Hiding Behind Jesus

Your Father is light and live, always faithful to His promises. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, He will allow you to return, running to embrace you. His arms always welcome you. You can't go too far or too fast to escape what He offers. Simply turn around, and it's yours.

You wanted to see the world, and so asked for your inheritance. You got more than you bargained for. They always said pigs were smarter than dogs, and actually preferred to be clean. Both are true.

Your Father has always been kind. Even to pigs. Perhaps He'll take you back. Didn't He always say that you don't have to be perfect for Him, that you don't have to be good? You only need to repent, and He'll take you just as you are.

You need that. You need one person who loves you, no matter what you've done. One person who won't reject you, one person who will look at your whole life -- even the mistakes, especially the mistakes -- and say, "It's all right. I'll still take you."

The pigs didn't watch you go. Someone sees you coming, and rushes to the other side. You both pretend that he doesn't watch your reflection in the store windows, dirt staining your robe in haphazard patches. Shoes crumbling off your feet with each step. Even you can smell your self.

It's a long walk, and easier to travel at night. You're like everyone else, then (except for the smell). Night masks imperfections, and assumptions are given free-reign. The smell, at some point, deters most. Except for the drunks. They're too drenched in their haze, and toss out slurred greetings.

Father always kept a light on from sunset to sunrise. Tonight's no exception. You hover at the fencepost. You should care about your appearance, at least try and clean yourself up. But you're so tired.

He won't reject you. Father doesn't do that. Father keeps His word.

One step. Two.

The front door bursts open. Father flies out. His form intersects the light, and all you see is this blog. Then it slams into you -- it's Father.

Father.

His arms cradle you. He's laughing. His child has come home. His child has returned. Why wouldn't this child, when Father leaves the light on?

You slump against Him, releasing those cares. Everything seems like a dream now.

Father asks you a question. You can't hear the words -- you just feel the vibration in his chest. But surely your Father sees that you're too tired to answer ,you're just too overwhelmed that you're home, that you're --

An answer? You gave an answer? How? You didn't even hear the question.

Wait. Why are you pulling --- you want to stare into your Father's eyes? But you weren't ready for that yet, you weren't ready to see --

Your Father's eyes are now mirrors, capturing this shimmering white form. Serene. Peaceful. Untainted. Something you never were, something you never could be.

The form's lips move, still saying those words. Its arms move, and you realize your arms move in time. Father's very happy. He's crying. "My son," He cries. "My son is home. Lost, and now found!"

Found? How am I found? This reflection in my Father's eyes -- how could I be found, when that's not you? Father always knew who you were, always told you ... who is your Father embracing?

Who am I, Father, if You don't see me?

The above italics are probably dramatic, if not overly so. But I'm hoping to explore the potential dark side of seeing Jesus as a sacrifice for sins. Paul says somewhere that it's no longer him that lives, but Christ that lives in him. Other New Testament passages reference being cleansed by Jesus' blood, and I've read on other blogs how Jesus' blood was perfect enough to cover all sins. Other times, I read/hear people pray that the "lost" always see Jesus/God in them.

The blood itself was necessary because God can't look upon sin. So I would see this as logically entailing that God can't look upon any human unless Jesus' blood is first in place.

However, evangelical Christianity also presents God as accepting you, "just as I am." I was involved in a discussion on another blog as to whether that idea is found in the Bible. In that precise wording, no. But the idea I get behind "just as I am" is that it's supposed to contrast Christianity against "work-based" religions. You don't need to try and be good before approaching God, He'll come and meet you no matter where you are (provided you either admit how bad you are, or how much you need God). Hence, "just as I am," entails all the sin was is currently infested with.

I'm not sure these two ideas are compatible. If God requires blood in order to look upon humans, then we aren't accepted just as we are. Especially since under the original sin concept, every iota of us is twisted/tainted with sin. If our parents or spouses tell us that they take us just as we are, the line of thought behind that is that we are accepted in both good and bad parts -- and both parts are acknowledged and seen.

(A possible way around this might be as follows: if going on the Trinitarian concept, then it could be said that God the Son accepts you just as you are, and yet God the Father must have blood in place. However, then you've got the different persons acting in an inconsistent fashion, with one capable of doing something the other can't.)

However, in referencing my parable above -- the Father wasn't accepting the prodigal child. He was accepting another creature in the prodigal's place. When he looked at the child, He saw Someone else. Isn't that how Jesus is used? God must see Jesus' blood in order to look upon you, for if you were actually seen, then you'd get thrown into hell? Can it even be said, then, that God loves you? Or is Jesus loved in your place, and you're just an afterthought?

If a parent only accepted a child after slaughtering a lamb and dumping the blood on top of the child, what would we say about that parent? What would that do to the child?

Does evangelical Christianity truly follow the story of the prodigal son? I'm not sure it does. It says that a sacrifice must be in place, so that one can be welcomed into heaven. In the parable, the son was simply welcomed, as he was. No mediator was necessary.

Jesus vs Paul, Round One.

“Both Jesus and Paul taught salvation by faith, leading to spiritual rebirth and alliance with God’s purposes. But while these were, for Jesus, freely available from the God who knows how to give his children what they need (matt 5:6; 7:7-11), with Paul, salvation had to be arranged: there was a mechanism of salvation. Christ had to be made sin, had to be handed over for our transgressions. For Jesus, faith is primarily trust. This is present in Paul, but what dominates is an intellectual component, namely belief – assenting to certain soteriological facts: “Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead” (Rom 10:9); “become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted” (Rom 6:17).

…”For Paul, Christ is a mediator, not a proclaimer, of salvation. Jesus’ own emphatically stated parables about faith, honesty, and growth may be fine wisdom teaching, but they are hardly the essence of salvation for Paul, which is “Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). A proclaimer of salvation is an apostle, and he never calls Jesus an apostle. For Paul, one dies to the Law not through the teachings but through the body of Christ (Rom 7:4). And so Jesus the teacher becomes Jesus the type, and a type needs to be interpreted.

“Paul never says “your faith has saved you,” as Jesus did, since he is sure it was the Messiah’s ultra-significant death that actually saves; rather, faith means accepting this teaching … Paul could never say “blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matt 5:8), for there are not pure in heart in Paul’s view. There is no immediate and free access to God by the meek or the pure. Access to God required an intervening transaction on behalf of wretched humanity: “Christ died for our sins (1 Cor 15:3). Faith needs to believe that.

“Jesus was willing to use the innocence of children as a sign of the kingdom. For Paul, there is none innocent, and trust itself is not to be trusted since “the evil I do not want is what I do” (Rom 7:19). Paul’s is a religion of catastrophic conversion; Jesus’ healthy-minded religion is not understood. For Paul, there are only extremes: profound enslavement or unexpected redemption, being lost in sin or being dramatically rescued.

“…. We are dealing with two entirely different instincts about God and access to God. Jesus, with fully adult know-how and lack of illusions, is able to say that a sincere and childlike faith opens the portals of heaven. There really are some truth-hungering, merciful, and “utterly sincere” people, who “will be filled … will receive mercy … will see God” (Matt 5:6-8)

“We have reached a state in theological development when we need to acknowledge that the Bible is full of diverse viewpoints and admit that it is not likely to be a transcript straight from the mind of God, though it may indeed be the heavily filtered human reflection of the mind of God, a record of the gradual and partial human reception of God’s initiatives.”

Problems with Atonement, Stephen Finlan.

The first time I ever read the Synoptic Gospels straight through, I was surprised at what was in them -- because most of it didn't seem to be taught in traditional Christianity. Faith in Jesus isn't the overriding factor, and they are heavily work-based. I found this startling, considering the actual words of Jesus were in these three Gospels. But when you look at "what we believe" statements from churches, do the majority of the quotes pull from the Synoptics? Or do they pull from Paul and Company, with a smattering of the Gospel of John?

Then I got to John, and pieces came together. Then I read Paul, and it all clicked. Much of traditional Christianity does seem to be pulled straight from Paul, and anything in the Synoptics that disagrees with this is re-interpreted so that everything fits in one neat pile. For instance, the Sermon on the Mount, where it says "blessed are the peacemakers, for they are called the children of God." To me, that seems clear-cut. Peacemakers = children of God. I would think the crowds listening would understand it as such. Or telling people, in the present tense, that they *are* the light of the world, or the salt of the Earth. Again, clear-cut.

I read somewhere that the Sermon actually applies to Christians almost "after the fact." It would apply to them after they accepted Jesus as their Savior, and could say how one should live after receiving salvation.

Okay, if we're going with the timeline of Jesus preaching for three years, and this is placed relatively early in Matthew ... even if it takes place during the last year, what are the odds that the crowd understood it to apply at a later date? Does anything in the Sermon itself even hint at that? Wouldn't the crowd have rather gone home, and raved about what the man teaching with authority said, and what it said about their relationship to God?

Another idea I've heard is that the Sermon is designed to show one how sinful they are. But again, that's almost reading Pauline theology back into the Sermon. Yes, it makes mention of you kill someone by hating them, and looking at another person lustfully is committing adultery. But to me, that's not showing how hopeless one's situation is, it's showing that it's not enough to just act right. Good actions start from good motivations. You want to stop lusting after the opposite sex while married? It takes more than just making sure you don't look at someone, it requires eliminating the lust at the source -- at the inside. Any murderous act starts in the heart. If you hate someone, you are, in a way, mentally stripping them of their humanity. It's easier to kill what you hate, because you're already killing them inside your heart.

Besides, the Pharisees as interpreted in the Gospels were already going around condemning anyone who wasn't like them left and right, and Jesus had quite a few words for that. Why then would people find Jesus so riveting if he were doing the same thing?

I originally read the book to get a better grasp on all the atonement theories -- and I recommend it for that alone. It also helps show how influential Paul's letters were in designing atonement theories, and how the later Christians tended to stick with just one metaphor, whereas Paul used a combination.

Does God truly forgive?

From the dictionary, forgiveness is: to give up resentment of or claim to requital for. b: to grant relief from payment of. 2: to cease to feel resentment against (an offender)

Penal substitution is essentially Jesus punished in everyone's place in order to satisfy God's justice. Through this process, humanity can receive forgiveness.

I suppose the first question that arises is this: is forgiveness truly forgiveness if the "pound of flesh" is measured out first? If someone kills your child, and so you kill that person's child in turn and say to the person that you now forgive him/her, have you truly forgiven that person? Or is the forgiveness based on punishment, and what is due to you as the wronged party?

For me, I tend to see forgiveness as not only releasing the negative emotions, but relinquishing any claim to compensation for the wrong act. Jesus mentions this a lot, in that one is to forgive, and not seek vengeance. If vengeance is sought, and then forgiveness is granted, forgiveness becomes dependent on satisfying the vengeance.

So does the Penal substitution theory, which dominates conservative Protestantism (and possibly branches of Catholicism?) violate forgiveness as it's commonly identified? After all, God doesn't forgive unconditionally. Someone still had to be punished before that forgiveness was granted to people. God didn't simply relinquish any claims of satisfaction -- those claims were fulfilled in Jesus, in delivering that required 'pound of flesh.'

The only reason, under this atonement theory, that God doesn't punish people is because Jesus was punished. And to me, that violates the definition of forgiveness, because God didn't give a need for satisfaction, God didn't "cease" to feel anything about sin. The only reason why he ceased is because the person's punishment was still meted out, only not to the person.

That's not forgiveness, that's a transaction. It becomes an 'if-then' statement, it becomes a system of rewards, and paints a rather poor picture of how God forgives. I'm not even sure you can say it's unconditional forgiveness, because quite a few conditions were set before forgiveness even took place.