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Have you ever wondered if everyone but the Christian Church is damned to hell? The Reformation gave us back something quite valuable by reminding us that the Bible teaches no hierarchy amongst believers. While some are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors or teachers all are called to love and serve each other as brothers, in the face-to-face manner of Jesus, a great man yet who walked amongst men as friends and washed their smelly feet.
While it is clear that all followers of Jesus are called to mission, it is far from clear, from Jesus’ teaching, that only his followers would be saved. Let us set aside our black-and-white conception of the world divided into saved Christians and damned non-Christians and consider Jesus’ own words which, as will be plain, contained other categories. What emerges is an inclusive picture of people entering the Kingdom based not on religion or beliefs but on a multitude of other factors. Read the rest of this entry »
The more I read the Bible and the more I read (and learn from) Reformed Theologians, the more I realise I don’t fit in into the category of a Reformed Christian…
Reformed Christian
God, you are so Infinitely Holy that you cannot tolerate sin. All are sinners and are utterly unacceptable, Totally Depraved, and displeasing to you, Objects of Wrath. The right and holy and just thing to do is to Punish Sinners and your infinite nature requires you punish infinitely, damning all people to Hell. This alone is so glorious that we can only praise you for your Severe Justice, but you top that by going even further and Unconditionally Electing people from this group of hell-fodder for salvation. These you Unilaterally Regenerate and Justify completely apart from who they are or what they’ve done, giving them by Grace a Saving Faith which they could not produce. Because your Grace is not quite free, someone had to pay, so you sent Jesus to be the Substitution of Atonementwhich placates your Wrath. This Grace is not for everytone it’s called Limited Atonement and those elected for Life cannot resist your plan – it’s Irresistible Grace. You are now able to do what was not possible before and Ignore Sin, Counting Sinners as Righteous although they are not sinless. You detest any form of self-righteousness and want people to rely on your justification instead of trying to be good. When the time comes for all to be judged, you will count them as perfect (Imputation) because you will see only Christ’s obedience and look over their own disobedience. Those not elected by you for salvation will endure Eternal Conscious Torment in Hell whilst the elect will necessarily and deterministically Perservere as Saints to enjoy Paradise for ever. What counts is Doctrines Believed, the key to Good Religion is Justification by Faith, all authority grounded in Scripture.
Transformed Disciple
God you are so Infinitely Loving that you cannot allow sin to continue it’s damaging hold on your Human Creatures whom you made in your Image to Reflect your Glory into Creation. You sent your only Son as a fateful messenger who Fully Reveals God, the embodiment of who you are. You allowed him to be crucified as a Transformative Symbol of how you Condemn Sin and will destroy all evil and as an echo through history of how Man Rejected God. More than that, his blood was the Pledge a Promise to Forgive Our Sins. You want us to make Disciples of All Men so that all can know the Forgiveness Accessible to Any and All who would turn (Repent) and ask for it. You are not a respecter of status but deal with each Valuable Person according to how they live and treat others, not looking to their past failings but eagerly anticipating their future under your Reign. You graciously Pour out Your Spirit so that we can begin to be Conformed to the Image of Jesus and be freed from the power of sin. You then Proclaim our Right Standing in your sight, proof of our Adoption as Sons and Daughters, and of your Covenantal Faithfulnessto Israel. You promised to bless the world through Abraham’s Seed and your Church is not only the recipient of blessing but the Instrument of Blessing, as Christ’s body, by which your Justice, Peace and Love are multiplied and fulfilled in the World Today. You begin a Good Work in us as we Participate in your Plan which you will complete so that, at the final judgement, you will be able to truly say of us “well done, good and true servant, you worked well, fought the good fight and will inherit the Kingdom”. As Loving Creatoryour plan is not to destory the physical world but to Bury, Resurrect and Renew it so that your promises to Bless all Nations and Restore Creation will come to fulfillment and your appointed Lord, the Messiah, will bring your Rule On Earth as it is in Heaven. What counts is Faithful Allegiance, the key to Good Religion is Active Love for You and Your Creatures, all authority belongs to Jesus.
I go to a church in which the Bible is referred to as “the Word of God” and it’s inerrancy is upheld as the basis (or foundation) of our belief. Here, Christians are basically people who decided to trust the Bible and arguments on Doctrine or Practice can be solved by consulting and quoting of Scripture.
Many of my brothers and sisters know the Bible very well and can quote chapter and verse (of which I am envious) but I have several issues with this “high” view of Scripture which have brought me into some conflict in the past with some of the pillars that be. Read the rest of this entry »
I remember how visibly shocked an atheist friend of mine was when I told him that the core message of Christianity was NOT a moral one. Perhaps you are shocked and are sure that Christianity’s chief concern is our morality. Perhaps you are well past personal moral striving (self-righteousness) and into justification by faith but still sure that the whole point is our moral dilemma before God and that Jesus is the solution for our guilt as a result of our immorality. I hope to offer a glimmer of a much bigger plan which Jesus announced and is still being unveiled.
This is Part II of Substitutionary Atonement – How Can Jesus Pay for Our Sins?
The Rational Christian Model
Let us begin by analysing the ways in which resolution can be obtained after injustice. Our sense of justice demands a solution and we know that one cannot undo what has been done. However, two[1] paths are available so that justice is served and the conflict is resolved:
- Revenge: Punishment and Reparation followed by Forgetting
- Reconciliation: Repentance and Reparation followed by Forgiveness
The Problem
There are many things I understand about Christianity and a few (sometimes key) things I don’t. Atonement is one of the things I cannot make sense of. Why does Jesus’ death make it OK that I have sinned and will sin again? Can we really speak of justice when another person receives punishment for what I did?
For many people, this absurd notion is grounds for writing off Christianity as irrational, even inhumane. But despite this obvious problem, Christianity makes much more sense of life than any other explanation I have come across. I want a solution.
Read the rest of this entry »
Salvation by faith alone is the characteristic doctrine of Protestant theology and yet, in this form, a subtle imprecise and misleading formulation of Justification by faith alone. I would not even bother mentioning it if I didn’t think that, for most people, the misunderstanding is serious and detrimental to a healthy understanding of the Bible and of God. I also found that investigating the difference between salvation and justification has shed light on some theological problems and inconsistencies I have come across.
I propose to use Paul’s writings as a basis for better understanding how justification and salvation are related because Paul’s letters are the closest thing to a systematic theology I can find in the Bible, certainly regarding salvation. I see Paul’s task as looking back on Gospel events and expounding the theological and practical implications for the early church. I see our task as doing the same thing and working out a theology and practice for today’s church. We must become acquainted then, not only with what Paul said and meant, but the meanings it would have had to the audience at the time. This is no easy task but we run the risk of reading the Bible with post-enlightenment spectacles and misunderstanding much if we don’t. Read the rest of this entry »
Consider the following syllogism:
- If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist
- Objective moral values exist
- Therefore, God exists
Nietzsche was an influential atheist who realised and made explicit the first premise and even went as far as predicting the disappearance of all values as belief in God subsided and the powerful dominated. The modern atheist will not go this far but will affirm premise 1 with the proviso that subjective moral values will see us through – “who needs religion to be good?”. As effective as subjective morality may turn out to be, the argument is not answered – the atheist who agrees with the first premise must demonstrate that objective moral values do not exist in order to cast a doubt on God’s existence. I have not found that atheists can deny premise 2 and have noticed a common misunderstanding which I would like to highlight:
The absence of agreement on a moral standard is not evidence of the absence of such a standard.
The typical atheist argument is as follows: if we look at different cultures we see a great diversity in moral practices. In some cultures polygamy is prohibited, in others it is the norm. Similarly, homicide is actually permissible in all cultures under varying circumstances (from abortion to infanticide, revenge murders, right up to self-defence and wars). Therefore, the atheist concludes, morality is not universal and therefore not objective.
This, I would argue, is to misconstrue the second premise which is not “morality is uniformly practiced”. The theist, who believes in objective moral values, is quite aware that the absolute morality they believe in is not practiced universally, even within their own culture, even by themselves. But that is not the issue. The theist is not saying: “my standard is the standard” but “there is a standard”. Indeed, the Christian would add “…of which we all fall short”.
So how do we reason that such a standard exists? By looking at how people behave when the moral standard is violated. Assuming no objective moral values existed you would expect someone when falsely accused or hurt to respond “I did not like that, but that’s just my personal preference”. In fact, the person will respond more like we would expect if objective moral values did exist: “Hey! You can’t do that! That’s not fair! That was wrong!”. No hint of personal preference there or sign that the unjust action might be right in the perpetrator’s frame of reference or culture. We do not let terrorists off the hook because that sort of behaviour is acceptable, even praiseworthy, in their culture.
If we look at other cultures we see that this principle is indeed universal. When someone is wronged in any culture they will appeal to a standard which is higher than any particular person or cultural norm. It may be culturally acceptable for a rich man to rape a woman in certain cultures but the woman (and possibly also the man) will still know that it is really wrong despite its popularity and the status quo. In doing so they do not appeal to personal preference but to a general, universal and objective law. It is this appeal to an objective reference which we expect the other person to acknowledge which will, in practice, reveal how we really think about and expect morality to operate – that is objectively.
Finally, the atheist is not justified in assuming that for something to be objective it must be universally acknowledged. There are a great many people today who still believe the earth is flat. Unanimous assent may be the atheists measure of objectivity but it amounts to nothing more than consensus. Since, by the atheist’s view there is nothing higher than man to judge, consensus among men is taken as objective. But this is not what objectivity means – objective means true independent of observer or subject – “objective” basically means True in the absolute sense. It is nonsense to appeal to man as the measure of all things much less to all men in establishing objectivity.
Objectivity is something we can strive for but not obtain as we are all subjects and consensus among subjects is at most what we can call intersubjective verifiability. Whilst reality is an instance of the objective (existing whether we acknowledge it or not) objectivity among humans is illusory – no one can say “I am objective” for it would be a subject saying “I am not subjective” or “I am not a subject”. Reality is always objective, but our ideas about it are not – we are not objective.
We thus see that objective morality does exist even if we cannot exactly stipulate and practice it perfectly. We are aware of the standard hovering over our heads or “written on our hearts” yet unable to fully grasp it. Nevertheless we know that some things really are wrong no matter how many people think otherwise and indirectly affirm a law-giver who is unswayed by culture, natural selection and personal preference. The big question is: “What is the nature of that law-giver?”…
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The majority of wealthy modern people are practical atheists – living as though God did not exist – perhaps without actively considering why they do this. Here are some common reasons people give for being atheists or agnostics:
1. Because of science
Many people have some vague idea that Science has disproved and replaced God. Because we now understand the world we don’t need to invoke God to explain things. This assumes that God was in fact invented to explain the world and science has made Him redundant. History tells a different tale and the fall of religion with the progress of science has yet to materialise.
Christians believe that the universe is God’s creation in the same way a painting is the work of an artist. We marvel at the strokes and, with analysis, understand more about how it was done. However, even with a perfect understanding and lots of scratching around we won’t find the painter under the paint. We may learn something about the artist’s character and motive but He’s not part of the painting.
Science points to God in it’s most fundamental laws and it’s most complex processes – watch out for pseudo-science: the painting did not pop into existence for no reason and beautifully paint itself.
2. Because it appears intellectual and modern
We like to believe that new ideas are better ones and God belongs to old-school thinking. However new ideas are often published and broadcast because they are innovative not because they are good whilst old ideas survive because they’ve stood the test of time. New ideas come and go. The bright future promised by modern atheism’s Founding Fathers (e.g. Marx, Nietzche) has failed to materialise. People today are atheists not because of conviction but from indifference, distraction and confusion accelerated by mass media. Truth is not a democracy. Test the message.
3. Because everyone else is
Most practical atheists today are not bad folk and feel they are good enough to cover their bases in case God shows up. They assume God is congenial will accept at least 50% of his creatures into heaven and assure themselves (with sideways glances) that they’re doing OK – “At least I’m not like them!”. This whiter-than-thou thinking is sheep mentality which is comfortable but dangerous as they enjoy the social infrastructure laid down by believers oblivious to it’s erosion.
4. Because it’s liberating
It appears that atheism liberates in denying ultimate authority because that liberates humans to self rule. Is that a good thing? How are we doing at that? And who should rule – does might make right? Which ideas about society should be implemented (enforced) as policy? Atheism tends to breeds anarchy or despotism – twin evils in which some human or group of humans enslave the rest.
5. Because religion is …
Bad? Unnecessary? Boring? Incoherent? Violent? Oppresive? Repulsive? Well, so are many forms of atheism but this sort of argument is irrelevant because religion is not the issue. You can be a religious atheist or a child of God who shuns religion (like Jesus) – the issue is ultimately how you relate to your Creator by whom and for whom you were made because this relationship shapes your life here and your eternity.
6. Because it’s the default position
It’s debatable whether people are by nature atheists or theists. The fact that all societies recognise a god seems to point to the latter. Nevertheless, we need not remain atheists if we were born that way just as we grow from ignorance to understanding and progress from milk to solids. Our modern lifestyle feeds, distracts and desensitises us to our basic need for purpose and relation to our heavenly Father yet we must break these chains.
7. Because God is…
Bad? A bully? Unjust? Improbable? The God you don’t believe in you haven’t met yet. God is the perfect loving being knows you and who wants to spend eternity with you – He would and did die to catch your attention and give you a chance at accepting His offer. Forget the cliches and the presentations you have seen – seek Him alone and personally!
