Romans 8:38, 39
For I am convinced that neither death nor life,
Neither angels nor demons,
Neither the present nor the future,
Nor any powers,
Neither height nor depth,
Nor anything else in all creation,
Will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Apostle Paul seems to go to great lengths in order to assure us that God’s love is greater than anything that would attempt to keep us away from him. It’s a wonderful verse, and I believe it with all my heart. But most “Christians” don’t.
What can separate us from God’s love? Can hell? Are those that are in hell now on the outside of God’s love? How can he still love them and burn them forever? Or does the verse only apply to Christians — those who “accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior?” What about John 3:16? Does he truly love the world but with strings attached?
Or what about 2 Corinthians 5:19, where God is reconciling the world to himself in Christ? Is the Lord of the Universe not capable of meaning world when he says world?
Suppose our children were apathetic, mean, disobedient, unbearable or outright evil — would they ever stop being our children? Never! If we stop loving them, shame on us. Would we not do anything in our power to bring them back to us of their own free will? If we can even imagine it, why can’t God do it? Of course he can. He wrote the book.
Read more about: children, love
June 14th, 2009 at 11:40 am
While it’s true that we are not gods, our only point of reference is that we were made in his image, thereby having a pretty good take on how he sees things. The common error is to take the “mystery” of God, along with his ironclad justice, to such a level that we’re not allowed to speculate or question, for fear of the almighty lightning strike.
The only acceptable consequence for the murderer is for him to be truly sorry that he murdered — not sorry that he got caught and punished.
God’s word can come to anyone at anytime. Some wrote it down. Some added their own slant. The Bible is a collection of writings over a long period of time. Just because a bishop and a council ordered it to be so (after 250 years of debating, by the way), it doesn’t make it the authoritative Word of God. The apocrypha was included in ALL Bibles until 1880. Then someone decided is was detracting from the “true scripture.”
I believe that God uses all manner of writing, speaking and the arts to communicate to us and allow us to interact with one another. I’m open to whatever truth he wants to share. If I’m wrong, I trust that he will set me straight, because I know that his love is what sustains me.
June 13th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
I was not trying to make the point that a parent should be able to condemn the soul of their child, but rather that to us, making the decision for the rest of a person’s life is comparable to God making a decision for the soul. We can’t begin to comprehend how God feels making any decision, as our frame of reference (feelings themselves) are only pale shadows of what is God’s. Of course you want even a murderer to come to terms with what he did and change his heart, but he still has to face the consequences for his actions.
As for the Bible, if you don’t fully believe it’s God’s word, why quote it at all? I certainly don’t believe that everyone’s interpretation of it is inerrant, but to rely on your own opinion as a litmus test for whether or not this line or that is correct seems shaky.
June 13th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
The child who is a “serial killer” once was an innocent baby, and the punishment (eternal) does not fit the crime. Would you not want your child to truly come to his or her senses, in this life or the next? Would you not have that child be reconciled to the victims, to their families, to you? Would you set a time limit on their repentance and rehabilitation?
Sorry, I don’t accept the Bible as the wholly inerrant word of God. Jesus sending the “goats” away to eternal punishment, with no plan to get them out of there, seems senseless and unloving. Either we’re not understanding the correct meaning, or he didn’t say it.
June 12th, 2009 at 6:54 am
I don’t think you can carry the analogy of the love that we have for our children too far. God is perfect and we can only understand him in the most imperfect of ways.
But to follow your idea of our apathetic, mean, disobedient children, imagine if you really had such a child. Not a child that just didn’t get along with you but a child that was truly corrupt on a fundamental level. A pathological child molester. A dangerous serial killer. They may still be your child, you may still love them, but what righteous or just parent would not choose to send that child to prison for the rest of their natural lives should the power be in their hands to do so? Can God not continue to love those that he separates from himself? Or does there have to be an eventual reconciliation for that love to seem valid?
I don’t tend to believe in the fire and brimstone concept of hell where demons poke us with pitchforks and all manner of unimaginable horrors happen for eternity, but there does seem to be a concept of separation reinforced time and again in Jesus’s own words. What do you do with passages like Matthew 25:46 where Jesus has been describing the sheep and the goats and how those who did for “the least of these brothers” are divided from those did not. He says:
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”