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.

Magnifying God's love.

Would God's love pack as much of a punch as it does if we weren't also told how depraved we are? One of the things I notice in Christianity a lot is how overwhelmed people are that this most holy God loves the most wretched sinner, and how much humanity doesn't deserve this love.

But what if humanity was told that sometimes it does deserve that love? Would the love itself then be that overwhelming? Or just par for the course? Does Christianity need humanity to be in that depraved state in order to emphasize the nature of God's love? Does it need humanity to be depraved in order to make sure its followers never forget how humble they should feel, or that the followers should constantly be amazed? How much value would God's love have if humanity were perfect? Or even a mixture of good/bad?

Returning the power.

"In the literature where Judaism speaks for itself, Israel's election, embodied in the giving of the Torah, is viewed as God's gracious gift. Obedience to the Torah is the proper response to the gift of the Torah, but it does not earn salvation as such. "Election and ultimately salvation cannot be earned, but depend on God's grace" and mercy."

-- Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ, second edition.

"We love because He loved us first." 1 John 4:20

In Christianity, the emphasis is on God loving everyone, the undeserving, and that no one can ever be good enough to earn God's love. God's love is not a response to anything we do, and is not correlated to our actions. I think we're putting the focus in the wrong place. It has nothing to do with how good or bad we are. It has to do with power, and who has it.

When you start throwing around words like “deserve,” the word “earn” isn’t too far behind. And if you’re capable of earning something, then you’re capable of behaving in such a way that gets whatever it is you’ve earned removed. When that happens, the power ultimately lies with us -- we would then have the ability to determine when or if God would love us. God's love would be fickle, rather than a constant. And God's love would be less than all-powerful, because it would be the effect to our cause.

Rather, in saying that God loves the world, or God loves us, or that we love because God first loves us, the focus there is on who has the power – and it’s not us. We do not have the power to affect the fact that God loves us. At no point does the love ever come with an “off” switch. Much like a parent with a child, the parent loves. Period. S/he loves because this is his/her child, this is his/her creation, and the child is an expression of the parent, carrying a piece of the parent forward, only in new ways.

There is a complication with this, though. I once asked (well, kind of threw it into an already too long e-mail over theological differences) an evangelical friend about this notion, and said one of the difficulties I have with the “inherent sin” and so forth is that if standing before God, and hearing about God, it makes me ask, “Is there anything about me that’s lovable? What is it inside me that You love? What produces that?”

Her response was that God’s love isn’t dependent on us, but on God.

She missed the point I was driving at, but that’s because I wasn’t clear. One of the difficulties in saying that nothing you do produces God’s love is that it can lead to the idea that God has no choice in loving humanity. It’s like an addictive compulsion and perhaps, given a choice, God would prefer to not love humanity. It's an abstract love, that really has no personal connections. A rock would have equal weight in terms of God's love.

While I do think that nothing we do can alter God’s love, I do think that the production of God’s love is dependent upon us. This is possibly paradoxical, but let’s go back to the parent/child example. The parent’s love of a child simply is, but it is dependent upon knowledge of that child (not necessarily existence, because the child could die, but the parent’s love would not). Without the child, that particular aspect of the parent’s love wouldn’t be. And yet without that love, the child wouldn’t exist (granted, this example is limited to those who actually wanted a child at one point).

Therefore, the thing inside us that God loves is the very fact that we are created. We carry tremendous potential for good, we can demonstrate pure life, light, love in this world, as we were created to be. The very thing that God responds to when loving His creation is everything He put into His creation in the first place. That is precisely why we cannot be responsible for activating or shutting down God's love: we had nothing to do with those original qualities.

One of the reasons I’ve heard for why the Trinity must be true is that God’s love had to directed “outwards,” otherwise it became a selfish love. Therefore, the love was directed towards the three Trinity members. I don’t think this is the case. Even without the Trinity, God’s love would still be directed “outwards.”

God is omniscient. Is there ever a time when God does not know you? Expectant parents love the child in the womb – they know nothing about this child, what it will be like, and yet they still love the child. God, being omniscient, knows everything about you, like you’ve already lived your life. And if God is infinite and eternal, and had no starting point, then we have been known eternally. There was never a point at which God was not aware of us, down the last little DNA strand.

Do we need to exist in this time/space in order to be loved? Does God only love us after we are physically born here? No, because then that love once again has an on/off switch. So if God has eternally known us, then hasn’t that love always been directed outwards?

Now, this doesn't meant that you can do whatever you want, because God always loves you. The best relationships I see that are based on love are relationships of improvement. We are awed and amazed that this person, who is full of goodness and grace and light, loves us. Clearly, if this person who has all these qualities loves us, then there is something of those qualities that the person responds to -- and to me, that would make me want to search myself to see how those qualities could be cultivated, and how the bad qualities could be eliminated. What I glean from the Bible is you take the best human relationship you have and increase by a factor of millions, and it makes you want to be what God sees in you that much more.

Saved through Grace

If living in the Western civilization, you'd basically need to live under a rock to not at least be passingly familiar with the concept of saved through grace, and how it's pulled from Ephesians 2:8.

However, I'm wondering how much of that is taken in the correct context. Here's the verse in full: "For you have been delivered by grace through trusting, and even this is not your accomplishment but God's gift. You were not delivered by your own actions; therefore no one should boast. For we are of God's making, created in union with the Messiah Yeshua for a life of good actions already prepared by God for us to do." -- Complete Jewish Bible, Ephesians 2:8-10.

I get how this translation is saying how no one earns their salvation. I don't see the corresponding factor that nothing we do has any merit, or that people are incapable of earning the salvation. Rather, what it's saying is that any good work one does is a result of God's making. If God made us to do good works, then we didn't independently generate those good works. Therefore, we can't take credit for them, because their not of our devising. They were 'already prepared' for us to do, and we were simply doing what we were created to do.

I also think Paul is unto an important idea here: that no one should boast. If in fact people could rack up enough brownie points to 'earn' heaven, then the good works become a chore, almost. They cease to be good because there's an expectation of reward. Which act is the good one? Someone who returns a purse simply because, or someone who returns a purse because there's a $500 reward? If that is applied in salvation: which person is good -- the person who helps the neighbor just because, or the person who helps because that gets him/her 200 points closer to heaven? The good work then becomes motivation by selfish interests.

The other problem with boasting: it's too often tied to pride, and that one person has an ability the other lacks. Given human nature, if salvation was a matter of doing enough to earn it, think of how quickly that would descend to: "I did 300 more good works than you did, so God likes me better." Or "I'm more worthy of salvation than you."

Instead, Paul almost seems to be saying to not worry about the works. They're already prepared for us, and they're taken care of. We're doing what we're supposed to be doing. Just relax and let go.

However, in a way, works do still 'save' people. Not by the concept of works earn salvation, but that good works demonstrate how grace works in one's life. Works are a way of expressing love, gratitude, compassion, light, and show that one chooses a life away from sin.