{"id":511,"date":"2012-07-05T16:10:39","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T22:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/?p=511"},"modified":"2012-07-05T16:11:50","modified_gmt":"2012-07-05T22:11:50","slug":"blogs-the-evangelical-church-and-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/?p=511","title":{"rendered":"Blogs, the Evangelical Church, and Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I\u2019ve been reading various blog posts over the past few months, I\u2019ve been running into something that makes me feel sad.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to pinpoint or nail down.\u00a0 I recognize that a few years ago I wouldn\u2019t have been bothered by what I read at all.\u00a0 I would relate, I would empathize, I would say \u201cI know how you feel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What am I reading? Agony over decisions made, fear of falling short as a parent, guilt over not being a good enough parent\/spouse\/friend\/(dare I say \u2013 Christian?), struggles with insecurity, fear, worry, stress.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t empathize, that I don\u2019t relate, that I don\u2019t know how they feel.\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 I guess the biggest difference is that my perspective has changed.\u00a0 How I view the world, how I view people, myself, and God has fundamentally changed over the last few years.<\/p>\n<p>How has it changed? Through experience, through revelation, through relationships with others, through the wonderful transforming work of my loving God.<\/p>\n<p>So what has changed?\u00a0 Here are some of the areas where my perspective has shifted:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>My view of \u2018the Judgement\u2019 has changed.\u00a0 I no longer believe that the final Judgement of God is to throw everyone who didn\u2019t \u2018say the prayer\u2019 into a lake of fire to suffer agonizing torment for all of eternity \u2013 this does not align with my belief in an overwhelmingly loving God.\u00a0 There are few references to hell and a lake of fire in the Bible and I\u2019d say the references are a bit ambiguous, certainly not enough to base an entire theology upon. I\u2019ve come to rely more upon this passage as a reference for \u2018the judgement\u2019: \u201cThis is the judgement, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.\u201d (John 3:19).\u00a0 \u00a0If you take this perspective, it is a person\u2019s choice to hide from the Light (ie: God) that is the judgement \u2013 because a person is used to living in darkness, the glorious Light of God will be torment in and of itself.\u00a0 It is <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">not<\/span> God\u2019s choice to inflict torment on His child, it is just the natural result of rejecting the Light (ie: the very nature of God).<\/li>\n<li>With this change in perspective, my view of God has completely changed.\u00a0 There is a subconscious disconnect with the traditional belief that God is Love AND would willingly condemn the majority of mankind to eternal torment.\u00a0 How can God love unconditionally and still have that \u2018limit\u2019 on His love? It must mean that God is <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">not<\/span> unconditionally loving.\u00a0 Because actions speak louder than words (I know for myself) there were certain things I couldn\u2019t \u2018believe\u2019 as long as I subconsciously believed that God would actively create torment for His children (I don\u2019t care how much you tell me \u2018God loves me\u2019 He can\u2019t love enough not to condemn my friends to excruciating pain).\u00a0 With that belief gone, I am free to view God as truly unconditionally loving \u2013 there are no limits to His love.\u00a0 \u201cThe Lord is\u2026 not wishing any to perish but for all to come to repentance.\u201d (2 Peter 3:9)\u00a0 He <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">never<\/span> desires torment for His children, nor does He <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">have<\/span> to punish His children.<\/li>\n<li>I think the traditional belief in \u2018the judgement\u2019 fosters striving, guilt, and fear as opposed to a reliance upon God\u2019s grace.\u00a0 We see God punishing those who don\u2019t measure up and we must strive (consciously or subconsciously) to make sure God does not feel compelled to punish <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">us<\/span>!<\/li>\n<li>This shift in belief away from the traditional view of \u2018judgement\u2019 has helped me to understand <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">and experience<\/span> the work of God\u2019s grace that much more.\u00a0 God recognizes that we are weak, broken, imperfect.\u00a0 And <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">that\u2019s OK<\/span>.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have to beat myself up for not being \u2018good enough\u2019 because God\u2019s not going to punish me (and I don\u2019t have to punish myself so God doesn\u2019t have to punish me).\u00a0 \u00a0He has no desire to punish me when I \u2018fall short\u2019.\u00a0 His grace is so much greater than my weakness.\u00a0 As I come to understand this truth more and more, I have less fear, less guilt, less stress.\u00a0 There is <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">way more<\/span> freedom in relying on God\u2019s faithful love and grace to walk me through Life\u2019s journey.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Let me interject by saying that by no means have I \u2018arrived\u2019.\u00a0 There are numerous areas of weakness in my life where I continue to function in fear and I\u2019ll have my bad days (and weeks), but my shift in perspective means that fear has much less of a hold on me.\u00a0 I don\u2019t wallow in self-guilt and loathing nearly as long as I used to.\u00a0 There is more freedom.\u00a0 There is more peace within myself.\u00a0 There is more acceptance and grace for others.\u00a0 There is less comparing myself to others.\u00a0 There is less striving to live up to unrealistic standards &#8211; although I still have a lot of unrealistic standards (I have less than I used to).<\/p>\n<p>This leads me to my opening comments in this post.\u00a0 I feel saddened because I believe there has been far too little emphasis on God\u2019s grace and love in the evangelical church (the church that I have grown up in and is my Christian point of reference).\u00a0 And I see the results of this lived out in Christians around me.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s almost like we think everyone knows the \u2018basics\u2019 \u2013 God loves us and His grace is for us \u2013 but now we need to focus on the \u2018more important stuff\u2019 like daily Bible reading, prayer, faithful attendance, overcoming our weaknesses so we can be \u2018better\u2019 Christians, etc.\u00a0 The problem is that without God\u2019s love (and grace) as our <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">lifeblood<\/span>, we can\u2019t truly be freed from the things that bring us down.\u00a0 If we don\u2019t really know God loves us, we will continue to live in fear, we will continue to be insecure, we will continue to compare ourselves to others, we will continue to feel that we\u2019re not \u2018good enough\u2019, we will continue to strive.\u00a0\u00a0 God\u2019s love is <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">the answer <\/span>to transformation in our lives.\u00a0 I firmly believe this.\u00a0 Nothing else will set us free.<\/p>\n<p>Yet I see many Christians running around in circles striving to improve themselves (with God\u2019s help), striving to free themselves from (insert sin here), striving to overcome the Enemy\u2019s grip on their lives.\u00a0 It won\u2019t work.\u00a0 Not without God\u2019s love.<\/p>\n<p>But in order to understand God\u2019s love and grace we need to experience it (at least I found that for myself \u2013 I could read about His love and grace but it wasn\u2019t until I experienced it that it started to make sense).\u00a0 And that\u2019s a topic for a whole other blog post.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll leave you with one other verse (which makes more sense to me now from the point of resting in God\u2019s love rather than trying to \u2018will\u2019 myself to not be afraid):<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.\u201d (1 John 4:18).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I\u2019ve been reading various blog posts over the past few months, I\u2019ve been running into something that makes me feel sad.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to [&hellip;] <span class=\"read-more-link\"><a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/?p=511\">Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":513,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions\/513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}