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Mid-America Christian University Press Oklahoma City, Oklahoma www.MACU.edu
FOREWORD
God has always been seeking people, but people have not always sought Him. I think its different today as many people are engaged in an honest, often desperate, search to know God. This book is a marvelous introduction to Him. It navigates through our societal myths about who God is to reveal the truth that the Holy Spirit has been making known from the first days of creation.
Cliff Sanders has written a book that communicate to both the head and the heart. Written in a learned yet practical way, Making Sense Out of Spirituality reflects the author ’s personal and inspiring discovery of theholiness of God. The author isn’t content to keep this discovery to himself; he wants you to come to your own spiritual awakening, growing close enough to God for Him to breathe life into your spirit.
Making Sense Out of Spirituality also expresses the vision of its publisher, Mid-America Christian University, to combine spiritual
authenticity with educational excellence. I am proud of my association with MACU, for this institution understands that leadership begins with a soul that is in tune with God and that such a heart must be in tune with everything around it. My partnership with the administration, faculty, staff, and students of this fine school through the Toler Leadership Center has enriched my own life and, as a result, the lives of thousands who have attended its seminars and conferences. My prayer is for you as you make your own discovery of God. May your knowledge of God increase until you become His holy ambassador in the world.
—STAN TOLER
1 Knowing God
When my wife and I moved to Oklahoma City to teach at a private college, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment for almost a year. It only about six hundred square feet, so small you had to go outside to change your mind. After about ten months, I thought—much to my wife’s relief—that we should see if we could afford to purchase a home. We knew we wouldn’t qualify for a large mortgage, but there were a number of affordable homes in the area because of the oil bust of the 1980s. These were lovely homes that people had been forced to abandon due to the difficult financial times. While we were sorry for their loss, our hopes for ourselves began to rise as the realtor showed us what appeared to be a dream home. It was a two-story home of over two thousand square feet, and it had great curb appeal. It had a fireplace, and the master bathroom seemed to be almost as large as our entire apartment! “It’s perfect,” my wife whispered as we
strolled through the spacious rooms, “I can picture us living here.” The realtor seemed to share our excitement as the prospect of a sale loomed larger.
As we continued looking around, I noticed the vents for the heating system in the floor. Glancing at one of them, I saw something that seemed to glisten. I called our realtor over and asked what this meant. His countenance changed immediately. He said that water in those openings could mean only one thing—a problem with the foundation. Two days later, I arranged for a home inspector to meet me at the house. Within ten minutes he announced that there were major structural problems with the dwelling. He identified a huge crack in the floor of the garage, breaks in the brick, and other telltale signs of damage that would cost thousands to repair. When I asked him what had caused these problems in a house that appeared so lovely, said, “That’s simple. The ground wasn’t properly prepared when the house was built. As a result, the foundation simply won’t bear the weight.”
Our excitement about the possibility of owning that home seemed to slip through one of the many cracks in that foundation. There was no way we would purchase a home that needed to have major repairs conducted before we could even move into it. The foundation was not the first thing we saw when inspecting the home—in fact, I never did get a good look at it. But the flaws in that foundation made the house uninhabitable.
The Importance of Foundations
Foundations are important for constructing a spiritual life as well as a home. Most often, we look only at the outer appearance of our spirituality, just as we are most concerned with the curb appeal of a home. We don’t usually take time to consider the foundational matters of our faith—the ideas and beliefs that must be strong enough to stand up to the pressures of life. As a result, we may go
for a long time allowing subtle cracks in our spiritual life to go undetected.
The single most important footing for spiritual life is our view of God. What we think about who he is and how we relate to him will affect everything else in our lives. After reflecting on that statement, it seems self-evident. Yet this is something few of us have ever been encouraged to do. We might have good ideas about spiritual things, the church, and even the afterlife, but if we do not understand who God is and how we can and do interact with him, none of our other ideas about spirituality can be trusted. Knowing God is the critical foundation for spirituality. As A. W. Tozer put it, “Mans’spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God” (Tozer, 9).
Laying a Foundation for Knowing God
This kind of understanding does not come automatically. We must take time to reflect on God and our relationship to him. It is something we must do on purpose. Based on my own experience as a believer and as a teacher of college students for more than a dozen years, few of us have been encouraged to undertake this kind of purposeful reflection. How strange that is. If our spiritual lives revolve around our notion of God, why wouldn’t we take time to think about who God is and what he is like?
One reason we don’t give more attention to this foundation of faith is the assumption that all people who believe in God already know enough about him to have made a good decision about matters of faith. In other words, we think we know God already. Is that the case? In fact, we often place our faith in a sort of caricature of God—an inaccurate image of who God is, based on what we thought we knew or had been told by others. Sadly, many people intuitively realize that their understanding of God is inadequate but are too embarrassed about their ignorance to ask questions. Some even come
from faith traditions that view questions—and not ignorance—as cracks in the foundation of faith.
It seems obvious that one cannot have a satisfying relationship with God or have a vibrant faith in God until one’s view of God has been properly established. Jim Packer wrote, “Disregard the study of God and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded” (Packer, 15).William Temple puts it even stronger: “If your conception of God is radically false, then the more devout you are the worse it will be for you. You are opening your soul to be molded by something base. You had much better be an atheist” (Temple, 24).
Knowing Is the Key to Relationship
Many people speak of spirituality only in general, impersonal terms. They use the term as vague description of their way of life or code of action without reference to a being at the other end of that experience. Others speak of God, but always without personal terms. Their god has no face; it is simply an idea that they have chosen to believe in, an abstract concept like peace, justice, or love. Spirituality, by this way of thinking, describes the best human intentions or else some vague, nonphysical dimension of reality.
Yet true spirituality is a personal encounter. It is daily interaction with the unseen God who created us. So to know God, we must become involved with him and not merely hold ideas about him— ideas that may have precious little to do with who God truly is. There is no possibility that I can have a vital relationship with someone that I barely know or do not know at all. If I am to have a vibrant spiritual life, I must know God.
The Bible suggests that having this relationship with God was his design for human beings from the beginning. Jesus said, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). God wants us to know him,
and the way that we come to know him is through Jesus. Eternal life, according to this scripture, is not simply a duration of time but is a description of a kind of life that we can enjoy—a life in relationship with God. God is not interested merely in having us follow a code of behavior or simply holding correct ideas about him. He wants us to know him. Our actions and beliefs will be based on that knowledge, on that relationship with him.
It is the same with nearly all relationships, our behavior and actions flow from our knowledge of the other person. My wife happens to like flowers, so I buy them for her whenever I can. But this action is based on my relationship with her specifically, and not on the vague notion that “all women like flowers.” In fact, not all women do. It is my relationship that informs and guides my actions. It is the same with our spiritual lives—it all begins with our relationship with God.
It took time for my wife and I to form a relationship. We didn’t start out knowing everything about one another. Everyone around us understood that. Nobody expected us to get married on our first date; they knew it would take time to form a lasting relationship. It seems odd, then, that we generally expect people to form a healthy, lasting relationship with God in no time at all. We assume that they know enough about him to be in a relationship with him. In fact, I knew as little about God at the beginning as I did about my wife on our first date. It took time to know him and to build that relationship.
Knowing Is the Key to Trust
It is often said that people today lack the ability to make firm commitments. Usually, marriage is cited as the prime example of this notion. Statistics on divorce or cohabitation are cited to demonstrate the idea that people are unwilling to make a commitment. It would be easy to draw the conclusion that most people are willing to commit themselves only to something that brings immediate gratification.
People won’t commit themselves to much, and we don’t stick with it when the going gets tough—that’s what we’ve come to believe.
I do not believe that’s true. People are willing to commit themselves to whatever they believe will bring them the highest level of satisfaction in life. There are many examples of people who are committed to spiritual beliefs that are not Christian—but they are committed to them nonetheless. People will devote themselves to work, recreation, relationships, or religions if they believe those things will contribute to a higher level of life. Spirituality is just one more commitment people will make for as long as they see benefits for themselves.
People make commitments based on knowledge. They trust what they know—or think they know. They will not trust something of which they have no knowledge. Here’s an example. I have known my friend Wayne for over twenty-five years. We work in the same vocation, our families have vacationed together, we know each other extremely well. Because I know Wayne so well, I trust him. In fact, I have given him a key to my house. One day I came home to find Wayne sitting in my kitchen having a bowl of cereal. He had come over to borrow a tool, begun tinkering in the garage, and decided to have a snack! When we know someone and have entered into a relationship with that person, there will be trust. I wouldn’t give a stranger the key to my home and say, “Please look after the place for me; and help yourself to whatever you need.” But I did exactly that with Wayne because I knew his character. Knowledge brings trust.
Now let’s get back to the idea of commitment. If someone has some knowledge of God, that knowledge will lead to trust. And where there is trust, there will be commitment. And then trust and commitment to God would follow. In fact Psalms 9:10 says, “Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.” In the ancient world, the term name implied more than the literal name of a person but the total person,
including his or her character, as well. So the Bible teaches that those who know God’s character will trust him.
There are many who make spiritual commitments based on the moment. “Foxhole” conversions are sincere for the moment, but once the moment changes, the commitment is often forgotten. Fear, even the fear of hell, makes very poor Christians. Yet when people come to know God, when they see who he is, understand what he is like, and have an experience with him, they will gladly commit themselves to a relationship with him. Knowing leads to trust, and trust leads to commitment.
When you are having trouble making a commitment to God, have you ever considered that the underlying problem may be not a lack of faith but a lack of knowledge? Could it be that you are simplyunwilling to put your trust in someone that you don’t fully know? The solution is not to attend more church services that emphasize commitment or more Bible studies on the concept of faith—the solution is to know God better. That was the case for a young man whom I’ll call Daniel.
When I was a young pastor in Houston, Texas, I was visiting a member of my congregation who was in the hospital. I found the room of the church member and made a brief visit, and I noticed that there was a young man occupying the next bed. I introduced myself and learned that his name was Daniel. And Daniel’s next words to me were these: “I don’t believe in God.” As a young pastor fresh out of theological training, I first wondered if Daniel might be making an intellectual argument about one of the proofs for the existence of God. Had he investigated the matter thoroughly, I wondered, and was he perhaps looking for a debate? I sensed that there might be more to it than that, so I asked him, “So Daniel, tell me about the God you don’t believe in.”
What followed was a long and thorough description of a harsh, demanding, unloving judge whom Daniel knew he could never please. Daniel believed in a god that was always out to catch him doing
something wrong, and a god that was unconcerned for any of the challenges Daniel faced in life, a god who hated people.
I listened for awhile, and when Daniel ran out of steam I placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “Congratulations.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked.
I said, “I mean that you’re in perfect mental health. No normal person who understood God to be like that could possibly believe in him.”
Daniel smiled broadly, and we began a serious conversation about the true nature of God. Daniel had a notion of God that came partly from his parents and perhaps partly from the church—but not from the Bible and certainly not from a knowledge of God himself. In order to make a commitment to God, he had to first trust him. And in order to trust him, he had to have an accurate idea of who God really is.
That is true for everyone. We find it impossible to commit our lives to a god that we cannot please or love. Until we know that God is trustworthy, we will be unlikely to offer our allegiance to him. Yet when we do know him, we will find him irresistible. Knowing God leads to trusting him.
Knowing God as the Cry of the Human Heart
Augustine said that God created us for himself, and that our hearts will be restless until we rest in him (Augustine, 11). Knowing God is the foundation to a healthy relationship with him, and that relationship is the cry of the human heart. We are created to know God.
On the last night of Jesus’earthly life, Jesus gathered his apostles for one last meal together. Tensions in the room were running high as the twelve sensed that the end of their time with Jesus might be nearing its end. Phillip spoke for his companions when he voiced their anxiety, saying to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us” (John 14:8). There were many things that Phillip did
not understand. He did not know exactly what Jesus was going to do next, what would happen in the days ahead, or where his own life was headed. But he cut through that fog of confusion to express the one great desire in the human heart: to know God. Phillip realized that if they could all see who God is, their troubled hearts would be calmed.
Hannah Whitall Smith said, “Nothing can set our hearts at rest but a real acquaintance with God” (Smith, 13). We try a great many things to medicate the unrest of our souls. We think that a new car, a new home, or some great vacation trip will bring about that sense of peace. But in the back of our souls is a restlessness that cannot be medicated by things. We know that we are uneasy because we are unsure about who God is and who we are in relationship to him. As a friend of mine has often said, “The most important thing in life is to discover that there is a God, and the second most important thing is to discover that you are not he.” We know that life is difficult and unfair at times. But if we know the nature of our Father in heaven, we can be at peace. Our circumstances may not change, but our knowledge of God will bring a sense of peace, a sense of purpose, and the ability to endure. In this vast and complex world, our hearts cry out to know who God is.
Questions for Reflection
1.Describe God as you now understand him.
2.How much of what you know about God has come from other people? How much from the Bible? How much from interacting with God himself?
3. How much time have you given to reflecting on who God is or on getting to know him?
4.Name one thing you will do this week to know God better.
2 Origins of Our View of God
If knowing God is the foundation to a healthy spiritual life, then how are we to know God? Where do we get our view of him? Abraham Maslow observed, “We do get our ideas largely from early significant figures in our lives” (Maslow, 7). For better or worse, the first place most of us look for ideas about God is to our parents.
Starting with What We Know
Do you remember Daniel, the young man that I met in the hospital? Daniel had formed his view of God primarily by reflecting on the significant relationships in his life. He learned what he knew of God from his parents, and perhaps he even equated his parents’character with the character of God. Most of us do something like that. We arrive at our particular view of God through our relationships. This is
only natural when you stop to think about the process by which we come to have our own view of just about anything. Our starting point is our own circumstances.
For example, if you grew up in a home in which there was no television,you would probably think that most people didn’t have a TV. You might think it was a bit odd for people to watch television for several hours each day, as many people do. It might greatly surprise you to discover that the overwhelming majority of people who do own television sets would think it a bit odd for someone to live without TV. Your own experience would be the standard for making judgments about the world—and that would be true for other people as well. Our experiences are all we really have until we learn by exposure to the experiences of others. Part of growing as a person is learning from other people and cultures, gaining a wider understanding of the world. Until that happens, we usually believe that whatever we have experienced in life is “normal.” So when a young woman sees her mother disrespected by her father, she is very likely to marry a man who will treat her in the same disrespectful way. Ayoung man may be emotionally distant from his children because his own father was austere with him. We tend to live based upon our own experiences until we find a more meaningful way to interpret life. In a similar way, our view of God results from our experiences with reality and with the people who make up that reality (Arterburn & Felton, 59).
The Most Significant Relationship
Of all the formative relationships in our lives, there is one that is far more significant than the rest—the relationship with our father. This relationship seems to exert the greatest influence in our lives, and that’s especially true in forming our view of God (Phillips, p. 96).
It is surprising how many people identify some characteristic of their view of God as originating in their own earthly father. They may
never make the connection consciously because they haven’t taken time to think about why they view God as they do. Nevertheless, many people see God exactly as they see their own parents—especiallytheir father. I’ve seen many students experience an “a-ha” moment when they suddenly realized that they consider God to be a super-sized version of their own dad. The things they “hear” God saying to them are mostly the things their father said to them. I know that was true for me.
When I was a young child, I had a great fear of carnival rides. Roller coasters in particular terrified me. My dad saw the agony and embarrassment that this caused me with my young friends, and he wanted to help. He suggested that I embrace the motto “Do what you fear,” and he urged me to conquer my fear by riding a roller coaster. That seemed reasonable, so I did it. Unfortunately, it didn’t help. I rode the rides primarily out of obedience to my father, but I was still terrified. The result, however, was that the motto “Do what you fear” was embedded in my consciousness. Somehow, I came to equate that notion with my view of God.
Years later when I entered the ministry, I occasionally discovered that I had anxiety about a particular ministry situation, such as working in the inner city. I began to notice that anytime I had a fear of something to do with ministry, I could hear that motto “Do what you fear.” I became convinced that the thing that made me the most uneasy was the very thing God wanted me to do. What an unhealthy view of God’s will! Aformative experience—my dad’s attempt to help me conquer the fear of roller coasters—had significantly shaped the way I viewed God. Thankfully, I have discovered that God’s way of dealing with our fears can be quite different from my own dad’s method. While I love my father, I’m grateful that my view of God has been liberated from my experiences with my family or with any other set of human relationships.
Thinking about God
Many people do not understand the origin of their God-view because they have never stopped to reflect upon it. When they do, they often discover that their ideas about God are a close match with their early life experiences.
What about you? What mottos did you hear as a child from the significant people in your life? What thoughts have formed in you mind and heart that are distinct expressions of how you see God? Can you identify any overlap between the way you see God and the relationships you had early in life? Take some time and reflect upon your early life—especially the relationship you experienced and the ideas that you were taught. What is the origin of your current view of God?
Questions for Reflection
1.Describe the people who were closest to you when you were a child. What were they like? What did they teach you?
2.List some of the mottos that you heard frequently as a child— perhaps things like “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it” or “God helps those who help themselves.” Do you believe the things you were taught? Do you believe they reflect the character of God? Why or why not?
3.How much of your God-view is drawn from your life experiences and how much from other sources?
4.What do you think is the best way to find out what God is really like?
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The Need for Critical Thinking
The primary way that we form our view of God is by transferring what we have learned from our significant relationships in early life. These relationships exercise immense influence upon our lives and view of reality. Asecond way that many people arrive at their view of God is by reflecting on life in an uncritical fashion. There is a great deal of difference between being critical—meaning finding fault with something—and reflecting critically, which means to distinguish between what is correct and what may simply sound correct. There is a great deal of difference between the two. I am sure that you have had an experience or two where you have not taken time to reflect upon an event, only later to realize how mistaken you were in how you interpreted the event. Unfortunately, many people form their view of God based on mistaken, uncritical thoughts about life. To have a proper view of God, we must learn to think critically.
The Absence of Critical Reflection
The inability or unwillingness to reflect critically upon life can have serious consequences. I can recall times in my life where not reflecting critically upon a situation caused problems. On one occasion I was having some car trouble and did not think critically about the results of my action. Without revealing too much of my own ignorance, I can tell you that one should critically evaluate the relationship between spark and gasoline. It is a mistake to assume that these two things are unrelated. The result can be explosive!
Many of us have arrived at our view of God without thinking critically about events in our lives. There are a couple of reasons for that. Many people have been raised in a family or environment that does not encourage serious thinking. Others are brought up in a religious environment that considers any event that is difficult to understand or seems to have no justification to be the will of God. I once heard a distraught father say that he did not know why God had caused his family to be drowned by a raging flash flood. Here was a man who was genuinely trying to make sense out of what appeared to be senseless. Yet imagine the tension this man will experience in his spiritual life if he continues to believe that God wished for his wife and four children to drown. This tendency to place upon God the cause for what we cannot understand is a well-honored cultural tendency. Insurance companies refer to catastrophic events as “acts of God.” In our collective consciousness, we hold the deeply rooted idea that God’s actions are arbitrary, destructive, and impossible to predict.
As a result, many people begin to ascribe to God all of the terrible things that have happened in their lives. God is their reason for anything that is unreasonable. He is the answer to the unthinkable, and the sense for senseless events in life. God becomes the means by which we fill in the gaps in our understanding of reality. If we cannot explain it, we assume that God did it.
The Presence of Evil
The problem with thinking uncritically about life is that it attempts to make God the answer for things with which he has not caused. It makes evil things—like the drowning of five people in a flood—out to be good things, things God has willed into our lives for a purpose. Yet we know that God’s will is not universally obeyed; therefore, not everything that happens in life is a direct result of God’s will. Jesus told us to pray that God’s kingdom would come and that his will would be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). The clear implication of that prayer is that God’s will is not currently done on earth just as it is in heaven. The Bible clearly does not assert that everything that happens in life is good; rather, God can make good result from it for his children (Romans 8:28). It is a mistake to declare that everything that happens in life is the direct result of God’s will. That uncritical view of life does not take into account the presence of evil in the world or the destruction caused by it. While it is true that God has allowed evil to exist, that does not mean that he specifically wills for children to be killed in flash floods or tornados or earthquakes.
The Result of Uncritical Thinking
When people believe that every event in life is a direct result of the will of God, they usually have a malformed view of God. Astriking example of this came to me while I was a pastor. I led an early morning Bible study for men and was chatting with some of the guys who attended. One gentleman began to tell me about his life. He told me that he had been a pastor at another church in town but that he had, in his words “gotten away from the Lord.” He said that he had rebelled against God by leaving the pastoral ministry but that God had brought him back to obedience in the most forceful way. The man stated as a matter of fact, “God drowned my nine-year-old son to get me back in the ministry.”
I could not believe what I was hearing, and I certainly could not agree! In shock, I stated the matter to him as forcefully as I could. I said, “That can’t be true because you’re not that important! Why would God need you in the ministry so bad that he would kill your child to compel you to obey?” He seemed as stunned as I was by the candor of my response. I realized that the statement was extreme, but I strongly believed that he needed to see that God does not use murder as a way of compelling obedience. This poor man had tried to make sense of an obvious tragedy by asserting that it somehow fit with God’s will and his plan for the man’s life.
Can you imagine the view of God that this fellow must have had? While his statement perhaps helped him to accept the loss of his son, imagine the consequences for other areas of life. How could anyone trust a god who would drown our children in order to punish us for changing careers? Unfortunately, this is the view of God that many people hold because they do not think critically about the circumstances of their lives.
I have seen firsthand the harm this kind of thinking can cause. I once related this story to a group of students, and after class one girl made her way to the front of the room where I was amassing my papers. She related that “God needed her mother in heaven.” This explanation was all that the girl needed at the time; she dutifully accepted this answer and went on with a life without a mother. But when the girl became a teenager, she began to wonder what kind of god needed her mother in heaven more than she needed her? It became obvious to this young lady that she could not—and would not—trust a god who cared so little for. She spoke of her anger toward God and related that she was unable to trust God with her life because he was so capricious and selfish. My heart broke for her. Reaching for pat answers to difficult happenings can do more harm than good. We must learn to reflect critically on the events of life, comparing them with what we know about God from Scripture.
A Better View of God
When disturbing and life changing events occur, and they will, we do have the assurance that God is with us and working for our good (Romans 8:28). Notice what the Bible does and does not say on this subject. The Bible does not say that everything that happens to us is good. The text states that God causes all things to work for our good. Note the word cause. This suggests that God gets involved and makes something happen that would not happen had he not gotten involved. Many people seem to want a God who not only allows events but who specifically wills everything to happen exactly as it does. According to this view, if God is not specifically controlling all events—like a grand puppet master—then he must not be fully in control of the world. Suffice it to say that God is big enough both to allow certain things to happen as they do and to cause things that are bad to work out for good. That is an amazing God!
Easy answers to complex questions may be easy to swallow at first, but they are not good medicine for the soul. I once had to take a medication that was easy to swallow. But once it was into my system, it caused severe side effects. My body finally threw off the medication because my stomach wouldn’t accept it. In a similar way, shallow answers formed by uncritical reflection may be easy to take at first. Later, however, once the mind has a chance to see all of their implications, they may cause serious spiritual side effects. Has that happened to you? If so, thank God that your system can no longer tolerate shallow answers. You have come to a time in life when you need to critically examine your view of God. You are now ready to evaluate your view of God in light of the only reliable source: the Bible.
Questions for Reflection
1.What are some of the important events in your life? What advice have you received from others concerning these events?
2.How have these events or this advice shaped the way you think about God?
3. Are you usually content with simple answers, or are you a person who likes to think through complex issues? What value do you see in each approach?
4. If you were to think critically about your view of God in light of your life’s circumstances, where would you begin? What sources would you look to for information? What questions would you ask about life or about God?
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Four Distorted Views of God
Adistortion is a view of something or someone that exists in our sight or perception but is out of proportion with reality. Acaricature is one example of a distortion. Acaricature is a portrait of a person that emphasizes certain traits in such a drastic way that the rendering is completely out of proportion. For example, if the subject has large ears, the artist may depict the ears as being much larger than the head or even the upper body of the person. The trait is real, but the proportionis exaggerated. We are usually amused when we see drawings like these—unless they are depicting us!
Many people have a view of God that is really a caricature. It is not that they understand nothing about God’s nature and his interactions with human beings. Rather it is that they have gotten some aspect of his nature out of proportion. Here are four commonly held distorted views of God.
The Cosmic Cop
This distorted view of God is based on one of his best-known traits: omniscience. Many people realize that God is omniscient— meaning that he has the ability to see everything that is going on in his world. There is nothing happening right now that God does not know about; nothing can be hidden from him (see Psalm 139:1–5). This truth, however, can become a caricature of God’s nature and relationship with his creation in that some take this truth to mean that God is always on the lookout to catch us doing something wrong. We have taken a true aspect of God’s nature and distorted it out of proportion with everything else we know about him. I’ve had many conversations with students over the years that revealed this view of God. Oddly, these same students hardly ever seem to believe that God also has the ability to observe them doing something right. They believe God may be watching them when they lose their temper or tell a lie, but they don’t seem to feel that he is watching them when they are serving the poor or doing an act of service for someone. This is a distorted view of God which sees him as omniscient only when it comes to wrongdoing. It is a caricature of God, and a pervasive one. J. B. Phillips refers to this view of God as the “cosmic cop.”
The idea of God as a cosmic cop might be more familiar to us than we think when we pause to consider. How many of us think of police officers as doing anything but trying to catch us doing something wrong. Awhole industry of sophisticated electronic radar detectors has grown up because most of us believe that police officers are hiding to catch us breaking the speed limit. We just do not think of police officers in police cars in other terms.
Do you view God as cosmic cop who is hiding on the side of the road so he can catch you doing something wrong? Or do you see God as noticing when you do something right? Aworld of difference would be seen in your relationship with God if you were to hold the latter view. Yet I have observed the former view of God at work in the
lives of hundreds of people—they think of God as a policeman and they relate to him in that way on a daily basis.
The consequences of viewing God in this way are enormous. Think of how difficult it would be to develop any kind of intimacy with a god like that. That kind of god would show up only when you were in trouble. You would experience no love or concern from that god, and he would have no involvement in your daily life. This cosmic cop would only reveal how you had failed, give you the equivalent of a spiritual speeding ticket, and then drive off to lurk in the shadows again so he could watch you. Your relationship with this god would be onedimensional: he would arrive only when you had done something wrong.
This view is actually quite common. You may have heard people say things like “God will get you for that.” Sometimes we hear people speak about God being determined to make you pay for what you have done wrong. This may be partly because so many people know of only one means to motivate others: fear. Fear can be a great motivator in the short term, but it doesn’t provide very good long-term motivation. People motivated by fear run the risk of developing an aversion to that which they fear. This is particularly destructive when what, or who, we come to avoid is none other than God. No intimacy or relationship is ever established with someone whom you fear and wish only to keep from punishing you.
Reflect for a moment on your own experiences an on how you have pictured God in the past. Was your image of God something close to this kind of caricature? Does the dominant feature in your view of God have something to do with the fear of being caught doing wrong or of being punished? If so, you may have a distorted view of God as a cosmic cop. This is a caricature of God; it does not accurately represent his true nature.
The Voice Inside My Head
Asecond distorted view of God can occur when we associate the function of our conscience with the will of God. In his classic book Your God Is too Small, J. B. Phillips points out that many people have confused the function of their own conscience with the action of God. This can lead to all sorts of confusing ideas about morality and other behaviors. When God becomes nothing more than the “little voice” inside your head, there is really no way to distinguish between your own thoughts and those of God.
While conscience can be an aid to doing what is right, there is a serious problem with assuming that your own conscience and God is the same thing. One reason for that is the way in which conscience is developed. Aperson’s conscience can be affected by his or her upbringing, environment, or experiences. Some people have been conditioned by their life’s experience in such a way that conscience is almost absent. Some evidence suggests that children who are reared in a home where a good deal of violence is witnessed or experienced may develop a malformed conscience so that they lack compassion for other people’s suffering and pain. They may also have little sensitivity to God and others. Therefore, they sense no inner conviction that their harmful actions are actually wrong and feel justified in doing things that are clearly destructive. This is a dire situation, to say the least, and a good reason one cannot take the voice of conscience as the voice of God. The resident policeman inside of us (our conscience) is not to be trusted as the final arbitrator of right and wrong and is certainly not an accurate representation of the nature of God.
Conscience can also be malformed in another direction; it can be too sensitive. Some people are raised in homes and have experiences that cause the development of a hyperactive conscience. They are too sensitive to the voice of conscience, wrongly believe everything their conscience tells them is an accurate reflection of the will and voice of God. As a result they feel inhibited about or guilty for things that are perfectly harmless. I have met a great many people with this
affliction over the years.What they fail to realize is that much of what their conscience approves or disapproves is a better reflection of their family of origin or the church in which they were raised than of the will of God.
These two extremes—a hardened conscience and a hyperactive one—demonstrate that conscience cannot be equated with the will of God. This error is a problem for many people and may be one reason some have left the faith: their malformed conscience has produced a distorted view of God as either overly permissive or hypercritical.
The Pharaoh God
Athird distorted view of God is what I call the Pharaoh god. I learned this concept from Dr. David Seamands of Asbury Theological Seminary. During my last year as a student there, Dr. Seamands began to speak to us about the Pharaoh mentioned in the book of Exodus, who wanted to keep the descendants of Jacob from revolting and breaking out of their slavery in Egypt. Pharaoh’s strategy was to double the workload of the people that they would have little time to think of anything but work. Even so, the people continued to increase in number. Later, another Pharaoh arose and Moses confronted him with the demand to let God’s people go to the desert and worship him. This Pharaoh not only did not grant the request but also he increased the people’s labor by forcing them to make bricks without straw. Now, the people had to go out and gather their own straw in addition to doing the labor of building Pharaoh’s cities.
The descendants of Jacob met every challenge that was put before them, yet Pharaoh was unmoved by their accomplishments. He continued to add to their burden even as they met his cruel demands.
Dr. Seamands made the point that a great many people live with this caricature of God. They are eager to serve the Lord but see him as continually upping the ante on their service. When they complete one job, they believe God gives them something else—something
more challenging—to do. Eventually, they come to feel that no matterwhat they do they won’t be good enough to please God.
People do not burn out in life or ministry simply because they work a great deal. It is when they work with no sense of God’s approval that they lose heart and drop out of the church or ministry. We can handle a good deal of activity, but when we come home after a long day of serving and feel as if someone has said “You should have done more,” we lose heart.
One factor that contributes to this distorted view of God is that church culture often gives honor to people who work hard. We constantly see people being affirmed for what they are doing in the ministry although they have no knowledge of what may be going on in their personal life or relationship with God. We seem addicted to activity. The problem with the Pharaoh god is that you can serve him only when you are young, filled with energy, and do not have small children. As you grow older, life gets complicated, and it becomes impossible to meet the demands of this unrelenting master.
This caricature of God can be very powerful and difficult to reject. I recall coming home on many occasions from a full day of ministry and having a gnawing feeling that I could have—and should have—done even more. I could take no comfort in the fact that I had done my best. No matter how hard I tried, I could never quite reach the goal I believed God had for me. I was aiming a target that was always moving farther away.
I’ve met many others who suffered under this distorted view of God. They say things like, “Pastor, I just don’t know why God allows me to go on living—I really can’t do anything anymore.” I grieve over the apparent thought that God’s only interest in us is our value to produce something for him. Pharaoh was never crueler than this distorted image of God. It is likely that a person with this view of God will eventually experience anger toward him. Someone might be able to live these demands for awhile, but before long either one’s view of God or one’s relationship with him will change. Usually it is the relationship.
I’ve observed that many people with this view of God begin to avoid him so as not to have more tasks placed upon them.
The Farmer and His Mule
Afourth distorted view of God rises from a misplaced relationship with him, and it’s a view that I’ve experienced myself. When I was younger, I felt sure that in order to be a Christian one had to have a relationship with God. I had heard that all my life, yet I had had very little instruction about the nature of that relationship. As a result, I fell into a relationship with God that was shaped by the particular kind of Christianity in which I was reared, a relationship based on performance.
I picture this distortion as a farmer working with his mule. There is no way that a farmer can become attached to service animals the way that a city person would to a pet. To the farmer, the mule is a means to an end. It provides service. Afarmer will feed and care for the animal for as long as it is useful and productive, and he may be genuinely kind to it. Yet the treatment given in food and shelter is aimed at keeping the mule healthy so it can continue to serve the farmer.
Many people see themselves in this way in relationship to God. He is the farmer who cares for us and tends to our needs—but only so that we can continue to serve him. We have a sense that our value is directly connected to our ability to perform. As a result, we may become anxious, competitive, and driven to produce. We continue to serve not because we are valued but in order to become valued. We see our worth only in what we can do, not in who we are.
I have encountered many people who have this distorted view of their relationship with God. Perhaps you do. Do you sometimes wonder why you have little energy or ability to grow in relationship with God? Could that be because you see God as interested only in what you can do for him? This is not the kind of arrangement we mean when we speak of having a personal relationship with God.
Questions for Reflection
1.Review the four distorted views of God mentioned in this chapter. What is the element of truth in each of them? In what way does each of them take that characteristic to excess?
2.Have you held any of these distorted views? What factors led you to see God in those ways?
3. Can you think of any other distorted views of God? What do you think causes people to see God in that caricatured way?
4. How might you go about forming an accurate view of who God is?
5 Reconstructing Our View of God
We have begun to think through some of the various personal views of God, and that can be both painful and liberating. It can be painful when it causes us to realize that we have had a distorted view of God that not only is inaccurate but also is at the root of the difficulty we’ve had in relating to God on a personal level. This process can be liberating, however, when it helps us form a more accurate view of God and then learn to relate to him. If you have taken some time to think through your view of God and identify any inaccuracies or distortions that it might contain, you are ready to begin the process of reconstructing your view of God to arrive at a more accurate understanding of him.
The accuracy of your view will be determined by how closely it matches what God has revealed about himself in Scripture. God’s Word is the starting point for our reconstruction process. But you might say, “I’ve always based my ideas about God on the Bible.”
That may well be true. Many of us who have had distorted views of God have been informed, at least in part, by Scripture. Yet we all come to the Bible with a different set of circumstances and experiences, which are the lenses through which we view Scripture. Because of that, we may miss some very important aspects of what Scripture tells us. This is similar to the case of a person suffering from depression. We know that when a person becomes depressed, something happens to his or her mind. That person will see things in a completely different light than will someone who is not depressed. Most negative circumstances appear worse that they really are, and most good things appear less positive than they really are. The depressed person views life through a lens that distorts everything he or she sees.
Similarly, there may be factors in our lives that become distorted lenses through which we view everything. There will be points at which our way of thinking is not completely in accord with reality. This also affects our ability to accurately interpret Scripture and form a correct view of God. Therefore, it is possible to hold a view of God that is based on Scripture but is also distorted because we view Scripture through the distorted lenses of our experiences and circumstances.
So what does an accurate view of God look like? While this chapter is not an exhaustive study of God’s nature, it will lay a solid foundation for reconstructing our view of God by identifying two essential elements of a biblical view of God. An accurate view of God must have at least these three characteristics.
Like Jesus Christ
First, a biblically informed view of God must be consistent with the person of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 1:1–4 reveals that God has spoken a various times and in various ways in times past. None of those previous revelations were of any final nature; they were simply a portion of the complete message. God spoke in many ways, meaning that
he spoke through various people over the years. But now, according to Hebrews, God has spoken in a single way, through a single person: Jesus Christ. Note the direct contrast with God’s previous speech. Before, he spoke at many times in various ways; now he has spoken in one way, through one person.
Furthermore, the writer of Hebrews declares, Jesus is not only the way that God has spoken to us but also the message that God has to deliver. Jesus bears and reveals the “exact representation of his [God’s] nature” (Hebrews 1:3). This clearly tells us that any view we have of God must be consistent with the person of Jesus Christ. As Jesus himself said, when we have seen him, we have seen God (see John 14:9).
That may seem elementary to those of us who are familiar with Christian teaching, but do not pass over this important truth lightly. Think about the distorted views of God that we discussed in the previous chapter and that you may have identified in your life. Would you say that those views of God are consistent with what you know about Jesus? Do you see any disconnect between the way you have seen God and the way he has revealed himself in the life of Jesus Christ?
Here are a couple of ways to test your view of God to see if it is consistent with the person of Christ. First, think about how Jesus acted with children. He welcomed children to come to him. Children possessed the least amount of influence in Jesus’time—indeed, in many cultures throughout history. Yet Jesus showed great interest in children. Jesus reveals God’s character in his willingness to receive and bless the least valued, most vulnerable people of his time— children.Is this loving acceptance consistent with your view of God?
Another way that Jesus reveals God’s nature is the way in which he dealt with people. Jesus lived and moved among common people. He spent much of his time ministering to the marginalized people of his day—people who were ignored by or excluded from proper society. Consider Zacchaeus, the tax collector who was despised for his
complicity with the corrupt Roman government. Yet Jesus recognized him and even ate in his home. Remember Mary Magdalene, a woman with a bad reputation whom Jesus delivered from demonic possession. Perhaps the greatest example of Jesus concern for the underprivileged is his treatment of a man with leprosy, recorded in Matthew 8:1–4. Leprosy was a dreaded disease in Jesus’day, and those afflicted by it were required by law to be banished from contact with society. Yet Jesus reached out to a leper and healed him. Although Jesus was capable of healing in many different ways—in some cases simply by pronouncing them healed from a long distance—Jesus actually touched this leper. By doing so, he shows us the exact nature of God. He is willing to demonstrate love in a tangible way for a person in need. Is this how you see God?
Is your view of God consistent with the person of Jesus? When you think of God, do you think of someone who thinks and acts like Jesus? For many people, the answer is no. Yet to be consistent with what Scripture declares, we must reconstruct our view of God to be consistent with the person of Jesus Christ. Remember what the Bible says: he is the exact representation of God’s nature. Do you see the nature of God through the person of Jesus Christ?
Interested in You
Another characteristic of a biblically accurate view of God is that it will reveal a God who always has your best interest at heart. We know from Scripture that God is always committed to our very best. He always wants us to live life at the best level possible. So our view of God must be one that understands that all of God’s commands are given for our good—not to make us miserable.
This is not an idea that I easily understood at first. I had heard it said often enough that the things God wanted me to do were really good for me. But somewhere in the translation I got the idea that God was primarily interested in having me obey him regardless of how
I felt about it. I thought of God as being much like my mom, who wanted me to eat vegetables. She assured me that they were good for me, but I hated the taste. Similarly, I knew that obeying God would be good for me somehow, but I had no interest in being obedient— other than to keep God from being mad at me.
I became convinced that God really did have my best interest at heart after studying some passages in the Old Testament. For a long time, certain passages in the Old Testament had me convinced that God was easily angered and demanded unflinching obedience. But upon closer study, I began to see in those same passages a God who is interested in developing a close relationship with people.
My clue came from the book of Deuteronomy, chapters 5 and 6. The phrase that caught my attention was “that it may be well with you” or “well with them.” It is repeated several times in connection with God’s giving the Law to Moses. When I reflected on these passages, I began to understand that God had a motive for placing demands on people—he wanted it to be well with them; he wanted their lives to be better. He had their best interest at heart. Suddenly I realized that God had no desire to punish people or put them in hell. He wanted to care for them, to instruct them, and to help them be well. This is a radically different view of God than I had previously held, and it is different from the view that many people continue to hold.
That realization was the turning point in my personal view of God. The change was slight at first, like a dandelion beginning to grow through the crevice in a sidewalk. That one idea—that God truly desired my best—continued to grow like a weed in my life. Before long it cracked my God view wide open. I began to see God as someone who knew what was best for me and wanted me to experience the best life had to offer. I realized that because God designed and made me, he is supremely qualified to know what will work in my life and what won’t. As a result, I began to trust him more and to obey him willingly.
Do you believe that God has your best at heart? Is that an element of your God view? If you were to embrace that view, how would your relationship with God change?
Here’s another thought. If it is true that God gives commands to me only so that it will go well with me, then I can assume that if I do not obey those commands, life won’t go so well. Is that because God is out to get me, like a cosmic cop? Or is it because God simply knows better than I do what makes for a happy life? I believe the latter is true. Just as a gasoline powered car won’t run well, if at all, on diesel fuel, so our lives will go well only when we operate within the design limits that God has created for us. God knows how life works, and, far from being eager to punish us, he want us to enjoy life to the fullest. This is the “abundant life” that Jesus spoke of (see John 10:10).
Disobeying God never makes life better. Add unfaithfulness to a marriage and see if that marriage gets better. Add lying to a friendship and see the result. Add the abuse of alcohol or drugs to a life and watch the effect on the person’s health. In each of these scenarios, it might be accurate to say that God does not punish sin so much as sin punishes us. God exhorts us to obey him so that it may go well with us. Does your view of God indicate that he is demanding, unreasonable, and issues arbitrary commands? Or does it reveal a God who is deeply concerned for your welfare and always has your best interest at heart? How would your view of God change if you viewed him as someone who wants you to live life to the fullest? How would your life change?
Holy Love
The third characteristic of biblically informed view of God is a revelation of a God of holy love. I have combined the two concepts of holiness and love because they together encompass most of what the Bible has to say about God. We are shown a clear picture of God in the Old Testament as one who is holy (see especially Isaiah 6 and
Leviticus 11:44). The Old Testament also reveals that God is love, but that truth is especially clear in the New Testament, which depicts the person of Jesus Christ. Each aspect of God’s character is presented most fully in the corresponding testament.
Sometimes it can be a challenge to understand that God’s nature encompasses both characteristics: holiness and love. Some of us come from Christian traditions that emphasize the holiness of God. We understand that God is holy and that he is universally set against sin. We may have an overdeveloped view of God as holy. One may see God’s holiness in isolation or abstracted from God’s love. To have an overdeveloped view of God’s holiness is to lose the tension of God as one who also loves. Others have come from traditions that emphasized the love of God and seemed less concerned with the matter of sin. Letting people know that they are loved by God was the main priority. Their view of God may emphasize love to the neglect of holiness.
Both extremes are present an imbalanced view of God. Those who overemphasize the holiness of God do well in calling people to avoid sin but fail to see that he offers love and grace to sinners. Those who overemphasize the love of God do well to extend God’s mercy to the undeserving but may also be unduly tolerant of immorality. Both failures result from our difficulty in keeping these two aspects of God’s nature in balance.
Managing Tension. I have learned that balance is really a matter of managing tension. When a young seedling is planted where I live in Oklahoma, the landscaper usually wraps two wires around the tree trunk, then anchors them in the ground—one on the north side of the tree and the other one the south. The reason is that the wind in this part of the country usually comes from either the north or the south. The wires must provide enough tension to hold the trunk straight when the wind blows from either direction. If one wire provides too little tension, winds from the opposite direction will cause the seedling to grow crooked. The challenge is to place
just the right tension on each wire to hold the trunk straight against the two opposing winds.
In the same way, our view of God must have just the right tension between holiness and love. We dare not emphasize one to the neglect of the other. Both most be equally present if we are to have an accurate view of God.
Desiring What Is Best. This is especially true when we consider that our culture has done much to confuse people about what love is. People are said to fall in and out of love almost constantly, and love is considered to be a sudden emotion or feeling that cannot be controlled. In fact, love is much more than that. Jesus commands us to love others (Mark 12:29–31, John 13:34), which shows that love is not simply a feeling that comes unexpectedly. Love is something that we can choose to do by acting in the best interests of someone else.
That is what the Bible means when it says that God is love (1 John 4:8). It means that God seeks the best for the one loved. This is holy love. Holy love is unique in that it makes a distinction between what is good for the one loved and what is not good. Holy love approves of that which will better the one loved and disapproves of that which will harm him or her.
Good parents, for example, operate in this kind of love. They seek what is best for their children even when those children are trying their patience greatly. When children want ice cream for breakfast, good parents wisely tell them no. Because they love their children, parents make a distinction between what will be best for them and what may harm them.
And that is what God does with us. God’s love is never tolerant of that which destroys one’s life and relationships. In our culture, love has wrongly been defined as desiring only what will make the loved one happy—even if that happiness will be merely temporary. It is a sloppy, sentimental view of love as never saying no, never denying a request, always acquiescing to the demands of the loved one. God’s love is holy, which means that he never approves of what will harm
those whom he loves. The Bible says that God’s love “does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). One might say that God’s holy love is a biased love, biased toward that which is good and helpful and biased against that which would bring harm.
Determined to Work for Good. Another characteristic of God’s nature, based on his holy love, is that he is resolutely determined to participate in our lives to bring about what is best for us. He doesn’t just favor our good—he works toward it. Because God possesses holy love, he cannot be indifferent to you. Indifference is really the opposite of love. God is interested in and involved in your life. Even when we talk about the wrath of God, we’re really talking about an aspect of his holy love. Remember that holy love makes a distinction between what is best for us and what is harmful, so when God appears to be wrathful by disciplining his children they are merely on the receiving end of that distinction-making love.
When I was about five years old, my mother warned me strictly that I should not play in the street. Like any normal child, I pushed that boundary. I waited until my mother was on the phone, and I made my way to the street. When my mother finally saw me, she rushed out of the house, pulled me quickly from the street, and gave me one swat on the backside for each step back to the house. I literally felt my mother ’s wrath. Yet I now know that her motivation was love. Her love for me would not allow her to remain indifferent when she saw that I was in danger. Holy love makes distinctions between what is good and what is destructive to its object.
In the same way, God’s love will not allow him to remain indifferent to you. He will not remain idle while you—the object of his love—pursue a destructive course. He will seek to be involved in your life in order to bring about the best for you.
God’s holy love is the perfect tension between those two aspects of his nature that may at first seem contrary to one another. No view of God can be accurate if it does not do justice to his holiness. God is
firmly set against anything that will harm his children. And no view of God can be complete if it does not emphasize his love. God is deeply concerned for us and always desires our best. Holy love provides the balance: it is love that seeks our best and yet is determined to destroy that which would harm us.
Thomas Merton wrote, “To love another is to will what is really good for him [or her]. Such love must be based on truth. Alove that sees no distinction between good and evil, but loves blindly merely for the sake of loving, is hatred, rather than love” (Merton, 5).
Questions for Reflection
1.Of the four aspects of God’s nature mentioned in this chapter, which seem most natural to you? Which, if any, do you have a difficult time accepting? Why do you think that is?
2.If what we know about God must be consistent with what we know about Jesus Christ, what characteristic of God can you name—besides those listed in this chapter? In other words, what is there about Jesus Christ that helps you see God more clearly?
3.How does it affect your feelings toward God to know that he cares deeply about you and is interested in your best?
4.Do you agree that there is tension between God’s holiness and his love? Explain how the concept of holy love might resolve this tension.
God As Father
During his life and ministry on earth, Jesus revealed something unique about God. It was not the fact that God is mighty. Although Jesus demonstrated that with many miracles, the idea that God is almighty is taught throughout the Old Testament and was demonstrated by many mighty acts in ancient times. Omnipotence is simply part of the job description for the Supreme Being. And the unique facet of God’s character that Jesus revealed was not that he answers prayer. There was a long tradition in Judaism that taught that God hears and answers prayer. Given the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross, we might conclude that Jesus revealed to us that God requires a sacrifice to atone for sin. But the Old Testament repeatedly declares that there must be sacrifice to atone for sin.
So what is the unique aspect of God’s character revealed by Jesus? It is the view of God as father. It is true that there are several Old
Testament passages in which God is referred to as father: Deuteronomy 32:6; 2 Samuel 7:14–15; 1 Chronicles 22:10 and 29:10; Psalm 68:5, 89:26 and 103:13; Isaiah 22:21, 63:14, 63:16 and 64:8; and Jeremiah. 3:4, 3:19 and 31:9. Yet these few references are the only places in the Old Testament where either God or someone else refers to God as father. So while the idea may have existed before Jesus came to earth, it was he who elevated this notion and showed us the intimate relationship that can exist between God and his creatures. That notion is unique to the teaching of Jesus.
While there are only fifteen references to God as father in the Old Testament, Jesus applied the term to God seventeen times in the Sermon on the Mount alone. No other word is used more frequently in those three chapters of the Bible. Jesus used the term father another fifty-one times in his discourse to his disciples on the last night of his life, recorded in John 13–17. On this highly significant evening, the last that Jesus would spend with his closest followers before being put to death, he made sure that they had an accurate understanding of the nature of God—as a father.
Noted scholar Joachim Jeremias goes so far as to suggest that the unique component of Jesus’ teaching was this assertion that we can relate to God as father (Jeremias, p. 96). This is a profound thing when we consider the Judaism of Jesus’day, which strongly emphasized the idea that God was distant and unknowable on a personal level.
The Jewish View of God
One of Judaism’s central teachings is that God is holy (see Leviticus 11:45; 19:2). Even his name was considered holy and was to be greatly revered (Leviticus 20:3; 21:6; 22:2; 1 Chronicles 16:10). So great was the respect for the name of God among Jewish people that it was not generally spoken. Even when reading the Bible, the sacred name of God, Yahweh, was replaced by the titles Adonai (Lord)or Elohim (God). This sense of God’s holiness caused people to emphasize
the distance between him and his created beings. Furthermore, the Jewish literature from the time of Christ suggests that it was extremely uncommon for Jews to address God as father.
So while the God revealed to us by Jesus Christ is the same God as in the Old Testament, Jesus placed a remarkable emphasis on the idea that God is our father (Bromiley, II, 501). For thousands of years, Jewish people had related to God as one who is holy, distant, and shown great honor, even to the point of revering his name. While Jesus also revered his heavenly father, he demonstrated the fact that God desires a more intimate relationship—the relationship of a father to his children. Can you imagine the change that had to take place in the way people thought when Jesus began to teach that God is our father? What incredible openness Jesus brought in the way we relate to God.
Adoption by God
The Apostle Paul speaks of the way in which we may “see” God in Romans 8:15. Paul characterizes that life of a Christian by stating that “we have not received a spirit of slavery which leads us to fear again.” The adverb again is noteworthy. Paul wants his readers to know that they are not to go into fear again, suggesting that they had previously had a spirit of fear. Paul seems to be saying that before placing faith in Christ, people lived in fear (see also Hebrews 2:15). After placing faith in Christ, our lives are not characterized by fear but by acceptance—we have been adopted into God’s family. John Wesley stated that “after one is saved, they are saved from fear . . . from all servile fear; from that fear which hath torment; from fear of punishment; from fear of the wrath of God, whom they now no longer regard as a severe Master, but as an indulgent Father” (Bryant, 154).
The image of a slave versus an adopted son is a powerful one. In the ancient world, these two statuses represented two extremes. Slaves had the legal status of property. Slaves were considered things
to be owned or traded. Sons, however, had a privileged relationship with their fathers. Ason was a valued member of the family, who would inherit the estate of the father upon his death. This is exactly the opposite position of the slave. And sonship is what Paul declares to be the right of every person who has placed his or her faith in Jesus Christ. Life is no longer characterized by the fear of the slave but by the confident expectation of the son.
Sadly, many people—even some who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ—do not realize that it is possible to relate to God as child relates to a father. Their lives continue to be dominated a fear of God because they still see him as distant and unapproachable. Even worse, many folk are fed a religious diet of fear and anxiety through misguided preaching and teaching that emphasizes fear and shame. This is counter to Paul’s assertion that we should not be led into a spirit of fear again. We now relate to God as a father.
Intimate Relationship
Paul concludes his thought in Romans 8:15 by declaring that we have received a spirit which causes us to cry out “Abba! Father!” This should be the normal experience of every believer—a life characterized by the spirit of adoption, not the spirit of slavery. That spirit causes us to cry out to God as a child calls out to his or her father. Abba was a very intimate term used by small children. It is the equivalent of daddy. Nowhere in the literature of ancient Judaism do we see God addressed in this way (Brown, I, 614). Think what a change the use of this term for God would have meant for people living in Jesus’day. Jesus demonstrated by his teaching—and by using this term himself—that we can live in relationship with God in the most intimate way.
Relating to God as father is at the heart of our experience of him. J. I. Packer states:
If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his (her) father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his (her) whole outlook on life, it means that he (she) does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. Father is the Christian name for God (Hughes, 21-22).
Many people who have come to God through Jesus Christ have yet to understand that their position is one of a son and not that of a slave. Do you live your life in the spirit of slavery, which leads to fear? Or do you live your life in the spirit of adoption? I lived for many years with the spirit of fear. Although I had placed my faith in Jesus Christ, I did not have an intimate relationship with God, like that of a son. This became an issue in my life as I meditated on the idea of being adopted by God and had the strong impression that I needed to change the way I prayed. I had always been very respectful of God, referring to him as Master or Lord. But I sensed that God wanted me to only call him Daddy (Abba) in my personal times of prayer. I found myself hesitating to address God with in such intimate terms. I could not bring myself to refer to God as Daddy in prayer. I determined that I would refer to God as Dad in my personal prayers for the next thirty days. It wasn’t easy. I found myself slipping into calling him God, Lord, or Master quite often. Yet after thirty days, I had learned that God does desire an intimate relationship with me. I now have the freedom that comes from knowing that God wants me as his child. The spirit of adoption has replaced the spirit of fear. You may find relating to God as a father difficult, just like those who first heard Jesus teach and model the idea that the great God
Yahweh could be referred to as Daddy. Your particular struggle may be due to an overly keen awareness of your own failures in life. It may be because you have not had the joy of relating closely to your own father in a way that produced joy and acceptance. It could be that you have been reared in a church tradition that does not emphasize God’s love and concern for you. Whatever your situation, believe that God is a father and that you have been adopted into his family; you are a cherished child of God’s choice.
Questions for Reflection
1.Why do you think some people have a difficult time feeling close to God?
2.Is your relationship with God more often characterized by fear or by a feeling of acceptance?
3. Do you feel close to God when you have succeeded in some ministry on his behalf? What change, if any, do you sense in your relationship when you have failed?
4. Do you feel comfortable with addressing God as Daddy, or some other intimate term? Why or why not?
7 Affective Reconstruction
We have invested a good deal of time to thinking about how we might see God incorrectly and how the Bible can help us correct some of these views. That is precisely the place to begin reconstructingour view of God—to address the myriad of thoughts going on in our heads about him. Some of these thoughts are conscious processes we deal with every day, and some exist in the recesses of our minds. These background thoughts are like the sound of a refrigerator running;although they are there all the time, we don’t consciously hear them after awhile. Many of our thoughts about God exist in a preconscious realm, but they have a continual effect on our lives.
So there is yet another step we must take in this journey to correcting our view of God. The steps we have taken up to this point have been cognitive, dealing with how we think about God. Those are important first steps in correcting distorted views of God, but they are not enough.
We must take affective steps as well, dealing with how we feel about God. This is necessary because of the way in which we arrived at our distorted views of God. We earlier discussed that our view of God is formed largely by experiences and relationships early in life. Those event relationships were present before we were able to read or think critically. So our views of God necessarily have a highly experiential and emotive element to them. Also, because our views of God were formed mostly by relationships, there must be a relational component to correcting those views. That is why attempting to think clearly and accurately about God simply by correcting cognitive though will usually be ineffective.
How do we correct our view of God from a relational standpoint?
Acknowledging the Relational Component
First, we must acknowledge that there is a relational component to the way we think about God, and there must be a relational component to any distorted view of God that we may hold. Our distorted views of God normally have their root in emotions that we feel about relationships and experiences in our lives and not from merely from a series of clearly reasoned thoughts. We can address our distorted views of God with new thoughts and ideas, but we must also address the affective component of our view. We must address the way we feel about God.
Establishing Healthy Relationships
Second, we must begin the process of establishing healthy relationships. Remember, our early life relationships were foundational elements in forming our view of God. So our journey to reconstructing that view must include forming healthy relationships that begin to correct any distorted views of God that we have acquired.
Fortunately, God has created a place where we can do just that— a place where we can establish healthy relationships, be accepted, and
be loved. That place is the church. This may be a hard thing for you to hear at this point in your life. You might say, “But it was while attending a church that I formed all my distorted ideas about God!” I can imagine that may be true for you. The way some people lead churches or participate in them is both unbiblical and terribly unhealthy. That is a real problem, but it should not cause us to loose sight of the fact that the church is God’s instrument for helping us grow beyond our experiences so that we can experience the love of God through other people, and in turn show God’s love to others. The church is the place God intended for us to discover healthy relationships and to become all that he intended us to be.
Church at Its Best
Many people, however, think of the church in just the opposite way. They have experienced the church only as a place where people are critically evaluated and judged. They have experienced church as a place where they are made to feel unworthy. This is truly unfortunate and is greatly destructive to people’s lives. The church was designed to be a place where we gather as brothers and sisters and learn to live in a Christlike way. When that works properly and each participant does his or her part, the church builds itself up in love (see Ephesians 4:15–16). That is God’s plan for the church, that it should be a place where people build up one another in love.
How does this building up in love occur? Paul states in Ephesians, chapter 4, that this happens when we all exercise the Godgiven abilities, spiritual gifts, that each of us have. Peter also tells us that each believer has a special gift and that when we employ it, God’s grace is distributed to others in the church (1 Peter 4:10). God gives gifts to his people that originate in grace. These gifts are to be used by Christ followers to serve one another, building them up. In other words, God’s grace is given to us on a regular basis through the ministry and lives of other Christ-followers. We have experienced the
grace of God in our lives through the atoning death and resurrected life of Jesus Christ, but we continue to experience God’s grace on a regular basis through people within whom the resurrected Jesus now lives. We cannot separate ourselves from those people with whom God has gifted and empowered to minister to us.
When the church does operate this way, it is a place where people can experience relational healing, form healthy relationships, and correct their distorted views of God in an affective way.
Many people will never be able to correct their distorted views of God without this relational component. We need to see some evidence of God’s character demonstrated in the lives of the people who worship him. We need to experience relationships with others who treat us in ways that begin the healing process and correct the damage done by others in our early lives. It is in the church that we experience God’s grace through the lives of other Christ followers.
At one time in my life, I was dealing with a particularly difficult decision. The decision might not have seemed important to others, but to me it loomed large. The more I thought about it and prayed about it, they more difficult it seemed to grow. I tried everything I knew in order to gain clarity. I prayed, read, and even fasted about this decision, but I couldn’t find a solution. Then I attended a small group meeting that our church sponsors in my neighborhood, and there I got some insight for the decision I was trying to make.
One of my friends in the group was standing in the kitchen after our lesson, and we engaged in some small talk. He asked how I was doing, and I told him that I was almost paralyzed by a decision I was facing. He offered some words of encouragement and asked to pray for me. We were not in some church building or a beautiful cathedral. We were standing in the kitchen of a private home. But he placed his hand on my shoulder and prayed a very simple prayer for me. When he finished, I felt as if the weight of the entire world had lifted from my shoulders. I realized that I had allowed a distorted view of God creep into my mind, for I was thinking that God only wanted me to
make choices that were very difficult for me. I instantly came to feel a great freedom about this decision. My friend had ministered God’s grace to me. That is the way the church can work to demonstrate healthy relationships and help correct our distorted views of God.
Forming New Relationships
In the community of faith, each of us will find relationships that express God’s grace to us in unique and timely ways. We may come to know people who do not freak out when we make a mistake, as others may have done in our earlier life experiences. Or we may find people who do not think of us as a failure because we have failed, or who simply love us even when we are not lovely. These people show us a way of relating that is not based upon a barter system, in which we receive something of value only when we have something of value to give. These people show us grace, which gives us something of value—love, acceptance, esteem—even when we have failed. When we experience relationships like this with other Christ followers, we begin the process of correcting our distorted views of God from an affective standpoint. We begin to form not merely correct thoughts about God but correct feelings as well. Therefore, it is critically important to take part in a healthy church. Please note that I did not say a perfect church; there is no such thing. Ahealthy church is one in which the leaders model an open and honest relationship with each other and with God. A healthy church is one in which our problems can be spoken of openly and we can find people who express grace to us in our journey to wholeness. Ahealthy church is one in which people do not hide behind a theological position but rather are honest and open about real life. Ahealthy church is one in which people know that the almighty Christ and the empowering Holy Spirit are available to help us grow up and can provide anything of which we have need.
Be a part of that kind of church. Do not try to correct your distorted views of God in isolation. Remember that we have our distortedviews of God because of some disturbances in relationships with others early in life and will be able to correct those distorted views only in the context of healthy relationships that we form now.
Taking Time to Heal
The process of identifying distorted views of God and correcting them will take time and patience. God will help you make progress as you are able. Give yourself the gift of time and allow yourself permission to not correct everything at once. Also, be very careful in how you process this information. Do not attempt to correct some of the people in your life who may have contributed to your distorted views of God. Although it may be difficult, refrain from judging them. Remember that people do the best they can with what resources they have. You were doing the best you knew how when you began this journey. Now you have gained new insight and new tools for working on this aspect of your life. Do not assume that others, who may have hurt you, were not also doing the best they could at the time. I realize it may be hard to believe that some of the people in your life were doing the best they could with the knowledge and experience they had, but at least consider that possibility.
Here is one thing you might try. Consider writing a letter to some of the people with whom you had significant relationships early in life. This letter is to say thank you—where you genuinely can—to those people for doing the best they could for you over the years. By doing so, you will extend God’s grace to them. You may also open some doors to conversation about your relationships with those peopleand give you the opportunity to share what you have learned on your journey to knowing God.
Questions for Reflection
1.How do you feel about God? In what ways is that different, if any, from what you think about him?
2.Describe your prior experiences with church, if any. So far, has church been a place that helped or harmed your relationship with God?
3. If you are now or soon will become involved in a healthy church, describe the relationships you hope to form there. In what ways will you minister God’s grace to others? In what ways do you hope to receive God’s grace through others?
4.Name at least one person who has had a significant impact on your life. Would you consider sending a letter or e-mail to that person to thank them for the role they played in your life? What do you think might be the result of taking that action?
8 Understanding Yourself
Have you ever wondered what you are capable of doing? Have you ever thought about doing something that you have never done? Could you train so as to be able to run a marathon? Could you learn how to play the violin? Could you learn to throw a curve ball? All of these activities are things that have been done by human beings, and with the right amount of training or practice you might be able to do them as well.
Yet there are things you simply not be capable of doing, no matter how much training or practice you invest. For instance, you could not live underwater for a month by holding your breath. You could not fly simply by flapping your arms at a rapid rate. While there are many things that you could learn to do with enough training, there are some things that are simply beyond your reach as a human being.
We need to have some idea of what we human beings are capable of doing and what we are not. Otherwise, we run the risk of having a
view of ourselves that is too low or too high. Our view of human nature—our view of ourselves—is directly correlated to what we believe is possible for us to do in general and, most especially, as Christians. Understanding who we are as human beings is just as important as understanding who God is. We must know ourselves.
This is especially true when we realize that Christianity is a relationship. You may have heard that statement made by some people who were reacting against the idea that Christianity is a religion or who had some problem with the church. They prefer to think of their faith as completely personal, not involving the rituals or other people. But the essence of a relationship is that it involves two parties. One of them is God. We’ve learned a great deal about him in the previous chapters. Now it is time to think about ourselves, the other party in the relationship.
What can we say about the nature of human beings?
We Are Both Physical and Spiritual
There are two extreme positions that some people take in describing the nature of human beings. I will state them not because I agree with either one but to demonstrate the outer limits of what has been taught about human nature. Then we can work to find a position that recognizes what may be true about these positions without adopting their extreme elements.
One extreme position suggests that human beings are nothing more than a collection of physical properties. This position sees human beings as physical in both body and essential nature.When people die, all life for them is over. Those who adhere to this position find purpose and meaning only in the here-and-now. They live on a purely physical level and admit the existence only of things that can be experienced with the physical senses. Those who think this way are taking a gamble on the idea that there is nothing beyond the grave.
Another extreme position suggests that human life is purely spiritual. People who adhere to this position find meaning and purpose only in intangible things and usually do not do well in dealing with life on a day-to-day basis. They look for spiritual answers to every problem, have little tolerance for the harsh realities that others face, and look for their reward in life only after death.
There is truth in both positions, of course. Human beings are physical creatures. We exist in physical bodies and inhabit time and space. Yet we are spiritual beings as well. There is more to life than what we can verify with our physical senses, and there is life after death. So we must look for an understanding of human nature that honors both the physical and the spiritual. The Bible does exactly that, which makes it the best place to learn more about who we are as human beings.
We Are Created in God’s Image
The Bible begins with the statement that God created the world in which we live. In the first few pages of the book of Genesis, we learn something, though not everything, about how the universe came to be as it is. God spoke, and the world took shape (see Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24). What is of particular interest is that it took only God’s speaking for the world and nearly everything in it to come into existence.
There is a distinct difference, however, in the way human beings are created. Human beings have a different nature than anything else in creation because we are made in the image of God (see Genesis 1:26–27). No other thing in all creation is said to bear God’s image. We are distinctly different from all other created things. That fact has major implications for how we think of ourselves.
We Have Value
First, because we bear the image of God, each one of us possesses inherent value. Human beings are valuable simply because of who they are, not because of what they do. We have value because we bear the image of God.
Our culture tends to value people based upon their performance. Value, for a human being, is something that must be earned. When we gather together socially, for example, we usually assume that those who have more productive careers and earn higher incomes have greater value. Doctors, lawyers, and business executives, for example, we think of as having careers. Those who perform manual or clerical tasks, we usually think of as having jobs. We generally ascribe social importance to one and thing less highly of the other. We think of some people, like cancer researchers, as contributing to society. We think of others, like homeless people, as burdens to society.
Yet if we truly are created in the image of God, each person, regardless of his or her station in life, has equal value because each one bears the image of the Creator. This biblical value is foundational to understanding who we are as human beings, and it will directly affect the way in which we interact with other human beings.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who spent her life working among the poor, is an example of someone who understood this truth. In the culture in which she served, people tended to see hardship as a direct result of bad decisions or actions in a past life. As a result, people showed little compassion on those who suffered. Yet Mother Teresa saw in each beggar a person created in the image of God. She saw each one as having great value. Her belief drove her to have compassion for the suffering of others, and she motivated many others to do so also.
We Can Have a Relationship with God
Asecond implication of our creation in the image of God is that we are able to enter into a relationship with him. This is a unique privilege of human beings, and it is what makes being human so different from all other created things. No other creature mentioned in the Genesis account of creation shares this trait.
We are different not only because we bear the image of God, but also because we were created in a different manner. God created all other things simply by speaking them into existence. But when it came to the creation of people, God formed them out of the dust of the earth (see Genesis 2:7). The use of the term form and the way the Bible records this activity show a great deal of intimacy between God and the beings he created. In addition, Genesis 3:7 states that God breathed life into human beings. Imagine a sort of divine CPR in which God places his lips against those of the human being he has shaped with his own hands and then breathes life into him. The biblical account depicts a level of intimacy that is experienced by no other created thing.
Human beings have a special place in the universe and can therefore have a special relationship with God. That unique privilege is stated in Psalm 8:3–5:
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
What a privilege human beings have to enjoy this special relationship with God. We have the capacity, which God created in us, to live in a personal relationship with him because we have something in common with him—we bear his image. This places human beings in a unique and exalted position.
We Have A Soul
Athird implication of our creation in God’s image is that we have an everlasting soul. In this, we are similar, but not identical, to God. God had no beginning and will have no end. While each of us had a beginning—the time when we were born—we will have no end. We will live forever somewhere. We will relate to God in some conscious state forever. Our relationship with him will not end with physical death but will continue into eternity. Because we bear God’s image, we are capable of relating to him forever. That means that our relationship with him is the ultimate relationship we must consider.
We Have Freedom
Another implication of sharing God’s image is that we have some measure of freedom beyond instinct. God is uniquely free in his character and nature. No one and no thing can make him do anything he does not choose to do. Human beings have a measure of that same freedom, though in a limited way.
This freedom that we have goes well beyond the instinctual actions that other created beings are capable of. Human beings are able to process information, allow values to influence the decision making process, and make decisions that go against their instinct for self-preservation. It is true that some animals have socialization tendencies, but most animal behavior is based upon instinct rather than deliberated choices.
This is not to say that human beings have no internal drives or instinctual tendencies. However, human beings, unlike animals, have an added feature called free will. Human beings can decide to choose against these drives and instincts in a way that it appears animals cannot. This freedom is what makes the human beings different from the animal kingdom—and morally responsible for their decisions.
It was this freedom that led God to create, and when we use our freedom, we create in a sense. We do not create ex nihilo—from
nothing—as God created the world, yet when we make decisions we set in motion a series of actions and events that are created. Perhaps you can look back on some action you took and see an entire series of events that it created. Our actions create reactions and results that were before unknown or non-existent. This capacity is both a great privilege and a great problem. We can use our freedom to create good or we can use your freedom to do harm to ourselves and others. Why did God give human beings this capacity for freedom if he knew that the misuse of this freedom would produce suffering and pain?
The answer to that question is a key to understanding the kind of world God wished us to inhabit. God created human beings with the ability to choose because he wants a world that is based upon love, or at least based upon the possibility of love. If God had created the world in such a way that we had no choice about what we did, we would not be capable of harming others. But we also would be incapable of loving others. Our lack of freedom would mean that we could do only what God had programmed us to do. Without some measure of freedom, love would not be a possibility. So the very presence of choice is a prerequisite for the possibility of love. What would the universe be without the presence of choice? We would live in a world that would be robotic and monotonous. So while our freedom carries with it the possibility that we can do great harm, it carriesalso the possibility that we can love.
God wants a world based upon love. He did not want a world in which there was only programmed obedience to his every wish. So he was willing to take a huge risk and give a measure of freedom to human beings, all the while knowing that both good and evil would result.
This is the kind of world that God created, one in which human beings enjoy a unique relationship with him and a unique privilege. It is an amazing world in which we live.
Questions for Reflection
1.Have you ever thought about what makes you different from other created beings? What differences do you see?
2.How does it make you feel to know that God places both great value and great trust in you?
3. Being made in the image of God means that we enjoy a unique relationship with God. How would you describe your relationship with God up to this point in your life? What kind of relationship do you hope to have?
4. In what ways have you used the freedom that God has given you? What have been some of the results?
9
The Problem Between You and God
We have learned that God is a loving father who eagerly desires to have a relationship with us. We have also learned that we were created in the image of God, tailor-made for just such a loving relationship. So what went wrong? Why is it that so many of us do not have intimate lovingrelationships with God? Why do so many people use the freedom that God has given them to harm themselves and others, rather than choosing to love as God intended?
As we consider this question, let’s not make the mistake of focusing on the problem. To do so would be like a doctor treating the symptoms of an illness rather than looking for the underlying cause of the disease. You wouldn’t think you were receiving adequate medical care if you visited your doctor with a severe headache that caused blurred vision and loss of balance and the physician did nothing more than prescribe a strong pain reliever. You would want
the doctor to administer some tests to discover what was causing the pain in your head.
In the same way, when we attempt to “cure” people of lying, stealing, committing acts of violence, or any number of problems but fail to see their root cause, we are merely treating the symptoms and ignoring the disease. To get at the real problem—the broken relationship with God—is always more difficult, so we often settle for managing the problem behaviors. This approach always falls short. Even when it is somewhat successful in eliminating a problem behavior, the result is usually pride—yet another symptom of our estranged relationship from our loving heavenly Father. So let’s agree that we are looking for a real solution. We want to get at the root cause of our problem and not settle for dealing with one or two behavioral issues.
What Went Wrong
The technical name for our problem is sin. Sin is the misuse of the limited freedom that God has given us as human beings. It is the wrong response to the choices that are set before us. That wrong response is to go against the will and direction of God. Of course, we do not have unlimited freedom to defy God. As we noted in the last chapter, human beings have limits. There are some things that we simply cannot do. Yet God has given us the ability to exercise some freedom. We can make some choices. And we can choose to ignore God, disregard his desires up to a point, and do things that go very much against his loving ideal for us and for the world.
Even after the original sin, when Adam and Even disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden (see Genesis 3), the Bible tells us that human beings continued to bear the image of God (see Genesis 6:9). So it appears that human beings have an intruder within them, sin. This intruder has damaged the image of God in the human family, but not destroyed it. This intruder has incited human beings to rebel against God and caused the entire race use its freedom to attempt to be
independent from God! So sin is, first of all, a broken relationship with God. We cannot speak of sin in abstraction or merely as a type of behavior. Sin always has to do with some aspect of our relationship with God.
Beginning the Discussion
Sin is such a pervasive and complex problem in human experience that there is no single term that adequately summarizes it. We’ll examine several ways of understanding sin, but to begin with, there are some foundational ideas that we need to understand.
Freedom
The first point for understanding sin is the concept of human freedom. How free are human beings? Some people believe that human beings are completely free to do whatever they choose. Others believe that human beings have essentially no freedom at all—they can do only what God wills them to do. But both the Bible and experience tell us another story.
The Bible makes it clear that human beings are not entirely free. There are limits and influences on the choices they can make. Jesus stated that whoever commits sin is enslaved to sin (John 8:34), and the apostle Paul tells us that sin is such a powerful force that it virtually compels us to do things we desire not to do (Romans 7:15). Sin is a pervasive and powerful force in our lives. We do not enter life in a neutral position, we are in a battle with a foe that has exercised some control over the human family for millennia.
Experience shows us also that while we do have freedom, there are some limits on it. For example, some people prefer chocolate ice cream, others prefer vanilla. Yet these are not really choices. We simply have a disposition one way or the other. In the same way, some people have a tendency toward certain sinful behaviors with which
others don’t seem to struggle. So our choices are not made within a vacuum. There are some forces acting upon us.
Can you begin to see how sin functions in daily life? It has to do in part with the choices we make.
Human Responsibility
Second, we must understand that we are responsible for the choices that we make. While it is true that we are not absolutely free do what we choose, God has given us a measure of freedom, and he holds us accountable for the use of that freedom. There is a standard by which we will be judged for our actions. With freedom comes responsibility.
What Sin Is Not
Third, it’s important to understand that there is a difference between being sinful and being human. While it is true that all people are sinful, that does not mean that there is something wrong with being human. Jesus Christ, God’s Son, became a man, which suggests that there is nothing inherently sinful about being a human being (see Hebrews 1–2). It is easy to become confused about this because of the various ways in which the term flesh is used in the Bible. At times the term simply refers to the human body or humanity (Genesis 2:21; Romans 1:3). At other times flesh refers to that which is limited and finite (Matthew 26:41; Romans 7:18). But there is a use of the term flesh that indicates a life lived in opposition to God and his will (Romans 8:5, 7, 9). As one writer put it, “God’s quarrel is not with our humanity, but with our disposition to set out will against his” (Taylor, 63).
So as we come to understand sin, we must avoid the idea that to be human is to be sinful. While all humans have sinned, humanity itself is not the problem. Sin—opposition to God—that is the real issue.
Sin as Broken Relationship
Although the Bible uses multiple terms to describe the concept of sin, I believe we can understand it most readily in relational terms. Sin always relates to some aspect of our relationship with God. This way of thinking about sin is based on two important statements in the New Testament, both of which have their basis in the Old Testament.
The Kingdom of God
The New Testament opens with the idea that Jesus brings an important message. Contrary to what you might think, this message is not primarily about forgiveness or prayer. The message Jesus brings is that God’s kingdom has arrived. Jesus’first message as recorded in Matthew and Mark was about the presence of the Kingdom of God (Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:15). Shortly thereafter, Jesus defined the nature of his ministry as declaring the presence of God’s kingdom in the world (Luke 4:43). Many of the people who first heard Jesus speak about the kingdom of God would have recalled Daniel’s writing on a similar theme (see Daniel 2:44). By declaring the arrival of the kingdom of God so persistently, Jesus teaches us something about the new relationship that God is seeking with his creation.
The word kingdom is not a familiar word to those of us who are accustomed to living in a representative democracy. A kingdom is the system of government where one person rules. This was especially true of kingdoms in biblical times. Kings ruled their kingdom with absolute authority and control. Akingdom, as Jesus’hearers understood the term, is a territory in which a king ruled his subjects with absolute authority. So Jesus’ announcement that the kingdom of God had arrived was a declaration that the rule of God on earth was being inaugurated.
It is important to note that this announcement was accompanied by a call to repentance. In Matthew and Mark, the account of Jesus preaching about the Kingdom always included a call for people to
repent. So what is repentance, and why is it so important for the arrival of God’s rule among us?
To repent means literally to change one’s mind. So a call for repentance is a call for changed thinking. Jesus called people to change their minds about the rule of God and its coming presence. He called them to change their loyalty from some other rule to this new kingdom of God. Why was that important? That other kingdom, the alternative to the rule of God, is the rule of self. Human beings have been participating in their own kingdom, characterized by self-rule. Jesus called them to turn away from building the kingdom of God and to begin participating in the kingdom of God (Jabay, 23).
Sin As Rebellion
Therefore, one way of understanding sin is that it is any alternative to the rulership of God in one’s life. This description fits the classic Bible text about the nature of sin, Isaiah 53:6: “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.” Here is a description of sin in action. It is not a study of the etymology of the various terms used to define sin. It is an image of what sin looks like. It is when we each go our own way. Sin is self-rule!
Often, we think of sin in terms of some violation of prescribed behavior. But sin is not breaking some set of rules but refusing to be ruled by a personal God. Sin is when human beings use their Godgiven freedom to rebel against him and be, as one writer has put it, a “contender against God’s throne” (Jabay, 22). So, sin is never an impersonal response to a set of impersonal rules; it is a highly personal rejection of the direction and guidance of God. Human beings are not misguided creatures; they are self-guided creatures who know that they are created to follow God’s leading yet refuse to do so.
It is tempting to think that we are not fully responsible for our choice to reject God’s rule. After all, aren’t there some people who really don’t know any better than to follow their own desires? Someone in that
condition may be indifferent to God, but that is quite different from being ignorant of him. God has revealed himself to us in many ways, and a person who does not invest some effort in discovering who God is and what he requires of us is not released from responsibility.
Sin as Failure to Love
Here is another way of understanding sin. At the very heart of the teaching of the Old Testament is a clear statement of what God requires of us. That idea is clearly restated in the New Testament. What is it that God requires? That we should love God and love others (Deuteronomy 6:4–5; Matthew 22:36–40). This is the standard for all human interactions with God and with one another. We are created to love. And because human beings have been given some measure of freedom, the call to love is something we are capable of responding to. Sin, therefore, can be seen as our failure to properly respond to this singular command of God: to love. Sin is love gone awry. What does that mean?
First, it means that we have not fulfilled the call to love God and one another. Our love has been directed to some other object.
We see this in everyday life. People put their energy, resources and time into things instead of God and his kingdom. It is not that the things people love are bad in themselves, they are simply substitutes for what we are told to love. These substitutes may be family or friends, homes, cars, or other possessions. When these things take the place of God in our lives, that is love gone awry; that is sin.
Many people reserve the label sin for only the most violent or disgusting behaviors such as murder or the abuse of children. But remember that sin is defined not by how outrageous a behavior may be but by how if places us in relationship to God. So even something that may seem relatively innocent may become sin if it takes the place of God in our lives.
I once had a neighbor who seemed to be a really fine guy. He had a nice family, worked hard, and provided a great home for his family.
I chatted with him often, and looked for ways to introduce the idea of having a relationship with God. At first, I was looking for flaws in his character of behavior, obvious behaviors that I could point to as sinful, things that he should feel guilty about or repent of. Yet as far as I could tell, there were none.
Then it dawned on me. His problem was not that he used his freedom to do terrible things. He seemed to care about the right things. The problem was that he cared about them to the wrong degree and intensity. He had no room left in his life for a relationship with God.
Sin is not merely the misuse of freedom to act defiantly. Sin is also the use of that freedom to love something besides God with all of one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength. Anything that takes the place of the supreme love that I should have for God is misdirected love. While we love our families, our work, and our leisure activities, they must all be subordinate to our love for God.
Many of us have learned how to work the angles on what I might call sin management. We know that most of our behaviors are in line with what God desires for us. We don’t lie, steal, or harm others. We may even feel quite content with how “good” we are. Yet we may yet fail to love God with all of our heart. We may look very good to others and to ourselves, yet inside we realize that we are still practicing self-rule. It is ourselves and not God who is the object of our ultimate loyalty and love.
The Inadequacy of Defining Sin Behaviorally
That is why it is totally inadequate to understand sin only in terms of behavior. To do so is to treat the symptoms only, not the disease. Besides, when we think of sin as merely a list of do’s and don’ts, there is a possibility that we may not have an adequate list. While the list might include things like lying and stealing, it might not include the underlying attitudes of greed and jealousy that drive the behavior. We may fail to see that these attitudes are not harmless but are violations of the command to love.
Another danger of defining sin as a list of behaviors is that the list might fail to include social sins—things that we do as a group and for which no one of us feels fully responsible. These sins include things like repression, discrimination, and injustice.
Yet another flaw in the sin-list idea is that we might put the wrong things on the list. You might visit a number of churches in your community and find that Christians in each one defined sin a little different. As a young man, I was part of a church that was strictly opposed to dancing, while there was a church nearby that organized dances for its youth ministry. I always wanted to attend that other church.
Finally, we dare not define sin as a certain set of behaviors because that invariably leads to legalism. Legalism is an inordinate concern with identifying right and wrong behaviors to the point where correct behavior becomes the only measure of what it means to love God. Behavior is important, to be sure. But it is our relationship with God that matters most.
It is vital that we understand the problem that exists between God and us. And it is vital that we understand that problem accurately. Just as we took pains to form an accurate understanding of who God is and who we are, we need an accurate understanding of the problem between us—sin. I believe the best way to understand that problem is in relational terms. Sin is a broken relationship between us. That broken relationship is caused by our desire for self-rule versus participation in God’s kingdom. And it can be understood as misdirected love—loving some other thing in place of God or more intensely than we love God.
When we properly understand sin, we will be able to evaluate each situation we face in life based upon these fundamental principles and can respond to God’s call to accept his rule in our lives and to fully love him and others.
Questions for Reflection
1.Can you describe a time when you used your freedom to honor God? Can you think of a time when your freedom resulted in self-rule?
2.When you try to do what is right, are you successful? How much of the time?
3. What do you love most in life? How might you be able to evaluate whether that love is more important to you than your love for God?
4. Do you think it is wise to define the human problem in terms of our relationship with God rather than in terms of behavior? Why or why not?
God’s Solution for Sin
Ifsin is an accurate description of the problem between God and human beings, how can that problem be corrected? The situation for human beings is dire and requires drastic change. How can human beings cease to be self-ruled when experience tells us that the self cannot expel itself anymore than a drowning person can save himself?And how are human beings to redirect their love to the right object once it is directed elsewhere?
There is no easy solution to this problem because while human beings have a limited measure of freedom, they have become enslaved to sin (see John 8:34). We are no longer neutral in our decision making. Human beings are in bondage to sin and unable to break that bondage by themselves. How can any change occur? And if the problem is essentially a broken relationship, how can that relationshipbe restored?
Clearly, we are in need of some help if we are to break free from sin and re-enter an intimate, loving relationship with God.
Our Need for Help
According to the Bible, human beings are both uninterested and incapable of initiating a restoration of relationship with God (see Romans 1:18–32; John 8:34). We live in bondage to this self-rule and misdirected affection that renders us completely unable to initiate, let alone restore, our relationship with God. More than that, the Bible states that we are enemies of God, actively opposed to his Kingdom and rule (Romans 5:10). There is more to the problem. In addition to being at odds with God because of our sin, we are completely unable to deal with the debt that we incurred because of it. Clearly, we need help from outside ourselves.
God’s Grace at Work
There are two ways of thinking about how we might be restored to a right relationship with God. One way of thinking emphasizes the idea that human beings a totally enslaved to sin and are incapable of reversing its effects. Since that is true, human beings can take no part whatsoever in restoring their relationship with God. God simply chooses to restore his relationship with some people, but not others.
Another way of thinking emphasizes God’s grace, which is always at work in our lives. According to this view, although human beings are indeed totally enslaved by sin, God’s prevenient grace enables them to respond when God initiates a new relationship with them. Prevenient grace is God’s grace that predates any decision on the part of human beings. It has been called “the gift of God’s activity in our lives, sensitizing and inviting us” (Maddox, 89–90). Like sin in our lives, God’s grace is a powerful force. Yet grace is not irresistible.
God enables us to respond to him and form a new relationship, but he compels no one to love him.
An important scripture for understanding this concept is Romans 10:17, which states, “Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” God’s prevenient grace gives people the opportunity to respond to the message of salvation. It is in the very declaration of the gospel that God extends to those who hear the reality of faith. Our faith does not spring up in a vacuum nor is it merely commanded by God; it results from our hearing the good news about Jesus Christ. So while people are inherently incapable of exercising faith on their own, when they do hear the good news about Jesus, God’s prevenient grace enables them to believe. “Prevenient grace effects a partial restoring of our sincorruptedhuman faculties, sufficient that we might sense our need and God’s offer of salvation, and respond to that offer” (Maddox, 87).
There are two other Bible passages that clarify the notion of prevenient. One is John 1:9, which says about Jesus, “The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.” This points to the universal effect of the work of Jesus Christ to all human beings— not simply to a few who were specially chosen by God. A second passageis Romans 5, which declares that the work of Jesus Christ has created future possibilities for all human beings. Because God loved the whole world, he sent his son to bring the offer of salvation to everyone. By his prevenient grace, God gives each of us the possibility of responding to this gift. (For further reading on this subject, see Responsible Grace by Randy L. Maddox and Elect in the Son by Robert Shank.)
Forgiveness
Christianity is not a philosophy that suggests human beings can overcome the problem of sin in their lives if they just try harder or have a great example to follow. Christianity declares that human
beings are trapped in their sin and must have someone who can pay the price to release them from their bondage. This is precisely what Jesus did. Salvation at its most basic level is deliverance from the penalty of rebellion against God.
The first three chapters of the book of Romans deal extensively with the effect of sin and our need for salvation, leading to this eloquent statement: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Galatians 2:20 captures the essence of Christ’s atoning work when it says that Christ “delivered himself up” for sinners. Jesus paid the penalty for sin by taking our place—delivering himself up. As a result, we are freed from the penalty owed to God for our rebellion.
Relationship
Another aspect of Christ’s work for us is that he restored the relationship between God and human beings. The apostle Paul states this perfectly in 1 Corinthians 5:18–19: “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” It’s not that we did anything to restore our relationship with God; rather, God has done all that needs to be done to reconcile human beings to himself. John 3:16, perhaps the best known verse in the Bible, makes this clear: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” God seeks relationship with all his creation.
These two concepts—forgiveness and relationship—capture the essence of what the Bible says about salvation. Of course, this brief description is not an exhaustive discussion of what salvation means. But it is a start, and it covers the basic points. Forgiveness deals with
the negative side of the problem, payment of the penalty for sin. Relationship deals with the positive side, restored contact with our heavenly Father.
God’s Desire for You
Aremarkable passage of the Bible reveals just how committed God is to the salvation of his creatures. Romans 5:8 states that “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us.” The Greek word that is translated demonstrates has a rich meaning. The term sunistaesin is a compound word that includes the preposition with and the verb stand. It might also be translated by the phrase “to stand with.” It brings to mind the image of someone who stands with another and does not desert them. This image is even more gripping when we remember the context—it was while we were still sinners, helpless in our sin, and enemies to God’s rule in the world that he stood by us. What a marvelous picture of what God’s love for a sinner! God will not desert us in our time of need. He stands by us. If God would not desert you when you were a sinner and an enemy to him, we should never wonder about whether he will desert us after we respond to his grace, find forgiveness, and enjoy a restored relationship with him. God loves us, and he will not desert us.
What Comes Next
I mentioned that forgiveness deals with the negative aspect of salvation—repayment of our debt. To be forgiven is to have your debt cancelled. To put this in ordinary terms, if you owed someone one hundred dollars and that person forgave the debt, you would be no richer than when you began. You didn’t have the money then, and you wouldn’t have it now. You simply wouldn’t have the debt hanging over your head anymore.
What comes next in our relationship with God? After forgiveness, how do we rebuild a positive relationship with God? That’s the subject of our next chapter.
Questions for Reflection
1.Have you ever tried to make yourself a better person? How fully did you succeed?
2.If God is offering to forgive your sin and restore the relationship between the two of you, what might you do to accept that offer?
3. How does it make you feel to hear that God will stand by you, no matter what?
4. Are you ready to begin a new relationship with God? If not, why not?
New Life
Several years ago a movie titled Honey, I Shrunk the Kids took a whimsical look at an aspiring inventor who accidentally shrank his children using one of his makeshift inventions. The children were reduced to a size smaller than ants, and the movie chronicled their hilarious ordeal in navigating the hazards of their backyard and being safely returned to normal size. The movie was pure fantasy, of course, and had nothing to do with real-world possibilities for growth.
When discussing our relationship with God, particularly with salvation, there is a possibility that we may accidentally shrink this seriousmatter to ridiculously small proportions. Our relationship with God is far too grand and complex to be adequately described by a sound bite or T-shirt slogan. We want to understand the truth about God, ourselves, and our relationship with him in way that is both true to the Bible and concise enough to have a real impact on our lives.
With that in mind, let me offer the most concise definition of salvation that I possibly can—Salvation is life!
More than Forgiveness
This theme is often buried in our thinking about salvation. We usually speak most about forgiveness for sin, for which we are grateful. We are right to emphasize the fact that God forgives our sin because of the work of Jesus Christ. Yet if we reduce our thinking about salvation to forgiveness alone, we will miss a great deal of what the Bible says about this subject. We will wind up with a bumpersticker faith that touts, “Christians aren’t perfect—they are just forgiven.” Sadly, for many people, that is the sum total of their Christian experience. They have been forgiven for sin—but that’s all. To fully understand what it means to be saved—that is, restored to a full relationship with God—we need to talk about what comes after forgiveness. We need to talk about new life.
Remember the verse that we touched on in the last chapter, the signature verse of the New Testament, John 3:16. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” According to this statement, the primary result of belief in Jesus Christ is not forgiveness but new life. Of course, the verse doesn’t imply that we are not forgiven. It simply shows that eternal life is a primary element of our salvation. This is the result of God’s love for us.
We see that same idea in several other New Testament verses. First, Jesus describes entering heaven as entering “life” (see Matthew 7:14; 18:8–9; 19:17; 25:46; Mark 9:43, 45). Furthermore, the idea of eternal life is found throughout the teachings of Jesus, indeed, throughout the Bible (see, for example, Matthew 19:16, 29; Mark 10:17, 30; Luke 10:25; John 3:15-16, 36; Romans 5:21, 6:22–23; Galatians 6:8). Atheme that is repeated so often must certainly be of great importance. We cannot seriously read the Bible and reflect upon
its meaning without coming to grips with the idea that salvation includes eternal life.
Reasons for Omission
So why is this idea so often omitted from our discussions of salvation? Why do we seem to focus exclusively on the negative aspect of salvation—the removal of guilt?
First, it is true that the Bible places great importance on the need for forgiveness for sin. One cannot read the Old Testament, with the role that ritual sacrifice plays in God’s interaction with people, without gaining a profound sense of our need for forgiveness. The New Testament also teaches the need for sacrifice to be made in order to receive forgiveness. So it would be foolish to suggest that forgiveness is unimportant.
Yet it does not follow that forgiveness is the sole concern of the Bible or the primary result of our salvation. To consider this teaching to be the supreme expression of God’s dealings with human beings is to miss a good deal of the truth of the gospel.
A second reason we sometimes focus exclusively on forgiveness is that, frankly, it is easier. When we think of salvation only in terms of being released from our burden of guilt, we think little of the moral obligation to live a changed life that comes along with God’s call to salvation. That seems apparent when we so often see statistics reporting that Christians display virtually no difference in their moral behavior as compared with the culture around them. That fits well with the popular notion that we are “not perfect; just forgiven.” Many of us seem content to know that our sins are forgiven by God’s grace without realizing the possibility that that same grace might transform our lives.
New Life
Salvation is more than forgiveness alone; it is new life. The New Testament declares that human beings are dead in sin (Ephesians 2:1), that to be saved is to be born again (John 3:16 and 1 Peter 1:3), and we are given life (John 10:10). Apopular way of describing salvation is that it is when we give our lives to God. Yet how can that be, if we are dead in sin as the Bible declares? Instead, a Christian is one who receives his or her life from God (VanVonderen, 137).
Like many people, when I was a younger person I heard preaching that focused mostly about how bad I was—my sinfulness. I had such an elevated understanding of my badness that I had little time to consider anything else! Sure, I nodded in agreement when I heard messages on eternal life, but most of the teaching I heard seemed more intent on dealing with the sin problem than with addressing how I lived. I assumed that the gift of life meant eternal life, which seemed to be about the future. I heard little or nothing said about my need for a new life right now.
The result was that I, like many other Christians, began to feel that I had a behavior problem. After all, I reasoned, wasn’t sin the main problem? And wasn’t sin purely a matter of behavior? I did not understand that I was truly dead in my sin and had no way of living for God. I wrongly assumed that anyone could choose not to sin if they wanted to bad enough.
What I later discovered is that human beings are not free to obey and serve God apart from his grace. They are trapped in an endless cycle of self-rule and misdirected love until something or someone sets them free. They need the gift of eternal life that only God can give.
Life Now
Eternal life is not a quantity of life—it is a quality of life. If eternal life merely meant living forever, then every human being would already have it. Each of us has an eternal soul and will life forever
somewhere, either in heaven or in hell. But the Bible declares that only those who place their faith in Jesus Christ have eternal life (John 3:16). So the description eternal refers to the kind of life we will have, not its duration.
Jesus states that those who believe in him already have this eternal life, now (see John 3:16; 5:24, 40). Eternal life is not simply a future experience; it is experienced now. We were dead in our sins, but Jesus brings us life. And we enter that life immediately.
Jesus made a definitive statement about his mission when he said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Jesus came to give life to human beings. Why would he do that if they already had life to begin with? Obviously, this refers to something other than biological life. Jesus came to give a kind of life that human beings do not naturally possess; the life that God gives when we believe in Jesus Christ.
What kind of life is this eternal life? It is something we receive upon believing in the Son of God. This life comes through our relationship with him (see 1 John 5:11–12). It isn’t the case that Jesus simply brings to earth and hands out to people. The idea is that Jesus is life and that as we are related to him through faith, he gives us himself to us—he gives us life. I realize that this is a heady concept and it may take awhile to fully comprehend. Jesus is our life! We are participants with God as we experience life in relationship with him.
The idea that Jesus is our life is based on several passages of scripture (for example, see John 3:36; John 14:6; Romans 5:10, 17; Romans 8:2; 1 Corinthians 15:45 Colossians 3:4). In these passages and others, there is the direct link between being in relationship with Jesus through faith and experiencing life. Jesus also made that statement to some people who were searching for eternal life in the Scriptures, which was a commendable thing to do. Yet Jesus clearly stated that the Scriptures do not bring about life; it is when we come to Jesus that we have life (see John 5:39–40). Jesus came to offer
eternal life; life that is different in quality, not just in quantity, from the physical life we already possess.
Finding New Power
If it is true that human beings need both forgiveness and eternal life, then there is an important question we need to consider: How is that possible? Given the fact that we are “dead” in our sins, there is no way we can simply rework our old lives and make them better. We are completely without this new life that comes only through Jesus. Human beings are not simply people who need to be forgiven and then have the ability to fully love God and others. That may sound like good psychology, but it is terrible theology. Human beings must be given the power to live new, different lives, and that power comes only from God.
Think of it this way: a glove looks something like a hand. They have the same shape, and both of them have five fingers. Yet if I were to lay a glove on the table in front of you and then command it to “Write!” nothing would happen. I may exhort the glove with all my might to pick up a pen and write, but it never will. It is dead. Yet if I were to place my hand inside the glove, you would then see the glove become animated, take up a pen, and write freely.
Our lives are like that. Alone, we cannot break free from self-rule and love God fully. It won’t matter how often we are commandedto “Love!” We simply don’t have it in us. Yet when we are connected with Christ, we come alive. Then, through his power, we are able love God and love others as we should. It is when we have a relationship of trust with Jesus Christ that we can be restored to a full relationship with God, we can finally be fully ourselves, we can have new life.
Questions for Reflection
1.When you think about having a relationship with God, do you think mostly about the problems (sin) or the possibilities (life)?
2.What has been your strategy for improving your life so far? How has it worked for you?
3. Many people find it more comfortable to remain as they are rather than risk making sweeping changes. Are you interested in making changes in your life?
4. Have you discovered life through Jesus Christ? What is stopping you from placing your faith in him right now?
Your Next Step
By reading this book, you have begun a journey to developing a relationship with God. You are now more aware than ever that some of the difficulties you have encountered in life have had to do with the way you perceive God. I am sure this has been an eye-opening and, hopefully, a heart-opening process. For some of you, the journey will not take long. You have had an essentially healthy view of God for some time. This process has been more of a refresher course. For you, the challenge now is to be prepared to share this information with those you will meet in the days ahead. Ask God to help you understand some of the pain that people experience because of their distorted views of God, pain that you have not had to deal with. Open your heart now to the possibility that you can minister God’s grace to others.
For others, who have not had a healthy view of God, the journey has just begun. You will need to be patient with yourself as you begin
experience God’s grace for the first time and begin to see him more accurately. Trusting this new image of God will not always be easy. There will be times when you think all this talk of God being good and loving is simply too good to be true.
I am reminded of a friend who had a very serious heart attack. In fact, had he not been in the hospital at the time, being prepared for heart surgery, he almost certainly would have died. After the attack and the complicated surgery that followed, the surgeon came to speak to his family and me. The doctor told us that the heart had been damaged by a lack of blood flow to the heart itself. The situation was further complicated by the way the heart was responding to the reestablished flow of blood. When the blockage was removed, my friend’s heart was stunned by the restored blood flow. Now his heart was in a state of shock, and the surgeon was hoping that the heart would regulate itself and get used to the new flow of blood. Think of it, the very thing the heart was designed to do, circulate blood, was causing the problem.
Some of us find ourselves in that same situation when reconstructing our view of God. The flow of God’s grace to our spiritual hearts has long been blocked by negative experiences and relationships. When we finally begin form an accurate view of God and realize that he loves us more than we had ever imagined, we are stunned by grace. The news that God really cares about you for who you are, not simply what you can do, may seem too good to be true. Do not be too hard on yourself, or let others be too hard on you when you share that you are working through the issue of God’s loving character. It may simply take some time to get your spiritual heart regulated. But it will happen for you, just as it did for my friend, who survived the surgery to become healthy again.
This does not mean, however, that we do not need to believe what the Bible clearly declares about God’s character. We have the responsibility to get our emotions under the control of God’s Word and Spirit. Yet it may take time for us to feel the reality of what we are
learning. Believe that this will happen and be prepared for it. Do not take one minute longer than is needed for this process, and do not take one minute less than needed either. To keep from either moving too quickly or becoming bogged down in the process, ask God to guide you to some trusted relationships with others who can encourage you and spur you on to growth—and believe that he will do it. It is unlikely that you can successfully complete this process alone; we all need objective counsel from others who can see things about us that we cannot see ourselves.
May God bless you as you continue the journey to knowing him.
Questions for Reflection
1.Was your view of God mostly accurate or mostly distorted when you began reading this book? What has been your most significant learning so far?
2.If you have a mostly healthy view of God, do you feel competent to express that view to others and help them identify inaccuracies in their view? If not, how might you gain that competence?
3. How has your heart responded to the flood of God’s grace in your life? Is this easy for you to accept or difficult? Why do you think that is?
4.Have you formed relationships with people who can help you in your journey to know God? If not, with whom could you form such a relationship? When will you do it?
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