THREE CONCERNS BRAIN DUMP
crisis of authority
Love and Fear
God has been speaking to us both what we want to hear and don’t want to hear. He has been speaking to every generation accurately and uniquely. There is no doubt that the Scripture is supposedly considered authoritative. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” We have zero problem with the Scripture, but we probably have problem with the way we interpret the Scripture. Christ is truth, that is, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”, the truth can never confront and contradict himself. Contradiction in truth can not really happen, for Christ can not really be a contradiction. Then it has been true to say that it is a paradox, and it is an apparent contradiction.
When it comes to “God is Love”, it’s never hard for most of us to wrap our minds around this God’s attribute. We all need this, we all acknowledge this; if there is no love, there is no God. Nowadays “God is love” is the most frequently mentioned and most widely quoted in our sermons, devotions, worships, meditations, and daily conversations. No doubt that God is love, as the Scripture says in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” And, 1 John 4:8 goes like this, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” Beyond doubt God is love, though this phrase has seen its theological imbalance with only twice mentioned in the Bible.
The fear of God, however, is the least favoured topic we have among the discussions. We fear God, yet not no as much as we love God. In God, we love, but our fear for God dose not suffice in our love for Him. If we neither have fear in love, nor love in fear, we probably have a warped sense of the love of God.
“For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalms 103:11-12)
Heaven and Hell
The Scripture has no problem. The Christ is like Jacob’s Ladder; He came down from Heaven and provided us with only one true stairway towards Heaven. But the problem we have with the Scripture is our way in interpretation. My Chinese grandparents’ generations would never have a problem with the idea that evil exists in the world, particularly when the Nanjing Massacre by the Imperial Japanese Army happened in December 1937. They believed that evil existed, and needed to be punished by sending them to Hell. Thus, they’re convinced that there must have Hell absolutely necessary and available to them if God was just. However, they were probably struggled with the idea that God could forgive them(when they repented). Likewise, the German concentration camp survivors, having lived through the Second World War, never doubted against Jesus’s sayings like “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:46) If God was loving, there had to be Hell. But they found “the forgiveness of sin” somehow difficult to comprehend.
I am happy with the Japanese. I love their culture, history, food and flag. And I have been longing to travel to Japan with my wife someday soon. Christianity, in the 21st Century, had seemed to appear more friendly of Heaven than Hell. Living in one of the most liveable and beautiful city in the world like Hobart, people might have struggled so hard with the idea of Hell. Why is it? Probably because Hobart, on the surface of it, allows Christianity to be comfortable, but it’s more probably because we have a warped sense of the love of God and the idea of Heaven. And the reason for it is not because of the Bible we have, is precisely because of the culture we’re living in. The way we think is shaped by our culture nowadays; the way we approach the Scripture is shaped by our cultural inclination and distillation.
2 Peter 1:20-21 says, “knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” It seems to me that there is a way to read the Scripture, and there is a way not to read the Scripture.
Cheap Grace
One of my workmates is a devout Muslim. I have had plenty of good conversations with her about fasting and prayer, though many areas of her religion are wrong. Muslims pray five times a day, as she said, because of the necessity of overcoming the forgetfulness and achieving the remembrance. Christians like us should be encouraged learn from them, and must outdo them.
When we take Communion, we are reminding ourselves of His sacrifice that is costly and personal, as Jesus says, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Luke 22:20) Jesus did for all of us and he will never go back and change His mind. The river of blood paid for everything. Grace plainly given to us comes with a great price: His ultimate sacrifice. Today many Christians tend to talk more about God’s love and His grace than His death that satisfies divine wrath and justice. We thank God, because God just loves and accepts us as we are, but if we are not careful about the concept of love of God, we take the risk of falling into the belief in “cheap grace”. You might surely say “we are not worthy to have grace.” For of course we aren’t. For the grace by its nature is for the unworthy. Grace is not like “God forgives and that’s his job, then you go on doing you.” But we know that true grace takes price to come to us. His sacrifice is a costly sacrifice; his forgiveness is a costly gift. God was sacrificially willing to carry His cross, endure suffering and torment and ultimately to death. From the grace received, we must also sacrificially live for Him in return. According to Bonhoeffer, that’s the gospel, not salvation by law, nor by cheap grace, but by costly grace. Costly grace costs us, so changes us upside-down, inside out.
Our experiences dictate our cultural inclinations; our way to read the Scripture has been shaped by our cultural instincts. Understandably, for those who come from a broken past are inclined to lean into the love of God; for those who have experienced cruelty and horrid of wars are easier to picture the concept of Hell. It is therefore very true to say that the way we think has been deeply shaped by our cultural bias and empiricism. My grandparents’ generations have problems with the Japanese; my current generations have problems with the Communist Chinese government; Kim Jong Un has problem with South Korea; Dietrich Bonhoeffer had problems with Hitler and Nazis. C.S. Lewis says that we need to read old books, because we need to have our cultural and generational biases constantly checked and examined. When you read C.S. Lewis, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Teresa of Avila or early church fathers, they would be to a degree awakening you from cultural biases. There is no such thing as total objectivity, but we can be increasingly objective by looking at things from different perspectives of past ages.
Sometimes I challenge myself that maybe my first instinct that I have when I read the Scripture is not right. It’s hard, but at least I’m convinced that God did not tell me to follow my heart, but His heart, for the Bible says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)