Of course it’s human nature to gravitate toward that with which we agree, so I try to be careful. Then again, when one of the points made is that you cannot defend the veracity of your own truth when you deny the ability to know an objective truth in the first place, perhaps it’s easier to fall on the one side after all.
And a recent podcast by Natasha Crain with Alisa Childers as a guest says a lot of what I’ve been saying over the months I’ve been writing here — particularly in the overemphasis of “love” as the attribute of God that exists above all other attributes.
I want to be clear — God being perfect, he is perfect (complete) in all of his attributes. To claim a lesser attribute is to claim that that attribute is not perfect or as meaningful. But how can a perfect God be justified in saving we imperfect sinners?
Here are some short answers to that complex question: “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” And “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” And “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.“
And this is part of the problem that Crain and Childers are getting at. Some prefer to grab one verse out of the Bible that says “God is love,” because that’s what fits for them, and then they ignore the rest of it all unless it lines up with their way of thinking. They pick and choose, which doesn’t make sense to me. I wrote just a couple of days ago about this. If they’re going to throw out whole parts of the Bible as unreliable, they may as well throw it all out. Their god is just that — theirs — and in many cases unrecognizable to those who’ve made a thorough study of the entirety of the source documents.
And the source documents contain the words I quoted above — demonstrating a reasonable solution to the question of how a God of wrath can also be a God of love, both in equal measure. But you can’t see it if you’re unwilling to accept that God’s wrath is even a thing.
Another quandary.
I really recommend you listen to the podcast. You can find it here if you haven’t already clicked my link to it above. It’s long, but worth it.
