(Before reading this, a clarification of terms is in order: Omnibenevolent means all or perfect good. Omnipotent means perfect or all powerful. Omniscient means perfect or all knowing. And omnipresent pretty much means in all conceivable and unconceivable places at once.) How can I worship God as He has been portrayed by my Christianized Old and Testament? Well, it was hard-going at first. Trust me on this. While I was allegedly saved in 2001, I spent the next several years using the Bible as my own personal roll of two-ply Charmin. LOL -- You shoulda seen me in action. In fact, some of my friends here on Facebook actually DID see it. They saw me rip it apart. They saw me claiming Jesus while simultaneously and unabashedly granting myself full editorial license over the Scriptures. A supposedly omnibenevolent God condemning human souls to eternal judgment and torment? My response to that was: SORRY, BUT THATS GOTTA GO! A supposedly omniscient God being somehow UNAWARE that human beings were gonna screw things up so badly that He would have to send a world-wide FLOOD to make an example ... and then later do the same thing with Jesus? My response to that was SORRY, BUT THATS GOTTA GO! A supposedly omnibenevolent and simultaneously omnipotent God who would allow His own nemesis -- the Devil -- jurisdiction over the whole world and, thus, Bad Things To Happen to Good People and Good Things To Happen to Bad People? My response to that was SORRY, BUT THATS GOTTA GO! A supposedly omnibenevolent God who would allow a truly righteous and Godly man like Job to be a pawn on some stupid game of chess between God and the Devil? To allow Satan to take away Jobs livelihood, his entire family, his home ... and give the poor guy A STUPENDOUSLY F***ED UP SKINRASH to boot? My response to that was -- drumroll, please! -- SORRY, BUT THATS GOTTA GO! Oh, and dont even get me started on what happened at Mt. Saini in Exodus ... You think you evilbible clones got dirt on the biblical portrayal of God? Trust me, youre a bunch of weak-kneed limp-doodle amateurs compared to me rockin THESE guns, baby! ::::flexing both upper arms for the Live Studio Audience:::: Like I said: You should have seen me kicking all that shit to the curb ... I was good at it. I threw out everything in the Bible that made me uncomfortable, that offended my worldly sensibilities, that made me squirm in my seat, that flew in the face of my subjective, empirically-based perception of logic and reason and right and wrong. I spent years doing this in front of a whole bunch of people. You know what Jesus calls that kind of person? He calls that kind of person a false prophet. Which makes perfect sense ... when one considers that everything I did back then almost destroyed my faith ... simply because I chose to put my perception over Gods and remake His Word as I saw fit. My arrogance almost killed my faith. I even remember the night I screamed FY! to God and literally threw the brand new Bible my wife got for me less than a week before into the kitchen wastebasket. I didnt give up. I remember crying in her arms that night, but I didnt give up. I simply retrieved the book, took both a deep breath and a step back ... and thought: Okay, God, lets do this YOUR way. And, miraculously, simply because I previously assumed I had seen everything the Scriptures had to offer, I came across something NEW ... something that spoke directly to me: For the message of the cross is foolish to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligence I will frustrate. Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demanded miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than mans wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than mans strength. Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world and the despised things -- and the things that are not -- to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Corinthians 1:18-29) I looked at one particular portion again: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate. That applied directly to what I was doing: I was frustrated by my own intelligence ... and nearly rationalized myself out of Gods grace. (Yes, it CAN happen, make no mistake -- Matthew 7:21-23, for example: a precursor to the standard of judgment Christ uses in the same book, 25:31-46.) I have since repented of my trespass against the Father, and have vowed to never commit that same sin again. So when I call myself a fundamentalist Bible-thumping Christian, Im not whistlin Dixie by using that label lightly. C.S. Lewis once said in Mere Christianity that there are only certain basic things that you can understand if youre outside Christianity ... a small pool of knowledge that expands once youre INSIDE the circle, but still is never complete. Lewis describes conversion and the subsequent path leading from that as something that cannot be rushed. The answers will eventually come, but only on Gods timetable. LOL ... Had I read that passage back when I first got saved, I would have saved myself both a lot of head and heartache. I hope you understand my position better now. All of this melodrama is basically a codephrase for: I shall not be moved.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 01:44:27 +0000
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