Can't buy me love

“17 And as he was setting out on his way, one individual ran up and knelt down before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do so that I will inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10)

Why did God accept Abel’s sacrifice and not Cain’s?  It’s always bothered me.  Oh, I’ve heard explanations but none of them sufficed.  None of them truly explained it in my mind.  Both are worshiping God yet God looks with favor on Abel and Cain gets the hand.  Whassup witdat?  Can we worship God wrong?  How will I know if I’m doing it?  Seems like a pretty important question, doesn’t it?

It almost sounds like the essence of the rich young ruler’s question in the above passage from Mark.  I’m doing this, this and this, what more do I lack?  Maybe he asks because he’s read Genesis four and he wants to make sure he’s doing it right.  Maybe he has done these things and he still feels that nagging loss.  The incompleteness that creeps in at the end of a day of business in the form of a question, “I worked so hard today but what did I accomplish?  I was so good, but was I good enough?”  Maybe, what he really longed to hear was Jesus say, “Dude!  You’re golden!  God told me to tell you, good on ya, keep on keepin’ on!”

Jesus doesn’t say, “Good on ya,” partly, I’m sure, because Jesus is not Australian.  But also partly because it was not good on him and it was not good for him. 

I write a lot about what we are to do, what we Christians, we followers of Christ, we the Bride of Christ are to do.  Lately, where it concerns evangelism: who gets into the Kingdom, who inherits eternal life and who does not.  Why should we tell folk?  How should we tell folk?  If no one can come unless they are called and God gives a measure of proof to all and faith is a gift, why should we talk about Jesus at all?  And here’s the crux of what I have to say…

If you’re asking the question, “Why should we talk about Jesus?” you shouldn’t.  In fact, please don’t.  Because you don’t know him.

Why didn’t God accept Cain’s offering?  I don’t think it was because it was grain and produce.  God told the Israelites to make all kinds of grain and produce offerings.  Why did Jesus tell the rich, young ruler to give all he owned to the poor?  He didn’t tell Nicodemus or Zaccheus to impoverish themselves.  Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, David, Solomon, were all actually blessed with riches.  God’s not anti-wealth.  So what’s the deal?  Why did Jesus in Luke nine tell the guys, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” “Foxes have dens and birds have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” and “He who puts his hands to the plow and looks back is not worthy of me.”?  Why is it whenever people seem most enthusiastic about Jesus and his new movement, he says something calculated to skeeve them out and make them angry, upset or confused?  Why did God put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden?  Why did God not tell Job what it was all about?  Why do we suffer and God seems strangely silent?  Why am I asking so many questions and not giving any answers?  Why am I not going to stop?

Why wouldn’t you pay for a husband?  Why do we not knock women on the head and drag them to our caves to be our wives?  Why is it we could not be satisfied with a Stepford Wife?  Why isn’t wine better than a man?  Many jokes come to mind but the answer is only one question away…

Why isn’t God pleased with religion?

Love.

Love is a relationship.  Love is total submission to the other for the good of the other!  The Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father.  God loves you and what’s best for you is to be drawn into the relationship He has within Himself!  It’s what He made you for!  It’s what you’re searching for when you acquire things, when you long for love, when you work, when you seek health!  Nothing else will satisfy.  Not even religion.  Why?  Because religion is love of the self.   Cain’s sacrifice wasn’t for God.  It wasn’t from love.  It was to get something from God.  The rich young ruler wasn’t keeping the commandments because he loved others; it was because he loved himself.  He wanted righteousness, rightness for himself.  To put God in his debt.

“Good Teacher,” he says, you who have achieved enlightenment.  Show me how to get where you are.  To make myself like the Most High!  “I am good,” is only one letter away from, “I am god!”  Spiritually, it’s the same thing. “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”   And there is only one God in heaven and earth. Why did God not accept Cain’s offering?  Why did the rich man go away sad?  Why do self-righteous people go to hell? 

Because they take the Bread of Life and the Wine of the Covenant that the Father offers them, the marriage proposal he gives to the World, the offer of eternal love, life and joy in Him, they slap them from Jesus’ outstretched, nail scarred hands and say through clenched teeth, “I don’t want pity from you!  I want to BE YOU!”  And God sadly, lets them go their way, to a place where they are god alone.  You think the world is bad now, imagine a place without any mitigating limits on people’s selfishness, without any blessings from God at all.  Total separation from everything good.  Imagine what they’ll be like when they realize how much of what they loved was a blessing from God they didn’t deserve.  Rage.  Furious, impotent, all consuming rage and despair.  Fire unquenched and worms which never die.  That’s hell.

Now imagine being drawn into the most loving relationship there ever was, ever is and ever will be.  True love.  Not transactional, not based on the worth of the loved but on the worth of the lover!  “6 For in this way God loved the world, so that he gave his one and only Son, in order that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life.” (John 3)  Why won’t you perish?  Because you have Jesus!  Jesus IS LIFE!  He is bread!  He is water!  He is Love!  You can’t come to the Father except through him because he is the Way to the Father!  He’s not being exclusive!  He’s being honest!  The Father loves Jesus, Jesus is the only one who can stand in God’s presence because Jesus. Is. God!  Even the angels hide their faces from God!  But He loved us so much he came to us and died for us!  And when he took our sin, our unworthiness, our unrighteousness on himself, he gave us HIS WORTH, HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, his status as the SON OF GOD!  The best pagan is worshiping what they do not know!  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a man to enter the kingdom of God.  But Jesus!  Nothing is impossible with God.  They are trying to get to God and we know God Immanuel, God has come and is trying to get to us! 

Why would you tell someone about Jesus?  Why wouldn’t you???

Posture is everything.

“25 And behold, a certain legal expert stood up to test him,” (Luke 10)

This line bolted off the page at me today.  Then a thousand thoughts ran through my mind and onto this page until it became a literary elephant seal which could barely lift its bulk out of the water to bark and make it’s “Port-o-john-at-a-chili-cook-off” noises.  So I clubbed it, skinned it and rendered the blubber down in my oven to what I hope, I hope will be the oil of essence to light a lamp of truth.

Coincidentally, that might be the grossest paragraph I’ve ever written.  Oh well, if you can’t be edifying, at least be provocative.

I hear the “hater” label a lot these days.  Christians are intolerant.  Their God is a baby-killer.  Jesus consigns people to hell because they just happened to live in the wrong country and never heard of him or they’re gay or democrat or what have you.  And all of this is missing the point and no different than what Adam did in blaming Eve or Cain did in saying his punishment was unfair.  Oh poor me, all I did was kill my brother in cold blood and now I have to go live somewhere else.  Boo hoo.  God is mean!

Let’s get something straight and ironed out right here and now.  No one goes to Hell where the worm never dies and the fire is not extinguished or the Lake of Fire that burns with sulphur or the Outer Darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth for any sin, ANY sin except this one…

Self righteousness.

That’s it.  It’s true there will be no gays in heaven, no adulterers, no murderers or pornographers or gossips or slanderers, no liars, fiends, addicts, bigots, racists, prostitutes, traitors, fornicators, perverts, brawlers, drunkards, witches, there will be no thieves, cheats, swindlers or greedy people there, no one who manipulates, no one who has been selfish, rude, arrogant, angry without cause, unfair, mean, or short-tempered, no one who has been disobedient to their parents or legitimate authorities, no one who sins at all will be there.

The new heaven and the new earth will however be full of former gays, adulterers, murderers, pornographers, gossips, slanderers, liars, fiends, addicts, bigots, racists, prostitutes, traitors, fornicators, perverts, brawlers, drunkards, witches, thieves, cheats, swindlers, formerly greedy people, manipulators, people who were formerly selfish, rude, arrogant, angry without cause, unfair, mean, short tempered and disobedient.  Heaven will be full of people who sinned, recognized their unworthiness and fell on God’s love, compassion and forgiveness. 

In former times and in far away lands, faith meant believing God could do this even though one didn’t know how.  How could a God who is fully fair, fully just, just …forgive our sins?  No matter how great?  No matter who I hurt?  He couldn’t!  He would have to punish sin!  He is holy!  Nothing sinful can enter His presence without being burnt down like a French fry shot at the Sun! 

But Jesus!  Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth and took the punishment, the full punishment for our sins!  God took he who had never sinned, never been disobedient and put all our sins on Him and then killed him!  Killing all our sins!  And because Jesus did this willingly, did this perfectly, did this lovingly God raised Him from the dead!  For how could a just God, a fair Judge, a loving Father not reward such sacrifice!?

“21 For just as the Father raises the dead and makes them alive, thus also the Son makes alive whomever he wishes. 22 For the Father does not judge anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son, 23 in order that all people will honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. The one who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 Truly, truly I say to you that the one who hears my word and who believes the one who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.” (John 5)

In former times and far away lands, rebellion against God’s mercy, love and sovereignty looked like idolatry.  Which is really worship of self.  God’s of our own understanding.  God’s we control and manipulate.  God’s who give us what we want which is to be our own gods.  Now, since Jesus, it’s exactly the same, only people can be more specific about it if they want.  All of it results in the same thing however, rejection of God’s plan for mercy in the person of Jesus.  Rejection of God’s love.  The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father.  All things were made by the Father, through the Son, for the Son and the Son has come and purified all things as a gift for the Father.  This has been testified to since the beginning by the Holy Spirit.  Rejection of this testimony is calling the Holy Spirit a liar.  Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.  The one unforgivable sin. 

What does this look like?  Is it just saying you don’t believe once and your done like the kids and fools on a website created for atheists who can’t even be atheists without attempting to biblically insult the God they profess not to believe in?  Is it atheism itself?  Or do you have to be a pagan?  Is it anything in that list of sins at the beginning?

It looks like three crosses.  Jesus in the center with a thief on either hand.  One thief looks at the guiltless lamb of God and mocks in anger and impotent fury.  The other, guilty of the same crime as his brother, confesses his guilt, looks at the guiltless lamb of God and asks for mercy he knows he has no right to receive unless the one in the center is loving.

“Today if you will hear his voice:

8 “Do not harden your heart…” (Ps 95)

“You warned them so that they would return to your law. Yet they acted arrogantly and did not listen to your commandments but sinned against your judgments that a person must do so that they may live. They turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck and would not listen.” (Neh 9)

Paganism?  Atheism?  Murder, adultery, greed?  No.  Those are just symptoms.  Symptoms of a hard heart and stiff neck.

Seven...

i had a nightmare that i'd died and gone to hell.

Then i realized that i wasn't even asleep,

i was just plumbing.

Two...

Why parents can't be universalists.