The Line in the Sand

“Jesus was the only one who raised the dead,” the Misfit continued, “and he shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left eh best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness.”
From “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
Flannery O’Connor

In one crude yet surprisingly rational monologue the Misfit describes the dilemma we post-Christ humans have to face: do we follow Him or not? If Jesus spoke the truth, then we should all follow Him. If He didn’t, then He’s a liar, and worse than any demon, and nothing matters on earth than to do exactly what we want, no matter how destructive or immoral or sociopathic.

Flannery O’ Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a story about a family, who through pure happenstance, come across a murderous escaped convict. The grandmother manages to identify him out loud, provoking him to murder them in order to insure his escape. His fellow convicts murder the rest of the family while he has a discussion with the grandmother and she pleads for her life. It is in this conversation that the convict lays out his very logical rationale for what he is doing.

He says Jesus was the moral turning point of all mankind, in all of history. Jesus drew a line in the sand and said in essence, “I stand with the Almighty, and He stands with me. Join me or perish.” Not only did he say that, but by his actions he proved his words to be true. He rose people from the dead. If it were not for this, we could dismiss Jesus as some lunatic, or the worst kind of liar, but this action, the resurrection of Lazarus, lent the most irrefutable credence to his words. The Misfit lays out the choices we now have: either Jesus was telling the truth, and we should all toss everything aside and follow him, or he was lying, and nothing else matters in this life except to do what makes us happy.

If Jesus was telling the truth, then everything he said about God and about justice and heaven was true, and the only rational, logical choice is to follow him and trust in everything he said. If he was lying, then he is the worst kind of liar, claiming God to be on his side and demonstrating the power of some otherworldly omnipotent monster to back up his claims and seduce us to the worst kind of hell. If Jesus was lying, where did he get this power from? Who was really behind the miracles he performed? If not God, then who?

If Jesus was a liar, then everything he said about truth, and love, and justice have no meaning. If Jesus was a liar, the only meaning this life can give us is pleasure, however we can find it. If he was a liar, then every action he did to help people, his compassion, kindness, and power all have some darker and cosmically ominous significance.

What kind of person would come to the conclusion that Jesus was a liar? A person like the Misfit, yet the Misfit was a monster. His conclusion that Jesus was a liar led him to a life of “meanness”, for it was the only pleasure he found in life, and murder was the only purpose with any meaning for him.

Jesus laid all of existence bare when he raised Lazarus from the dead. There would no longer be a middle ground between God and men. We can either follow Him or call Him a demon. Any kind of compromise between the two is complete nonsense.

God may not love everyone in the world

Jacob I loved but Esau I hated

Romans 9.13 

A common interpretation of this verse goes like this:

Jacob I chose and Esau I rejected. 

This interpretation seems reasonable except for the very powerful language it uses. Also keep in mind what the Apostle Paul goes on to say about this passage, and the other story he uses to illustrate the verse.
Pharoah, Paul says, was specifically chosen to demonstrate God's power. Pharoah's heart was hardened so that God would show His wrath on the unbeliever and the world would know who He was. Does this sound like God loved Pharoah equally to the Israelites? Does this sound like the mere difference between "chosen" and "rejected"?

He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.

Maybe God did hate Esau.

For God so loved the world... 

But does God love everyone in the world?
He didn't love Esau. If there is one exception to any universal rule, the rule is not universal.
Let's assume God did love everyone in the world. We also know that men are powerless in their sins and cannot choose to believe in God. If anyone will be saved, it will be God who saves them and it will be God who chooses whom to save. If God loves everyone, why doesn't He save everyone? Why didn't He save Pharoah? Why did He harden Pharoah's heart and make him an "object of wrath, prepared for destruction" (Romans 9.22)? Does anyone else see a contradiction between simultaneously declaring love for someone and then determining their destruction?
Let's put that aside and examine our present state in the form of a simple statement:

God loves all men equally.

Or another way:

God loves me as much as He loved Adolf Hitler.

Maybe to you it's OK that God loves the atheists and the pagans and the Christian-beheaders and the God-haters as much as He loves you. Maybe to you that's noble and that's what the Apostle John meant when he said, "God is love."

My Father loves every child in the neighborhood as much as He loves me.

Every child that you don't know, every child that barely knows Him, every child that steals your stuff and bullies you at school--your Father loves them every bit as much as He loves you. Are you still OK with this?

My husband loves every woman He meets as much as He loves me.

You should not be OK with this. Yes, God is love, but love only has meaning when it takes place within the bounds of a relationship. Anything less is dysfunction and adultery.
I do not believe that God loves everyone in the world. I believe that God loves the world, and within the world He loves the people that love Him, those that He has chosen and redeemed to be His own.

Identity Things

I attended a lunch at my daughter's new college that was meant to introduce her to all of the ethnic clubs on campus. There was a very unenthusiastic panel there that answered questions from a moderator like, "How did [college] help you learn about your ethnic identity?" and "Tell us about how you're ethnic and not white". Well, basically. It was a strange experience sitting with a white and non-white crowd listening to how awesome it is to not be white. At a Christian college.

I am thankful that we have taught my daughter to be happy with who she is, not as a member of any particular group, but happy with herself. God made her and that is why she is special, not because she is not white, or not a man, but because she is, and she is God's child. None of us is more or less special because of our color or our gender. We are all sinners, as Paul made clear.

Why am I a Christian?

I have no "good" reason to give any atheist or agnostic or any member of any other faith. What I say will make no sense to anyone but others like myself.

I am only a Christian because God has loved me and chosen me. I am a Christian because He decided to love me and save me. I was not convinced by any evangelist nor was I persuaded by any apologetic evidence. I stand here in faith because there is literally nothing else I can do. I have wrestled with God and I have hated Him and cursed Him and I cannot escape Him because He has grasped me and not I Him.

Some of us who have fallen to the bottom of the pit of this hell called sin have realized there is no hope apart from God, and that hope can only be known through His Son Jesus Christ.

TWOGATBWOM: The Nature of the Divine Sovereignty, Jack Cottrell

I do agree with one thing that Cottrell says about Calvinists and divine sovereignty: consistent calvinism cannot adequately and biblically reconcile free will with divine sovereignty. There is no reconciling free will with divine sovereignty. Scripture explicitly teaches God's sovereignty over His creation and man's desires , and only implicitly seems to assume man's free will.

The main justification for a biblical notion of free will is, "God would not command us and hold us accountable to His commands if we were not free to obey them". This makes complete sense. However, what makes sense and what God does do not always mesh. Paul obliterates this notion in Romans 9:

“Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?

In reconciling two exclusive ideas, one taught explicitly and one explicitly denied, I hold to God's absolute sovereignty and deny man's free will.

TGOGATBWOM Part 2

In order to move coherently and smoothly through the Scripture countering election and sovereignty and asserting free will, Pinnock and friends must ignore one very basic facet of Biblical teaching: we are all sinners. There's really no good way to counter this other than to ignore it, which this book does at every possible turn.

Adam freely chose to disobey God and every act of will since has been corrupted by sin, not as some external force we strive to act against but as the core of our very nature. Apart from God's grace we delight in rebellion against Him. Everything in Scripture testifies to this, from Genesis to Revelation. To ignore this is to rewrite Scripture.

This simple statement above is enough to counter Pinnock`s entire book, but because I enjoy tearing down antiscriptural swill I will continue.

Universal Grace and Atonement in the Pastoral Epistles, I. Howard Marshall

What I find particularly odd about Marshall's essay was how he so cavalierly throws aside their Pauline authorship. This makes it easy for him to ignore every system of thought in the Pauline epistles,  namely election and sin and of course Romans 9. If we correctly assume every book that begins with "I, Paul", is written by Paul, how can we assume that these books are not? If they were not written by Paul, then Marshall is totally fine with using books written by some liar claiming to be Paul the Apostle, as long as he can use them to prove his point. Like I said, I find this very odd.

Does God want all men to be saved? Not according to Romans 9. Even if we exclude Pharoah by saying, "He was the only person God wanted to damn", we cannot exclude the general statement that Paul makes:

What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction?

 Marshall's argument falls apart when he begins to examine the scope of how the word "all" is used. Calvinists believe that when the New Testament speaks of God's desire for "all" to be saved it means all believers. In this sense "all" means all whom God has chosen to be saved, since we have seen that no one can believe in God unless God wants them to. The other option is that somehow God wants all men to be saved except for those He doesn't. This is contradictory and I do not hold to this view.

I am fine with the Bible not always making sense. It's about God. He shouldn't make sense to us. This isn't one of those times.

Conveniently Marshall narrows his investigation to the Pastoral epistles, and I would not have a problem, logically speaking, if he only mentioned these books, but this is not the case. Near the end of this essay he says,

If we ask why some believe and others do not, we can say no more than that this is part of the mystery of evil to which the Pastorals, like the rest of Scripture, can offer no answer.

Wrong. This isn't a mystery that God has chosen to keep hidden. The answer is twofold: (1) men are born sinners, and (2) God chooses some to be His children. If Marshall's question was meant to say, "Why does God choose some and not others?", then yes, this is a mystery. As I have said before, I believe that Marshall and every author in this book intentionally obscure the specifics of election and man's sinful nature in order to further their belief in free will.

The Grace of God and the Broken Will of Man: Critiquing Pinnock’s The Grace of God and the Will of Man

Part 1

You wouldn’t know it by reading the title, but Editor C.H. Pinnock believes that our will is at least a match for the power and glory of God, either to thwart His work or to provide the missing piece necessary to complete it. I wager if you’ve read anything else I’ve written, you already know my opinion on this book. I do not believe, like many Calvinist theologians do, that this line of thinking is a tolerable difference in the church between brethren who ultimately desire to glorify God. I believe it is a subtle cancer that has given birth to many atheistic and antitheistic systems of thought. My thesis is that the root of Pinnock’s theology is the same pride which demeaned Lucifer and Adam.

We are in no way a match for God’s will, and there is nothing that we do that God needs from us to complete His will. We do not thwart His plans, nor does God bend His will to accommodate our fleeting and transitory nature. There are instances where God seems to change His mind in response to His creation, but these are not meant to demonstrate that God’s purpose has changed, or that He does not know future events, but that He has emotions in a manner like our own, along with contrasting attributes like wrath and mercy.

If God were a god whose will was subject to every changing whim that passes through our minds, then nothing He desired would ever be accomplished because literally none of us desires to do His will. If His will was subject to ours we would be God. If His will was subject to ours, prophecy would have no meaning for our lives because it would no longer describe God’s intention for us, but our intention for ourselves. I do not want to live in a world like this.

The Universality of God’s Love, by Fritz Guy

The root of pride is not seen more clearly than in Guy’s essay, “The Universality of God’s Love”. His proposal is that God’s love is defined by what He does for His creation, specifically mankind. I have not read any theology essay more self-centered than this offensive little ditty.
His essay can best be summarized by a quote from page 37:

God is “glorified” – that is to say, the divine experience of reality is expanded and enriched – as the humanity created in the divine image experiences more and more of its glorious potential for creativity, understanding, love, and the sheer enjoyment of reality.

God’s experience as God is expanded when we achieve our potential to be gods. Does this sound familiar?

 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God”[1]

If God’s goal was for us to achieve our highest potential, why the fuss over the tower of Babel? Shouldn’t He have helped us build the tower to the sky?

Why does God save the sinner? Why does He chastise Israel?

I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them. But I will gain glory for myself through Pharoah and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.[2]
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this.[3]
What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of His glory known to the objects of his mercy?[4]

Guy is a humanist, a philosophy that believes the ultimate goal of humanity is to glorify humanity: to be better, to improve, to achieve. He throws God in to legitimize his religion. God is our servant and His goal becomes the improvement and achievement of humanity. This is a despicable twisting of His servant message. Yes He came to serve, but as an example of how we relate to each other, not to show us what His role is in our lives.

[1] Genesis 3.4,5
[2] Exodus 14.4
[3] Isaiah 48.11
[4] Romans 9.22,23