Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.
And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:
Almighty God: our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.
Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.
They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.
They will be sore tried, by night and by day without rest - until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.
For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.
Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.
And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters and brothers of brave men overseas -- whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them -- help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.
Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a countenance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.
Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.
And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.
And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.
With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, June 6, 1944
The Invasion of Normandy
Have has the courage of America fled?
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"Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith."
I prefer Mark Twain's version of the War Prayer:
With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire;
help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst...
Or perhaps Monty Python's:
Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy."
The US still has plenty of guts and we're working on having some ethics and morality along with them. Bravery in battle is often only terrorism unless one has some morality.
God don't bless wars.
Jesus tells us, "Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
Amen.
Amazing!
He has before. At least he sanctioned them, giving victory to a lesser force over those He judged to be wicked. Of course when the Israelites rejected Him, engaging in those actions He prohibited, He would withdraw His backing, His blessing and the Israelites would lose, even if they had superior numbers.
There is no problem asking the Lord for His protection and support in war. But I know that it is here, in a situation like this, that Dan believes God will not answer, that such prayers are wasted. His sarcastic examples of war prayers are wasted here. Christians in battle generally request victory and protection, help with aiming and courage to perservere. Dan likes to believe that those who go to war enjoy it and while there have been George Pattons throughout history, in this country war is generally waged because of a sincere feeling of it's need. There's no eagerness in the average soldier to engage in battle. I would hate to know that there is someone like Dan with the responsibility of deciding when we need to take up arms. Our nation would cease to exist in short order.
In the meantime, I'm suggesting we pray as Jesus prayed, not as Roosevelt did here.
God's not on one side or the other in an armed conflict.
I think that in the heat of it, I'd pray something like: "Lord, forgive me for the ass I'm fixin' to kick." 'Cause I am human, after all.
I see the claims otherwise in the OT about like I saw the religious galoots who claimed that God caused-OK'd-smiled on Katrina:
People daring to look to God to justify calamity, or their own prior notions. Pshaw.
So, you might say God is on the victims' side of all wars.
Mark Twain nailed it.
If you're going to pray for God to help you kill your enemies, go all the way with your prayer and make it as bloodthirsty as you want.
Just know that God doesn't choose sides. Or, conversely, God's on all our side and the side he consistently chooses in the Bible is the one of the oppressed and marginalized. NOT the one with the biggest, deadliest bombs.
(I've always said God was on both, or all, sides of our Civil War. Clearly. But do I think he cared much which side won? No. Do I think that he even intervened to end slavery? That not being the trur point of the start of the war in the first place, among other reasons, no.)
And my thought is that those are prayers of exasperation - the prayers of the oppressed usually - and they're in the Bible to show us that God understands that we get weary and seek vengeance and that it's okay to feel thusly. It's okay to vent.
It's not okay to go out and do the smiting and bashing ourselves, though, for both testaments tell us plainly, "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord."
So vent away in your prayers if you wish. Just understand that just because you pray that God will save "our" side and smite "their" side, God is on all sides, not choosing ours over theirs.
Those are human constructs, seems to me, not godly ones.
I'm sorry. This is just plainly stupid as well as illogical. It fails to consider that one side can be driven by true evil, and that God wouldn't use the opposition as His retribution, or that He wouldn't use one side as a means of protecting the innocent from the savagery of evil. It's becoming more plain that the total eradication of believers is just fine with Dan and ER.
Mark Twain's goofy "prayer" and Dan's pleasure in offering it is insulting to those who see their duty to defend against evil, who are willing to risk their lives in the fight against evil. It matters not one wit to what or whom evil people pray. Our prayers go up on behalf of those selfless individuals willing to risk it all on our behalf. To say that the intent is to do more than repell the aggression, to satiate some thirst for blood, is ignorant, stupid, insulting, naive, childish, immoral, and a reflection of your own poor understanding of good and evil, right and wrong, and morality in general.
God is on the side of righteousness. Period. If God is on any side, it's on the side of those who seek to destroy the works of evil... of Satan. That doesn't mean he's on the side of the individuals that war against evil, who themselves may be evil in their hearts. But the destruction of evil, be it Nazi, Radical Muslim, or what-ever, is the side upon which God expects us to stand.
Okay, brother, which People are the ones driven by true evil? Is it the Arabs? The Germans?
Who are the wholly evil people?? - by all means, let's destroy them all. I'll buy you a gun and a whole passel of bullets and you can start making that call and killing them.
You better go ahead and kill the children who will be wholly evil, while you're at it. Let's not leave one evil person standing, shall we? We'll go all Old Testament on their butts.
"All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."
"there is none righteous - no, not one."
-the Apostle Paul
'People' is hardly indicative of 'individuals'. It denotes a 'group' or 'groups'. Radical Islamists ARE driven by an evil ideology. Nazi Germany (and those who supported it) WAS driven by an evil ideology. No one here has suggested-- in this post at least --killing every man woman child and goat... only that some 'peoples' can be driven by evil, and that 'evil' must be confronted.
Hypothetical:
If you're on a Baghdad street and a group of muslims have you pinned down by weapons fire, and you and your platoon fire back, eventually killing all of your attackers, have you committed a heinous act if after searching the bodies you discover one of them is that of an eleven year old boy?
Your calling upon the ghost of Twain in this post is... for lack of a better word... so not "Relevent" to the remembrance of the words spoken by Roosevelt to the nation AND God; an address/prayer that did not invoke words like 'Smite, Tear, Bloody Shreds,' or such rhetoric as 'Smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead.' Neither did it contain words like 'Shriek, Writhe, Pain, Waste, Wring, Widows, Grief, or Desolate' or 'Blow thine enemies to tiny bits'...
Your characterization of Roosevelt's honest prayer is both unwarranted and unjustified. I ask you to check all your hyperbole at the door before you comment on this post again. Don't get me wrong, I understand your sentiment, and I happen to agree... to a point. But inserting Twain here, in juxtaposition to Roosevelt, is disingenuous and not the least bit apropos.
Pray for safety. Pray for God's will be done. Pray for forgiveness for the evil we feel we've been forced into.
Just don't pray as if God is on your side or worse, in your pocket.
Peace, bros.
Do you not realize that by praying 'His will be done' is the equivalent of praying for Him to pour out His wrath upon the nations and allow the Antichrist to begin crushing the world under foot? How many billions are you praying to die?
His will is that all men repent. He has said they won't all repent. His wrath therefore is upon them... they will die in their sins and be cast into outer darkness... Way to go! Dan!
His will is that we Christians be about the ministry He has given us. And if you're a Christian, you have a ministry. You may not be called to preach, or teach, but you've been called to do something to advance his purpose in the time that remains. And that, friend, is ministry.
No, it's not.
("An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a definite proposition... A contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says."
("No, it's not..."
(--Monty Python
([from Dan's blog!])
Re, "Do you not realize that by praying 'His will be done' is the equivalent of praying for Him to pour out His wrath upon the nations and allow the Antichrist to begin crushing the world under foot?"
Oh. My. God. You actually believe that. Do you EVER get into Grace, dude? God wills that all live, and that all live more abundantly. Maybe I was wrong when I said earlier, privately, that we worship the same God. ... Nah. Different lenses, is all. Yours was made in fearful antiquity, designed to see through the smoke and fire of an angry mountain God. The one I use was made on the Cross.
And MA and anyone else: If you think I'm playin' all I'm-smarter-than-y'all, think again. I'm playing DUMB. So dumb that I actually wallow around IN GRACEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!
His will is that all men repent? His will is that all men, and women, shut up, be still and accept His love.
By insisting on repentance first, you've made salvation a transaction with US acting first. Bull. How the heck does that square with accepting a gift? If we have to do ANYTHING to get it, then it's not free, then it's not Grace, then it's not GOD acting: It's us. I reject that, for Christ's sake.
EL, I think you're a Pentecostal orthodox Jew sometimes. Where *do* you burn your young bullocks, anyway?
:-)
Yes it is! (Your turn)
And no, you're only "saying" you're playing dumb, but at the same time, insisting on your version of proper Christian belief. You imply a superior knowledge. But be calm, as we're all doing it to one degree or another, framing it in "what I'm sayin'".
At the same time, one cannot really play dumb and at the same time have a true plan. There has to be some basis upon which to build the philosophy, some template against which one judges when one is or isn't speaking to right or wrong. It's all well and good to say that one is letting God do the talking as far as what's right, but then to never illustrate an example...?
But as to whether God supports one side of a war over another, it's just another endless debate. Your side never sees a reason to war. My side finds that a total abdication of responsibility and a naive interpretation of Christian morality. Did God not sanction and even participate in war in the OT? Is Jesus Christ not to lead the final battle? Is there not a time for everything under heaven?
And as I understand it, one accepts Christ AND repents. Faith AND works. Works alone is worthless, but faith without it is empty. Accepting Christ and not repenting from one's sinful life doesn't work either. I know you don't like the concept of "sin", but it's a fact of Christian life. If I say I've accepted Christ, but I still willfully engage in bed-hopping, drunkeness, burglary, drug dealing, strong-arming juice loan welchers, cheating at solotaire, how far will my faith get me? Does acceptance of Christ provide an instantaneous transformation for every individual, or do some need to develop the habit until the Spirit really moves them? Acceptance AND repentance. Faith AND works.
Dan,
You excitable boy, you.
"I'll buy you a gun and a whole passel of bullets and you can start making that call and killing them."
How thoughtful! But I never said anything about me making the call or even the leader of a nation making the call. All we can do is answer a call and based on my opinion of my fellow Americans, it's likely that the call to go to war will be based on a justifiable reason. As to which side God would back, that's totally His call. And He might not make it. As demonstrated in the OT, He might even back the "wrong" side to teach the other side a lesson. Of course this is all speculative, but the point is that who's to say one way or the other? Are you saying that only YOUR version can be correct? Isn't that contrary to what you've been wrongly accusing me and others of doing in such debates? I never waste time judging when God's hand is present in human affairs. I ask for His help. Jesus said whatever we ask for in His name will be granted. If we are defending ourselves against an obvious evil, such as Islamofascist scumgbags, what makes you think He wouldn't comply? We're not fighting for fun, we're fighting for survival and self-defense and protection of those who can't defend themselves. A noble, honorable, and I'd say Christian thing to do.
The thing is, y'all hold your tongues most of the time, but you don't really believe I am. But y'all are wrong. There are many individual trails experienced on the one Way.
But I honestly do see the angry mountain God as a no-longer-relevant view of God. Y'all can keep that image of the Creator. There are other images of God in the Bible to emphasize. ... I do kinda like that Sophia Wisdom Goddess.
Yeah, that's funny.
But relevance is important. The question is which direction should the relevance go? You can certainly focus on the loving aspects of God if you wish. I don't see that there's anything wrong or improper in doing so, unless you are suggesting that there is no vengeful or wrathful God. Then, you're making stuff up. I think God is relevant all the time, of course. How can He not be, being God and all. More to the point is relating. If you can't "relate" to the wrathful God on the mountain image, you should learn to since He exists. Perhaps not on a mountain, per se, but you get the idea.
Many people choose their church by notions of whether or not they can relate. Kinda silly. They keep looking until they find one to which they can relate. What they've usually found is one that is simply spewing happy talk from the pulpit, if they use one, and because they are not ever reminded of those things in which they engage that are sinful. When one stands accused by the message of the sermon, one might feel uncomfortable. When one feels uncomfortable, one can't relate and that church and it's message of God preached is "irrelevant".
God "picking sides" in a war doesn't seem like the type of God you might like, but there's nothing anywhere that can truthfully suggest that He doesn't insert Himself into the lives of people on that level any more or less than on any other level.
I remember a sketch from Saturday Night Live. Sally Field was the hostess. (She's a chick, so I say "hostess".) She played, in this sketch, a southern girl who prays to Jesus over anything and everything no matter how mundane. She's constantly praying, always. One day Jesus, played by Phil Hartman, shows up at her door to tell her to back off a bit. Pretty funny bit. But, though they were mocking those who do pray in such a manner (or appear to), I don't believe that such a mindset, though over the top in the sketch, is inconsistent with Jesus' teachings about prayer. Other than instructing us not to pray with empty recitation, I don't believe He restricted us as to what we might pray for. To seek the Lord's help in such a time as war seems to me to be a really good idea, considering all the tragic possibilities which might befall a person.
I believe that angry and vengeful is a way that people of faith have seen God. I also believe that there is a clear progression in the imaging of God throughout the Bible, from angry-vengeful-jealous-tribal to the culmination of "God is love," as enunciated in the NT and demonstrated by Mr. Jesus Christ (nod to Mark in case he's lurking around). So, yes, I do choose the loving image of God, which is as Scriptural as the angry-vengeful image. No, God has not changed. But the way people sees Him has. I'll take the Jesusy image. 'Cause I'm a Christian, not a Jew, not a Godian, and not a Biblian.;
Let me get this straight: Myself and others here are stuck worshipping an "Angry God on the mountain", yet you-- with presumably a straight face --throw out Gnostic tenets, as though [from my perspective] to enlighten us? On another post you even went so far as to bandied Preterism about... And we're the ones who are superstitious? Our views of God corrupted?
For those of you who haven't a clue about 'Sophia' I'll quote from Wikipedia's entry [emphasis mine]:
"For the Gnostic Christians, the Sophia was a central element in their cosmological understanding of the Universe. A Feminine figure, analogous to the human soul but also simultaneously one of the Feminine aspects of God and the Bride of Christ, she is considered to have fallen from grace in some way, in so doing creating or helping to create the material world. For the Gnostics, the drama of the redemption of the Sophia through Christ or the Logos is the central drama of the universe. The Sophia resides in all of us as the Divine Spark. According to the Pistis Sophia, Christ is sent from the Godhead in order to bring Sophia back into the fullness of Pleroma following her repentence."
How's that for silly?
If you can like Sophia, I guess I can like Jimmy Crack-Corn. Both are equally impotent.
Make fun of Sophia, too, if you will. The concept is Scriptural, although contentious -- usually to manly men who think "patriarchal" is an idea to be made fun of. The Gnostics had a Sophis thing going? I didn't know that. The Hebrews did, for sure.
Mock if you will.
Although the Divine Sophia is central to so many Gnostic movements she is by no means a figure unique to Gnosticism. Sophia as 'the Wisdom of God' (Chokhmah in Hebrew) appears in the Bible in the Book of Proverbs - in particular 8:22-31 in which the Sophia speaks as if an entity in her own right - as well as in the Psalms, the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, other Wisdom literature and the New Testament. In Judaism the Sophia appears alongside the Shekinah, 'the Glory of God', a figure who plays a key role in the cosmology of the Kabbalists as an expression of the feminine aspect of God. Like the Gnostic Sophia, the Shekinah has a dual role as placed side by side with God while also exiled to the world of matter, the Malkuth.
At one point in time in the Russian Orthodox Church, for instance, the Sophia was championed by some individuals as a key part of the Godhead by religious thinkers. This included Vladimir Solovyov, Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky, Nikolai Berdyaev and Sergei Bulgakov whose book Sophia: The Wisdom of God is in many ways the apotheosis of Sophiology. His work was denounced by the Russian Orthodox Authorities as heretical. For Bulgakov, the Sophia is co-existent with the Trinity, operating as the Feminine Aspect of God in concert with the three Masculine principles of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. This contrary to the official view of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is that She is the same person as God the Son (however referred to as feminine in the Old Testament because "Sophia" in Greek is a female term) who became incarnate as Jesus Christ.
In Roman Catholicism Dame Hildegard of Bingen also celebrated the Sophia as a cosmic figure both in her writing and art. Within the Protestant tradition in England, 17th Century Mystic, Theosophist and founder of the Philadelphia Society Jane Leade wrote copious descriptions of her visions and dialogues with the 'Virgin-Sophia' who, she said, revealed to her the spiritual workings of the Universe. Leade was hugely influenced by the theosophical writings of Jakob Boehme, who also speaks of the Sophia in works such as [[the Way to Christ]].
Some commentators view the Virgin Mary as an expression of the Sophia, although in one sense much reduced. The Sophia is seen as being expressed in all Creation, the Natural World, and, for some of the Mystics mentioned above, integral to the spiritual well-being of mankind and the Church. The Virgin is seen as outside Creation but compassionately interceding on behalf of humanity to alleviate its suffering. The main difference between the Gnostic idea of the Sophia and the established churches' is that for the latter she is not fallen or in need of redemption. Conversely, she is not as central to established Christianity as she is to the Gnostic counterpart. Indeed, apart from the theologians and mystics mentioned above, in many Christian movements she is not a major figure at all, especially in the Western Churches (eg Catholicism, Lutheranism etc).
OH, and I told you I mentioned Preterism as a throw-away remark. Dishonest for you to claim now that I had anything serious to tsay about it.
I'm saying I don't think that God exists. You believe He exists because He appears in the Bible. I believe He is in the Bible because that's the way the Hebrews saw Him, and so that's the way they recorded their encounters with the divine.
I am not saying that my way is right and yours is wrong, or vice versa. I will say that both are incomplete, and therefore both are less than right.
But I don't think it matters because I don't believe one's relationship with God -- one's salvation even, and especially -- depends on what one believes.
Talk about silly! For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believed certain facts about him should not perish?
I don't think so. Believe = trust, rely on, lean on, cling to.
"But I don't think it matters because I don't believe one's relationship with God -- one's salvation even, and especially -- depends on what one believes."
[the moderator chuckles softly...]
Talk about silly! By that standard I could worship nightly at the altar of sexual hedonism and be right with God. I could believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster barfed out all existence and still be right with God... and on my way to Heaven.
Talk about silly!
Oh! And your links to "Flight F-I-N-A-L" were greatly appreciated. I couldn't find anything wrong with them. As fas as allegory goes, it hits the nail squarely on the head, which is what I find most surprising. How, you say? Well, because you toss out Preterism [even as a throw away], Sophia, and assertions that what one believes is not fundamental to a healthy relationship with God. I was surprised that you found "Flight F-I-N-A-L", so clearly based on fundamentalist Christian faith, to be beyond reproach or criticism.
Sometimes you absolutely amaze me!
I see how you might be offended at my assertion that an angry tribal God is a primitive concept, within the context of many people still today seeing God that way. I apologize. I didn't think of it that way.
I don't know how to talk about something I used to believe, in light of what I now believe -- all within the context of a rich and varied Christian faith, especially as perceptions chantge over time --without suggesting that those who still believe the old way are somehow "behind" me. I'll work on it. I've been trying lately. Sigh.
But, I meet your challenge on Sophia, the concept of Wisdom, as a female, being in the Bible: I think she's there.
You're the word man. Look at the sources and etymology and such of uses of "wisdom" in Proverbs. Either somebody is just lying or it's there.
I'm not saying I believe there is a female goddess who is part of the godhead. I'm saying that in Hebrew history is the perception of certain aspects of God as being female, associated with what Christians genrerally believe to be the Logos -- which is Christ.
Why anyone would be offended at that notion is really beyond me. I image God as a male no more than I image him having hands (and I mean, sigh, God the ... Father ... for lack of a word acceptable to you, not Jesus-God in earthly form as a man).
Re, "By that standard I could worship nightly at the altar of sexual hedonism and be right with God. I could believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster barfed out all existence and still be right with God... and on my way to Heaven."
I wish you would give me the benefit of the doubt sometimes. I see everything you say here about matters of faith within the context of Christianity -- as I intend, and expect, everything I say here to be seen within the context of Christianity. For you to assume otherwise because you we disagree on many things that clearly ARE disagreements within the Christian faith tradition shows that you really, do, honestly, think you're right and I'm wrong about everything. Or it suggests that, at least. Last I heard, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not being held up as the Jewish messiah now worshiped, and followed, by Christans. Nor is sexual hedonism generally regarded to be either a Christian practice, sacrament or order.
What I meant was this: I don't think it matters what, exactly, one believes in terms of doctrine, assuming that whatever views one holds are under the big umbrella of what it has meant to be a Christian to various Christians throughout the centuries.
I believe Jesus was-is divine. I do not believe it is necessary to believe that Jesus was-is divine to be saved. Same goes for just about every other fundamental you can name.
"Well, how can someone trust a mere man for salvation?" you say. Because Jesus was not a mere man, or we wouldn't be talking about him right here right now. And, even Jesus pointed to God -- not to himself.
The whole point of coming to God is to give up! To turn from oneself, and one's understanding, and to turn to God and the Mystery. Through Jesus, who is the Christ. Whose Grace and Love and Power works for us, on our behalf, despite our failures -- all of them, including our pride in being able to assent to certain supposed facts, as well as our honesty in admitting that we cannot. Not to turn in an essay or multiple-chopixce test with the right answers.
If there's a checklist of what one is supposed to believe, as in assent to the facts of, as the admission ticket to Glory, then just what the heck was the Cross all about in the first place?
The Cross either slashes through every -- EVERY! -- human understanding and misunderstanding of God, or it slashes through nothing -- not even the temple curtains.
I fear no wrong interpretation of the Bible, or church tradition, or anything else. Because getting it right is not what salvation is about. Giving up trying to get it right, whatever it is, IS.
Why do I have no fear?
Because Paul was fearless and I take him at his word:
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And I mean the kind of love that isn't taken back EVER. I believe that NOT "because it's in the Bible," and NOT because I believe it's the "Word of God." I agree with Paul, who no one doubts wrote the letter to the Roman church, unlike the disputed provenance of many other books of the Bible, and I accept it as his witness. Nothing magical about it. Nothing superstitous about it. There is no reason to assume anything else about any other book of the Bible based on what is known about Romans. Paul is the most authentic voice from the early church that we have. If that's the way HE saw HIS relationship with Christ, then that's good enough for me.
I think you're right though. I'm pretty extreme. Sloppy Grace is what some call it.
I insist that we'rre all under the same tent. I do not insist that y'all agree with me on anything -- save "Christ, and him crucified."
If any of y'all still insist that there are specific things that I must believe, or that I am not allowed to possibly believe, or that I am not alowed, as a Christian, to be ambivalent about or not have an opinion on, please be specific.
Fudge:
----- -----
The New Testament reveals God's great kindness to sinners through the death of Jesus Christ, but it begins and ends with judgments. John the Baptist opens the story with an announcement that God's fire will soon scorch the desert floor, sending the hypocritical 'snakes' scurrying in all directions. Revelation closes with a Lake of Fire which spells the everlasting death of evil and all those who prefer the darkness of sin to the bright light of God's presence.
"Between John the Baptist and John of Patmos, we find the divine execution of Ananias and Sapphira, an opponent of Christianity struck blind, and warnings to fear God who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell. At the core of the gospel message is the Cross of Christ -- the ultimate judgment of God against sin, willingly borne by the Son of God in place of all sinners who finally are saved.
"We really are not talking about an either/or. God is merciful and he is also severe. Romans 11:22 puts these traits together in perspective: 'Behold, therefore, the goodness and the severity of God.' God is good to those who do not push him away. For those who reject God's freely-offered goodness, there remains only that judgment which, apart from Christ's atonement, God's holiness and justice require."