Graven Image – Reblog

This entry is part 14 of 14 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

Almost exactly ten years ago, I was in a worship meeting where there was high worship in the Spirit; those who have experienced this will know exactly what I mean[1]. In this particular instance, the Presence of God was manifested not only in His tangible and ‘felt’ presence, but also in the sparkling in the room and the way the air actually felt ‘thicker’. This is a level of worship which is rarely attained except where God chooses so to manifest His Presence in that way. It’s nothing that we do for that to happen; it’s just what God does sometimes. In this kind of worship, there is healing, there is release for the captives, and there are public and private words from God for people either singly or congregationally. You don’t emerge from such worship the same as you were when you went in 😀 

Anyway, during that meeting, Jesus shared some wisdom with me that I then felt I really couldn’t keep to myself, and so I shared the fruit of this, well, ‘inspiration’, I suppose you could call it, on my blog. This was what gave rise to the piece ‘Graven Image‘, and I reproduce it here, with a bit of additional commentary[2] at the end. I feel it is particularly relevant for my series, ‘The Problems of Evangelicalism’, and may shed a little light on the complex reasons why such problems exist. Here we go:


Graven Image

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” (Ex 20:4 KJV)

In this, the second of the ‘Ten Commandments’ given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, God forbade the Israelites to make for themselves any idols, or ‘false gods’, or indeed even an image (statue or whatever) of God Himself. Unlike the other nations in the area at that time, they were not to use idols to worship, but instead they had to worship the One God Himself.

It’s easy to see why. If you think about it, if the people gave any worship – or ‘worth-ship’ – or value – to what was essentially just a wooden, metal or stone statue, before long they would believe that the statue itself was God and that God is like the statue.  Apart from giving the statue the worship and attention that is God’s alone by right, they would also create in their minds and hearts and expectations a completely unrealistic picture of what God is really like. Clearly, you can’t represent God in all His love, power, majesty and splendour in a 30ft tall ‘graven image’, no matter how well decorated it is! There are many other reasons too, but this is the main one for the purposes of this post.

Fast-forward many centuries from Mt. Sinai to the time of Jesus. The religious authorities followed a strict system of rules, regulations and observances that not only they, but everyone else, had to follow. For various complex reasons, which I will go into in a later post, God was seen as a harsh, vengeful and implacable autocrat, and people were only acceptable to God by a) following an increasingly rigid and detailed set of rules and b) participating in blood sacrifices (involving the killing of animals). Departure from these rules would result, not in the threat of ‘hell’ as our religious people threaten with these days, but in a system of various punishments ranging from exclusion from the assembly (like being excommunicated) right up to the death penalty which would be administered by the barbaric practice of stoning. And, remember, all this would be done ‘in the name of’ the god they worshipped.

So effectively the religious authorities of the time had made a ‘graven image’. They had built themselves an image of God in their minds and in their writings, and they thought that God was like that image. This image of God they had made was of course, like all graven images, completely incorrect; even in the Old Testament, God describes Himself as a God of Love, which their graven image did not reflect. They had set up, in the place of the Loving Father, a man-made, stone-faced image of a ‘nasty god’ which bore no resemblance to the loving Creator of the Universe. Ask any person even nowadays what they think of God, and the chances are that they think of him as an angry old man up in Heaven just looking for people to get radgy with. This is the legacy of the graven image that these people worshipped – and, sadly, that many people still worship today.

But then Jesus came onto the scene. Jesus, the Man Who is God. Jesus, the Man Who came to show us what God is really like. Showing right from the start how much He wanted people to enjoy life – His first miracle was the one where He turned water into wine; and not just any old wine, but strong wine! – and how much He wanted people to be free of the horrible things that happen like sickness and death, by performing His healing miracles. The significance of Jesus’s miracles was not simply to show us who He is, nor just to help those whom He healed (although these were of course important in themselves), but to show us the nature of God’s Kingdom, and thereby the nature of the King Himself.

If you like, Jesus was – and is – God’s ‘graven image’ of Himself, made by Him and honoured by Him. Here at last is the Image of God, not made of wood, stone or metal, but as a Man, as a human. Col 1:15 says, “He is the image of the unseen God, the firstborn of all creation”. Here is the Absolute, the Ultimate. Here is Jesus. He’s the One Who shatters the graven image made so popular by religious people, the image of the ‘nasty god’, and replaces it with the Real Thing. And, guess what? He still does the same today.

This, then,  is why the ‘graven image’ was forbidden. Because anything less than the Real Thing – Jesus – falls woefully short of the mark!


The picture of the Easter Island statues at the top of this post was not just to illustrate the idea of a stern, frowning ‘graven image’. I also wanted to poke some fun at the idea of a static, set-in-stone concept of God, with this cartoon.

easter_island_pez

(For those who don’t remember the Pez sweet dispenser, click the image below to be taken to the Wikipedia article on it):

pez


So there we go. Yes, I could have removed the humourous bit from the end, because some might feel it detracts from the ‘seriousness’ of the piece, but to be fair, a) It’s not really all that serious and was not presented in such a way as to be so; and b) Too many people these days feel that humour detracts and distracts from serious things; such people are usually miserable so-and-so’s and I will have no part of their shenanigans! So the humour stays![3]

Anyway, my comments will, I think, be few[4], except to put the piece in the context of the series it’s a part of, The Problems with Evangelicalism. 

The honest truth is that most, and likely all, of us carry around in our head and heart our own ‘Graven Image’; our concept of what God is like. Depending on the personality, the upbringing, the education, the life experiences, as well as the personal encounters a person may have had with God, and above all, that person’s faith/religious background, that Graven Image is going to look different for each Christian. And the effect of this is that that concept will influence to a greater or lesser extent how each Christian treats others; how much they reflect Jesus – Who was indeed God’s ‘Graven Image’, but this time the real thing – and that will affect that Christian’s ‘witness’. How much Jesus is ‘transmitted’ through a Christian’s actions and attitudes is one of the main factors that influence others’ belief – or otherwise – in the existence and nature of God. And that Graven Image will have been strongly influenced by what others, usually in our formative years, taught us about God. A brilliant example would be Sonny Ray’s story, as related in one of the earier articles in this series.

For me, I remember, both at school as a teenager, and as a congregant listening to ‘children’s ministry’ in churches, just how much of it was Old Testament (OT)-based. I remember there being an especial emphasis on the Ten Commandments, and of course David and Goliath[5] as told in 1 Samuel chapter 17.

The Ten Commandments teaching is introduced early into a child’s indoctrination so as to make them immediately subject to the Mosaic Law[6]. Unfortunately, this makes people ‘educated’ in this manner far more resistant to the Grace message because they have been taught from a very early age that following God is all about a set of Rules, and no exceptions.

Yes, we were taught about Jesus’s life, ministry, death and Resurrection. For the adults, in church, there was talk of ‘repentance’ and forgiveness and all that. And of course the worship was spectacular. Sometimes, the Presence of God was tangible and overwhelming, but not all of the time.

Somehow, though, the way in which that vengeful OT god is related to the God of Grace of the New Testament (NT) God, as revealed by Jesus, and the way in which it was connected to ‘salvation’, was never actually explicitly made[7]. Sure, they acknowledged that that god was a god of justice, holiness, vengefulness, and judgment, and yes (occasionally) of Love, but there was a disconnect between that god and the NT view of God. It was never explained adequately, nor was any attempt ever made to do so that I know of. Certainly not in my hearing, anyway. I suspect that this lack of connection was (and is) partially because no-one really knew how to reconcile the ‘angry god’ of the OT with the God revealed by Jesus, and so the problem was just brushed under the rug[8]. Part of this is due to the failure to appreciate the Bible as ‘progressive revelation’; that is, the concept that those who wrote the OT did not know as much about God as did those who wrote the later books/letters in the NT. Certainly, the OT writers never imagined that Someone like Jesus would come along to show us what God is really like (John 1:18).

Therefore, the revelation of God was ‘progressive’ in terms of the thinking that human understanding of God, and beliefs about Him, had ‘progressed’ since the times of the OT. And the same is true today. Therefore, any Bible interpretation that puts as much emphasis, weight or even ‘credibility’ to OT passages as it does to NT passages, and also fails to take into account the experiences, knowledge and fruits of modern-day believers, is doomed to failure. In a very real sense, this reading of the Bible under the assumption that it is infallible and inerrant, and that everything that it says is non-contradictory and that the whole thing is factually true, is the underlying cause of such contradictory beliefs about God. And these contradictions can only really be handled either by acknowledging that the Bible is neither inerrant nor infallible and reading it as such, or by allowing oneself to slip into cognitive dissonance.

This kind of ‘flat-reading’ thinking – where all the parts of the Bible are seen as carrying equal weight, and therefore worthy of equal emphasis – is what gives rise to common Evangelical clichĂ©s like ‘God is Love, but He’s also holy/just/righteous’ and similar[9]. Where the clear and textually absolute statements of, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8) and the parallel text “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5) is relegated to subjection to all the other verses that describe God in a much more threatening manner. What they fail to notice is that all the other terms such as ‘holy’, ‘just’ and ‘righteous’ are adjectives – descriptive words[10] – whereas ‘Love’ is a noun. Therefore, if God is Love, then those other attributes – holiness, righteousness and justice – absolutely must be shaped and coloured by the underlying nature of God, which is Love. Of course, even the definition of Love isn’t always all that clear, and even what we do have has been twisted by Evangelicals, and other Fundies, to mean, well, whatever they want it to mean. You will no doubt have noticed that ‘Love’ is used as an excuse for all manner of unpleasantness and abuse in churches, simply by using the word ‘Love’ as an excuse for such behaviour. For Christians, really, if they’re going to follow their Rulebook sincerely, then surely the definitive description of Love is found in the famous passage in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a and should be used by them to define what Love means and looks like. For completeness’ sake, here’s what it says:

So for me, then, if what someone claims to be Love does not fit with that definition, then it’s not Love.

Which brings us back to the Graven Image.

Does the Graven Image, that each of us holds inside, match with Jesus; the One Who exemplified the Love in 1 Corinthians 13? If not, then be prepared for Jesus to gently help you to modify it in your own heart. Be encouraged! Remember that none of us has an entirely correct view of what God is like, nor will we do so until we see Him face to face (which is also in 1 Corinthians 13, at verse 12!): “Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known”. – 1 Cor 13:12. So, don’t feel bad about having your own ‘Graven Image’: first of all, how else are you supposed to hold any concept of God; secondly, if it makes you look to Jesus more, then that’s never going to be a bad thing; thirdly, remember we are under Grace, and not Law (Rom 6:14), so the Ten Commandments (of which, as we have seen, the ‘Graven Image’ commandment is one) are already fulfilled in Jesus and we are no longer subject to them, not that, as Gentiles[11], we were ever really supposed to be ‘under’ it in any case; fourthly, it’s up to Jesus to make you more like Him anyway – it really isn’t your problem. Your task is simply to rest in His Grace and enjoy His Presence, and let Him do the changing as and when He deems it to be the right time! Trust Him; He knows what He’s doing! Philippians 1:6 (KJV) says, “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ”, leading to Jude 1:24(KJV) where it says, “Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy…” [Emphasis mine]

Faultless. That is an absolute term[12]. Hold on to it. Believe it. Rejoice in it!

Grace and Peace to you all


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Footnotes

Footnotes
1 It’s very hard to describe it to those who have not so experienced it.
2 Well, I have learned more about God and His ways since then!
3 The Religious of Jesus’s time were like this. The thing they found the most offensive about Jesus, in my opinion, was that He took life so lightly while at the same time taking God so seriously. Their religious spirits couldn’t cope with such levity. There’s more on this idea in my April, 2020 piece, ‘Tractor Beams‘.
4 Turns out they weren’t ‘few’ at all. Sorry.
5 The Bible story describes the Philistine ‘giant’ Goliath as being from ‘Gath’ (1Sam 17:4), which is modern-day Gaza City. Make of that what you will.
6 That is, the Ten Commandments as dictated by God to Moses (hence ‘Mosaic Law’) on Mt. Sinai in Exodus 20:1-17
7 For me, that connection was in fact never made by any human teacher; instead, it came by direct revelation directly from God.
8 This has been a perennial problem in the history of Christianity, so it’s nothing new, nor is it surprising that the problem is still in existence today. For an early example of an attempt to reconcile the OT god with the God of Jesus, check out the concept of ‘Marcionism‘; a belief system that was seen by some at the time as an heresy, although personally I think it’s more of an individual’s (Marcion’s) honest attempt to make the Bible fit with its own narrative; to bring cohesion in the midst of contradiction, if you will.
9 I personally think of this as the ‘God is Love, But…’ heresy 😉
10 Also, quite how any given Christian would define each of those adjectives depends largely on their background. For example, the word ‘Just’ depends on someone’s definition of ‘justice’; this will more likely be a mishmash of that individual’s personal experiences, how he’s always been taught what ‘justice’ supposedly looks like, and the desire to conform to their denomination’s teachings. Plus there will likely be some uncertainty there too, because ‘justice’ and therefore ‘just’ are such nebulous terms with no absolute definitions. And ‘holy’ and ‘holiness’? Don’t get me started on holiness; no Christian really knows what it means when it comes down to it!
11 Gentiles is a collective name for people who are not Jewish
12 You can’t have ‘Faultless, but…’ or ‘Faultless, except…’. Fautless means fautless, period

“Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’ ” – Reblog

In this modern world of judgmentalism, cancel culture and ever-increasing rules and strictures about what is – and what is not – allowed, it is unsurprising to see that Christianity has kept up with the world’s system of trying to legislate everything, and has stayed hardline legalistic[1]. Nine years ago, I wrote this piece explaining Grace – God’s unearned favour and the freedom it brings – using ideas from Star Wars for illustration. My thoughts on the subject actually remain unchanged; indeed, events since the piece was first written have only served to confirm that what I wrote here is not only correct, but also the main thread of first-century Christianity that has become concreted over by centuries of legalism. Presumptious of me to say that? Undoubtedly. But it all jives with my experience, so how else can I judge it?

See what you think:


Most of my readers know how much I love to use the mythology of Star Wars to illustrate theological points from the Christian faith. And of course there is no better character than Jedi Master Yoda when it comes to wisdom quotes. With his backwards-facing speech and small stature, it’s easy to underestimate him – until you realise that he’s over 800 years old and has lived under the guidance of the Force (the Star Wars universe’s version of God) for his whole life. He’s compassionate and gentle, wise and powerful. Someone once said to me that he thought that Yoda was ‘…a better Christian than some Church people I know’!

Although sometimes his sayings can be most confusing!

Take, for instance, the saying in the title of this piece.

“Try not. Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’ “

This is actually a fair summary of the message of God’s Grace, in a nutshell.

But first, let’s hear it from Master Yoda himself:

And I’m not the only one who found it confusing. For instance, in the Disney XD series ‘Star Wars Rebels‘, there’s an exchange between Jedi Kanan Jarrus and his young Padawan (apprentice), Ezra Bridger, talking about it:

As I said above, this is indeed a fair summary of the message of God’s Grace, in terms of what we need to do to please God. Naturally, I’m ripping it entirely out of its original context, and saying something completely different from what Yoda meant (I think, anyway!) – but still it’s useful.

“Do, or Do Not, there is no Try”, simply reminds us that in Christ we have the freedom to Do, or to Do Not. There is absolutely no need to Try.

This is so liberating!

You see, as my regular readers will know, I am a strong proponent of Grace. God’s Grace: the undeserved favour of Almighty God given freely and without hindrance or condition to His children. In all the world’s religions, there are really only two main approaches: there’s Legalism, and there’s Grace. And Christianity, at its core, is the only faith which promotes Grace, and this entirely through the finished work of Jesus Christ – although sadly, much of the time, it is bound up with so much other legalistic religious baggage that it’s undetectable in its true form.

Simply put, Legalism is: do this, do this, don’t do that, don’t do that. Try harder to impress God and He’ll look upon you with favour.

Grace, however, is: it’s already done! Because of the freedom Grace brings, Grace is “Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’. ”

Grace gives you the freedom to choose to do, or do not, without the Law telling you what to do or not to do. Grace allows you to live life by the Spirit of God, life ‘in the Spirit’, completely unfettered by human expectations of how you ‘should’ obey God’s Law. In short, Do, or Do Not. If you begin to ‘Try’, then you immediately fall into Law and you have ‘fallen from Grace’ (Gal 5:4) in that you are no longer in the state where you are relying on Grace to do things for you, such as making you righteous, fulfilling the Law in Christ and so on. You cannot be in Grace and Law at the same time; it’s either one or the other. To coin a Star Wars phrase, again, you need to ‘trust in the Force’, to ‘let go’ and let God work out His will for you as you walk in the Spirit.

“Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’ “

Because the flesh and the law work together, there is no try, because try is doomed to failure. The Law is weakened by sin, and sin increases through the Law (Rom 7:5-6). The two therefore work together in a vicious circle to produce fruitlessness and death. If you want to live by Law, fine; you will still enjoy fellowship with God after a fashion, even though you will likely be adding in lots of additional burdens like rule-keeping, expected behaviour and having to toe the party line on certain issues like creation/evolution and gay/straight debates. There is a form of fellowship with God there, because God allows people to ‘do legalism’ without it affecting how He sees them. But it’s not because of the Rules you think you’re keeping so well (in fact you will probably be conscious of how badly you’re keeping them!); no, It’s because of God’s Grace, apart from Law (Rom 3:21), that you are already made acceptable to God in Christ. But unless you come into the real freedom of the Children of God (Rom 8:21) then you will never be free, completely free, from the desire to please others, from the jumping through man-made hoops in order to please God, and all that other baggage. Make no mistake – the desire to please God through following rules almost always turns into trying to please men, because in actual fact it’s their rules you end up trying to keep, not God’s. The Pharisees of Jesus’s day had the Ten Commandments and some other laws too, but they also added lots of other man-made rules of their own. You see the problem? This still goes on today…..

Grace is over Law – the Law of God which essentially states that everyone has to be perfect, and therefore naturally leads us to the point where we realise we can’t be perfect. And so it leads us to Grace, because the function of the Law is to show us our need for Grace (Rom 7:13). The key here is to realise that and accept it, rather than to go on struggling under Law!

“Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’ “

Paul, talking about God’s dealing with Israel with regards to the Gospel, (but the principle applies to Jew and Gentile believer alike), says in Romans 11:6, “And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace” (NIV) The King James Version actually adds in more, which I find helpful: “And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work” Romans 11:6 (KJV). That elaboration in the KJV is helpful because it explains that whichever mode of belief you subscribe to – Law (works) or Grace – they are mutually exclusive. You cant exist in both states at the same time. To try to do so means you become ‘double-minded‘ because you are in and out of the ‘state of Grace’ and blown about all over the place (Jas 1:5-8)

“Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’ “

I still maintain that, for many believers (even those who understand Grace), the temptation to become acceptable to God through performance – ‘works’ – is a vestigial remnant of their desire to please God in their own strength. But what of where James says in Jas 2:14-26 that “faith without works is dead”? Don’t we need both faith and works? Yes, but only in that works are the fruit of faith. A life lived in faith will produce good works; as usual in many Christian circles a lot of people have got it back-to front and said that good works prove your faith. In one sense they do, but it is not the job of fellow believers to be ‘fruit inspectors’ who ‘police’ others’ works! And the interesting thing here is that actually even those whose walk is under Law still do produce some fruit, because their hearts are in one sense right before God in that they desire Him and desire to walk with Him. But the primary holdup with Law is that the Law-walking believer is never walking in the complete freedom that is his by birthright.

Why have I gone to such lengths to describe the futility of the walk under Law in this piece?

Because these are all examples of Try. It’s all about what we do, rather than about what Christ has already done. What part of Christ’s work does the Legalistic believer think was not completed properly, such that he needs to complete Christ’s work for Him? No, this is Try. Even for those who claim to recognise Grace, but then try to prove they love God by trying to obey rules, it’s not really living under Grace; it’s living under ‘mixture‘. True Grace is completely different. There is no compulsion to try to fulfil the Law in order to please God, because Jesus has already fulfilled the Law on our behalf. There is the freedom to Do – works for God flowing from the depth of our love for, and our relationship with, Him – but not in order to try to earn His favour, which we already have. The freedom to enjoy life with all its blessings without human rules and expectations getting in the way. There is the freedom to Do Not; the freedom to just rest in God and trust Him for all our own righteousness rather than try to earn it for ourselves – which we can’t do anyway!

Despite all my convoluted explanations above, it’s really very simple.

Under Grace, you have the freedom to Do; you have the freedom to Do Not.

But to Try – I think we’ve already seen how futile this is.

No, it’s always got to be this:

“Try not. Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’ “
do-donot-yoda-pie-chart

 

 

 

 

 

 

And May the Force be With You!

Footnotes

Footnotes
1 Of course, some of this may be the unsurprising reaction of Conservative Christianity to the constantly increasing, worldwide phenomenon of Christians realising what Grace really means.

The Christians Making Atheists

This entry is part 13 of 14 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

“There is no better, nor no worse, witness for Jesus than the Church” – Anon

This was said to me by a friend a long time ago[1], and I kind-of agree with him – well, at least on the second part of the quote; not quite so much the first![2] And of course this was before the major excesses of American Evangelical Christianity tacitly, or even openly, supporting the inhuman actions and policies of the current (2025) President of the United States, and the Evangelical-led sweeping destruction of democracy through the Evangelical-inspired ‘Project 2025’. I don’t do politics on here, but I do do faith-related matters, and the actions of these people do not in any way reflect the faith that I follow, nor indeed do they reflect the teachings of its Founder. End of story; no further comment required.

Fortunately, at the moment, it’s nowhere near as bad as this in my country; we tend to be a lot more open-minded and cosmopolitan in our outlook. But if the Religious people in Evangelicalism have their way, that could of course change.

If you are an Evangelical in the UK, or any other country for that matter, do not let your leadership lull you into the idea that Jesus is, or Christianity ‘should be’, on the ‘side’ of any political movement. Jesus is above all that, and His people are too if they would but realise it. Remember the Jerusalem priests at the ‘trial’ of Jesus – who really should have known better – shouting out to Pontius Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar!” (Jn 19:15) Don’t, please don’t, be like them. As a Christian, I have no King but Jesus.

So, let’s hear from the brilliant John Pavlovitz, speaking from back in 2017. Things have only got worse since then:


The Christians Making Atheists

Growing-up in the Church, I was taught that the worst thing one could be was a non-believer; that nothing was as tragic as a doomed soul that condemned itself by rejecting God. The religion of my childhood drew a sharp, clear line between the saved and the damned. All that mattered was making sure someone found themselves on the better side of this line—and the Atheists and Humanists didn’t have a shot.

In light of this supposed truth, the heart of the faith (I was told), was to live in a way that reflected the character and love of Jesus so vividly, so beautifully, that others were compelled to follow after him; that a Christian’s living testimony might be the catalyst for someone’s conversion. The Bible called it “making disciples” and it was the heart of our tradition. As the venerable hymn declared, we Jesus people were to be known by our love.

What a difference a couple of decades make.

Just ask around. People outside the Church will tell you: love is no longer our calling card. It is now condemnation, bigotry, judgment and hypocrisy. In fact, the Christianity prevalent in so much of America right now isn’t just failing to draw others to Christ, it is actively repelling them from him. By operating in a way that is in full opposition to the life and ministry of Jesus—it is understandably producing people fully opposed to the faith that bears his name.

 

In record numbers, the Conservative American Church is consistently and surely making Atheists—or at the very least it is making former Christians; people who no longer consider organized religion an option because the Jesus they recognize is absent. With its sky-is-falling hand-wringing, its political bed-making, and its constant venom toward diversity, it is giving people no alternative but to conclude, that based on the evidence of people professing to be Godly—that God is of little use. In fact, this God may be toxic.

And that’s the greatest irony of it all: that the very Evangelicals who’ve spent that last 50 years in this country demonizing those who reject Jesus—are now the single most compelling reason for them to do so. They are giving people who suspect that all Christians are self-righteous, hateful hypocrites, all the evidence they need. The Church is confirming the outside world’s most dire suspicions about itself.

These people aren’t stupid. They realize that bigotry, even when it is wrapped in religion or justified by the Bible or spoken from a pulpit is still bigotry. They can smell the putrid stench of phony religion from a mile away—and this version of the Church, frankly reeks of it. People are steering clear in droves, choosing to find meaning and community and something that resembles love outside its gatherings.

With every persecution of the LGBTQ community, with every unprovoked attack on Muslims, with every planet-wrecking decision, with every regressive civil rights move—the flight from Christianity continues. Meanwhile the celebrity preachers and professional Christians publicly beat their breasts about the multitudes walking away from God, oblivious to the fact that they are the impetus for the exodus.

And one day soon, these same religious folks will look around, lamenting the empty buildings and the irrelevance of the Church and a world that has no use for it, and they’ll wonder how this happened. They’ll blame a corrupt culture, or the liberal media, or a rejection of Biblical values, or the devil himself—but it will be none of those things.

No, the reason the Church soon will be teetering on the verge of extinction and irrelevance, will be because those entrusted to perpetuate the love of Jesus in the world, lost the plot so horribly, and gave the world no other option but to look elsewhere for goodness and purpose and truth.

 

Soon these Evangelicals will ask why so much of America has rejected Jesus, and we will remind them of these days, and assure them that they have not rejected Jesus at all—they just found no evidence of him in their Church or in them.


Original post can be found here


“Soon these Evangelicals will ask why so much of America has rejected Jesus, and we will remind them of these days, and assure them that they have not rejected Jesus at all—they just found no evidence of him in their Church or in them” – and this is exactly what is happening now.

People are leaving American Christianity in droves, and this is one of the main reasons why – although there are of course many.

Note, though, that this does not mean that people are leaving Jesus, nor abandoning their faith in Him; not all of them, at any rate. Like most forms of genuine ‘deconstruction’, they have simply left behind the parts of their faith that they have seen to be unproductive, counterproductive, or just plain wrong, and carried on with those parts that still work for them. This is healthy and I wish it was more widespread! I really don’t think that people can honestly hold to such deadly anti-Christian beliefs and still walk closely with Jesus, if I’m honest. Your thoughts may vary, of course; but still, like me, you need to listen to Jesus and hear what He’s saying to you personally.

Grace and Peace to you.


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Footnotes

Footnotes
1 He was quoting an un-named source, hence ‘Anon’.
2 Of course, as I have said before even in this series, there are still many good, sincere and genuine Jesus followers in the Church which largely redeem it from the horrors perpetrated by those who are Christians in name only.

The Secret of the Lord – Reblog

It seems I’ve been doing a lot of reblogging lately – republishing pieces that I wrote some time ago – and this piece is one of those, first published in June, 2018.

Every so often, it is prudent to bring to the fore ideas, concepts and wisdom from the past, in order to make it visible again. I have recently been so blessed by this piece that I just had to share it once more[1].

And so, here is the piece ‘The Secret of the Lord’, previously published here. I trust it will bless you as much as it just blessed me!


I think it’s fair to say that God knows everything. He knows how everything is put together, how it all works, how it all began and how it all ends. And yet, in the midst of all that wonder, He chooses to let us ‘in’ on His secrets.

Now, everyone loves a secret that they are privy to. You’ll remember the delicious feeling, when we were kids, of being ‘in the know’; maybe being part of a secret club or ‘gang’ (not a ‘gang’ in its modern sense!); a group of kids who all identified with each other and who were all ‘in’. Great fun, wasn’t it? 😀

And I think that this is a precursor to knowing the secrets of God. That same desire to ‘know stuff’, which manifests itself differently in different people. For some it might be a desire to indulge in gossip about others’ private lives; for others it’s a desire to work things out in great detail; for still others it may be something else entirely. So I do believe it’s part of every human’s makeup in one form or another.

But for me there is no more fascinating quest than that of the pursuit of the secret things of God. To see in increasing measure what His purpose is; to see His attitudes; to know His love; to know many, many other things, maybe not even necessarily things directly about Him, that I can’t even begin to describe. Even the beginning of the knowledge of the answers to the deep questions of life is to be found in this quest.

As a medical research scientist, many years ago, I discovered how many things worked in a medical sense. That’s what we did. We were finding out these previously unknown things – secrets, if you will – that, up until we had made the discovery, nobody knew about.

And yet that’s nothing compared with knowing God and knowing about His ways. Consider also, there are Life’s Big Questions too, which I have touched on previously – why do bad things happen; why does God allow suffering and death – yes, I have those questions too.

So in this piece, then, I will attempt to explore something of what this ‘The Secret of the Lord’ is all about. The Psalmist said, “The secret of the Lord [is] with them that fear Him; And He will shew [archaic: show – Ed] them His covenant” – Ps 25:14 (KJV) – and that’s what we’re going to be looking at today.

But first, let’s just deal with that word ‘Fear’, shall we? The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him? As I have said in a previous article, the word ‘Fear’, when seen in the Bible in the context of the ‘Fear of God’, does not mean what people in this day and age understand as ‘fear’. The word ‘fear’ has been retained in modern translations, despite its archaic use (and hence my use of the King James Version quotations to illustrate this), but it meant a different thing then from what it does now. The cynic in me says that this has been done for control purposes, but then that’s just my opinion. I’m not going to go into more detail here, but if you would like some more background on the common misuse of this word in the Bible, please take a look at this article. Suffice it to say for now that it’s a very rich word with connotations far exceeding simple ‘terror’; that the word can mean concepts more like ‘respect’, ‘awe’ or even ‘worship’ too, and given that perfect Love has no room for ‘fear’ as we understand the meaning of the word today, we would expect that the context is less to do with terror than it has to do with love. So, when we talk about people who ‘fear’ the Lord, we are talking about those who love Him, who worship Him, and who think He’s just pretty amazing. That’s what we’re talking about here.

So, to paraphrase Ps 25:14, ‘The secret of the Lord is with those who think He’s amazing’. Ok? But I am going to carry on using the word ‘fear’ in this article because it is the form of the Scripture passage that most believers will be familiar with. Just remember what the word really means, right?! 🙂

So, then, using our knowledge of Hebrew parallelism, we can at least see that the two concepts in Ps 25:14 are linked, in that to those who fear the Lord and know His secrets, He will show His covenant. In other words, the very idea of God showing His secrets to those who fear Him means that He makes His covenant – the ways in which He has promised to relate to us – known to us in increasing measure. And while that’s absolutely wonderful, there’s a lot more that He makes known to us as well.

And this is to be expected. God’s dealings with His faithful have always involved Him telling us stuff that we wouldn’t previously have known. Even as far back as Genesis, God said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Gen 18:17). As St. Paul wrote, “
The natural man [that is, one not walking in the Spirit] does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is not subject to anyone’s judgment. “For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ” – (1Cor2:14-16) If we are living a supernatural life, then it is to be expected that God will reveal new and surprising things to us through His Spirit; things we were not expecting, things we did not ask for, and certainly things that we didn’t know before and would have no way of knowing without the Spirit of God showing us these things.

Linked with this is the idea that, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” – (Prov 9:10). Do you see the connection there; the common root? If we begin by approaching the Lord in ‘fear’ – worship, adoration, awe and just generally being gobsmacked – then we begin and continue our walk along the path to wisdom, which is part of the ‘Secret of the Lord’. If you’ve been a believer for some time, then you will know what I am talking about. You will be able to point to various things that God has shown you over the years that you couldn’t have known yourself; things He has shared with you, in terms of both wisdom and knowledge. If you’ve not been walking with Jesus all that long, then I rejoice in saying that you have all this to look forward to!

Much of the wisdom I have been able to share which I have learned in my grief journey since losing my wife to cancer nineteen months ago, this wisdom I have been taught in the silences of simply sitting at Jesus’s feet; in the agonies of grief; in deep, healing worship; and in the times where I have felt His tangible Presence like a warm cloak of divine Love wrapped around my shoulders. And some of this knowledge is ‘secret’ because it relates only to me; it’s personal for my circumstances – these are ‘my secrets’, if you will. But other things have been revealed that I have indeed shared. In particular, the profound realisation that death is not the end is extremely important, and had to be shared with my readers here.

He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him – Dan 2:22 (KJV)

He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him. – Dan 2:22 (NIV)

‘Deep and secret things’. That sounds amazing, doesn’t it? And it is. We are privy to an immense storehouse of God’s wisdom and knowledge that He is willing to pass on to us, albeit in chunks that we can cope with. The ancient Hebrew King, David, wrote this: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain” – (Psalm 139:6). Jesus Himself said several times that even once He’d gone, not only would He not leave us ‘as orphans’ (Jn 14:18), and that He would come to us and that He would send us His Spirit “…to be with you for ever” (Jn 14:16)

And He also said that, “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.” – (Jn 16:12-15)[Emphasis mine]

I also love the bit in Matthew 11:25-27 where Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children [in the context, He was referring to His disciples here – Ed]. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”.

As you’ve probably gathered by now, the key to all this is Jesus. Knowing Jesus is foundational. In order to sit at His feet and learn from Him, you need to come to Him. Jesus said, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” – (John 17:3). If you like, the wisdom and knowledge of the ways of God, including the ‘Secret of the Lord’, is part of the ‘Eternal Life’ package; the life of the age to come being projected into the here and now. Parallel to this idea, Proverbs 8:35 says, “For he who finds me [wisdom] finds life, and obtains favour from the Lord” – Prov 8:35 (NASB)

As I mentioned above, some parts of the Secrets of the Lord can be shared; some cannot. Some we can learn from each other; from those to whom God has revealed things. Some things are too far ingrained in the route by which we learned them such that they are not communicatable because the way we learned them is too deep to be expressed. But some things are in any case altogether too sacred to share, and indeed can be potentially harmful to share with people who do not have the maturity to hear those things (cf. Heb 5:11-14)[2]. Some of the stuff I get from God, I know full well would cause one helluva stir if I were to let it out into the public domain. And so, the wisdom that I receive from the Lord – which I always want to have at the same time as the knowledge I receive – is that which says what is good to share, and what is not. St. Paul, somewhat modestly, declared (in the third person) that he had received visions from God that he was not permitted to share. I love the passage where he writes about this:

“Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell“.  – (2Cor12:1-4, emphasis mine)

Some of my readers will know what this is like. How many times have you had dreams where God has shared things with you that you cannot even express? I remember once (if ‘remember’ is the right word) having a dream about the things of God. I could not remember a thing about it when I woke up except that I knew that something really deep had happened. The fruits of that dream are with me to this day. I’m not talking about the ordinary kind of forgetting of dreams that always happens; I distinctly remember waking up fully from the dream that had just finished, knowing that something amazing had happened to me, but I didn’t know what it was. It seems that, on occasion, God even keeps secrets from us about His dealings with us! And talking of dreams, my late wife Fiona had a similar occurrence in her sleep in her early twenties, which was incredible but which is not my story to share.

Added to that, a few months before she died, Fiona was given a lucid vision of what Heaven was going to be like for her. And she kept that a secret from me until only a couple of weeks before her passing, because she knew that her telling me would greatly upset me, because then all my hope of not losing her would be lost. Now that’s wisdom! She was the most wise person I ever met, was my Fiona! 🙂

Another idea along these lines is that sometimes someone isn’t ready for new knowledge just yet. Let me use the example of an article I read the other day, where the writer was working through some concepts of Scripture that were bothering them. This person had some excellent ideas, some that were not so good, and also expressed some concepts that I left behind years ago. But rather than wade in and point out ‘errors’ based on my ‘knowledge’ (which I appreciate is sketchy at best!), I recognised that the writer was at a point in their own walk that was a huge step forward from where they were previously, and for them, that was amazing. And so I kept my trap shut and didn’t say anything. I sometimes think that wisdom is knowing how and when to use the knowledge that we have been given!

I also read a comment, in reply to one of Christy Wood’s posts, where the commenter said this, “Here’s the thing: even as God does gently lead me into greater understanding, I cannot then turn around and push it down the throats of others. I have to allow God to be God, and do with them as he is doing with me. If I am a parent, I have to allow my adult children to learn their own lessons, make their own mistakes and choose their own flavor of relating to God“. We can use that illustration as part of the reason why God shares with us certain things, while not sharing others.

Sometimes, the stuff He shares with us is so historically magnificent that it would destabilise lives if we were to share it. “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law“. – (Deut 29:29) This is true insofar as the secret things of God were being progressively revealed to the Israelites in the desert under Moses, and later through the prophets, but were revealed in their fulness in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the fulfilment of that Law on our behalf. And so, ‘secret things’ were revealed, yes, but their true historical significance did not become apparent until Jesus Christ. They couldn’t, and indeed shouldn’t, have known what was to come, because the ramifications were so huge. In other words, God speaks His secrets to us at a level we are able to cope with, and not necessarily at a level that others could cope with. That’s pretty deep, I know.

[1Cor 2:10]

You will probably be raring to go, to seek after the ‘Secret of the Lord’. Remember it’s not one thing, but a whole magnificent plan and destiny of which He reveals only a small part at a time, and the hugeness of which cannot be understood by mere mortals like us. But even so, having the plans of God revealed to us carries an immense sense of privilege, and an immense responsibility, to hold and use that knowledge with the wisdom that He also gives freely.

How do we start? It’s nothing heavy. The knowledge and wisdom of God is given freely to those who simply ask. Just ask Him, and then expect Him to point things out to you as you go about your everyday life, walking in the Spirit. It will happen. You may suddenly realise that for the past week, God has been speaking these secrets to you and, you haven’t realised. Don’t worry. He will bring things back to you. This is something that takes some getting used to, and it improves with practice. It’s a ‘learning curve’! Cut yourself some slack and just enjoy the experience.

Oh, and one more thing: remember it’s a ‘secret’. Don’t share stuff with others unless you are absolutely sure they can deal with it. Don’t share it boastfully or with ‘attitude’. Remember there will be those who do not, indeed simply cannot, understand. So, most of the time, keep these nuggets to yourself, let them nourish you and teach you in the ways of God. The fruits and the benefits for others will emerge in due course.

To quote J. C. Philpot, from August 1844:

“It is a secret, because it is only known to a few. It is a secret, because it is carried on in private between God and the soul. It is a secret, because never known until God the Spirit unfolds the mystery.”[3]

For another angle on this, there is an interesting article that I read recently, which goes quite deeply into the ideas of sharing the ‘Secret of the Lord’ with others. “When the Lord knows that He can trust us with His secrets, He will reveal things to us which He cannot reveal to others”. Definitely worth a look[4].

As an addendum, I also recently had a little more insight on the wisdom of sharing the deep things of God.

Firstly, there is always the ‘pearls before swine’ analogy (Matt 7:6). Don’t give certain people precious knowledge, unless you know it will be treasured.

Secondly, I recently wrote this on a Facebook post, which I think adds to our present discussion:

The Secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him. And sometimes these secrets are too deep to share with others, especially when those others do not yet have the spiritual maturity to deal with them. When we share with the objective of putting ourselves on a pedestal about how awesome our personal revelation is, that’s a sure sign that we are not sharing at the right time. Sharing of such deep wisdom generally needs to be done in the quiet, on-on-one place, not in a big meeting where the effects can be catastrophic. Deep wisdom can be a two-edged sword; it can build up those who have the ears to hear and the eyes to see the truth, but it can also destroy those who do not have those ears and eyes. This is why knowledge of the things of God must go hand in hand with the wisdom of God. This may well be why there is such an emphasis on wisdom in the Scriptures.

So, The Secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him. Enjoy this. Be fascinated by it, by your discoveries, by His revelations. Drink in the richness of His Creation, the depths of His wisdom, and the knowledge of His love, power, majesty and might.

Grace and Peace to you.


There we go. I have tweaked the article slightly in order to make it easier to navigate, and I have incorporated later edits into the text, but it still contains the required wisdom, and explains it properly.

Footnotes

Footnotes
1 Sometimes, I look at a piece from the past and think like, ‘Crumbs, this is superb; did I really write that??’ 😉
2 “We have much to say about this [theological idea], but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” – Heb 5:11-14
3 https://www.gracegems.org/Philpot/secret_of_the_lord.htm
Much of what Philpot says in that sermon is stuff I don’t agree with, and it reflects the prevalent thinking of the period. But some of it is real gold. I leave it to the reader to sift it for the nuggets 🙂

[Edit]: I have copied the text, of that sermon linked to, into a page here on my own website. This is because sometimes web pages disappear, and the links I have given no longer work because of that. This in fact happened to another web page I linked to in this present article, which you will see in the footnotes below. Here is the link to Philpot’s sermon page on my blog in case this happens!

4 From ‘Love Notes’, by Mary Love Eyster: http://www.iprayprayer.com/secret-lord-fear-psalm-2514-keeping-gods-secrets/

[Edit: The original article has indeed disappeared since I wrote the original article; I’m so glad I saved it! – See next paragraph]

I have reproduced Mary’s article linked to above, in a Page here on my blog. There is so much good stuff in it, and websites disappear all the time, so I wanted to make sure that it is preserved for posterity. Here is the link.

Some Thoughts on Deconstruction, by Don Francisco

This entry is part 12 of 14 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

One of my favourite quotes from the famous[1] Christian artist, Don Francisco, is this:

“If all you know of God is from books, you are walking in deep darkness…”

In the context of this series, on the Problems of Evangelicalism, it is particularly apt đŸ€Ł So I though I’d elaborate or, more accurately, let Don elaborate!

Here, then, is the full piece, written a good few years ago now[2], in which he wrote that important little quote. I will add no more; Don’s essay needs no commentary![3]


I’ve had several supernatural revelations in my seventy-plus years. They first showed me, and then re-confirmed, the reality of Jesus/God and His love; they have become the foundations of my life.

Making an all-too-common error, however, I interpreted those undeniable experiences with God according to modern evangelical dogma, having no other context. It didn’t take long for those interpretations to mix with the revelations themselves, and together they hardened into intellectual barriers… I began to confuse defending those composite walls with defending the revelations themselves– which needed no defense. It took years for me to realize this had occurred…

Religious dogma would assert that such a realization is actually a spiritual attack that requires resistance – and the building of a higher, more extensive, and more impenetrable mental wall. Experience is deemed invalid (being identified with “the sinful flesh”), and doctrine is elevated to the place of prime importance.

Recently, I found myself surveying the damage after the wrecking ball of reason had swung full-force into those dogmatic walls. To continue the metaphor: All that I knew experientially of God was now buried under tons of intellectual rubble. (This is a place people find themselves after escaping from religious cults– doubting everything they’ve believed, not just the cults’ lies and half-truths.)

Removing the rubble and reclaiming my violated experiences was the task before me– all the more difficult because I still lacked a context: Evangelical doctrine was the only one I’d ever known for interpreting those revelations, and I needed a fresh perspective. I eventually found one that works for me; I realize it’s sort of cobbled together…

My interpretive wall had been built of the following common evangelical principles. (The list is not exhaustive, but nearly so…)

1) At the Fall in the Garden of Eden, the human race became evil at its core, and every child born since contains and is predisposed to express that evil. All of us were born separated from God by this misdeed of our ancestors.

2) God could not associate with humanity after the Fall because of His holiness and righteous anger toward our sins and sinful nature. His anger had to be satisfied, and our nature needed to be changed.

3) In the evangelical view, the Old Testament describes how God made a covenant with the nation of Israel via Moses; Israel continually failed to keep their part of the bargain, incurring God’s wrath and judgment. It’s presented as a model of God’s dealings with humanity outside of Jesus…

4) God sent His only, beloved, and perfect Son to become the human known as Jesus on earth so that He could die to pay the debt for our sins and to change our inner nature– if we ask him. When we do, we are included in the New Covenant, living forever in harmony with God.

5) Three days after His crucifixion and death, Jesus rose bodily from the dead, ascending back to God some time later. Pentecost occurred, followed by centuries of arguments about what it means…

6) Everyone who does not believe in Jesus’ deity and resurrection, repenting of their sins and asking Him to be their Lord and Savior, will be consigned by God to an eternal fiery torment.

7) All believers therefore have a duty to convince non-believers of the above, so that they, too, will receive natures acceptable to God and no longer be destined for hell-fire.

8) The Bible is the Word of God, a God-breathed, inerrant and infallible guide to understanding all these things. It is the sole authority in spiritual matters.

I can no longer believe that most of these things are true. Here are my beliefs today; you should work out your own, but feel free to cherry-pick from mine…

1) The Genesis story of the Fall was not intended by its writer(s) as a factual account of the first man and woman. It’s a metaphor meant to describe humanity when we decide that we know how to live without God. We are not born evil, but in the image of God– we’re like him. Some of us choose evil, but most just blunder through life on our own…

2) God never stopped associating with us– because of our ‘sins’ or for any other reason. Jesus, for one, proved it, preferring the company of practically anyone over that of religious leaders. (The Israelites’ idea of an angry god who needed appeasement by blood had been assimilated from neighboring cultures; to their credit, they usually used animal rather than human sacrifices.)

3) The Old Covenant scriptures are a human record of a nation groping after God but ultimately failing to understand Him. Some of the OT (Old Testament – Ed) writers heard Him better than others, but it’s a mixed bag. Trying to build a theology from the OT won’t work.

4) Jesus did come because of God’s great love for us; he didn’t come to die as payment for our sins. He came to show us what God is really like because we had it all wrong: He’s not angry– He is Love, a love that understands and forgives, even when we murder Him; His love is also independent of our response to it. The Spirit of God is real, has always been present and has never turned from anyone. He would dearly love for you to welcome him into your life; he’s always felt that way… Jesus also came to show us what it looks like to be truly and fully human…

5) I believe Jesus rose bodily from the dead, proving his deity, his love for us, and God’s eternal identification with the human race. When He said, “It is finished” on the cross, He meant it: There is nothing left for us to do but live in the reality of His accomplishment. (The Spirit of God helps us to do that, but the assertion in Acts that he had not yet been “given” makes little sense to me; he is, and always has been omnipresent. Perhaps humanity’s previous lack of comprehension kept him out…) My own initial experience of being filled with him occurred without any “laying on of hands”. What is described as Jesus’ “ascension” was simply a dimensional relocation…

6) For various reasons, the idea of eternal conscious torment for unbelievers has been inserted into Jesus’ teachings and other places in the NT (New Testament – Ed). Assigning anyone to such a place is completely incompatible with Jesus’/God’s character– even the OT writers didn’t threaten people with it… and there really is no such thing as “hell” in the NT.

7) Most of humanity’s hurtful, destructive, and evil actions are motivated by fear. By telling others of God’s love in Jesus– and demonstrating it by how we live– we can introduce them to Him and to reality– a universe governed by love. We can show them that God has always loved them, never condemned them, and not to fear death: It’s not the end, and there is no hell to be avoided by kissing up to an angry god.

8) Idolizing the Bible is foundational to the cult of evangelicalism; human interpretations of a book are thereby elevated to a place of authority above even the audible voice of God Himself. For me, what God says to me in my heart is always held above everything written or spoken by another human.

The Bible exists to lead us to Jesus: He is the Word of God. Hear Him.

This last point (#8), of necessity, affects all the others. If all you know of God is from
books, you are walking in deep darkness…


Comments have been disabled for this post

Footnotes

Footnotes
1 But now retired!
2 And I have actually shared it before, here – interestingly as part of my series on spiritual growth – but I feel it needs restating in the current context!
3 I will also add that I find it interesting how so many people who have walked with Jesus for so long, and are honest and free enough to realise and express it, come to the same or very similar conclusions. I found myself nodding with Don on just about every point on re-reading this, and this from my own independent thinking, study and conclusions.

A Relationship With a Book?? – Reblog

This entry is part 11 of 14 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

In this series so far, I have written about the religious and spiritual abuses that go on within the Evangelical branch of the Christian faith. And I have written about the biggest evil, where God is presented in a literally dreadful light in the doctrine of Hell.

Well, there is another evil in Evangelicalism, which is not universal by any means, but is at least tacit in a lot of Evangelicals’ thinking, if not all. And it’s the idea that you can only have a Relationship with God through the Bible.

Oh, I know that a common Evangelical Christianese catchphrase is that ‘it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship’. Trying to claim, of course, that it’s a relationship with God. And many people in Evangelicalism do indeed have a direct and first-hand Relationship[1] with God. I know this because I had one, when I was in Evangelicalism, and I rejoice that I still walk with God in that Relationship right now[2]. But there are also those who steal this concept of ‘relationship’, making their religion sound attractive by advertising it as being able to actually know God personally, as they have heard that others claim, and then they twist this concept into the idea that the Bible must be, and is, the only way in which humans can have a relationship with God, and vice versa. This is the classic bait-and-switch of Evangelicalism: Join us! We know how to access God, ok welcome aboard, now here’s a Bible[3]; read it and you’ll know God in that way[4].

I mean, for mere humans to decide unilaterally that God – the Creator of everything[5] is restricted to just the thousand or so pages of a book, when it comes to Him speaking and walking with humans, is simply preposterous. And those ideas are, almost by definition, espoused and promoted by those people in Evangelicalism that do not themselves have a real, living Relationship with God. It’s ‘by definition’ because, if they did so have that Relationship, then they would know that the Relationship is not bound – and simply cannot be bound – just by the pages of the Bible, and they’d also know that, again by definition, the Relationship transcends the Bible.

The reason this is an evil is twofold.

First, it tells those who have a relationship with God only through the Bible alone – an ‘indirect’ relationship, one might call it – that this is all there is. Yes, you may hunger for more, but sorry mate, the Bible is all you get. Whatever you want from God, it’s all in there and you can forget about meeting Him in any other way.

Second, and leading on from that, it also implies – either tacitly or, as in the article quoted in the main piece below – that anything beyond the Bible is from the Enemy, the ‘devil’. That’s what they think; you’ll see this in the main piece. This means that anyone who believes that the Bible is the best you can get, in terms of relationship with God, and that anything else comes from the evil one, is essentially discouraged from seeking God for themselves. It means, although this is not generally realised, that things that most believers would heartily agree bring you closer to God – like a walk out in Nature, a glorious sunset, a deep loving friendship, a good single malt whisky[6], or even any piece of music that moves you to your heart in some indescribable way[7] – whatever, if it’s not the Bible, it’s banned. Of course, not even the Religious actually practice that sort of prohibition (well, maybe the whisky and the music they do đŸ€Ł), but still the logical conclusion is the same. Anyway, I digress. These points mean that these Religious people – the blind leading the blind (Mt 15:14, Lk 6:39) – who believe that the Bible is the only means of getting to know God, are not only lying to their victims[8] – that there is nothing better than the Bible[9], but they also establish in the minds of their victims the fear-based, and what is essentially superstitious, prohibition/deterrence on seeking God further, thereby denying their victims the fullness of a true Relationship with God through Jesus[10].

And that, my friends, is evil. There’s simply no other word for it.

Here’s the main piece, then, first published in April, 2017:


A Relationship With a Book??

This post, after my two recent posts (here and here), completes what is almost a mini-series on the dogged insistence of some believers on following Scripture to the letter and even placing it above Jesus, and thus misusing it completely.

The other day, I read a terrible piece criticising the book (and the new movie) The Shack. The book and movie have brought a lot of people into wide-open freedom already, and I have no doubt that many more will be touched by its message. Personally, I love the book and I can’t wait to see the movie (which comes out in June here in the UK). But it should come as no surprise that ‘religious’ people find that sort of thing difficult – the idea of people finding complete freedom – and so the article was critical, dogmatic and judgemental. The article is here if you want to try to stomach it. I don’t recommend reading it unless you have a bucket handy, it’s so negative.

But the thing that I found most disturbing was that the author of that article wrote this (and I hate to contaminate my blog with this sort of thing):

“In The Shack, Mack (the main character) finds true relationship with God in contrast to those who have traditional Christian beliefs based on the Bible. This subtle message qualifies as a wind of doctrine as mentioned in Ephesians 4.

“There is an undertone within The Shack, that relationship with God is something independent of the written word of God, and nothing could be further from the truth.

“There is no sweeter, no more assuring, no more real and living relationship with God than knowing him through his Word, especially when the Word is mixed with a prayerful heart. Earnest and heartfelt time in the Word of God, is time spent with God.

“Relationship with “the god of The Shack” is not true relationship with the Living God, because it is relationship with someone other than the true God we fellowship with in the scriptures.

“It is through the knowledge of God revealed in his holy written word that we grow in our relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and as we grow in the Lord we embrace sound doctrine and good biblical theology which makes us spiritually healthy.”[11]

I have to say that I actually feel physically sick from reading this, even if only for the purposes of debunking it. (And I don’t have a bucket to hand…) He’s saying that the only true ‘relationship’ one can have with Jesus is only and entirely through the Bible.

And this is what I am most concerned about. Sure, some people may well have experienced only that ‘Bible relationship’ with Jesus, but for him to say that anyone who has a personal relationship with Him, which transcends that of the Bible, to say that that person is wrong, is plain disrespectful and ignorant. In fact, ‘Ignorant’, in its true sense – lacking knowledge – is exactly what it is. These people know not that of which they speak.

I know what it’s like; when God speaks through the Bible, you do indeed ‘hear’ His voice inside you. I do understand that for any believer reading the Bible, there is indeed a sweetness when God is speaking through the Bible in that way. I fully agree with that. I have experienced that. And that sweetness is sweet indeed. It’s the witness of our spirit and the Holy Spirit within us.

But to name that sweetness as the ‘ceiling of sweetness’, as it were, that it doesn’t get any better than that, only means to me that that writer has never experienced anything better than that himself. I’m not saying that my spiritual walk is superior in any way, just that there is more, much more, than that fellow has yet plumbed. It is suggesting that they have only experienced God through the Bible; that they have never experienced the powerful reality of God actually walking and talking with them in their daily lives; they have never experienced anything other than just reading about Him in their Bibles and the sweetness that brings. I have. I can testify to that personally, and my regular readers will be aware of just how much He has brought me through over the last few months in the strength and love of that relationship, since the loss of my beloved wife, Fiona, to cancer last October. The Presence of God is an almost constant, bubbling-up wellspring of joy, power and freedom deep within. (Jesus spoke about this in John 4:14 and John 7:38).

Of course, that writer has it all covered, by asserting that the “…relationship [is] with someone other than the true God”, thus passively-aggressively hinting that it’s the Enemy with whom I fellowship[12]. Well, there’s a simple test, isn’t there? By their fruits you shall know them. (Mt 7:16) If my life shows the fruits of the Spirit, then it’s a life lived by the Spirit of God, and not by any other shady spirit, thank you very much. And they’re a cheeky so-and-so for trying to intimate that I’m not ‘in Christ’ 😉 Which I am, and I know it for sure. It can happen that people realise that God speaks through the Bible, and the sound of that Voice they make synonymous with the Bible rather than God. I liken it to an iPod. With an iPod, what comes through is the music but the iPod is not the artist that did the music. Similarly, the Bible is (one of the) means by which God speaks, but it is not God and some people make the mistake of deifying the Bible for that reason.

Does this not demonstrate a classic example of people like those Jesus was talking to in John 5:39-40?:

“You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want” (Jn 5:39-40 Message).

And so, I want to share with you today a little analogy I wrote some time ago, illustrating this relationship with Scripture against a Relationship with Jesus Himself. Here it is.

It’s like a sad middle-aged man still living with his parents, even though he’s met the girl of his dreams. The Bible leads us to Christ; once we have the relationship with Christ, it should ideally become the main relationship, not completely superseding the Bible relationship – which still exists – but still it is the main relationship. The sad man moves out of his parents’ house and marries the girl. He still has a warm, loving (and somewhat relieved!) relationship with his parents, but now his main focus is his wife. And so it is with Jesus. He is now the main focus and the Bible has done one of its main jobs which is to direct us to Him.

I understand that trusting a living person rather than a book is far harder; with a book you know where you stand; it’s all written down (but even then it’s open to misinterpretation!). The thing is that you stand, and you stand, and you continue to stand. There is no moving forward as God is not allowed to say anything that is not either ‘in’ the Book, or at least closely related to it, in that you hear evangelicals all the time saying that the Spirit will not go against anything that is in the Bible. That is neither Scriptural nor true. He will definitely go against things like hamstringing donkeys and battering children, killing all the inhabitants of a city – and even against the stuff in Job where the ‘friends’ are supposedly proclaiming God’s word but in fact they are doing nothing of the sort. Jesus said’ “There is so much more I want to tell you, but you can’t bear it now” (Jn 16:12) and this sort of thing – the Relationship with the Real and Living Person of Jesus – is precisely (but not exclusively) what He was talking about.

Far be it from me to denigrate someone else’s experience of God – for that is indeed what they get through reading their Bibles, as we have already seen. If someone wants to have a relationship with God through the tight limitations of a Book, that’s all well and good, and good luck to him – although if he stops there, with the Bible, then he’s missing out on so much more. But to criticise the true and real relationship of another believer in Christ by essentially saying that that relationship isn’t allowed, because that relationship not only exceeds but indeed transcends the words in the Bible – that’s just not on.

And to condemn someone else’s real and living relationship with Jesus and claim it is Satanic (which is what they are passively aggressively claiming) just because it doesn’t jive with their interpretation of Scripture – now that is reprehensible.

So, I would say for these people: it’s time for them to trust Jesus, both with their own lives, and with others’ too – which are in any case none of their business (Jn 21:22). It’s time to stop criticising and judging others’ relationship with the Lord. Jesus is more than capable of looking after His Church; His people, and drawing near to each of them as He sees fit.

It’s strange, really. My header picture was originally intended to show somewhat cynically that a relationship with a Book is no replacement for a Relationship with a Person, specifically the Person of Jesus by His Holy Spirit. But, you know, the primary function of the Bible is to lead us to Jesus; in some ways, then, we can indeed meet Him in its pages, thus enabling us figuratively to ‘hug’ Him like the picture shows. But the thing is that Jesus exists outside the Book, far more so than He does inside the Book. And that’s the message I’m trying to get across. You can’t limit the Creator of the universe to a book, no matter how special that book might be. There is far, far more to knowing God than simply what we find in the Bible. The Bible is, in fact only our starting point – it introduces us to Jesus, it introduces us to the loving Heavenly Father, and it instructs us in God’s ways. But it must be read with Jesus in mind – remember the Scripture’s primary purpose is to lead us to Christ!


I will finish with these short thoughts:

1) You can read all you like about God but unless you actually encounter Him you’re wasting your time.

2) It’s like reading about board games instead of playing them, or reading about a movie but not actually seeing it yourself. Or, and this is closer to the point, reading a book about someone, then claiming you know them and have a relationship with them, even though you’ve never actually met them.

3) As Don Francisco says, ‘If all you know about God is from books, then you are living in deep darkness’.

Grace and Peace to you all.


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Footnotes

Footnotes
1 I tend to capitalise the actual, personal Relationship with God, as opposed to a claimed relationship that is actually nothing of the sort and does not deserve capitalisation!đŸ€Ł
2 Since leaving Evangelicalism, that Relationship has indeed deepened, broadened and become so much more real to me. But I still appreciate the time I spent within Evangelicalism for the foundations it laid; not in terms of rules and doctrine, but in terms of the chance to develop that Relationship as far as it could before I outgrew the denomination itself.
3 Although actually churches are generally so tight-fisted that many of them would expect you to go out and buy your own!
4 You know, like how reading a book about Sir Winston Churchill means that you will know Sir Winston Churchill!
5 Remember that these people do believe that (as do I, but that’s irrelevant to my point), and so they should really form their ideas with this in mind.
6 My current personal favourite is the Glenlivet Founder’s Reserve.
7 And, yes, despite what the Religious would claim, this can also be heavy rock music if that’s your thang!
8 Although it could also be said that they are victims themselves; victims of these devilish teachings having been passed on to them by preceding generations.
9 Nor is there anything that can be known about God from ‘beyond’ the Bible, nor is there any ‘advanced’ faith level, if you like, where a believer can progress and grow through personal experience as well as through what is written in the Bible
10 It also denies several basic Scriptural ‘anti-fear’ principles, like that God protects His children from enemy activity – for example in 1Jn 4:4 “…for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world”, and that if we seek God for anything (including a greater knowledge of Him, by whatever means), He will not let us down, for example Mt 7:9-11, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” These are not quoted here as proof-texts, but simply to show that these people will conveniently ignore these verses, which they claim to believe, when it suits them in promoting their fear-based agenda.
11 This comment/footnote was added for the reblog – but can’t you almost hear the oily, unctuous and slimy voice and intonation of the creep saying these words? 😂 You’ve all heard people like this, I’m sure!
12 I know he’s not writing to/about me specifically, but as one who agrees with all the theology in The Shack, it’s as good as him writing about me.

Be Careful What You Pray For…

…you just might get it!

Several times in my writings, I have expressed the idea that the ‘Revival’, that has been prayed for/prophesied about since at least the 1980’s, is actually happening now, and has been for the last couple of decades at least.

It seems to be a characteristic of religious people that they don’t recognise the great things that God is doing until much later; if indeed they ever do. Even though the religious of Jesus’s time were expecting a Messiah, they didn’t recognise Him when He arrived in the Person Of Jesus, because He wasn’t at all what they expected He would be like, and didn’t do the things they thought He would: He didn’t drive out the Romans; He didn’t take up the Throne of David (John 6:14-15); and so on.

He also did things that their Scriptures of their time supposedly forbade under their interpretation, and that Jesus did all kinds of things that were considered forbidden under the religious society’s rules. He associated with ‘tax collectors and sinners’. Jesus’s creative interpretation of the Scriptures meant that His disciples rubbed and ate corn ears on the Sabbath. Jesus healed people on the Sabbath. He called God His ‘Father’, which drove them nuts.

This phenomenon of the religious being the last to ‘get it’ leads to Jesus saying things like, ‘Father, I thank You that you have not revealed this to the wise, but instead to little children’ (Mt 11:25). It explains passages like those parables in which Jesus shows that those who should have known better (i.e. those who supposedly had a religious mindset) got it horrifically wrong. An example would be the Parable of the Tenants, as described in all three of the Synoptic Gospels: Matt 21:33-46; Mark 12:1-12; and Luke 20:9-19.

Ultimately, it even explains how the religious experts of the day – the Scribes, Pharisees and Teachers of the Law [of God] eventually set Jesus up for an illegal kangaroo ‘trial’ and also incited the people in Jerusalem to demand Jesus’s execution. They simply didn’t see Who He was. ‘Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing’ has many layers of meaning, of which this is one: that they were crucifying their long-awaited Messiah because they didn’t realise Who they had there, present right in their midst.

I would say that it’s often – in fact in my experience it’s usually – the case that God’s answers to prayers and expectations don’t look anything like what we were praying for, and therefore look nothing like what we expected.

Since the 1990s, I remember people in my church at the time praying for revival. I remember them praying for the ‘next new thing’, citing of course the Scripture passage in Isaiah 43:19, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland”[1]

Usually, this was accompanied by the idea that God’s people were not ‘doing enough’; were not ‘worthy enough’; were somehow ‘bad’ in their dealings with Him. So they also trotted out the other verse in 2 Chron 7:14 – “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2Chron 7:14 (KJV)). Well, we can’t have something for nothing, can we, and the thing that is usually required, say the Religious, is a good healthy dose of self-recrimination and a ‘need for repentance’, lol. Because ‘we’ are all ‘wicked’ – also lol.

Well, for at least the last 25-30 years, God has been working quietly in the hearts and minds of people who truly seek Him, in all faiths and in all denominations. It’s happening quietly, and where it’s happening, those who are the Gatekeepers of Heaven are running scared, because all they can do is to vilify the ‘movement’ (although in reality it’s nowhere near as well-organised as a real ‘movement’, nor should it be) and try to scare people off from it.

Key to that current work of God is the phenomenon called ‘deconstruction’[2], a term that of course has already been misunderstood, misinterpreted and of course pirated by Christian groups all over the place. It’s even become a term used in everyday church parlance; to me, that’s never a good sign.

So here’s my dear friend, Lisa-Anne Valentine Wooldridge, with her take on how to view ‘deconstruction’. Lisa-Anne is, in my opinion, a modern-day prophet who very often sees right to the heart of a problem and gives God’s take on it; I have seen her do this time and again.

Enjoy:


I would like to gently suggest that the process of deconstruction is not something to be feared, whether it be something you find yourself in the midst of or something that is happening to those around you.

For many years, some have prayed for revival. If you peer deeply enough into the mysteries of God, you will see that deconstruction is His answer.

Think of the church as an extra fancy Caesar salad where all kinds of extra ingredients have been added, to the point it’s barely recognizable to the creator of Caesar salad. Deconstruction is merely the process of sorting the salad out, rinsing off the residue of the “wrong” ingredients, and then, hopefully over time, rebuilding the salad to actually be Caesar salad and not a “franken-salad” with weird things like bananas and gummy bears. Trust the process. Trust the One who leads us into all Truth. Trust the One who promised to grow the Body up to match the Head.

If you can’t wrap your head around Church Salad, think of it this way. Deconstruction is a much needed spa treatment for Christians, even if the salt scrub stings a little sometimes, and the heat and pressure of the hot stones is a little bit intense, and even if you think you’ll never be clean again after a total mudbath. When you exit deconstruction (and yes, there is an end to it) you will be free from a lot of the toxins and harmful effects of religion that you’ve carried with you over the years. You’ll then be able to live the simple, honest life of someone unencumbered by hollow religion but full of the confidence and joy that comes from unfettered Union with a God who is even better than anyone ever told you.

I have experienced Deconstruction, down to the very Foundation, and while it may look and feel scary, I can assure you there is no need to be afraid. You can count on this: “I will never leave you nor forsake you….” He’s as good as His word. I’ve watched and helped thousands of others going through this process over the last decade or so. Only a very few walk away from God altogether, and my belief is that they don’t walk alone, no matter how it seems.

Love carries us all. LOVE carries us all.

– Lisa-Anne Valentine Wooldridge
Shared with her kind permission


Excellent, thanks Lisa-Anne 🙂

I would like to suggest that, just as how with individual people, God brings us through stages of belief, so too in faith communities as a whole God is also bringing them through similar stages of belief. The ways in which people’s faiths are being expressed and practised are changing.

For Christianity, in the 70’s and 80’s there was a real resurgence in the practice of the actual, tangible presence of God, so far advanced from the dry and dusty liturgy-only services that were the norm before that time. People were finding a reality in God’s Presence that they just weren’t finding in the ‘old wineskins’ of dead and dusty religion. Now, decades later, the next stages of faith are maturing: people are emerging from their ‘dark nights of the soul’ and into the light of deeper faith, Stage 5 of ‘Fowler’s Stages of Faith’, the ‘Conjunctive Faith‘ stage.[3] And this is happening via Deconstruction.

This is the answer that they’ve been praying for! And, tragically, just like the Religious of Jesus’s time, they are missing it, ignoring it, and even reviling it as a deception of the enemy. Remember that Jesus defined the only ‘unforgivable sin[4] as being when people attribute the works of the Spirit to the enemy. And in denigrating deconstruction and, in some cases, attributing it to ‘satan’ or, at best, as a ‘work of the flesh’, they are, once again, missing the point.

You watch: just wait and see; in 20 years’ time, the phenomenon will be accepted into Church (and other religions’) structure and acceptable practice. People will wonder what all the fuss is about. There will be churches who have learned to expect deconstruction, and to carry and support their membership in their individual journey, should they need it (not all do by any means), and all without judging or condemning them for ‘backsliding’.

And, of course, it will have been pirated, imitated and counterfeited. Make no mistake: deconstruction is not a choice; it’s not something you wake up one morning and decide to just do. It’s not something you can effectively pretend, although there will be Christians who will claim that they have been through it, but actually they haven’t[5]. Nor is it something that leads once again back to a legalism of rules from the Bible, in the bait-and-switch move so well-beloved of Evangelical Christianity. It’s something that God leads a person into, each of us in a different way. Attitudes are lost, found, revised and owned by us personally. The character of Christ shines through effortlessly. We walk in Grace, unencumbered by the expectations of humans.

But it has to be real. Only genuine deconstruction leads us away from legalism and into the glorious freedom of the Children of God in Christ[6].

Grace and Peace to you.


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Footnotes

Footnotes
1 Oh, the irony – that God has indeed been doing a New Thing for the past couple of decades and, to answer His question in that Scripture: No; they do not perceive it!
2 In my case, my deconstruction took the form of a fifteen-year ‘Dark Night of the Soul’, which I describe here, and fill out the concept here.
3 This Stage has different designations in different descriptive models of the Stages of Faith, but Fowler’s are the ones I am most familiar with
4 Please do visit the link to my original article so that you understand what this means; there is no ‘sin’ for which people cannot be forgiven.
5 I am not saying here, even for one moment, that anyone’s deconstruction will not be completely unique to them, nor am I suggesting that anyone else should ‘police’ the ‘genuineness’ of deconstruction. Those who actually have gone through it will be able to see it in those others who have anyway; there will ne a kinship of spirit that will be readily apparent. It’s not something that can really be faked by those trying to appear ‘spiritual’.
6 Unless, of course, a person didn’t need to deconstruct in the first place; I know a very few people in that fortunate position. They had nothing to unlearn; they just came straight in at the ‘Grace’ doorway.

The Relentless Logic of the Evangelical Hell Doctrine – Reblog

This entry is part 10 of 14 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

Following on from the last post in this series, where I described the Hell doctrine as being the ‘Great Evil’ of the Evangelical gospel, I thought I would add more detail by reblogging this piece.

Back in 2018, I published this pivotal essay about Hell, and about just how terrible the doctrine really is – and indeed how terrible reality would be if indeed it were true. Here is the essay once again in all its terrible, dreadful, painful detail; I apologise that reading this may cost you some of your peace, and I would not blame you if you cried off reading it for that reason. That’s why I’m warning you. But if you can stomach it, it will be at least an education and, unless the reader’s heart is already set on believing in this doctrine come-what-may, it might even shed light on why the doctrine is completely antithetical to the teaching, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus.

I haven’t added anything to the essay or taken anything away, nor have I edited or modified it except for tidying up the footnotes into properly-referenced notes rather than simply using asterisks. The words I wrote in 2018 are just as relevant, and just as valid, today, as much as they were back then, because the logic is the same. Even the premises and assumptions on which I have based my arguments are still the same. Church ideas change veeeerrrry slowly.


Be warned: this is a very dark essay, mitigated only by the fact that I am describing what I consider to be wholly incorrect doctrines.

Today I’m going to look at the terrifying and indeed relentless ‘logic’ of the Evangelical doctrine of Hell, and the fate of everyone who ever lived[1]. But first I need to make some points clear.

Firstly, please remember that I am writing this from the point of view of Evangelical doctrine, as I used to believe it, 20 years ago, and which is still believed by most Christians of that persuasion today. I do know what I am talking about, because I was schooled in this horrific doctrine.

Secondly, I now reject the doctrine utterly, as completely false. Humans do not suffer endless torment in this Hell place once they die. I consider it to be a man-made invention, inspired by mediaeval interpretations of Scripture towards a public even more ignorant than they are now (ignorant in its proper sense of ‘not knowing’), mediaeval literature such as Dante’s Inferno, Islamic theology from the Koran, Greek mythology and many Pagan ideas as well as Babylonian mythology too. If the Christian Scriptures are interpreted through such ‘filters’, then it is no wonder that such a terrible concoction, as the Hell doctrine actually is, exists. That, and its promotion from the desire of crooked people from time immemorial who desire control over others. But that doesn’t mean it’s true; far from it.

Most gentle Christians, if asked about this doctrine, will usually say that they do believe in Hell, but that they have not really thought about it all that much. They are just believing – loosely – what they have been taught.

In this article, therefore, I am writing almost entirely about the ‘nasty’ churches and harsh Christians who aggressively and overtly espouse doctrines that damage the idea of a God of Love; I am not talking about the majority of decent churches who simply live their Christian lives for Jesus, doing good in a quiet way (1Thess 4:11)

To digress for a minute, I would bring up the subject of ‘cherry-picking’. That is, selecting Scripture verses or other evidence that supports your own point of view, while ignoring or otherwise disregarding other evidence that contradicts that point of view. This is nothing new, of course, and many Bible characters, including Jesus, did it regularly. This is actually because of the style of debate that Rabbinic scholars used, and unless one is familiar with that, it can be quite bewildering and confusing.

There are those in the Church who, for whatever reasons, like to major on the ‘bad news’. I am working on an essay on this idea at the moment, and I will publish it in due course. And so, I have noticed recently that the bad-news mongers only cherry-pick the bad verses, while at the same time accusing people like Universalists (those who believe everyone will be ‘saved’), for example, of only cherry-picking the ‘good’ verses.

It seems to me that these kinds of Christians, who, incredibly, consider themselves ‘joyful’; the bad-news mongers who nevertheless believe they are purveying a ‘loving God’ and ‘good news’, would rather assume that everything about their god is bad. He sends people to Hell. He punishes people for their sins. He’s wrathful. He likes people dashing babies against rocks because it says so in the Psalms (Ps 137:9, in fact, if you’ve never realised that Scripture exists). It seems that for a religion that purports to be joyful, it’s actually not. They have a facade of ‘good’, and many if not most churches do indeed do a lot of good in the world, but actually their ‘good news’ underlying everything is actually very, very bad news indeed. In fact it is actually the worst news there could possibly be. The most horrible nightmare you ever had does not compare with this stuff.

Let’s take a look.

Jesus said in Matthew 7:13-14 that ‘narrow is the way, and few are those that find it’. I know from personal experience that most Evangelicals infer from this that those who do not find that ‘way’ are toast in eternal punishment, because the verse also says that the ‘broad’ way leads to destruction. This is always interpreted by Evangelical Christians as meaning that this ‘destruction’ is in the eternal, everlasting torment of Hell. There is, however, actually no direct link between this passage and the classic ‘Hell’ passages, for example Luke 16:19-31; the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. This conceptual link between the ‘broad road’ and its ‘destruction’, and that this ‘destruction’ happens in Hell, is actually an assumption made by humans when trying to support the doctrine of Hell.

Maybe you don’t believe this is standard Evangelical doctrine? May I suggest you take a look at the interpretation of the ‘Narrow Way’ passage’s entry on GotQuestions.org, a website explaining standard Evangelical doctrine. It even says there that ‘We are not to be concerned with the number who will or will not enter’ – how callous is that? Grr…. Also take a look at the gross assumptions layered over the Rich Man and Lazarus story – another ‘classic’ Hell passage as mentioned above – in the ‘explanation’ of that parable on GotQuestions. It says there that, “Jesus teaches here that heaven and hell are both real, literal places”, and actually the whole, horrific doctrine is laid out there as true, non-debatable and horrible in its harshness, although I must allow that at least they have come clean and said what they actually believe, honestly, in black-and-white.

Let’s summarise, then, by saying that the Evangelical belief is that a) Hell consists of real, conscious, everlasting torment after death for all those who do not believe in Jesus (death is of course seen as the final deadline for finding that belief); and alongside that, b) Very few people will find the way (Jesus) Who rescues them from that unimaginable fate. Let’s also add c) In order to ‘find’ Jesus, people must adhere to the Evangelical methods of doing so – saying the ‘sinner’s prayer’, for example, being baptised, obedience to leadership, tithing, belief in Scripture as inspired, inerrant, infallible and to be taken literally. That’ll do for now.

But let’s go back to Matthew 7:13-14. Let’s look at it again:

From this verse – few are those that find it – it follows that actually few people will be ‘saved’ – they will ‘find’ the narrow way that leads to life – and the corollary to this is that most will therefore go to Hell. My very conservative estimate would be that, if that doctrine is true as stated, about 99.9% of people will end up there, according to Evangelical doctrine and given the number of people ‘reached by the Gospel’, by the time they die, with the ‘correct’ Gospel message[2].

I would therefore pose this question: What kind of parent would bring a child into the world, knowing that there is a better than even chance that that child will eventually burn forever in Hell? Who would dream of bringing a child into that sort of situation? Why would you want to do such a thing? It would be sheer folly of the highest order and an abdication of responsible parenthood even before they become parents. It would be absolutely stupid to have children if you know that they will more than likely, statistically speaking, be amongst those who will burn forever. Who would want to do that? In order to try to justify the concept of children going to Hell, in many cases even before they are even conscious, they make up totally unbiblical ideas like the ‘age of responsibility’ and claptrap like that. This is an utterly man-made construct; it’s not Biblical at all, and furthermore, Jesus TOLD us that few will be those who find the way. Therefore, age of responsibility notwithstanding, most of your children will go to Hell according to those Evangelical doctrines.

Some would say Oh well, God is just, He’ll work something out. He’ll do the Right Thing. But if god is constrained by the rules that the Evangelicals say he is, there is no escape there either. There are no exceptions at all: children; the mentally ill; aborted fetuses. No. Evangelical doctrine holds that god is constrained by his ‘justice’; his rules of punishing sin, being unable to bear anything that is not holy, and his rules of justice which state that all sin must be punished or at least borne by someone, even an innocent victim. But even if that victim did his best – and Evangelicals believe that Jesus, that innocent victim, indeed ‘did it all’ – even then, most people will burn. Jesus effectively said so in Matthew 7:13, and there’s no getting away from it. Of course, it’s always ‘someone else’ that’s going to burn, not those who believe they are the ‘Elect’. But still, if there are people who, by accident of health, geography, family background or for any other of a host of reasons cannot say or understand the ‘sinner’s prayer’, then they are going to burn. No exceptions. And so that means that the sacrifice of Jesus was 99.9% worthless, or at least it will be worthless for 99.9% of people.

The ‘good news’, then, is that a very few people will find the ‘way’, and the rest will burn forever in unimaginable agony. Linked with my earlier paragraph, the ‘bad-news monger’ will say ‘Yes, god is loving, ah but, he’s also holy and wrathful and righteous and all sorts of other stuff’. They prefer the ‘bad’ verses over the ‘good’ verses.

The doctrine of Hell is the single most repulsive doctrine in all of Christendom. If it were true, the Bible would be full of warnings and references to it – but it’s not. Would it not be fair of God to make it absolutely crystal clear? But that there Bible is in fact not clear on many things, and it’s especially not clear on this.

Just to reiterate: the gospel that contains a Hell doctrine is NOT a gospel – it is not good news. It is the worst news that there could possibly be.

Let’s make it personal, shall we?: most of the people you know, love and/or have ever met will be toasting in Hell for all eternity.

There is no escape; there is no recourse other than to a 0.1% effective (at best) Saviour, if indeed 99.9% of all people who ever existed will end up in Hell. These are not good odds, I would say. I would also say that this Jesus, as depicted in this doctrine, is not all that effective a Saviour, is He? How can that be called ‘Good News’??

If you believe in the Narrow Way doctrine, and you believe in Hell for those (most people) who will not find that Narrow Way, then these terrible, terrible things are what you must believe.

All the Church socials, all the outreach, all the best coffee in the world and all your social projects designed to reach the poor or the Lost; they are all a waste of time and are simply papering over this most terrible news: that actually, no matter what you do or how hard you try, most of the people who ever lived – including most of your family, friends, colleagues and loved ones – will be tormented forever. These points are relentless, irrefutable, despair-inducing, inescapable and hopeless. There is no hope in this gospel.

This is the relentless, uncompromising logic of the Evangelical doctrine of Hell. This entire logical sequence is what you must believe, if you believe in the Hell doctrine.

Think about it.


I am sorry to finish this essay on such a low note, but this is intentional because I wanted to show that this darkness and despair is what the Hell doctrine actually represents. For more on this subject, and a little more light in the tunnel, please visit my Hell Resource Page which is somewhat more positive. The one gleam of light I can offer right here is that I believe that these doctrines are completely untrue. Remember I have written this all from the point of view of an hypothetical Evangelical who actually believes it’s all true.


Header image shows the gate of the concentration camp at Auschwitz I – Birkenau, Poland; the atrocities committed here pale into insignificance compared with the horrors of Hell as espoused in Evangelical doctrine.


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Footnotes

Footnotes
1 I have to say that this essay has been written at a great personal cost. In looking at, and researching, the Evangelical doctrine of Hell, I have looked again at the most horrific doctrinal ideas I have ever seen, against which the Holocaust pales by comparison, and realised that this stuff is really and truly believed church-wide as standard doctrine. Even though not all churches are Evangelical, still one of the supposedly foundational beliefs in the Western Christian church at the moment is this Hell doctrine. It’s simply incredible. People like me, who reject the concept of Hell as a place of eternal conscious suffering, are usually ostracised in churches if we so much as mention that it might all be wrong. I see my wonderful God’s Name blackened beyond recognition; I see Jesus’s death as wasted (according to their doctrines anyway) and all this sort of stuff. I have felt my blood pressure rise; the whole concept has made me tearful, stressed and deeply saddened. I have felt physically ill because of it and it has made me sick to the heart. Such is the vehemence with which I reject this doctrine, and all the damage that it does, and such is the burden that people like me bear. Difficult is the Narrow Path indeed, and it is a very hard road indeed.
2 There are a number of other factors involved in my reaching that 99.9% figure, but the main one is that it’s only about 0.1% of people in the world, at the most, that believe in the standard Evangelical ‘salvation’ model, and since it’s the Evangelical claims I am describing here, this is the figure I am using here so that the essay is consistent in its claims about Evangelical doctrine.

The Great Evil of the Evangelical Gospel

This entry is part 9 of 14 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

“The gospel is not the problem – we are the problem.”

Hmmm….

 

I read an article the other day where the author – an Evangelical Christian pastor – was describing his interactions with a couple of men, formerly of Evangelical congregations, who had become ‘…repelled by Christianity’. The article then went on to describe his (so far unsuccessful) efforts to get them to come back in to the ‘fold’, as it were. While his essay recognised several good points regarding what needs to change in Evangelical Christianity, one sentence popped out at me as being totally key in the perception of Evangelical Christianity, in addition to all the other things he was saying, and which he had completely failed to notice as such. The sentence was,

“The gospel is not the problem – we are the problem.”

And that, right there, is the very heart of the problem. In my opinion, the ‘gospel’, as the writer sees it, is indeed the problem. It’s both: it’s ‘We’ and it’s ‘The gospel’.

First, I will present the essay as written (with just one emphasis inserted by me), and then I will present my rebuttal on the ‘gospel is not the problem’ idea. There is actually some good stuff here, despite the guy failing to recognise the key issue[1].


Two long conversations in two days with two different men, one identical story: Grew up in traditional churches. Highly involved. Now completely repelled by Christianity. Why? Because of the terrible, appalling attitudes held and atrocities done by its leaders.

Heartbreaking.

I said all the obvious things. Apologised. Tried to point them away from religion towards Jesus. Apologised again. Mostly listened. But to be honest I don’t blame them. They were probably safer outside the church. I blame us.

Both men are still open spiritually, cautiously interested in my faith, deeply caring individuals. Both told me ‘I do my best. I’m a good person’. But both of them are also far too hurt to be open to any form of church.

I feel sad. Ashamed – as a Christian and especially as a leader. But I also feel discouraged. Here we are doing our best to reach the one lost sheep, whilst others are repelling the 99. Our back door is bigger and busier by far than our front door.

The Scottish comedian Billy Connolly fondly recalls growing up in the crowded Catholic tenements of Glasgow. Families were enormous and the children would play all day in and out of each other’s homes. At night, he jokes, each dad would make sure that the right number of children was put to bed in each house, without worrying about whose they actually were.

It’s a bit like that in the church. We continually seek to welcome strangers into our home, whilst our own children go missing, and then comfort ourselves that the numbers are roughly the same. We aspire to be good witnesses to the world, whilst neglecting and alienating the members of our own family.

The gospel is not the problem – we are the problem. [Emphasis mine – Ed] This is not a failure of Christian apologetics (both of the men I met are open intellectually); it’s a failure of Christians to apologise (their hurt hearts are firmly and understandably closed).

This is why we *must* do more than just preach the gospel and try to be nice. We must also urgently, practically nurture communities of healing and gospel life. We need systemic change in the institutional church. And of course we must hold leaders to account whilst raising up women and men whose integrity matches their ability. For every pioneer evangelist outside the front door amongst the unchurched, we probably need ten prodigal mothers and fathers on the back porch quietly loving and listening to those who have been (or are about to be) ‘dechurched’. What’s the point of winning new people when we are losing – repelling – the ones we’ve already got?

Religious sentimentality and a fetishistic obsession with the familiar is obscuring the concrete reality of our situation. There is hard graft, dirty and difficult work to be done: first, burying the dead religious rituals despised by Jesus (it won’t be popular), and then actively building the living, loving community he actually came to establish. We must apply ourselves to work and pray with all our strength to renew old churches and to plant new churches. Both together. One without the other will not work. And we must dismantle the toxic distinction between priesthood and laity. Oh and we are also going to have to apologise. A lot.

And then personally we must also be prepared to go on many long journeys with prodigals like the two men I met these past two days. We must listen to them respectfully and befriend them unconditionally. One whiff of bible-bashing and they will run a mile. But give it a few more chats over a few more months and there may well come a night, after a few beers no doubt, when one or other of these men will turn to me and finally say ‘OK, talk to me about the Jesus stuff. How can you really believe all that ****? Tell me more.’

Our back door is bigger than our front door and it has a long and winding driveway.

Kyrie eleison


So, there we have, along with the beautifully honest points about what corrective changes need to be made in churches, the understandable desire of a pastor to bring back what he sees as his ‘lost sheep’. You can feel the compassion and concern that he has for them, and it is certainly genuine.

Sadly, though, it has to be said: it is obvious that his ultimate objective is to bring them back to believing the same things that he and his congregation do. You can even see the ulterior motives there in his closing sentences, despite using the word ‘unconditional’, and also in his unfortunate and revealing use of the word ‘prodigal’. Heck, he even admits that they are probably safer outside of church! And while he indeed says ” ‘We’ are wrong”, there’s actually much more to it than that.

Recently, I have been working with ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs), helping to bring them back into what could be seen as a ‘normal’ life, free of the habits engendered by a lifetime of being steeped in a toxic religious atmosphere. While the JWs do indeed have a whole pile of, shall we say, ‘problematic’, and indeed harmful, doctrines, I’m afraid Evangelicalism is little different except in specifics. The JWs have many ideas of reality that dictate the way in which they approach life and faith, and in this regard Evangelicalism is of course the same. After all, any person’s faith background, if it is held sincerely[2], will always dictate – to a greater or lesser extent – the way in which the person lives their lives. And it appears that the key to either voluntary or enforced adherence to one’s faith practices, in many if not most congregations, is that of fear. Fear of others’ opinions, fear of sanctions, fear of leadership, fear of exposure and/or public ridicule or shaming, fear of death, fear of afterlife punishment, and the list goes on. It’s all about fear.

When things like this become apparent to a former adherent to a particular faith tradition, possibly like the two men in the piece above; where they see the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, as it were, it becomes the prime reason why those people would never want to return to that particular ‘flock'[3]. If the gospel is one of fear – whatever form that fear may take – why would you want to subject yourself to that sort of thing? Especially when the pastor can’t see, and indeed doesn’t know and/or understand, what it was that drives people away in the first place[4]. And you can’t ‘unsee’ what you’ve seen; indeed, it would be dishonest, and ultimately pointless, to do so.

And there’s more.

Let’s come back to the main assertion:

“The gospel is not the problem – we are the problem.”

You see, I’d actually say that the ‘gospel’, as Evangelical Christianity calls and defines it, is indeed the problem[5]. Emphatically, it’s not that Evangelicalism itself is evil, and nor are the people in it.[6]. A lot of good comes from Evangelicalism; I believe that the love that many have for Jesus is genuine and they do lots of good things in society (some of which, yes, has strings attached) and above all their love for Jesus is expressed in some really good, inspired and indeed anointed worship music.

So, why is their ‘gospel’ a ‘Great Evil’, as the title of this piece claims?

The simple answer, which I will of course complicate by explaining and describing it, is that their gospel misrepresents God, presenting Him in the most terrible light possible, so much so that no-one in their right mind would want to associate themselves with such a monster god. And that’s even before you get into how this god has supposedly put – equally horrific – things in place in order to ‘put things right’.

When you really look deeply into Evangelical doctrine – and believe me, I have done just that! – you will find that the summary below is what is held as the true nature of spiritual reality[7] by Evangelical Christians. I’m sure they would try to qualify, explain away and and ‘Ah, but…’ the whole thing; I’m sure that I, as an Evangelical many years ago, would have done the same thing. But, right at its very heart, this is Evangelicalism[8]. Here, then, is what you have to believe, at the heart of it, if you’re going to call yourself an Evangelical Christian. Hold tight; here we go!

Evangelicalism’s god is an angry, capricious and bullying god[9] that acts more like humans than humans do.

He’s easily offended, he holds grudges, and the only thing he accepts to appease him (and as everyone knows, appeasement only works until the bully decides it doesn’t) is to kill his own son to satisfy his ‘holiness’, his ‘justice’ and also his honour.

People are given the ‘choice’ to ‘love’ this god, or burn forever in a furnace – ‘Hell’ – of that god’s own designing and maintaining[10], while those he’s supposed to have trained to love others either look on in glee – a standard doctrine in 19th century Evangelicalism, which, I am disappointed to be able to say, has persisted to this day in many circles – or are somehow ‘trained’ to forget about their loved ones burning; this being the other doctrine that explains how people can live a blessed life in Heaven while the excluded roast and scream[11].

And, because ‘narrow is the way’ (Mt 7:13-14), this inescapably means that many more people will go to that furnace than will not, probably including their (Evangelicals’) children, which they still keep popping out despite knowing that most people will end up in the furnace, statistically including their children. It seems they’re prepared to take that risk with the eternal futures of the people they will (hopefully) love more than anyone or anything else in this life.

And, remember, all this happens – Hell and so on – because this god is a god of love, they tell us.

The English word ‘Gospel’ – the translation of the Greek word ‘Î”Ï…Î±ÎłÎłÎ”Î»ÎčÎżÎœ’ (euaggelion) – means ‘Good News’. This is where we get the terms ‘Evangelical’ and ‘evangelist’ from, of course[12].

The gospel[13] espoused by Evangelical Christianity, though, can under no circumstances be decribed as ‘good news’. It is in fact far, far worse news than anything in history, putting even the genocide of the Holocaust to shame. It pains me to even have to explain this, but in fact according to the Evangelical gospel, every single one of the Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust went straight to Hell, because they didn’t come to a belief in Jesus before they died. By any definition, except apparently any coming from Evangelicalism, this concept represents such a diabolical evil that the only way to reconcile it with a loving god is…. well, there isn’t one. The only way that an Evangelical Christian, one who really believes that, anyway, can so reconcile it is for them to live with a cognitive dissonance. That a god of love can cause and perpetuate such suffering is only capable of being handled by the human mind by means of having a cognitive dissonance. And that goes with the glibness of their claim that most people, whom their god loves, remember, will burn in Hell for all eternity, and their ability to believe that without going completely insane.

No, this is NOT good news by any standard, and it is the reason why I refer to it as ‘The Great Evil of Evangelicalism’. Because that’s what it is.

Furthermore, the Hell doctrine is an integral part of Evangelicalism; it is fully intertwined with the way the religion works; it is ‘non-resectable’, to use a surgical term – it cannot be removed without doing irreparable damage to the entire structure. If you remove this doctrine, you break the whole thing, and it won’t be Evangelicalism anymore. This is why it’s so deadly. If you’re an honest Evangelical, you have to admit that you believe that this doctrine is true and, indeed, that what it describes will really happen to real people.

One of the reasons why Jesus came was in order to show God as being, well, in a word, ‘Nice’. Someone who loves us just as we are; someone Who has our best interests at heart. Someone Who heals, forgives and restores the broken. He did this in order to set right the image of god that people of His time had; that of being, shall we say, ‘Not nice’!

And yet, over the centuries, successive generations of Christian theologians have twisted that image back to the pre-Jesus concept of a horrible god. Nowhere and no-when has this been more apparent than over the last 150 years or so, since Evangelicalism (and its precursors) began.

This, then, is the evil of Evangelicalism[14]. Despite the clear example of Jesus, the depiction of God is one of Him being cruel, vengeful, sadistic – and, rather than continue the list, let’s just sum it up with one word: Unapproachable. Who would want the company of a god like that, in the unlikely event that he’d even allow us near him? And so, ordinary, decent people are rightly repelled by that depiction. The very people who need Jesus the most are repelled by Evangelicalism’s depiction of Him, and are thereby denied all the benefits and blessing of direct faith in, and personal knowledge of, Jesus.

Since Evangelicalism is founded on such a diabolically evil dissonance, and one where words and definitions are routinely and irreparably twisted, it would be far better if not only those two brothers being counselled by our pastor friend, but also everyone else with a gentle loving heart, should avoid Evangelicalism entirely.

Such gentle hearts only get corrupted by the constant exposure to the evil that is the Evangelical gospel, which really is the polar opposite of everything that Jesus was, that He showed, and that He taught. I say this from personal experience; that’s what happened to me and it took me fifteen years to detox from it. Try holding the Evangelical gospel up next to the loving teachings of Jesus, and you will see that it only holds water if any of the things He is recorded as saying are twisted out of their real meanings and contexts.

I am so glad that those guys got out, and I sincerely hope that they will eventually recover. I’m not assuming that the points I make in this essay are the reasons why those two guys came out of Evangelicalism – indeed, the reasons are given as being the atrocities committed by leadership. But you can bet that there were other reasons too, and these will have much in common with both what I have written here, and what other ‘exvangelicals’ too have experienced.

So, regarding going ‘back in’ to Evangelicalism, well, you don’t recover from poisoning by drinking more poison. Yes, Jesus is amazing; again, I speak from personal experience. But, in Evangelicalism, even Jesus has been twisted and, in fact, silenced by the Bibliolatry[15] of Evangelicalism.

You see, if Jesus[16] tells a believer something that is ‘against’ the ‘clear teaching’ of the Bible – as interpreted by Evangelicalism, of course – then it is Jesus that is wrong, not the Bible. Moreover, Evangelicalism has stained and sullied the Bible over the years, and to such an extent, that now even the purest-hearted believer finds it hard to read it because of all the disgusting twisted interpretations they’ve been fed down the years that keep coming back to mind unbidden.

No, let those escaped men deconstruct in whatever way they need. Leave them alone. Don’t try to recapture them and draw them back into the cage they have escaped from. That would be pure evil – which like all the worst evil, comes from people who think they have the best motives.

Here is an excellent and very much on-point quotation from Rob Bell – a pastor who has of course been rejected by Evangelicalism because of his teachings against belief in Hell:

“Millions have been taught that if they don’t believe, if they don’t accept in the right way, that is, the way the person telling them the Gospel does, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, God would have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell. God would, in essence, become a fundamentally different being to them in that moment of death, a different being to them forever. A loving heavenly Father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormenter who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony. Does God become somebody totally different the moment you die?

“That kind of God is simply devastating. Psychologically crushing. We can’t bear it. No one can. And that is the secret deep in the heart of many people, especially Christians: they don’t love God. They can’t, because the God they’ve been presented with and taught about can’t be loved. That God is terrifying and traumatizing and unbearable.

“And so there are conferences about how churches can be more “relevant” and “missional” and “welcoming,” and there are vast resources, many, many books and films, for those who want to “reach out” and “connect” and “build relationships” with people who aren’t part of the church. And that can be helpful. But at the heart of it, we have to ask: Just what kind of God is behind all this?

“Because if something is wrong with your God, if your God is loving one second and cruel the next, if your God will punish people for all of eternity for sins committed in a few short years, no amount of clever marketing or compelling language or good music or great coffee will be able to disguise that one, true, glaring, untenable, unacceptable, awful reality.”

– Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived

And so the two men, in the original essay, came out of Evangelicalism. But, of course, for Evangelicals, that’s no escape! There is no escape from a god who would pursue a person right to the ends of the earth to make sure that they end up in that fiery furnace![17] They would say that simply running away or ignoring [their perception of] the truth won’t save you. There is no escape!

But it’s not that. It’s that these people are so honest that they believe that God isn’t like Evangelicalism says he is, so why would they want to be part of a community where that is believed and acted upon? They simply don’t believe that any more, so to them it doesn’t matter that this ‘truth’ might pursue them, for it is no longer relevant. So why would they ever want to return to something that they have essentially grown out of? Their path of spiritual growth has led them away from Evangelicalism, and to go back would be to nullify that growth. They have grown past that, in the same way that a butterfly has grown past being a caterpillar, and what butterfly ever benefitted from taking flying lessons from caterpillars?

And so, it’s not just that “…others are repelling the 99” as the author says; it is also, most emphatically, their gospel itself.

I am aware that many of my readers believe fully in the atoning death of Jesus, and in the deflection of God’s wrath away from us and onto Jesus. Of Jesus being the sacrificial Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world. I’m not trying to take that away from those people; far from it. Take a look at this article for more on what Jesus did on the Cross and why it all applies no matter what the precise details are of your belief system. Remember also that there are almost as many ways of looking at the Cross as there are denominations. Be encouraged; be secure: Jesus is still Lord, and Jesus still died for our sins, no matter how that actually works in practice.

The actual Gospel is sooooo much better than Evangelicalism gives credit for. However it works, Jesus has obtained forgiveness of sin and victory over death! This is not heresy; this is the glorious truth of it all!

So what is the Gospel, then? Many people outside of Christianity say, ‘If God is so good and so powerful, why can’t He just forgive people anyway?’

And, that, I believe, that is the Good News – the Gospel – that those ‘outside’ so intuitively realise: that God does indeed forgive, and has indeed forgiven, everything that everyone has ever done wrong, every ‘sin’ both actual and only perceived. This is indeed the case; because for Him they were never a problem. “As far as the East is from the West, so far does He remove our transgressions [sins] from us” (Psalm 103:12-14). There are so many ramifications that lead on from that one basic truth, but that in essence is what we’re looking at.

I might go into more detail on this later in the series, but, for now, I think I’ve blathered on enough!

Grace and Peace to you all


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Footnotes

Footnotes
1 Remember here that I’m not saying that Evangelicalism is evil. I am saying that its gospel is evil, though, for reasons I explain in the essay itself. And the people aren’t evil, either.
2 Or if it is enforced/forcibly imposed, as happens with Jehovah’s Witnesses, with other cults, and of course in some corners of Evangelicalism.
3 I appreciate that the quoted article says that it was the abuse from leadership that the men were repelled by, and not specifically by Church doctrines. That said, however, once bad leadership is exposed for what it is – the Wizard’s curtain is pulled back, so to speak – then all or most of the stuff they told you suddenly loses its credibility. Their hypocrisy does not speak well of the things they said they believed, and that they doubtless told the men that they had to believe too. ‘What else did they tell you that was lies?’, is the question someone will rightly ask when bad leadership is exposed like this.
4 Some pastors and other church leaders, of course, are actually abusive, whether intentionally or not. In these cases, they know full well how to manipulate people, especially their fears, and ensure compliance by using all kinds of abusive bullying tactics. And, generally, they don’t see the things that drive people away as being problems to be solved – and to be realistic, they probably don’t care. If people that they are unable to control leave, then that’s better for their power structure. People who refuse to succumb to their abuse aren’t welcome anyway. For more information and comprehensive help on church abuse, check out the book ‘Broken Trust; by F. Remy Diederich, referenced in my article here.
5 In a nutshell, and so that it’s clear what I’m talking about here, the Evangelical gospel is this: Humankind ‘fell’ when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Amongst other things, this means that all humanity inherit Adam’s ‘Fall’ and have offended god’s justice. Therefore, they will all go to Hell when they die because they are guilty. But wait! Jesus came and died on the Cross, thus acting as a lightning rod for God’s offended anger, meaning that humans who believe in Him now go to Heaven instead of Hell. Everyone else still goes to Hell anyway. This is the ‘gospel’ according to Evangelicalism. Don’t shoot the messenger; that’s really what they believe!
6 Most of them aren’t, anyway.
7 ‘Spiritual reality’ meaning things like what God is like and how He associates with humanity
8 They’d likely use the fallacious argument of ‘God’s ways are higher than our ways’ somewhere in their list of excuses! See this article for a proper analysis of what that passage (Isaiah 55:8-9) really means.
9 Small ‘g’ for this god, as this is not the Creator of the Universe. The god that Evangelicalism describes does not deserve the honorific of the capitalisation of ‘God’ nor of ‘He’, so I do not do it.
10 ‘Love me or burn forever’. How is that a choice?? How is that love??
11 Evangelicalism, though, does not usually mention as part of its ‘good news’ that those unfortunates will be roasting at the same time as the Evangelicals will be livin’ it up in Heaven. It does not explain, usually because the question is not asked, how those in Heaven will be able to cope with the idea of their loved ones suffering forever in fire. These two ‘explanations’ I have given here usually have to be prised out of the ‘thinking’ of those Evangelicals who have actually ‘thought’ about it and have come up with some sort of reasoning, however pathetic and inadequate their answers – these two concepts – may be. Yet another example of how the doctrine of Hell’s inadequacies have to be propped up by Evangelical ‘apologetics’.
12 And in some Christian circles, the Gospel is still referred to as the ‘Evangel’
13 Again, lack of initial capitalisation as this isn’t what I would call any kind of ‘Gospel’
14 And the ‘evil(s)’, plural, are the resulting attitudes and behaviours that spring from it.
15 Bibliolatry is the term used for the worship of the Bible; setting the Bible up in place of God the Holy Spirit
16 Jesus is alive and lives in the hearts of those who love Him. And because He is alive, He actually speaks to them. Weird, but true.
17 As opposed to a Shepherd who would leave the ninety-nine sheep to go and search for the one lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7)

Foody Morsels

Another collection of bite-sized quotations from various sources. Enjoy!


Yes, it’s true fascism doesn’t take a vacation[1], but that’s because fascism despises joy. It is antithetical to peace. Its goal is to gradually squeeze and suffocate the lightness out of people so that they stop dreaming, stop planning, stop dancing. Its authors are inherently miserable people whose sole joy consists of replicating themselves by reproducing despondency.
– John Pavlovitz

To Pharisees condemning the ministry of inclusion: “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

“God doesn’t look at the world through the lens of judgment. He looks through the empty tomb Jesus stepped out of. And when He rose, He raised the world into a new status: Forgiven, Loved, and Included. This is the human race. To everybody in the human race
 to anybody here that’s not a born-again Christian
. He raised you to this status: You are forgiven, you are loved, and you are included”.
– Creflo Dollar

[As a comment on a YouTube video] This song [Oceans] is at its best when people are allowed to live out the words without judgment from others. When you walk out into depths where only Jesus can hold you up, others may fear for you and criticise you – but there is no fear in Love. If it’s your time to emerge from the chrysalis, the caterpillars will not understand the beautiful butterfly you have become. If you know, you know.
– Me

JUST IN CASE YOU HAD ANY DOUBTS.. The Father does not need your decision, choice or belief to justify you, make you righteous, forgive you, love you unconditionally or accept you into the family
.

That is the gospel !!
– Don Keathley

IN JESUS DWELLS THE fullness of the Godhead bodily and you are complete in Him. Col 2:9-10

 SO YOU CAN quit your begging for more of Him, more power, more anointing, more of the Holy Spirit. It is time to tune in to the Spirit of Truth and fully awaken to who you have always been and what you have always fully possessed.
– Don Keathley

My reply to the above was:

So in the Garden, when the serpent told the woman that if she ate the fruit, she would be like God, it was offering her what she already had. Is that, then, a parallel with what religion offers: it promises to give us what we already have?
– Me

“I still believe that at any time the no-talent police will come and arrest me”.
– Mike Myers

“How do I know I’m standing on the right side of history? There is a simple answer. The wrong side of history will tell you to be afraid. The right side of history will expect you to be brave.”
– JB Pritzker, Illinois Governor

For the purposes of righteousness, the Law is useless
– Me

Religion made it all about fear. Grace makes it all about freedom. Say goodbye to legalistic rules and enjoy the fruit of a loving relationship. That is the grace walk experience.
– Steve McVey

God isn’t disillusioned with us because he never had any illusions to begin with. He knows us and loves completely.
– Graham Cooke

The Gospel of Jesus Christ allows you to walk out of Prison. Religion causes prisoners to merely change cells.
– Rex Gaskey

Their sharp and steely eyes [of people steeped in a lifetime of religious legalism] are likely on the lookout for others’ ‘sin’, too. That’s the final destination of the atrophication of those with a religious spirit.
– Me

Often, we see only
What we want to see,
Get only
What we expect to get,
And accept only
What we’ve been taught to accept . . .
When we read the Bible.
– Mo Thomas

Threatening an atheist with hell, is like threatening a nudist with a wedgie…
– Derrick Day

There is a real dignified beauty about secret giving. No wonder Jesus was so in favour of it.
–  Me

[Social media] all reward engagement, not accuracy
– Robin Jackson

All Evangelical Christians know that the Bible was simply dropped from the sky by God. There were a lot of fatalities in mediaeval times from falling Bibles, primarily because they were so heavy. Apparently the same was true of the Pyramids:

– Me

Literature does the most wonderful thing: it takes the lost ‘now’ and places it right in front of you
– Anon (Quoted from a BBC Radio 4 Book Club advert)

They [Christians wanting to justify their behaviour] make it up as they go along. Romans 13:1-2 [that says that a Christian should obey the lawful authorities] is fine as long as they agree with those they are under. As soon as they don’t, it’s Acts 5:29, “We must obey God rather than people”. They get to choose which Bible verse they want to ignore based on their own leanings. Of course, this also proves that the Bible contradicts itself, much to the annoyance of Inerrantists!
– Me

I agree with F.F. Bruce that “eternal conscious torment” [i.e. ‘Hell’ – Ed] is inconsistent with the revealed nature of God in Jesus.
– Richard Murray

 

 

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
1 Whether political or religious; the effect is the same on those who are subjected to it – Ed