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.

Hath God Said?

So who hath said election, and its twin, utter depravity are factual? The answer comes that scripture says it, thus God says it. Yet when applied to other passages in their context, utter depravity and election stand in contradiction to them. So did God really say it or has man plucked, proofed and created it himself? I am familiar with the commonly cited verses that are used in support of the twin ideas. However the way they are interpreted stands in stark contrast to other plain and contextually interpreted verses. So which comes first the plain and clearly seen or the ideas in need of explanations?

By plain and clearly seen I mean a verse or statement that needs no explanation. The words themselves are universally understood to mean certain things. If I were to say “the sky is blue” everyone who speaks my language knows that I am referring to the color of the atmosphere as seen from the ground. The only people needing an explanation would be a blind person or someone who does not know my language. Most people accept as plain and clear the verse Romans 3:23. There is no room for a different way of looking at it. Everyone has sinned and fallen short of God's glory.

One passage that is very plain is John 3:14-18. The problem for election and utter depravity here reside in the words “whosoever” and “world”. Whosoever is not ambiguous. There is no other usage of it. World is not as obvious, yet going by how the word is used in the rest of the new testament it leaves us with only two meanings. One meaning is the planet earth and the other means people who are not in God's kingdom. If election means “a group chosen beforehand, not all humanity” but Jesus said “who ever” and “world” which viewpoint is correct? It cannot be both. Salvation is either open to all or only the elect. Jesus either was sent for all or only some. They stand in opposition to each other for how can Jesus be only for the elect and the whole world at the same time. Clever explanations have been crafted trying to “fix” the contradiction. But one should not have to reinterpret a plainly worded passage. It says what it says and means what it says. Other verses exist that offer the gospel promises to any man, whosoever, whom ever and any/all. Yet supposedly the gospel is only for a limited group who have no choice but to accept it. That idea right there is a whole different argument in itself.

But what about the verses and passages that use the word elect, chosen, given and so forth? We need to look at them in harmony with the plain and clear passages. If the interpretation contradicts the plain and clear verses we are in error. A verse taken out by itself can seem to be saying or implying one thing but placed back into context or alongside other clear verses it obviously means something else. Two opposites cannot be true at the same time. Wet is wet, it is not both wet and dry at the same instant.

Now I know this will not convince everyone but it should bring a pause and double check. Utter depravity declares man incapable of choosing God's ways because sin has broken him too much. Yet in scripture the first choice was offered to Adam and Eve. Humanity and then the children of Israel were constantly called to obey God and flee idolatry. Throughout scripture humanity is called to follow God and his ways. Choosing God is a central theme in the bible. This is utter nonsense if we have no ability to choose. It would be like commanding a fish to live on land and breathe air. God is never nonsensical.

Election Doctrine Holds a Horrific Flaw

I've been studying Calvinism for 30 years. Ever since it was introduced to me when I was about 14. Until this week I had never read a book about it either for or against. I have read a few articles on both side of the issue. I have also talked/debated people online. So I know the average stance of those claiming Calvinism. I hold no animosity towards the people who hold on to it. We are all just trying to follow the purest form of the gospel we know how. I wrote the following post during the month we had no internet access as the topic had been brought back into my world. So while I am putting this up today, it was written in early May.

As I understand it the doctrine of election says instead of people choosing salvation God himself chose who would be saved before the world was even created. This also ties into another doctrine called utter depravity. This says that something is broken inside of an unsaved person and they are spiritually unable to choose God and turn to Him. With utter depravity one must have election in order for some people to be able to be saved.

In the most simplified terms, the idea of election says that the larger portion of humanity has been elected to hell. While God was choosing the elect for heaven he was also actively and intentionally choosing the non-elect for damnation. Before the world began God chose them for fire and torment. According to the teaching of election, God's desire is that the larger portion of humanity burn for eternity instead of being allowed to be redeemed. The ONLY thing standing between them and salvation is his will. There is no way to wiggle out of it. When you strip Election down to its core elements that is EXACTLY what it says. God chose some people to suffer torment for eternity because He did not want to save them.

How is this acceptable? How has this horrible thing even gained traction in the Christian's mind? God intentionally denying people redemption for no explainable reason. The normal arguments of deserving hell fire because of sin do not apply here. Supposedly they are going to hell because of their sin. But when you look at it down it its most basic form WHY are they really going to hell? Election says that God did not choose them so they cannot be saved. They are not going to suffer for eternity because of what they did but because of what God refused to do for them.

In a strange twist of theology which says that sinners, who are nothing but what God made them to be, are to suffer eternally for being unable to access the blood of Christ. Looking at it this way the damned are being punished for following God's will perfectly. He willed that they not come to Christ and so they must undergo eternal punishment for being in their sins.
It is the same as if a mother made the rule that if a child is not washed and cleaned by bedtime they must be spanked before they go to sleep. Then the mother also refuses to allow the children access to the bathroom in order to clean themselves. The result is that she spanks them every night before bed. If this were to happen in real life her children would be take away because of child abuse and she would go to jail. Yet we argue about and loudly proclaim that our perfect heavenly Father does far worse with humanity. God justly demands a payment for sin. He also gave Jesus as a substitute for our sin. Yet election says that only some people can come and be cleansed from their sin, all others must burn forever simply because they were not chosen. God has denied them their bath.

Just because you have a list of verses that use the word elect, election or imply the sentiment does not mean it is a correct idea. The core concept is 100 against what we are shown in scripture of God's spiritual legal system, His perfect, flawless character and even the demands and wording of the gospel itself. No matter how hard or loudly you argue you cannot make the sky green and the grass blue. God is not a child abuser. He has not closed to the door to the blood of Christ denying millions their chance at escaping hellfire.

P.S- I have no problem with people going to hell if it is their own choice to reject Christ and die unwashed in their sins. That is justice and holiness. Hopefully all can see my issue is with the notion that God refuses to save some people by not electing them.