Making our message popular . .

Even if it's at the expense of Scripture, Tradition and reason!

People tell me how such a stance appears to be very much in vogue now and I'd have to answer that it was ever so (for indeed there truly is !nothing new under the sun).

having been listening to some of the popular personalities in the post-evangelical and emerging church world I have to say that as much as I enjoy reading many of them, the message they bring is peddling a brand of universalist faith which doesn't quite match up to, or perhaps even warrant the name of, Christianity!

I have always struggled with the word of Hebrews 9: 27 -28 for many years because it appears that we get one go on the ride that is life and then have to face the judgement, but lets look at what is written (ESV):

'And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.'

I don't see anything about secondary probation (which  [oversimply] is where you die, get 'woken up' and asked if you'd like to change your mind, and then go back in the freezer until the judgement - a sort of postmortem evangelical opportunity).

I don't see anything that reconstitutes aeons such that the end of the world comes with the fall of the Temple; neither do I see Jesus coming and changing God's mind (for previously being a Jew and circumcised [as a man] was what brought you into some sort of relationship with God but Jesus changes God's mind) so ALL are acceptable!

I don't see credibility in the argument that a twenty-year old who rejects the Gospel and chooses to act contrary to it and dies because of it must be accepted into heaven because this is what a god of love would do! I say this because the God I have come to understand is also a God who keeps the rules; He doesn't bend or corrupt the rules because He likes someone - for He loves us all but  . . .  have a think on this . .  .

If you were driving down a road which had a thirty miles per hour speed limit and were caught by a member of the local constabulary doing sixty, would you expect to be prosecuted?

I would have to suggest that you would.

Now, if the police officer who stopped you was a member of your family, would you expect to be let off even though this would mean that both of you were now breaking the law? Perhaps you'd justify it by saying that no one got hurt?

Take it up a notch: You're speeding and this causes a death, would you still expect to get off because of the family connection?

Now imagine you live down the road where the people are doing the speeding, would your views about being caught and let off be different? You hear of the driver who has killed and vanished - what do you want? I'll warrant that you want them found and dealt with by the law!

Remembering that you don't know that in either of the situations there has been part of a cover up by a family member who is also an officer - But when you find out will you want them both arrested? (silly question - of course you do!!)

This is the dilemma before a loving God, for to not apply the rules would be to make Him act against that which was in place (called 'God's laws) and would render Him and the focus of the act wrong and if this was to be, then God wouldn't be (logically or theologically). To 'let them off' or 'turn a blind eye' is to be as guilty as the person who broke the law and in the latter case would make them an accessory to a murder (or manslaughter at the very least)!

God can do one thing and that is be inside the law (even though you'd think He might be above it being God!).

SO

I am becoming rather tired with those who seek to create a popular faith where what is required is a consistent faith.

I struggle with those who want us to have a faith which congratulates and applauds us for our choices, regardless of whether they are right or wrong (using the 'old Christianity'), ignoring the outcome and attitudes relating to them.

I am afraid that Christianity does ask us to make choices and to act differently from that which our own hearts and desires might lead us towards. It does ask us to make a commitment and to live, think and act differently from the world (which is generally full of nice people who want to do their own stuff and please themselves).

We need to realise that our efforts to create communities which accept anything and everything regardless of whether or not God might consider it to be wrong is to encourage people to act wrongly; to tell them heaven is theirs, regardless of what they think, do or believe is to take people and, like the false prophets of old, make them 'twice as fit for hell as they are themselves!'

Yep - tough words, but without them there are no moral absolutes, not correctives and no rules to live by and that is my idea of hell (on earth and later).

Pax

Annihilation - Love that ends?

I cannot move away from concept of eternal punishment and this punishment being separation. I understand the position of the universalists (more about them later) who have a Father Christmas like character who permits all to enter because they can’t bear the thought of a God who deals justly with His creation and who extrapolate this to enjoy the accommodation of a God who, if there must be some sort of punishment, gives the sinner 250mls of Euthatol and drops them in the bin (“Don’t worry madam, we gave Tiddles a dignified send-off!”).

I’m sorry people, but it seems that hell, Gehenna - the rubbish tip where the filth and the fires never cease to be, is pretty much something that is in the script. Not as some form of evening the scores or ‘getting pay back’ (as one really dodgy Christian put it), but because that’s what justice is about. Now, I hear some cry, what about grace?

Well grace exists and is there from the moment of cognisance to the moment just before the very last breath (looks like I don’t do predestination either, doesn’t it?) it is there before us. Jesus dies on a cross and sin, losing its power because death no longer works, is defeated – step right up and take a ticket, free and gratis won for you and yours by faith and through grace! If not you don’t just get what you deserve to have (which could still be considered cruel and wicked) but you get what you have made the conscious decision to have. So many people tell me that they have chosen not to ‘do the Christian thing’ but when the final bit comes I bet they wish they hadn’t (and I exclude secondary probabtion too, so there’s no hope once you’ve pegged it) when they get everything they said they wanted! Being zapped would be preferable to living separate, wouldn’t it?

So we have separation and punishment, which I see conveniently coalesce, and one further element which is the hope the annihilationists pin their hopes on, destruction. If hell is about justice and retribution rather than vengeance and revenge then the destruction that I read of from Paul is destruction of the God bit within us – the soul rather than the flesh bit and so this would cause annihilationists to have fallen short. But they continue because they can’t comprehend a God of love being a God of justice, perhaps those who vote for annihilationism should join the many other ersatz faiths that engage in such thinking and become universalist too?

Of course we can explain away eternal punishment by looking at the word ‘eternal’ and defining it as ‘in a future time’ which means that judgment is not for now but for some other time. The implication being that the punishment is not forever which satisfies the now and the imprecatory nature of things when it is assumed that this is what you get and getting to the end without being dealt with signifies victory. If I am to believe a lecture on this from way back, aionios could be used in this manner with pretty persuasive (and perhaps accommodating) results but it doesn’t remove the ‘eterna;’ element from everything else, does it, and if it doesn’t then why should the accommodation exist other than to support temporal (and temporary) caveats? A single act of judgment, punishment and then an eternity of continued presence or being as if you never were – all sounds a bit limp on one side and triumphal on the other, not balanced at all.

I have to apologise, but the quickly scribbled thinking from the top of my bonce and the depths of my heart coupled with the thin theological understanding I possess lead me to a place where I cannot see past what I believe in to a position where we make God frilly and sweet by avoiding giving the people what they want – life serving themselves and eternity separated from Him!

You pays your money and makes your choice – don’t say no one told you ;)

Pax