Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: procsy@cbnewsd.att.com (Jeff Sargent) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Self-Serving Beliefs Message-ID: Date: 9 Feb 90 07:18:17 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 109 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article bnr-vpa!bnr-fos!bmers58!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) writes: > It is my duty before God to test each and every statement made by others > as well as each and every one of my own thoughts by what God has said > within the Scriptures. All the Scriptures, not just the displeasing, judgmental ones. I fully agree, actually, that God does not want people to sin. But I disagree with the idea, which most of Mielke's writings seem to communicate (I'd gladly have this corrected if it's a misimpression), that this is because He is a perfectionistic, judgmental, authoritarian, dictatorial, unloveable potentate. On the contrary, He Himself stated that He came that people might have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10) -- and sin destroys life, in every sense of that word; so, because it destroys that which God wants to give, it is not what God wants for us. Eternal life is much, much more than eternal fire insurance. It is, as its name says, *life* -- an aliveness, an alertness, an overflow of love and joy that cannot help but be attractive to the oppressed and unhappy ("My yoke is easy and My burden is light", "Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life", and similar passages). Why do you think so many thousands were converted in the early days, as recorded in Acts? The chief reason surely was that they recognized that God loved them and wanted to give them *life* despite everything they had done, up to and including calling for the death of Jesus Himself. For that matter, even the Old Testament has clear indications of God's love sprinkled throughout -- one of them being the famous "watchman" passage in Ezekiel 33; clearly a call to repentance arises from the love and compassion of the Caller for the called, as seen in verses 10 and 11: "Son of man, say to the house of Israel, 'This is what you are saying: "Our offenses and sins weigh us down, and we are wasting away because of them. How then can we live?"' Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, *I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and *live*.* [my emphasis -- jjs] Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'" > The only source of truth is the Bible itself. Perhaps; but what of Jesus's statement in John 16:12-13, "I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth." Did this promise apply only to His immediate audience -- i.e., the 11 apostles? No; Paul writes in Galatians 1:12 of his own knowledge of the Gospel, "I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ." So did Jesus's promise of the Spirit's guiding us into all truth cease at the end of the New Testament era? I fail to see why God would deliberately take away a gift of such great benefit, and I don't believe He has ceased providing us with truth directly, not just through the Bible. > This is why I endeavour to include Scriptural support > whenever I make statements pertaining to God. On the other hand (continuing my thought above), I don't believe any more than Dave Mielke does that the Spirit will come up with something that contradicts the Bible -- but God is an expert at coming up with stuff that contradicts people's interpretations of the Bible, as recorded all over the Gospels. Use and quote the Scriptures, certainly; they never cease to have edifying stuff in them, no matter how often you read them; but also pray that you may see through them what God intended you to see, not what you expect to see and thus perhaps read back into them. > Galatians 1:10...says "For do I > now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet > pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.". Consider the context of this verse. The immediately preceding verses, and much of that epistle, indicate that the people Paul was chiefly referring to were the Judaizers; he properly considered them utterly in the wrong, and he didn't let it faze him one whit that they opposed him bitterly. But in another context (I Corinthians 10:32-33), he writes, "Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks, or the church of God -- even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.", and similarly his famous "I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some." (I Corinthians 9:22), followed by the curious 9:23, "I do all this for the sake of the gospel, *that I might share in its blessings*." [my emphasis -- jjs] Anyway, the point is that the grim, forbidding picture of God which one may so easily infer from the writings of Dave Mielke and many others hardly agrees with the picture of a God who is "gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love...good to all...has compassion on all he has made" (Psalm 145:8-9), who "heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds" (Psalm 147:3), who "is good -- His love endures forever" (Psalm 136:1), who "raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap" (Psalm 113:7), whose "love" is "great...higher than the heavens" and whose "faithfulness reaches to the skies" (Psalm 108:4), "who daily bears our burdens...who saves" (Psalm 68:19-20), of whom David would ask "that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the *beauty* of the LORD" (Psalm 27:4, my emphasis [jjs]), who says "Open wide your mouth and I will fill it" (Psalm 81:10) -- and while my quick scan of just that one book (Psalms) admittedly also found many verses, some in these same psalms, which speak of the wicked getting their just deserts, one gets the impression that God would much rather even the most wicked repent rather than be destroyed, or He'd blow them away quickly rather than giving them plenty of time in which, maybe, some of them might see what they've been doing and turn their lives around and find the blessings and love of God. In sum, life with God ought to be one of rejoicing (as indeed it is, all over both Testaments), not an existence afraid that God will be, like Queen Victoria, "not amused" at something we do. -- -- Jeff Sargent att!ihlpb!jeffjs (UUCP), jeffjs@ihlpb.att.com (Internet) AT&T Bell Laboratories, IH 5A-433, Naperville, IL (708) 979-5284 PRAY NAKED