Category Archives: Insights

The Misery of Legalism – Reblog

Insights, Reblogs

Since my epic encounter with two legalistic ‘evangelists’ last week, and my subsequent blog post on my conclusions from that encounter, I thought I’d just re-blog this encouraging piece from over nine years ago, about how amazing it is to be set free from the power of sin and death as espoused by the Law of Moses. Enjoy!

Legalism is where a person believes – knowingly or unknowingly – that they need to adhere to some sort of rules, codes of conduct, or other behaviour-based method in order to make themselves acceptable to God. But the real message of the Gospel is that it’s all Grace: the full, free, undeserved favour of God on us which means that Jesus has already done everything for us on the Cross, everything we need for our salvation, for living the Kingdom life, and “… for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (2Pet 1:3)

I saw this comment in a discussion on the blog jesuswithoutbaggage.com recently, and wanted to share it. If you are in this position, please be assured that your freedom is close at hand and is yours for the taking – just surrender your dependence on yourself, however much you may have disguised it as religious devotion!

“In general, I’ve found that people who are very legalistic try very hard to recruit others to their ranks. My opinion is that the more insecure one is in what one believes, the more that person will need the validation of others, which is often gained by getting others to join them and by refusing to even hear any other views. I suspect they’re also jealous of those who’ve found freedom by not having to beat themselves over the head daily with guilt and shame and “laws”. Jesus made it clear he didn’t / doesn’t appreciate spiritual enforcers, those who think they’ve got such a grip on righteousness that they are hammers, and everyone who doesn’t agree with them exactly is a nail that needs to be hammered.”

Jesus said of these people in Matthew 23:15, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are!” Legalism is such a miserable place to be in, but weirdly it’s also self-propagating in that the legalist wants to drag more unfortunate victims in! Misery loves company! Ugh!

And I do know what it’s like. I was once a Legalist. And, running parallel with my love for God and my knowledge that I am His child, was an underlying feeling that actually God could easily become displeased with me. The Cross was, quite rightly, my only hope in that I relied on Jesus’s finished work there to make me ‘worthy’ – but somehow I felt that if I put a foot wrong, then God would be mightily dischuffed with me despite the Cross. Although my salvation would not be at risk – I have always believed in ‘once saved, always saved‘ – I would not be able to minister in power nor to move in the consciousness of His presence. But in His Grace, God led me out of that mindset with a real revelation of, not only just how much He loves me, but also a revelation of the joy that is in His presence when we just let go and let Him do it all. It all becomes so effortless.

I escaped from Legalism over a fifteen-year period of being outside Church, questioning what I believed in and why. I saw a quote on a blog about a year ago which said this:

“It’s hard to overexpress how much unanticipated joy I felt in being
released from the prescribed mindset that Christianity gave me; in many
ways, it gave me the opportunity see the world and respect others in
ways I had not realized the Bible had closed me off from before”.

And that is more or less exactly what happened to me. I too felt that joy, not so much about what the Bible said, but about what others told me I should believe the Bible actually means when it says, well, whatever. I was free to believe in my own way without others telling me what to believe. It’s so liberating to be what I call a ‘free Christian’ – free from others’ dogma and interpretations. While I choose to consider myself answerable to people I am close to (both in and out of Church), I am not answerable to anyone else except God.

Interestingly, about a year ago I was once again subjected to an (uninvited) barrage of accusations/doctrinal correction/call it what you will, from a ‘non-free Christian’, and it made me realise, while in the process of categorically rejecting that person’s diatribe, just how far I have come in my freedom. I never want to go back to that life. My ‘detoxification’, as it were, has released me into entirely new freedoms to love people of different views without judging them or trying to change them. And that, to me, is real freedom!

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

But, Legalist, you too can be free, if you just let Jesus take over. There is no place for both Law and Grace in a believer; the Law has fulfilled its purpose in that it has brought you to the point – probably some years ago – where you realised the futility of trying to impress God in your own strength. So just let go. Don’t strive; just relax in Him and all that He has already done! It was for you that Jesus said in Matthew 11:28 (Message), “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (MSG translation) There is complete security, and indeed Divine permission, in your freedom; you do not have to be afraid of it!

For those looking for Biblical support for the exercise of their freedom, well, the Bible is full of it. Begin by reading the entire book of Galatians, in the light of freedom rather than that of legalism. It’s set out there more plainly than in any other book of the Bible. And in Jesus’s declaration in Luke 4:18, He said He was here to ‘proclaim release for the captives’. Freedom is what the Kingdom is all about; it is your birthright as a child of God – which means you are entitled to it – and you are missing out on the whole point of the Gospel if you don’t grab your freedom with both hands! Liberty is huge, it’s free, it’s amazing, and it’s yours for the taking if you’ll just let go and trust God. What are you afraid of? God will uphold you no matter what. I know it’s hard to let go. It’s like you’re clinging to the side of the swimming pool; the water is deep and there’s people out there where they can’t touch the bottom, enjoying themselves. And you want to tell them it’s not safe – you want to exhort them to come back to the side and hang on where they’ll know what they’re holding on to. Isn’t it dangerous out there in the deep water? No, it’s not. Because Jesus is the Lifeguard on duty, and He will not let any harm befall any of His own.

So relax, let go, and let God!

I heartily recommend that you get the whole picture by following the links in red in this article. In those links, I explain more about the background for my thinking on these points. You may well find in those links the keys to your freedom.

Be free!

Top Tip: Read the Signs!

Insights, Humour, Asperger's/Autism, Teaching, Wisdom

To members of religious organisations who decide to ignore my ‘No Cold Callers’ signs: Try thinking ouside your box for once.

You ‘think’ that the signs are there to protect *me*, and therefore you ignored them today.

But they’re not; they’re there to protect *you*. Ignore them at your peril, and you will get the full 16-inch broadside again, like you got today.

You really have no idea what you’re messing with!

That was a post I put on Facebook, the day after a couple of ‘evangelists’ from my local Evangelical Church came around to my house uninvited and proceeded to knock on my door, despite there being clear signage asking people not to do so.

I’m going to talk today about why this action of theirs was not only wrong, but also that there are a number of learning points that those two men could maybe consider thinking about.

After our conversation, I gave them the business card for my blog, so who knows; maybe they’re reading this right now. Hello again, gentlemen!

Well then, in Matthew 16:3, Jesus suggests to the Pharisees that maybe they should try reading the signs of the times. And that’s fair enough.

These days, however, it seems that some Christians can’t even read signs that are written down, and displayed clearly and prominently.

Allow me to explain. There are disabled people living in my house. I have people that can’t answer the door due to mobility issues, and people that can’t help but take their time getting to the door because of age-related mobility issues (it takes them longer to get down the stairs, for example) and also people who have neurodivergent issues which means that it is stressful for them to answer the door to complete strangers who will of course be pushing an agenda.

And so we have a couple of defences. We have a Ring doorbell, which enables occupants in the house to screen callers, and to talk to them remotely. I’ve even done it from the local library once, ‘Sorry, I’m not in, please can you leave the package behind the wheelie bin?’ and so on.

But we also have signs on the door telling people that cold callers should not knock/ring. These signs are legally binding, because they state clearly that unsolicited callers are not welcome and that to ring/knock constitutes an offence under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations, 2008. And to be fair, sometimes it works. We hear the proximity alert (someone is approaching your door) but they don’t ring the bell, and instead walk away. So far, so good. And we always report the unrepentant to the police; those callers who ignore the signs when they are tradespeople or sales people and then claim that they always ignore such signs. Their punishment is deserved.

However, it has been my experience that the worst offenders for ringing the doorbell when they shouldn’t are people from religious groups. While I have actually seen Jehovah’s Witnesses see the signs, turn around, and walk back up my driveway, to their credit, unfortunately the last time some of them came, they actually rang the bell! And I gave them a theological run for their money and they left wishing they’d never called – not that I was nasty to them, of course, but I told them lots of things they didn’t like me saying. And to be even more fair, religious groups are actually exempt from the door knocking regulations – although I always tell them that ignoring the sign is not a ‘good witness’ for their religion. What does it say about the kind of people they have in their group when they ignore a perfectly reasonable request to not knock? There’s simply no excuse.

So anyway, these two guys turned up a couple of days ago, and I knew they were from my local Evangelical church because they tried to present me with a leaflet and I turned it down, but not before I’d seen the pictures on the leaflet, so I knew their colours.

The following Facebook post sums up the interaction succinctly:

Lol I just had two blokes on my doorstep from our local Evangelical church. They wanted to give me a sermon, but boy did they get one. 🤣

The nature of Grace, and how it abounds even more than the biggest ‘sin’. Their ‘sin fixation’ was highly evident, to be honest. One of them even asked me if I would look at a blonde in a miniskirt going down the street, thus revealing his own heart on such things…

When you preach freedom and Grace, and all they can say is ‘but….’ then you know you’re up against hardened hearts. Still, one of them was listening…but I’m sad to say the other one had a religious spirit. You could just see it, especially the barely concealed anger in him when I declared my support for LGBTQ+ relationships. Like it’s his job to police the opinions of a complete stranger.

Nevertheless, I gave them cards for my blog, with the suggestion to eat the meat and spit out the bones, and be blessed by it. Who knows; maybe the uplifting effect of the true Gospel may have found a mark…

They had opened with a response to my immediate query about how their church copes with LGBTQ people – my Litmus Test. Of course, although they immediately responded by talking about the love of Jesus, they very quickly went into the bait-and-switch of quoting the Bible. Standard operating procedure for evangelists; they hold up the bait of the idea of the loving Jesus, which is a really attractive concept, and then they switch to the Bible and its rules – in this case, they were of course quoting some of the ‘clobber passages'[1]. So Jesus is ok as long as the Bible can be brought in somewhere. It is my new hypothesis that the Bible leads people to Jesus (John 5:39-40), but then the purpose of Christian evangelists is to lead people back to the Bible. I mean, you can’t have Jesus talking to people unsupervised, now can you? Remember, everything Jesus says to a believer has to be held up against the Bible, by other believers, to see if it is valid. This is because the Bible is the third person of the Trinity, of course[2]. </sarcasm off>  😉

The other bait-and-switch, of course, is the Grace-to-legalism switch. I could go on about this, but the idea is basically ‘Come as you are, God will love you anyway’ and then switch to ‘Ok, now we’ve got you, here are the list of rules you have to obey in order to ‘stay saved’. They lay over the top of the pure Jesus experience layers and layers of requirements until the new believer is buried in the mire of religion, and the poor neophyte loses that initial joy because of it. This is what churches do; it’s very, very rare to find a church where the individual’s relationship with Jesus is held as the primary source of their faith; no, it has to be the Bible. Again. Because, again, they don’t trust God to be capable of speaking to a believer Himself[3].

Anyway, here is a list of, shall we say, ‘suggestions’ that I have come up with for people doing door-to-door visitation. Not that I would encourage such presumption in others’ behaviour, of course (I would not encourage door-to-door ministry for many reasons), but since I am Autistic (something else they never knew about; just treat everyone the same, why don’t you, guys) I have of course obsessively analysed the interaction in depth and found many of the flaws in their method. And for those who may unwittingly fall victim to these intruders on your property, I hope that my actually writing out these ‘Top Tips’ will give you things to look out for, and that you can pull them up for. Don’t get me wrong, I know they’re doing it from a sincere heart and with a genuine desire to ‘save’ people, and their courage in doing so is admirable. But as usual their cloistered, out of touch situation of being in a tight church community blinds them to how their ‘ministry’ looks from the outside. Which is not a good thing.

And at the risk of confusing Christians (it has been my constant experience that most Christians can only cope with one talking point at a time), I will list the points below.

Ok, here we go:

  • Don’t be pre-judgmental and assume that everyone you meet will be someone who knows nothing about God and His ways. You don’t know who you might be talking to. In my case, you were talking to an acknowledged genius with an acutely sharp mind, and with in-depth Bible college qualifications, and who has been walking with Jesus for the best part of 45 years.  Hardly someone who is unfamiliar at least with Jesus, and even the Bible too.
  • Related to the above, don’t presume that others are ignorant about the things of God. Even if they’re not someone like me, they too will likely have some sort of spiritual walk, even if it is ‘merely’ being good to other people.
  • Very importantly, don’t ignore signs like mine on the door. It displays your unconcern for others’ feelings and needs if you do ignore the signs, and, furthermore, you may be surprised to learn that others will likely not consider your message as important as you think it is – and certainly not after you have ignored their notices. No, just don’t do it. Period[4].
  • If you have a religious spirit, you’d best stay at home, mate. Such a spirit is more obvious to your audience than you realise; in fact you probably don’t even realise it yourself since your slide into that spirit was so gradual. And it is by far the most off-putting thing in all of Christianity for people to experience someone with a religious spirit. How can you tell if that’s you? To be honest you yourself likely can’t, but a big clue is found in the fact that you are doing this activity in the first place. At the end of the day, you are going out to tell others how wrong they are, and how you have the answers. Don’t try to pretend otherwise, or to try to mask it by feigning concern about your neighbours’ welfare, like it says on your church website. That behaviour is presumptuous, arrogant and artificial, and this too will be detected by your victims. Certainly, talking a lot about ‘sin’ is a dead giveaway for the religious spirit, especially when you start to list your pet peeve ‘sins’. And see below, too, about how this reveals your heart. Also, being prepared to adopt underhand tactics such as those discussed below, are a sign of the religious spirit. You may also find that you have lost your joy somewhere along the line, and your faith now consists of a grey, lifeless adherence to what you see as God’s Law. This is why Paul says that “the written Law brings death” (2Cor 3:6) – but be encouraged! because he immediately follows that assertion in typical Hebrew fashion by saying “but the Spirit gives life”. Linked with that loss of joy, you will likely also have lost your sense of humour, partially because you have to be selective about what you allow yourself to find as funny, and also because laughter needs some sort of joy to fuel it – and your joy tanks are dry. Finally, the religious spirit always has to have the last word. He glories in (what he thinks is) a magnificent parting shot, whereas in actuality it is a damp squib in the face of vastly superior firepower. If what he had to say was that good, he’d have used it during the general discussion, rather than as a shot at someone’s back when there is little chance of a rejoinder. This is the religious spirit; that’s what it looks like.
  • Listen more than you talk. Your audience needs to feel valued and listened to, and you need to tailor your replies to their words. This is what’s called ‘basic conversational skills’ and, having been walled up in a closed community of like-minded people, you’ve probably never had the chance to learn it properly.
  • Remember: you started it[5]. You turned up at their house unannounced, uninvited and unexpected. If people say things you don’t like, remember you put yourself in the situation voluntarily and in fact you didn’t ask the householder if it was voluntary on their part. None of this ‘is this a convenient time?’ or anything, because you assume again that what you have to say is so much more important than anything they would possibly rather be doing in their own house. Remember you weren’t asked to come and visit and you’re there on the homeowner’s sufferance. Respect that and don’t assume any sort of entitlement.
  • In my case, you failed to recognise my Autism. Granted, I mask it very well. But the take-home message here is that you should always be aware that everyone is different and, therefore, their responses will stem from vastly different thought processes, backgrounds and motivations, none of which you can assume you are right about. Something they never teach at churches is that one size definitely does not fit all. But of course you will not believe that, since as far as you people believe, there is only one way to ‘get saved’, and that’s by your way. You assume that when Jesus spoke of a ‘narrow way’, a) you understand what He meant, and b) you have found that ‘narrow way’. Of course you have; how lucky that was for you.[6]
  • Please stop doing the old ‘Bait and switch’ – switching Grace for Law and Jesus for Bible. You bait with Jesus, and you end up giving them the Bible. You claim to preach Grace, but as with most churches that claim they are ‘into’ Grace, in reality it’s nothing of the sort. You just impose a set of rules for people to follow (Matthew 23:4), and that’s called ‘Law’ in anyone’s book. What you are doing by using this method is no different from the tricks used by pushy and disreputable salespeople. You claim to be ‘in the world, but not of it’. Why not prove it. then, by not adopting ‘worldly’ tricks like this one.
  • Related to the point above, even though you begin by saying you preach Jesus, in actual fact you really preach the Bible. Your rulebook says in John 5:39-40 that the Bible leads people to Jesus. And yet it seems to the victim that your task is actually to lead them all the way back to the Bible again. You’re not on your own, of course; most Evangelical churches do this exact same thing; this is to me a sure sign of the, yes, apostasy in today’s Evangelical church. Stick to Jesus. Relate your testimony of all the good He’s done in your life. Describe how your relationship with Him works, and how much it blesses you. If you can’t do that, then I would suggest that you don’t really have a relationship with Jesus Himself, but instead you have one with the Bible. If that’s the case, then you should not be going out lying to people by claiming that you do indeed have that Relationship with Jesus Himself. As Don Francisco once said, “If all you know of God is from books, you are walking in deep darkness”.
  • Remember that you will meet all kinds of people, including fellow Christians who are further on in the faith than you are. Accept that, and be prepared to listen and learn. If you remain teachable, then you will find that you will learn something from most if not all of your conversations, even with ‘unbelievers’. Do not disregard the wisdom of the world; it too can come out with some real gems, as you’d see if you looked at some of the posts in my ‘quotations’ series[7]. And you likely have forgotten this Scripture, but again your own Rulebook says in 1 Corinthians 2:15 that ‘The spiritual man judges all things [note, not people – Ed] but he himself is not subject to human judgment. And therefore you shall not judge any fellow believer that you meet on the doorsteps. If you do this, then that believer may well give you nuggets from God that you were not expecting, you will not want to hear, and which may well change your life for the better. Of course, your hardened heart will protect you from this to some extent, but, well, you have been warned! For one of the visitors the other day (and yes, it was the guy with the religious spirit!), his parting shot was “You need to spend more time in the Word!” Spend more time in the word, you say! How on earth do you think that I managed to quote all that Scripture, from memory complete with chapter and verse, to you if I wasn’t completely steeped in the Scriptures? Look, your own Rulebook says in Colossians 3:16, ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly…’ and, for the last nearly 45 years, that is exactly what I have done. The fruit of that is shown by my extensive knowledge of the Scriptures and by my extensive scholarship in the Bible and its concepts[8]. You were simply closed to what the Spirit was saying to you, as well as being so focused on your own thoughts that you were unable even to discern what was going on around you. I was fully conscious of the huge anointing on me as I spoke to you, and you were seemingly impervious to it. I am sad to say that it seems you have a long way to go before you get a hold of the freedom that Jesus actually offers you – but who knows? He may just reveal it all to you in a flash, just like He did for me all those years ago. He may well surprise you, and I sincerely hope He does. Your life will never be the same again.
  • Looking at the above bullet point from a slightly different angle, remember that when Christians meet, they are supposed to bless each other. And that was what I tried to do, by explaining the wonder of Grace to you.
    But all you did was to try to argue your way out of God’s Grace, to almost try to explain why it didn’t apply to you, and also try to drag me down with you.
    Why would you want to do that; to deny yourselves such blessing, and also try to destroy mine as well? I mean, why? Now, I fully understand that you will meet with hostility on your ‘rounds’. But you don’t need to assume that fellow Christians will be equally hostile. Even once I had declared myself as a Christian, you remained hostile; in fact you actually got worse. As if you were annoyed that someone calling himself a Christian could possibly believe something different from you. So rather than share blessings, you simply turned nasty. All you’re doing with this attitude is to miss out on so much more blessing, and on learning more about Jesus from someone who has a different point of view, but which nonetheless will likely complement yours nicely. And so, you didn’t share blessing; you shared disquiet and discord. When you go out, it’s supposed to be ‘peace on this house’. But you didn’t share any peace at all.
  • Related to the above, I noticed that once I ‘came out’ as a Christian, you immediately switched attitude. In short, you assumed that because I am a fellow believer, you were suddenly entitled to make unwanted input into my life. What gives you the right or permission to do that? Do you think that because we have the same Father, you can suddenly tell me what to do or think, or judge my attitudes more harshly than just the general ‘oh he’s an unbeliever’ judgments you would reserve for those who do not profess belief? Why should I suddenly be subjected to a new set of standards, coupled with your belief that I should abide by them? I saw your anger when I declared my support for same-sex relationships, after you knew that I am a Christian. I mean what?? And then your parting shot of saying ‘You should get into the Word more’. How dare you! Would you have used that on a non-believer? No, because you wanted to present a ‘nice’ front to people who might want to make the mistake of coming to your church[9]. But of course once you know I’m a believer, that all changes; you know that I know what churches are like, so there’s no need to pretend any more. If I’d never owned up, you’d have kept your ‘speaking to an unbeliever attitude’! Honestly, you guys make me sick. God knew all along about my attitudes, but He didn’t see fit to inform you of them, and therefore they’re not all that important to Him in the context. Why should anything be any different because all of a sudden you know things that God has known all along? It’s because you have an exaggerated sense of self-importance; you think that God can’t manage dealing with His children in His own way; you have to do it on his behalf. And that’s a pathetic attitude.
  • Don’t use proof-texting. It is disrespectful both to your victim and to the Bible itself, for so many reasons. Check out my blog post here, including the comments section where I give bonus content, for more details on this.
  • I presume that your church is one of those who believe that the Bible is not only inspired, but also infallible and inerrant, as partially evidenced by the line on your website that declares that declining belief in the Bible is largely due to the teaching of evolution in schools and other establishments. Well, in regards to inerrancy, and also related to the bullet point above, a point which is which is universally missed by Biblical inerrantists is this. If you insist on providing ‘proof texts’ which contradict any text quoted by your victim, this is actually declaring that you do not believe in inerrancy. Inerrancy means that the Bible is never wrong. Inerrancy also infers (and this is backed up by inerrantists who claim, when challenged) that the Bible does not contradict itself, despite you using those verses to do so. Well, any honest reading will immediately show this assertion to be incorrect (in Proverbs 26:4-5 for just one example of many). But my point is this: simply by quoting a Scripture verse that contradicts another Scripture verse just given by your victim, you are showing that the Bible does indeed contradict itself. And, while you may be blind to this, your victims will not be, especially those who are well-versed in the Scriptures. The problem is actually not so much with the Bible, but more with what you are expecting it to do. If you expect it to give you unified cast-iron rules, methods, opinions and doctrines, then you will be sorely disappointed. This is because, while the Bible is undoubtedly inspired, it was still written by many people in different cultures and time periods, and who had each had their own encounter with God in their own, unique way. While their lessons and experiences are priceless even to us today, you should not expect the Bible to present a unified front, at least not on the surface level of the words written. It was never intended for that, and if you simply throw out the concept of inerrancy, then that will solve the problem. It is simply not the case that the Bible loses its authority just because it is seen for what it is, and what it is not. Yes, there are contradictions, but these can still be used to edify and build up those who read them. To come back to the Proverbs 26:4,5 example above, if it is read as Hebrew parallelism rather than just as a plain pair of inerrant but yet still contradictory statements, then it is far more useful. Applying a similar idea to the rest of the Bible, inerrancy becomes redundant and the Bible is far more understandable because of it – even to the layman.
  • Stop focusing on ‘sin’. Your Rulebook says in Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things”. That’s good advice, and will take your eyes off ‘sin’, at least until you realise how much you miss thinking about ‘sin’, that is. And then, sadly and in all likelihood, you’ll likely return to it like a dog to its vomit (Prov 26:11) 😉
  • Finally, be aware that if you start suggesting things as examples of things that you consider ‘sinful’, you will likely inadvertently be exposing your own heart, its predilections and its hidden ‘sin wishes’. People are more perceptive about dead giveaways like this than you give them credit for. So if your idea of a ‘temptation’ is, as one of you suggested yesterday, ‘a blonde in a miniskirt wearing a low-cut top'[10], then you need to know that you are betraying your fantasy to the world at large. I wonder if your wife knows about this particular leaning….[11]

So, there we go. If you’re going to come around and visit me again, you’ll need more than just your Bibles, boys. Unless you want to hear about Grace, in which case I’m all yours. 😀

Grace and Peace to all my readers.

[Postscript, September 2025]: I feel it is important to add that this visit, my deep thinking, consideration and prayer that followed it, and this article which resulted from that consideration, all added together to inspire my series ‘The Problems of Evangelicalism‘. Indeed, so pivotal was this essay that I reblogged it as part of the series itself. It’s funny how God triggers inspiration sometimes…. 😀

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 The Clobber Passages are the six main Scriptural passages that Fundies quote when trying to prove that homosexuality is somehow wrong
⇧2 The Holy Trinity, for those dependent on Biblical inerrancy, is of course Father, Son and Holy Bible
⇧3 Of course, they would couch this in terms of ‘the human heart is deceitful above all things’ (Jer 17:9), and therefore it’s the believer that they don’t trust to hear God correctly – notwithstanding that they conveniently forget that someone in Christ is a new creation (2Cor5:17) where that deceitful heart has been swapped out for a ‘new’ heart (Eze 36:26). In which case God might as well not bother, so it amounts to the same thing
⇧4 A few days after this incident, I actually wrote to the church to complain about the evangelists having ignored my signs. Of course, there was no reply. So I wrote again. Like I’m just going to forget? And I did then get a reply, which, to be completely fair to them, did include an apology and a note that they had mentioned to their boys that they shouldn’t knock on doors where it says not to. So I have to give them credit for that!
⇧5 ‘We did not start it!’ ‘Yes you did, you invaded Poland!’ – Fawlty Towers, Series 1, Episode 6, ‘The Germans‘
⇧6 Another thing with that ‘narrow way’ business (Mt 7:14) is that you presume that this Scripture means that most people will be lost – they will go to Hell – and few will be saved. Other considerations from this repugnant idea aside, there’s this: If you consider that those words are true, and that they mean what you believe they mean, then why on Earth would you ever, ever consider having children? Because, if this stuff is true, then there is a far greater chance of them ending up in Hell than of them going to Heaven. And don’t imagine for one second that their simply being your kids will protect them, because, as you so gleefully and openly proclaim, ‘God has no grandchildren’. Each person, according to you, must make their own decision and then live by your rules (oh, sorry, I forgot, they’re God’s rules, aren’t they, because you say so) for the rest of their lives, on pain of Hell if they dare to be guilty of ‘falling away’. You will of course ignore this, but that’s the state of it if what you believe is actually correct.
⇧7 The reason why controlling religious leadership tells people not to consider ‘worldly wisdom’ is because they don’t want you to obtain knowledge outside of their carefully curated list of ‘approved sources’. This is about as culty as it gets. I would even go so far as to say that if a leader tells you not to read a certain book (some years ago, and maybe even today, that would have been ‘The Shack‘ by Wm. Paul Young), then you should immediately pause that conversation and go and order the disapproved-of book straight away. Truth comes in many forms, and not all of them – in fact very few of them – come from Religion’s approved sources
⇧8 And that without it being the third person of my Trinity!
⇧9 Rest assured, I personally shall never do that!
⇧10 ‘A blonde in a miniskirt’ has since become a meme in my family; a meme for people obsessed with ‘sin’, especially the sexual-type ‘sin’ so beloved of Evangelicals. Thank you for the laugh and for the meme; we will treasure it always!
⇧11 In fact, I would even suggest, in all seriousness, that you should notify your Church’s safeguarding team about your lust problem. Let’s be honest: that’s really what you were talking about here, isn’t it?

Be like Chad

Insights, Personal, Humour, Asperger's/Autism

I have noticed a phenomenon which I find quite amusing, and also a bit unsettling, if I’m honest.

When Christians meet other Christians that they don’t know, there immediately follows a period of religious butt-sniffing, like dogs do when they meet.

The idea for each person is to categorise the other people into the person’s self-designed pigeonholes, so that they know where they stand. Are you a Protestant, are you a Baptist, are you Like Me, and for some, sadly, there’s even the attitude of ‘are there things that you disagree with me on, so that I must settle those differences by telling you how wrong you are, before we can ever get along?’ In short, they are generating ‘labels’.

But I’m not having any of that.

This is where listening more than talking comes in. I don’t declare my own definitions openly; they are mine and mine alone. In any case, I am Autistic and the standard pigeonholes do not apply to me anyway, because I am wired differently. And no, I am not using Autism as a label in its own right, because it has been my experience that even amongst Autistic people, they are all wired differently from each other. There is no ‘standard definition’ of an Autistic person and as such we are all different; all equally unpredictable.

It’s funny; I met a Christian man about 24 years ago who, when we did the religious butt-sniffing thing on him (I was different then!), he just stayed silent.

He ‘went’ to a particular church but it seemed like he was only loosely attached.

But a more Christlike man I have never met. He never declared himself; never showed any affiliation other than to Jesus.

Chad was his name.

I want to be like Chad.

Pick ‘n’ Mix

Quotations, Insights, Others' stuff

Another collection of short, bite-sized pieces of wisdom. All of these quotations are used with the kind permission of their authors.

—

Just because someone in a Bible study answers all your questions, it doesn’t mean that those answers are right
 – Me

Human judgment often condemns and crushes.
Divine judgment always helps and heals.
Why don’t we get this?
Jesus is Jehovah-Rapha (the God that heals), not Jehovah-the-Ripper.
 – Richard Murray

Faith expressing itself through love, not fear, is the manifestation of the life of Christ within.
 – Jeff Turner

[Replying to a friend who is undergoing cancer treatment but nevertheless pushed his limits in going to an event he really wanted to go to] Some things you just have to do. I have a relative who also gets exhausted quickly and easily (although not for the same reason as you) but sometimes they just have to say, Look, I’m doing this…I might regret it later in terms of pain but it would be worse to forever regret missing the opportunity. Glad you had a good time. Sometimes, that’s as good a medicine as all the drugs in the pharmacy.
 – Me

Your questions aren’t dangerous. The people telling you not to ask them are.
 – Jeff Turner

And when challenged about this, they will produce proof text after proof text to continue driving you into the ground with the piledriver of weaponised Scripture. But by that time you should be out of earshot, because you will have walked away 😀
 – Me

When you find your belief system to be the thing keeping you from becoming a better person, summon the courage to become a better person than your beliefs.
 – Jeff Turner

Isaiah 30:21 says, “Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying “this is the way, walk in it.” Sadly, these days it’s usually the Pastor…
 – Me

I have been saying this for years now, but the notion that sin can separate a ”sinner” from God is as absurd as the notion that cancer can separate a cancer-sufferer from the oncologist. If cancer were to separate an oncologist from a cancer-sufferer then the oncologist could never separate the cancer-sufferer from cancer. Likewise, if “sin” could separate the “sinner” from God, then God could never separate the “sinner” from sin.
 – Jeff Turner

“You don’t know everything” is an axiom that everyone should live by.
Unfortunately, many people in the world are thick as three short planks – I call them the ‘Unintelligentsia’. They usually do think (and that’s being generous) that they know a lot, and usually that they know more than everyone else. For me, being an actual recognised genius, it has always been a problem to cope tactfully with the ignorant, especially when these people can influence others’ lives.

But still, I openly declare that “[I] don’t know everything”. And part of humility is being willing to defer to those who have the better knowledge in all cases where that applies. And that’s how we learn.
 – Me

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

The irony of the song ‘Oceans‘ is that it actually goes against the way that Church leadership like their people to behave. Sure, let’s sing about God being top of the list; about Him being Number-One in their lives; or about how much they love Him. But Oceans sings about being out in the deep waters, away from human control (even our own) and trusting entirely in God. At the end of the day, that is the kind of thing that gets Christians kicked out of these churches, because when God starts showing the believer things that they can only learn out in the deep waters of faith, those who have not been there do not understand, nor can they ever do so until they have been there themselves. And human leadership doesn’t like it when the Spirit gets real control of people like that, because the Spirit blows where He wills, not where humans want Him to.
 – Me

We might have been created the same, but we have not become the same.
 – Chris Kratzer

“Could the disobedience [of Adam and Eve] have been part of an expected and desired process that would lead to a greater state of mankind?” Yes, I think that’s exactly what it is. I think the fall was an essential part of humanity realising its godliness. ‘You will become like God…’ says the serpent. And yet that’s the point all along; to be transformed into His likeness. No-one ever seems to notice the parallel there.
 – Me

If fear of eternal fire is the only thing keeping you from living a morally bankrupt life, you have more pressing matters to attend to, and bigger questions to answer, than does the one who rejects the concept of eternal conscious torment altogether.
 – Jeff Turner

Who is God? This is the first question we need to try to answer on our faith reconstruction journey. Where do we turn for ideas? If God is real, then we don’t get to decide who He is. We just get to discover Him.
 – Christy Lynne Wood

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

“Blessed are the cracked, for they let the light in.”
 – Dave Tomlinson

—

As a professional laboratory scientist, I could never allow my kids to eat ‘Pick ‘n’ Mix’ sweets. Because the boxes containing the sweets were wide open to the environment, the opportunity was rife for kids literally to pick [their noses] and mix [the products of those excavations with the sweets]. That’s just asking for it… 😉

We are Not the Same

Insights, Others' stuff
This entry is part 7 of 7 in the series Speaking Truth to Power

Here’s an excellent piece from Chris Kratzer, a man whom I consider to be a modern-day prophet. He speaks truth to power by exposing the things that modern-day Fundagelicals[1] don’t think about – indeed are blind to – because of various reasons, two of which are 1) believing that they are always right, and 2) never examining their own thoughts or beliefs to discover whether they are their own beliefs, or beliefs they have been told to believe. Over to Chris:

—

Dear Evangelical Christians.

This is what separates us.
This is the discord.
This is what’s different between me and so many of you.

Indeed, we are both human and divinely created, to be sure. But in heart, mind, and soul, we are not the same. Your path has taken a different way.

As a child, I learned the same Christian teachings as you and anchored them deep within, yet here we are, two very different people whose hearts and minds are clearly at odds with one another.

It is my experience that you believe the world is you and your beliefs. That without you and your faith the world has no hope, value, or redemption. You see the world and its people as inherently flawed and depraved. To you, people are broken and need fixing. At your core, you believe nothing will get better until people believe as you do, become like you, and you hold all the seats of power and privilege.

But I believe the world is far more than you and your beliefs.

I know the world to be good, whole, holy, and divine, as is, without you and your faith, even in spite of you. You and your beliefs do nothing to make it any more sacred or pure. The beauty, purity, and divine majesty of creation and its humanity is not codependent upon you, your faith, your brand of God, your creeds, your power, or your opinions.

In fact, all too often, it has been my experience that your path of faith has served to corrupt the world and its people, and increase its suffering in service to what is your clear and apparent quest for power and control.

In contrast, I see the earth as my sanctuary, love as my worship, humanity as my community, and truth as the light of goodness within me and all things.

I know that God does not punish nor use hardship or suffering to teach or influence my life. I see no evidence for hell in the afterlife, but only in the here and now, especially among the religious. I know God to bend his heart toward the poor, not the rich; to the broken-hearted, not the proud; to the abused, not the abuser; to the follower, not the leader; and to the humble in heart, not the self-righteous.

I have come to know and understand the Divine intimately and in truth by looking earnestly to the creation around me and the Light within me. I don’t trust the faith opinions of dead men or those that are alive to guide me. But instead, I rest in the Spirit I see in all things and deep within me to be the light unto my path. I have no desire for world conquest or colonizing the world into my beliefs.

Instead, I understand my grand and everyday purpose as being to serve, not to be served. To put the needs of others above my own. To be last, not first. To love my neighbor as myself. To seek justice and speak truth to power. And to see the least of these among as the most important among us.

This is the difference between us.

We might have been created the same, but we have not become the same.

Your path of faith has convinced me that Christianity resembles nothing of Christ; it is not anchored in love, compassion, goodness, or truth, and therefore has nothing for me.

My path of faith has convinced me that Love is the all and everything. And if what I believe, pursue, or become does not resemble love, it is not of God, Jesus, or anything or anyone that is holy, whole, or good.

For love is unconditional; Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

This is the difference between me and you.

May it be known.
I love you.
But we are not the same.

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Fundamentalist Evangelicals

Gehenna and the Persistence of Mistranslation

Insights

Here’s a great piece, by the brilliant Jacob Wright, on the unsustainability of the Hell doctrine. This is from one of his Facebook posts.

Unfortunately, the comments on this piece from the usual bunch of Infernalists[1] matched exactly his predictions. Obviously these people have it so set in their minds that their Hell exists, that they are completely unable/unwilling to countenance any other opinion[2].

Over to Jacob:

“Hell” is not in the Bible. “Gehenna” is. “Hell” is a mistranslation. “Gehenna” is the right translation. Either you’re ignorant of this, or you’ve read it and yet choose to deliberately go with the mistranslation. Now you know.

The concept of “hell”, or eternal torment in the afterlife is literally and exactly nowhere in the Old Testament. “Gehenna” however is in the OT just a few times. It is a literal place, right outside of Jerusalem, where Israel practiced gross idolatry and later became called “the Valley of Slaughter” because of its reputation of idolatry and loathsomeness. Dead bodies were thrown in Gehenna and they were eaten by worms and turned to ashes by fire. This provides the context of Jesus usage of “Gehenna”.

Jesus quotes Isaiah when talking about Gehenna when he says “where the worm doesn’t die and the fire is not quenched”. He’s referring back to the valley of Gehenna, directly quoting Isaiah 66:24, which says “…the dead bodies, the worms that eat them up will not die and the fire that consumes them will not be quenched.” This literally happened. Dead bodies were eaten up by unquenchable fire and worms fed on the dead bodies until they were consumed to nothing.

Interesting thing is, go to that Valley of Slaughter today and look in it and you will not see the fire still burning nor will you see immortal worms feeding on miraculously preserved dead bodies. The bodies are gone, the worms are gone, the fire is gone. The point is that the fire would not be deterred in burning up the dead bodies to nothing, the worms would not be deterred in eating up the dead bodies to nothing. And keep in mind these are mortal dead bodies in this life, not immortal conscious souls in the afterlife.

To read eternal torment into that is either gross ignorance or deliberate deception.

Even “eternal fire” or “eternal punishment” is a mistranslation, as “eternal” is a mistranslation of the Greek word “aionios”, which does not mean “never-ending” or anything of the sort. It means “of the age to come”, or to Plato, who may have invented the word, it means something which has its origin in God, or the unseen realm. It has nothing to do with ongoing, never-ending time. “Other-worldly” is a pretty good translation of “aionios”. “Eternal” is not.

There is literally no verse in scripture that can prop up the ridiculous, pagan, non-Jewish concept of eternal torment.

Spread the word to try to get rid of the ignorance on this issue.

This is not some new politically correct idea that people are making up because they don’t like hard biblical truths. There is a long list of early fathers who rejected eternal torment because they understood these correct meanings of words, they didn’t believe in the immortality of the soul (a pagan Greek belief), they had a touch of sanity (a good thing to have for theology), and they recognized that the scriptures either taught conditional immortality and/or final universal reconciliation. Eternal torment was the minority belief in the early church, and amongst those who were less familiar with the original meanings of the text. It did not become the prominent belief until after 500 AD, with the help of the violent organized institutional church under Constantine.

Hell is not a good translation of Gehenna and it never will be. Gehenna was a real place with a real history in the Jewish mind, and it must be read in that context. Once it is read in that context, the idea of eternal torment falls to pieces, as it should.

I predict now that people will come on here quoting mistranslated verses ripped out of their context to try to prop up their beloved tradition of humans being tortured forever for not believing the same things as them. It is an evil and demonic idea which finds no basis in reason, love, justice, the scriptures, or the universe we observe. I have found that most of these people have not studied without confirmation bias nor have seriously considered the existential weight of this issue. They just accept what they are told. Nor have they probably ever had a dearly loved one that died an unbeliever. For them, it is completely fine that a bunch of dumb humans they don’t know or have empathy for burn alive forever. Such a thing they wouldn’t give a second thought or shed one tear over.

It is normal for us to not want to go through the discomfort of questioning and reconstructing what we believe, because of the fear drilled into us for years, or facing the rebuke of our religious community, so we protect the only thing we’ve known and stay uncontroversially within the bounds of groupthink.

Hell is not a good translation of Gehenna and it never will be. Gehenna was a real place with a real history in the Jewish mind, and it must be read in that context. Once it is read in that context, the idea of eternal torment falls to pieces, as it should.

– Jacob M. A. Wright, used here with his kind permission

 

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Infernalists: People who believe in a literal place of torment – ‘Hell’ – that lasts forever and ever after death, and that the people who will be in there are everyone who does not believe the exact same things that they themselves believe.
⇧2 So why aren’t these people out shouting it from the rooftops??

The Outsiders

Insights, Others' stuff

Be careful of listening to the outsiders.

People who only know you from a distance.
People who aren’t invested in your life.
People who profit from your stress or pain.
People who take more than they give.

The news… outsider.
The Bible… outsider.
The pastor… outsider.
The influencer… outsider.

Nothing outside of you should rule or define what’s inside of you.
Instead, filter and discern everything through the insiders.

The Divine within… insider.
Your chosen family… insider.
Your inner voice… insider.

Live and love, only from the inside out… always.

 – Chris Kratzer, shared with his kind permission

All Means All

Insights

Here’s a piece by the brilliant Richard Murray, where he explains – using many Scriptures – that in fact ‘All’ means ‘All’, Christ died for ‘All’, and all that. So many Evangelicals deny that, wanting to claim that, when it all boils down to it, He only died for people who agree with their doctrines.

They even go so far as to say that when the word ‘All’ is used more than once in a passage, the second ‘All’ can mean a different ‘All’ from the first one. You’ve really got to use some pretty serious mental gymnastics, as well as some severely twisted and intentional dishonesty, to want that to be true and to continue to claim that it is. The best example is in 1 Corinthians 15:22: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”. For those so keen on the ‘plain reading of Scripture’, which most of these Fundamentalists are (except when it suits them, as in this case), this should be a wrap. Cut and dried. All died in Adam, therefore all are made alive in Christ. But no, of course not. They say it’s a different ‘All’. Sure, all died in Adam, but only the ‘all’ who agree with their doctrines are made alive in Christ. Now I don’t know about you, but I personally would tend to think that ‘all’ is an absolute term. How twisted is that, to try to deny that? There is no ‘All, except’, because then that isn’t ‘all’, is it? I’ll pass you over to Richard now:

So many brimstoners and infernalists who argue for Hell as a place of eternal conscious torment seem to suffer from a Vitamin “ALL” Deficiency.

They simply can’t seem to absorb (or even acknowledge) the pervasive use of the word ALL (or EVERY) used in the following passages, all of which point to a “better end” instead of “bitter end” for ALL.

I once received the following comment from one such critic.

“Richard, the New Testament NEVER teaches that ALL men will be reconciled to God. I understand that you think God uses His postmortem judgment fire to cure, purge, and prepare humanity for heaven, not torture them for eternity. I understand that you believe God’s punishments are rehabilitative, not retributive. It’s a nice thought but it’s nowhere taught in the New Testament. You have no passages to support your position.”

Really? This myopic viewpoint never ceases to amaze me. People have been so indoctrinated with a view of Hell where God sends those who displease and disbelieve Him into eternal conscious torment.

This reductive indoctrination comes from endlessly chanting a handful of passages about Hell which have largely been mistranslated (at least from the ways the early church fathers understood them, Patristic scholars who knew Koine Greek far better than do we moderns). Those indoctrinated by Hell’s hive mind have been programmed to completely ignore so many other Scriptures, no matter how specific and on point they are.

The verses below say what they say. Notice the use of “all” and “everybody.” Notice there are no exceptions given.

“This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance. For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, Who is the Savior of ALL MEN, ESPECIALLY [Greek: “to the greatest degree”] of those who believe. These things command and teach.” (1 Tim. 4:9-11). [this passage clearly includes even those who do not believe as being within the ambit of salvation].

“Jesus, was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for EVERYONE.” (Heb. 2:9)

“This is good and acceptable in the sight of our God our saviour; Who WILL have ALL men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus: Who gave himself a ransom for ALL, to be testified in due time.” (1 Tim. 2:3-6, KJV).

“He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might GATHER TOGETHER IN ONE ALL THINGS IN CHRIST, BOTH WHICH ARE IN HEAVEN AND WHICH ARE HEAVEN AND WHICH ARE ON EARTH— IN HIM.” (Eph. 1:9-10).

“He will transform the body of our humble condition into the likeness of His glorious body, by the power that enables Him to subject ALL THINGS TO HIMSELF” (Phil. 3:21).

“EVERY MAN’S work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be BURNED, he shall SUFFER LOSS: but HE HIMSELF SHALL BE SAVED; yet so AS BY FIRE.” 1 Cor. 3:13-15. (Key passage on the postmortem judgment fire of God, where there is suffering and loss for the errant soul, but ultimately salvation, yes as by fire).

“For as in Adam ALL DIE, even so in Christ shall ALL BE MADE ALIVE. But EVERY man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put ALL enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put ALL things under his feet. But when he saith, ALL things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put ALL things under him. And when ALL things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put ALL things under him, that GOD MAY BE ‘ALL IN ALL.’ Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?” 1 Corinthians 15:22-29.

“I heard EVERY creature IN heaven, ON earth, UNDER the earth, ON the sea, and EVERYTHING in them say: Blessing and honor and glory and dominion to the One seated on the throne and to the Lamb, forever and ever!” (Rev. 5:13). (Angels here are included in the restoration– no creaturely exception.)

“Then He who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make ALL things new'” (God will dwell with men and he will wipe every tear from their eyes, death, mourning, crying, pain and the old order of things will pass and everything and everybody will be made new. Rev. 21:5, 3-4).

“At the name of Jesus EVERY knee should bow, of those in heaven, and those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that EVERY tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:10:11).

“ALL Israel will be saved.” (Rom. 11:26)

“Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for ALL, and therefore ALL died.” (2 Cor. 5:14)

“Just as the result of one trespass was condemnation of ALL MEN, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for ALL MEN.” (Rom. 5:18)

“And I, if I (Jesus) am lifted up from the earth, will draw [“drag” in the Greek, helkuo] ALL MANKIND unto Myself.” (John 12:32).

Read this passage together with, “No one can come to Christ unless the Father who sent Him draws him.” (John 6:44), and we are left with the unavoidable promise that Jesus WILL draw all men to Himself.

In Jesus Christ is “the restoration of ALL THINGS, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.” (Acts 3:21)

The Gospel is “good tidings of great joy will be to ALL people.” (Luke 2:10)

Believers in Christ are “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:13)

God appointed Jesus “heir of ALL THINGS, and through whom He made the universe.” (Heb. 1:2)

“As God gave Jesus authority over ALL FLESH, that he should give eternal life to as many as God have Him.” (John 17:2)

The Father “has given ALL THINGS into Jesus’ hands.” (John 13:3)

Jesus “was the true light which gives light to EVERY MAN who come into the world.” (John 1:9)

“Just as the result of one trespass was condemnation of ALL MEN, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for ALL MEN.” (Rom. 5:18)

Jesus is “able even to subdue ALL THINGS to Himself.” (Phil. 3:21)

“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering towards us, not willing that any should perish, but that ALL should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

“God was Christ reconciling THE WORLD to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God.” (2 Cor. 5:19, 20).”

–  Richard Murray, shared with his kind permission.

I think that says it all. Explaining away Scriptures is one thing; denying that they exist is a completely different matter. Doubtless, the person that Richard mentions in his opening words there, who said there is no Scriptural evidence for ‘All’, is going to have to eat his words. I would be happy to provide the cutlery 😉

Grace and Peace to you

True Gospel

Insights

Here is a beautiful passage by Brad Jersak:

“Christ did not come to change the Father, or to appease the wrath of an angry judge, but to reveal the Father.

“God is like Jesus, exactly like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. We did not know that, but now we do.

“Paul said God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. It’s not the Father that needed to be reconciled to the world. It’s the world that needed to be reconciled to the Father. Jesus, perfectly revealing the heart of the Father, confronts the sin of the world this way: I forgive you.

“Even when we turn away from God, he is always there, confronting us with his love. God is always toward us. Always for us. He comes, not as a condemning judge, but as a great physician.

“Jesus was saving us from Satan, sin and death; not saving us from God.

“God never turns away from humanity. God is perfectly revealed in Jesus. When did Jesus ever turn away from sinful humanity and say, ‘I am too holy and perfect to look on your sin?’ Did Jesus ever do anything like that? No. The Pharisees did that. They were too holy and turned away. God is like Jesus, not like a Pharisee.

“The gospel is this: when we turn away, he turns toward us. When we run away, he confronts us with his love. When we murder God, he confronts us with his mercy and forgiveness.”

– Brad Jersak, ‘A More Christlike God‘

You Are Not Evil

Insights, Others' stuff

One of the founding pillars of Evangelical Christianity is not so much Jesus, not so much the Church, not even a firm belief in Hell[1], but in fact the firm belief in what we call ‘Worm Theology'[2].

The whole idea is that ‘we'[3] are no better than worms; we are the lowest of the low, the dirtiest of the dirty, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9)

And I don’t believe that. I don’t remember ever believing it. Even in my Fundieculty[4] days, I may have outwardly agreed with it, but deep down I knew that most people are good. Most people would call the emergency services if you were in a road accident. Some would even try to pull you out of the wreckage, even at the risk of their own health or lives. People let you out of road junctions when it’s not really your turn, with a simple wave of the hand. People hold doors open for you, rather than letting them drop back in your face[5]. Granted, to the Fundieculty, none of this counts, because as far as they are concerned, your righteousness is ‘as filthy rags’ (Is 64:6). In fact to a Fundieculty, nothing counts, because no matter how clever you are, no matter how good you are, no matter how helpful, kind, generous or loving you are, you are simply not good enough[6]. How to encourage people 101, guys. And when challenged about this, they will produce proof text after proof text to continue driving you into the ground with the piledriver of weaponised Scripture. But by that time you should be out of earshot, because you will have walked away 😀

No. This is simply not true. Granted, when I am driving a  car, I’m afraid I adopt the same attitude that my mother had: they are ‘The Enemy’ and they’re all out to get in your way and obstruct your intended course of action 😉 But other than that, no. People are usually good. There are exceptions, of course, most of whom are well-known; there are evil people. But just your average everyday ‘man in the street’ citizen, these are good people.

So in case I haven’t hammered this home enough, here’s a great piece by the incomparable Jeff Turner. You are not evil!

You are not evil.
Your heart is not deceitful, wicked, or untrustworthy, despite how badly Old Testament verses, taken out of their contexts, have been preached at you.
You may have been told this your entire life, including at those pivotal moments in childhood when your brain was in pure receiving mode, and was storing and creating the program that would later run your life.
You may have had it suggested, if not spelled out plainly, that you were conceived and brought forth in original sin, and would occupy a space of total depravity until you were able to make a conscious decision to follow Jesus and accept salvation.
This is pure fiction, and not even a part of the narratives found in either the Old or New Testaments. But it doesn’t matter what’s true as far as your experience of life and reality is concerned, it matters only what you believe is true.
When you believe you are of a fallen species, hopelessly bent in the direction of evil, unrighteousness, and sin, and, ultimately, a target of the eternal wrath of God, it’s difficult to trust yourself, recognize blessings and opportunities when they appear, and to take decisive action when you need to.
Such thinking and programming can literally take a life that could have changed the world, and turn it into one that goes unrecognized, both by the liver of said life, as well as by those sharing a planet with it.
Not that changing the world and greatness according to certain standards is even the goal, but I think most would like to live at least slightly above mediocrity, and mediocrity is, at best, what a mind convinced of its broken and untrustworthy nature can hope to achieve.
This week, speak to yourself of your goodness, trustworthiness, and ability to see a good opportunity when presented with one.Think on these things morning, noon, and night, and then anticipate opportunities to test them out.
One can hear corrective theology and deconstruct the bad all day long, and still have the stymying effects of the bad clinging onto them like barnacles.
It is often only in the arena of real life, wherein we act, move, and see for ourselves that what we thought to be true of ourselves simply is not, that real change occurs.So study theology, correct the errors in your belief system, but, also, prepare yourself to experience practically the truth of who you are. Once you begin to see, little by little, that you are capable of recognizing the good, acting on instinct and intuition, etc., you will naturally begin to know yourself for who you truly are.
You are capable of so much more than the program you’re likely running on is able to help you achieve.You are good.Your heart is trustworthy.
So, may opportunities find you, and may they find you prepared to take hold of them.
Life doesn’t have to be one drag after another.
You were created for more, and have the capacity for more.
Peace.
 – Jeff Turner, shared with his kind permission.
Wow. How do you follow that?

Maybe only by quoting St. Paul, who seems to have been of a similar mind, when he said this:

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” – Phil 4:8

Header picture is of one very relaxed Jeff Turner. On a bench.

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Which, sadly, is in some places a more required belief than a belief in Jesus
⇧2 How the hell did we get to that point in our belief system??
⇧3 I despair when I see forum and Facebook posts referring to ‘We’ as if everyone in the entire world, and certainly the readers of that particular post, are all somehow collectively included in whatever nefarious plot the poster has in mind, whether it is a ‘We must…’ leading insidiously back to legalism (or into more legalism), a ‘We are…’ which ropes everyone into the same category of whatever misery the writer is pushing… and so on. I’m sure there are many other examples.
⇧4 A fundamentalist Christian with a cult mindset. I’ve just invented that word now, and I like it 😉
⇧5 My friend Richard has a great story to tell on this point. Out on lunch break, he was just coming out of the Merrion Centre in Leeds and as he went through the door, he looked back and saw a young woman a few yards back, and heading in the same direction. True to his generous nature, he held the door for her, only to be given the admonition, “I hope you’re not doing that because I’m a lady!” Quick as a flash, his rejoinder was “No, I’m doing it because I’m a gentleman”. No answer for that, of course! 😀
⇧6 Actually, I sometimes think that peple like to drag others down to their own level of misery, which, apparently, loves company. In effect, they don’t like to think of anyone else as being better than them, so they find ‘Biblical’ proof to show that others are, indeed, just as bad. What it must be like to live like that…