No...Yes...Maybe...WELL?

Friday, August 4, 2023

The Lord is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.  The Lord is good to everyone.  He showers compassion on all his creation….The Lord helps the fallen and lifts those bent beneath their loads.  The eyes of all look to you in hope; you give them their food as they need it.  When you open your hand, you satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing.  The Lord is righteous in everything he does; he is filled with kindness.  The Lord is close to all who call on him, yes, to all who call on him in truth.  He grants the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cries for help and rescues them.  The Lord protects all those who love him, but he destroys the wicked.  I will praise the Lord, and may everyone on earth bless his holy name forever and ever.  Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21

In 2011 Rob Bell, added to an ongoing enigma as old as the Garden of Eden when he published his book, Love Wins.  The debate centers-on the question:

Is God all-love, or does He judge some and save others?

Bell is the trendy preacher who began Mars Hill church in 1999.  It grew at a meteoric rate in just a few years to over 10,000 Sunday attenders.  Love Wins is, by any traditionally-accepted evangelical standards, heresy at worst, fluff masquerading as theology at least.  Mainline and Evangelical leaders alike consider Bell’s views as “universalist”, essentially meaning all humans are acceptable to God, no matter their actions, and, in the end, will be redeemed to spend eternity with God.  In short, universalist theology teaches there is no such thing as Hell; Rob Bell says it is merely a reference to suffering here on earth.  Bell also denies Scripture, saying the bodily resurrection of Jesus is a wrong interpretation of Scripture.  This places Bell in the category of heretic, according to John 20. Jesus wasn’t a ghost, as Thomas found out when he put his hands into the holes in Jesus’ hands and side!

By 2012 Rob Bell’s “church” crumbled.  He left Michigan and moved to California.  

He joined Oprah Winfry’s Supersoul Sunday podcasts, while continuing to travel the world giving seminars on spirituality and surfing.  By most accounts, he considers “church” as irrelevant. 

So, the question looms…is there punishment for sin…or not….or maybe?  Or do we just go with avoiding the question?  These questions are superfluous if you’ve taken the time and effort to read the Scriptures.  God is certainly love, and does not want anyone to suffer in Hell eternally.[1]  And if Scripture declares that punishment to be a reality, certainly it validates the existence of the place.  Hell is real, as is Heaven. 

There are (as Rob Bell holds) many things we do not know about God, or what He has in store for us.  However denying what God has plainly and categorically stated in Scripture is no way to humbly search for truth.  Faith is a matter of depending on His Word, and proclaiming it…not twisting it until it is unrecognizable.  That is what got humankind misled as far back as the Garden of Eden.  It’s Satan’s tool!

For You Today 

The Lord is compassionate, kind, and protective over those who stay close to Him and call on His name.  He is also the Creator, Sovereign God of the Universe, and destroys the wicked.  That is both sides of the entire scope of Scripture, humanity, evil, and good.  All of us, including Rob Bell, you, and I need to live with it!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  

 

Title Image:  via Pixabay.com 

Images without citation are in public domain.   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©  

[1] 2 Peter 3:9

 

The Truth Shall Set You Free

[1]

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings.  And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  John 8:31-32^(NLT)

My friend and UMC elder, Drew McIntyre shared his review of a new book by David Watson, in which the author makes the point that there is no such thing as a church without creeds: 

There are churches with implicit creeds and churches with explicit creeds. Every Christian tradition, however, is organized around some set of beliefs that set it apart from other traditions, and the adherents of those traditions generally know what those beliefs are. These beliefs help to shape the ways in which the community of faith understands and applies Scripture.[2]

Creeds are simply that which we believe about God, and which we continue to pass along as the faith once delivered to the saints[3].  You might say that a church of folk who are creed-aphobic could be defined as those who are afraid of being known as holding any thoughts about the nature of God and our relationship with Him. 

McIntyre makes the exact opposite point;

We should not be shy about the traditions we inhabit and the beliefs that go along with them.  In part, this is simple honesty: be up front with insiders and outsiders about who you are and what you are about….Better to own it than to deceive.

Beyond simple integrity about what we claim to believe, I would carry it one step further and hold that this very truth is what sets us free, and makes us strong , or Godly.  In fact, everything we do in our daily lives restates part of the creed we hold.  Every hymn sung or act of worship in which we participate, witnesses to what we believe or hold as creed about God.  To deny this, or to be embarrassed in it, is to deny the very faith we claim to possess. 

You are a Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, or whatever label history has crowned upon the distinctives of your creedal tribe; because of recent events or changes, or lack of change, you find yourself being too embarrassed to even claim being part of that tribe.  This would be a good time to reflect on what makes you nervous about the place where you once found faith.  Like Martin Luther and countless other reformers and protestors who sensed they served a church that was missing the mark, it’s time to do what Paul the Apostle suggests:

Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves. Surely you know that Jesus Christ is among you; if not, you have failed the test of genuine faith. 

2 Corinthians 13:5^(NLT)

For You Today

Now, as one who has served the church, loves the church, and wants only the advance and strength of the genuine church of Jesus Christ, do not mistake what I am suggesting.  This is not a call (or convenient excuse) for wholesale scrapping of local churches and denominations.  But, if after diligent prayer, heart-searching and personal honesty, you cannot say you identify with the church where your faith once heard the call of God to labor together and heartily, vibrantly server others…if the creed which was once your own now only serves to divide you…then, like Luther and others, if you cannot own it, live it, and proclaim it, it may be time to leave it! 

As it was in school, where nobody else can take your tests for you, it is most certainly true in the weightier issues of life, faith and eternity – no other person can take that test for you.  But when you live out those tests with honesty and integrity you will find truth, and He, THE Truth will set your feet on freedom’s path!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy:  Pixabay.com

[2] Scripture and the Life of God

[3] Jude 3

Light Has No Shadow

[i]

Friday, July 29, 2016

There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.  Proverbs 16:25^(NLT) 

If I have heard it once, I’ve heard it countless times, a theology of who God is, based on some wishy-washy figment of somebody’s imagination.  It goes something like this:  The God I know would never send people to Hell, or Jesus never said anything about smoking marijuana being wrong, or, yada, yada, yada….

Then comes the brilliant analysis which reveals WHY the person feels that way; they are trying to construct a god to fit what they think, so they don’t have to live like Scripture’s true God demands.

It’s that simple!

We want what we want, and we don’t want anyone to interfere with how we live. 

And we tend to convince ourselves we’re right.  Every time a Bible verse contradicts the way we want to live, we are willing to listen to any explanation of that verse which gets us off the hook and lets us do what we want.  And the enemy is quite willing to produce a friend or acquaintance who will suggest that explanation from his vast Biblical knowledge gained in a week at VBS 30 years ago.

Fact:  Biblical ignorance, no matter how eloquently stated, and no matter how culturally acceptable, is still ignorance.

Another fact:  For those who would try to say something about who God is, it would behoove them to actually study Scripture objectively, with ethical integrity. 

This is necessary for two reasons:

1.     It saves you from saying a whole lot of stupid things.

2.     You will meet God when you search for him with your whole heart[ii] and your heart will be changed. 

And you will know the truth about God, and it won’t be from a friend who only thinks he’s right, but in fact is heading down the path of destruction.  You’ll be hearing it ring true within, as the Holy Spirit speaks words of strength and encouragement to your soul.

Jesus told his disciples this very thing:

The Spirit alone gives eternal life.  Human effort accomplishes nothing.  And the very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.  John 6:63^(NLT)

For You Today

There’s a lot of stuff being kicked around about life and what’s right and wrong.  Make sure your source is dependable; eternal life is not a trifle kind of thing.

In the nature of God there is no shadow, no darkness at all. 

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today…have a blessed day!

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NOTES

[i] Title Image: By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] Jeremiah 29:13

The Tempter Arrives

[i]

Thursday, July 28, 2016

The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.  

1 Corinthians 10:13^(NLT)

C.S. Lewis may arguably be the 20^th century’s greatest defender of the faith.  His works often make complex theological doctrines somewhat clearer.  In The Screwtape Letters Lewis describes the fight we humans face, and the ways the enemy attempts to trip us up.  He tells the story through the eyes of “Screwtape” (a senior demon), who is mentoring his somewhat less-able nephew, "Wormwood”. 

Senior demon, Screwtape, referring to God as the enemy reveals Hell’s intentions for human marriage:  

The Enemy’s demand on humans takes the form of a dilemma; either complete abstinence or unmitigated monogamy.  Ever since our Father’s first great victory, we have rendered the former very difficult to them.  The latter, for the last few centuries, we have been closing up as a way of escape.  We have done this through the poets and novelists by persuading the humans that a curious, and usually shortlived, experience which they call ‘being in love’ is the only respectable ground for marriage; that marriage can, and ought to, render this excitement permanent; and that a marriage which does not do so is no longer binding.

This idea is our parody of an idea that came from the Enemy.  The whole philosophy of Hell rests on recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing, and, specially, that one self is not another self.  My good is my good and your good is yours.  What one gains another loses.  Even an inanimate object is what it is by excluding all other objects from the space it occupies; if it expands, it does so by thrusting other objects aside or by absorbing them.  A self does the same.  With beasts the absorption takes the form of eating; for us, it means the sucking of will and freedom out of a weaker self into a stronger.  ‘To be’ means ‘to be in competition’.[ii]

If C.S. Lewis is right, this explains much about how our culture arrived at the idea that the sexual aberrations of fornication, homosexuality, polygamy, adultery and a host of other perversions of God’s will are not only acceptable, but liberating.  If Lewis has nailed it with Screwtape’s explanation of the “enemy’s” plan, these wanderings-away from God’s will are not only not liberating, they are downright enslaving.

In short, we are choking ourselves to death on forbidden fruit!

For You Today

The pictures today’s culture paint of sexual liberation are as appealing as the fruit Eve determined she just had to have.  The problem is that it all appeals to our lower nature, and not that for which we are created.

Don’t let the tempter suck the life out of your free will; that free will is a gift placed within you by God to live a life of true freedom, purity, and grace; it’s a life of obedience to God’s will and God’s Word!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today…have a blessed day!

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NOTES

[i] Title Image: By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] From The Screwtape Letters Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters. Copyright © 1942, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.