Tag Archives: QUESTIONS
Questions & Inquisitions
First let me say Questions are great especially in the search for knowledge and wisdom, but there are questions which have neither of these noble quests in mind. I have noticed a rise in questions that are purely for the purpose of an Inquisition. An Inquisition is “an official investigation, especially one of a political or religious nature, characterized by lack of regard for individual rights, prejudice on the part of the examiners, and recklessly cruel punishments.”
There was a man during the Salem Witch Trials whose name was Giles Corey, this brave man refused to plead innocent or guilty. He correctly understood that to answer that simple question was to justify the validity of the Inquisition. For this rejection of a Question which was based in an Inquisition he was killed in a very gruesome manner. Jesus also refused to answer question at his mock trial before Pilot and his accusers, I find it interesting that Satan means accuser in the Hebrew tongue. The Book of Job opening heavenly scene is Satan asking God Questions, the purpose of which was to destroy what was in balance in order to rule in pride.
This brings me forward to the 21st century and in many respects not much has changed with regards to Questions and Inquisitions. The other day I read an article where Mark Driscoll was interrogating another Christian and calling him a coward because he held a different interpretation to the Questions. This kind of stuff goes on all the time especially in religion and politics, both areas where Unity is Vital. For some though the answer is not a question that leads to Unity but rather leads to Conformity, this is the Inquisition I speak about.
One in which a “Christian” goes up to a person made in the image of God, and then asks “Do you know where you will go if you die today?” Is it any wonder that many people see God as the lead Inquisitor, and the Jesus Question as the one you must answer their way or else. What if you asked a person a question in order to learn about them and how you might Unify, but then its just so much easier to view them as Dead and Hell bound.
I encourage you to look at the questions you ask and above all else reject those questions that are based in an Inquisition Mindset. I understand you have been taught this way but my Friend look at Jesus and see another Way.
ANZAHOLYMAN
Six Questions from the Hell Debate by Morgan Guyton
2011 will always be remembered as the year of the “hell debate” because of the explosion of Christian writing that rattled the popular evangelical conception of hell. What has become clear is that it’s not a debate between those “for” and “against” hell, but rather a debate between different possible hells. The following six questions are my attempt to explore the theological presumptions that explain how we come up with such different hells.
1) Is God’s being independent of the universe or is God the source of the universe’s being?
The modern imagination pictures God as another person like we are people. He’s invisible, omnipotent, and omnipresent but His being is seen as completely independent from ours. This is very different from the ancient Christian view that God was the source of all being, expressed most succinctly in Colossians 1:17: ”In Him all things hold together.”
If all things depend on God for existence and hell is eternal separation from God, then hell is the non-existence that results from rejecting the source of our being. The punitive nature of hell becomes literal rather than metaphorical only in modernity when it becomes possible to imagine existence independent of the presence of God.
2) Is God’s primary agenda to love creation or defend His glory?
If God’s love is the underlying motive for everything He does, then hell must have a loving purpose such as solidarity or protection for the victims of sin. If God never stops loving the people who suffer in hell, then hell must be the product of their choice to reject God’s love rather than God’s rejection of them.
But if everything God does is out of defense of His glory rather than love, and His glory is not defined in terms of His love, then hell has nothing to do with love. In this conception of hell, God punishes people in hell not because they hurt people He loves but simply because His honor has been offended. If God is invested in His honor rather than in seeking communion, He would be indifferent to whether He is glorified through salvation or damnation.
3) Is God’s justice primarily retributive or restorative?
Our modern capitalist world depends upon the assumption that every debt will be paid in full. Without this assurance, our entire economic order would collapse. I think this is why in modernity we equate justice with retribution. Modern justice concerns itself exclusively with ensuring that criminals “pay” fully for their crime, as opposed to restoring the well-being of crime victims or repairing the damage crime does to a community. Restorative justice concerns itself instead with healing, repentance, and reconciliation.
If hell serves the purpose of retributive justice, it exists simply to make sinners pay for their sins. Under this view of hell, some people might question whether eternal torment is an appropriate retribution for a mildly sinful life. The response is usually to say that God is such a perfectionist that sins we consider to be mild are infinitely offensive to God.
On the other hand, if hell serves the purpose of restorative justice, then it isn’t a punishment measured out in proportion to the offensiveness of sin, but the denial of eternal communion to sinners who have refused the means by which God offers to heal and reconcile them with the people hurt by their sin.
4) Is God’s holiness an intolerance for imperfection or an intolerable perfection?
It’s a common formulation in pop evangelical speech to say that God’s holiness means that He “can have no fellowship with sin” and that God has to send people to hell because He can’t tolerate their imperfection. On the other hand, Jesus did choose to fellowship with sinners without compromising His holiness. His holiness could tolerate sinners, but the sinners could not tolerate His holiness, so they crucified Him.
If holiness is God’s intolerance for imperfection, then hell serves the purpose of protecting God from exposure to our sin. If on the other hand, holiness is God’s intolerable perfection, then hell is the torture experienced by sinners who face God’s holiness without atonement.
5) When we escape hell, is it because God changed His mind about us or because we changed our minds about God?
Jesus’ death on the cross is often presented as the reason Jesus’ wrathful Father changes His mind about damning all humanity to hell. The objection to this is to point out that it breaks the Son and Father into two separate gods, rather than one single triune God. If God is truly both Son and Father, then He does not need to be persuaded by His own actions, which would seem to indicate that the cross is supposed to change our minds about God instead.
If God is the one whose mind needs to be changed, then we experience heaven or hell according to where God chooses to send us. If we are the ones whose minds need to be changed, then God’s attitude toward us is constant, but we experience heaven or hell depending upon whether we receive God’s fiery embrace as love or wrath.
6) Are we saved by proving something to God or does God save us from having something to prove?
Evangelical Christianity describes salvation as justification by faith rather than works. This means that we are saved by believing something but not by doing something. But if salvation describes God’s evaluative response to something we have proven about ourselves, then it would seem that whatever proof we have given God is our “works-righteousness,” whether it’s a decision or sinner’s prayer or adherence to the right doctrine. Alternatively, salvation could mean being liberated from the need to prove our worth to God because we trust instead in Jesus’ sacrifice.
If salvation describes God’s approval of our demonstrated “faith,” then hell is God’s reaction to those whom He disapproves. If on the other hand, salvation describes how God liberates us from thinking that we need to earn His approval, then hell could be our delusional imprisonment to the need to prove our worth to God, which would mean that many evangelicals who think they’re saved are actually suffering through hell
by Morgan Guyton
I’m the associate pastor of Burke United Methodist Church and lead pastor for our Lifesign contemporary service
Fixed Horizons & New Perspectives
One of the things I find myself doing more and more lately, is observing how I Perceive & Understand the world around me. It goes with saying that my Perceptions affect my ability to truly learn and change. This is I am sure closely related to my desire to see beyond the Fixed Horizons I have built up over the years. Most of these fixed Horizons to my dismay are constructed more of fiction than fact, although for many years I have been loath to admit it.
This for me has been most acute in the area of Theology, which for many years I treated as an exact science rather than the art form it really is. There is a reason why the Theology Department at a liberal arts college, is not found in the Science Building. Because Theology uses some of the same tools of logic and language, I just Assumed it carried with it the same weight.
So let me tell you what changed, I simply stopped treating the study of an Infinite God as a Fixed Horizon. More importantly I stopped being fearful of questions that challenged by heretofore untouchable understanding and perceptions. If there is one thing I am most thankful for in this Post Modern Age of Derrida, Rob Bell, Peter Rollins, and a whole host of new thinkers. Is the courage by which these women and men ask questions that challenge Orthodoxy which holds the idea and assumption that it alone has the right of succession. Because after all only the Old Questions and the assumptive answers discovered in ages past, can rightly be called the Truth. It reminds me of how Dear Leader is chosen in North Korea, did anyone doubt it wasn’t going to be a Jong boy child?
Of course these types of environments are dangerous to challenge but without any credible threat other than a seven letter word (heretic), the questions are out of the bag. With the result that our passionate pursuit of God might actually begin to look like something, more than just a fortified castle with moat and burning oil included.
Let me give you an example from the other day, I had always assumed back in my Calvinist day, that Adam died spiritually in the Garden with Eve. Then one day I heard someone ask a question that would challenge all my Fixed Horizons. What if He only died Physically and it was His perceptions that changed His ability to see God clearly? Wow then man being born to die and go to hell was just a perception based on an assumption, pretending to be a Fixed Horizon.
What would my theology look like if God still thought it was all Good and the process is one of restoration, rather than a courtroom with God demanding payment for being offended?
What if God is Love?
What if I was partly or completely wrong?
So my New Perceptions and Assumptions are no more fixed than theirs, and are based on the Fluid Horizon of What if. I have discovered and infinite God there who Loves me, a God who must be forever discovered, Horizon over Horizon over Horizon! I have discovered faith again and the actual need for grace in the face of my ignorance, with eyes wide open.
ANZAHOLYMAN
The Moody Blues “Question”
“Question”
Why do we never get an answer
When we’re knocking at the door
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war?
’cause when we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need.
In a world of persecution that is burning in its greed.
Why do we never get an answer
When we’re knocking at the door?
Because the truth is hard to swallow
That’s what the war of love is for.
It’s not the way that you say it
When you do those things to me.
It’s more the way that you mean it
When you tell me what will be.
And when you stop and think about it
You won’t believe it’s true.
That all the love you’ve been giving
Has all been meant for you.
I’m looking for someone to change my life.
I’m looking for a miracle in my life.
And if you could see what it’s done to me
To lose the love I knew
Could safely lead me through.
Between the silence of the mountains
And the crashing of the sea
There lies a land I once lived in
And she’s waiting there for me.
But in the grey of the morning
My mind becomes confused
Between the dead and the sleeping
And the road that I must choose.
I’m looking for someone to change my life.
I’m looking for a miracle in my life.
And if you could see what it’s done to me
To lose the love I knew
Could safely lead me to
The land that I once knew.
To learn as we grow old
The secrets of our souls.
It’s not the way that you say it
When you do those things to me.
It’s more the way you really mean it
When you tell me what will be.
Why do we never get an answer
When we’re knocking at the door
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war?
When we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need.
In a world of persecution that is burning in its greed.
ANZAHOLYMAN
