Category Archives: Insights

Lest Ye Be Judged

Insights

I’m sad to say that if there’s one thing that Christianity in general is notorious for in this time – and probably throughout most of Church history – it’s its Judgementalism. The attitude that feels that a person or organisation has some sort of right to judge someone else.

Many people in the world make value judgements about other people on a daily basis, sometimes even hourly, and they do so verbally, mentally, in gossip and rumour, backbiting and slander, as partially described in Gal 5:19-21 as being fruits of the flesh. And it seems that, instead of being different from all that worldly behaviour, many Christians not only judge others just as harshly as do the world, but they do so with a sickening self-righteousness that comes from a perceived divine mandate to judge others.

Jesus said that people would know us by our love for one another, and I strongly agree that this does indeed happen, where Jesus is allowed to express Himself through the hearts of people who listen to His voice (Jn 10:4). It’s awesome to see. But sadly, it is also painfully true that Christianity makes more noise by judging others than they do about loving others. Granted, they will claim that they are exercising ‘tough love’; ‘pointing out people’s sin’ in order to ‘save’ them, and that by this they are being ‘loving’*. But nobody likes people pointing the finger of judgement at them, and that’s certainly not the way to ‘win converts’. This is not Good News; all it is is bad news that Christianity has sunk so far.

Jesus said many times not to judge others. In response to this, though, Religious hardliners will both twist Scriptures that say it’s not good to judge others so that those passages support their judgementalism, and will also point out other places where Jesus purportedly said about it being ‘allowed’ to judge others. But given the context of such passages, and given the larger overarching context of the nature of Jesus and the Father Whom He perfectly portrayed, those passages must be read with the Good News in mind rather than the Bad. So, rather than saying ‘It’s ok to judge others’, we should instead not judge others at all, and, instead look at those other passages in their correct contexts and not simply accept them as ‘plain reading’ excuses/proof-texts to allow us to judge others. My position on judging others has always been clear: Don’t. Just don’t. I won’t proof-text this; I know that the Scripture is an excellent tool for the Rabbinic-style debate of putting together two polar-opposite propositions and arguing it down to a mid-point position, and gleaning truth in the process. That is good and healthy, but not all Scripture is suitable for that. The Scriptures on judging others are among those not really suitable for that kind of debate; suffice it to say that I simply believe that judging others is so harmful on so many levels, both to the one judging and to the one being judged, that it is unhealthy to do it.

I also think that if we judge others, we are putting ourselves on a pedestal and thinking of ourselves as being somehow better than those others. Disguise it or excuse it all you like, but that’s the reality behind it. In judging others, we are saying that we are somehow better than they are. And for those who hold the Bible as a Rulebook, I would say that they are conveniently ignoring one of their Rules: St. Paul’s injunction to ‘…not think of yourselves more highly than you ought…’ (Rom 12:3).

What do we do, then, when there is a judgemental prat on a forum – and we’ve all seen them – who is doing the judging? He’s sitting there traversing his guns left and right and shooting at all those who come along telling him to chill out  a bit. We’ve all seen him; he’s are like a cornered animal. He has to tackle all comers. Every question and assertion has to be answered. Every point has to be addressed and (usually) refuted. Every bit of Good News shown him has to be countered with some Bad News from another Scripture verse. It’s a sign of the religious spirit that it always has to have the last word, and he does indeed do that. And yet there is a sense of defensive – but – still – aggressive desperation in his posts that suggests a deep insecurity in his relationship with God; that he seems to think that if he doesn’t counter every argument successfully, not only are his victims going to Hell, but he is probably going there with them (likely in a handbasket), for not ‘saving them from the fire’.

That’s no way to live.

I often despair over people like this. They come uninvited into others’ discussions and lash out with their flailing comments, and then suddenly they’ve moved on and they’ve forgotten all about it, but left a trail of damaged people in their wake. This indeed is an example of those who would ‘steal, kill and destroy’ (Jn 10:10) and is the exact opposite of hte gentle Christ Who does not break bruised reeds nor snuff out smouldering flax (Is 42:3, Mt 12:20).

So, what do we do about them?

Well, I was involved in a great discussion about this sort of thing some weeks ago. One thing in particular that spoke to me was this little nugget from a lady called Sharon:

“The roots of judgment are firmly twisted around a bedrock of fear that is buried deeply within the souls of these people. I ache with a dichotomy of anger and desperate painful sorrow that battles inside me when I ponder this stuff .
My belief in the truth of that statement is the main reason I am able to survive being surrounded daily by those who are trapped in that bondage; allowing me to function with love and prayers for their freedom instead of getting angry and frustrated to the point of despair, or lashing out and compromising my own commitment to peace while losing any position to influence change that I currently have”

Now that is profound. “The roots of judgement are firmly twisted around a bedrock of fear that is buried deeply within the souls of these people”. Maybe it looks something like this,

…but you get the idea. And I think Sharon is right when she says that these people need prayer for their freedom. Of course, such prayer would best be done secretly and without telling the person. Firstly, there is nothing quite so condescending as the offer of ‘I will pray for you’ when that offer is made to someone with whom you disagre. It makes it sound as if you want God to bring them round to your point of view, and actually hardens them to the freedom they so desperately need. Secondly, it is such a lovely thing to see when someone emerges into freedom without them even knowing you were praying for them 😀

So, not all Christians are judgemental. Those of us who do enter into ‘discussion’ with the desperately Religious do so not to judge or argue, but instead with a desire to bring freedom, but with no real expectation that such freedom will happen for those with whom we are discussing things, save for the direct intervention of Father, Who, let’s not forget, loves those people just as much as He loves us. What our real expectation is, however, is actually this: we remember that there are many, many silent readers who read our stuff, in addition to the judgemental person in his corner. Our hope is that that those others will see that there are gentle Christians who are not judgemental, and are accepting, affirming and inclusive. And that is one of the main reasons why we have to keep our conversations ‘full of Grace and seasoned with salt‘, otherwise, as Sharon hints, we lose our influence towards change. Don’t get me wrong; I am never out to ‘convert’ people. I gave that up a long time ago. But I am all for releasing words of freedom ‘into the wild’ so that people know how much God loves them, just as they are, with none of the conditions that Religion would place on our acceptablility before God. Each of us has to come to God in our own way, and this is why there is no pre-set ‘formula’ described in the Bible to enable us to do so. When preconditions exist for our acceptability before God, this inevitably leads to a whole entangling web of legalism and bondage which will only need to be left behind at some point in the future when we realise our true freedom. And that can be painful for us and others around us. I sometimes wonder if some of our ‘cornered animal’ friends are people on the cusp of realising how much bondage they are in, and are expressing the last of their deperation with their current belief system before they finally throw off their chains and walk free. Kind of like birth pains. I sincerely hope so.

Don’t just take my word for it, though. Do a Google search under ‘Judge Not’. You will certainly find many references where Christians are justifying judging others, as you might expect. But you will also find other Christians who believe that judging others is harmful and should therefore be refrained from. Not as a Law or Rule, you understand, but simply because it makes you look like a complete pillock.

Be prepared to believe that not all Christians are judgemental people like our ‘cornered animal’ friend described above. Note also that the weight of the hits you get on Google will be more about those who consider it ok to judge others. This is because it is, as we have seen, the prodominant view in Christianity: judge away; it’ll be fine. As always, those who are listening to the Spirit of Grace will be in the minority – but those are the ones you need to listen to.

What I find funniest – and most annoying at the same time – is that when people tell the cornered animal that they are coming across as judgemental, they usually play the “Ah, but now you’re judging me too!” card.

Well, dear Judgemental Cornered Animal, I’m sorry, but if you are going to come into others’ conversations and judge people left, right and centre, then you don’t get to play the ‘You’re judging me!’ card. You started it, mate. And I would like to say that I would say that Jesus warned you about this. He wasn’t laying this down as a Rule, but as wisdom, and when He said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged”, for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Mt 7:1-2), just before He gave His plank-and-speck parable in v.3. So this is entirely about judgement. You see, Mr. Judgemental, what is happening to you is exactly what Jesus warned you about in His clearest statement about not judging others**. If you do this, then people will judge you back again, and then some. They are judging you back in full measure, pressed down and shaken together (in other words, fair measure) – giving you back just exactly what you have given out in the first place, just like He said would happen. So it jolly well serves you right.

And you can’t say He didn’t warn you!

*But if what someone thinks of as ‘love’ does not match up with 1 Corinthains 13, then it’s not love.

**Of course, all judgemental Christians justify their ignoring of this wisdom of Jesus by making an exception for themselves, saying He didn’t mean not to point out sin, saying whatever they like, in fact, to allow themselves to judge others. And in some ways that’s fair enough, because they can interpret the Scripture just however they like. But it still doesn’t mean that they are exempt from being judged back again. That’s going to happen anyway!

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Three Short Essays on the Bible

Insights, Others' stuff
This entry is part 22 of 22 in the series About the Bible - Inerrancy, Infallibility, Inspiration and Revelation

I suppose that, given the sort of things I read about Biblical inerrancy, infallibility and whatnot, it had to happen at some point.

Today, I read the third of three pieces in the space of two days about the relevance of the Bible and why it should not be the foundation of our faith, but Jesus. Three great writers: Don Francisco; Nathan Jennings; and Phil Drysdale (only two of whom I have actually met; Don and Phil), say very similar things in their three short pieces.

Maybe God is saying something?

I will put all three of them on here for you to read.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying in this time.

First up, Don Francisco:

How should we, as believers, use the Bible? Most Western Christians read the Bible like they read other books, starting here to finish there– a rather shallow method, at best.

I usually use several translations and a Greek dictionary/grammar or two, checking anything that seems odd until I feel like I have a sense of what the writer meant to convey; I’ll generally concentrate on a few verses unless they’re part of a longer narrative. All of that must be preceded, however, by learning when, where, and in what language that particular book/letter was written, by and to whom, and the religious and cultural milieu of both author and recipient(s)– ignorance here can result in some very strange conclusions. It takes a lot of study. I’m still learning…

Understanding Scripture is a far more complex matter today than it was when the reader’s first language was the same as the writer’s. In the roughly eighteen hundred years since the books now called the New Testament were written, the world has changed radically: Whole cultures have disappeared or suffered violent repression; portions of Biblical text have been added, lost, and removed; entire books/letters have been sidelined or discarded by segments of the Church, while others– even though written by people of uncertain identity– have been included as essential. Vital, life-impacting meanings have changed over time, calcifying as religious dogma; countless translators have struggled to rise above religious control, political and cultural biases, and their own ignorance– spiritual and otherwise: It’s not an easy thing to peer through the fog of centuries to understand what a deep and serious writer originally meant in a dead and ancient language.

The Letter to the Hebrews says, “The Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, between joints and marrow, and able to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.” The writer obviously wasn’t referring to printed text, but the living Word of God that surrounds and fills us all. When you hear God speak to you that way, the result is something deeper and far more substantial than any text, which, after all, is only paper and ink. The written words of Scripture point your attention to reality; the voice of God gives revelation, truth and understanding. Listen well.

– Don Francisco

Next, Nathan Jennings:

Why I still read the Bible

It seems many people, in my circles at least, are often conflicted by and even turned off from the Bible and it’s many narratives because it sometimes depicts God, to our modern sensibilities, as a self absorbed genocidal tribal deity that is more concerned with his (because God is mostly depicted as a guy) “glory” and reputation than his creation. I get it, because I’ve been there and still wrestle with it and I’m sure I always will.

As I currently see it, the problem happens mostly because of a flat literalism that ignores the literary genre’s of the text. This wasn’t such a big deal, say, 1000 or even 500 years ago. However due to modern thought, scholarship, and the information age that we live in, we should be able to read the Bible and realize that in antiquity, the writers and it’s interpreters weren’t even asking the same questions we ask now.

For instance, when we read the Canaanite conquest and the great flood story, we now know that tribes wrote these stories of God destroying entire civilizations because that’s just how people in antiquity wrote stories back then.

There were literally tons of flood stories circulating by the time the Israelites recorded theirs. Of course they put their own twist on it, depicting their God different than those around them. The fact that God “drowned the entire earth”, to them, was just a small aspect and really just what gods did. It wasn’t even the point of the story. The God of the Hebrew bible flood story was extremely subversive compared to the other tribes flood stories though. Click here for more of my thoughts on the flood story.

The Canaanite conquest is regarded by most modern scholars as polemic against rival tribes and part of a larger origin story, not a historical event. In their view, if a war happened, it’s because god or the gods commanded it. That’s just how people thought thousands of years ago. The conquest story, in my opinion, is less about God destroying an entire civilization and more about God being on the side of the oppressed and with those that have nowhere to lay their head. It’s a story for those that have nothing that says “God is on our side and is for us and provides for us.”

All I’m trying to say is that I know a lot of people hate the Bible, and for good reason with the way many have been taught to read it. A lot of people think the old testament specifically has nothing to offer, and depicts a God that isn’t worthy of worship or following or believing in. I get it. I just want to suggest that it isn’t what it seems.

There are so many resources out there besides the bland big box store brand readings and interpretations of the text. From the modern liberation and feminist/womanist readings, to Jewish commentary, to the most recent historical criticism. There is so much available now days that don’t choke the Bibles many narratives down to some fundamentalist doctrinal agreements.

The stories are timeless and full of wisdom. If only we realize it isn’t a history book or a literal treatise of what was. It’s a theological text that used the ancient literary tools, devices and genre’s of its time (a span of at least a thousand years) from a specific tribe to record their story, with differing voices and opinions and we are all invited into that story to participate and interpret and interact with it to help bring justice and hope for a better tomorrow. Personally, I wouldn’t even read the Bible anymore if I didn’t view it this way.

– Nathan Jennings

The link to the original blog post is here.

And now, Phil Drysdale:

The other day I was chatting with someone about the Bible and I mentioned that I didn’t see the Bible as an inerrant text.

Their face said everything… they were aghast.

They replied, “Bu.. Bu… But… if you get rid of the very foundation of your faith what do you have left?”

We talked a bit and I think I put their mind at ease (slightly).

But I’m glad this person managed to put so perfectly the issue in many people’s faith.

They have the wrong foundation!

Now don’t hear me wrong! I love the Bible, anyone who has followed my ministry for any amount of time will know I use it extensively and love it to bits. It truly is a gift from God to humanity.

However, it’s not my foundation.

Jesus is!

You know; THE Word of God.

This is a hugely significant because Jesus, the Word of God, is unchanging and unshakable.

But many people have a different foundation. Their foundation is the Bible, or their church’s doctrines, or something else entirely.

But when you have a foundation other than Jesus you are setting yourself up for a very bad time.

Build your faith upon a charismatic leader – you aren’t going to have a good time if you find out they aren’t perfect.

Build your faith upon a denomination – you aren’t going to have a good time if you find out that every area of their doctrine isn’t correct.

Build your faith upon the Bible – you aren’t going to have a good time if you find out that it’s not inerrant.

This is really just the story of the wise man building his house upon the rock if you think about it.

Faith changes over the years, that’s just a part of life. We grow and evolve in our understanding of this infinite God.

When our foundation is this infinite God we are in good stead. But when our foundation is something else… well… just one simple change in your faith can bring the whole thing down.

We see this in teenagers from churches that teach “the Bible is the foundation of our faith.” Having been taught dogmatically their whole lives that the Bible says the world is X thousand years old, what often happens is they go away to a college and find out there is overwhelming evidence that it’s older than what “the Bible says.” They often walk away from their faith to one degree or another. Because if the Bible is wrong in one area and the Bible is what their whole faith is built on then the faith is not true.

What a terrible shame, it really does break my heart to see.

Regardless of what you believe about the age of the earth (it was just an example, you can exchange it for countless others if that one didn’t work for you), can you see this is a problem?

A teenager who has been taught that Jesus is our foundation is far less likely to walk away from Jesus because an interpretation of the Bible is challenged.

In fact, interpretations of the Bible are far more welcome when you put the Bible in its rightful place, at the feet of Jesus as a signpost pointing to Jesus. Not as the ultimate and final Word of God.

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that any foundation other than Jesus is basically an idol.

Yes, even the Bible can be an idol when we let it take the foundational place of Jesus.

So that’s my challenge to you today, to evaluate what the foundation of your faith is? Hopefully at the end you can say Jesus.

– Phil Drysdale

Thanks, guys, for those wise words!

 

 

10

What God is Like

Insights

The nature of God is tucked away ‘in disguise’ in 1 Corinthians 13. If your vision of God does not fit with Paul’s description of Love in that chapter, then there’s something out of focus.

Here is a magnificent piece by Brian Zahnd, which goes into even more detail on this. Read and enjoy; this stuff is life-changing:

What God is like?

Is God harsh, severe, demanding, petulant? God is often depicted this way. Or, to push a little harder, is God vicious and vengeful, malicious and malevolent? Is God (dare we say it?) monstrous? I’ve met many Christians who think so. Or at the very least, they think God has a monstrous side. For them, the hope of salvation is that Jesus will save them from the monstrous side of God. Jesus is beloved as the One who will save them from his angry Father. They usually don’t say it just so, but this is essentially their theology of the cross. When the cross is viewed through the theological lens of punishment, God is seen as an inherently violent being who can be appeased only by a violent ritual sacrifice.

Those who are formed by this kind of theology will harbor a deep-seated fear that God is a menacing deity from whom they need to be saved.

But is this right? I know that if we are inclined to do so we can find a way to make the Bible support a monster-God theology. But is it true? Is God a vengeful giant whose essential nature requires him to vent his wrath upon sinners with omnipotent fury? Or is God co-suffering love whose very nature is to offer unconditional forgiveness?

These are honest questions. The term “God of the Bible” does not give as coherent a picture as we like to pretend. Is the God to whom the Bible points chiefly revealed as infinite anger or as immeasurable love? It’s possible to read the Bible in support of both.

What we need is a way to center our reading of Scripture. We do this by reading from the center of salvation history: the cross.

When we view the cross in the light of resurrection, we are looking at salvation, but what do we see? Are we looking at the appeasement of a monster God through the barbarism of child sacrifice? No, we are seeing the very opposite.

The crucifixion is not what God inflicts upon Jesus in order to forgive; the crucifixion is what God endures in Christ as he forgives. The monstrous aspects of Good Friday are of entirely human origin. What is divine about Good Friday is the completely unprecedented picture of a crucified God responding to his torturers with love and mercy. Golgotha offers humanity a genuinely new and previously unimagined way of conceiving the nature of God.

For eons human beings conjured and internalized a monstrous vision of God. Every flood, storm, earthquake, and plague was interpreted as the contrivances of a vindictive god. Calamities were made a bit more bearable by attributing inexplicable disasters to the wrath of the gods. These gods could be worshiped in dread and appeased by appropriate sacrifice and ritual, but these capricious gods could never be truly loved. Only love begets love.

Across the ages the religious imagination of humankind was haunted by monstrous gods. And if monotheism takes hold, the monstrous gods are absorbed into a single monster god. (Or at least a god with a monstrous side.)

But at the cross we find the death of the monster god. By this I mean it is at the cross of Christ that our wrong idea of God as a vengeful monster finally dies. Among the many meanings of the cross is this one: in the crucified body of Jesus we see the death of our mistaken image of God. God is not a monster. God does not have a monstrous side. God is whom we find in the Word made flesh. When Jesus dies, he does not evoke revenge; instead he confers forgiveness. Jesus does this for one profound reason: this is what God is like. A forgiveness-centered view of the cross saves us from a pathological anxiety about God, which is so detrimental to the soul.

We can now understand that the monster god is our own creation—a monster born of our projected issues of anxiety, anger, and shame. We are the Dr. Frankenstein who created the monster god.

The image of a terrifying god is created in the hearts of anxious people. The image of a raging god is born in the hearts of angry people. The image of a condemning god is created in the hearts of ashamed people.

Because we are such anxious, angry, and ashamed people, we imagine horrors where we should be seeing salvation. If we persist in looking at the cross through the distorted lens of fear, anger, and shame, we will imagine that the cross is what God does in order to forgive, instead of perceiving the cross as what God endures as he forgives.

Jesus’s entire life was a demonstration of the true nature of God. As Jesus heals the sick, forgives the sinner, receives the outcast, restores the fallen, and supremely as he dies on a cross forgiving his killers, he reveals what God is like. To see Jesus is to see the Father.

At last we know that God is not like the thunderbolt-hurling Zeus or any of the other angry gods in the pantheon of terrorized religious imagination. God is like Jesus, nailed to a tree, offering forgiveness. God is not a monster. God is like Jesus!

The truth is that there are monsters in this world, but the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not one of them. We have an imagination for monsters because we know of their existence. Venomous and vicious beasts were a daily peril for our earliest ancestors. Volcanoes and tsunamis can swallow whole cities. Hurricanes and tornadoes roar from the heavens, leaving hell in their wake. Epidemics of disease are lethal predators taking their pitiless toll. Worst of all, there are monstrosities of men—conquerors and warlords, tyrants and despots—galloping across history like ringwraiths, bringing conquest, war, famine, and death. We can imagine monsters because we have met them. But the living God is not one of them. Not the God whom Jesus called Abba.

Oh, the pagan gods are monstrous; of course they are. They are mercurial and merciless, petty and vengeful. They have to be mollified by a virgin flung into a volcano or a victim sacrificed on a stone altar. They always demand a violent and bloody appeasement…or else!

But we know about these gods now; we know what they really are. They are personifications of those beasts and disasters and epidemics and wars and tyrants that frighten us so. They are deified projections of our own rage and fear. They are the desperate attempt to deal with our own sin, suffering, and shame.

The good news is that the God revealed in Christ does not belong to the category of Mars and Molech, of Ares and Zeus. These are the false gods of our frightened and shame-laden imaginations.

The Creator God, the One True God, is not vengeful and retributive like those gods of the primitive pantheon. In his triumph Jesus put these petty and vindictive gods out of business. It’s only their fading ghosts that haunt us today.

In the dread of night we may be tempted to think that the true God shares the fearsome attributes of the vanquished monster gods. In our horror we imagine how Scripture confirms our nightmares. In our terror we may use the Bible as a palette to paint a macabre and monstrous image of God. But then the day dawns and we hear Jesus say, “It is I; do not be afraid.” With the dayspring of Christ the terrors of night fade away.

Jesus is perfect theology. And the perfect theology of Jesus saves us from our primeval nightmares about the divine. The hands of God are not hurling thunderbolts. The hands of God have scars; they were nailed to a tree as he forgave monstrous evil.

– Brian Zahnd

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But is it Biblical?

Insights, Others' stuff
This entry is part 21 of 22 in the series About the Bible - Inerrancy, Infallibility, Inspiration and Revelation

Once again, I am privileged to share the work of the brilliant Phil Drysdale on my blog, writing on a subject that is close to my heart:

As Christians we’ve all thought “is this biblical?”

It’s a great benchmark to see if something we are believing or doing is in line with scripture.

But there is a concern in this framework.

The Bible can lie to us.

Or more specifically – we can lie to ourselves when reading the Bible.

There are technically two ways to read the Bible – exegesis and eisegesis.

Exegesis literally means “to lead out of.” It’s when we read something in the Bible and it informs our opinions and changes the way we live life.

Eisegesis literally means “to lead into.” It’s when we read our own opinion into the Bible and it confirms our opinion and stops us from changing.

The truth is we all think we are doing exegesis when we are reading the Bible. But studies have shown, again and again, that most of the time the most well meaning of people perform eisegesis when reading their Bible.

It’s no surprise if you are a democrat there are passages to support you – and they do!

But it’s also no surprise if you are a republican there are passages to support you as well – and they do!

(sometimes they are even the same passages!!)

Same with how to raise your kid. Firm hand – its biblical. Soft and meek – it’s biblical.

How about that decision at work? There are dozens of “biblical” solutions in that Bible of yours. But you’ll most likely pick the one you want to or the one that makes the most sense to you.

Now hear me right, we frequently break out of exegesis by the grace of God and the leading of the Holy Spirit. So don’t hear me say reading the Bible can’t guide you or help you change, or that there is no point in reading the Bible.

I’m simply saying we need to be aware that we can be biased in finding what we want when reading the Bible.

In fact, it’s perhaps the only thing we can do. Be aware of this bias and pray God helps us navigate our subjectivity.

But I have another strategy I’d like to propose to you.

It’s more solid than asking, “is it biblical?”

It’s to ask, “is it Christ-like?”

You see when Jesus came He told us we had read the scriptures wrong!

Not just the common folk like you or I. No, the guys who had dedicated their entire lives to studying the scriptures. He told them that they had studied the scriptures to find out a “biblical” view of God and they couldn’t recognize God standing in front of them in the flesh.

Jesus redefined their reading of the scriptures.

He must also be our benchmark for reading the scriptures.

In fact, I would go as far as to propose if your “biblical” view does not work out to look “Christ-like” then it is not in fact truly biblical as Jesus would see it.

And Jesus did some drastic stuff to do this. He edited the scriptures. Selectively quoting them. Cutting out some bits. Inserting His own thoughts into others. Discrediting some while validating others many had ignored.

Jesus messed with the Jewish concept of scripture… and I think He needs to mess with our “Christian” one at times too!!

So that’s my challenge to you today. Will you allow Jesus to inform your concept of biblical?

After all, the Word of God should be the one who tells us what the words of God mean.

20

One for ‘Father’s Day’

Insights, Others' stuff

I don’t usually stand on any kind of ceremony for ‘special’ days, especially Father’s Day, which is simply a commercial copy of Mother’s Day. I won’t go into any further details on that.

But today – which, I am told is ‘Father’s Day’ – I saw a superb piece by Lee O’Hare, whose work I have shared before but which I have not posted a lot of recently. And it’s relevant to ‘Father’s Day’. Over to Lee:

“But his father said . . .” (Luke 15:22)

There is probably no passage in scripture that reveals the true heart of God as powerfully as the story told by Jesus of the incredible father who came running to his repentant wayward son after having wasted his father’s inheritance and brought incredible shame to the name of his father. The story known as “The Prodigal Son” really is not about the son at all; it is about the amazing love of a Father who refuses to treat us as anything other than deeply loved, cherished and totally forgiven children.

I realize that everybody reading this is all too familiar with this parable, but I would ask you, do not let that familiarity keep you from receiving the glorious truth which this reveals about the love of Abba God. In seems every time I read this story something new and fresh is revealed to me about the heart of my Heavenly Father. I would like to simply share a few thoughts that have recently come from my meditations on this wonderful story.

The most obvious thing that I see is how completely wrong both sons were in their perception of who their father really is. This makes me remember Jesus’ words in the “High Priestly Prayer” in John 17:25, “O righteous Father the world DOES NOT KNOW YOU.” That is the problem. Without the revelatory work of the Holy Spirit we really have no idea who God is or what He is really like. We carry around in our hearts distorted images of Him which have been forged on the anvils of our personal past experiences of rejection, shame and disappointment. This is only exacerbated by the wrong images we receive from well meaning parents, teachers, preachers as well as our own innate sense of guilt and unworthiness. We then try to relate to God out of those distorted perceptions and find ourselves feeling hopeless, confused, weary and often times utterly burned out and even resentful towards God. I don’t know how many times I have heard frustrated Christians say in one way or another, “It doesn’t matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to be a good enough Christian.” We can know all about grace in our heads, but what we need is a true Holy Spirit revelation of who our Abba really is in the deepest recesses of our hearts.

So what strikes me above all else in this story is how utterly and completely different the father really was. The “prodigal” son had to go to incredible extremes in order to be brought to a place where he was able to finally experience the truth of who His father really was and had always been – including the time that he had been living in the father’s house, as well as all that time he was living far away from home in rebellion and ultimately in complete and utter shame and filthy disgrace. I could easily inject some personal testimony right here, but suffice it to say, I can very much identify with this story today. I know what it is crawl around in the filth of a “pig pen” with distorted and perverted images of who I thought God was filling my heart and mind. I know what it is to finally “come to my senses” and say, “I don’t have to live like this any longer” and to begin the journey of returning to the father’s house. I also know what it is to feel I have to negotiate with God in order to be allowed back on the father’s property.

Pay close attention to the repentance speech the son had prepared and memorized as he was heading back to the father’s house:

“I have sinned against heaven and against you and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Just treat me as one of your hired servants.” (Luke 15:18, 19)

I have actually read in some commentaries that this was a correct and proper understanding and attitude of repentance for this good for nothing, rebellious sinner to have in approaching his father. But, let’s look at how the father, representing Abba God, actually responded when his wayward son returns with repentance speech in hand to plead for acceptance back home “as one of your hired servants.”

Of course, everybody is familiar with this part of the story: “And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20). It is at this point that the story gets really interesting. It is while the father is “falling upon his neck” (KJV) with love and compassion and smothering his swine infested flesh with kisses of fatherly affection, that the son begins to recite his prepared speech of repentance. But he only gets so far. What so many miss here is the fact that THE FATHER DOES NOT ALLOW HIM TO FINISH HIS SPEECH. He has just confessed that he is no longer worthy to be called a son and is about to say, “Just treat me as one of your hired servants” that Jesus interjects, “BUT HIS FATHER SAID . . .” Feel the power of that. I call this the “Divine Interruption” Just as he is about to place himself in servitude as a slave in the father’s household he is interrupted by the father who then turns to the servants and says, “Quick bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet . . .” It is as if the father is saying, “I refuse to hear this nonsense about you being my servant. I will have nothing of it. I am not interested in servants. I do not want a servant. I only want a son whom I can shower with my love and affection.”

Can you feel the power in this? While we are trying to negotiate with God out of our feelings of shame and guilt, which inevitably drag us into legalism and promises to do better and try harder, He is wanting to embrace us with love and kisses of fatherly affection and to lavish upon us His own gifts of grace and mercy.

Through this story Jesus profoundly reveals the heart of His Father and shows us so clearly what it really is that Abba wants most from us, who are His beloved children. It obviously is not simply obedient and responsible behavior. He already had that from the elder son who, the story reveals, also had no idea who his father really was, nor what he was like. The returning son was prepared to sell himself into lifelong servitude to pay his father back for years of shameful rebellion and waste, but as we have seen, the father would absolutely have none of that. What the father wanted, and what Abba wants from us, more than anything else, is a loving relationship. That is what he did not have from either of his sons and he wanted it so desperately that he would spare nothing to have it.

The heart of this story, and what personally speaks powerfully to me at this time, is the fact that the father, out of his love and desire for true relationship, was willing to let his son completely go so he could come to the absolute end of his own self-sufficiency in order to find out who his father really was. Only by coming to the end of himself was the son able to finally recognize what had been important to the father all along.

– Lee O’Hare, shared with his kind permission.

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There Is A River…

Insights, Others' stuff

Another piece from Jamie Englehart:

Maturity celebrates diversity, and those who think, lead, believe and function differently than each other. When we try and put everyone into our paradigm and way of doing things and our way of thinking and believing it will only lead to breaches in our relationships. No one likes to be put into a box they do not belong in, and everyone wants to be celebrated for who they are and what God has graced them to do and become in His Kingdom.

David tells us in Psalm 46 that there is A river whose streams make glad the city of God. There is only ONE River, but there are many streams and if we would just flow in our lane and bring to the city the life that it needs thru the streams that we release then the river will continue to make the city glad.

However, when the streams think that they are THE River and there is no need for the other streams is when the life flow is dammed up and the city becomes sad. So flow my friends in the streams of life that God has you in and celebrate the other streams that are bringing joy to many. If another stream is not your taste or flavor, remember it is ministering gladness to those you are not.

– Jamie Englehart, used with his kind permission

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The Great Heresy

Insights, Others' stuff

I get accused of heresy a lot, simply because I don’t believe in a lot of what ‘mainline’ Evangelical Christianity believes in. This of course depends entirely upon my accusers’ presupposition that they are in fact right, and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong. But when you’re talking about an infinite, intrinsically unknowable Being, it stands to reason that anyone who claims to have all their ducks neatly in a row is by definition wrong.

But the biggest heresy of all is the huge slur on the character of God that is perpetrated by that same group. Here’s a far better take on it, from Kevin Carter:

I truly think the great heresy of the church is the attack on the character of God that began with Augustine, continued with Anselm, and was finalized with Calvin.

God became a tyrant, who saw humanity only as worthless rags, worthy of destruction… God’s holiness wasn’t something to love, but something to fear because we could never live up to it, and it’s not our fault, because God created us with that flaw, but we’re the ones to be accountable.

God, in a moment of regret, recognizes the flaw and decides to give us an escape route, but He does so by requiring the greatest, most painful and bloody death possible, then fragments the story in numerous ways, fills it with some myth, and requires you to believe a great number of ridiculous claims that work against the fabric of what we’ve come to understand to know about the Universe. And if we simply aren’t convinced by one particular sect of people who call themselves His followers, then He torments us gleefully in Hell for infinity?

I’m sorry, but that God is not Holy, Righteous, or Pure. That God is more evil than Thanos.

Luckily, that’s not who God is, nor is that what the church believed for the first 400 years or so… There is a more ancient truth of God’s love for all humanity, Gods suffering because of the sin condition, God’s desire to conquer the sin condition and offer us a way out of that system while we live, but with complete plans to fully reconcile ALL of it eventually.

That’s a God worth loving… The first is something to be feared and reviled.

– Kevin Carter, shared with his kind permission.

Header image shows three of the Monty Python team (left to right: Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam) in their well-known and oft-quoted sketch ‘The Spanish Inquisition’. No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition, of course 😉 But unfortunately the reality was nowhere near as funny: The real Spanish inquisition were a bunch of church-approved heresy hunters who began their work in the late fifteenth century and continuing for some 300 years. Nasty people they were, and of course their heirs are still in existence today. Seriously, they were horrible. Here’s a link to the the Wikipedia article on them.

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Do Not Be Afraid

Insights, Others' stuff

I don’t know if you know this, but the most commonly-used phrase in the entire Bible is this: “Do not be afraid”. Usually (although not always) it is used in the context of humans being scared of God or His angels.

Funny, then, isn’t it, how so much of today’s church activity focuses on fear. The doctrines, the practices, the terminology, the liturgy  – most of it is fear-based. And most of that fear is of course channeled into the idea of being afraid of God, despite the most common context of the phrase ‘Do not be afraid’.

The phrase could even be seen as the most-often-repeated commandment of God, although you won’t hear all that many church leaders preaching on that idea, because of the loss of fear-based power that would follow. So, when people trot out the inerrantists’ phrase, ‘God says it, I believe it, and that settles it’, why do they not apply it to the phrase ‘Do not be afraid’?

And given the phrase that is repeated so many times – Do not be afraid! – there really is no excuse, when you think about it, for any believer to be afraid. Afraid of God and/or what He’s going to do; of death, because it’s been defeated; of Hell, because it’s just a scaremongering idea invented by the mediaeval Church to keep people in line. No, there is no need at all to be afraid, and I would like to emphasise this by sharing below a great piece from my friend Mo Thomas on this very subject. Here we go:

Fear of Divine Punishment

Based on what I know of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, I have NO FEAR OF HELL whatsoever, for me or anyone else, EVEN IF it exists as western theology frames it. (Note: I don’t believe that it exists as a nightmarish place of eternal horror, and neither did 5 of the first 6 schools of theology in the first 5 centuries after Christ. We might be missing something?!?)

Why would I ever have any fear or worry? This is the Abba of our Lord Jesus that we’re talking about!! His Love never fails, it keeps no record of wrongs, and His mercy endures forever. I trust Him completely that it would be for our refining, that all which is not of Christ would be burned away in His holy fire.

“We have come into an intimate experience with God’s love, and we trust in the love he has for us. God is love! Those who are living in love are living in God, and God lives through them. By living in God, love has been brought to its full expression in us so that we may fearlessly face the day of judgment, because all that Jesus now is, so are we in this world. Love never brings fear, for fear is always related to punishment. But love’s perfection drives the fear of punishment far from our hearts. **Whoever walks constantly afraid of punishment has not reached love’s perfection.”** (1Jn 4:16-18 (Passion Translation))

Hear God speak into your soul, gently but firmly, with unshakable confidence in His voice…

“It is I, the One who loves you.
Trust in Me, and #DoNotBeAfraid.
Come to Me, and rest in My Embrace.”

Selah.

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There is No Balance in God

Insights

So many people these days, ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers’ alike, believe either consciously or subconsciously that God is somehow a mixture, a balance if you will, of light and dark,  good and evil, yin and yang.

He’s not. In God, there is no ‘balance’ as we understand the term.

His mercy is not balanced by His judgement; instead, His mercy triumphs over judgement.

His love is not balanced or somehow cancelled out by His ‘holiness’ (as some Christians understand it, as essentially meaning stand-offishness) or His justice (usually meaning humanity’s brand of vengeful justice); instead, His Love in fact never fails.

Instead of hanging on to these cautious beliefs that always hold something in reserve, something that is fearful about trusting that God is good all the time, it’s time we realised that in fact that which we thought was too good to be true actually is true: Yes, God is good!

In fact, He’s all good, He’s completely good, and in Him there is no darkness at all. Not one bit. God is in fact just like Jesus. Was there anything dark about Jesus? Of course not, and neither is there anything dark about God either. And He loves you with a love that will not only never end, but which will never, ever let anything separate you from that love.

And this is the completely one-sided, unfair, unearned, shockingly life-changingly wonderful and brilliant truth of the Gospel – which really is Good News. All of it.

Here’s the truth: if the god that people have told you about does not look just like Jesus, then that’s not the real God they have told you about. Period.

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Regarding Christians Who Gloat About People Burning in Hell

Insights, Others' stuff

Before we even start, yes, I’m sorry but there are indeed such people as I mention in my title.

I once wrote that, “[Hell means that God allows the] torment of literally billions of precious people for all eternity, all at the same time as the ‘elect’, those who are ‘saved’, are ‘living it up’ in Heaven and knowing full well that all that suffering is going on ‘somewhere else’.

It’s easy to see why this is such an easy concept for certain Christians to grasp, because it’s mirrored in the way that many Christians reject as worthless those that they despise. So ‘those people’ are suffering? Well, it must be something they’ve done/it serves them right/other such highfalutin’ statement. Because the suffering is going on ‘somewhere else’ and therefore it doesn’t matter.

I do wonder how those with such cold hearts can define themselves as ‘Christian’. I mean, each to their own, yeah, but surely Jesus’s whole emphasis was on ‘Love’? Attitudes like that are as far from Love as it gets, when you think about it. Surely their own definition of ‘love’ should be based on St. Paul’s famous description in 1Cor 13? But it’s a long way from that!

And I know for a fact that I’m not the only one who thinks like that. Here’s a superb piece by one ‘Captain Cassidy’, written in the wake of the Paris terrorist shootings in 2015. I must say that I don’t agree with everything in the essay, but I think he has encapsulated nicely many of the objections I have about Christians being so blasé about the idea of people burning forever in Hell.

I want to talk about Hell today.

There is something truly grotesque about the way so many Christians seem to get off on the idea of people burning in Hell. I’m sure you’ve seen what I have: the way their eyes glitter when they talk about it, the eager tone of voice they get when describing in lurid detail the horrors non-believers will experience there. I don’t think they even realize they’re coming off that way, they’re so desensitized to the idea by now. The idea that a huge number of their family members, loved ones, and total strangers alike are one day going to burn forever and ever and ever is so endemic to their worldview that I’m not sure they even realize what it means or what their gloating implies about them as people. Today we’re going to talk about this mindset and what it means–and why good people reject it.

[…]

[Description of interviews of people trying to help burn victims – Ed]

These interviews hit me really hard. […] All of the people I’ve mentioned here have made one fact painfully clear: out of every single way there is to die, burning is about the most horrible and ghastly one there is. If these victims they’d tried to save had survived, it would be amid years of pain; burns take forever to heal and some never really do. Clearly our species simply didn’t survive serious burns often enough to pass on superior burn-healing capabilities to our offspring in the distant past, because we are really shitty at healing that sort of injury. No wonder Christians years ago used death by fire to punish heretics and dissenters; out of all the really imaginative ways we’ve ever found to hurt people, fire’s about as bad as it gets.So gang, that’s what it’s like to watch someone burn to death. It’s not fun or funny. It’s not cute. It’s not something to gloat about or even feel smugly certain about. Someone has to be seriously disturbed to watch someone suffering fire damage and feel anything but a desire to immediately leap in to help in any way possible.

And had I … suggested that there was something these burn victims might have done to deserve that kind of death, I would not have been surprised in the least if such an encounter ended with me nursing a bruised ego–or ass. Neither of these [people] are gods, and even they would have been more merciful than the Christian god apparently is.

When Christians chirp their various singsong threats, that’s what they are saying to us: we are going to suffer and die an unending death by fire, tortured forever by burning, and they actually look forward to seeing us in that kind of agony. It’s no more than we deserve, by their lights, so there’s no point in wasting empathy or sympathy on us. They regard our rejection of their religious claims as a direct attack upon themselves, and our future torment is nothing more than cosmic comeuppance for not obeying them.

We didn’t pick the correct religion out of all the thousands in the world, you see, and from there the correct permutation of Christian doctrines out of the 40,000+ available. We didn’t manage to feign adequate belief in the utter nonsense spewed by Christian apologists and leaders. We found no reason to believe in this god who spent so much time and effort deliberately obfuscating his existence to ensure that there’d be no proof whatsoever of his existence. We figured out that there was no more reason to accept Christianity’s claims than there is to accept those of any other religion. And for our great sin of using our divinely-granted consciousness and discernment, we deserve to burn to death forever. We deserve to be set on fire after we die and tortured without any hope of mercy, redemption, reconciliation, forgiveness, parole, or escape.

Most Christians don’t even think about how absolutely appalling this doctrine is–how blatantly manipulative, how openly terrorist in nature, how beyond-blitheringly cruel and evil it would be for any earthly despot to institute a punishment even half as ghastly as Hell. Even worse are the Christians who do think about it, though; they have to find some way to reconcile such a concept with that of a loving god, and the ways they find of doing that are nothing short of obscene.

Why it’s only moving the problem one step over to claim that “people send themselves to Hell.”

The idea of Hell as I’ve outlined it clearly does make some Christians hugely uncomfortable. And it should. It’s an evil, nasty, mean-spirited, fearmongering, openly terrorist and extortionist doctrine that is 100% incompatible with the current reigning Christian view of its god as gentle, loving, and merciful.

That doctrine is fine with a lot of Christians–the sort who openly gloat about dead soldiers and picket children’s funerals, or those Calvinist sorts who seem perfectly at ease with the idea of their god being an asshole–but most Christians are part of our culture whether they like it or not, and our culture is moving away from that kind of cruelty. So they’ve evolved some two-steps meant to distance themselves from the more troubling ramifications of their own ideology.

I’ve talked before about these distancing acts. The whole “love the sinner/hate the sin” dance is one of them; it is meant to give Christians an excuse to be nasty and hateful to others. They don’t especially care if their dance fools anybody outside the tribe; it’s done for their benefit, not for ours.

The current two-step around Hell is one of their current favorites, though.

Follow along with the dancing red ball:

Assumption A. Allowing people to be tortured for any length of time is evil and monstrous.

A1. The Christian doctrine of Hell involves people being tortured forever by fire.
A2. That would normally make the author of such threats evil and monstrous.
A3. But the Christian god can’t possibly be evil and monstrous.

Conclusion. Clearly that means that the evil and monstrosity is coming from somewhere else.

Assumption B. Whenever a doctrine seems to contradict Christian ideology, it’s not the doctrine that is in question, ever, nor the ideology that is at fault; there is always a way to reconcile them somehow.

B1. So clearly it’s people’s fault that they are facing eternal torture. It is not this god’s choice that people suffer, nor his desire.
B2. The Christian god must have nothing to do with Hell, so people must be sending themselves to Hell to be tortured eternally by fire.

Conclusion. It’s totally not our god’s fault at all that people end up in Hell getting tortured forever by fire. Overall conclusion: Hooray! He’s (still) a loving and merciful god!

I’ve heard a dizzying number of excuses along these lines offered by Christians to explain why Hell is not a monstrous and evil idea:

* People choose to throw themselves into Hell.

* People don’t want to be with Jesus in the afterlife, so they do this to themselves on purpose.

* Would you want to have a rude guest in your house for a party? (I used this excuse myself.)

* The doors of Hell are locked from the inside, not the outside. People who go there don’t want the Christian god around.

* Hell isn’t a punishment; it’s a consequence for non-compliance, just like death in a car accident is a possible consequence of not following seat-belt laws.

* Hell was designed for demons, not people, so of course it won’t be pleasant for people to be there.

And some heretics even try to make for themselves a Hell that is not fiery, eternal, and physically painful–even though such a Hell looks nothing whatsoever like anything in the Bible.

All of these excuses depend on a few ideas that categorically put the entire Christian faith on its ear. These excuses all require that the Christian god be something besides all-powerful, for him to be an idiot, or for him to be malevolent enough to punish people for his own inability to provide evidence enough to compel belief in him. As Neil Carter’s so ably described, tons of Christians figure this stuff out and end up following the evidence right out of the religion. We deconvert because when we tried our damndest to find a good reason to believe, we found none at all.

Christians might comfortably and complacently believe that one or two of us “chose” to be tortured eternally, but most ex-Christians are thoughtful, caring, intelligent people who want only to do the right thing with our lives. The idea that a god might allow a single one of these precious and beautiful people to be harmed even one second repulses any compassionate mind. How many of those people do Christians need to meet before they start having questions about how loving and merciful their ideas of Hell are?

And, too, this entire “choose to be tortured” idea has the distinct smack of victim-blaming about it. It’s like a murderer telling a judge, “I told her not to scream or I’d shoot her, and she screamed! So really, she chose for me to shoot her to death!” Do you suppose any judge in the land would allow such a murderer to go free after that excuse was given?

If the Christian god designed the ideology and place itself, if he decided upon its entrance requirements and then deliberately refused to provide people solid proof of any of his religion’s claims so that there was no more reason to blindly choose his religion over any other in the world, then he is the same as that murderer who claimed that his victim caused her own death by not complying with his demands. This is not the same situation as someone not listening to seat-belt laws and then getting killed in a car accident; in our scenario, the Christian god actively inflicts this pain on others (or allows it to be inflicted, but again, because he’s omnipotent that doesn’t actually make much of a difference!) because he was dissatisfied with their obedience to his whims, and he created the entire game itself to be exactly as it is now. It was no accident that someone found no evidence to believe, nor that there happened to be a horrific place ready for that person to go to after death to suffer for not having believed.

The Christian god, if one is to take his adherents’ preposterous claims seriously, is an omnipotent being who created this realm and set it up. If he didn’t intend for any people to go there, then he needed to design somewhere else for people to go. If he didn’t want people to go somewhere like Hell, then surely he is powerful and intelligent enough to either create a more reasonable ideology or to give people overwhelming evidence and instructions for avoiding that place.

If he isn’t powerful enough to create a cosmology that allows people to see the truth either before death or posthumously, or to change their minds after death about anything, or to at least allow for rehabilitation and redemption at that point, then maybe Christians need to figure out what cosmic Truth their godling is compelled to obey and go work out what god is embodied therein so they can follow that one instead, because whoever that god is, she or he is the real MVP.

And that is the Problem of Evil in a nutshell.

Either this god is not smart or powerful enough to create a cosmology that avoids eternal torture, or he is cruel and malevolent enough to allow such torment to exist. If he’s capable of stopping fiery torture but chooses not to do so, then he is evil; if he is not capable or doesn’t realize what’s happening at all, then he’s hardly a god in the first place.

Now, obviously there’s no proof for a single bit of Christians’ claims. There’s no evidence that there’s even an afterlife, much less an unpleasant one controlled and administered by demons at the behest of an omnimax god of love and mercy, much less any god, omnimax or not, loving and merciful or not, much less a cosmology that looks remotely like the one Christians believe.

But if one of them tells me with a perfectly straight face that their infinitely loving, powerful, merciful god is not only okay with the idea of anybody burning in this life or the next but designed things to be that way, then I am going to think that either the Christian in question has never really thought this one through (as indeed I hadn’t, back then!), or is an immoral person who is okay with hurting people for non-compliance.

Moving the Problem of Evil to humans’ laps only moves the issue one step over; it does not resolve the actual problem at all because ultimately, their god (according to them) designed all of this nonsense in the first place. All they’ve done is add some victim-blaming to the mix.

And I’m not so sure that it’s that far a jump to think that if it’s okay to hurt someone deliberately and cruelly in the next life, then maybe it’s not so bad to do it in this life if it’s for a good cause. We already know that right-wing Christians regard themselves as mini-Jesuses, fully invested in the right and ability–even the obligation–to dispense divine justice upon other human beings in the name of the greater good. They already think that they should be given the right to control the rest of us because non-Christians are just too damned stupid to run our lives correctly. They already scare the bejesus out of non-believers because of the over-the-top aggression they display when they’re challenged–even to the point of issuing death and rape threats to an underage girl who objected to the way Christians in her school district were muscling into her education.

If Christians can’t have cooperation through happy consent, then they have demonstrated repeatedly that they will take compliance given only out of fear–and will consider either one evidence of divine blessing upon their endeavors. And our culture is starting to reject this mindset–in large part because we’re finally starting to empathize with and understand the people who are getting hurt by these ways of thinking, and we’re starting to understand how interconnected we are to each other.

It’s hard to stomach the idea of hurting someone we know very well and consider part of our group. It’s even harder to be okay with the idea of eternal fiery torture for non-compliance when we start really thinking about how terrible it is to burn.

Any religious system that relies upon force, violence, or threats to gain compliance from anybody is not one worth following.

People are right to reject any religion that tries to gain power and influence through threats, and to reject such such behavior as incompatible with the idea of a loving deity of any kind even on the metaphorical level. People use fear when they don’t have a good case to make otherwise. The bigger the threat, the weaker the case generally is. And Hell–burning to death forever and ever–is about as big a threat as anybody could ever concoct.

But fear requires darkness in which to operate. It can’t stand daylight in the form of questions and open dissent. The more people question the doctrine of Hell, the more Christians will get the permission they need to contemplate the unthinkable questions: What if the two-step they’re doing about Hell doesn’t actually solve any of the problems the doctrine has? What if the violence embodied in Hell taints everything about Christianity?

And even more unthinkable: What would their religion even look like without fear being any part of its doctrines and ideologies, and without threats being considered a perfectly acceptable and viable marketing tactic? If they refused to use fear or threats of any kind to sell their religion, then how would they market it?

Here is the link to the original article

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