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.

Jesus: Only Way to God the Father

Answering a question on Quora: 

Where in the Bible does it say the only way to the Father is through the Son?

New Testament

John 14:6

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Acts 4:12

And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among mankind by which we must be saved.

Note that approaching the Father requires “being saved.” This means that God must do what we cannot: redeem, regenerate, justify, and sanctify. Since the Son provided the means of redemption, it is not too much to ask that we acknowledge that the Son is whom He is and receive the gift as a free gift.

Old Testament

Psalm 2:11–12

Worship the LORD with reverence
And rejoice with trembling.
Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way,
For His wrath may soon be kindled.
How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!

Additional Evidence

The relationship between the Son and the Father is defined explicitly in the New Testament. Old Testament clues are there, but relevant passages are better interpreted in hindsight, that is, in light of the New Testament.

The first clue is in the opening lines of the Bible, where God says, let us make…. People who deny that the one God used creative power over space-time to experience it as three Persons frequently explain away “us” as a “royal we.” However, the literal interpretation is reinforced by the plural, “Gods,” in In the beginning Gods created the the heavens and the Earth. And the unity of the plural Gods is reinforced by the singular number of made. The best interpretation is that one God exists in space-time as three Persons in communication with each other.

Another clue, less clear in the Old Testament, is that, while God remains in heaven and unseen by any human, He also walked the earth in the appearance of a human. This can be traced from the Garden of Eden, through Abraham’s entertainment of strangers, to God’s revelation of Himself to Moses. The earthly liaison, so to speak, gave Himself a descriptive name, I AM — as contrasted with all other gods, who are not. He chose this name for our sakes but does not actually need one. No previous god existed with the authority to name Him, and no other god exists from whom He needs to be distinguished.

(The Hebrew word translated I AM and the LORD is YHWH. Note that the word has no vowels and the pronunciation was lost a few centuries before Jesus was born. Anybody who makes a big show about its pronunciation “knows” more than what the facts establish.)

To prevent desecration of God’s “name,” translators began a tradition of translating YHWH as the LORD (in capital letters). This is the God whom all Jews and Christians aspire to know.

In the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth reveals Himself to be YHWH, the I AM (John 8:58), the Word who was God, who was in the beginning with God, and through whom all created things were created (John 1:1–3, Colossians 1:16–17). In this light, passages such as Isaiah 9:6 make sense:

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

If you aspire to know the Lord, that is, God or God the Father, you aspire to know the Son. If you know the Son, you know the Father as well (John 14:7–11), but you cannot know the Father if you reject that the Son is who He says He is (John 8:9).

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

God Shoulda Created an All-Good Universe

An Absurd Atheist Remedy for the Problem of Evil

Many atheists argue that, if God has foreknowledge, He should have created a universe in which evil would not exist. The argument has multiple non sequiturs.

• Evil is not a thing that "exists." As darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of good and therefore the rejection of God. 
  
  
• The argument assumes that preventing His rejection (i.e., creating a vacuum that constitutes “evil”) would have been better than what He did create. 
  
  
• Using the word “better” makes a moral judgment based on either the atheist's mere personal preferences, which have no authority, or a standard the atheist rejects, God's goodness. So the atheist has no foundation on which to say one thing would be "better" than another.
  
  
• The argument assumes that no higher purpose exists that justifies God's allowance of His rejection. For example, it ignores that, in an all-good-always universe, love, mercy, and grace would be meaningless, and no creature would, by nature, be worthwhile for God to have a relationship with.
  
  
• In an all-good-always universe, only one option exists: God's perfect will. Any other choice would be non-compliance and, therefore, evil. If non-compliance with the perfect were an option, evil would happen. But if evil cannot happen, only one option exists. Thus, choice would be non-existent. Love, mercy, grace, and any other good would be meaningless because they would be forced. In fact, love, mercy, and grace would not exist because they would not be needed.
  
  
• The argument assumes that temporary material existence, not an everlasting spiritual existence that takes into account things done during material existence, is the correct courtroom in which to judge God’s plans. 

The argument is often accompanied by a claim that God created imperfection or evil. That is like saying that if I build a house and my client rejects me by vandalizing the house, I made a vandalized house. Like the main argument, it’s logically absurd. 

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use. For your own conscience's sake, please give credit where credit is due. (You do know what remunerated means, don't you?)

Astounding Magnitude of Adam's "Little" Sin

Do you think the choice by Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was a minor thing?

On the surface, their offenses consisted of disobeying God by lusting for and then seizing something forbidden -- a mere piece of fruit. 

First, that violates "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal. That's three of the Ten Commandments right off the bat. But we can go a bit deeper.

Hebrew use of "to know" means to personally, intimately experience something; for example, Adam knew his wife, and she bore a son. So to know evil is to know it experientially: that is, to commit evil. Thus, choosing knowledge of good and evil means choosing to participate in evil.

Someone has asked, what's wrong with wanting to be like God? You should bear in mind, first, that it was the serpent who suggested that knowledge of good and evil  would make them like God. Be careful whom you choose as a source! But was the desired result really to be like God?

While God understood evil and had performed the good and just act of punishing evil when He put down Lucifer's rebellion, God, being all-good, did not "know" (participate in) evil. The serpent lied: Having the knowledge of good and evil would not have made them like God.

Had they wanted to be like God, with no other context, it might not have mattered. But that is NOT all it was. 

• Believing the serpent's claim that they would not die, rather than God's warning that they would, effectively called God a liar, which is bearing false witness.
• Believing God wanted to keep knowledge to Himself calls Him selfish, which is bearing false witness against the One who is Truth and Love.
• Doing so constituted violation of the commandment to love God.
• Setting up the serpent and themselves as superior arbiters of truth constituted idolatry.
• Rebelling against God's authority constituted taking His name in vain (i.e., treating it as worthless).
• Desiring what belonged to God alone constituted the first act of covetousness. 
• Taking the fruit (it does not say it was an apple) was stealing. 
• Dishonoring their Creator was a variation on failing to honor one's parents. 
• The sin brought about their spiritual death and made physical death inevitable. It passed their deaths down to billions of descendants. That is, at best, manslaughter; and at worst, mass murder. 

And I haven't even gone into the even weightier secondary consequences, namely the Fall of all creation, its effects, and the cost imposed on God to redeem us from that Fall.

Please explain how taking the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil could be NOT a big deal! 

One more thing. Adam and Eve could have gone to the Tree of Life before God pronounced judgment. But they didn't have the faith to do so. Most of the world follows that same pattern. A metaphorical Tree of Life is available to all in the cross of Christ. Tragically, only a few turn to Him before it is too late.

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use as long as credit is given where credit is due.

God's Commandments Don't Change; Their Jurisdiction Does

Answering a question on Quora:

Do God’s commandments change?

The quick answer is no. However, you need to define which commandments. If you mean the Ten Commandments and hundreds of other commandments given through Moses (the “Mosaic Law”), then they had limited jurisdiction, and their proper usage is not what most people think.

Which commandments?

God has given more than one set of commandments:

• Commands to Adam and Eve to tend the Garden, name the animals, have children, and abstain from eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
  
  
• Commands to Noah to build an ark and take shelter in it.
  
  
• Commands to Pharaoh to free Israel.
  
  
• Commands to Moses to follow certain instructions to deliver, feed, and water Israel.
  
  
• Commands to love God, love your neighbor, worship God alone, and abstain from certain generic sins (the “Ten Commandments”).
  
  
• Hundreds of specific civil and personal commands in support of the Ten Commandments, taken together as “the Mosaic Law.”
  
  
• A command to believe in Jesus of Nazareth for redemption instead of trusting self-righteousness.
  
  
• A command for followers of Jesus to love one another.

By “God’s commandments,” most people mean the Ten Commandments and may mean the Mosaic Law.

Different Jurisdictions, Different Commandments

The Mosaic Law (or “The Law”) was given to ancient, pre-Messianic Israel. The Law was not given to gentiles (non-Hebrews), and it does not apply to followers of the Anointed One (Hebrew: Messiah; Greek: Christ), Jesus of Nazareth. 

Not every commandment applies to everybody. For example, a commandment to a priestly descendant of Aaron to sprinkle the blood of a sacrifice on things in the Temple’s Holy of Holies obviously would not apply to a jeweler from the tribe of Benjamin. 

Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law [Judaism], so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law none of mankind will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes knowledge of sin.

Jesus used this technique many times. For example, who loves God with all their heart, from birth to death? Who has never broken the commandments against adultery, murder, and coveting in their hearts?

Following the Ten Commandments is profitable, but not for redemption. Redemption comes only through trusting God’s gift through Christ.

Thus, we have the commandment, This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.

The New Testament is emphatic.

Knowing that a person is not justified by works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the Law; since by works of the Law no flesh will be justified.

The change in jurisdiction happened because, as others have answered, Christ fulfilled the Law. The Law is also called a Covenant. Today, we would use the word contract. A contract becomes ineffective when either of two conditions happen:

• One party fails to fulfill its obligations. Then the penalties become effective. At a national level, this happened when Israel rejected her Messiah and God destroyed national Israel, including its Temple, in 67–70 AD. At an individual level, it happens to every Hebrew who rejects Messiah Jesus.
  
  
• The obligations of the Law have been fulfilled. Jesus fulfilled God’s side of the Law by fulfilling the prophecies and the symbols (especially the sacrifices).

From a religious angle, the Law itself did not change. However, the applicability of the Law changed. Hebrews 7 explains that when the priesthood changes, a new law replaces the old Law. This is like when the United States of America formed and its Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation, and the states had to rewrite the laws that they had when they were nations and, before that, colonies.

Under the Mosaic Law, a change in priesthood occurred. The Priesthood was given to Aaron, of the tribe of Levi, and to his descendants. Correspondingly, a change in the law occurred when God gave the Mosaic Law. In the same way, when God made Jesus a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, God gave a new Law. The new Law was not mere written commandments, but it was the Spirit of the law, written upon the hearts of those who entrust their redemption to Christ.

"But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

Underlying this, the Mosaic Law cannot save, but rather presents a mirror to show us our condemnation. For, Cursed is every man that continues not in all the words of this law to do them…. In contrast, the “Perfect Law of Love and Liberty” written on the hearts of those who bend their knee to Messiah Jesus shows how God has already delivered them from condemnation. God makes believers a kingdom of priests, Jesus being the High Priest; and with that, applies a new, better Law.

The Lawful Use of the Law

Some may object that Mosaic commandments were repeated in the New Testament. This is true, but it does not contradict anything written here. Two jurisdictions can have the same laws. Florida and Arizona both have laws against murder, but a Floridian would not refrain from murder because it's Arizona's law. The fact that Arizona has a law against murder does not mean that the Floridian is under Arizona law. Similarly, the fact that the New Testament condemns murder does not mean that Christians are under the Mosaic Law.

It is a common mistake to apply commandments given to ancient Israel to people living under the New Testament’s Perfect Law of Love and Liberty. For example, many insist on resting on the Sabbath (which is Saturday). Others say that baptism replaces circumcision, and people must be baptized to go to heaven. They focus on human merit instead of on the merit of Christ’s sacrifice.

The Mosaic Law still has applicability. People who think they will be good enough to go to heaven have to face that Law. In evangelism, it may be necessary to review the Law so people test themselves. Jesus did that often. Notice that the closer you look at any commandment, the more detail you see. Here’s a sample, using just four of the Ten Commandments:

• Have you honored your father and mother? Have you always obeyed them? This includes not just doing what you were told. Honoring goes beyond obedience. It includes obeying without delay, eye-rolling, sarcasm, or resentment. It means actually respecting them in your heart.
  
  
• Perhaps you don’t think you’ve committed adultery. But if you have had sex before marriage, you have. In fact, since God is Spirit and we have spirits, what we do in our thoughts are just as real to God as our physical actions are. So if you have looked at someone with sexual desire, you have broken this commandment.
  
  
• You may not think you are a thief. But have you downloaded music or ‘borrowed” a cable TV connection that you should have paid for? Have you taken anything from work without returning it? Have you found something that belonged to someone else and not even tried to find the owner? Or have you even thought about taking something that was not yours?
  
  
• You probably have not killed anyone. But Jesus said that if you even hated somebody without just cause, you committed murder in your heart. And if you have even called someone a fool or empty-headed, you are dangerously close to that line.

If you have kept the Ten Commandments from the heart all your life, congratulations! You are as perfect as God! I’m being sarcastic, of course.

In evangelism, Christians want to share the good news that God offers forgiveness as a gift on the basis that Christ acted as our proxy on the cross. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

But people who think they are righteous do not realize that they need that redemption. So the “lawful use of the Law” today is to use it as a mirror so people will turn from (a) justifying their sins or (b) self righteousness, and turn to trust alone in Christ alone.

What remains to believers is to Love God, our neighbors, and our spiritual brothers and sisters. The Perfect Law of Love and Liberty fulfills the spirit of all commandments. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Believers don’t keep this commandment to redeem themselves, but rather, because God has already redeemed them.

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

Why Christians Don't Use "Jehovah" As Often

Answering a question on Quora:

Why do you rarely hear Christians who are non-Jehovah's Witnesses, referring to God as Jehovah God (or rarely even Just Jehovah) like the Jehovah's Witnesses do?

The Watchtower (the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ organization) teaches that God has a personal name, and it is Jehovah. It teaches that knowing and using God’s name is critical to being able to worship Him.

Many Christians (non-Jehovah’s Witnesses) do use the name Jehovah, but much less for several reasons. If you want a short answer, skip to the end; but if you want to learn the reasons behind the answer, keep reading.

A more complex doctrine of God requires more terms.

The Bible gives evidence that Persons called the Father, the Son (Jesus, Christ, Messiah, the Lord, the Son of Man), and the Holy Spirit are God — and yet, there is but one God. Modalists such as Oneness Pentecostals try to solve this apparent paradox by saying that God switches between personas. However, this creates problems such as when the Son and the Father speak to each other and when scriptures say the Father subjects all things to the Son except Himself. Latter Day Saints (“Mormons”) say Jesus was, like all angels, demons, and humans, a spirit-child of God the Father who will become a god of his own world on Judgment Day. This, like the Modalist god, violates the scriptures’ teaching that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. The Jewish faith denies the evidence that Jesus was divine, and many deny that He even existed. The Watchtower accepts that Jesus existed, but teaches that He was an angel, a small-g god who became Jesus of Nazareth and then became an exalted angel (again, see Hebrews 13:8).

Christians resolve the paradox by supposing that the Creator of the universe – meaning that God created not only matter and energy, but also space-time – can do anything He wishes, so long as it is good and not a logical impossibility. From the scriptures’ claims, they conclude that God used creative power to function in and experience space-time as three Persons. This Tri-unity (one God as three Persons) is a solution, not a problem. It bypasses many problems that Bible-recognizing religions face when they reject the Trinity.

As a result, to Christians, God has a more complex identity. They can speak of God in general as God, the Almighty, the Creator, etc.; or they might speak of a specific person, namely, the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. (Note that God is “Lord,” regardless of which Person you speak of; but for the sake of communication, the scriptures often distinguish the Father from the Son by calling the Father, God, and calling Christ, Lord.)

Jehovah is not God's name.

Another reason Christians do not use the term Jehovah very often is that it is not actually God’s name! God does not need a name. There are no other real gods from whom to distinguish Him. Also, no god preceded and created Him, so nobody had the authority to name Him. On the other hand, God does take many descriptive titles and names, not for His own sake, but for ours.

The name "Jehovah" started when the Israelites were enslaved in a land with many so-called gods. (You will see, a few paragraphs later, why I put "Jehovah" in scare quotes.) When God was commissioning Moses to lead the Israelites, Moses asked whom he should say was sending him. God responded, “say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" This was a functional name chosen by God, not for His own sake, but for Israel’s. He is the I AM, as contrasted with all the other gods, who ARE NOT.

Jehovah is an incorrect pronunciation

The Hebrew word translated I AM is YHWH. Note that ancient Hebrew writing had no vowels. It had only consonants.

During the 400 years before Christ, the Jews had a revival of respect for God. They became so obsessed with rules that they would not dare to pronounce YHWH. Instead, when speaking, such as when reading scriptures aloud, they substituted the name Adonai, which means Lord. Consequently, they forgot how YHWH was pronounced! By the time of Christ, it had become common practice to combine the vowels from Adonai with the consonants YHWH, which produced Yahowah or Yahweh.

Now, transliterate Yahowah to Greek, transliterate that to Latin, and transliterate that to English, and you get Jehovah. So Jehovah is, at best, a twisted pronunciation of a word whose pronunciation was lost over 2,000 years ago.

Jehovah is an obsolete transliteration

In 1611, the Authorized Version (King James Version or KJV) used the word Jehovah in some places (and LORD, in all caps, in most places) to translate YHWH. Many readers of the KJV use the word Jehovah as a name for God. But many others simply use God or Lord, and the spread of modern Bible translations that do not use the word Jehovah reinforces that trend.

Within and outside Christianity there are movements such as Hebrew Roots that make a big deal about pronouncing YHWH and Jesus with original Hebrew pronunciations. This sounds cool and may make a person feel that he has special knowledge or special reverence for God, but biblical Christians do not think there is magical power in words and pronunciations. The power is in the meaning they convey, and God is omni-lingual.

Jehovah is Jesus

There’s yet another reason Christians use the word Jehovah less often. John chapter 1 teaches that Jesus is the Word, meaning that He is the expressive member of the Tri-unity. Jesus Himself said, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” In other words, it was God the Son, before he took on the bodily form we call Jesus, who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. So, in a monumental irony, the term that the Watchtower uses to label God actually refers to the Person whose deity they deny!

Summary

Christians use the word Jehovah less than Jehovah’s Witnesses do because the Jehovah's Witnesses inflate its usage and misuse it. Christians use it even less than they used to because laymen (as contrasted with clergy) are growing in awareness that it is a descriptive label rather than a personal name, it is a bad transliteration of a word whose pronunciation has been forgotten, it is not a general label for God, it is an incorrect label for God the Father, and Christians reject the idea that words and pronunciations have intrinsic power. God is just as good a "name" for the Creator as any other.

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use (meaning, you don't make money by plagiarizing it). But please give credit where credit is due.

One Core Religion, Progressively Elaborated

Responding to questions in a thread:

One Core Religion, Progressively Elaborated

Background

Me: The “religion” of Noah and Moses was the same “religion,” handed down from Adam to Noah and from Noah to Jacob’s (“Israel’s”) twelve sons. In Egypt, most of Israel forgot those beliefs and adopted Egyptian practices. Moses merely wrote it down as God restored it and elaborated on it.

Response: Does that mean Jesus modified and changed the eternal religion by deeming everything allowed to be eaten?

Secondly, do you have a proof of your claim that it was the same religion, or is it just a conjecture?

Response

First, the trend of the “religion” of Elohim/YHWH/Jesus as defined in the Bible has a constant thread of depending on God instead of on self-righteousness, and being rewarded with enjoying a personal relationship with God. The doctrines of the “religion” developed through punctuated elaboration. That is, at various times, more details were added so that it forms a continuum, just like the education of any student. The Jewish authorities of Jesus’s time dropped out by rejecting the next layer of elaboration and the corrections that laid its groundwork.

To me, calling that process “modifying and changing” is like saying that conducting a student from sixth grade into seventh grade is “changing” his education. There is a change in the student’s stage, but the stages of the plan have been there all along. So, from the religionist’s perspective, perhaps; from the Planner’s perspective, no.

Just as some schools will put part of their students on a path toward manual vocations and others on a path toward college, God separated the descendants of Abraham from the rest of the world. The purpose of the Abrahamic path became clear when God singled out Jacob’s descendants to become Israel, a nation of priests to the world (they failed miserably) and the path through which the Redeemer would come. A special role required special policies.

The Mosaic Law had a number of purposes, among which was conveying a message about holiness. The need for holiness was symbolized, for example, by dietary regulations. However:

• The dietary regulations were part of the Mosaic Covenant (or “Law” or “contract”) between God and Israel. The Law never had jurisdiction outside of Israel (“gentiles”).
  
  
• Israel abrogated the Law through breach of contract, violating it repeatedly, ultimately by rejecting the promised Messiah.
  
  
• God abrogated the Law by fulfilling it through the Messiah (“Christ”).
  
  
• God supplanted the Law with a new covenant (“New Testament”) with simplified requirements: Trust the sacrifice of Christ for redemption instead of trusting self-righteousness; Love God; love your neighbor; and love fellow believers. The simplification was new, but it continued “the spirit of the Law” that had always existed.

The butterfly is still the same creature that it was when it was a caterpillar. When a child discards the toys of a toddler in favor of the toys of a pre-pubescent, the process of maturation is not “modified or changed.” You aren’t changing the “religion” by moving it into a more mature phase.

Second, the genealogies do not say, “X begat Y and taught him his religion, and Y begat Z and taught him his religion,” etc. However, the whole of the scriptures emphasize that beliefs are passed from generation to generation; that the beliefs God defines should be passed down; and there were generations such as Abel, Seth, and Enoch between Adam and Noah that were specifically said to walk with God. And isn’t it the hope of every parent that their child will follow their religious (or non-religions) belief?

I’m accustomed to people (specifically, atheists) who ask for “proof,” demanding unreasonable, tangible, irrefutable, complete, and constantly available evidence. Since time machines are fantasy, I’m prejudiced to say that, according to their standards, “No, there’s no proof.” But if you’re a reasonable person, I’m sure a time machine won’t be necessary. 

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated reuse. 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.

Procrastinated Salvation Due to a Fallen Gospel

Answering a post on Reddit

Prayer for an end to procrastination

Hi all, lately I've been learning about what it means to actually be a Christian. It's not just a feeling, but rather a love relationship with God. Recently I've been struggling with 3 major things and I was wondering if you would be willing to pray that God helps me overcome them (preferably quickly too):

1. Procrastination (this is probably my biggest one, because I fear that I take steps back when trying to take steps towards God because I end up feeling like I'm willing to do what God wants, but after I do this, this, and this. The thing I assume that God wants me to do is call upon His name to be saved, but I sometimes can tell that I hold out on calling His name due to the procrastination and the genuineness of my heart [4]).
2. Lust (I'm having trouble realizing that my lust has had destructive effects on me and need help realizing this in a way that will result in my salvation).
3. Going "in and out of reality" (basically zoning out or going into a sort of autopilot mode. It's like listening and watching a conversation and enjoying watching more than being a part of it).
4. The genuineness of my heart (I struggle with genuinely praying, wanting God's help, and wanting Him at times, and how this relates to the procrastination of potentially holding out on Him when it comes to calling upon His name. Sometimes I think that I hear about a problem and then assume I have it or let myself slip into that problem, so that's another thing I would appreciate prayers for: running from problems that God doesnt want me in, not to them. Thank you all so much, happy new year and merry late Christmas :). God bless you ❤

Answer

I struggle with many of the same things and do not count myself worthy to preach. And yet, we are responsible to share what we have been blessed with, so I'll offer what I have learned. It will revolutionize the way you look at the problems for which you've requested prayer.

All religions except one have, as their ultimate goal for individuals, achievement through personal merit of some form of "salvation." Many mistaken variants of Christianity, veering onto that same path, have become counterfeit "Christian" churches, denominations, or movements.

To debunk that concept, the Law given to ancient Israel through Moses proved that nobody could achieve that level of righteousness. The Mosaic Law was one Law with many points. It had several layers.

The Law is like fractals. Every time you look closer, you see more details. Each layer adds details about how to fulfill the previous layer:

1. Love God
2. Love God's creation; specifically, fellow humans
3. The Ten Commandments
4. Another 600 commandments; some being ceremonial or civil and only for ancient Israel, but many being moral.

Here's one example:

1. Love God.
2. Love God by loving your fellow humans.
3. Do not commit adultery or covet (desiring what's not yours).
4. Do not lust after someone other than your spouse because lust is adultery of the mind and covetousness. God is Spirit, so what we "do" in our spirits is just as real to Him as what we do in the material world.

Although the Law served to maintain peace between neighbors and between us and God, it served two main purpose:

• Many ceremonial elements conveyed spiritual or prophetic truths. For example, the sacrifices symbolized how Christ would bear our sins on the cross.
  
  
• The strictness of the Law showed us that we could not self-righteously justify ourselves. "Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law [specifically, ancient Israel; generally, self-righteous people], so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin." (Romans 3:19-20).

Both purposes drove a third: Instead of relying on self-righteousness, we must trust entirely the undeserved favor of God. "Now to the one who works [people who try to achieve salvation through self-righteousness], his wage [salvation] is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness" (Romans 4:4-5). So if you think you will get salvation by controlling your lust, you will never achieve it. But when you grasp how futile your efforts are and instead trust God 100%, He gives you the gift!

In other words, if you insult the Giver by trying to deserve the gift, you get neither the Giver nor the gift. But if you receive the gift as a free gift, you receive both. "For by grace you [people who have already found salvation] have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9).

This does not mean you can maintain sinful habits. The next verse says, "we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10). It makes no sense that a person would repent from sins and then embrace them.

As part of salvation, God becomes no longer your Judge, but rather, becomes a Father who cares about your maturity. Therefore, like any good human father, He chastises His children. In some cases, He even will call His children home to heaven prematurely, if they are stubborn enough about destructive sins. (See the first twelve verses of Hebrews 12. https://biblehub.com/nasb/hebrews/12.htm)

(Hint: Don't listen to people who promise prosperity or "your best life now." Once God starts training you, life can seem a lot harder; and if you don't receive such correction, you need to re-examine whether your faith was genuine.)

Receiving the gift is like changing directions. It means turning away from sins and from self-righteousness and turning to faith in God. You already feel the weight of your sins, so I don't need to tell you to repent. When you receive the gift as a free gift, God gives you a spiritual rebirth and sends His Holy Spirit to help you get the victory over your sins that you could not achieve on your own.

Victory over sins is a result of salvation, not a cause of it. If you wait to make yourself worthy, you will wait forever. The world's religions say you must achieve that victory in order to receive salvation. They make the result into a cause. This is one of the heresies that the Bible talks about in the letter to the Galatians. 

Pop culture has misdefined the term "fallen from grace." The term does not mean losing God's favor. It means that a false gospel is followed that teaches people to do things to earn salvation (Galatians 5:4 https://biblehub.com/nasb_/galatians/5.htm). 

2,000 years ago, new Christians from the Jewish culture said you had to be circumcised or eat only kosher foods. Today, people say you have to avoid certain sins or persevere by your own strength, or else you lose salvation. Their message is "fallen from grace" into self-righteousness.

When you understand that salvation is a gift, you will no longer have any reason to procrastinate about receiving it. 

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use, providing that credit is given where credit is due.

The Righteous Will Be Judged

Answering a question on Quora:

Why will the righteous be judged?

The short answer is that, whereas the unrighteous are judged for punishment, the righteous are judged for reward.

The long answer requires starting by defining “the righteous.” The righteous are not people who never sin.

Now we know that whatever the Law [the Ten Commandments and associated commands] says, it speaks to those who are under the Law [ancient Israelites], so that every mouth may be closed and call the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh [no human] will be justified in His [God’s] sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God… — Romans 3:19–20, 23

The purpose of passages such as the Ten Commandments is not to show us how we can earn heaven. It is to show us that we cannot earn heaven. It drives us to seek a different way to have positive relationship with God.

Rather, the righteous are people who let go of self-righteousness and instead trust that God paid their penalty through Jesus’s sacrifice and then proved it by raising Jesus from the dead. Scriptures use accounting language to say that God credits their penalty to Jesus and imputes their faith to their account for righteousness. They become, not perfect or sinless, but declared righteous.

Being declared righteous does not automatically make their thoughts and actions righteous; that takes growth over the rest of their lives. Becoming a Christian doesn’t make you perfect, it makes you a student.

Here’s an important distinction: Being declared righteous does not mean you can do whatever you want. There are many reasons for this. First, believers do what they believe, so if they really believe God, then they’ll start learning to do God’s will.

Second, God takes steps to help them grow more holy in what they do. So their belief will produce evidence, that is, good behaviors. Good behavior is not a cause of God’s gift of forgiveness, it is a result. Every false system will reverse that by making good works into requirements for receiving the gift. But when you try to earn a gift, you insult the Giver and miss out on getting the gift.

Third, God tests and chastises His children to instill good behaviors. In extreme cases, chastisement can even lead to taking a severely disobedient believer home to heaven. So it’s laughable to say that being secure in God’s love and not having to persevere in good works means you can get away with anything. A “believer” who does whatever he wants and gets away with it demonstrates that he is a counterfeit Christian.

The judgment of the righteous is different from the judgment of those who reject or fail to accept God’s gift (let’s call them “the lost”). When the lost are judged, their moral crimes determine their degree of punishment. Since we sin against infinite God, even a “small” sin earns a very serious punishment.

The righteous, on the other hand, are not judged for punishment because their sins were already punished. (Remember, they were transferred to Christ.) Instead, their works are judged for reward. Many of their “good” works will be disqualified because they were mixed with error, bad methods, or wrong motives. Those works that survive the test will be rewarded. 1 Corinthians 3:12-13

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use. Please give credit where credit is due.