A certain Presbyterian minister says it is spiritual abuse to tell people that if they don't accept God's free gift of love offered through Jesus Christ, they will die in their sins, and they will not live eternally in heaven. This minister says that it is essentially spiritual violence to warn people that the consequences of not turning their lives over to God is eternal death--a loss of the joy they could have forever with God.
What a strange definition of spiritual abuse!
Let's look at an analogy. Suppose there were a road that everyone needed to take. This road has a fork, and one direction leads to a sudden hidden precipice. Suppose further that someone wants to place a warning sign at the fork saying "Look out! If you continue along this direction, you will fall off a precipice and die." Would placing that sign there be mental abuse? Would it be mentally violent? Or would it actually be helpful and saving to the people taking that road?
That is the case with those who want to tell people about God's offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. They want to be helpful and offer what is lifesaving to those who don't have it.
Moreover, it is actually spiritually abusive to deny this offer to people. The minister who claims that God does not exist (he says, "No deity exists. Not Jesus Christ, not Yahweh, not Baal, not Marduk, not Allah, not Zeus, not the Flying Spaghetti Monster, not the Wizard of Oz. None of them exist. All figments of imagination. They are fun. But none are worth the spiritual violence they cause.") does not have a shred of proof to back up his assertion. It all rests on his own faith claim that this world is all there is, his own 21st-century weltanschauung.
He is like the stubborn medieval people who couldn't see that the world was round, so they insisted it was flat. This minister can't see or feel God, so he insists God is not there. And so he becomes spiritually abusive toward his parishioners, and the readers of his blog and newspaper articles, by denying them the saving knowledge of all that God has to offer them.
True spiritual violence is done to people when God's love is kept away from them.
Showing posts with label Atonement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atonement. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Friday, April 2, 2010
Passion Week
There is a moment in the St. John Passion by Bach when, after Christ has been arrested and Peter has denied three times that he even knows Christ, the Evangelist (narrator) says that Peter went out and wept bitterly. This is sung in a hauntingly beautiful tenor voice, with a long, slow melody on the German word for "wept".
Who does not know the same kind of wretched despair that Peter felt at that time? We do things wrong. We fail again and again. We resolve to do better, and yet we find ourselves repeating our mistakes. Well we know what this music expresses. If not literally, then figuratively, we weep and weep and weep. We are trapped in our human failings. Even Peter, who has just been with the living Christ, repudiates him. How can we ever do better?
Miserable sinners that we are, who can rescue us from this body of death, from this pattern of repeated failure?
But there is one who can. It is for this that God became man in Jesus, came to earth, and took upon himself the punishment for all our failings, endured the denials, the mocking, the pain, the weight of all of everyone's sin. Who can rescue us from this body of death? Who but God? Thanks be to him through Jesus Christ our Lord! May we never take this lightly!
(Romans 7:24-25a)
Who does not know the same kind of wretched despair that Peter felt at that time? We do things wrong. We fail again and again. We resolve to do better, and yet we find ourselves repeating our mistakes. Well we know what this music expresses. If not literally, then figuratively, we weep and weep and weep. We are trapped in our human failings. Even Peter, who has just been with the living Christ, repudiates him. How can we ever do better?
Miserable sinners that we are, who can rescue us from this body of death, from this pattern of repeated failure?
But there is one who can. It is for this that God became man in Jesus, came to earth, and took upon himself the punishment for all our failings, endured the denials, the mocking, the pain, the weight of all of everyone's sin. Who can rescue us from this body of death? Who but God? Thanks be to him through Jesus Christ our Lord! May we never take this lightly!
(Romans 7:24-25a)
Saturday, April 21, 2007
The Atonement is Good News
I've been thinking about the Atonement lately. The doctrine of the Atonement has been coming under attack in recent years. It shouldn't be surprising, since by many who hold to progressive theology, personal sin has been denied or its extent or gravity has been lessened, and the second person of the Trinity (Jesus Christ, the son of God) has been devalued (his divinity is denied, his actual resurrection is denied, and/or obedience to him is no longer sought). So in such a climate, an act by Jesus Christ that takes away the consequences of personal sin is bound to become a target for elimination.
For example, a recent attack on the Atonement occurred not long before Easter, when Canon Jeffrey John of the Church of England was slated to speak about it on BBC Radio. In his view, the traditional doctrine of the Atonement, in which Jesus takes the punishment for the sins of humankind, so that, when we acknowledge that he has done so, and submit our lives to him, we can be forgiven and live eternally with God, "makes God sound like a psychopath". Instead, he suggests that Christ was crucified merely to share in our suffering.
If that's all Christ has to offer us on the cross, it doesn't give us much hope. If he just hung there and died so that God could say, "There, there, I understand how much it hurts," I don't think I'd be all that grateful. I'd rather have a God and a Savior who could really do something about the mess we're in, and fortunately, that's what we've got, because of the Atonement.
People who see God and Christ in this way--people who deny the Atonement--necessarily have a vision of God as a weak God. This is because they're saying that the Bible got it wrong all these years when it described Christ's death on the cross as paying for our sins. So that must mean that God was not powerful enough to make sure that the Bible got written correctly. Unfortunately for him, it ended up written wrong and was misunderstood for all these long centuries, and he just wasn't able to inspire the writers to get it put right. But now, at last, people have come along who really do know what is right--they know that the Atonement is not true! This implies that we are fortunate to be living in a time when there are really intelligent people who at last know the truth. In fact, God should be grateful to these people who can finally correct the Bible and do what he has been unable to do all these years.
Of course, I disagree with this point of view. So let me attempt to answer some of the arguments that have been made against the Atonement.
1. Argument 1: God wants to kill us because we wronged him. Why is it that God is supposed to be more merciful than we are, yet almost none of us wants to kill those who wrong us? Answer: God isn't out to kill us. This is stating the problem the wrong way. Here's the right way: God is out to keep us from dying eternally. The problem is that God is utterly, completely good, and evil cannot exist where he is. Once we have sinned, we are tainted with evil. Evil cannot live forever with God; it has to die, because it cannot be where God is. However, God loves us and wants us to be with him, and he is so merciful that he has worked out a way to make that happen, via the Atonement. God, as Jesus, takes the consequence--death--of sin, and we are counted as good if we accept what Jesus did for us.
2. Argument 2: God's killing his own son makes him the ultimate child abuser. Answer: This separates God and Jesus too much. God and Jesus are both separate and the same, as part of the mystery of the Trinity. Because God and Jesus are the same, God himself died for us when Jesus died. Moreover, Jesus did it freely, and not under compulsion. Jesus chose to die for us because he loves us and wants us to be with him forever.
3. Argument 3: Jesus' suffering isn't sufficient because it's not the worst suffering the world has ever seen; other people have suffered more. Answer: It's not the degree of suffering, it's who suffered. Jesus wasn't just a man, he was God. If God takes our punishment, it has been taken to an infinitely greater degree than if it were taken by a mortal. But also the degree of suffering must be greater than any suffering any other person has ever endured. At the moment when Jesus bore all the accumulated guilt and shame of our past, present, and future sins, he was separated from God's love, and that is suffering that is magnitudes beyond what anyone else has ever undergone.
4. Argument 4: It doesn't make sense that nobody is able to be perfectly good and that all people need salvation by God; why should all people be sinful and none be good? Or at least, aren't there some sins that don't need atoning for, that wouldn't keep a person out of heaven? Answer: God apparently didn't want perfect robots, preferring us to have free will. Thus we were left free to sin. But this is a mystery, and I assume that God's mind is bigger than mine, so I don't pretend to understand why we inevitably sin. But as for there being some sins that aren't so bad, and that shouldn't keep us out of heaven, I like what I heard our pastor Scott Dudley say once. He suggested thinking about what heaven would be like if people were let in with the sin that you think isn't too bad. Suppose you thought that irritability wasn't so bad and shouldn't keep you out of heaven. Would it still be heaven if irritable people were there? Maybe for some thick-skinned people it wouldn't be so bad, but for some others it might make it hell. Besides, all sin is a grave problem to God, who is perfectly good, and to whom we owe thanks for everything good in creation. When we commit even little sins, we repay God's goodness with evil, and by doing evil, we work against his good will for creation.
5. Argument 5: The Atonement requires a view of God as an angry, bloodthirsty God. Answer: Again, the Atonement is not something that God did because he's out for blood. It's true that sin makes God angry, but not in a bloodthirsty way. God is angry with sin because of the hurt that it causes people and his creation. Sin causes death, and God doesn't like death. So, to rob death of its victims, and give us a chance to be with him forever, God provided the Atonement. All we have to do is acknowledge what he did for us. He has made it very easy for us. Rather than being a bloodthirsty punisher, because of the Atonement, God is actually the most tender, merciful, loving God that can be imagined. (Of course, we want to respond to this love by obedience and service, but that's another part of the story.)
As I've said above, it is predictable that the Atonement should be targeted for disposal, since the doctrine of personal sin is also unpopular now among many people. This is a pity, because when we don't acknowledge our own sin, we miss out on being forgiven by God. And forgiveness is a beautiful and precious thing.
I thank God for the Atonement. Because of it, I will have life forever with God.
For example, a recent attack on the Atonement occurred not long before Easter, when Canon Jeffrey John of the Church of England was slated to speak about it on BBC Radio. In his view, the traditional doctrine of the Atonement, in which Jesus takes the punishment for the sins of humankind, so that, when we acknowledge that he has done so, and submit our lives to him, we can be forgiven and live eternally with God, "makes God sound like a psychopath". Instead, he suggests that Christ was crucified merely to share in our suffering.
If that's all Christ has to offer us on the cross, it doesn't give us much hope. If he just hung there and died so that God could say, "There, there, I understand how much it hurts," I don't think I'd be all that grateful. I'd rather have a God and a Savior who could really do something about the mess we're in, and fortunately, that's what we've got, because of the Atonement.
People who see God and Christ in this way--people who deny the Atonement--necessarily have a vision of God as a weak God. This is because they're saying that the Bible got it wrong all these years when it described Christ's death on the cross as paying for our sins. So that must mean that God was not powerful enough to make sure that the Bible got written correctly. Unfortunately for him, it ended up written wrong and was misunderstood for all these long centuries, and he just wasn't able to inspire the writers to get it put right. But now, at last, people have come along who really do know what is right--they know that the Atonement is not true! This implies that we are fortunate to be living in a time when there are really intelligent people who at last know the truth. In fact, God should be grateful to these people who can finally correct the Bible and do what he has been unable to do all these years.
Of course, I disagree with this point of view. So let me attempt to answer some of the arguments that have been made against the Atonement.
1. Argument 1: God wants to kill us because we wronged him. Why is it that God is supposed to be more merciful than we are, yet almost none of us wants to kill those who wrong us? Answer: God isn't out to kill us. This is stating the problem the wrong way. Here's the right way: God is out to keep us from dying eternally. The problem is that God is utterly, completely good, and evil cannot exist where he is. Once we have sinned, we are tainted with evil. Evil cannot live forever with God; it has to die, because it cannot be where God is. However, God loves us and wants us to be with him, and he is so merciful that he has worked out a way to make that happen, via the Atonement. God, as Jesus, takes the consequence--death--of sin, and we are counted as good if we accept what Jesus did for us.
2. Argument 2: God's killing his own son makes him the ultimate child abuser. Answer: This separates God and Jesus too much. God and Jesus are both separate and the same, as part of the mystery of the Trinity. Because God and Jesus are the same, God himself died for us when Jesus died. Moreover, Jesus did it freely, and not under compulsion. Jesus chose to die for us because he loves us and wants us to be with him forever.
3. Argument 3: Jesus' suffering isn't sufficient because it's not the worst suffering the world has ever seen; other people have suffered more. Answer: It's not the degree of suffering, it's who suffered. Jesus wasn't just a man, he was God. If God takes our punishment, it has been taken to an infinitely greater degree than if it were taken by a mortal. But also the degree of suffering must be greater than any suffering any other person has ever endured. At the moment when Jesus bore all the accumulated guilt and shame of our past, present, and future sins, he was separated from God's love, and that is suffering that is magnitudes beyond what anyone else has ever undergone.
4. Argument 4: It doesn't make sense that nobody is able to be perfectly good and that all people need salvation by God; why should all people be sinful and none be good? Or at least, aren't there some sins that don't need atoning for, that wouldn't keep a person out of heaven? Answer: God apparently didn't want perfect robots, preferring us to have free will. Thus we were left free to sin. But this is a mystery, and I assume that God's mind is bigger than mine, so I don't pretend to understand why we inevitably sin. But as for there being some sins that aren't so bad, and that shouldn't keep us out of heaven, I like what I heard our pastor Scott Dudley say once. He suggested thinking about what heaven would be like if people were let in with the sin that you think isn't too bad. Suppose you thought that irritability wasn't so bad and shouldn't keep you out of heaven. Would it still be heaven if irritable people were there? Maybe for some thick-skinned people it wouldn't be so bad, but for some others it might make it hell. Besides, all sin is a grave problem to God, who is perfectly good, and to whom we owe thanks for everything good in creation. When we commit even little sins, we repay God's goodness with evil, and by doing evil, we work against his good will for creation.
5. Argument 5: The Atonement requires a view of God as an angry, bloodthirsty God. Answer: Again, the Atonement is not something that God did because he's out for blood. It's true that sin makes God angry, but not in a bloodthirsty way. God is angry with sin because of the hurt that it causes people and his creation. Sin causes death, and God doesn't like death. So, to rob death of its victims, and give us a chance to be with him forever, God provided the Atonement. All we have to do is acknowledge what he did for us. He has made it very easy for us. Rather than being a bloodthirsty punisher, because of the Atonement, God is actually the most tender, merciful, loving God that can be imagined. (Of course, we want to respond to this love by obedience and service, but that's another part of the story.)
As I've said above, it is predictable that the Atonement should be targeted for disposal, since the doctrine of personal sin is also unpopular now among many people. This is a pity, because when we don't acknowledge our own sin, we miss out on being forgiven by God. And forgiveness is a beautiful and precious thing.
I thank God for the Atonement. Because of it, I will have life forever with God.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
