How Not to Speak of God...
by R.E. Slater
Setting: Russia's attack on its brother state, Ukraine, on February 24, 2022.
Here is a post I had read on Facebook which I will leave anonymous from a fellow Christian friend I admire but whose theology of God is austere and ungenerous.
An evangelical Christian whose faith is built on Reformed Neo-Calvinism which sees God as an unloving God disinterested in caring or helping those in need (such as the unfortunate Ukrainians in the loss of their freedom and democracy to Russia's bombs and forced subservience).
On the post was the recital of Romans 9:14-24 NLT without further commentary. Thereto were a number of "likes" and several comments agreeing with its posting. Knowing the person, their faith, and their followers, I then understood why it had been posted. Simply, it was to show a blind trust and faith in God regardless of world's events (such as the Covid pandemic we all have experienced).
Which is all well or good as blind faith goes but has become a misleading source to God's character impugned by Christians believing all sin and evil in the world is from His hand and by His direction.
Who further believe that God controls and determines all events in this world, whether good or evil, and that God may use both the wicked and the good to set His purposes aright in the outcome of His divine rule (as depicted in their minds by the book of Revelation).
At one time I was of the same mind and belief. But no longer. I do not consider God to be aloof from this world like the Greek Olympiad's Zeus, who came-and-went at his "good" pleasure leaving mankind to its fortunes or fates.
Nor do I attribute to God a determinative control over a freewilled creation birthed out of his love and not by divine fiat. A God who gave to creation the multiplying gifts of valuative wellbeing to bless one another with boundless opportunities of love, kindness, and recreation.
Nor do I attribute to God any-and-all wickedness which a loving, holy God cannot do. It would be out-of-character with whom God is. No, all sin and wickedness can only be attributed to a freewill creation which has abandoned its holy charters of love to enact unloving words and deeds upon itself. These things are not from God but from a creation choosing sin over love.
This kind of fundamental, or evangelical, or "biblical" faith is the kind of dogma I now reject and can not longer approve, defend, or wish to fix. Instead, I have chosen to abandon this kind of faith which believes in a God such as this and move to a Reformed process version of my faith
I should explain that since I am not Lutheran, Catholic, or Orthodox, the Lord took what I knew and helped me express my post-fundamental and post-evangelical Reformed faith using process philosophy as its base, and process theology as its outcome. In doing this, my rejection of Calvinism for Arminianism, and its subsequent uplift towards Open & Relational Arminian Theology can now include Open & Relational Process-based Arminian Theology. One which I now call Process Christianity so that it might include Lutherans, Catholics, and Orthodox believers.
Moreover, by quoting and interpreting Romans by Calvinistic standards I have found such theological outlooks to be implicitly harmful to Spirit living. Evangelical Calvinism has become over the years a very dark, misleading theology about God, God's promises and hope, and Christian living. But from personal experience it can also be a place where the Spirit of God might lead a follower of Jesus away from even as the Spirit had done with my own evangelical outlooks and beliefs many years earlier.
Which is why I write. In hopes that what spiritual light is spoken here at Relevancy22 may lead other Jesus-followers away from similar Christian systems of spiritual bondage and oppression to see the light-and-life which lies in Jesus our Lord and Savior when beheld in the love of God, our Father and Redeemer.
Peace,
R.E. Slater
February 25, 2022
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The God who is Not There for You
Posted by Anon
February 25, 2022
ROMANS 9.14-24 NLT
14 Are we saying, then, that God was unfair? Of course not! 15 For God said to Moses,“I will show mercy to anyone I choose,and I will show compassion to anyone I choose.”16 So it is God who decides to show mercy. We can neither choose it nor work for it.17 For the Scriptures say that God told Pharaoh,
“I have appointed you for the very purpose of displaying my power in you and to spread my fame throughout the earth.”
18 So you see, God chooses to show mercy to some, and he chooses to harden the hearts of others so they refuse to listen.19 Well then, you might say, “Why does God blame people for not responding? Haven’t they simply done what he makes them do?”20 No, don’t say that. Who are you, a mere human being, to argue with God? Should the thing that was created say to the one who created it, “Why have you made me like this?”
21 When a potter makes jars out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for decoration and another to throw garbage into?
22 In the same way, even though God has the right to show his anger and his power, he is very patient with those on whom his anger falls, who are destined for destruction.
23 He does this to make the riches of his glory shine even brighter on those to whom he shows mercy, who were prepared in advance for glory.
24 And we are among those whom he selected, both from the Jews and from the Gentiles.
END
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| HOW to Speak of God aright... |
A Suggested, But Brief, Interpretation
of Romans 9.14-24
by R.E. Slater
Here Paul speaks to an audience of Jewish and Gentile Christians who have questions about Israel's rejection of Jesus. From personal experience the Apostle Paul (once the Jewish Rabbi, Saul) understood the pride and hard-heartedness of his fellow tribal congregants and templed Jewish theocracy.
Firstly, Judaism was a monotheistic faith - but at Jesus' Incarnate Advent, the Jews believed Christians were holding to an apostatizing faith of two Gods, not One. For centuries later, both Jews - and later Muslims - misunderstood the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation of Christ. It kept both faiths to their own monotheistic faiths rather than convert to the trinitarian monotheism of Christianity.
However, here, in this passage, time, and setting, Paul gets a bit rough in his speech to his fellow brethren saying that if willful pride and the blasphemy of Jesus' redemptive atonement kept Israel from Christ, so too can pride and short-sighted theology keep the Christian church in its error and apostasy from Christ.
Paul makes full usage of the Judaized teachings of the Mosaic Law to show how far apart their idea of God is from whom the true God is. In affect, Paul's speech here of the OT God was purposely using the genre of sarcasm to compare Israel's hard-hearted, pagan perception of God to that of the Christian idea of a loving God who is always present with His people.
When Christians read these passages in a literalizing way they will find what they are looking for... a doctrine of a God of fear and judgment. But for the child of God who knows the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, there is no spirit of fear but of trust and affinity for the "Lover of Our Souls."
Romans 9 is the assurance to the converted Jew or Gentile that the God they had once pictured as doing "this or that thing" is but a fiction to the real story of God's steadfastness of love not only to the believer, but to all men and women living in a world of disruption, harm, and suffering.
God is a God to all people of all faiths even as God can never be a God to those who misunderstand Him and purposely refuse to change their beliefs teaching of an austere God who does what He wants, forgives whom He wants. A God not of love - but of bounded edges and withholding grace. Who is so far removed from creation as to become a God one fears instead of a God one loves. A God who is worshipped as a pagan would do, mistrusting the very God they sacrifice to rather than worshipped as a God who is good and kind and selflessly sacrificing to His creation in all His ways, actions, and deeds.
Romans 9 is a declaration to austere religions that the very God they worship is justified in treating their faiths exactly as they believe. But in Paul's rant, this same God is spoken of untruly and is not the graven image He is made out to be:
22 In the same way, even though God has the right to show his anger and his power, he is very patient with those on whom his anger falls, who are destined for destruction.
23 He does this to make the riches of his glory shine even brighter on those to whom he shows mercy, who were prepared in advance for glory.
24 And we are among those whom he selected, both from the Jews and from the Gentiles.
R.E. Slater
February 25, 2022
*After writing this post I came across an interpretation of Romans 9 which may or may not help show how Calvinists and Arminianists think on the same passage. Perhaps this will enlighten a bit further. Here is the link.
