Most of the regular visitors here at A Christian Worldview of Fiction are likely unaware that a discussion cropped up a couple weeks ago on an unrelated post, centered on God’s justice. I’ve retitled the original post, “Why I Love Fantasy,” so that it now reads “God – A God Of Judgment?” The heart of the discussion, as I see it, lies in this comment I made to sometime-visitor and emergent-church conversationalist Mike Morrell:
You have stripped [God] of His right to judge, of His sovereignty over those who take a stand against Him, of His righteousness in doing so.
To clarify: some in the emerging church, as do atheists like Christopher Hitchens, regard God as He revealed Himself in the Old Testament as a tyrant, a genocidal maniac, a murderer. Therefore, they try to “explain” him in a number of ways. One is to reduce the Old Testament to the status of myth. Another is to suggest that God is evolving—becoming “nicer,” as Jesus demonstrated.
Seemingly the one thing these professing Christians cannot abide is that God is a just Judge, that He actually has the right to mete out punishment to those opposed to Him.
But this brings me to today’s topic. What would the world be like if God were not just? What if we had no sovereign judge?
First, I think it would be fair to say that a god who is not just would consequently also not have one of two other attributes: either omnipotence or goodness.
Here’s my line of thinking. If God were not just, then evil would be without recompense. If he were not just but still good, then it seems the only reason he would not act on behalf of good against evil would be because he lacked the power to do so. But if he retained all power, then his refusal to act against evil could only be understood as a lack of goodness which would necessitate him to redress wrong.
Secondly, if God were not just, then he also would not be righteous. A moral, principled, ethical individual could not look on the atrocities of man against man and take no stand.
Atheists know this. One of their accusations against God is that He takes no stand against the Hitlers and Stalins and Idi Amins and Osama bin Ladens of the world. Little do they understand that His action was and will be. He sent His Son and He will judge righteously.
The enclave of emergent thinkers accusing God of “genocide” in the Old Testament when He brought judgment to bear on nations, apparently think evil requires no action. Or else they believe evil does not exist in the heart of man, in which case, some other evil—society or Satan—is running around unchecked by an uncaring god devoid of righteousness.
Third, God’s love would not be magnified. If Man’s sin did not require payment, if Man was not destined to die, if sin would be solved simply by overlooking it, where then is the love of God? What love does it take to reward a good person, someone deserving of praise and adoration? Love shows best when it stoops to the unlovely, to the one who has nothing to give in return.
God’s love shines most brightly because He came and died to cancel the insurmountable indebtedness for each of us—not after we’d cleaned up a bit and earned a nod from our Creator. He made the supreme magnanimous sacrifice while we were yet sinners. He didn’t simply wave off our debt, though. He paid for it.
If we owed nothing, if there were no reckoning day when all accounts would be squared, then God’s sacrifice might be seen as a really nice gesture, but so unnecessary. People might actually cluck their tongues and say, What a waste, that he went through so much so unnecessarily.
How small God’s love looks if He is not also just.
Thankfully, thankfully, that notion is far from the truth.
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A Christian Worldview of Fiction 
Hi Becky
I think it is very hard (impossible?) for human beings to understand what an exquisite balancing act it is to be a God of both love and justice. As people, we tend to choose one over the other, not both equally.
I try to teeter closer to the balance myself by remembering this: The only thing more important than justice is mercy. And the only thing more important than mercy is justice.
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Excellent, Becky! Thanks for taking the effort to write that out! I recall having a conversation on that theme a short while ago. God’s love and mercy are all the greater because of his justice. Justice is necessary; so are love and mercy.
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Behold, the merciful justice of God.
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I like the previous (above?)comment about justice vs. mercy and the virtual impossibility of human comprehension of that paradox. I spent 25 years in the ‘justice’ camp and the next 10 in the ‘mercy’ camp. Now I’m just trying not to camp. I am spending less time trying to get people to believe the ‘right’ stuff about Jesus, and more time trying to live and behave as he did. Paul said to the Corinthians, “The Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.” I have found that giving people ‘permission’ to think what they want is more powerful than trying to change them. I used to try to ‘win’ discussions and correct the ‘wrong’ out of other people with high powered arguements and well explained theories. Recently, however, when I hear someone speaking things that sound dangerously untrue, I try to let my fear for them and the potential consequences of their beliefs cause me to be sad for them instead. I try to imagine their life story and think about how Jesus looked at the ‘rich young ruler’ and loved him. Sometimes this results in tears. When it does, the ‘correction’ is more powerful than the sharpest rebuke. People really don’t care what I know until they know that I care. Electronic communication makes this really difficult but not impossible. We all want to be heard, but can we be a little more patient with the ‘send’ button? Don’t worry about who I am writing this for, just let it be true if it is true for you. Can we listen more, correct less, and speak more from our experience than our theories? I hope so. I believe so.
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You know, Mike, you lose a lot of credibility with me when you rewrite my words in your Facebook postings. For the record, this post never said
Why do you find it necessary to turn my discussions of God into attacks on you?
Also for the record, I’m working my way through MacDonald’s sermon you linked to. So far, I only see a man’s thought, nothing Biblical, but of course, that might change.
Becky
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Hi Becky,
There’s a saying in journalism – “If it bleeds, it leads.” I had to get folks to click on the link somehow. 🙂 And I see it as summarizing, not misrepresenting. My name was in your opening paragraph, but it was ‘below the fold’ of what would have otherwise previewed on Facebook.
But I’m curious, Becky, since you never accepted my FB friend request…how do you know what I am or am not posting there?
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And – you don’t like George MacDonald, eh? That’s surprising, seeing as he was a huge influence on CS Lewis & the granddaddy of Christian speculative fiction. I’ve always found him to be eminently biblical and radical…just like me. 😉
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Jim, after reading Mike’s Facebook posting, I understand why you wrote what you wrote. I agree with you that it is hard to communicate to people electronically that we care. My best effort is to tell Mike that I pray for him—which amuses him. As to patience in responding, you’ve given me a good reminder. I believe I should lay each comment (and each post) before God. Sometimes, I get hasty.
As to listening more, correcting less, I can only assume you are still believing that I wrote to set “that arch-heretic” straight. Not so. In reality, I feel so very sad that those who don’t understand God’s justice are deprived of knowing His actual love.
This post is not about winning an argument or making a case against anyone. It is primarily a declaration of Truth about the One I know and love. I don’t want to see Him lied about. And I don’t want to see thousands think they know Him, only to hear, “Depart, I never knew you.”
Becky
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Mike, here’s what I see. I wrote nothing “bleeding” about you, but you rewrote my lines, then Tweeted “Becky strikes again.”
It would have been an easy matter to bring your name above the fold by using an ellipsis to replace omitted text.
Seriously, Mike, do you think this transparent alteration of the truth is any better than you rewriting lines of my post or retitling the previous one you put on Facebook?
But since you have no compunction about doing away with the parts of the Bible you don’t like or about re-imaging God, I should not be surprised that you have no compunction rewriting my words for a little hype.
I admit, though, that I’m disappointed. I thought we had a bit more civil relationship than what you’ve demonstrated.
Perhaps the affirmation from your Facebook buddies takes away the sting of truth about God’s character.
I’m grabbing at straws here because I’m not convinced your motive was your burning desire to have people rush over here and read about God’s justice.
As to MacDonald, I’m sorry if I led you to believe I didn’t like him. I didn’t even say that I disagree with him, though I’m leaning that way based on what I’ve read so far. I said he wasn’t convincing because he’s not making a case from anything but his own thoughts. There’s no Biblical authority behind what he’s said in the part I’ve read.
Me liking it, or liking him, or caring about his influence on C. S. Lewis, or agreeing even, wouldn’t matter if what he says contradicts Truth.
Becky
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Mike, you showed your true colors when you wrote that headline, and you also catered to our culture’s need for sensationalism. For shame.
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Journalist here: there’s a difference between actual self-sustained “sensational” stories, and stabbing a non-sensational one to make it bleed.
Again it looks like everything needs to be all about you; you must name-check yourself to make it “cool.” Treating ideas and eternal truths like shiny little toys, useful only in their ability to contribute to self-promotion? Ugh, I hope not, but what else can I conclude what that’s the best explanation I hear? And I, too, had though better of ya, Mike. Just proves again no one knows everything.
Lots revealed there, sadly.
Can’t help but wonder: if every single criticism from someone is explained away as jealousy/fear/”attacking”/power preservation, or any other myriad of cultural fundamentalist-style excuses, to reject differing views, what happens if you’re really wrong and someone who cares tries to tell you?
My suggestion: consider, next time, what would happen if someone had misquoted your own words in the name of hyping it up. This supposed improved “love and mercy” view has hideous blind spots.
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Hi all,
I’m sorry that my light-hearted summary was so offensive – truly. When someone *actually* calls me an ‘arch-heretic,’ I laugh out loud; those aren’t ‘fighting words’ to me, but silly hyperbole. (I think I’ve only been called that once, by Ken Silva over at Apprising) Hardly anyone reads those light-grey boxes; I think you, Becky, and one other person were the only ones who noticed it before you drew attention to it. I will leave a clarifying comment on my Facebook wall under that post to let folks know it was a satirical summary and not meant to be taken literally. Mea culpa. (And Becky, you still haven’t told me how you have such intimate knowledge of my FB wall when we’re not “friends”! I guess my privacy settings are pretty low…)
E Steve, I find it fascinating that this demonstrates to you just how ‘hideous’ new-fangled forms of love can sink, whilst mocking God’s biblical revelation of Her feminine aspects as some kind of sub-par “she-god” is perfectly acceptable.
So part of me wants to go back and respond, point by point, to your varied and sundry points and questions about God’s character, theories of biblical revelation, why I’ve come to see God as I do, etc… And perhaps someday I shall be able to – maybe even sometime in 2011. But as Becky has noted,and E Steve has railed about, and even Cassidy has pointed out with his Knight & Gardner motifs – perhaps I am not yet mature enough to do so without resorting to either a.) Over-defensiveness on the one hand, or b.) Satire and mirthful response on the other hand.
The fact is, we’re speaking two very different languages and coming from two very different reference points. It’s like people speaking Sanskrit and Japanese trying to have a meaningful conversation. And this is what lays bare my lack of skill: My convictions about God, my relationship to God in Christ via the Holy Spirit, has been formed over many years of asking, seeking, knocking; many years of prayer, fellowship, reading, conversation, and study; and above all, a wide-eyed, open, curious stance toward the great Mystery and Revelation that God illumines in the unlikliest places. I can’t possibly hope to regurgitate upon the pixellated page in a few moments what’s taken me years to live out and discover. If we were together over a cup of tea, perhaps, or a pint of Guinness; but the medium (through no particular fault of your own) is hostile to the message. There’s no way I can sincerely tell you my story without resorting to either a.) Defensiveness or b.) Snark. And yet, Peter’s admonition to always be ready to explain the hope that is within stands as a challenge to me, so I’ll keep working on it. 🙂
I’ll leave you with some sage words from George MacDonald when he was questioned for his deviations from Scottish Presbyterian ‘orthodoxy.’ He says things far better than I:
“Have you really been reading my books, and at this time ask me what have I lost of the old faith? Much have I rejected of the new, but I have never rejected anything I could keep, and have never turned to gather again what I had once cast away. With the faith itself to be found in the old Scottish manse I trust I have a true sympathy. With many of the forms gathered around that faith and supposed by the faithful to set forth and explain their faith, I have none. At a very early age I had begun to cast them from me; but all the time my faith in Jesus as the Son of the Father of men and the Savior of us all, has been growing. If it were not for the fear of its sounding unkind, I would say that if you had been a disciple of his instead of mine, you would not have mistaken me so much. Do not suppose that I believe in Jesus because it is said so-and-so in a book. I believe in him because he is himself. The vision of him in that book, and, I trust, his own living power in me, have enabled me to understand him, to look him in the face, as it were, and accept him as my Master and Savior, in following whom I shall come to the rest of the Father’s peace. The Bible is to me the most precious thing in the world, because it tells me his story; and what good men thought about him who know him and accepted him. But, the common theory of the inspiration of the words, instead of the breathing of God’s truth into the hearts and souls of those who wrote it, and who then did their best with it, is degrading and evil; and they who hold it are in danger of worshipping the letter instead of living in the Spirit, of being idolaters of the Bible instead of disciples of Jesus…. It is Jesus who is the Revelation of God, not the Bible; that is but a means to a mighty eternal end. The book is indeed sent us by God, but it nowhere claims to be His very word. If it were—and it would be no irreverence to say it—it would have been a good deal better written. Yet even it’s errors and blunders do not touch the truth, and are the merest trifles—dear as the little spot of earth on the whiteness of the snowdrop. Jesus alone is The Word of God.
With all sorts of doubt I am familiar, and the result of them is, has been, and will be, a widening of my heart and soul and mind to greater glories of the truth—the truth that is in Jesus—and not in Calvin or Luther or St. Paul or St. John, save as they got it from Him, from whom every simple heart may have it, and can alone get it. You cannot have such proof of the existence of God or the truth of the Gospel story as you can have of a proposition in Euclid or a chemical experiment. But the man who will order his way by the word of the Master shall partake of his peace, and shall have in himself a growing conviction that in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge….
One thing more I must say: though the Bible contains many an utterance of the will of God, we do not need to go there to find how to begin to do his will. In every heart there is a consciousness of some duty or other required of it: that is the will of God. He who would be saved must get up and do that will—if it be but to sweep a room or make an apology, or pay a debt. It was he who had kept the commandments whom Jesus invited to be his follower in poverty and labour …
From your letter it seems that to be assured of my faith would be a help to you. I cannot say I never doubt, nor until I hold the very heart of good as my very own in Him, can I wish not to doubt. For doubt is the hammer that breaks the windows clouded with human fancies, and lets in the pure light. But I do say that all my hope, all my joy, all my strength are in the Lord Christ and his Father; that all my theories of life and growth are rooted in him; that his truth is gradually clearing up the mysteries of this world…. To Him I belong heart and soul and body, and he may do with me as he will-nay, nay—I pray him to do with me as he wills: for that is my only well-being and freedom.”
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Hey again Mike — though I’m not the one offended, I was hoping you’d say something close to that. Kudos to you. I’ve learned several times from my own similar failures, not just having committed them but having had them committed against me: plagiarism included. That’s partly why Biblical Christians go for this whole “repentance and forgiveness” thing: we’ve benefited from God’s forgiveness (and Christ suffering our fate in our place) and so ought to be eager to share that same spirit of reconciliation.
So why give ’em credence by repeating it and letting them have that “power” (and also seeming to enjoy the negative attention)? 😛 Yes, that was a slight nitpick, and intentionally so. However, while “arch-heretic” may be silly, “heretic” is a legitimate term to describe someone professing any religion, but who falls outside its generally accepted beliefs. Yet I think it should be reserved for those seeking to spread false beliefs intentionally.
Recently I discovered Facebook has an option to see your own profile the way any other friend will see it. The button is a bit hard to find, but visible near the top of the edit-privacy-settings panel …
I’m still yer Facebook Friend, so that’s how I know.
Ah, but what “revelation” be this? I could say our knowledge of God is evolving and so therefore I’m so far along the way that I know better than His talking about His nurturing, caring, power to define love by virtue of Himself, etc. 😉
That’s a rhetorical argument, meant to show the inconsistency of an “evolving knowledge” view that makes God’s revelation self-contradictory and Himself an idiot or cruel. Now for my real response: I’m not mocking that part of the Bible, but merely rejecting your foreign import, inconsistent both logically and Biblically, that this must mean God is a Girrr-llll. Have you seen my response, in the other post? Quick repeat: it seems sexist to say that nurturing, caring, etc., are specifically feminine qualities. Moreover, the same Bible that describes God as love and nurturing, and sometimes uses feminine metaphors, etc., always describes Him as a He. Claiming “He” must also be a “she” based on some artificial logical construct seems to reject the Mystery part of God to make some modernistic, either/or imposition on the ancient text. Real humility would get under that revelation, rather than place my own confusion over it, right?
Dang straight, sir. 😉 But perhaps we disagree on the exact nature of those languages, and one reason I say that is because you go on to describe a little of your personal story, search for God, etc. Lots of people are doing that, though; this is not to put you down or say you’re not unique, but simply to add perspective. And yet it seems we have two different approaches: are we seeking God to find truths, glories, love, or even Himself as something “useful” to some other cause? Or are we seeking Him as the ultimate Cause, humbling ourselves under Him as He has revealed Himself to be (assuming He is love, and capable of giving us some knowledge about Himself)?
I think that’s the main difference here. And I speak not as some Living Spiritual Master who has figured out exactly how to keep things God-centered, but one who has benefited tremendously whenever I’ve kept approaching giving up my own, uber-practical, selfish-goal-driven, I-want-my-spiritual-search-to-be-about-me Quest or Story, and started delighting in God’s quest/Story instead.
Ergo, if we compared this to a game of “rock, paper, scissors,” only turned instead into a game of Anecdote, Christian Teaching, Scripture, we would both be calling out “Anecdote!” but those simply deadlock. Supervising all of our personal experiences should be Scripture, interpreting our experiences through its perspective, not vice-versa. That shows true humility and respect for God, as competent and loving enough to equip us for every good work, through His Word.
And if the discussion turns toward all those supposed varying interpretations of Scripture, etc., I refer back to the other post, in which I actually posted from actual Scripture and said “well, what do you think it means?” and never heard back. Well, George did say he was busy moving, and it’s a holiday weekend. … And speaking of which, Happy New Year to you and yours. I mean that literally. 😛
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Thanks for your reply. A side-note on God & gender, which might be illuminating on the whole of our differences:
I suspect that you and I both agree that God is not literally male or female, that God transcends gender. And I suspect that we both believe that human male-ness and female-ness each tell us something substantial about God, a la Genesis 1:27. AND – this might come as a surprise to you – I do not categorically reject any of Scripture’s male images for God – precisely for one of the reasons that you’ve hinted at: There’s actually something subversive about ascribing nurturing, compassionate attributes to a “He” – something counter-cultural, perhaps, in ancient Semetic cultures that stood as a critique of some modes of ancient patriarchal society.
Where we differ, I’d imagine, is over the idea of progressive revelation. F’r instance (and this is where I show my hand: Though I’m happy to entertain questions of God’s evolving, and have friends who believe so, I believe that a deity presiding over billions of years of creative evolution is not likely to be super-capricious within a 6-10,000 year span), God never wanted one human being to stand over another in slavery, yet not one passage in Scripture (Old or New Testament) condemns the institution. I figure this is either because God was not speaking about this or we weren’t listening. Yet you can see an arc of increasing humane-ness throughout the Bible, something some folks might call ‘the unfolding of salvation history’ or some such thing. Gradually, fresh awareness began to manifest as growing conviction, ’till some Anglicans and Quakers got together a few centuries ago and said “No! This is wrong!” and similar developments have occurred with regards to our attitudes of torture, etc…
In like manner, I’ll give you that Scripture never just comes out liturgically addresses God as “Her” or “She,” though many hints are there. Rather, it is the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit revealing to the church the manifold wisdom of God in Christ. The same Spirit that revealed to the Church that slavery is wrong even though the Letter does not condemn it, has been working for centuries to break the back of harmful patriarchy – there was no more virulent enemy of traditional family values in the first century AD than Jesus himself, who tells us that we need to hate biological family for the new in-breaking Kingdom order, and that those who follow him will be his brothers and sisters and mothers (but ‘father’ is conspicuously absent). The groundwork has been laid in the New Covenant for every genuine progression of belief and practice, which could be summed up as “that which expands our empathy for all sentient and non-sentient life” – the all-consuming love of God Who Is and will be All in all (see I Cor 15). So whether it’s loving women, abolishing slavery, seeing masculine and feminine in the nature of God, affirming loving relationships among whomever they occur, the wideness of God’s mercy, et al, this comes from my interpretation of the arc of love, the increased Light of God’s revelation expanding the hearts of those willing to receive it.
I do not say this in blissful or willful ignorance of the New Testament’s many admonitions against false teachers and end-of-days apostasies and tickling ears and antichrists, and warnings about narrow ways. As a preterist, I see these as having been historically fulfilled around AD 70, but I think their lessons are applicable to us today. Time does not permit to go into full detail, but suffice it to say that Jesus’ greatest rhetorical enemies were the religious, whether conservative Sadducees (who saw themselves as progressives), or liberal Pharisees (who saw themselves as conservatives). The early church’s greatest Christ-denyers were the legalists who wanted to promote law at the expense of gospel liberation. The ‘narrow way’ was Jesus’ way of nonviolent living and direct action to change the world rather than the Fight of Zealotry or the Flight of Essenes; this way was a narrow path that led to life, not speaking of some afterlife state (which most of his hearers didn’t believe in anyway) but of the ‘coming destruction’ of a Jewish civil war and subsequent Roman annihilation. Anyone who participated in the ‘sword’ of that violent way was bound to perish in like manner.
So: I don’t expect us to agree, at the end of the day, on what I’ve just said or indeed very much at all. But please know that any deviations I make from Augustinian-Calvinist visions of orthodoxy are considered and deliberate; they come from prayerful study of actual history, which makes the ‘timeless’ abstractions of orthodoxy less and less tenable in many cases. And yet, with one of my heroes, George MacDonald, I can say: “What have I lost of the old faith? Much have I rejected of the new, but I have never rejected anything I could keep, and have never turned to gather again what I had once cast away.”
I am, believe it or not, a conservative: Whatever I can agree with in historic, mainstream Christianity, I do in order to maintain good faith and fellowship with the communion of saints. I affirm mainstream Christology, Trinitarian views, and more; whatever I cannot in good conscience affirm – and I hope you know that this makes me a good Protestant like you – I have no choice but to discard in true Lutheran fashion: “Here I stand, God help me, I can do no other.” Thankfully I have Jesus, the original iconoclast, who challenged all of the religious shibboleths in his day. I think I’m in good company. 🙂
With that said, I think you’re in good company too; were we not arguing with each other about things of which we disagree, I think we might well be conversing or working together on those things which we do. Doubtless you’re all lovely people, and even (or especially) if turned out to be ‘right’ about all of my hobby-horses versus all of yours, I know that my God will still be full of mercy, compassion, and restorative justice – even if I won’t fare as well with yours. 🙂 It’s a proposition I’m willing to stake my life on.
Grace & peace & all good things as we enter into 2011…
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Hi, Mike, in your mea culpa you said
I guess we’re destined not to agree on much. You did not summarize my description of you; you re-wrote it. You can soften it all you want, but you lied. But changing my words to say something completely different wasn’t an offense, the way you mean it, as if you somehow bruised me by your harsh sense of humor. Lies aren’t little or white.
That being said, I do forgive you. I, who come into God’s presence only on the strength of the forgiveness Christ earned for me, can do nothing less.
Becky
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Mike, your lengthy George MacDonald quote shows the basic difference between us. It isn’t that you are speaking Sanskrit and I am speaking Japanese.
You simply view the Bible in a different light than do I. Nothing shows this more clearly than when you said
I don’t know if you read my earlier post about the Pharisees or not. If so, then you already know I see Scripture revealing Jesus as a religious person and His opposition to the Pharisees as something completely different from an objection to legalism.
He excoriated them because they were hypocrites, cheats, liars, false teachers (teaching tradition as if it was the word of God). Ultimately, He rejected them because they rejected Him.
Any careful reading of the text shows event after event in which Jesus pointed the finger at them but not once did He call them legalists. The closest thing to it was when He said
Clearly, He was not rebuking them for keeping the letter of the law but for ignoring what was behind it, including God’s justice.
Nor did Jesus come to change the world in the way you describe it. Mike, you can only get there by ignoring what Jesus said Himself about why He came.
But that’s the bottom line, you have taken upon yourself the right to correct Jesus and ignore God. You add to His words and dismiss others as part of the Christ “mythos.” I’ll say again, you have taken upon yourself the right to judge God, to decide when Scripture explains Him accurately and when it does not.
So I start by laying the Bible before me and saying, These words are true; whereas you lay it out before you and say, What about this is true?
With those differing starting places, of course we are not going to end up in the same place.
So my question, Mike, on what authority do you believe you have the right to sift God and His word?
Becky
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Happy New Year to all. Becky already said a lot of what I wanted to say — including the vexing but persistent myth that Jesus’ goal was to Show A Better Way, a kinder, gentler legalist, and laid the smackdown on the Pharisees because they were “too religious.” Reading merely Mark 7 helps set this aright. But alas, I fear many people — right-wing, left-wing, whatever — prefer coming to the Bible to look for Solutions to Problems (popular problems?) rather than God Himself.
Yet methinks I’ll offer some quick thoughts in reply to all of your points, Mike, and perhaps continue this Conversation after the weekend, on Monday.
Because He is a Spirit, this is true to an extent. Yet my hope (and recommendation) is to avoid that ever-present temptation to try to work “logical” derivatives from the truth that God is not a physical being — such as that God is androgynous or some kind of Neutrality. All I know is the Bible does show that “male and female” are made in God’s image, and yet every time He refers to Himself, it’s as a Himself, not a “herself” or “itself.” To insist that this isn’t enough and that we must Figure It Out is to fail to let God be God, Who defines the terms and Who keeps some mysteries to Himself.
Yep, but please consider that you’ve just argued propositionally from Scripture. What if I were the kind of professing Christian who didn’t even want to admit that women’s qualities tell us something about God’s image? I could just say “that’s your interpretation” or say that “our knowledge of God is evolving” or that God changes. Just a reminder that this is inconsistent. But not surprising!
If that’s the case, it’s a theory outside Scripture — not incorrect, just secondary. Maybe — just maybe — God inspired that material not because it was Subversive, as if He only gets His jollies off putting the rhetorical screws to snarks. Maybe He included it in there primarily because it was True!
Naturally I wish you wouldn’t even entertain those. What’s the point of it, when God has already said He does not change? I can provide Scriptural support for this. No “progressive revelation” concept should lead us to conclude that God has switched from being Who He once was. Otherwise, He is as capricious as you say you don’t want Him to be, or He is an idiot — and perhaps we should thus hate and oppose Him.
Whuh? Who’s coming up with the “billions of years of creative evolution” part? Perhaps this explains why many believe God has changed tacks since this long and wasteful a process of evolution: not only is this a cruel and ridiculous way of creating, it shows that God is just fine with sin and suffering before any kind of human fall, and moreover, He is an idiot for letting that whole “Genesis” account getting out and about to people in His Name.
I hope you’re familiar with the “slave” definition of the NT that is better rendered “bondservant.”
Moreover, don’t you think the Bible would be very long, somewhat dull, and ignoring the real problem of the human heart to contain a list of Do’s and Don’ts? Again you seem to reveal a latent or blatant legalism, Mike, regardless of your intent. God is much wiser than simply saying “do, do, do” to people: He addresses the corruption and deadness of our hearts, positively, and only secondarily says to His people (for example, in the epistles): Now that Christ has done this for you, live like… such and such.
It seems you’ve inherited more from right-wing “fundamentalist” Christianity, which depends on human traditions of “do, do, do” rather than on what Christ has done for His people. Surely you have at least a passing familiarity with the Biblical Gospel of grace? If so, why are you rejecting it and demanding of the Bible something far less and much worse: condemnations of all specific sins such as inhumane slavery, as if merely knowing about them will help us fulfill God’s standards?
(Cough, cough … clears throat …)
Subtle reactions over. While we all have problems not listening to what God has said, I must point this out: you’re reading the Bible selectively, like an atheist, as if the OT God was only smiting people and being “violent” while Jesus just glided about Israel, never saying anything hard (say, about how you must repent and stop excuse-making lest you suffer the same fate as terrorist attack victims!). But even some atheists recognize that in more passages than Romans 1 and Revelation is God clearly still in the mindset of punishing those who reject His ultimate good in favor of their own rebellion.
Your whole bit about opposing un-Biblical patriarchy is interesting, but it’s still a stretch and totally unnecessary to throw out God’s “Himself” references in order to argue against abusive family relationships. That’s another “logical” System inference that may be consistent with itself, but not with Scripture. Many people I know do quite fine in opposing abuse, and even opposing idolizing Traditional Family Values above God Himself, without calling into question God’s self-revelation about His nature. To say we need to call God “her” and other nonsense is not only to go overboard, but to sink the whole ship of His own revelation.
Sure, Christian scholarship and such will continue finding ways to apply what God has actually said to the social issues of our day, which do change and result in new challenges to our views. But God Himself does not change or contradict Himself.
The same Word that encourages forsaking family, if they are more important to us than God, also endorses husbands imitating Christ and wives imitating the Church: different roles, based on the
Gospel, but equal value before God. Changes in the heart will resolve problems of abuse, “patriarchy” and domination more than any application of Rules, Rules, Rules — which you keep wanting to find.
Incidentally, Jesus’ words in Mark 3 about how “whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother” follows because his mother, brothers and sisters were trying to see him at that moment, and He decided to make a point of it. His earthly “father” wasn’t there (some believe Joseph had died years ago). Context helps with this stuff. Also, His true Father was in Heaven, so why you think Him leaving out “father” is such a big point?
Again, this seems like 21st-century “revolutionary” attitude projection: Jesus wasn’t on Earth mainly to Overthrow Everyone’s Wrong Views. He didn’t get His jollies simply by being a big bad rebel. He was there to do His Father’s will (the same big bad OT God!) and to fulfill — not overthrow, abolish or impugn — the true Law of God (Matt. 5).
Becky has already dealt helpfully with that vexing but persistent myth that Jesus’ main beef with the Pharisees is that they were just too darn stringent with that whole Law (that God gave), and presumably they should just ignore that real Law and be nicer to people like Jesus was. I realize this is a simplification of the common view, but regardless of nuance, that’s plain mythological (among all stripes of professing and even actual Christians).
That’s from God’s Law and Jesus’ love, that is. And to that I would only add that in John 5, Jesus faults them for trying to go back to Rules, Rules, Rules (mostly their own made-up rules) rather than seeing that the OT Scriptures were all about Him personally (a persistent problem to this day).
It seems you’re again seeing Jesus with that projection of 24/7 “revolutionary,” which involves reading the Bible selectively to find only the “Jesus sticks it to The Man” parts and not so much the “Jesus reaffirmed and fulfilled the real Law” parts. This basis seems essential to that different language you’re speaking, and is a foreign, rules-based approach that sees the Bible as a repository of salvageable parts useful to treat Problems, rather than the specific revelation of what God is like, what He’s done, what He will do, and how we ought to seek Him for who He is and find satisfaction in Him, in all things.
Otherwise: what will happen if you get to His eternity and you’re still stuck in this find-parts-to-fix-problems mindset? No joy! No delight! You’ll be bored and useless, unable to act as a “savior” yourself! … But He wants the credit for saving us, not merely enabling us to Do Better. He will have all that glory. That is so frightening, humbling and yet awe-inspiring when you really think about it. I hope you will consider this.
That’s all for now. Again, happy new year. More to come, I am sure. I appreciate your reading this.
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Stephen, let me just add to the “God, He” or “god, she” issue, though I think for the most part it is a straw man, yet indicative of how we view the Bible—whether or not it is the authority that informs us who God is. Here’s what we know from Scripture:
1. God refers to Himself as Father (testimony of omniscience)
2. Jesus refers to God as Father (also testimony of omniscience)
3. John the baptist equated Jesus with a bridegroom.
4. Paul equates husbands with Christ and tells them to love their wives as Christ loves the church.
5. Paul equates God’s discipline with that of a father’s.
6. Paul draws parallels between Jesus and Adam (not Eve)
7. God incarnate came in the form of a man, not a woman
Anyone who sees God’s self-revelation and persists in calling Him “her” is tipping his hand. He does not consider God’s written revelation as binding, as an authoritative record from God.
Rather, such an individual is saying that he can talk about god however he wishes, in terms that express his own thinking about god, not what God says about Himself.
The point (is God masculine, feminine, both, neither) is insignificant in comparison to what it says about how a person views Scripture. God has His reasons for revealing Himself as Father, as a husband, as a bridegroom. In so doing He communicates His love and tenderness and how He cherishes us.
Sadly, someone who calls Him “her” is rejecting these roles of God.
Becky
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[…] it turned out, much of what he said is relevant to the recent discussions we’ve had here and here about […]
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