“That doesn’t work for me.”
I’m writing this post because I can’t stop the title statement from popping up in my mind. It was spoken by someone close to me. It was uttered in response to my comment, “Jesus wants to be in relationship with you.”
If I understood the person who said it correctly, it is a denial that we have a God who did more than “set the clockwork in motion.” The statement was offered more than once, by a person who acknowledges the existence of God.
I believe it conveys a very limited theology. I know it is a position that is held by many. It is not my intent to be critical. But I am sincerely concerned that it will lead to hearing, “I never knew you” when the day comes to meet your maker.
That is not a threat or a judgement, but only a true concern for the eternal destiny of anyone who excludes relationship with Christ from their lives.
The sacrifice of Christ on the cross was meant to reconcile man to God. No matter what a person may hold as an image of God, the desire to be in relationship must be part of it. I can’t help but wonder what people who think this way think the bigger plan is.
In my limited experience, everyone who professes a “mental assent” to the existence of God, while holding that He is not involved in our lives, all have another thing in common. I’m going out on a limb, but here it is.
They all have a reluctance to accept scripture. Please forgive me if this strikes you as offensive.
So let’s talk about the veracity of scripture. I’m not going down the road of defending “inerrancy.”
Current culture supports many variants of arguing about how much of the Bible is accurate. Let’s not argue about mankind making errors in translation, or which versions of the Bible are the most accurate.
Let’s take another tack altogether. Instead of quibbling about each word, let’s consider how much of the scriptures have to be denied to hold the “uninvolved God” position.
Even if you just can’t reconcile the first 3 chapters of Genesis with your understanding of empiricism, read the rest of the first book. It reveals much more about the long term plan of God than just the beginning of things.
Beyond that, I’ll offer some other sweeping examples of what must be disregarded.
Almost all of what Jesus is quoted as saying refers to His desire to be in relationship. He saw His own mission as reconciling man to God. To seek and save that which was lost refers to the relationship between man and God, which was lost at the fall of man when sin entered into the picture.
More specifically, try this experiment. Take the book of John, and redact every statement in it that refers to Jesus and love. You won’t have much left, will you?
“I doesn’t work for me” belies an insideous flaw in thinking. Please comment if you think I am off base here. For me to say that I reject the vast majority of the scriptures is very different from saying there are some parts I think are erroneous.
The flaw is this. “What I think is more important than what God thinks”. Our culture has supported the incorrect view that we are more gods than God is God.
Personal preferences, the desire to have our viewpoints given more validity than the viewpoint of God, is preposterous.
Beyond the mere mental assent stance, comes faith in the simple fact that God is superior to us.
If He is not superior, He is not God.
I really would love to hear any comments that would help me better understand how an uninvolved God can be reconciled with scripture.
