describe and define the spiritual comes from a religious mind. A free spirit doesn’t have words to share the divine experience, because it’s precisely that: an experience. You can only let people see the fruits and the effects; you know, like the wind.
– Yorick Videlson

I define Religion [as opposed to faith – Ed] as being the concept of humans trying to please, appease or otherwise placate ‘the gods’ (including the God of the Bible) so that said humans will not be subject to those gods’ wrath, whatever form that wrath may take – volcanoes, famine, flood, going to Hell, or even just plain and simple ‘bad luck’. Usually, Religion involves performance of some kind: doing rituals, magic spells, sacrifices, obeying rules either written or tacitly inferred. Religious people are people who feel that this ‘doing stuff’ is necessary in order for them to be able to approach God/the gods. Personally, I think that’s just a modern form of superstition.
– Me

“If you find that your heart has grown bigger than your doctrine, know that it is the doctrine that needs to go, not the heart that needs to be restricted.”
– Jeff Turner

If God desires us to love Him in any serious way, He would be stupid to threaten us with Hell. Or any other punishment. Once punishment is introduced, any action comes from fear, not love.
– Susie

If wrath would be a property of God it would be the 10th fruit of the Spirit. It is not.
– Anon

The Bible worshippers think God stopped speaking after the last word in the book of Revelation. Then they limit God to just be a sign poster pointing you back at the Bible.
– Kehinde

“Christianity is like a swimming-pool. All the noise comes from the shallow end.”
– Quote from a US theologian.

[Speaking of a photo of a legalism preacher who doesn’t look all that happy] No wonder he’s looking so fed up. He’s missed that the Kingdom of God is not about following rules, but about righteousness, peace and joy. One is a set of behaviours. The other is a state of being. I know where I’d rather live
– Me

The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. It’s the religious mindset destroying and tainting everything it touches, and thus steals joy. People who are in that mindset have my pity, but not my sympathy. The gates of hell are locked from the inside, said CS Lewis, and they are in there by their own choice. The hell of religion, that is. All it takes is the decision to call BS on the whole thing, and they can escape.
– Me

Can we get it wrong if we follow the Spirit? Of course. And you don’t have to look very hard to see a few thousand years of people getting it wrong by following the Book, either.
– Keith Giles

Unfortunately, sometimes the grey religious NPC types twist the ‘unmerited’ idea [that is, the idea of Grace being the unmerited favour of God] into ‘unworthy’ and ‘undeserved’. This is wrong. All it means is that Grace is unearned – you don’t have to *do* anything in order to obtain it or to keep it. You haven’t received it through any merit, but just as a gift. But they like to mask that by saying that it is something we are actually not worthy of receiving. More Pharisees shutting the door of heaven in others’ faces.
– Me

You will not heal by going back to what broke you.
– Anon

The reason that Evangelical attack dogs attack mystical experiences is that they themselves lack such experience. [The people who do that kind of attacking of others] have likely never knowingly known the Presence of God. In the same way as miserable people love to drag others down to their level, so too these Evangelical attack dogs try to deny all valid mystical experiences, so that they think they’ll feel better about their own lack of such experiences. But a) it doesn’t make them feel any better; and b) nothing they can say or do can ever erase the reality experienced by those they attack. The caveat is that not all Evangelicals are like that, fortunately.
– Me

…non-Christians are asking the L.G.B.T.Q. question before they even enter the door as a litmus test as to whether they will even come in the first place. We can argue about whether that’s fair or not, but we can’t argue about whether that’s reality. They simply will only come to a church that is welcoming of L.G.B.T.Q. people, and not what they call “pretend” welcoming into what they call “second-class citizenship.”
– Bill White

What [Evangelicals] do is yes, they claim the Bible leads them to Jesus, just as Jesus says (John 5:39), but their job is to lead them back from Jesus to the Bible, it seems!
– Me

A god who saves you from himself is a god in whose presence you will never truly feel safe.  – Jeff Turner

I didn’t want to bring people to my old church precisely because I didn’t want them to hear about the loving God I personally know, in such terrible terms [as one who would send people to burn forever in hell]. I see that now. I wasn’t sure back then why I was so reluctant, but this is why.
– Me

I’ve also noticed that when you start to enthuse about your freedom while talking with a Legalist – whether they know they are one or not! – the first thing they will do is to try to explain to you why you should not be free. It’s usually couched in Bible verses, and [possibly] from a good heart, but still that’s what they are doing. “He gave His word for freedom; you use it to enslave“. And they will claim that they are under Grace but their lives will not show this. I sometimes wonder if this is simple insecurity; they feel threatened to see someone operating out of freedom instead of Law.
– Me

I think [legalists] need the ‘security’ afforded by having clear rules by which to live… Even if they consistently fail to live by them (and consequently live stunted lives of fear and self-loathing). It’s pretty sad really, especially when all the ‘evidence’ needed to live a life of freedom is readily available.
– Phil Hendry

[It’s] so sad; [legalists] are still clinging to the side of their swimming pool, shouting unheeded and unnecessary warnings to those who are out in the deep waters of faith and living life to the full.
– Me

When some people talk about the gospel, you’d think that John 3:16 said: “God so hated the world that he killed his only Son.” Sometimes people say: “That picture is important—wrath and sin and hell and all the rest of it, and it’s because God loves us.” But simply adding the word “love” onto the end of that story can actually be even worse. It is like what abusers do when they say, “I love you so much”—it’s hideous.
– N.T. (‘Tom’) Wright

To Pharisees[2] condemning the ministry of inclusion[3]: “You are just the jealous older brother (from the Prodigal story). You have worked hard to earn the Father’s favour, only to be told that you had His favour all along. And now you want to deny it to the Prodigals out there. Well, shame on you”.
– Me

For me, I know how much the unclean have besmirched the name of my faith. But I refuse to let them steal my birthright: I am a Christian; I was a Christian before they stole the name and I will still claim that title for the rest of my life. I am a Prince of the Kingdom of Heaven; a child of God and He is my Father. I was crucified with Christ and have been raised up with Him to heavenly places. These things have been revealed to me over and above what a mere book says, and I know them as part of my make-up, as you say. It’s part of who I am, too, and, like you, no-one can take that away. Even (and especially) the Thief and his children.
– Me

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 If I was playing a game of Radio 4’s ‘Just A Minute’, I’d already have been buzzed for repeated use of a word. Sorry about that. But it was supposed to be used to emphasise a point….
⇧2 That is, self-righteous people in today’s Christianity, not the ancient sect of first-century Judaism – although they are of the same spirit!
⇧3 That is, the inclusion of everyone into Jesus, not just those who agree with certain doctrines, are of a certain sexuality, or have said the ‘right’ prayer