God of wrath; God of LOVE — Introduction
“I want to invite you to consider the possibility that maybe the televangelists and the street preachers and the evangelical converts are wrong … I want to invite you to consider the possibility that maybe God really is Love unconditional.
I want to you to open your heart & mind to the chance – however small – that maybe the Fruits of the Spirit really are as beautiful as Peace and Kindness and Joy and Service and Compassion, and not the ugly things that have come to characterize religion; namely — intolerance, bigotry, hatred, condemnation, and damnation …
Don’t get me wrong, I humbly admit that there could be an afterlife, and yet more often than not all the church has done is promise us a life after death and use that promise as a ticket to impotently ignore the hellish suffering that surrounds us every day.
I am convinced that the Christian Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die, but about bringing God’s Kingdom of Peace & Harmony down to those in our midst. After all, it was Jesus himself who taught us to pray that God’s will be done ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ … on Earth!”
~ inspired by Shane Claiborne
“The work of salvation, in its full sense, is threefold: first, it is about us as whole human beings, not merely as celestial souls; second, it is about our current present, not merely our one-day future; and third, it is about what God does through us, not about what God does in us or for us.”
~ inspired by N. T. Wright
Many Christians believe that God is a “testing God.” They feel that He places painful obstacles and challenges into their lives so that they may then “prove ourselves” to Him. They are certain that He punishes them when they sin. They feel that God, from time to time, gets fed up with humankind and sends wrathful “lessons” to “encourage us” to be better people. … To them, sometimes God is an angry, stern Father.
And yet deep down, many Christians want more from their God. Even though they have been taught that God is highly selective and often shunning when it comes to admitting Souls into the Kingdom of Heaven, they want to believe in a Father whose mercy is without bounds and whose acceptance knows no exception … Even though they have been taught that God purposefully places painful obstacles and challenges into their lives that they may then “prove themselves” to Him, they want to worship a God of a more awesome & gentle Grace … Even though they have come to feel that God punishes them when they sin; that God, from time to time, gets fed up with humankind and sends wrathful “lessons” our way in order to “encourage us” to be better people, they want to honor a God of a Compassion more full & more complete.
Well my dear Christian Friends, I have a sincere faith that you do indeed want to worship a God worth worshiping; that you do indeed want to worship an all-Loving God – one who refuses to demand petty hosannas & hallelujahs from His followers; one who refuses to condemn minor offenders of “false religions” to an eternity of torment; one who would never “test” his followers by sending them purposefully through times of pain or dis-ease or disconcertion …
And as such, I thought it would be a Kind gesture to enable you all to more readily seek – and thereby more easily find – the far greater God who is indeed waiting for you within the Bible’s texts; the far greater Father who Loves all without condition, and whose Grace is know to truly given freely without end. And it is with this in mind that I humbly offer the following eleven fundamental Truths about the Bible’s contents – eleven epiphanies that, when read with an open mind and enlivened with a courageous Heart, will help your Scriptures to become reborn with fresh in-Sight & deeper Meaning.
Amen … Let it be so!
Scaughdt
(November 2015)
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