Get Yourself Some Wisdom

 Proverbs 4:5-8

"Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her."(KJV)

Looking back at our past we have gone through some very lean times. While I had the added complication of my chronic illness being unmanaged there are things I could have done better had I known how serious the future was going to get. Some choices were physically impossible at the time like gardening, canning and any outdoor manual labor. By the time we realized we were in a personal crisis event there was not much we could do about it. 

While we cannot change the past we can learn from it. Wisdom is found in our family history, national history and the Bible. But history is boring! If you really only know history from a school textbook it does seem that way. But the kind of history I am talking about are things like mothers and families in historical stories and fiction. What did they do when their crisis hit? How did they adapt to the new normal? Some of those accounts tell of a normal standard of living far below anything any of us have experienced. You can  learn a lot from material designed to entertain because history is about the people who lived it not dry facts unconnected to real life. 

I've found practical wisdom for hard times in the Little House books, short stories of Michigan pioneers and other similar fiction from various times in American history. My current favorite is the Foxfire series which is a compilation of interviews, tales and demonstrations of Appalachian life as told by the elderly in the 1960's. 

Since neither my husband or I had much access to our family history once we were old enough to appreciate it we seek it out from other sources. Most of our grandparents passed while we were young or just adult enough to realize we should start asking them about their past. So if you have access to elders who like to talk and tell stories, sit down and ask them about their childhood, what they did as newlyweds, how they got through. 

Scriptures That Refute Election/Predestination

I thought I would collect Scripture that stands in full contradiction to the notion of election. I will only use contextual material. Scripture is the final authority. I plan on adding scripture as I find more of it. 

Whosoever regarding belief, gospel, salvation, etc.

Matthew- 7:24, 10:32, 12:50

Mark- 8:34

Luke- 12:8, 14:27

John- 3:15-16, 4:14, 11:26, 12:46

Acts- 2:21, 10:43

Romans- 9:33, 10:11, 10:13

Galatians 5:4

1 John- 3:6, 3:9, 4:15, 5:1,

Final Count= 20 verses that say anyone can become saved

Contradiction #1: According to election only some people can respond to the gospel, believe or have faith. But here 20 contextual verses say anyone can. This isn't even counting the verses that use the terms "any man" and "whoever" such as this one “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” Revelation 3:20

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The sins of the world

“And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 2:2

“The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” John 1:29

“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” John 3:17

“But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” Hebrews 2:9

Contradiction #2: According to limited atonement Jesus only died for the sins of the elect. Here are 3 verses that say He died for the sins of the world. 

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God wants all men to believe

“And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.” John 6:40

“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9

(John 3:17 fits here as well)

Contradiction #3: God wants all men to believe on Jesus and not perish. According to election God only desires to save the elect and only the elect can believe.

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John 3:16 fits all three contradictions. Because God loved the world so much He sent Jesus so that anyone who believes may have eternal life.

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Humans can choose God's ways or reject them

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” Matthew 23:37(also Luke 13:34)

“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15

"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Isaiah 1:18:

"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." Deuteronomy 30:19

"Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh." Proverbs 1:24-26

(All the verses that say “whosoever, whoever and any man” believes is then saved also fall under this category. God calls people to the gospel using terms that say & mean that anyone can respond.)

Contradiction #4: According to election sinners have lost the capacity to choose God and his ways. So no one can be saved without God turning on the light bulb of faith for them. Yet scripture is full of God asking people to choose his ways. A choice which is utterly impossible according to utter depravity.

The Father is Not an Abuser

A deity who is cruel and double tongued tends to chase people away instead of drawing them towards the light. I've run into those people. Many grew up in churches that taught that God refuses salvation to most, meddles in their lives causing all the pains, heartbreaks and sufferings while at the same time proclaiming that he is perfect love and justice. They could not stomach the contradictions and so either ran into the arms of atheism or created a quasi-Christianity that removed the problems but also removed the deity of Jesus and the divine authorship of the bible.

As the daughter of an abuser let me unveil some of the subtleties of abusive behavior that others do not know about. An abuser has a wooing side and a harmful side. With their lips they proclaim their love for you, they tear up at the thought of you not understanding that. In order to keep you they give gifts, pay attention to you and make you feel like they have changed. But their true nature and behaviors belie all of that outward show. Once they feel comfortable that they have retained you as a pawn their true nature comes forth. They are cold, cruel, capricious and blame you for everything that goes wrong. Is it any wonder then that people who have personally known abusers question and deny these heresies about God's character and behavior? When you have known the face of evil you can spot an abuser or abusive behavior clearly. You don't fall for the cover story, the contradictions, because you've seen them all before. So when a theology tries to tell you that God behaves just like an abusive person you cry foul at the very notion that the perfection of the universe could be so slandered.

Jesus Blood: the beginning, maintenance and end of everything

In Hebrews 9 and 10 we are walked through Jesus act as our high priest. Not only was He the Lamb sacrifice, He is the priest which applies the blood to our sins.

An interesting side note is that the lamb offering was for intentional sin. It was the scapegoat which was for the accidental sins of the people. So do not believe anyone who tries to tell you that Jesus blood only covers your accidental sins. A lamb was not killed for unintentional acts. 

So beginning in Hebrews 9 we see that the earthly tabernacle and all the instruments inside were copies of what actually exists in heaven. In verse 11 it begins explaining Christ's work as high priest. Verse 12 says that Jesus entered one time into the holiest having obtained eternal redemption for us. If animal blood cleans up the flesh how much more powerful is the blood of God. This purchase and cleansing also functions to purge our conscience from dead works so we can serve the living God. We no longer have to run around trying to work ourselves into God's favor and acceptance.(v 13-14) Then is goes on to explain the testament which we see is another word for covenant. This is the second covenant.(v 15-22)

We are then told that Christ did not enter into a place made by human hands but into heaven itself to appear before God in our place. He is not going to offer himself often like the human priests did. If He were to do it often it would mean continual suffering for Him. Now He had appeared to put away sin with His sacrifice.(v 24-26)

Now in chapter 10 we continue on in the comparison between the temple patterns and what Jesus did in heaven. Verse 4 says it is not possible for the blood of animals to take away sins. Animal blood can only temporarily cover it up. Jesus then goes on to say that God really isn't pleased by animal sacrificed and burnt offerings. “I have come to do They will O God.”(v 7-9) I have come to take away the first and establish the second. The first covenant and its method for covering sin and give us a new covenant with a different way of dealing with sin.

And then a powerful statement in verse 10. By His offering His own body we are sanctified(made holy, set apart) “once for all”. One time for all who will receive it.

Jesus once He performed His one time duty as high priest sat down at God's right hand. “One sacrifice for sins forever”. Let that sink in. One sacrifice, offered one time dealt with all your sins forever. There is no other way to look at this without denying the basic aspects of what these 2 chapters say. By this offering He perfected those who are sanctified.(v 14)
The Holy Spirit writes God's laws, His morality, into our hearts and minds.(v 16)
No for another powerful freedom statement from God the Father. “and their sins and iniquities I will remember no more.” No more. Because of Jesus sacrifice God will not remember our sins. All of our sins not just the before Jesus ones, or the ones we say we are sorry for, or the ones we promise not to do again. All of them. If not them we will die with some sins on our account and we will burn for eternity.
Where there is remission, aka forgiveness, of sin there is no more offering for sin. Once you are forgiven you do not need more sacrifices. It was already done.(v 18)

This is what gives us the boldness to be able to enter the holiest of holies ourselves. We can drawn near to God fully confident in our faith because we are sprinkled with the blood and cleansed with water(I assuming baptism here)

Once we are in heaven and are judged the only thing God can judge us on are our good works. He cannot remember our sins and judge them. He judged Jesus when He bore our sins on the cross.(v 22)

Jumping down to verses 26 & 27 we see a much abused or misunderstood statement. Taken alone it does seem strong, maybe even harsh. But when read with what came before the meaning drastically changes from how many were taught it. Tradition says that if we intentionally sin there is nothing for us but expectation of condemnation or damnation. A hopeless, scary concept. Let us redeem those verses from out of context interpretations and put it back into context.
We have already been told that there are no more sacrifices. That Jesus made a single and final one for all sin. If we do not understand that entire concept of Jesus' one offering for all sin we will stand in fear expecting judgment and wrath from God. When we disregard His sacrifice as equal to the animals or even of less effect we risk treading Jesus underfoot because we count His sanctifying blood as a common, unholy thing.(v 29) How much fear has been sown in hearts by teachers taking a verse or two out of their place and giving them meaning apart from the Word? The real risk is not sinning intentionally but of disregarding the power and fullness of the one time for all blood offering of Jesus. He who is both our Lamb and our High Priest at the same time. Here is where we tie the threads back up to the previous side note about what kind of sin the lamb was used for. The apostle John declared Jesus to be the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world. He did not name Him the scapegoat.

This sets people free from destructive sin habits that they struggled to get free from. I know because I've experienced it and saw it set others free as well.

God's Default Setting

This is extremely vital to understand. 
God does not function from a position of hate and anger. By anger here I am intending the type of anger that we humans feel in our sin or that we have experienced coming from others, not theological anger. God's default position is one of love. Love can stand in perfect harmony and balance with justice as well as holiness. God's love is not contaminated or warped by sin. We tend to associate the meanings of words with our experience or how the culture around us uses the term.

I think of the term spiritualized. My spell check does not recognize this as a real word. Maybe it isn't but it perfectly denotes the error Christians have fallen into throughout time. They take a real concrete idea in scripture and strip it of all it's gritty, rawness and visualizing it only in other worldly, spirit realm terms. A something without substance and outside of ordinary human experience. Kind of like the old myth that Jesus' birth was not a normal human birth but that he slid from Mary's body on a ray of light. I guess the very thought of a messy, exhausting, sweaty human birth was just too real and human for some people. They couldn't associate a spiritual and holy God with earthly messiness. Many terms surrounding God get spiritualized in one way or another or by some theologies. We think of love and we worry that it is going to get mixed up and confused for the unregenerate lust or cultural views that love everyone's sins. But we can use the words for what they truly mean. God made words, words have meaning and those meanings can be powerful or dilute depending on whether we fear misunderstandings or not.

On the other hand I see anger sometimes defined in ultra human terms. God has anger. But it isn't human anger, unhinged, explosive, petty, raging, tantrum like. It is a thoroughly righteous, slow burn, sharply directed and 100% oriented to justice. The wrath of a gardener whose beautiful and carefully cultivated production has been run over with a mower and filled with septic sludge. It is the flaming heart of a supremely faithful spouse who has caught their beloved in bed with another. It is the rage of a father whose children have been diagnosed with cancer. Sadly the flesh defines God's anger as the rather human kind. A pissed off king, drunk with power, tantruming that nobody is obeying him, wildly raging and out of control. Praise God the flesh doesn't get its way with this one.

God is a braided cord of love, holiness and justice, to name a few. No one strand is more than another. They all blend and balance in perfect harmony. Yet without love there would be no cross. For God love the world in this way.... God did not hate the world so he sent his only son, he loved it. Sin gave a type of destructive spiritual and physical cancer to all of the original perfect creation. This cancer has bred into every cell of our current world, human and nature alike. God hates this cancer with his whole being. If God didn't love he would just hit the delete, erase button and start over. Justice would be satisfied and so would holiness. But love bring something different to the system. It takes into account the birth defect and infection of creation and seeks to free it from the toxin. Justice needs met so God gives of himself out of love to meet that debt. Holiness must not be marred so God gives his to all believers out of love. He suffers long, waiting until the correct moment to eradicate the sin-cancer and redeem the universe from corruption. Without love there is nothing.

God is at war with sin. Because we were born into the wrong camp we are his enemies but enemies that he sweated, bled, was beaten, thirsted and suffocated for. This is love. God hates sin so much that he sweated in terror of the coming physical events and did it any way. The joy of the cross was not some detachment from experience but the knowledge of what would happened afterward. God hates sin but died of love for sinners. Even at the end when he judges those who refused him it is only after trying everything to woo them from their punishment. God hates sin like we hate cancer. We humans don't hate the cancer patient, we hate the corrupt cells destroying their body.

Why is this so important? Because it changes a lot. If God hates people, then we can too. If God gives up on certain folks as too far gone and tosses them into the fire bin to burn then we can too. It is harder to love them like Jesus, seeing beyond the flesh and into the eternal soul. It is fallen human nature to hate that which causes us or our loved ones pain. It takes no supernatural intervention to hate our enemies. It does take an act of God to see our enemies as people Jesus suffered to death for.

Hated To the Cross?

The idea of God hating some people pleases the flesh. Because we are to emulate God with our lives it provides the easier path. It is not difficult to hate the most evil, vile and rejected of humanity. It is quite easy to hate our enemy. In human reasoning some people are worthy of being hated for eternity because of what they have done.

However if God loves every person who ever lived, then we have a difficult path ahead of us. If God loves everyone enough to be stripped, beaten, and to die of blood loss and suffocation for them, we too must love them this way as well. Their sins do not determine their loveliness. Their own goodness does not merit our love. It is the example of the Father & Jesus that determines their worth. In this viewpoint every single person no matter how evil, debase, or nasty is just someone whom Jesus died for. Everyone has intrinsic value because of being made in the image of God and because Jesus died for them.

A sinner is just someone who is dying of that cancer called sin. Their evil is just the outward manifestation of that cancer. A cancer we all had before coming to Christ. We are to love them with mercy, compassion and gospel love. This does not eradicate justice and the proper consequences that true justice requires. Justice is not the opposite of love and mercy. They are co-operators in God's spiritual economy. Love and mercy without justice is syrupy sweetness that gives a free pass to wrongs done. But justice without love or mercy is revenge and hate, a gleeful handing down of just desserts so they get what is coming to them.

Loving like God means seeing every sinner as a cancer patient who has yet to submit to an operation by the supreme cancer doctor, Jesus. This is how we forgive the worst that is done to us. This is how we let go of revenge and let God be our justice. If God hates then we can too and so our special tormentors get our hate instead of our forgiveness, love, and compassion. We cannot heap coals of fire upon their heads if we hate them. We can only do that by loving them enough to surrender them to God, praying for them and desiring them to come to redemption. By doing good to them and for them, our making peace with them in our hearts becomes our “revenge”. This is backwards to human feelings but exactly correct in God's way of doing things. If we are allowed to hate we do not give them the same grace we were given. Instead we become judge, jury and executioner, even if only in our our hearts and minds. Forgive them as your heavenly Father forgave you. While we were yet the enemies of God, Christ died of blood loss and suffocation for us. If anyone misunderstands this they should watch(or re-watch) The Passion of the Christ movie. That movie strips away our jelly bean, chocolate bunny notions of what Jesus went through at the cross and brings it into our hearts and minds with stark clarity. Jesus did not float through that day on a cloud of spirituality. He suffered every second of it for the world. For God so loved the WORLD that He sent His only begotten Son. Jesus suffered for the most vile human that ever lived and for us too. If He did it so must we. No one was ever hated to the foot of the cross.

Grumpy God

At some point in time along the way branches of Christianity adopted the ticked off, pissed, ranting God of anger. Of course the “correct” terminology is wrathful, angry, holy justice. But how the lost world sees it, how wounded believers see it, how children and teens see it is rather the former unpleasant words than the theologically correct version. Word have power not just meaning. In spiritual terms things are deeper than just the dictionary. What words we use have a rippling impact that goes beyond first glance or casual usage. So if we promote God as angry, especially when we hint that this anger is the hate people filled variety we send a very specific message.

This message is one that reminds people of the lightning bolt throwing deities of mythology, in other words idols. It reminds them of a carnal earthy father whose rage-anger tore through the house and screamed in their face for minor childish or adolescent behavior. It bring to mind the boss who has been assigned anger management classes. It holds nothing holy, doesn't look like justice or contains anything like the fruits of the Spirit. And it isn't their fault or their carnality that causes them to think this. It is the very words we use. Words have power.

Without correct scriptural context an angry God is someone to run away from because he hates you and wants nothing more than to hurt and torture you. He doesn't look like Jesus. I and my Father are one. God contains no shadow of turning or changing. God is Jesus and the Spirit. He is 2 Corinthians 13. He is the fruit of the Spirit. He is the one who bled from so many wound he was unrecognizable. He is the one who suffocated to death because he loved sinners that much. I don't think many people grasp the enormity of what Jesus did when he took on the sins of the world. He wore that filth, filth so deep and dark that the Father temporarily turned away from him. For that moment Jesus had the same connection to God that every lost person does and he died that way.

God so loved... The favorites? The morally pure? The experts on the Laws of Moses?

God so loved THE WORLD. Yes God is angry and has enemies but at look at the life of Jesus shows where that anger is directed, at whom that anger is directed. The ordinary lost person, the weak unlearned seeker, the faithful, the doubter and the one who misunderstands were NOT among those who received his ire. He didn't whip the loser from the temple. He gave his anger to the religious pros who were bilking honest folk out of their coins. Those who turned the house of prayer into a scam store.

You see this is the difference between the theologically angry God who hates most everyone and true scriptural righteous anger. One view turns God into someone who hates all the same people I do and the other turns me into someone who loves her enemy. One type of angry aims at the sinner because of the damage they cause. The other type is angry at the person because they were born into the slavery of satan. One hates the poison of sin because of the damage it does. The other hates people for simply existing having inherited their father Adam's defects.