God Doesn’t Need Our Defense

When people are hurting, what they need from us is compassion birthed from unconditional Love…not a defense of God or a theological treatise justifying ‘why bad things happen’.  Listen to them.  Feel their pain with them.  And yes, encourage them!  But encourage from a position of Love, not the mistaken posture of the self-appointed apologist of the Divine.  The God who willingly, voluntarily, and completely relinquished Himself to the angry mob of our mistaken identity so as to appease our perceived need for blood is surely not so easily offended.  He does not need, nor want, our defense.  The Architect of all that is can take care of Himself without our help.  He prioritizes His nature (Love) above all else…and so should we.  


Passages to Consider:

Romans 8:32 (NASB95)
He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? 

Luke 9:51–56 (NASB95): 51 When the days were approaching for His ascension, He was determined to go to Jerusalem; 
 52 and He sent messengers on ahead of Him, and they went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements for Him. 
 53 But they did not receive Him, because He was traveling toward Jerusalem. 
 54 When His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 
 55 But He turned and rebuked them, [and said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; 
 56 for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”] And they went on to another village



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sometimes Certainty is the Greatest Sin of All

Image
One of the more offensive beliefs espoused by western evangelicalism (and there are many) is the notion that all expressions of the Christian faith preceding it - Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Reformed, et al - were in such gross and debauched error as to render them outside the familial participation of Jesus Christ and indeed worshippers of ‘another Jesus’ altogether.  They espouse this without really considering the ramifications of what they are saying.  If these traditional veins are indeed disconnected from the one true Vine of the church, that would mean that the assembled family of God was absent from the earth for over a thousand years.  Taking it a step further in logical progression, it would be asserting that all of the voices informing our current understanding of the nature of God and His Church are irrelevant as why would we rely on those worshipping ‘another Jesus’ for guidance of any kind?!  So that would mean… The doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement which evangelica
Read more

Deconstructing Too Far

“Deconstruction”, when done correctly, is a refiner’s fire burning away that which is faulty or harmful, a gardener’s pruning cutting off those elements contributing to pain and death.  It should never consume the whole nor should it attempt to disconnect the branches from the vine.   While much needs removed, much warrants preservation.  Indeed, like pulling weeds from among the flowers, the purpose of subtracting the faulty is to enable the healthy multiplication of the pure.   A deconstruction process that burns the whole edifice to the ground isn’t healthy and it isn’t helpful.  It’s a form of mass suicide that, by inflicting the same fate on the wheat and the chaff alike, results in the same end as would have been obtained had we never deconstructed at all: misery and death.  (Note: I’m aware there are other, far better terms for the healthy form of ‘deconstruction’.  But I am equally aware that this is the word most commonly used and have adopted it above for the sake of clarity.
Read more

The God of the Illuminated Journey

Image
The God of the Illuminated Journey The faith we experience is not our own or somehow under our manipulative control, to expand or shrink based on our effort or will, but originates from the Source: Father, Son, and Spirit.  As that faith grows, changes, and matures, it remains HIS faith at work in-and-through us.  We cannot multiply it or enlarge its borders.  We cannot order its comings and goings as if it were our subject, obliged to obey our command.  We simply discover it a little bit more each day.   We have, through the fear and intimidation of fundamentalist evangelicalism, substituted the journey with a destination.  By centering the argument on the false dichotomies (or, stated more accurately, false dichotomies as evangelicalism understands and articulates them) of heaven vs hell, saved vs unsaved, right vs wrong, the sunrise has been forfeited for a light switch.  Rather than experience Father, Son, and Spirit through a gradual unveiling of wonder wherein His luminance grows
Read more