I was invited to be interviewed on the Podcast, Intelligent Christianity. This is the audio from that podcast. If youd like to listen to more episodes, you can find the show on iTunes, here: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=319215885
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--the first people were given one commandment: “don't eat from the tree” There are thirty commandments punishable by death, why does God, if we couldn't follow one, believe we will follow the others?
ReplyDeleteHe doesn't. The New Test clearly says that the commandments are a curse, and that in Christ they are rewritten: 1 Love God and 2 love your neighbour. These we are able to do, because the commandments aren't “Love God without flaw” or “Love your neighbour perfectly”. Instead the formulation is what it is because now God has become one of us.
In the Old T God and humanity are separated by the state of the human heart. The ten commandments, then, are NOT God's idea, but are the expression of our consciences when we are in this state of separation. The stone tablets are OUR hearts of stone, the commandments are OUR knowledge of good and evil (gotten from the fall in the garden). They are our inherited “curse” if you like. When God passes Moses by on the mountain, He shields Moses' eyes so that Moses cannot see God. (contrast this to Jesus' “Touch the wounds in my hand and in my side”)
Through Christ we are given the rewritten law, and the new conscience: Love God and your neighbour as your self.
The dialogues Jesus has with the scribes and Pharisees are informative. They (Scribes and Pharisees) are the Old Law: uninspired, unjust, hard-hearted, self-justifying, proud and arrogant. Jesus exemplifies the new Law and covenant, and prefers the company of sinners, to whom He shows unfailing willingness to forgive. His mercy is without limits. He also gives us the Way to this new covenant/new conscience: His life, the life of being an open channel through which God's love may pour into the world. The life of giving and forgiving – the life that turns completely away from that heart of stone.
Now, in the Old T it was not adherence to the commandments which justified people, but faith (Abraham's faith was reckoned to him as righteousness). King David had Uriah killed in battle so that he could have Uriah's wife, Bathsheeba. He was faithful to God and was forgiven. The psalms written by David are illustrative of a tormented soul wrestling with his sinfulness. That wrestling is not God's doing. Nor is the torment from God, but it is the nature of the human heart.
So, you have completely ignored the fact of the possibility of atonement. Further, the Old T prophets clearly express God's disinterest with sacrifices as He instead wants a contrite and grateful heart.
“Just like if I gave my daughter a trigonometry test I wouldn't expect her to be able to pass it”.
ReplyDeleteNo, because the commandments are such a test only by our choice. The Pharisees clearly face such a test, St Peter, even with his denial – three times – of knowing Christ, will not. Why? What's the difference? Because the pharisees are attempting to live their faith as self-justification. They know only the law, they don't know God. They are religion at its worst:devoid of any genuine spiritual connectedness, and this is why they fail to recognize the “light” when it is there in front of them.
We make ourselves able to receive God or not. We decide if we are good receptors of God or not. This is the incredible gift and power God has given to humanity. If we were sheep in the literal sense, the sacrifice on the cross would be meaningless and unnecessary. We are His by our choice. We have been given immense dignity by this ability.
To say that God has cursed us with the commandments is to not know yourself.
“God said to kill homosexuals”
ReplyDeleteA great example of God interacting with the hardness of the human heart! Very similarly Jesus points out that Moses gave couples the ability to divorce because of their “hardness of heart” but that in reality couples become “one flesh”. We talk of God as the “light”, and it's an apt analogy. We know from physics that light has its final form (wave or particle) based upon the way it's detected. Clearly, in the sundry cases where God is commanding that this or that people be killed, we are seeing that same mystery played out in the history of God's revelation. For the Old T peoples had knowledge of God in terms of judgement and wrath. They were the “detectors” of that kind of God. Did God suddenly grow up with Jesus' birth – or did we? For Jesus says to the adulteress “go and sin no more” when the Law clearly says “stone her”. Wasn't Jesus, right there, showing how the commandments of love are greater?
“God created an impossible law and punished people for failing to do the impossible, unless they believe in His loophole.”
ReplyDeleteNo. God created a universe in which His greatest creation is freedom. The story of the Fall in the Garden of Eden describes the truth of our relationship with God. That relationship exists as it is because God foremost preserves the dignity and primacy of our freedom. The law (ie.conscience, i.e. The Ten Commandments) is what remains of justice when we choose to remain separated from God. Freedom and justice are completely dependant parts of our existence: one cannot adhere to us without the other. So we are condemned by our own gift when we refuse God's mercy. God showed us the fullness of that gift AND His mercy by becoming one of us and enduring all the horrors that this life can present. He showed that He was not above accepting our state of being.
Jesus, and His story, is not a loophole, it is a proposal, if you will. It is a marriage proposal where we become “one flesh” with Him.
“He damned people in Hell for failing to do the impossible”
ReplyDeleteWell, it's actually much better put that people damn themselves in Hell for failing to do the very possible. After all, in order for choosing God to be a meaningful thing, we have to have some say in our destiny. Rejecting God is to choose ourselves as 'god', in a way. We are left with our limited ability to control events around us and the belief that we are sufficient. However, to choose God means to accept the events around us as part of our journey to the Promised Land, and that God will accept us as sufficient. We entrust God this way, and He rewards our trust.
Now, interestingly, in the Catholic faith (which I profess) at least, the “story” isn't entirely necessary, since we believe that God can judge the human heart perfectly, and that those who follow the commandment to “love” are acceptable to God even if they have never had access to the story. God only expects reasonable things of us. However, “those to whom much has been given,much will be expected”
“He's providing a loophole for a problem He's caused. Why doesn't He just change the Law?”
ReplyDeleteBetter yet, how about we all just wake up tomorrow and we are equivalent to the Risen Christ? Why not? Because if God did this He would leave out our agency in creation. We would therefore, by necessity be lesser beings. We would not be those who chose the difficult path – the cross – in order to become like Him. We would, in essence, be sheep – cookie cutter creations. God has given us co-agency in the creation of our final selves, and this world, as it is, is the perfect path to it
“If you fail on one itty bitty iota of it (the law) you are going to be damned to hell”
ReplyDeleteIn saying this you've missed the first basic point taught to any Christian: that Christ died for our sins, and we are forgiven.
“When He created Hell it was for the purpose of burning the majority of humanity for eternity.”
ReplyDeleteHell is the choice made here on earth for radical separation from God. It is the choice of taking that creative freedom we have been given and making other things “gods”. It is really a place of our own creation However, I do believe that, if there is burning and “weeping and gnashing of teeth” that the agency of that is other spiritual beings whose mercy we will be at because we have rejected God and placed ourselves in separation from Him.
In Genesis God says “Let there be light” that the light was good and that the darkness could not overcome it. It does not say that God made the darkness. God, we believe, made the agents who chose darkness by rejecting God. They used their freedom to reject God and thus created their darkness. Perhaps if only one created being had ever rejected God then there would be no “eternal fire” only the regret of eternal separation
“tormented in the presence of holy angels and in the presence the lamb” as an argument that God is in hell, or that Hell is in God's presence, or that God enjoys human suffering.
ReplyDeleteThis (Revelation 14:10) has to do with the final judgement. For darkness not to overcome the light there must, I guess, be some attempt to do so. I don't know what that battle will be like, nor does anyone else. It doesn't necessitate God is present, watching in hell, and that hell is His idea. Perhaps this passage refers to the treatment of those beings (spirits) who have had some damning influence on those who have gone to hell. That makes as much sense as anything.
“The rich man and Lazarus” from Luke's Gospel. As an argument that Heaven and Hell are co-existent.
ReplyDeleteThe Catholic doctrine is that all the dead before Christ went to Hell, and that the saints went to the “arms of Abraham”, a place in Hell where they were...safe(?). That on the cross, Christ died and literally “descended to the dead” or Hell, and released the saints from this captivity and opened heaven to them. The story that Christ tells would have been the only thing that made sense to ancient Israelites as they had no concept of Heaven
I have to say, without any irony intended, that what you do here is God's work. the truth is what it is, and can stand the test. If you do anything, you strengthen those of us who believe by forcing us to articulate our faith.
ReplyDeleteGod bless you, and I hope you continue!
(I used to post comments on this blog under the name michael)