UNMC Visit and a "Parking Ticket" from Family Radio

Well, better late than never!  I hope you all had a wonderful Easter, wherever you were at.  As planned, I went to the historic Universalist National Memorial Service in Washington D.C.  The whole experience was just fantastic.  The greeter at the door was a kind man with whom I enjoyed speaking for a few minutes before the service.  Soon there entered a very nice lady who seemed genuinely interested in talking to me and welcomed me heartily to the service as well.  I had the chance to speak with a couple other nice folks before and after the service as well.  The service itself was really pleasant and I felt completely at ease, something I can’t say for every church I visit!  I never got the slightest feeling that I was being pressured or scrutinized.  It was the pastor’s final sermon there and I felt privileged to be able to attend this church with the wonderful people there and hear her final message to this group of folks.    

Then, as I was driving home, I noticed a leaflet tucked snugly into my wiper blade.  At first I thought it was a ticket for parking in a questionable area.  When I arrived home I plucked it out of my windshield wiper and was intrigued and slightly amused to read that the end of the world was going to happen very soon, apparently.  The title said “Holy God will bring judgment day on May 21, 2011.”  I read the back and saw that the leaflet was produced by Family Radio!  Anyone scared yet?  I began to read.  In one short paragraph, I read the words “Holy God” three times. 

Throughout the leaflet, God was consistently called “Holy God” over and over again.   The Great Flood, “by careful study” happened, per the pamphlet, in 4990 B.C.  Then, some numbers that people might be likely to ignore out of sheer boredom are manipulated to come up with a date for Judgment Day!  This is really unconscionable.  The leaflet struck me as actually bordering on being venomous; it reminded me just a little bit of Chick tracts (truly venomous!), minus the comic illustration of a huge angel tossing live human beings into a burning pit to suffer forever. 

Anyway, the bottom line message was: “Holy God hates you!”  I crumpled it up and threw it in the trash.  Then I retrieved it just to serve as an example of how why our image of God matters so much.  I can’t ever imagine myself loving “Holy God” as described in this leaflet.  He’s waiting to torment his own creatures for all eternity!  As Ellen White says somewhere about eternal torment:  “O, dreadful blasphemy!”  I’m no Seventh Day Adventist, but their stock went up considerably when I read that quote from their beloved founder and leader. 

In any case, this pamphlet was playing upon people’s fears: upon our realization that none of us are perfect before our Creator, an all-knowing being that has never made a mistake, knows everything about us, and (implied by this pamphlet) is VERY ANGRY with all of us!!  But let’s take a step back into the wonderful reality for a moment and see how Jesus, the perfect manifestation of God here on earth treated imperfect people like us when he was on earth…prostitutes, lepers, outcasts.  I’m repeating here, but this is so important that we strive to follow his example as best we can.  He ate with hated people, drank with them, healed the sick and paralyzed people and liberally forgave them – even when they did not ask for it!  And, we read of a good many religious leaders who scowled and seethed with hatred at him.   

Therefore, when we want to know what “Holy God” is really like, let us look to Jesus and read about how he treated people.  Let us meditate on the parable of the lost sheep and those like it – how we are all God’s children (per Paul’s speech to the Greeks in Acts 17, and elsewhere) – and how the Shepherd will not rest until all his sheep come home.  I believe the New Testament does clearly teach true justice.  But the punishment must fit the crime!  In Deuteronomy (25:1-3) even, the number of lashes a person could receive was limited to 40 and it was to be “according to his guilt!”  This was a brutal period, and even here we see justice tempered with mercy.  

Nowhere in the leaflet is there anything said about how God is Love or how Jesus treated people.  In fact, there’s virtually nothing at all in there about Jesus’ example and teachings to love one another and God (because he first loved us!).  Rather, the leaflet is designed to scare the living daylights out of people with a guilty conscience or the gullible, perhaps, who have yet to subscribe to some formula that Family Radio has cooked up that you and I need to believe in in order to escape this judgment.    

We know that God will have all people to be saved (1 Tim 2:4 – efforts to water down this verse don’t change the tremendous strength of the Greek verb there – see Gerry Beauchemin’s book Hope Beyond Hell or ask me for it and I’ll send you a free copy that details this); God is in charge of who gets saved of course; and we are told over and again that he will have mercy on ALL (Romans 11:32).  1 Tim 4:10?  Believe it! He really is the Savior of the whole world, not just the religious elite; and when he was on earth, he acted like it, by hanging around those who would be deemed by churches today to be “lost” or “damned forever”! 

Clearly there may be some pain to come, more or less.  Mark 9:49 tells us EVERYONE will get some fire.  We are all imperfect.  But as we know, God’s mercy endures forever, mercy triumphs over judgment and his wrath lasts but a moment!! (Psalm 136, James 2:13,  Lamentations 3:31-33)  What a change this makes in our lives in how we look and treat others when we realize this truth.  And thank God, this is the kind of God we serve – a God of mercy and love.  Yes, God is Love! (1 John 4:8; 1 John 4:16) And I’ll end it with 1 John 4:18 – “There 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.” Again, none of us are perfect, so there is bound to be some unhealthy fear and problems of all kinds in life associated with fears of all kinds.  But we know that God is going to take care of us all, wipe away every tear and fear will be no more!! 

God bless!

-David

April 23 Update

Greetings Friends!

Well, after a three-week bout with either a very bad cold or the flu I have that feeling of major gratitude for feeling healthy and motivated once again.  This is just a short update to say I'm back (I was also in my home state of Oregon for a couple weeks with limited internet access) and ready to go!  One thing that I am going to do is visit the Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington D.C. tomorrow.  I will give an update of the service and my impressions sometime tomorrow evening most likely. 

Next, I wanted to just make some comments on our attitudes and how we should strive to love others.  I have said that I love a good debate, and I do.  But sometimes these things just turn nasty and accomplish nothing.  Sometimes the comments I see by Christian Universalists actually resemble those of Fundamentalists in the sense of:  "we have the truth and you don't" as we then proceed to hammer people with why Christian Universalism is true.  Now there is surely mixed motivation behind this.  We want to be right.  Everybody does.  But if people looking in on these debates see things get mean-spirited or a lack of forgiveness and grace on our parts then they are likely just to chalk the truly good news up as "religion" and may tune out this wonderful truth:  God is not a monster who will torture all who have not done, said, or believe certain things about him forever without mercy; rather, God is love and the Savior of the entire world and he wants the best for us!    

What wonderful news that is!  I just hope we maintain a spirit of understanding when dealing with all people, even those fundamentalists who may really irritate us.  The majority of such folks are likely not going to change their minds - they are utterly convinced that they are right, they have the monopoly on the truth, and we (as well as most of the rest of the human race, all God's children) are heretical and dangerous, deceiving people into spending eternity in hell with no hope of escape.  So, they have a terrible, warped view of God - I have said before that I believe it to be "satanic," in that only the most evil being imaginable would do something like that to his own creatures.  And, there is the old saying that people tend to resemble the gods they serve.  It's surprising how accurate that statement turns out to be oftentimes.  We do not want to resemble that God by being unmerciful and downright mean.

The point of this is that in many cases we need to strive not to defeat this warped view of God by behaving as the fundamentalists do, but by actively striving to resemble the God that we serve, seen most perfectly in the life of Christ, healing people and helping people.  We can do this not with the goal of getting them "saved" or to coerce a "sinner's prayer" out of them or any other kind of ulterior motive, but out of love. 

It is true the fundamentalists are back on the attack.  They have been put on the defensive by a wonderful book such as Rob Bell's Love Wins.  We see brainwashed religious leaders such as John Piper effectively excommunicating Rob Bell and consigning him to the realm of apostates.  Piper represents many people with hardened hearts to the true good news.  That true good news is not Piper's bad news which is:  "accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior or burn in hell for all of eternity," but that all people will receive the mercy of God, who loves each person he has created and wants us to grow in this love by practicing this love to our fellow creatures!   So we don't necessarily have to sit back and let the fundamentalists beat us up, but let us not be unnecessarily argumentative and instead go out and DO acts of kindness and love.  Think of the hours we might be spending online (I include myself here) debating with fundamentalists.  Couldn't we take a few of those hours and go perform some acts of service to needy people?     

You see, the battle has already been won.  We don't have to convert the world to save them from the pit of an eternal hell.  God is going to save all people ultimately.  But it is wonderful to see people released from this view of God as a monster to be feared.  Whether they admit it or not, people with this view of God as a being who created an eternal hell especially for sinful people to torment them - a God who is waiting for them to screw up and then to punish them instead of welcoming them with open arms - will generally spend an awful lot of time trying to make sure they are in the clear with him and it is awfully hard to genuinely love such a being or have a relationship to him like a brother or Father.

For those of us who have come to believe the truly news that God loves all people and not just the elect or chosen few it causes us to look at all people differently and not put us a spiritual cut above the "lost" or "sinners."  Remember who Jesus spent the time with was sinners and that he generally lambasted religious fundamentalists more than anyone else.  But this didn't keep him from healing, serving and loving his children.  May we strive to do the same to people who need our help! 

Thanks everyone, and I will have more information on upcoming meetings soon.  There was a mention of this in the latest newsletter available at http://www.christianuniversalist.org  and I will keep you posted! 

Happy Easter!

David