What If God Really Meant What He Said?

What if the God of the Bible really means what he says?

John 3:16 For God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.

If these words came from the mouth of that one and only son, why do christians say, “I sure hope I make it to heaven. I try not to sin,” as if the father really wanted nothing to do with them only relenting grudgingly for his son’s sake.

Or, what if the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob really meant it when the Torah quotes:

Gen 12:1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father's family, and go to the land that I will show you.
Gen 12:2 I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others.

Why, then, when the people of Israel were given 10 tenets for successful life, did they invent 400 more to prove how righteous they could be?

“Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics, and the Catholics hate the Protestants, and the Moslems hate the Hindus … and everybody hates the Jews,” sang Tom Lehrer, Harvard mathematics professor turned musical-comedic political commentator in the 1960s. Abraham’s (Abram) descendants have not enjoyed the promise of others’ feeling blessed in them, arguably ever, certainly not since the reign of King Solomon.

Chastening or lament, a hypothesis often seen on church marquees across the U. S. goes “Christians are the main reason that most people aren’t,”

On the supposition that the reader is willing to consider the prospect of a divine personage – one with no beginning and no end – who interacts with humans in the context of time and space as they perceive them, what is it about such a god that is so distasteful? Is it the believers who queer the deal? Or is the institutional church at the heart of this disconnect?

Not a discussion of the divine inspiration of the written scripture, nor of the canonization of scripture, I will encourage the reader to consider the proposition that the message presented as christian doctrine – what God is doing among men – has been twisted beyond recognition that people are driven from rather than drawn to it. I will narrow my focus to the one question, “Who’s included?” and, by extension, “Who is able bring it about?”


Citations:

1. Colyer, Elmer M., “How To Read T. F. Torrance, Understanding His Trinitarian & Scientific Theology”, Wipf & Stock Publishers, Eugene OR, 2001, Book

A student of Karl Barth, T. F. Torrance, developed a theology beginning an understanding of God not from man’s experience of God, but from God’s revelation of himself.

2. Colyer, Elmer, “You’re Included,” (http://www.youreincluded.org/ )

addressing the question with whom this god interacts, Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary and an ordained United Methodist pastor and elder. Dr. Colyer edited The Promise of Trinitarian Theology: Theologians in Dialogue with T. F. Torrance, and he is author of How to Read T.F. Torrance: Understanding His Trinitarian and Scientific Theology, approaches from the viewpoint of John Wesley:

Wesley has enough sense that when he was arguing against predestination, he finally said, “Whatever predestination means, it cannot mean that God, from all eternity wills the damnation of some. Because it’s contrary to the character of God as depicted by the whole scope and tenor of Scripture and preeminently in Jesus Christ."

3. Edwards, Jonathan, "Sinners In The Hands of An Angry God," The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University, 1739, Sermon

Perhaps the seminal work in America defining the discussion of the condition of fallen man is a sermon – “Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God,” preached first in 1739 and subsequently on a circuit through all the American colonies by Jonathan Edwards.

4. Kettler, Dr. Chris, “You’re Included,” (http://www.youreincluded.org/ )
observes that people like to talk about the potential of salvation, but the Bible refers to the actuality of salvation.

5. McSwain, Jeff, “You’re Included,” (http://www.youreincluded.org/ ), Interview

Explains the difference between Calvinism and Arminianism, and the Reformed view of Karl Barth. Some people think that the Father is angry, and Christ is appeasing his anger. But the truth is quite different.
6. Time Magazine, Witness to an Ancient Truth, Friday, Apr. 20, 1962,
More recently, Karl Barth (rhymes with heart), Swiss-born son of a long line of Reformed Church clerics, studied in Bonn, Germany, but exiled for his anti-Nazi preaching, seems to have at once leaped to the fore of christian thought by returning to the very beginning of christian dogmatic scholarship of the students who studied under John, the last surviving of the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ and Paul, the most prolific of the New Testament writers.

One orthodox dogma that Barth has tried to set aright—much to the dismay of other theologians in the Reformed Church —is the best-known and gloomiest of Calvinist tenets: predestination. In his Institutes, Calvin argued that God has already determined both those who will be saved at the Last Judgment and those who will suffer the eternal pangs of Hell. Barth says that this belief does not pay sufficient heed to the fact that Christ's death was intended for all men: Man's ultimate fate is shrouded in mystery, but Barth believes that Christ, the loving Judge, could indeed reconcile all the world to the Father. "I do not preach universal salvation," Barth insists. "What I say is that I cannot exclude the possibility that God would save all men at the Judgment." (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,873557-8,00.html#ixzz0ja2af3Jx ,

7. Wikipedia, John Calvin, whose doctrinal positions included the doctrine of predestination, earlier discussed the issue of whom this god addresses:

“Calvinistic predestination is sometimes referred to as "double predestination."[2] This is the view that God chose who would go to heaven, and who to hell, and that his decision is infallibly to come to pass. This point of view simultaneously denies that God is the Author of Evil, but the issue is a very difficult point of the doctrine of predestination. The difference between elect and reprobate is not in themselves, all being equally unworthy, but in God's sovereign decision to show mercy to some, to save some and not others. It is called double predestination because it holds that God chose both whom to save and whom to damn, as opposed to single predestination which contends that though he chose whom to save, he did not choose whom to damn.” (Orthodox Presbyterian Church: "Question and Answer - Double Predestination.", Internet website)

John Calvin (Middle French: Jean Cauvin; 10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where in 1536 he published the first edition of his seminal work Institutes of the Christian Religion.


8. Wikipedia, John Wesley (28 June [O.S. 17 June] 1703 – 2 March 1791) was an Anglican cleric and Christian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, with founding the English Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield. In contrast to George Whitefield's Calvinism (which later led to the forming of the Calvinistic Methodists), Wesley embraced Arminianism. Methodism in both forms was a highly successful evangelical movement in the United Kingdom, which encouraged people to experience Jesus Christ personally.

9. Young, William P., You’re Included, Interview

Paul Young points out the disconnect many people experience in trying to trust the “angry” God who requires his Son’s death.