I am moved to tears when I listen to the magnificent anthem The Holy City by Stephen Adams, particularly the portion of the third stanza which speaks of the wideness of God's mercy and grace:
I saw the Holy City
Beside the tideless sea;
The light of God was on its streets,
The gates were open wide,
And all who would might enter,
And no one was denied.
A beautiful arrangement of this grand hymn can be viewed on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nq7ZLofnpk or at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tld1MZ2F4GA.
Now these words quoted above in no way reflect the view of God's grace with which I was raised. Then, as now in many Christian circles, hell was seen as the default destination for the human race unless they repented of their sinful natures and carnal activities and asked God for forgiveness. I believed this with all my heart as a young person, but as I became more exposed to the realities of life in this sorry world of ours, the more restless I became with that interpretation of God's will.
These were some of the stumbling blocks I faced as I tried to hold onto my traditional view of life eternal.
1. The numerous references to God loving the whole world, John 3:16 being the best example.
2. God's emphatic statement that "he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Ezekiel 18:23); rather, he is "delighted to show mercy" (Micah 7:18). In fact, says St. Paul, he is the God "who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4).
If this is true, the logical part of my mind scolded the sentimental and conservative portion, why does God stack the deck against the same people he claims that he wants to live with him always?
Stack the deck?, I protested to myself. What could you possibly mean?
Just this, I replied. I grew up believing that I had to repent and exercise faith towards a God of whom I had sufficient knowledge ("a saving knowledge" as we often called it) to even realize that such repentance was necessary. In other words, I had to have God, Jesus, my lost state, my need of forgiveness, the atonement, and so on explained to me by someone else who was credible to me.
Those not fortunate enough to have all of this information given to them were doomed from the beginning. And whose fault was it that these doomed ones hadn't heard this news?--why, us Christians. We hadn't done the necessary evangelism.
How logical is that? God wants everyone to become his child. He takes absolutely no pleasure in any other result. Yet those who lack the knowledge to learn about him (and that is most people in the world) go to Hell, while we lucky few go to Heaven, even though we are the culprits who didn't spread the word.
God holds lack of knowledge against the unsaved, who couldn't have possibly known better. But he does not hold the failure to spread the knowledge against us who have it, and should have known better.
And we call this grace?
The Calvinists try to lift this responsibility off of Christians' shoulders with their doctrine of predestination. They say that while Jesus' death was sufficient for all, it was efficient only for some. The some for whom Christ's death has any lasting beneficial effect were chosen by God in advance on no other basis than that he decided to be merciful to a portion of the totally undeserving world, and the rest are doomed even though they are kept from even wanting God by God's choice.
And they call this grace.
Some people of the traditional mindset certainly struggled with this even if their fundamental view didn't change very much. With respect to children, for instance, some preachers talked about an "age of accountability" before which kids could not be expected to understand their need of repentance, and who were exempt from the necessary steps until they had crossed some threshold of moral understanding. But this was not really a consistent position for them, because it did suggest another avenue for salvation beyond the knowledge-based one.
Others would try to take a more generous view of "the heathen" as they generally called them, the ones who had never heard the gospel. I occasionally heard reference to these folks being "judged according to whatever light they had."
I actually thought that they were perhaps on a better track. There are those enigmatic references to people with no knowledge of God through the normal channels, as it were, but who were equally part of God's kingdom. These include Melchizedek (Genesis 14), to whom Abraham himself showed obeisance, and "the other sheep that are not of this sheep pen" (John 10) that Jesus saw as much his children as his Jewish disciples.
And St. Paul refers to the possibility of knowing God in his creation: ...since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made... (Romans 1:19-20).
Then I began to think of all the people who had the so-called knowledge about the traditional Christian teaching about salvation but who could not possibly take it seriously. I think of the prostitute in Vancouver who was convinced by the some well-meaning Christians to accompany them to a large evangelical church. She walked in and the first thing she saw was the man leading the service--one of her customers. Or the young woman who joined the working girls on the streets here in Abbotsford after she was raped by her youth pastor. Are they automatically consigned to the burner because of the sins of others? Does that go for children of Christian child molesters? Battered wives of Christian husbands? Customers of business people who, as the old song has it:
Mr. Business went to church;
He never missed a Sunday.
Mr. Business went to Hell
For what he did on Monday.
All right, I heard my traditional self saying, let's turn my old thinking on its head. Let us suppose (using the royal "us" here) that instead of some place called Hell being the default position, that it is Heaven, or the Kingdom of God, whatever name one wants to apply.
In other words, what if we were to say, "You're in before your out."
More on this as I puzzle it through.
Beside the tideless sea;
The light of God was on its streets,
The gates were open wide,
And all who would might enter,
And no one was denied.
A beautiful arrangement of this grand hymn can be viewed on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nq7ZLofnpk or at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tld1MZ2F4GA.
Now these words quoted above in no way reflect the view of God's grace with which I was raised. Then, as now in many Christian circles, hell was seen as the default destination for the human race unless they repented of their sinful natures and carnal activities and asked God for forgiveness. I believed this with all my heart as a young person, but as I became more exposed to the realities of life in this sorry world of ours, the more restless I became with that interpretation of God's will.
These were some of the stumbling blocks I faced as I tried to hold onto my traditional view of life eternal.
1. The numerous references to God loving the whole world, John 3:16 being the best example.
2. God's emphatic statement that "he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Ezekiel 18:23); rather, he is "delighted to show mercy" (Micah 7:18). In fact, says St. Paul, he is the God "who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4).
If this is true, the logical part of my mind scolded the sentimental and conservative portion, why does God stack the deck against the same people he claims that he wants to live with him always?
Stack the deck?, I protested to myself. What could you possibly mean?
Just this, I replied. I grew up believing that I had to repent and exercise faith towards a God of whom I had sufficient knowledge ("a saving knowledge" as we often called it) to even realize that such repentance was necessary. In other words, I had to have God, Jesus, my lost state, my need of forgiveness, the atonement, and so on explained to me by someone else who was credible to me.
Those not fortunate enough to have all of this information given to them were doomed from the beginning. And whose fault was it that these doomed ones hadn't heard this news?--why, us Christians. We hadn't done the necessary evangelism.
How logical is that? God wants everyone to become his child. He takes absolutely no pleasure in any other result. Yet those who lack the knowledge to learn about him (and that is most people in the world) go to Hell, while we lucky few go to Heaven, even though we are the culprits who didn't spread the word.
God holds lack of knowledge against the unsaved, who couldn't have possibly known better. But he does not hold the failure to spread the knowledge against us who have it, and should have known better.
And we call this grace?
The Calvinists try to lift this responsibility off of Christians' shoulders with their doctrine of predestination. They say that while Jesus' death was sufficient for all, it was efficient only for some. The some for whom Christ's death has any lasting beneficial effect were chosen by God in advance on no other basis than that he decided to be merciful to a portion of the totally undeserving world, and the rest are doomed even though they are kept from even wanting God by God's choice.
And they call this grace.
Some people of the traditional mindset certainly struggled with this even if their fundamental view didn't change very much. With respect to children, for instance, some preachers talked about an "age of accountability" before which kids could not be expected to understand their need of repentance, and who were exempt from the necessary steps until they had crossed some threshold of moral understanding. But this was not really a consistent position for them, because it did suggest another avenue for salvation beyond the knowledge-based one.
Others would try to take a more generous view of "the heathen" as they generally called them, the ones who had never heard the gospel. I occasionally heard reference to these folks being "judged according to whatever light they had."
I actually thought that they were perhaps on a better track. There are those enigmatic references to people with no knowledge of God through the normal channels, as it were, but who were equally part of God's kingdom. These include Melchizedek (Genesis 14), to whom Abraham himself showed obeisance, and "the other sheep that are not of this sheep pen" (John 10) that Jesus saw as much his children as his Jewish disciples.
And St. Paul refers to the possibility of knowing God in his creation: ...since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made... (Romans 1:19-20).
Then I began to think of all the people who had the so-called knowledge about the traditional Christian teaching about salvation but who could not possibly take it seriously. I think of the prostitute in Vancouver who was convinced by the some well-meaning Christians to accompany them to a large evangelical church. She walked in and the first thing she saw was the man leading the service--one of her customers. Or the young woman who joined the working girls on the streets here in Abbotsford after she was raped by her youth pastor. Are they automatically consigned to the burner because of the sins of others? Does that go for children of Christian child molesters? Battered wives of Christian husbands? Customers of business people who, as the old song has it:
Mr. Business went to church;
He never missed a Sunday.
Mr. Business went to Hell
For what he did on Monday.
All right, I heard my traditional self saying, let's turn my old thinking on its head. Let us suppose (using the royal "us" here) that instead of some place called Hell being the default position, that it is Heaven, or the Kingdom of God, whatever name one wants to apply.
In other words, what if we were to say, "You're in before your out."
More on this as I puzzle it through.
Thanks for this post! I really appreciate it and love seeing how you are working through these ideas as am I! Reading this helps me think through the logic of all that we've been taught to believe...
ReplyDeleteI remember thinking that if telling people the "good news" meant that they now "knew" and then they didn't choose to "accept Christ" they would go to hell. So then perhaps we shouldn't even be telling them b/c they were more likely to be saved by having never heard of Christ! Not sure if this rambling sentence makes sense....