Why Not Try Socialism?

An interesting post appeared on Facebook today. It presented what appeared to be an editorial from a newspaper of some kind. The article alleged that a college professor, frustrated by her students’ belief that a socialistic form of government would be beneficial, decided to perform an experiment with them. She offered to average all test grades and give each student the same grade. On the first test, some students still studied hard, but many studied little. The average for the class was a B. This pleased the ones who hadn’t put in much effort but displeased the ones who had studied hard. Of course.

On the second test, the class average was a D because those who had been studying saw little reason to put in any great effort, and those who had studied only a little studied even less. By the third test, the class average was an F. The professor allegedly failed the entire class. (At this point I doubt the veracity of the story because if true, the professor would almost certainly have gotten herself terminated.) I commented on Facebook that I wish I had thought of this when I was teaching. I had the same frustration with young people who had no idea how socialism really worked or that it has failed everywhere it has been tried.

One of my friends on Facebook suggested that this “fable,” as he called it, represents a straw man fallacy. I looked up a definition: “A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false one. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be ‘attacking a straw man.’" For this to be a fallacy then, the professor’s argument, in this case by demonstration, would have to be false. I don’t think it is. The goal of socialism is equal outcomes for everyone. The professor’s experiment accomplished this. I think her “argument” was that in the beginning, lazy people love socialism, but in the end, no one likes it.

The other aspect of a straw man fallacy is that it doesn’t address or refute the subject of the argument. In this case, it seems that the subject of the argument was whether socialism is a beneficial form of government for all citizens in a society. The professor’s experiment demonstrated clearly that one of the main tenets of socialism, equality of outcomes, will ultimately bring about the collapse of society. If we replace the professor’s grade averaging with income and opportunity averaging, we have only to look at the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, or any other country that has tried socialistic policies to see what happens. When was the last time you read a story about hordes of people trying to get into Cuba or Venezuela to enjoy the benefits of socialism?

I think the main problem with socialism is completely ignored by most supporters. As pointed out in the article on Facebook, the government cannot give its citizens anything that it hasn’t taken from other citizens. The government does not make money; it takes money. The only source of income for the federal government is taxes and fees taken from the citizenry. I struggled to make my college freshmen understand that. They wanted the “free” college education that Bernie Sanders was campaigning for. They wanted “free” health care. I told them I would be retiring soon, and I would be sending them the bill for my “free” health care; I asked if they would mind paying. They soundly refused. I gave them the bad news: they would be paying because Medicare would be their responsibility and my benefit. I think some of them got the point. (For a great summary read “Why Socialism Always Fails.”)

Where is Heaven in this argument? Just this: Paul told the Thessalonians, “Anyone does not work neither shall he eat.” The Proverbs are full of admonishments to work for what one needs and discouragements toward those who are lazy. There is also throughout the Scripture the concept of those who have material goods helping those who do not. My contention is that this is meant to be a personal, faith-based type of assistance, not a government handout.

In my view, it is the church’s responsibility to help the poor; it is the government’s responsibility to maintain a level playing field so that everyone has the opportunity to be successful. The minute the government steps into the field of welfare for its citizens, problems are inevitable. Besides the fact that fraud is an automatic result because of man’s sinful nature, an attitude of entitlement soon drives large numbers of people who could support themselves to seek the “free” money. I quote Adrian Rogers, “When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation.”

Also, I won’t claim a direct cause-effect relationship, but I see a definite correlation between socialism and suppression of religious freedom. This may only be a coincidence, but it stands to reason that the enemy of our souls would get behind any form of human government that so nicely feeds our human weaknesses. I agree with the supposition of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters that the enemy will do whatever possible to make humans miserable. Socialism has proven very effective at that chore.

Several years ago, I wrote “Obama Isn't the Problem” to highlight the issue of Americans, especially the young, being receptive to policies that lean toward socialism. That post has been one of the most widely read of all my articles. I am weighing in again because it is evident that the real problem still exists. I have made my political position clear on numerous occasions, but I must say that while the Democrat party is more supportive of policies that are socialistic, an increasing number of Republicans are sliding down the slippery slope. I understand; it is hard to resist the temptation to garner votes by offering “free” stuff to the electorate. I just wish there was a stronger pull in Washington to get back to the principles of industry and personal responsibility that were at the core of our nation’s original success. Principles which are, by the way, biblically supported.

The Knowledge of Good and Evil

Someone has said that every major doctrine taught in Scripture can be found in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Without question, the roots of human frailty are found there. Genesis three is the pivotal point where humankind goes from innocence to depravity. Let me begin by saying that I believe we must understand the Garden of Eden as a real place and Adam and Eve as historical persons. It seems to me that if we make the garden story an allegory, we are forced by logic to discount the historicity of much of what follows in Scripture, including the literal incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. In the Gospels, Jesus Himself alludes to the Genesis account as a real event as does Paul on numerous occasions. We can still learn from an allegory, but in this case, I believe we lose too much if we put the fall of humankind in that category of literature.

That said, I have been thinking recently about the meaning of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God spoke its name and the prohibition against eating from its fruit in Genesis two. In the next chapter, the serpent, later revealed as the devil himself, repeats the “good and evil” pairing, although he deceptively raises questions as to the real results of eating the fruit. I am satisfied that most readers of Scripture have a decent understanding of what good means. Where I think we need to dig deeper is into the meaning of evil.

When we think of the word evil, we generally go toward synonyms like sin, wickedness, and bad behavior. While these are not incorrect meanings of the original Hebrew word, it has a broader sense that does not necessarily imply unrighteousness. I first discovered the wider meaning of the word often translated from Hebrew as “evil” when studying Isaiah in Bible college. I wrote a paper based on Isaiah 45:7 called “Creator of Evil.” Since we know God is holy and cannot be involved in any way in anything sinful, the verse bothered me. I learned that the word Isaiah used can mean distress, calamity, or unpleasantness. With that in mind, it seems clear that Isaiah was quoting God as saying that He brought about calamity to chastise Israel and bring them back to faith in Him.

If we see the tree in the garden as the bearer of distress, calamity or unpleasantness it puts the story in a different light. Add to this the fact that the word used for knowledge in the Hebrew text carries the idea of intimate, experiential knowing. (The word is used in the next chapter to say that Adam “knew” Eve and children were the result. That’s intimate knowledge.) Together this reveals that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden because it would cast the eaters into distress, calamity, and unpleasantness. God was trying to protect His family from that. No doubt, it was also a way of testing them to see if they would remain obedient. Without many such tests, obedience would be robotic and invalidate the idea of humans choosing to obey God of their own free will.

Seen in this way, I think we can learn some valuable lessons. First, God’s prohibition was protective. He wanted to keep Adam and Eve from the dire consequences of failing to obey His commands. It is not as if God was trying to keep them from having a moral sense; that would necessarily have been part of their created nature as imagers of God. They would need to know right from wrong from the beginning, or else they couldn’t be held accountable for disobedience. Note also that the devil used the same illegitimate desire that brought about his demise: you can be like God. The enemy was steering Eve away from the idea of right and wrong by tempting her to want the forbidden fruit. She had to have a moral sense to know that she was supposed to obey God’s commands. The devil was able to distract her by focusing on her desires.

Another lesson we learn here that seems self-evident but is too often ignored is that failure to follow the rules has inevitable consequences. Even true believers will sometimes go out of bounds and use euphemisms like coloring outside the lines or sowing wild oats. What they fail to realize is that coloring outside the lines ruins the picture and wild oats will eventually contaminate the good crop making it difficult to harvest. The sinful nature we all inherited from Adam is all too evident as Paul points out in Romans six and seven. Doing the right thing is made difficult if not impossible when we focus on our desires.

The good news is what Paul recites in Romans eight. We are no longer bound by the sinful nature of Adam if we are in Christ. “Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness.” (Romans 8:10 CSB) Whereas Adam made all humanity subject to the ravages of the knowledge of good and evil, Christ’s work on the cross removes us from the family of Adam and adopts us into the family of God. “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father!” The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ.” (Romans 8:15-17 CSB)

Another important lesson we can draw from thinking about good and evil beyond the strictly moral meaning is that even though believers are righteous in Christ, we still have a responsibility to use our spiritual senses to discern between right and wrong. The writer of Hebrews says, “But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have trained their faculties for the distinguishing of both good and evil.” Among the many synonyms the Greek lexicon gives for good and evil (καλου and κακου), there is one for each that stand out in this context. Good can mean “such as it ought to be,” and evil can mean “not what it ought to be.” Mature believers are called to see things as they “ought to be,” fitting nicely with the idea that sin is anything that is “not what it ought to be.” Righteousness brings order (ought) and anything else brings chaos (ought not).

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they left behind “what ought to be” and plunged humanity into “what ought not to be.” So, with this “knowledge,” it is easy to see how our purpose on earth is to help return things to what they were originally intended to be – what they ought to be. This means Christ as king and His followers as obedient subjects. “Bringing the Kingdom” means reestablishing the rule of God over His creation: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This will not be fully accomplished until Christ’s return at the end of the age, but we are called to make preparations now for that glorious future day.

Now you have the knowledge; wisdom is knowing what to do with it. And getting to it.

Related posts: The God of Demonstrations; Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing; Christian Responsibility; Digging Trenches

Friendship With the World

I recently wrote an article called “Crown of Thorns” that suggested following Christ could very well put believers in some thorny situations. If we use the life of the Apostle Paul as an example, it quickly becomes evident that trouble may be on the itinerary quite regularly. Church history confirms the unbroken chain of persecuted believers right up to the present day. Perhaps because America was founded in large part by people who were fleeing persecution for their faith, the founders designed a system that gave a measure of religious freedom. Except for a few sectarian squabbles, American Christians have not had to deal with harassment or oppression because of their religion.

Freedom from persecution may have inadvertently become the fertile soil that allowed the prosperity gospel to take such firm root in some American churches. Even churches that don’t subscribe to health and wealth preaching have fallen prey to the false teaching that Jesus wants His followers to be comfortable; the warm fuzzy gospel is preached far too often. I believe that Jesus is more concerned with our character than our comfort. Character is more likely to be improved by hard times than easy days. Note that the Bible lists positive traits as the result of trials (James 1:2-4; 1 Peter 1:6-7; Romans 5:3-5)

So, I should not have been surprised when Charles Spurgeon’s devotional the other today recommended patient acceptance of trials. He used the earthly experience of Jesus, our exemplar, to make his point. I would paraphrase the early verses of John’s gospel to say Jesus came into the world He created and the very people He came to save rejected Him completely. Of course, there were those who did receive the Savior: the blind who could see; the lame who could walk; the possessed who were set free. But the Jewish religious leaders almost all rejected His messiahship.

The different factions that made up the leadership each had their own reasons for refusing to believe the Man from Nazareth was the Messiah. The Herodians were in love with power; the Sadducees had developed a listless, secular faith; and the Pharisees were only concerned with outward things. In each case, the underlying problem was worldliness. They were more concerned with the things of this world than the other-worldly things Jesus emphasized. The predominant first century expectation of Messiah was that He would be a military leader who would drive out the Roman occupiers and reestablish an earthly kingdom in which their worldly wishes could be fulfilled.

That mentality is not too far from what many American Christians seem to want. Live like the world but paint it over with a thin coat of religiosity. A friend of mine was recently challenged by the accusation that she was only a “surface Christian.” She received the chastisement as righteous and has made a real effort to let her Christianity soak deep into her life. I am reminded of the contrast that was emphasized in my seminary training for Christian school administrators: a teacher who is a Christian is not the same as a Christian teacher. Likewise, a businessman who is a Christian is not necessarily a Christian businessman. Whether teaching, running a business or any other earthly pursuit, to be truly Christian, everything must be held up to biblical inspection.

Being a surface Christian is almost an oxymoron. If one’s belief does not reach the core of one’s being, it is doubtful that it is the kind of faith that will win the crown. The tragic irony is that there are many preachers who don’t preach Christianly. One seldom hears the call to be in but not of the world. Even less often does one hear worldly behaviors called sin. If the people who sit in church on Sunday are no different Monday through Saturday than the people who don’t go to church, there is a serious disconnect from the biblical description of what it means to be a Christian. If the preachers aren’t hammering that home, it is not sincere Christian preaching.

James said that friendship with the world is enmity with God. Paul cautioned the Roman believers against worldly thinking. Being the center of Western earthly power, it is not hard to imagine the Christians in Rome wanting to cozy up to the worldly powers in hopes that they might gain something. Paul’s message was that they had nothing to gain and everything to lose. Similarly, American Christians live in the richest, most powerful nation on earth. Worldly temptations surround us. Virtually every media source hammers us with the call to partake of earthly pleasures; the siren call is nearly impossible to ignore.

I don’t think the enemy of our souls tempts many believers to outright wickedness. It is enough that he can draw us into thinking that good things of the earth are blessings from God to be enjoyed with no restraint. Paul does say that God provides us all things richly for enjoyment, but look at the larger context: “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be proud and not to put their hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in God, who provides us all things richly for enjoyment, to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, sharing freely, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the future, in order that they may take hold of what is truly life.”

That which is truly life, the eternal life in God’s presence is not to be found in friendship with the world and its riches. The purpose of God’s rich blessing is to do good with our earthly wealth and store up heavenly treasures that last forever. Many American Christians have failed to notice Jesus’ warning that one cannot serve both God and mammon. I get a mixed message from multi-million-dollar church buildings with annual mission budgets that wouldn’t buy one of the shiny new expensive cars that fill the lot on Sunday morning.

In His earthly ministry, Jesus had much to say about our relationship with the world. The world was certainly not His friend, and if we would be Jesus’ friend, must look closely at our other friendships. We all need to do a heart test. Jesus said where your treasure (friendship) is, there also is your heart. Where is your heart?

Related posts: Abraham’s Promises – Solomon’s Rules; The Country Club Church; Merely Christian; The Church Cannot Save the Lost 

Why Heaven Matters

When I began writing this blog over a decade ago, I named it WHAMM for the cutesy sound of the name, but I also had something more serious in mind. In answering the title question, why heaven always matters most, I was playing off the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” As I have said many times, but especially in “Bringing the Kingdom,” it is the Christian’s responsibility to help make that prayer a reality. Earth is to be recreated in heaven’s image.

For most of my life I have believed the almost universal teaching that Heaven is where Christians go to spend eternity when they die. Two authors who have been added to my bookshelf recently have caused me to reexamine what the Bible actually says about Heaven. The first author who sparked my interest was Michael S. Heiser who wrote Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. One of Heiser’s main themes is that many of our modern ideas about the Bible are based on inferior translations of the Scripture and the theology that has grown from those translations. As a preeminent scholar of Hebrew and other ancient Mid-Eastern languages, Heiser offers the modern reader a more accurate impression of what the original authors were saying.

By providing a clearer reading of certain texts that have puzzled scholars for years, Heiser unveils a consistent theme that runs from Genesis to Revelation. For me, the most significant result of Heiser’s clarifications has been related to the overall plan of God, and how He intends to carry out the final chapter of the redemption story. Naturally, Heaven is a part of that story. Heiser helped me to see that it was never God’s plan to call a people to Himself so He could bring them to Heaven. God’s original plan was to have Adam and Eve fill the earth with their offspring and turn it everywhere into a beautiful garden. When they rebelled, God set in motion His redemption plan which would eventually finish what He started.

The second author who got me thinking about what the Bible says about Heaven is N.T. Wright. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, Wright pointedly says that the majority of Christians have misunderstood what the Bible teaches about Heaven. He says, “It comes as something as a shock, in fact, when people are told… that there is very little in the Bible about ‘going to heaven when you die.’” Wright continues, “The medieval pictures of heaven… have exercised a huge influence on Western Christian imagination. Many Christians assume that whenever the New Testament speaks of heaven it refers to the place to which the saved will go after death.” Wright suggests that when Jesus talks about entering the kingdom of heaven people assume He was talking about where you go when you die, “which is certainly not what either Jesus or Matthew had in mind.”

After making a sound argument that the kingdom of heaven Jesus spoke of is something the Savior initiated with his resurrection, Wright proceeds to suggest that the surprising hope his title refers to is the hope of a resurrection for all believers – a bodily resurrection which fits the faithful for an eternity on the recreated earth. Among many passages that expose this reality, Wright points to Romans 8:19-22 which plainly states that all of God’s creation is looking forward to the time when Eden is restored. The author makes a strong argument for the need to look forward to a bodily resurrection.

The question then becomes what heaven is if not the eternal destination of Christians. Wright believes it is a “place,” if it can be called place, where Christians wait for the recreation of Earth at the end of time. The idea of a paradise where the dead may go is supported by Jesus’ word to the thief on the next cross: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Paul also believed that upon his death he would be in Christ’s presence: “absent from the body is present with the Lord.” So, while Wright doesn’t deny the existence of heaven, he dismisses the false idea that it is the place where believers go to join the angels sitting on puffy clouds playing harps for eternity.

I suspect that Wright may be picturing heaven as it is portrayed in the Scripture, but I wonder if there may be a degree of condescension by God to a level of human understanding. I believe that because we have limited ability to understand the details of God’s program, He uses imagery that suits the intellectual capabilities of His creatures but does not necessarily reveal the whole picture. This was certainly the case with the Old Testament sacrificial system. The symbolic attire of the priests, the specific layout of the temple, and the blood sacrifices themselves all spoke of a deeper reality. The writer of Hebrews says that the old system was patterned after the true tabernacle which is in “heaven.” The exact nature of that heavenly reality is still something of a mystery.

In the matter of what happens when we die, I wonder if our problems stem partly from a mindset that is in bondage to time. We suppose that there must be a passage of time between when we die and when the new earth is presented. Ever since Einstein, we have known that time and space are inseparably linked – the so-called time-space continuum. Paul makes it clear in 1 Corinthians 15 that our corruptible, time-bound bodies will be exchanged for something entirely different when we die. Perhaps part of the difference is that we are no longer bound by time. If that is the case, there may not be any need for a passage of earthly time while we wait for the new creation.

What I am suggesting may sound too mystical or metaphysical for some. But I would argue that heaven is in fact mystical or properly put, supernatural. Heiser prompts us to see the supernatural aspects of all the Scripture. Wright makes us realize that our hope in resurrection is for a “physical” body, yet we know it will be different – supernatural – in some elemental way. My purpose is not to disregard heaven but to highlight why our concept of heaven matters (most). The last section of Wright’s book offers suggestions for how the ministry of the church should be impacted by the correct understanding of the hope of resurrection. If earth is our forever home as he suggests, then he is right to say that the believers’ primary task is to make earth ready for the coming new age in any way we can. So, my title still stands: heaven does matter most.

Related posts: The Heiser Effect; E=MC² in Genesis; Einstein Predicts the Existence of God; Lies We Have Been Told;  Why Wait

Losing the Boundary Stones

I am an almost compulsive saver. If there are screws or fittings left over after an assembly project, I save them. If I have a few inches of a board left after building something, I save it. For years I saved all the essays I wrote in Bible college and seminary. Long after I switched to digital research methods, I saved the texts and commentaries I had collected over the years. All the snapshots of family events from the years before digital photography were sorted and saved in two file boxes.

Occasionally, I would throw something away if it had sat unused for decades, but inevitably, I would need that very object within days of discarding it. My wife and I have downsized several times in the later years of our fifty together. When we chose to move full-time into a travel trailer, storage units became necessary to hold the things we couldn’t bear to part with. Our rationale was that we would probably get off the road and move back into a house, and therefore we would need the things we had stored. We spent more on storage than it would have cost to replace all the stored items.

Before our most recent move back into a trailer, we discarded another batch of saved items. We have a small shed on our lot that is less than half full of things that won’t fit in the trailer. The snapshots I mentioned were among the few things we did keep. Until last week. We did another purge and after all this time we finally decided to dump the family photos. Then yesterday I came across a few items that were my fathers from the time he was in the service in WWII. I didn’t remember that I had them, but they surfaced in our ongoing sort-and-toss operation. His military ID, some high school report cards, and a tiny Michigan State banner were the most touching.

Among my dad’s things, I also found an address book from that era with names of people he knew at the time. Two different addresses for his mother and father may have confirmed a rumor I had heard that Grandma and Grandpa went through a “rough patch” in their marriage. Indeed. This got me thinking about all the things I don’t know about my parents, let alone their parents. Then I thought about my kids. Having come of age in the digital era, they will have the advantage of the Internet, social media, and sites like Ancestry.com if they want to track their family history. Maybe that’s why they declined our offer to give them their photos from our snapshot collection.

I had a moment of dread this morning as I lay thinking about having trashed all those photo memories. I can’t help but wonder if my kids will ever wish they had the faded records of family vacations, holidays, and everyday events that now lie buried in some Arizona landfill. I wonder if the lack of concern for family history is a symptom of the lack of interest in history in general. The old saying is that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. It is also true that they are denied some human insight.

An interest in history often leads to a respect for the people who lived that history. I wish now I had learned more about my parents when they were alive. The things they lived through before I was born made them what they were. They had far different histories than mine, their having experienced the Depression, a world war, and the spread of communism. My mom emigrated from England as an infant and spent years homesteading on the vast Canadian plains. My dad meanwhile struggled to find work until the War Department called him up. They met at a community theater production in Windsor, Canada and married just before the war. Dad spent WWII navigating DC-3’s over thousands of miles of empty ocean using a compass, and map, and a pair of dividers. Mom spent the war years raising their first child while living with her mother-in-law. Six years and three pregnancies (one miscarriage) after the war, I popped onto the scene clueless as to what I had missed.

Here’s the point of all this sentimental reminiscence. It is important for not just families but entire cultures to remain in touch with their past. Throughout the Bible, first Israel and then the church are commanded to remember their past deeds and misdeeds. They are called to remember the faithfulness of the God who is the God of history. There is a Proverb that says, “Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors.” In a literal sense it refers to property boundaries, but there is a wider sense in which it can apply to any type of boundary. In baptism and the Lord’s Supper we remember the boundaries that were redrawn with the death and resurrection of our Savior. The Scripture is full of “ancient boundaries” that give direction to our lives. When we remove those boundary stones, life devolves into chaos.

We must never lose our sense of history. In a sense, we are an amalgam of all the experiences we have had. Certainly, one can rise above damaging circumstances and make a new start, as we witnessed many times in our work with recovering addicts and ex-offenders. Likewise, a country can move beyond the painful realities of past missteps. Neither a person nor a country should try to rewrite their past or deny it. To mix my metaphors, we can use the ancient stones as a lesson and the foundation for a better life. Whatever we do, we don’t want to lose the boundary stones.

That’s Not God

I am going to present some things that people believe are God but are not God. First there is the belief that when something terrible happens it is God’s fault. That is not God. Most of the death and disaster that people blame God for are just the result of living in a fallen world. When Adam and Eve turned their backs on God, they were not the only ones to be cursed; the earth itself was affected. The “thorns and thistles” were just the tip of the ecological iceberg that resulted from the humans’ failure. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and tornadoes would never have occurred in Eden. The curse also affected human relations as we see very quickly demonstrated when Cain murdered Abel. The devolution of people into wickedness before the flood in Genesis 9 shows how completely the original sin permeated the race.

Some people believe that one religion is as good as another: all roads lead to God. That’s not God. The ancient Eastern mysticism that is repackaged in the New Age thinking of today imagines god is everything and everything is god. It is true that God created everything and is everywhere present to His creation, but He is both separate and transcendent from what He made. When pantheists deny the personal nature of the Creator, they wade into the murky waters of a self-created god who is, in fact, the arch-enemy of the one true God. There is a pantheon of not-gods imagined by men throughout history: Zeus, Thor, Allah, Krishna all recommending paths that lead not to God but to death.

Most self-proclaimed atheists conjure up a god they can refuse to believe in. That’s not God. The downward spiral of their deception is explained by Paul in Ephesians 4: “This therefore I say and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the Gentiles walk: in the futility of their mind, being darkened in understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart, who, becoming callous, gave themselves over to licentiousness, for the pursuit of all uncleanness in greediness.” It is ironic that some highly intelligent people fall into this trap, but it points to the truth that the God of the Bible is apprehended by one’s spirit and not through “the futility of [the] mind.”

Some people think that God is an all-forgiving grandfatherly type sitting on a big throne somewhere in the sky just waiting to welcome His prodigal children home. That’s not God. It is true that the Apostle John said God is love, but what some people seem to ignore is that in the same epistle, John warns believers to walk in the light lest they fall in league with the devil. Unless you can make yourself believe that God will forgive the devil, you don’t want to be in his league. The theme of God’s wrath poured out against sin is demonstrated or stated in almost every book of the Bible. To ignore God’s holy judgment and focus solely on love is wishful thinking at best and a pernicious lie at worst.

Finally, there are people who call themselves Christians, who claim to believe in the God of the Bible, who think their God is going to let them into His Heaven because of their good works. That’s not God. I have written before about my experience some years ago canvassing our church neighborhood with the Evangelism Explosion approach. We asked, “If you died tonight, why should God let you into Heaven?” I was shocked by the number of Bible believing, church attending people who said, “I have been good.” I think the explanation for this misunderstanding of clear biblical teaching is that instead of seeing humans made in the image of God, some tend to make God in the image of humans. I had someone tell me recently that he couldn’t imagine a God who didn’t behave like a proper human father. That’s reversing the image concept.

Without getting into the deep weeds of God’s foreknowledge or human predestination, it is enough to say that if we think we can fully understand the God who made in us in His image, that god is too small to be the God of the Bible. Pure grace, the grace of God, is something little understood and seldom practiced by mere humans. It is hard for people steeped in the idea of fairness to grasp the depth of what Paul told the Ephesians: “For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast.”

The same mindset that causes people to misunderstand who God is affects their idea of what a Christian is. Many think Christians are supposed to be perfect; that’s not biblical thinking. Nor would I say, as if to forgive my shortcomings, that I am “just a sinner saved by grace.” Rather I would say that I am a saint living by grace, washed in Jesus’ blood, buried into His death, and risen to walk daily in His robe of righteousness. I might agree with the bumper sticker that proclaims, “I am not perfect – just forgiven.” In those moments when I walk in the light as John recommends, that’s not me. That’s God.

Related posts: Answering Rob Bell; The Goodness of Wrath; The Goodness of God When Trouble Comes; The Winnowing Fork of God; Lies We Have Been Told