An All-awful God

Hello All,

Over the years, and not just recently, it has been becoming more and more apparent that today's average person who professes faith in Christ is in a place of disadvantage if they don't understand at least in part how the beliefs of the Christian faith were transferred from one generation to the next over the centuries.  Some beliefs have been true and good; others very early on took the understanding of God as revealed in Jesus and to the apostles (for they had to work through many misunderstandings themselves) to some very wrong and unChristlike places.  In other words, not every belief one hears on sell from a pulpit is in line with the person of Jesus and how his earliest followers understood words like "believe", "repent", "salvation", "justice", just to name a few.  Even those who retort "I read the Bible for myself" are tragically ignorant of the fact that they're reading an Ancient Near East document two millenia separated from the culture in which it was written.  Sure, you "read the Bible for yourself," but you're also using a western, American lens which has centuries of teachings that just are not in line with the intent of the original authors and the life of God revealed in Christ.

Dr. Brad Jersak writes about the one western theologian, Augustine, who, unbeknownst to the majority of Christians, has given us his interpretation of God's person and nature that is not consistent with the revelation of himself in Christ.

"According to Canadian scholar, Ron S. Dart, Augustine took a position at times quite at odds with the Alexandrian Christianity of Clement and Origen. It is in Augustine that notions such as election, double-predestination, God’s sovereignty, just war and God’s willing and choosing reach a place and pitch that has much in common with the God of Biblical Judaism. …[We see] in Augustine the return to a willing, choosing sovereign God, not bounded by goodness or justice. Such a God could and would use his freedom to elect whom he willed for salvation and whom He willed for damnation. This is not a god [we can] truly trust."

In other words, combine the idea of God as all-powerful with the idea he is all-willful without the lens of Jesus' life of goodness and mercy, and you'll end up with an all-awful god who is not good and who does what he wants.  That god is not for you, but only for himself.

It's important to know the history of the church and how we came to believe what we believe.

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy