PresbyterJon’s Very Own Blog

Is God cruel or loving?

People have trouble enough dealing with the dilemma of why an all-powerful and loving God allows evil. Yet the Old Testament stories make it clear that God, not only allowed but, was very much involved in the events recorded there.

One mistake people make when reading the biblical accounts is to assume that just because God permits something, He condones it. However, if God allows free will, it follows that people will sometimes choose to do things which are outside His will. Not everything which occurred during this period had God’s blessing. He often rebuked people for what they did.

Though that is true, to a certain extent it begs the question. The fact is that God often, not only condoned but commanded massacres and genocide. What kind of God would do that? What sort of God would sanction bloody civil war, the destruction and looting of defenseless villages and the forced marriages of captive women?

Everyone has a message he or she needs to share.

There’s a saying in church circles that everyone has at least one sermon in him. What I mean when I use the expression is that each person, no matter how long he or she has been a Christian, is passionate about at least one thing, one topic. Each person has a message which he or she feels other Christians, or the church as whole needs to hear.

The message might be a very positive one, for example, an aspect of God’s blessing or His grace which this person understands or has experienced more than others. It might be a message of encouragement and hope when others are in despair. It might be a message of comfort in the face of distress and grief. It might be a message to motivate. Or, it might be a message of rebuke to the complacent or those who are drifting away.

What motivates us to do right?

My daughter aspires to a career writing children’s literature. I think she’ll succeed. She has a good imagination, she’s developed a unique voice in her writing and has the necessary discipline to park fundament in chair in front of computer for the requisite time to capture her plots. Where she may have some trouble is on the business side of things. You see, these days there are too many choices to make. It isn’t like the old days when there was basically only one route to publication.

We are works in progress. Jesus didn’t come for those who don’t need help.

One of the arguments I’ve heard against Christianity is, “If Christianity is true, then how come so many people who aren’t Christians are nicer than those who are?” I can answer that question because I happen to be one of those people who struggles with character flaws. You see, I tend to be a cynic. It’s easy for me to slip into the habit of seeing the negative and expecting the worst from people. It’s easy for me to be sarcastic and to make caustic comments. Occasionally someone has to take me to task for how I express myself. Then, there’s my temper. At times, even after almost 50 years of being in Christ, I still have to watch it. Bitterness has been another huge struggle for me. It’s all too easy to dwell on the wrongs and hurts which others have inflicted.

Why programs seldom produce expected results, and what to do about it.

Everybody knows what happens in a church service. Right? In fact, with only minor variations, the “order of service” is remarkably similar across denominations. And, most congregations hardly vary anything year in and year out. Drop a total stranger into just about any congregation at a random point in the assembly and he could probably tell you what’s going to happen next.

Why are our church assemblies the way they are? For the most part, tradition. We have a sermon as the filler in our “hymn sandwich” or its “contemporary” equivalent because that’s what we’ve always done. If someone were to ask why, most people would be at a loss to answer. It is something which just is.

An overview of training methodologies.

Re-stating the Problem

In part one of this series I talked about the shortage of leadership the church faces. For over 100 years, churches have looked to the Bible colleges and seminaries to train and provide their leaders. However, in spite of all the effort and money lavished on our institutions of learning, we still face a perpetual lack of people to fill leadership roles.

Not only do we face a shortage of leaders, the quality of the output of the colleges and seminaries is open to question. In my own experience, I’ve often been surprised, if not shocked, at graduates from the institutions who don’t seem to have a good grasp of basic Bible knowledge, let alone principles and foundational doctrine.

Dealing with rejection.

They asked me to resign. I’ve been thrown out of the eldership by the very people whom I helped ordain. And it hurts. It hurts really bad. [Note: This was written in 2012, a few months after I resigned my position as an Elder in the congregation I helped start.]

Let it be clearly understood that I have nothing against missionaries. I was raised on the mission field and have served as a missionary, myself. Over the years I’ve met quite a few other missionaries, visited their works and read plenty of mission newsletters. I’ve also read a fair number of mission books, not only historical accounts and biographies, but books about mission theory and practice. So I reckon I know a little about missionaries and what they do. From what I’ve observed, read and experienced, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a high rate of missionary failure and that, to a large extent, the failure is self-inflicted and self-perpetuating.

As I listened to speaker after speaker my sense of frustration and defeat grew. Oh, I appreciated their enthusiasm. I was impressed by their courage. Several had never spoken in public before. Others had to make their presentation in a language which was not their mother tongue. One man was almost illiterate. Yes, I admired their desire to share their insights and their willingness to risk looking foolish. Yet every single one of them, whether they were new converts or had been in the Lord for decades, whether they had spoken in public for years or this was their first time, regardless of their education or lack of it, all of them without exception, followed the same tired, worn-out formula in their talks. The reason for my discouragement was that this was a graphic demonstration of my shortcomings as a teacher.

How God communicates with us / Christ as the image of God

In another of these essays I used the metaphor of a computer game to illustrate the point that, if God exists, we cannot infer, with certainty, anything about either the beginning of the universe or its end by observing current conditions. Just as the actual origins of a computer game cannot be inferred by a character within the game merely by observing the state of his environment, we cannot know how our universe began by extrapolating the laws of physics backward in time.