Showing posts with label God's Wrath. Show all posts
Showing posts with label God's Wrath. Show all posts

Monday, August 29, 2016

What You Believe about Wrath Determines What You Believe About Justice



Wrath is our self-inflicted wounds.  Sin blinds us, separates us and gives us false illusions about the importance of self.  Justice then turns into winners and losers, us and them, comparison and blame games.  But God's wrath is not aimed at you.  It is redemption aimed at our sinfulness.  When we fail to love our neighbor, it leads to injustice.  The church unfortunately is often more concerned about how kids behave in church buildings than they do about those same kids misbehaving in the world.

People are so negative looking at all the social problems among the younger generation.  Can we see with eyes of faith that the young meth addict may be the next Billy Graham.  Who would have ever known that a terrorist by the name of Saul would become the great apostle to the Gentiles?  Who would have known a slave trader like John Newton would become a hymn-writing Christian?  Who would have known that an atheist Cambridge professor by the name of C. S. Lewis would become one of the great intellectual defenders of the Christian faith?  Who would have known?

The church can no longer avoid justice issues or acts like injustice only deals with personal sin without resisting the very environment and structured evil that perpetuates so much injustice today.  It is easy to write a check to end human trafficking but we lack concern for how we demand cheap affordable clothing and so many of our technology toys that exploits workers in other countries.  We can say we are against global terrorism but still demand our need for cheap gas from middle east countries that often pays terrorists to do the evil things they do.  We can say we want to see world hunger and poverty end and continue to support large corporations that exploit the poor in other nations.  The law of God's economics is for life, not death.  What are we teaching our kids when in comes to God's wrath and justice and the economics of life?


Saturday, May 7, 2016

Cosmos Reborn



John Crowder is an advocate for supernatural Christianity but also is a well respected writer and student of both God's Word and history.  This is probably his best book describing the radical love of God that destroys our theories and popular theologies of atonement, hell and conversion.  Here is a powerful theology of the cross that interweaves mystery, beauty, and wonder.

In his work, "Cosmos Reborn," one of the major issues he tackles is the concept that Jesus is paying off a debt to an angry Father.  We are saved from sin, not God.  Restoration is not just for us but for the whole cosmos.  New creation is not about renovation but recreation. 

He provocatively says in understanding reconciliation properly, "The Bible never says that the death of Christ was to reconcile God to us.  The death of Christ was to turn us back to God" (p.58).  Jesus died on the cross not because God need it but we needed it.  "On the cross, Jesus was not purchasing the Father's love ad changing God, he was changing you" (p.61).

Crowder's theology is fully Trinitarian, Christocentric, and incarnational.  He has nor only rediscovered the early church fathers but especially the Eastern Orthodox church's history and influence which is so often neglected in western thinking.  Even God's wrath is for you and not against you because it is an extension of The father's love for all of his creation. Christ was bearing our sin and wrath on the cross, not God's wrath.  This more nuanced approach may seem small but its spiritual impact and implications are huge.

Where Crowder sounds like a mystic (because the Christian mystical tradition has always been part of the church's teaching and faith) is when he says, "Before we were lost in Adam, we were already found in Jesus Christ" (p.70).  The atonement was not about God's punishment but about redemptive love . . . God's wrath is against sinfulness, not sinners (p.74).  Christ is the true Adam and in him we become complete as God's creation.  We are all part of the great becoming process of being a new creation.


Thursday, June 9, 2011

He Who Sits In the heavens Shall Laugh



KISS THE SON, LEAST HE BE ANGRY - Psalm 2:12

I often think of the resurrection of Jesus as God having the last laugh. And for those who follow God's Son Jesus, there is the beautiful laughter of the redeemed. But Scripture usually shows the laughter of God as a mocking laugh at the wicked. Who are the wicked? We usually think of somebody else who is an outsider and "we" of course are "insiders." But isn't God's Word written for His people? Are not the wicked often those who have a stake or claim on God?

This week is Vacation Bible School and I love working with children and youth. But I can't help thinking about the contrast of what I am doing from another church in what they are doing in regards to VBS. One of my friends is struggling as a VBS director? Well, it's bad enough that a new youth pastor is trying to micro-mangage her. But what I find distrubing and no laughing matter is how they are refusing to not allow certain people in the church to help with VBS. One girl wrote a word on facebook which most people use in their every day language. She was brought before the Elders for church discipline. Another young man was asked not to help with VBS after he was given permission prior because earlier this year, he got in trouble over a substance abuse issue. He was told he was not a Christian and he was not welcomed to help with VBS.

This brings me to my situation which I am still waiting to see how it all plays out. One young man got into trouble and it was even on the evening news. He has reached out to me and I have reached back to him. He has been my right hand man this week and I am believing God will reshape this man more and more into the image of His Son.

At the end of the day, maybe some think God will be laughing at me? Maybe God is laughing at this other church in the way they treat sinners which sounds very familiar to what Jesus observed by some of the religious establishment in his day?

All I know is we all bettter be kissing Jesus or we might find behind God's laughter a holy and righteous anger!