home | archives: July 2009

Welcome

FaithFusion offers blogs and columns on many topics: storytelling, society and culture, philosophy, religion, politics, science, and especially “deep doctrine magic” about all seven.
 

Features
 



Tags
 

Archives
 



 

Search
 



Updates



Follow me on Twitter
 



Recently read:
Nonfiction
 


Recently read:
Fiction
 



Christ’s death, God’s wrath: the vital connection

Avatar by Dr Ransom at 05:53 PM ET , Thursday, Jul 30, 2009

Permalink
Categories: Columns, Rebuttals, Deep Doctrine Magic: Biblical Theology, Life Applications



(This is adapted from forum discussion posts written July 27 and July 29. These were mostly in response to a member who wrote that he disagreed on that Christ on the cross suffered God’s wrath as punishment for humans’ sin — an issue that transcends “Calvinism” vs. free-willieism.)

Both Biblical Calvinists and Free-Willies believe a loving God will send people (and/or allow them to go) to Hell. We also fully agree that God allows suffering for his own good reasons. And both Calvinists and Free-Willies would (or should!) disagree with the sentiment below:

I fail to see how any such sin sacrifice would pacify God. Does God delight in blood and vengeance? Is he not a merciful God?

The two “sides” within Christendom both believe that God is merciful, yet also just. Yes, a sin sacrifice is what is required, made evident from the entirety of the Old Testament and Christ’s fulfillment of the Law. God is love, but if He ignored a rebel sinner spitting in His eye, He would not be holy; He would be evil.

As my wife said over the weekend, some think as if God were like Tinker Bell from Peter Pan, only able to have one attribute or emotion at a time. This not only cheapens and humanizes God (and we are able to have more than one emotion at once!), but worse, bypasses Scriptures that clearly present Him as both love/mercy and holy/wrathful, not just all-love-all-the-time.

I believe free-willies also exaggerate God’s love to an extent, but not so much as this. My free-willie friends may believe Christ died to set up a salvation “system,” rather than as a direct substitute for His people. But at least they believe that His sacrifice was for people’s sins and did satisfy God. This is the essence of Christianity, however you think the “mechanics” work. Scripture is so clear about this — try the whole book of Hebrews just for starters!

Rather than talking about Predestination versus Free Will, I think the question needs to become: why did Jesus have to die? That is much more foundational to Christianity, and what our beliefs are based upon — God’s Word, or human-limited “logic”? To be frank, what one believes about it will separate true Christians from “Churchians.”

Continued ...



Are you missing the point of Scripture passages?

Avatar by Dr Ransom at 05:41 PM ET , Tuesday, Jul 21, 2009

Permalink
Categories: Columns, Deep Doctrine Magic: Biblical Theology, Churchianity, Life Applications



(Edited from the originally written version, available here.)

Here is something I’ve had on my mind for a while, based on a little series of broadcasts called “Discover the Word,” by RBC Ministries. In early May, I mini-blogged this to my website:

Just now I’m finishing my catchup with the most recent “Discover the Word” broadcast, by RBC Ministries. They’re doing a fantastic series about misreading of Scripture, including Matthew 18: 19-20 ... offering the true context of this passage that I hadn’t seen before ...

They continued the Biblical Context series for about a month, dealing with misunderstood, misinterpreted or misapplied passages of Scripture that people take out of context all the time and may not even know it.

More and more I’ve learned that many passages I’ve had up in my head that I subconsciously thought said one thing actually say nothing of the sort. And in some cases, the out-of-context idea may be Biblical — just not what the verse is talking about there.


Reading random letters

For instance, take Matthew 18, actually verses 15-20.

The whole passage is about what steps to follow if you’re offended by a fellow Christ-follower, right? But somehow or other, folks tend to see this passage (along with other Biblical texts) as sort of a child’s summer-camp letter, as Dr. Haddon Robinson so aptly phrased it: jumping from thought to thought to thought like a kid who says, “Hi Mom. It’s hot here at camp. I captured a frog. Yesterday I went swimming. Please send money for snacks. ‘Bye.”

So instead of finding that all of what Jesus said in this passage is about reconciliation between believers, and in the Church, Christians think Jesus suddenly changes his mind and starts talking instead about prayer meetings, or “binding Satan,” or the power of faith to get stuff.

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

Pretty cool so far, right? Most readers would track right along with this if they began reading the chapter — or the book of Matthew altogether — from the beginning. Jesus started talking about personal reconciliation, which may or may not require church leaders to be intermediaries, and He hasn’t left that topic.

So when why — I ask myself this too, with a silly grin on my face! — do we sometimes while reading verses like this suddenly assume Jesus had some kind of ADD and then got distracted by spiritual warfare and how God is always there at prayer meetings?

That’s the way many Christians have traditionally understood the following verses, at least when they’re quoted by themselves like “sound bytes,” without context.

Continued ...



Breaking the silence: an update from the author

Avatar by Dr Ransom at 06:40 PM ET , Monday, Jul 20, 2009

Permalink
Categories: General, Media: Books



Whew. It’s been a busy two months since I last posted anything to this site. Lord willing, such long delays in offering anything new here are now over.

But unfortunately, a few things are still limiting my schedule:

1) Some months ago, a bug got into my site (perhaps from a flawed or old Wordpress installation) and inserted that obnoxious random-word trash into several of my pages. My theory is that this still preventing me from accessing any of my site, or even personal email accounts, from my previous commonly used internet source. Further research and repairs may be necessary …

2) I got married on May 30, and suddenly writing blogs and such seems lower-priority. Evidently that hasn’t stopped me from several interactions about Deep Doctrinal Magic on NarniaWeb, though (such as this one, posted very early Sunday morning). And recently I even posted a Speculative Faith column about Christian fiction’s bizarre obsessions with two seemingly opposite genres: Strange story spectrum — from barn-raisers to bloodsuckers.

So surely I can recover even time to post small items on this site — and longer columns on occasion.

3) For the past several months, I’ve been working at least one, sometimes two (it’s complicated) part-time jobs, in addition to my full-time employment as a reporter/photographer with a small community weekly newspaper. This additional work is often fun, but even better, profitable, and it takes more time.

4) Finally I’ve re-begun novel writing, on a work in progress I haven’t much discussed here. Sometime a site revision — or even a completely new site — will pay more attention to that project. …