The Evangelical Universalist Forum

If UR is true, God's doing a pretty bad job of selling it

Evangelical Universalism
#21

In all the important ways I agree. I couldn’t accept any God who didn’t know what it was like to suffer, and that leads me to Christian Trinitarian theism. And the Moltmannian crucified God is of great psychological import when dealing with pain.

But, and I hate to say it because it seems to almost border on blasphemy, but if the crucifixion of Christ was God demonstrating fully and clearly that He identifies with and *accepts responsibility for *evil and suffering then He didn’t suffer anywhere near enough. Sorry, but there it is. A brief torture and a few hours (of a grown man who willingly acquiesced) on a cross doesn’t equate to all the pain of every sentient being past, present, future. If the cross was all about identification, or worse, all about accepting responsibility, then I don’t think God punished Himself adequately.

#22

A challenging point, pog. Three brief thoughts:

As CS Lewis has pointed out, in The Problem of Pain (I think), there is no such thing as the “sum total” of all pain. Pain can only be experienced by an individual. Once we have reached the limit of what one person can suffer, that’s it, that’s all the pain in the world, ever.

Jesus’ suffering was undoubtedly very great. Check out Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ! And I think it’s wrong to say that Jesus went to the cross willingly. He was in terrible anguish, terror even. But he submitted to his Father’s will.

Maybe you’re right. Maybe God didn’t ‘suffer enough’. But does He not, perhaps, suffer with all of us, all the time?

#23

James

This is bang on the money. Like you I reject the Cosmic Warfare model - not least because I don’t believe in satan as a ‘person’. I also believe God knows the future, in the sense that he sees it happening in his ‘unbounded now’. Hence he is never caught unawares. His ultimate triumph is never in doubt. Open theism, as I understand, means a weak and less than omniscient God.

#24

Matt

What can I say to your lovely posts, except ‘Amen’. All Moderators are equal, but some are more equal than others, that’s what I say :laughing: .

Absolutely this is the correct response. What are we going to do about suffering and evil? That’s all that matters, really.

As for Yul Brynner - Westworld, a great movie, and one in which Brynner plays what my buddy Mark Driscoll thinks we all are - a robot :laughing: .

#25

Pog, I think it’s brave of you to say that, and you’re right, and it needs saying.

But there are a couple other ways of looking at the cross, at least that I can think of, which could possibly address this.

One is that somehow, in some mysterious way, Jesus took the whole weight of human suffering throughout the ages upon himself while on the cross, feeling everything, thus his external and physical suffering on the cross would have been only the tip of the iceberg.
Thus Jesus would be kind of like the Greek god Atlas… he bears the weight of the whole world upon his shoulders.
I’ve run across this way of looking at it in a few places, especially among mystics.
I don’t know how much support, but there is that one famous passage in the Suffering Servant chapter in Isaiah:

Not sure if that’s enough to say that somehow on the cross Jesus internally felt all the weight of all the suffering and evil in the world throughout the ages, but it’s something I guess, and for all we know, there could be something to it.

Another way of looking at the cross which comes to my mind is that Jesus, being like the face of God to the world, through his own suffering and death, expressed a truth about life that has always been true: namely, that God shares wholly and completely in the pain of the world, despite appearances to the contrary.
So in this way of looking at it, Jesus’ own limited and temporal suffering would be the tip of the iceberg on God’s suffering.

And, significantly, if you think about the crucifixion on a more poetic/symbolic level, Jesus was crucified between two men, one a man who accepted him before his death, another man who didn’t.
But he was quite literally in the middle of their suffering, the suffering of the believer and of the unbeliever, which is very encouraging to me, as it says that God is in the middle of our suffering, somehow sharing deeply in it, and that God is in solidarity with the suffering of the staunch atheist as much as He is with the devout Christian.
As it says ‘He is near to the brokenhearted, and to those who are crushed in spirit’. It appears there is no prerequisite of faith or any other kind of prerequisite for warranting God’s nearness to us in our suffering. He is with those who are in pain, whether they may believe it or feel it or not, and just because they are suffering, because God cares deeply and cannot help but share deeply in their pain because of His very nature, and for no other reason.

So perhaps Jesus’ own suffering and death was at least in part meant to open a window to us on this eternal reality, giving us a glimpse of a God whose face is streaked with tears.

Of course those who have a more intellectual/rational understanding of God, who basically believe in a God without feelings or passions, would balk at such a view, but then I for one don’t believe God is just some big brain without a heart, untouched and unsullied by the struggles of humankind.

I personally gravitate towards this view of Jesus’ suffering and death more than the other one that I mentioned, as it makes more sense to me and has wider implications that are very encouraging to me.

And either way you look at it, there is hope.

If Jesus did indeed take on the weight of the whole world, the weight of it obviously broke him and killed him, but then, miracle of miracles, in due time he got back up, he rose again, and one could say that in that there is the promise that, in due time, the whole world will get back up and rise with him.

On the other hand, if Jesus reflected an eternal reality about God, namely that He shares in our pain, then in the cross and the resurrection there is the promise that in time all suffering and evil and death will come to an end, and out of darkness there will spring light, out of suffering and evil and death there will spring new life, glorious and wonderful new life, and in this there is the promise that, in due time, the whole world, and all people throughout the ages, will follow Jesus into death but will also follow him into resurrection.

Either way, it’s a more encouraging way of looking at things. :slight_smile:

Not sure if this helps the discussion or not, or gives you some good food for thought Pog, but there you have it. :slight_smile:

Blessings to you :slight_smile:

Matt

#26

Aw shucks :blush:

You know, I never did got around to seeing that, will have to check it out sometime. I have seen The King And I though :slight_smile:
And yes, let’s all be robots, like Mark wants us to be :laughing:
On the other hand, maybe if we were lovable robots like Johnny Five from Short Circuit or Wall E that wouldn’t be so bad :wink:

Hey, there’s a new nickname for ya, mate… Johnny Five :laughing:

#27

Regardless of what CS Lewis said there is common sense difference between amount and distribution of suffering, hence why it is usually worse to torture a thousand rather than one. So if Jesus was identifying with the suffering of the entire universe that’s a huge amount (depth? Degree?) and very wide distribution (elongation? Prolongation?) of suffering He had to identify with - or demonstrate responsibility (contrition?) for - and a fairly run of the mill martyrdom doesn’t cut it. Of course He suffered hideously, but He probably wouldn’t make the top thousand victims in history, would He?

And if the atonement was all (all) about identification and responsibility then it isn’t enough. There has to be something else, more or different going on - else God’s let Himself off the hook far too lightly for the amount of suffering ever. Besides, we don’t even know (and on Open Theism even .god doesn’t know) exactly what the full degree and distribution of suffering will be. Maybe in the future some poor sucker will suffer to a degree utterly incomprehensible to us - especially if the suffering is done by a non-human or trans-human.

Matt, I get what you’re saying, and would include a hidden degree of supreme spiritual and sympathetic (vicarious?) suffering in the cross-work, but that is exactly the problem with this theodicy - the ‘extra’ suffering that makes it ‘fair’ (just) is ‘hidden’ - and thus cuts against the idea of identification and revelation. If God wanted to make it clear that in Christ He was taking responsibility for, and suffering in some sort of recompense for, the suffering He Himself caused/originated/planned/ willed/permitted/ failed to prevent, then Jesus really would have to have obviously suffered an equivalent degree/ prolongation. In His body He didn’t. The only way to develop this would be to consider the mystical sufferings of Christ in His church body - we ‘fill up to fullness’ and complete His sufferings in ourselves, in the church. Which again I can accept, but which is hardly an open, clear, public identification and revelation.

I think identification works to some degree, and maybe even take responsibility for … But it has to be far from the whole picture. Once again I find myself turning back to Cosmic .warfare, which for all it’s faults, seems to solve many of the problems that theodices which dismiss that component wrestle with. But hey, I’m really biased :slight_smile:

#28

You and your Cosmic Warfare theodicy, pog :laughing: .

Seriously, I agree with you about the extent of Jesus’s suffering. I get the creeps when I contemplate some of the most extreme forms of suffering human beings have endured over the years - a lot of it, God help us all, perpetrated in the name of ‘religion’. But for me the point isn’t that God somehow endured the same level of suffering as the most suffering human, or that he has somehow ‘balanced’ the sum total of suffering by suffering himself. No, for me the point is simply that God does not stand aloof from our suffering; he plunges into it with us. Is that enough? Who knows?

But as I believe in apokatastasis, in the glorious ‘transfiguration’ of all suffering into everlasting glory, I just have to trust God that it is :smiley:

#29

That’s how I feel about it too, mate :slight_smile:

And Pog, I hear what you’re saying bro, and I admire your courage in questioning boldly, but like Johnny, it’s enough for me to know that God shares in our pain in a meaningful way.
If nothing else, that builds trust as it means that God is willing to get His hands dirty, to get in the ring, so to speak.

And I think that’s what it’s about. Trust.
Maybe the scales don’t have to be balanced, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, blood for blood and tear for tear.
Someone else suffering never really makes up for our own suffering anyway, but someone else identifying with our pain does help build trust with that person, and I believe it can open a door for hope and healing.
That’s how love works, and how God works I think.

So in that sense maybe the cross was, at least in part, about God showing us through Jesus that He is with us, and sharing in our pain and our struggle, showing us that we can trust Him because He deeply cares about and understands how we all feel, and because He is able, by sharing in our experience of life and death, to bring us through our pain and our struggle, through darkness into light, just as He brought Jesus through.

Of course no one way of looking at the crucifixion and the resurrection covers every base or answers every possible question that might come up.
But I think Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection was like poetry, raw and beautiful, wild and wonderful, played out in real life, and like poetry it has many layers to it, many ways of looking at it, many of which are equally valid.

And one way is to look at it is to see how it inspires trust. Looking at Jesus’ story, many people see God’s love, see Him sharing in our pain, especially in the crucifixion, and looking at Jesus’ story, many people see God’s power as well, especially through the resurrection, see how He can take the worst of things and turn it into the best of things.

And though that may only be one way of looking at it, it is an important way I think, that speaks to the heart.

And all said and done, when it comes down to it, whether we have the answers or not about suffering and evil, whether or not we know why, we’re for it. This is how the world is now, this is what life is like now, and we have to make the best of it, and try each of us in our way to make a difference, hopefully to leave the world a little better than we found it when we popped out of our mother’s wombs. That’s all we can do, I think.
And then there’s trust.
I don’t think though that trust is so much something that we do as something that happens. I think it’s mostly on God to build trust within us, trust in Him and in what He’s doing in the world and where He’s taking us.

And maybe Jesus’ story is one of the ways in which He is seeking to build that trust.

There are a lot of theories out there, a lot of ways of looking at things, like Cosmic Warfare, Soul Making, and the like, and many of those theories no doubt have some or even a lot of validity to them, but when it comes down to it for me, trust is more important than just about anything.

I need to be able to trust God even when I don’t understand.
I need to be able to trust God’s heart even if I can’t trace His hand.

I need to be able to trust God even in the midst of all the world’s suffering and evil, and my own pain and struggle.

So I will keep praying that God will continue to awaken that trust in me, because I need all the help I can get in that, as trust does not come easy in this crazy world we live in.

Anyways, that’s my two cents for now.

Blessings to you bro :slight_smile:

Matt

#30

for so many are called but there are few to be chosen (for 1st resurrection), God is choosing just few people in this age
for evangelizing with Christ for 1000 years, it’s obvious, problem of ECT is they think entering heaven
is tiny, but this not what God wants.

#31

Johnny/ed

I totally agree with the Jesus getting His hands dirty bit, and in many ways it is enough and more than enough. But on the specific issue of demonstrating responsibility it seems to me less than enough for what would be required for that. It seems more that God is a victim too rather than He took on board some sort of penalty for his own action/in-action. If that was the attempted communication then it seems to fall short. And, to take a leaf out of. johnnies book :slight_smile:, why delay that revelation and why couch it in such uncertain terms? And why not re-enact it for every people group and every generation, why is it a once only thing that the vast majority of people don’t get to witness first hand?

It’s all so very vexing… As always theodicy seems to slip through ones fingers :frowning:

#32

I agree with you bro that it does appear at times that God is just another victim (and maybe, at the very least, through Jesus God identifies with victims)… and to believe that God is as effectively just as powerless, or nearly so, as we are is no doubt more palatable in some ways than to believe that God is all-powerful and almighty and yet leaves things as they are for some inscrutable reason…
If He is powerless then He can’t help it, and you can’t fault Him for it, right?
But then if that’s the case, then we are left wondering if we can really depend on God at all, if His hands are tied as much as ours are…
Either way you look at it, you’re left wondering if you can really trust God… is He willing to help us, is He able to help us?
Can only one of those questions be answered in the affirmative, or can both be?
What good is His power if there is no love behind it? What good is His love if there is no power behind it?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, at least not fur sure.

And you’re right that the whole ‘theodicy’ thing eventually leads us to a place where the answers slip through our fingers.
When we get to the top of one hill, there is yet another to climb, and when we get to the top, there is another, and when we get to the top of that hill, then… you get the picture.

But I still come back to trust in the face of all these unanswered questions. It’s aggravating being faced with so many uncertainties and paradoxes and riddles… but there is still that call to trust.
‘Blessed are those who trust, even when they can’t understand.’ Maybe Jesus could have said that to Thomas just as well.

I think it’s good to question things, to wonder about things, and there’s a time to cry out for answers and for understanding… but when we hit a wall and can go no further, maybe it would be better to stop and wait, or head off in some new direction, rather than staying at the wall and banging our head against it.

I’m slowly learning from my fiancee, Kaylyn, about simply trusting God. Kaylyn is a simple girl. Sometimes it annoys me, because I’m a little more intellectual and philosophical, whereas that stuff mostly bores her, so I can’t really have those kinds of conversations with her too much.
But in my struggles, she has said things to me that were simple, but were also profound.
Things like ‘If we can’t trust God, then who can we trust?’
And she always told me when I’ve started rambling and ranting about my questions and my doubts that I think too much, and that I’m a worrywort.
Simple and to the point, and maybe she’s right.

I think there can be a balance, a balance between questioning and wondering, and also remembering what lit the fire of faith of us in the first place, and what lights that fire still.
I’m not trying to say that we should just get on board with ‘the power of positive thinking’, but I think we need to remember the good in our lives and the lives of others as much as we can, remember the answers we do have and those things that give our lives meaning, and as much as we can, rather than exclusively focusing on all the bad in our lives or the lives of others, or the answers we don’t have, or the uncertainties that threaten to undermine everything that matters most to us, if we let those uncertainties consume us.

Kaylyn tells me I should trust God, and just live my life. For a natural skeptic and doubting Thomas like myself, that is far from easy for me, but maybe the girl is on to something. :wink:

Our brains want to figure everything out, want to understand all the reasons why, but maybe sometimes we just gotta take things on faith, and trust, as best we can, and try to ‘think’ with our hearts.

As it says in one of Kaylyn’s favorite books, The Little Prince:

When I look at the world only with my eyes, I see a lot of suffering and evil, a lot of darkness and pain, which is very real, but when I look with my heart, I also see beauty, wonder, grace, hope, love, scattered all around, like stars scattered out across the night sky, and that is very real too, at least to me.

(And sailors, by the way, can chart their course by the stars.)

Those hints of light are what keep me going, keep me from giving up despite my struggles and my doubts.
And I think that’s pretty much the case with most of us.
It’s our experiences of beauty, of wonder, of grace, of hope, of love, that keep us hanging on.
It’s those things which lit the fire of faith for us in the first place.
It’s the messages and the words that inspired us and encouraged us, it’s the prayers that were answered in surprising ways, it’s the dreams and the visions that spoke to us and moved us, it’s the human touch, the kind word, the tender embrace, that we knew God was in.

I think it’s easy for us to lose sight of what it is that makes us believe at all, deep down, believe that there is something more going on in this world and in our lives than a bunch of random atoms bouncing off of eachother, something hard to understand for sure, but, nevertheless, wonderful, and worth believing in.

We all wrestle with fears and doubts, sometimes deeply and agonizingly, I know I have, but that hunger for something more remains, that hunger for the transcendent, for that which is greater than myself, than all of us, and can give meaning and purpose to my life, and to all of our lives.
I hunger for it, even in the midst of all my weakness, my smallness, my mediocrity.

I can’t help but hunger for it sometimes, hopefully stumbling and bumbling my way towards home, wherever and whatever home is…

Not sure if any of this resonates with you guys, but, well, yeah :slight_smile:

Blessings to you :slight_smile:

Matt

#33

:slight_smile:

#34

Thank you, guys. It´s wonderful to have brethren who display that I am not alone in realizing that theodicy and the problem of evil is the ultimately vexing problem for faith, even among universalists! I live near Claremont School of Theology, the center of much Process thinking. And as Matt suggests, it is easy to see the attraction of their seeing a limited God as wholly good and Love, always opposing evil, even if it´s at the terrible expense of God´s omnipotence. At least God does the best that God can. And they stlll somehow try to trust that the ultimate outcome will be God´s total victory. Still, I´m unwilling to solve the traditional conundrum this way, affected by Eric Reitan´s argument that healthy religion is a bet on love as an ultimate value that will prove worthy of trusting in. This means that the essence of my commitment to faith is to base my life on the conviction that love will win. The traditional attributes of God coherently allows this confidence, even while leaving us with a seemingly impossible difficulty of understanding the painful meanwhile.

#35

As an open fwd cosmic warfare universalist theodicist I’m one of those who pretty much go down the line of limiting God’s power rather than His goodness. Given the choice I really think it has to be that way round. However, just because I limit His power that way doesn’t mean I also cannot have hope, trust and confidence in God’s eventual victory. Where my confidence is affected, though, is in God’s ability to help me right now! But in all honestly, I think every theology suffers from that problem …

#36

Hi Johnny:

This question is not unlike one I worked on privately some time back: Why isn’t the existence of God more obvious? Why isn’t the evidence clearer??

It should seem that such a foundational reality would be beyond dispute – yet disputed it is!!
Why is that?

Well, first off we could say that the fault is not with the reality (the fact, the truth) itself – truth just is. So the problem must lie within the perceiver.

Further, perhaps we should distinguish between opinions – and facts. (ie reality/truth) I may say/believe that our president is the best ever (or the worst) and believe it, but that is a very different thing from saying that I believe the president does not (or does) exist.

So the question of God’s existence or of the truth of UR live in the realm beyond opinion it seems.

What troubled me about most Christian’s answers to the disbelief in the existence of God was that it relied heavily on the assertion that it was only because of the craven wickedness of the person that they believed such a thing; the idea being that they did see the evidence for God but rejected it willfully and for malicious, evil, spiteful and despicable reasons. In short, they were not being honest at all. (I’m aware that Romans 1 seems to be describing such a mindset…)

Well, I knew (know) lots of atheists and I don’t find that to be the case with any of them! They are kind and thoughtful and honest and generous and considerate and fair and loyal and hold fiercely to the worth of persons. Which is to say that I believe they had/have the capacity to change their minds – to become convinced of that which fails to convince them at this moment.

Standing nearby to these “righteous atheists” however are another set of folks; those who believe, yet are scoundrels. I mention this because it seems that the mere agreement with certain “facts” (eg there is a God…) does not necessarily correlate with demonstrating the kind of heart and attitude to which God draws us; that contrite spirit, that love of mercy, that craving for justice.

It’s an odd dilemma then: “righteous atheists” standing next to “scoundrel believers”. One has the “facts” right but the actions wrong; the other acts “correctly” (ie righteously) but in the apparent absence of “correct facts”. Obviously correct fact coupled with (and serving as motivation for) correct behaviors is the ideal, but there would likely be wide agreement on which God prefers of the two options mentioned here.

This is merely to suggest that perhaps, in the economy of God, mere belief in the “fact of UR” (and I do think it is a truth!) is less important than other things…??? I mean if it’s true, our recognition of that truth has no impact on it’s actual reality.

What can we say then about a state of affairs wherein we witness a wide spectrum of “levels” of belief (a higher “level” meaning that more of what is actually true is believed) alongside a wide spectrum of adherence to “behavioral truths” (ie correct actions in the face of “wrong” beliefs; eg the atheist who treats people with dignity and who oves mercy etc) ???

Now all this implies strongly that what we see here, in this moment, is simply a snapshot in time; that we all exist in a state of transition and change and growth and learning. Which is to say that beliefs and behaviors can and do change - over time. That there is an apparent disconnect between the grasping of facts (of truth) and the subsequent proper behaviors that should be motivated by such beliefs. The eventual goal then would seem to be a 100% correlation between apprehension of truth and 100% participation in correct actions; not in isolation from each other, but actions as a consequence of belief. Which is an incredibly high standard!! But is precisely the condition to which God draws all. It’s just frustrating because there is such a vast variation (now anyway) of levels of belief and of behavior and of connectedness between the two.

But history does not stand still… We exist in time, and time “moves”… So too do we move. We change, we learn, we grow, and it sometimes might seem to be imperceptibly slow and even in the wrong direction. Yet we cannot deny that all this experience provides context. And it is that context in which God slowly works to accomplish His purposes.

To the question If UR is true, why is it such a minority belief? there seems no small amount of frustration motivating it. I certainly understand this motivation – however to the extent we are frustrated, imagine how much more so God!!

But lurking behind this frustration is the premise – or at least a premise hinted at – that truth should be readily obvious, readily discerned, readily embraced, and then readily acted upon. Yet if that premise is true, why not simply wish that every and all truths are so accepted - right now! - by everyone!! I mean why stop with this particular (ie UR) truth??

It is worthwhile then to consider what the barriers are to such a state; ie the ability to discern, embrace, and act upon every truth there is. That such barriers exist seems beyond dispute. Further, that we all contain at least some barriers to embracing/living these truths seems also indisputable – and is perhaps what the bible means when it says that ALL are sinners; that all fall short of God’s glory; that all are in need of saving (ie a savior) and so on.

So perhaps we might say that the barriers fall into categories like failures of perception; failures in our ability to arrive at conviction; failures to act on our convictions. Add to this the notion that these barriers cannot simply be “willed” away – which is to say, per Romans 11 that we cannot “desire” or “will” our way out of our dilemma. We need some “outside” help as it were.

The story of redemption then – the saga of salvation – can perhaps be thought of as the vast and comprehensive drama of God’s interventions to remove the barriers to that condition where we can “discern, embrace, and act upon every truth there is.” And utterly central to this drama is the person of Jesus, the Christ. His incarnation, life, death, and resurrection.

Well – that’s easy to say; much harder though to figure out precisely and exactly how the truth of Christ solves the problem and dissolves the barriers. Unfortunately, it lends itself to being boiled down to cliches and catchy phrases which can obscure more than illuminate. Nonetheless, the truth about God, through Christ, saves.

While Christ as demonstration (not just propositional claims) of the truth about God becomes central to healing our perceptions, I think there’s another aspect of our evolving development (ie ongoing; the bible talks about how we are “being changed…”) which is more difficult to articulate clearly. Specifically, I’m thinking that through Christ, God is somehow “released” – perhaps given “permission” – to actively intervene on our behalf and and simply come and “get us”. Which I admit it not a very common way for we Christians to talk – given our infatuation with our own “free will”. Yes, there really is a strong element of “coming to our senses” as the prodigal son discovered. But our “senses” can take us only so far…

What I’m emphasizing, and think needs to be pondered more, is that experience of having the saving shepherd come looking for us, find us, sweep us up from our plight in the dark and stormy wilderness, toss us over His shoulders, and carry us home to the fold. And all the while singing softly to us about His love for us. “Free will” kind of peripheral in this vision of grace.

Given that Christ so often spoke of Himself as truth, and asserts further that the truth “sets us free” I find it not unreasonable at all to interpret this as asserting God’s unilateral right to intervene in our bondage to illusion and false thinking and to liberate us from it. And when so liberated, we can see Him as He is, we can discern Him as He is, and respond as any self interested creature would. That is, we shall embrace the light.

All SHALL be well.

If God really is so released to intervene and liberate one in this way, why not all?

That is why I’m a Universalist…

Given this view, it shouldn’t surprise us to get the impression that God’s doing a “pretty bad job of selling UR”; that UR is such a “minority belief”… That’s simply “where we are” in time…

Am I happy with my explanation here? Does it completely satisfy? Of course not… Will it get better as time advances and I keep hanging around nice folks like those here?
I think so.

Thanks for triggering these thoughts all!!

Bobx3

#37

Hi BobBobBob

Great to hear your perceptive thoughts on this issue. You make some great points, as always, but one thing you said flashed a light bulb in my brain:

Of course! Of course that’s true! If UR is true - which we believe it is - then it doesn’t actually matter whether anyone believes it, right here, right now! Because the truth is that all will one day embrace that truth, in the time appointed by God.

So why the hell am I still worrying? :smiley: :laughing: :unamused: :frowning: :laughing:

Thanks so much Bob

J

#38

Bumping this topic, because I’ve just been rereading Bobx3’s last post in the thread and it’s really good - well worth another look, or a first look for anyone who missed it. And hopefully further feedback.

I particularly like Bob’s ‘righteous atheist’ vs ‘scoundrel believer’ dilemma. When I first became a Christian I was always very troubled by the idea that all atheists, no matter how ‘good’ by human standards, were going to end up in hell - particularly when so many supposed Christians were such, well, scoundrels :smiley: . My pastor tried to answer my objections with the analogy of human beings trying to leap across a wide chasm to save themselves from death: a ‘good atheist’ might leap a lot further than a bad one, but because the chasm was beyond any human’s ability to leap, they perished along with all the bad guys. Only saving faith in Jesus gave one the supernatural power to leap the chasm.

It was a game attempt, but it never convinced me. Hence here I am a Universalist :smiley: .

Also, on reflection, I think my original thread title was off the mark. It’s not God who’s doing a bad job selling UR - it’s us clods who are doing a rotten job of buying it :smiley: .

#39

Matt, you are such a poet. I read through your posts and I am distracted by the rhythm and the images and the emotions to the point that I don’t really know what you were saying when I get to the end of it, but I’m crying, so it must have been good. :laughing: And then I’ll have to read it again, to get the gist. I think it “goes in,” though – subconsciously – like a song. I’m so glad you have a lady like Kaylin, to give you an anchor, and someone to hold on with in the storms.

To the OP, I haven’t really been following this thread. I’ll go back and read BobBobBob’s post a little later, :slight_smile: but I’m already feeling guilty for spending so much time here this morning when the house is a mess and I need to start a fire because it’s cold! BUT I did want to say something, which maybe has already been said.

Someone, Johnny, I think, said something about feeling around and maybe finding God – or maybe it was Dick . . . anyway, this is from Paul’s sermon at the Areopagus, I believe. Johnny, dear friend, you have finally convinced me without saying a word (but it was you who started me thinking) that it must be true that God chose to use evolution to allow the world to come to be. Scientifically I’m not sure anyone could ever persuade me because I wouldn’t have the attention span to study all the various proofs and proof claims until I was convinced. BUT, it does appear from scripture that Father works with us this way, and creation is nothing if not a picture of God. He works progressively with the human race, with each individual human, with communities; plants grow from seeds; the galaxy grew from a singularity/seed (I never disbelieved that). It’s consistent with the way He does things.

And IF that is the case, then we are all growing into Him. Maybe it isn’t possible for us to find Him in any other way than to feel around, so to speak, in the darkness, until we stumble over Him. We HAVE to come to this knowledge by increments because that is the way we grow. That is the way we learn. That is the only way we can become understanders of the truth, and the Truth.

The enemy came and sowed the ground with tares – the children of the evil one – who is the father of lies. Tares are horrible things. Darnel is a pestilent weed even today, and if it is harvested with the wheat, it can make people sick as it’s typically infected with toxic fungus that causes intoxication and even death. What a fitting metaphor our Lord chose for His parable. An enemy has done this. But the Master said, “Let the wheat and the tares grow together until harvest lest in uprooting the tares you destroy some of the wheat.”

Sowing a field with tares was an act of war. It deprived your enemies of food or it sickened and killed your enemies by their food. Why would God allow His field to be sown with tares? These tares have intoxicated and killed the church’s people and leadership and its witness for so many, many years. The idea that Father desires to burn so many people forever in hell is one of those tares, I believe. I don’t know the answer to that – to why He refused to have the tares uprooted from the beginning, but might it have something to do with our feeling around and learning what was NOT good and finding the thing that IS good? You never ever know your lessons by learning them from a lecture or a book in the depth that you CAN know them by finding out the truth of them from experience. Darnel is not good for wheat; it weakens it and steals away the nutrients of the soil and the moisture and it cuts down on the crop you can expect. So it’s good to avoid having the field sown with darnel. BUT wheat is sown by broadcasting, and it wouldn’t be easy (or possible?) to go tramping around pulling up the darnel and NOT hurting the wheat. Besides, until the harvest time comes, it’s almost impossible to tell them apart.

We’ve seen the church let go of toxic ideas before. Hardly anyone believes in double predestination today, for example. They may believe in a doctrine that is effectively the same, but no one with a brain and a sense of self-interest would go on You-Tube with a video boldly declaring unvarnished, unnuanced double predestination today. Nearly all the hard-line Calvinists sound like Arminians to the unsuspecting listener; at least they do in teachings meant for the general populace. UR has had its proponents through the centuries, but it seems to me that it is only recently begun to have anything like a widespread appeal – at least for the first time in many centuries. Maybe I’m wrong about that, though. Maybe it takes a certain degree of maturity for the church to be capable of discerning the tares from the wheat. Yes, Father could take our hands and point out “This is wheat. See how the spikes are thicker and the spikelets are oriented with the flat side to the rachis and have two glumes? This is a tare. The spikes are thinner, and the spikelets are oriented edgeways to the rachis and have only a single glume.” But would we understand what He was talking about? I don’t even understand what the Wikipedia article about darnel said just now. (Yeah, I copied and pasted that!) When the harvest comes, the kernels still look like wheat . . . but it’s BLACK wheat. You know, hungry people will eat that anyway. Once. Unless they’ve seen what it does to other people who’ve eaten it.

Has the church been trying to pass off black “wheat” on the world for so many years that we think that’s what it’s SUPPOSED to look like? We don’t even want to eat the stuff. It makes us feel sick unto death, but we’ve been told it’s wheat. http://www.sherv.net/cm/emoticons/confused/confused-smiley-emoticon.gif Who are we to answer back to God? Or maybe we should be more careful to notice just WHO has been telling us to eat this poisonous black “wheat.” MAYBE an enemy has done this. As Johnny said a while back, what if our punishment for being ABLE to believe in ect is TO believe in ect?

I think that, in the end, things are progressing as expected, and that we are feeling around, trying to find Him, and that eventually we’ll come alive enough and be free enough to know what is wheat and what is darnel. At that point, someone will probably want to burn us at the stake for throwing out good “wheat,” but at least we’ll know. :laughing: Oh wait! There are already a few people out there who would LIKE to do that – maybe you’ve encountered the odd one too, as I have. BUT we’re NOT toasting yet, and that’s probably a good sign!

#40

Cindy, my dear Yankee sister :smiley: , that is a super post. I’m doubly glad I bumped this thread now: folk are gonna get to read Bob’s post and yours now :smiley: .

The wheat and the tares is one of my favourite parables - partly because it’s so simple, but so incredibly complex and mysterious at the same time. For me it is one of the very, very few clear Biblical statements - from the mouth of Jesus himself - about why there is so much evil in the world: “an enemy did this”. That’s it. No complicated theodicy (the Bible doesn’t really do theodicy), just “an enemy did this”. Makes you think.

I’m glad my ramblings have been of some little help to your understanding of the things of God. It’s one of the things I love about this forum. Someone says something that sparks a new train of thought, a new way of looking at things. And then lots of others pitch in and expand those thoughts. I’ve learnt far more here than in any church building or Bible study. And on a personal note, I very much admire your lack of dogmatism, and your bravery in exploring ideas which challenge your worldview. I guess most of us here have done that to some extent in becoming Universalists. But some of us - me more than any - have still got a lot to learn in that regard :smiley: .

Many blessings to you dear Cinders

J