OH DAN!
The LAST three paragraphs are pivotal for me; to keep me in this Christian faith……
the account of “The Prodigals’ Father”, which it is….. and tho the young man is a major character, also pivotal …. this IS about “Who” and What the Father is…
I am wary of the arena of the branch of religious ‘faith’, that endorses and pushes forward… the savagery of an Angry.. Furious deity.. who , as NT Wright describes as hating us ( the world)so much he had to kill his son) …… i was raised in that terrifying mentality…
the literal terror of “we never know what God is going to do now”…. THIS is so utterly freeing…..
and in many ways I am drawn back to Jesus….. but NOT to the religious system that proclaims the angry god theory….
Nyinge,( 3rd daughter, in the Senufo language) MK, Survivor of Mamou Alliance Academy and a lifetime of spiritual terrorism
“Why did Jesus die?” Good grief. Where have I been?
My earliest memories include waking in the pew beside my mother and siblings. Yet all these decades later I doubt that I once heard this question asked except to give one of the canned answers you note. And I’ve never heard of someone who rejects Jesus because his death meant God is harsh.
Hmm… I had assumed you were going to deal with how hypocritical behavior drives people away. If not that, then, how evangelicalism has become a mere mask for my country, right or wrong.
Yet I find it a fascinating topic.
If we ignore the “why?” and just look at what happened, (I might be bending it some here, but I’ll try) it seems a few religious leaders with pull engineered his crucifixion by their conquerors. Then his followers and later their followers asked, “Why?” Thus the pile of New Testament explanations from which you pulled several representative quotes.
When I was a little boy, Free Methodist preachers in Spring Arbor, Michigan, walked us around in the shoes of Moses and Elijah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The God they showed us cared for his people like a mother for her children. I can’t imagine those old preachers creating a God who killed his son.
When I left our village, however, I discovered preachers who thundered about a harsh God who was gonna getcha cause the world and everything, everyone, in it is basically evil. Other preachers ignored the “Old” Testament because the God back there was a meany. They preached only from the “New” Testament, because Jesus, unlike his angry father, is love.
I may view my childhood thru rose-tinted glasses, yet I focus on the Old Testament God of love those old preachers showed me.
“the HARSH GOD” who loved us so much he was watching with anger to see HOW we children broke his rules; and how hard HE would punish us…is how I and my siblings and the MK children at Mamou Alliance Academy were raised; a contradiction of terms….hate v. love.
My folks were deeply enmeshed in the theory of Calvinistic penal substitution.
it is a world I have been happy to escape.
fear and trembling is NOT a good way to come to GOD in prayer…. ’cause it leads to “what ifs….”
Did I do everything right? Do I deserve to be punished.. what did I do wrong to make God not answer my prayers”you never know what God was going to do”….
sorry….that does not “compute”..
Dave, you were blessed to be raised in the Methodist realm….
OH DAN!
The LAST three paragraphs are pivotal for me; to keep me in this Christian faith……
the account of “The Prodigals’ Father”, which it is….. and tho the young man is a major character, also pivotal …. this IS about “Who” and What the Father is…
I am wary of the arena of the branch of religious ‘faith’, that endorses and pushes forward… the savagery of an Angry.. Furious deity.. who , as NT Wright describes as hating us ( the world)so much he had to kill his son) …… i was raised in that terrifying mentality…
the literal terror of “we never know what God is going to do now”…. THIS is so utterly freeing…..
and in many ways I am drawn back to Jesus….. but NOT to the religious system that proclaims the angry god theory….
Nyinge,( 3rd daughter, in the Senufo language) MK, Survivor of Mamou Alliance Academy and a lifetime of spiritual terrorism
“Why did Jesus die?” Good grief. Where have I been?
My earliest memories include waking in the pew beside my mother and siblings. Yet all these decades later I doubt that I once heard this question asked except to give one of the canned answers you note. And I’ve never heard of someone who rejects Jesus because his death meant God is harsh.
Hmm… I had assumed you were going to deal with how hypocritical behavior drives people away. If not that, then, how evangelicalism has become a mere mask for my country, right or wrong.
Yet I find it a fascinating topic.
If we ignore the “why?” and just look at what happened, (I might be bending it some here, but I’ll try) it seems a few religious leaders with pull engineered his crucifixion by their conquerors. Then his followers and later their followers asked, “Why?” Thus the pile of New Testament explanations from which you pulled several representative quotes.
From my limited knowledge, you introduce it well.
Where have I been?
When I was a little boy, Free Methodist preachers in Spring Arbor, Michigan, walked us around in the shoes of Moses and Elijah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The God they showed us cared for his people like a mother for her children. I can’t imagine those old preachers creating a God who killed his son.
When I left our village, however, I discovered preachers who thundered about a harsh God who was gonna getcha cause the world and everything, everyone, in it is basically evil. Other preachers ignored the “Old” Testament because the God back there was a meany. They preached only from the “New” Testament, because Jesus, unlike his angry father, is love.
I may view my childhood thru rose-tinted glasses, yet I focus on the Old Testament God of love those old preachers showed me.
“the HARSH GOD” who loved us so much he was watching with anger to see HOW we children broke his rules; and how hard HE would punish us…is how I and my siblings and the MK children at Mamou Alliance Academy were raised; a contradiction of terms….hate v. love.
My folks were deeply enmeshed in the theory of Calvinistic penal substitution.
it is a world I have been happy to escape.
fear and trembling is NOT a good way to come to GOD in prayer…. ’cause it leads to “what ifs….”
Did I do everything right? Do I deserve to be punished.. what did I do wrong to make God not answer my prayers”you never know what God was going to do”….
sorry….that does not “compute”..
Dave, you were blessed to be raised in the Methodist realm….