I grew up thinking God was mad. Like, really mad. I was taught that from the moment I was conceived I was on God’s bad side, that I was tainted with a sin nature and that there was nothing I could ever do to escape it unless I …
Put my faith in Jesus.
Said a special prayer.
And invited him into my heart.
On one hand I was told that my “salvation” was by grace alone and that I could do nothing to be saved - it was all God.
BUT.
On the other hand I was told that if I didn’t accept Jesus into my heart (emphasis on “I” and “my”) then I was destined for hell and had no hope of salvation.
Sooooo … it’s my responsibility to accept Jesus to be saved and yet there’s nothing I can do to be saved?
So confusing.
None of that taught me very much, honestly, except that God can’t be trusted and that God is trigger happy - he’ll pull the lever on the trap door to hell unless you do everything exactly as he says it needs to be done.
You’ve gotta believe the right things.
You’ve gotta say the right prayer.
You’ve gotta have faith in Jesus (whatever that means).
And all of that made sense to me when I was younger, but as I got older and more inquisitive.
Well.
It started to make less and less sense. I mean, which “right things” do I need to believe? Should I believe what the Reformers say about Jesus? Or the Presbyterians? What about the Pentecostals? Or the Baptists? What about the Gnostics?
And the “right prayer”? What is the “sinner’s prayer?” Where is that in the Bible? And what does it look like? Is it a one and done thing or do I need to do it more than one time? If it was really all that important, wouldn’t there be like a chapter and verse about it somewhere?
“Faith in Jesus”? Do I just need to intellectually believe something? What if I believe it, but act like a horrible person? Some of the most terrible people who have ever lived said they had “faith in Jesus” and yet they did horrendous things. That gets you to heaven? What if I live like a saint, but don’t have “faith in Jesus”? Do I got to hell while the horrible person who had faith goes to heaven?
Eh?
So. Many. Questions. And the thing bubbling beneath it all was that God is angry and can’t be trusted because you never know what will happen if you hit the wrong button on the big vending machine in the sky. It felt like he could literally explode at any moment - he commanded genocide in the Old Testament along with rape and murder and the New Testament (supposedly) says he’s coming back with a vengeance to take a select few to heaven and leave the rest behind to burn.
God.
Is.
TICKED.
I love the perspective that Dom brings to the topic, though, when he says that we aren’t called to be “Bible-ians”, but “Christians”. In other words, we are called to the follow the Way of Christ, not the Bible; and if the Bible shows us something about God that we don’t see in Christ, we ought to feel free to reject it, rethink it, or dispose of it completely.
As someone who was brought up in a world where the Bible was the 4th member of the Trinity, that’s a challengingly freeing idea.
Much love,
Glenn
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