Category: Christian

The Wrath of God and Eternity

Our eternities rest on the choices God has given us. This life is serious business.

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(c) Can Stock Photo

(c) Can Stock Photo

This is part 3 in the series of Putting God’s Wrath in Perspective. We started by considering the fact that God is God. We are not God and really have no say in who God is or what He does. He could be nothing but wrathful, but we discover that God is, ultimately, love.

From there we discover that God’s wrath in history is employed to achieve the ends God purposes to accomplish, beginning with meting out justice, but more importantly to accomplish His ultimate purposes. His ultimate purpose is to bless the entire world and to reconcile the world to God and to mete out justice as justice is due.

This can only make sense, really, in the context of eternity. If this world is all there is, a just God would have to accomplish justice within the parameters of time. He would have to accomplish justice for each person during the life span of each person. That would be impossible to accomplish in a world in which individuals have real choice.

We tend to think of justice in terms of our own experiences. We think of justice at first instance in terms of our own lives; then we look out to the world that we know in the time in which we live. Justice is lacking in our experience – both in our own lives and in the world in which we live. In fact, if we are honest, injustice seems to be the norm.

Yet, we have this insatiable ideal and longing for a just world.

Where exactly does that come from? If justice seems so elusive in this world, why are we not simply accepting of the “way it is”? This is all we know. Why do we long for – actually insist on – something different from the injustice that is our experience?

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The Wrath of God in History

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(c) Can Stock Photo

(c) Can Stock Photo

This is part 2 of the series, Putting God’s Wrath in Perspective. In part 1, we focused on the necessary fact that, if God exists, God is God; so who can question or judge Him if He is wrathful? We are in no position to change God or judge Him. But we are told, if God is wrathful, that is not all He is because we are told that God is love. (1 John 1:14)

With that in mind, I continue this series on the wrath of God by focusing on God in the history revealed in the Bible. I want to pick that history up from the point when God found a man in (Abraham) who was inclined to hear his voice.

Whether you believe that men have evolved from neanderthals to modern intellectuals or believe in Adam and Eve, we have a natural disconnect between us and the divine. This is to be expected based on the fact that we are the stuff of time, space and matter, and God necessarily is not. In that relationship, we need God to reveal Himself to us because we don’t have the tools in our toolbox to understand a timeless, spaceless immaterial God on our own accord.

The biblical story is the story of God reaching out to mankind through people inclined to hear his voice. Abraham was such a man, and God used Abraham to reveal His self in history to mankind. God chose this man, Abraham, to be the vehicle by which he would bless all people because Abraham was inclined to hear God and respond to him.

Through Abraham and one miraculously born son, Isaac, God promised to create a people that would be as many as the stars in the sky. The Old Testament is the story of God establishing these people, though these people were difficult to manage. They grumbled and complained a lot. They didn’t understand what God was doing. They were more inclined to go in a different direction and live differently than God wanted them to live, but God made his promise to Abraham, and He would keep it.

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Warming up to the Wrath of God

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Clouds in Little Spider 2

Putting the Wrath of God in Perspective Part 1

The wrath of God has long been a source of discomfort for believers and a stumbling block for unbelievers. The subject is one step away from the question, “How can a loving God allow evil to exist in the world?” The counter punch is, “I cannot believe in a God who kills people, who wipes out innocent men, women and children.”

I am going to tackle this prickly subject in a series of writings. I have already written on the subject a number of times because it is a perplexing one.

It seems clear to me that the “answers” one finds are largely determined by orientation. A person who wants to understand will seek resolution and understanding; a person who is not interested in resolution or understanding will camp on the questions and make them rhetorical. I am writing for the person who is seeking to understand.

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Myth, Appearance and Reality

What other appearances (like the sun orbits the earth) and corresponding realities (like the earth orbits the sun) exist that we have yet to debunk or lay hold of?

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(c) Can Stock Photo

(c) Can Stock Photo

Some of the great breakthrough realizations in human history are that the earth is not flat, that the earth is round and rotating, that the Sun does not revolve around the earth, that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and the earth along with other round bodies in space rotate around each other kept in correlation with each other by gravitational pull. These realities are different than the appearances.

We appear to be standing on a stationary earth that, for all we can see, is flat. The Sun appears to rise, cross the sky and set every day. It is no great leap to understand that the sun might move around the earth, though the perception of a flat earth persisted into modern times. The moon seems to move around the earth in the same way the sun seems to move around the earth, but one does move around the earth and the other doesn’t.

Although we have known the realities for centuries, we still talk in terms of the appearances. We talk about the Sun rising and setting. We describe the phenomena as sunrise and sunset. Someone unfamiliar with our colloquialisms might hear us speak and think that we are ignorant of the truth.

The appearances have a strong hold on us. So strong that they persist in our language and how we describe things on a day to day basis. Those appearances stubbornly refuse to leave our everyday speaking patterns.

What other appearances and corresponding realities exist that we have yet to debunk or lay hold of? Continue reading “Myth, Appearance and Reality” →

Muslims, Christians and God

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(c) Can Stock Photo

(c) Can Stock Photo

The Wheaton College incident involving a professor who put on a bourka and professed that Christians and Muslims worship the same God has sparked much controversy, debate and discussion. The College has put her on paid leave and is still trying to decide her fate, having made a statement that seems fundamentally at odds with the evangelical creed to which the College subscribes.

In the United States, where minority rights are championed and “tolerance” is preached, the public consensus seems solidly in favor of the sympathetic professor.  A different sentiment prevails in the Middle East, however. “Among Muslims and Christians in the Middle East, the discussion is not over whether we worship the same God,” one Arab Christian said, “but rather Muslims challenging us that we worship one God at all.” [1]

If a similar controversy were to arise in a predominantly Islamic country, the atmosphere would likely be much different. Debate would likely be replaced by one-sided polemics, public spectacle and, perhaps, the death of the “heretic”. But, the differences in cultural response do not address the fundamental question: Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?

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