I heard a great thought today. I was listening to a sermon by Alistair Begg on the radio this morning on my drive to work. He is one of my favorite preachers, and as usual, he did not disappoint.
He took issue with the “benevolent grandpa” view of God. This is the idea that God is the cosmic equivalent of a senile but happy old man who overlooks the bad things we do with a sigh. “Boys will be boys,” he says, and he happily welcomes all of us into the Pearly Gates.
Begg posed a great rebuttal: Would you be friends with a person who never got angry? If a man saw someone brutally attacking another person and did not become angry at the injustice of it, what would you think of him? If you never became upset when someone you love was treated unfairly, what kind of person would you be? If God is “love” without any sense of justice (far be it from a “loving” God to send anyone to Hell), would He be worthy of worship?
Who is the God that you worship?
5 comments:
jon, how do you think God views mankind?
Mt 23:37 - "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing."
I think Jesus' words here do a good job of summing up humankind's relationship with God as portrayed in the Bible. If you look at the biblical story as a whole, you see a God who loves humanity and reaches out to them again and again, only to be rejected by most. His love compelled Him to give up everything for us, but His justice compels Him ultimately to judge us.
In answer to your question, then, I think God loves humanity unconditionally and wants the best for us, but He respects us enough to give us some measure of autonomy. I think I will write a short post about this last idea, so more on that later.
What do you think, as one who is searching (or so I gather from your blog)?
I' m glad my God is an "angry "God.He may be watching quietly for a while but there is a consequence for every sin.He does it with love because I know when I sin he is there to pick me up,forgive and punish me because he is creating me to be his ultimate servant!
jon, thanks for the question, in reference to your verse and the subsequent question christ's heartbreak lies in the rejection of his message.... yes. one carried by the prophets as well. obviously what christ and the prophets professed to had to be in contrast with that of man or in this case that of the pharisee. then the question is what is the message of the pharisee was it one of identity in christ or was it pertaining to ones own abbiding of the law of righteousness. the later obviously. so in order for christ to have been put to death he thus had to have a message differing from there own. his message life in him. i wrap with this God's idea of righteousness then has to be about the individual as opposed to rightousness by law. a new being equals God's perception in you in the identity of Christ. a new and reborn being. thoughts?
Jon;
The flip side of the article is that God will not happily greet people at the pearly gates because of their own goodness, they only get that warm reception when they are cloaked in the righteousness of Christ.
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