What the Heaven Are You Talking About?

“God is love” and “To God be the Glory”.  I believe these to be the “objective” truths of our faith.  These are the presuppositions of our Lord Jesus in giving us the whole law in the call to love God and love neighbor.  I believe that Jesus, in laying down His life for us, is providing the ultimate demonstration of God’s love while showing us the ultimate Glory of the Lord, power over evil and death and all their minions.

I believe that if the whole world would embrace these truths, we could abolish war, poverty, hunger, climate destruction, pollution, all the evils of the world.  

But we cannot because we are broken.  And God will not impose goodness upon us, we must choose the Lord.  Which has led to people of manipulative spirit to seek to use our God (often in cruel and divisive ways) to advance their own causes and has led people of good intentions to act in unloving (often cruelly and divisively) ways to ‘advance the kingdom of God’.

So this is what I believe and I believe I can’t force them to believe for their own good and I have to respect them and the dignity of their beings because they, like me, are created in the image of God.  That is the point of view from which I am to act, to speak, and even to think.  But, but, but what about the ‘thought police’ and the novel ‘1984’ and Big Brother trying to control everything?

What about Jesus saying in the Sermon on the Mount that, in my heart, if I have hatred for my sibling, I have already committed murder?  Yah, but nobody knows.  Well, except God.

So no politicking, no fear-mongering, no hatred, no ‘othering’ (making an enemy out of some others because of some characteristic of their being or personality), no intimidation, no trickery, no sinful motivations like money or power, no manipulation, no power play, no power promising, no coopting of divine authority for our own…

So what am I left with?  Preaching universal love and forgiveness?  (God’s love is universal, we are all God’s children.  God’s forgiveness is universal, there for the taking).  And to God be the glory, so there’s nothing left for me?  Maybe that’s the whole point, take off the pressure.

This is what in heaven I am talking about?

 

Peace,

Pastor Peter