Judge Jesus: "Full of Himself?

Answering a question on Quora:

Why is Jesus so full of himself that he would condemn good loving peaceful people to an eternity in a burning lake of fire that doesn't worship him as a god?

First off, you’re not really “full of yourself” if you really are “all that.” Jesus is “all that.” If you understood the unimaginable precision of the constants of physics required to keep the universe from collapsing or exploding, you’d be just beginning to understand the greatness of God the Son. If you understood the virtual impossibility of the chain of events beginning with the formation of the right types of amino acids all having the same geometries, forming the right proteins, forming the right components that enable self-replication of RNA and DNA, and the half-gigabyte of quaternary-encoded information that enables the duplication of that environment (as well as itself) in even the simplest hypothetical biological organism, you would be just beginning to grasp how great God the Son is. He is “all that.” He is all that by nature, He is all that by virtue of being your Creator, and He is all that by virtue of the price He paid to secure your potential redemption.

Second, if you grasped the utter perfection and holiness of God the Son, you would never pretend that there’s such a thing as “good” people, This error normally results from judging people relative to ourselves or from judging ourselves relative to other imperfect people, rather than judging relative to God’s standard. What, you think your “good” outweighs your bad? Do you really think you can pay off your debts with what you already owe to your Creator? What, you think you’re perfect? You’ve never done anything wrong? Now who’s full of himself?!

Third, the unholiness of man and the holiness of God’s presence cannot coexist. The unholiness of a human would defile and insult an utterly righteous and holy God, and the glory of God would be unbearable to an unholy, unregenerated human. Neither could stand the other! Hell is not a problem, but rather, a solution.

Fourth, saying that not worshiping Christ as God sends people to hell is like saying one link in a chain suspends the load. It’s a flawed focus on a single symptom. God provided a means of redemption and regeneration. He offers it as a gift. Refusing that gift is the ultimate sin; it is a sin against oneself. But nobody goes to hell for that sin alone; it is merely one among many.

Hell was created for Lucifer and the angels who followed him in rebellion against God. We are born as citizens of Lucifer’s kingdom, and we all ratify that with by breaking God’s commandments. God’s gift can regenerate us so we gain citizenship in God’s kingdom. If we are so full of ourselves that we fail to receive that gift, we have only ourselves to blame.

Fear of hell is not a wrong reason to receive the gift and then worship God. But there is a better reason. God is good. In fact He is the ultimate standard of goodness. He not only gave us life, but also, at His own expense, created the means for our forgiveness, redemption, and regeneration. He balanced justice and love by paying a price that would have destroyed any mere human. In His kindness, He freely offers that to each of us.

When we rebel against physical laws, we pay a price. The price of rebelling against gravity by walking off a cliff is paid when you hit the bottom. You have only yourself to blame. Likewise, there is a moral law. If we fail to receive the gift of redemption, we will hit the bottom in hell. And how much more accountable will be those who actively reject the gift.

You can reframe the consequences to shift the blame to the One who enforces the law. You may rage against Him for all eternity. But in all honesty, you will have only yourself to blame. 

Copyright 2021 Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use. Please cite sources when copying.

Benevolent Hell

Answering a question on Quora:

Is there anything benevolent about hell, no, right?

Yes, wrong.

First, consider the question’s two non sequiturs.

A. Taken literally, the question assigns moral significance to hell. However, hell is merely a place. In itself, it is neutral. Saying, “no, right?” is like saying that the law of gravity is evil because a tourist stood too close to the edge of a waterfall. Any moral significance derives not from the existence of hell, but from how it is used. In other words, whether it is benevolent or not depends on whether it is used justly or unjustly.

B. Whether hell is used at all by a human is like the tourist and the waterfall. The tourist can use the trail to walk away, and the human can use the Way God provided to walk away from a sentence of hell. The Way (John 14:6) is available to all. An intellectually honest person will realize that any fault, any lack of benevolence, must be assigned on the basis of the answer to this question: If there is a lack of benevolence, who is responsible, the One who provides the way of escape, or the one who decides to ignore the law of justice? 

Ignoring the non sequiturs, consider the question itself.

Violating God’s laws insults infinite God and disrespects His plans for us to have relationship with Him. Would God be benevolent to Himself if He ignored such insult and allowed unredeemed sinners to defile His presence?

Let’s take an extreme case: When Hitler’s Dr. Joseph Mengele dissected people alive, would it have been benevolent to Mengele’s victims if God ignored justice?

Now let’s take the case of people who use their judgment about hell as a rationalization for refusing God’s gift of redemption. In essence, they refuse to be rescued from a sentence of punishment for their sins. (Rejecting God and His gift is merely one sin out of many.) They refuse the post-mortem transformation that would allow them to enjoy God’s presence. Would it be benevolent to force them to endure the “unapproachable light” in which God dwells (1 Timothy 6:16)?

Hell was created not for us, but for the devil and the demons. By tempting Adam to revoke his citizenship in heaven, the devil trapped all of us in his own kingdom. He triggered all the suffering and death in history, including the suffering of any human cast into hell. If God did not prepare a hell in which to punish the devil, would God be benevolent to the human race?

My conclusion is that hell is, indeed, benevolent. But by itself, it is a half-truth.

God prepared a way to resolve the tension between justice and love. He provided Himself a sacrifice sufficient to redeem us from our sins and rescue us from the consequences of justice. God the Son paid the price at His own expense. This leads to a final question that returns us to the first question: If God debased the price He paid to rescue us from hell and thus demeaned Himself, would He be benevolent to Himself?

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use. Please give credit where credit is due.

The Fairness of Hearing the Gospel

Answering a question on Quora:

If only [by] believing in Jesus can someone go to heaven, what about people who died before Jesus's birth, who have not heard about Jesus at their time? If they can all go to heaven, is that not fair for us as we have to choose which god is the right one[?]

This question requires some untangling because it makes several assumptions and implies several questions. 

The question assumes that people have been accountable for fulfilling the same requirements at all times. That is, people living before Jesus’s birth could only go to heaven if they believed in Jesus.

Actually, accountability has always been proportional. That means that a child who has no ability to grasp the requirements has no accountability. It also means that people living in ancient times were not required to know something that had not happened yet.

The question asks, If [Since] only [by] believing in Jesus can someone go to heaven…. That is terribly over-simplified. “Believing in Jesus” is a mere title or summary. When you add the details, you find that five out of six (83%) of the requirements now and in ancient times overlap.

In ancient times, the required knowledge and belief were:

• God exists; and He is just and holy.
• My thoughts and actions have made me unholy, so I cannot defile the presence of a holy God.
• My actions require a just God to punish my unholy thoughts and actions.
• God is also merciful, gracious, and loving, so He will provide a way for me to enter His presence.
• I, therefore, trust God rather than myself.

In 33 AD, God added one more detail:

• The way is Jesus’s death and resurrection. (This is enough detail for this context, although another layer of details appears when you ask questions such as, Whom and What was Jesus? and What do you mean by resurrection?)

People living before 33 AD could not know how God would create the way to enter God’s presence, so they were not accountable for knowing the how. They knew — or at least they could know — through the Old Testament commands, that they were guilty before God. Then knew through the prescribed Old Testament sacrifices that it would require lifeblood and a substitution, and that it would be a price they could not pay without themselves being destroyed. So, instead of trusting themselves, they had to trust God.

Jesus lived, died, and rose again to create the way to enter God’s presence. The exact how was not something ancient people could know, but it is something we know. Since we know the how, we are accountable for following it.

Imagine being on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean. Someone tells you that a helicopter is hovering overhead, rescuing passengers.

• If you do not believe the ship is sinking, you will drown.
• If you decide to swim 2,000 miles to the nearest shore, you will drown.
• If you look at the helicopter and then return to your room, you will drown.
• If you believe them intellectually but do not let them hoist you up into the helicopter, you will drown.
• If you believe in the helicopter but insist on getting to it your own way, you will drown.

The question focuses on the way of escape, which is trusting that God paid our penalty. In a sense, failing to use that way of escape can be blamed for going to hell. But that is simplistic. The sinking ship represents our unholy thoughts and actions. Drowning represents going to hell. Failing to put faith in Christ’s actions is just one more unholy failure. A sinner does not go to hell for any single moral crime (although one is enough), but for a lifetime of moral crimes.

God sends people to hell for their sins. People send themselves to hell by failing to follow the way of escape that God created.

As for having to choose the right God, all men, always,  have "had to choose the right God." Only one God deals honestly with the problem of sin and justice. For example, when Islam's god forgives, he does so at the expense of satisfying justice. Only the Judeo-Christian God satisfies both justice and love.

The question ends by asking about fairness. Fairness is a relative concept. It is a question that children ask when they don’t get what they greedily desire. “Johnny got a gift he didn’t earn, so it’s unfair if I don’t get a gift.” If there is unfairness, it is created by us. We are the ones making the choice to repent and trust Christ or to reject God’s way.

From God’s perspective, “fairness” would have been making Jesus the political ruler over all earth 2,000 years ago instead of letting the Innocent One take the wrath the guilty deserve. Fairness would be letting all humans go to hell.

Since Jesus created a way to be saved from hell, fairness is allowing us to choose our own fates. Fairness to ourselves would be responding according to our knowledge of the way, living accordingly, and passing that knowledge along.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Assuming credit is given where credit is due, permission granted for non-remunerated use.

Everlasting Rage in Hell

Answering a question on Quora:

In Matthew 25:30, what does gnashing of the teeth mean?

The Parable of the Talents begins in Matthew 25:14. The word gnashing appears at the parable's end, verse 30, describing hell as being a place of outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

This question brings out a point that most people miss. Most people focus on weeping as a sign of sorrow, regret, or pain. The term, gnashing of teeth, ought to turn that around.

The Bible usually defines its own terms. We can determine the meaning of gnashing from Acts 7. Shortly after the beginning of the Christian church, the religious authorities who ruled Jerusalem put Stephen, a deacon in the church, on trial for preaching that Jesus of Nazareth was Messiah. Stephen’s defense demonstrated his innocence and showed that the rulers were the guilty ones who had murdered Jesus.

This infuriated the rulers. It says in Acts 7:54, On hearing this, the members of the Sanhedrin were enraged, and they gnashed their teeth at him. Then they mobbed him, dragged him out of the city, and stoned him to death.

Literally, to gnash your teeth means to make a biting, chewing, or clenched motion with your jaw. My dad did this in his sleep. It was loud! We called it grinding his teeth. The same gesture, done in anger by the Jewish rulers, was probably like a dog baring his teeth, biting at the air, and making hostile growling noises.

So the lesson of this phrase in Matthew 25 is that hell is not merely a place of pain. It is also a place of rage. Those who hate God now will forever consume themselves with the same hate. Even if flames, darkness, or worms are metaphors, being locked into overwhelming grief and rage, consuming you from within without relief or escape, is a horror that should motivate any Christian to pray for, love, and share the gospel with everyone they meet. 

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Free for non-remunerated use, but please give credit where credit is due.

Sin In the Spiritual Realm

People think they will be accountable only for their actions. They act surprised when you tell them that lust and hatred are adultery and murder in the heart, respectively. Yet everyone can finish the quote, "Man looks on the outward appearance, but...."

God is Spirit, so He observes not only the physical dimensions, but also the spiritual dimensions. Our thoughts are events in the spirit dimensions; so to God, they are just as real as our physical actions. "But I didn't lie get out of trouble." Too late, you already did it in your heart.

If you caught yourself before you blasphemed, you still thought it before you pronounced it. God heard that thought. If you pouted because somebody else got something you thought you deserved, you committed covetousness, and God saw. If you wanted to take it, God saw that mental theft.

You might think, "If God will judge me for thinking it, I'd might as well do it." But that will merely give God a second crime to judge, plus a victim that you hurt. Do yourself a favor. If you are not going to entrust your soul to Christ, at least try not to further stoke the fires of your future pit in hell by carrying out the misdeeds that you think up.

Think not within yourself, "but I mean well." God has seen all the times you didn't mean well. Repent of your self righteousness and entrust your soul to Christ today.

The Problem of Emotional Conversions

Biblical Salvation
Evangelist John Nordstrom
AAA Ministries:  Gospel Sowing to Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime

Biblical salvation becomes a reality when three components of the human body become interactively engaged: The mind, the heart, and the will (Romans 6:17). The gospel sower initiates the process of regeneration by delivering the doctrine of salvation into the prospect's intellect. The sower who dares pass beyond his jurisdiction and tries to also manipulate the heart, goes too far. The heart’s inner sanctum, is reserved for God alone. Truth delivered by the sower becomes a hammer in the hand of God, breaking down the fortified walls of the heart (Jeremiah 23:29). The final outcome is man’s will yielding to God’s will. True salvation takes place in the heart, not the intellect. It takes place after God has done his convicting work and not without it. God is the soul winner, not man (1 Corinthians 3:7).

There is nothing a gospel sower can do to cause the prospect to mean business with God.  The sower must focus on giving a correct gospel in an understandable way. The rest is up to God and the individual. When they die, their sincerity is between them and God.

I agree with much in the letter, but not with all. It draws a picture of intellect, heart, and will, to the exclusion of the spirit. This picture shows God pounding on the heart and the will, but ignores God giving life to the spirit and understanding to the intellect. Any Calvinist would offer tons of Scripture references that tear the letter to shreds.  (By the way, in interest of full disclosure, I triangulate somewhere above and between Arminians on my far left and Calvinists on my not-so-far right.)

Before I go on, I should point out that, while God ultimately wins souls, God delegates the privilege and duty of engaging in soul winning to believers. Somewhere, the Old Testament says, "he that wins souls is wise." Soul winning is a partnership between God and his ambassadors -- us. True soul winners give the glory to God and will one day cast their bejeweled crowns before His feet; yet it is God who places those jewels in their crowns and calls them soul winners. Therefore, I'm not following the false modesty of abandoning the term.

People sometimes claim to have had a head conversion without a heart conversion. The letter says that True salvation takes place in the heart, not the intellect.  This is false.  Both the intellect and the heart must be involved -- and the spirit, too. More often, I think, people have heart conversions without head conversions (especially in Charismatic circles). Perhaps legalistic sects such as Catholicism have will conversions without either head or heart conversions. (I'm not sure we should isolate "the will" as a separate function like intellect and heart. I think of it more as a verb -- to will -- resulting from the majority vote of the intellect, the heart, and the spirit.) The letter implies that people can even have head, heart, and will conversions based on the gospel and the emotional appeal of the soul winner, but accomplished without the work of the Spirit. Examples might include Judas in the gospels and Simon the Sorcerer in Acts.

The letter does not imply that an emotional appeal excludes the work of the Spirit. It is possible for God to quicken the sinner's spirit even if the gospel presenter includes an emotional appeal.

What a frustrating idea, that a fraction of those converted through emotional appeals are saved, and the rest are not. Between the intrusion of the world into the church and its saturation with unconverted souls, it becomes no wonder that "Christians" stand so undifferentiated from their neighbors. I must think, however, that all those false conversions represent a great lessening of coals upon those souls' heads and a great preservation of the societies in which they live.

On the other hand, might there be people who whose decision or act of will as a result of emotional appeal lead to greater things? Could the gospel with a God-prepared spirit result in an authentic conversion that lacks devotional energy because the soul winner left the person to cross the threshold alone? If we all did all things because we had the right information and the work of the Spirit upon our spirits, when would we need exhortation, encouragement, and provocation? Why would Paul and John have included such emotional appeals in their epistles? I conclude that the soul winner needs wisdom, caution, and balance (as do we all), since scriptures do not preclude the use of emotional appeal along with the preaching of the gospel.

What disadvantages do we find in false conversions? One is that false converts besmear the name of Christ when they stumble or fall away. The banner held high by remaining true converts ought to restore Christ's honor, but that brings us to the real danger. When false converts wander off, they discourage us. We feel betrayed because we put more trust in each other than we do in God. Sometimes, after times of failure, we question our own conversions because we know that things like what we did have also led to the revelation of others' false conversions. It hurts, especially when you were the person who "led them to the Lord." You wonder what you did wrong when, in truth, false conversions happen regardless of the soul winners' methods.

So we look for reasons why. In some churches that use strong emotional appeals, it's easy to blame the emotional appeal. We might conclude that all emotional appeals are wrong because the work on the heart and the will belong to God. That's an unreasonable extreme. Banning the emotional appeals makes about as much sense as banning the teaching of the gospel. After all, head-without-heart conversions are just as doomed as are heart-without-head conversions; and when false converts fall away, it hurts us just as much either way. What comes next, ban both the attempt to make the gospel plain and the attempt to appeal to the heart?

The first half of the answer lies in the wisdom to find appropriate proportions of intellectual and emotional appeals. At the same time, I'd like to acknowledge that God makes us with unique capacities. Some personalities have no capacity for emotional appeal, and it would be a mistake to force them to conduct altar calls with two dozens verses of Just as I Am at every service. Other personalities have little capacity for intellectual appeal. Let each man serve according to his gifts without rejecting others' gifts.

The second half lies in a wise response when false converts fall away. Some "false" converts are weak or misled believers who will later return, or they are believers whom God will call home prematurely for the preservation of their souls. A soul winner who judges such converts "false" takes on needless disappointment. Our disappointment indicates trust due God but misplaced in man and, even worse, in ourselves. Aside from sanctions prescribed by the Bible, we should leave judgment to God who alone sees our hearts.

Pharisaical Christians vs. Anti-Pharisees

Pharisaical Christians vs. Anti-Pharisees

By Xion
01.10.09 AT 12:45 PM
http://online.worldmag.com/2009/01/09/the-church-of-you/#comment-386607

The Church of You can refer to two forms of popular Christianity. One sees God as a celestial daddy whose role is to solve YOUR problems and make YOU feel better. The other sees God as a task master and holiness as something to be achieved by following a long list of dos and don'ts.

It is possible to stray to the left and do whatever you want ignoring God. But what few people understand is that it is also possible to stray to the right, as the Pharisees did, exalting their own righteousness over that of Christ. They celebrate their own works and traditions and operate on a system of merit, not knowing that their own righteousness is as filthy rags.

Pharisaical Christians ignore the grace of Jesus Christ. They don't know that we are accepted by God not because of anything we do, but by what Christ has done. God favors us because of the work of his Son. We are no better than anyone else.

And so, Pharisaical Christians thinking they are holier than everyone else look down on sinners and other Christians who don't measure up to their own standards. These hypocrites don't even meet their own standards, but point the bony finger of accusation against others.

These people also worship at the Church of You, sanctification being all about them and their own holiness, not the holiness of Christ.

My Reply

01.10.09 AT 9:12 PM

Most of the contributors to the referenced thread would do well to ask themselves, What is the opposite of the thing I criticize, and am I doing it? The opposite of Calvinism, for example, says, I decide to be saved and I keep myself saved when I avoid unpardonable sin. The opposite of intellectualism says, I obey the experts in my denomination like a good soldier, or I ignore doctrine, just gimme that emotional high.

By asking myself such a question, I learned something important from Xion. Yes, I easily slip into wrong attitudes about my long list of dos and don'ts. (Note to self: Add "Reject long lists of dos and don'ts" to my long list of dos and don'ts.)

Yet, it remains that those lists stem from what God reveals about human un-holiness. For example, if fornication destroys holiness, then doesn't public attire that provokes sexual desire also erode holiness? In place of God's Word or centuries of application of God's commandments, I arbitrate right and wrong. So, if I burn my list of such dos and don'ts, how shall I emulate my holy Father?

You say you are saved by grace; but how will you prove it to me? How will you prove it to the lost person who just waits to spring the label of hypocrite upon you? How will you reassure yourself that it was a heart decision and not just an intellectual exercise?

The opposite of Pharisaism, toward which Xion leans in his criticism, easily leads to the fall of many. Xion should make the point, then, not that lists of dos and don'ts are "wrong;" but rather that the dos and don'ts form the vocabulary of love notes to God, written not in lip service, but in deeds.

Even people in the Church of Others can unwittingly attend the Church of You when service becomes a foundation for self-righteousness. Any strength and any pet peeve can tempt us to join the Church of You.