(I find this the biggest problem in Christendom today — saints take someone else’s word for who and what God is — instead of getting into the Word and getting to know God for who He really is.)

Relationship, as I know it, is always a two way street. You continue to seek the one you love, to grow in knowledge.

We, as a Church, are wrong. We take for granted that because you came to Christ, that is it. We offer these classes and such every week, and if you don’t come — oh well.

I have always thought discipleship was one on one. That is how I was discipled, by an old saint, and I try to give to others I encounter, what she gave to me.

theBEattitude, my heart goes out to you, my prayers go up to God to bring someone in your life, who can live the reality of knowing the Godhead before you.

And as part of the Body of Christ, I ask your forgiveness for having let you down.

I too had that problem with some of the sayings of Jesus and I would like to share my solution with you. You may not find it satisfactory, but it makes the most sense to me.

There is a tendency for us believers to take the words that Jesus meant “spiritually” in a “literal” sense. When Jesus said “beware the leaven of the Pharisees”, for example, Peter and the Apostles immediately began to look for some bread that they could throw overboard when what Jesus actually meant was the “teaching” of the Pharisees. When Jesus said that we could move mountains through faith, maybe he was not talking about “literal” mountains? I am convinced that if we could see the “spiritual” world that is veiled from our eyes, then we would see that getting one person to profess a genuine faith in Jesus Christ required the removal of a “spiritual” mountain. In praying for a particular friend of mine, I once thought to myself, “There is no way that this person will ever become a Christian” only to be pleasantly surprised by the spiritual mountains moved by God.

By the way, I want to congratulate you on the fact that you are comfortable with unanswered questions. When I consider many questions that people ask about God I often wonder, “Do you really think that if God himself came down and explained the answer to that question to you personally that you would be capable of understanding it?” To me, it is not obvious that the answer to this question is yes. (I guess this is because I have had quantum mechanics explained to me by people who knew what they were talking about and I didn’t understand a word of it.) For this reason, being comfortable with unanswered questions seems to be the only reasonable way to approach certain issues in our faith.

robert van de water

Some of the best fun I have had has been having my simplistic theistic arguments systematically destroyed over the years by one of the most thoughtful people I know (a Jewish atheist and a very good friend). If my current positions make any sense at all, then it is because I have constantly had to adapt them to his rigorous and scathing analysis. It has been a pleasure discussing these issues and I hope we can do it again some time.

robert van de water

I’ve been talking to my pastor lately about some pretty basic stuff Jesus said (John 14:12 – 14″anyone who has faith… will do what what i have been doing…he will do even greater things than these… because i am going to the Father”)

- and the thing is, i do have faith that there is a reason Jesus said what He did. But instead religious people just want me to pretend i don’t see it, too… To be really honest, i haven’t gone to church for a few weeks now. I don’t fit in. And it’s not that i don’t love Jesus. Not that i don’t read my Bible and pray and teach my children. I just don’t fit. I believe Jesus and Reason are compatible. And yeah, i do think Faith is the missing link – and i’m comfortable with a certain amount of chaos/unexplained missing links.

I just don’t get the “pretend we don’t see it” posture. It seems so weak intellectually, and one more thing that pushes people away from a stagnant culture… which isn’t a bad thing. But if that stagnant culture holds a flag with Jesus’ face on it, it ends up pushing people away from Jesus…

I don’t want to get on a point by point debate on this gentleman’s blog, so I will refrain from posing the reasons for my skepticism of your offered solutions to these problems I have with certain Christian issues.

I am pretty sure if we knew each other in person we would find many interesting things to discuss, and I do appreciate you taking time to comment on my post.

Thanks to you as well for your thoughts Brian. Allow me to respond if I might.

“I suppose I just don’t have the ability to label the behavior of Yahweh in the OT as anything other than barbaric. We can speculate about “higher purposes” and “mysterious ways”, but honestly, an all powerful and loving deity could certainly find methods that don’t involve genocide, infanticide, slavery, and plundering neighboring nationalities over a chunk of real estate.”

But what if the point was not finding His people a chunk of real estate but of teaching them their need for grace, forgiveness and love? I certainly agree that the behavior of the Old Testament barbarians in the Old Testament was barbaric, but are we so sure that it was according to God’s will? Allow me to bounce some ideas off of you.

It is my view that the closest analog we have to the culture and outlook of the Old Testament nation of Israel in the modern world is Osama Bin Laden, Al Queda, the Taliban and other Muslim extremist groups. I believe that the ancient Israelites shared the same self-righteousness, the same clan loyalty, the same brutality and vicious outlook as these modern terrorist groups.

I further believe that the modern nation of Israel is the most secular, thoughtful, liberal, accomplished in every field of human endeavor nation in the world today. (Just look at their disproportionate share of Nobel Prizes.) How do you transform a barbaric, self-righteous and willfully ignorant people into the most civilized nation in the world? I believe the Old Testament is the highly counter-intuitive answer to that question. You give them a minimal standard (the Mosaic law) that points them in the direction of the Law of Love (”Love the Lord thy God and Love thy neighbor”) and watch as they struggle to realize that they need the grace and forgiveness of God just as much as the gentile “sinner” nations around them.

“An all powerful being can’t be limited to just two options to accomplish its will.

Hell is not necessitated because heaven exists. Annihilation is a merciful option. Only allowing those who would accept Him to come into existence is possible. I’m sure you have considered these but they are incompatible with the writings that are allegedly inspired and explain Yahweh’s will.”

The view of hell that I spelled out in my earlier post was somewhat simplified due to spatial constraints. I believe that there is a third option, for those who will accept it, where they have an existence that is much better than any existence that you could have on Earth. In the Bible I believe these two different options are spelled out clearly. In Revelation, some people are cast into the “Lake of Fire” and some people are said to live “oustide the city”. In my view, the “Lake of Fire” is where people go who choose not to be subject to God and his laws. The eternal torment that they experience there is not done by God but by the other people that are there (Imagine living on a resort island with Stalin, Hitler and Mao and other mass murderers for all eternity. No matter how pleasant the surroundings and amenities, the company will make you miserable.) Those who choose to live under God’s rule, however, are allowed to live “outside the city” where they have live a life of “lesser blessing” than those who have excepted God’s gift of eternal life.

“I suppose one can take that road, but it seems just as sensible to me to set it all aside and live by the golden rule which seems at the root of most spirituality anyway.”

“Setting it all aside” admits the whole thing to be false and I find it more reasonable/hopeful to believe that genuine and perfect love exists.

robert van de water

I thought I might bounce a few things off a couple things you wrote.

“The Old Testament stories of wrath and judgment, for example, can be viewed as basically historically accurate but badly misinterpreted by theologians with little understanding of God or His plan. Likewise the doctrine of hell can be understood if the traditional notions of literal flames and pitchfork wielding demons in red spandex jumpsuits are rejected.”

I suppose I just don’t have the ability to label the behavior of Yahweh in the OT as anything other than barbaric. We can speculate about “higher purposes” and “mysterious ways”, but honestly, an all powerful and loving deity could certainly find methods that don’t involve genocide, infanticide, slavery, and plundering neighboring nationalities over a chunk of real estate.

“What would eternal life be like if a group of people made a habit of refusing divine correction and did not forgive one another or “love their neighbors” in the manner specified by God? Over eternal time, people would gradually harden their hearts against one another and trust would breakdown. Eternal loneliness is the unavoidable longterm consequence of these kinds of decisions.”

An all powerful being can’t be limited to just two options to accomplish its will.

Hell is not necessitated because heaven exists. Annihilation is a merciful option. Only allowing those who would accept Him to come into existence is possible. I’m sure you have considered these but they are incompatible with the writings that are allegedly inspired and explain Yahweh’s will.

“Having thus considered the intellectual problems of the faith, I have found it necessary to reject much of conventional Christian theology.”

I suppose one can take that road, but it seems just as sensible to me to set it all aside and live by the golden rule which seems at the root of most spirituality anyway.

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on the matter. I remain open to the possibility of a spiritual order, but every faith I have examined looks like the work of fallible human minds.

Thanks.

When I was a younger Christian, I was extremely ignorant. Unfortunately, I made up for my ignorance with volume and bellicosity because I was threatened by rational arguments against the faith. I have since come to believe this behavior was shameful and disgraceful. This being the case, I can simultaneously sympathize with your intellectual issues and also sympathize with other Christians who have failed to deal well with these issues.

I have found that the key to dealing with these issues for me is to be comfortable with my need of Jesus Christ. I simply cannot stand the idea of being the money-grubbing, materialistic, lustful, self-centered, proud, insensitive and egotistical man that I was without Jesus Christ. The loving, kind, selfless, forgiving person that I want to be can only conceivably be accomplished with lavish divine assistance and Jesus Christ is the only source of such assistance on the market. Basing my faith on my need of Jesus Christ in this way, I am not threatened by intellectual questions regarding the faith and can approach them in a calm and reasonable state of mind.

Having thus considered the intellectual problems of the faith, I have found it necessary to reject much of conventional Christian theology. While the basic beliefs encapsulated in the various creeds are reasonable, much of the other attendant beliefs must be rejected as nonsensical. The Old Testament stories of wrath and judgment, for example, can be viewed as basically historically accurate but badly misinterpreted by theologians with little understanding of God or His plan. Likewise the doctrine of hell can be understood if the traditional notions of literal flames and pitchfork wielding demons in red spandex jumpsuits are rejected. While I have explored these issues at book-length elsewhere, allow me to explain briefly my views about hell.

Let us imagine that God was trying to create an eternal paradise for human beings. How would He go about this task? Does paradise merely require certain materialistic comforts? Or does paradise require something of the human beings that inhabit it?

My belief is that paradise requires human beings to be humble and amenable to divine correction. If human beings refuse divine guidance and correction, then paradise would gradually breakdown as individuals accumulated petty grievances against one another and refused to forgive one another or acknowledge guilt for their own infractions. Paradise is only possible if human beings “turn the other cheek” and “love their neighbor” as themselves by acknowledging their own infractions and forgiving the infractions of others.

What would eternal life be like if a group of people made a habit of refusing divine correction and did not forgive one another or “love their neighbors” in the manner specified by God? Over eternal time, people would gradually harden their hearts against one another and trust would breakdown. Eternal loneliness is the unavoidable longterm consequence of these kinds of decisions.

Now sometimes “loving our neighbors” requires us to do things that we don’t want to do. “Who cares about that loser who will get his feelings hurt if I have sex outside of marriage with this beautiful young woman? I want it, she wants it and nothing else matters.” Though these kinds of attitudes may seem harmless over the short term of a seventy year lifespan, over the course of an eternal life they will eventually result in the hell of loneliness described above. (These consequences can sometimes even be visible within the context of our brief seventy year lifespans!) Is it any wonder that God, who loves every single individual more than we can imagine, describes such a fate in the starkest possible terms?

This has been a long post and still does not do justice to the questions you have asked. I wish you the best as you continue to journey in search of truth.

robert van de water

At the moment I am writing my master’s thesis at the Free University in Amsterdam about the discussion among evangelicals (in the broad sense) about the authority of scripture, focusing on claims of inerrancy. Included is a short research on the early church fathers all the way up to the reformation and later, about what their respective positions were. It reveals all kinds of things, as you can imagine.

I agree with your statement and am somewhat afraid of the outcomes of my thesis..