The Tangent College
Hello Colleagues,
It is hard to fight against the prevailing Christian culture. I’ve experienced this for years and years as we’ve visited and attended many Christian churches, and almost without fail they will dance around the hard truths in the Bible despite the fact they all claim to follow them. It always makes me grimace and close my eyes saying “here it comes…” When they happen to stumble upon a difficult passage, and by difficult I mean only in the religious sense, not in the reality sense, because these passages are well understood if you have your metaphysics correct and you understand the true nature of God and the true nature of people and the true nature of God’s creation. But few pastors are able to fight the prevailing Christian religious dogma and state clearly what the Bible actually says.
There are so many examples of free will being exercised in the Bible by humans created in the image of God, sharing a God-like capacity to make choices for both good and for evil and yet there is always the returning, to satisfy the religious notions of predestination, election, eternal security, once-saved-always-saved, unmerited love etc.. Most of these religious notions have been created by Protestants in an overcompensation against faulty Roman Catholic religious beliefs.
I’m not going to go into a long explanation on any one of these things because that is best handled in longer articles, of which I am working on, but I will simply state some obvious biblical truths which seem to somehow always have to be religiously reinterpreted in order not to offend the sensibilities of those steeped in doctrine, rather than just accepting what the Bible says over and over.
The first of these is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit which I’ve heard on numerous occasions reinterpreted as simply meaning to not believe in Jesus. They say this in order to avoid the issue. But this is clearly not the meaning as Jesus states, ““Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. “And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the age to come.” -Matthew 12:31-32. This should be completely clear and yet it has to be soft soaped by the religious. The religious church that believes in eternal security can simply not accept that there is a sin that cannot be forgiven or for that matter that one can make a decision to walk away from Christ, fall away, divorce God and return to Egypt. I will tell it to you plainly, as Jesus said, there is such a thing as the unforgivable sin, as is clearly stated in this passage. And yet rather than explaining the unique difference between blasphemy of the Holy Spirit versus blasphemy of the Son or the Father, we are told that the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit simply means something different and is nothing to be afraid of and that this sin really doesn’t exist at all.
Jesus mentions the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit when he is addressing the Pharisees who had just previously said, ““This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons.” And knowing their thoughts He said to them…” Matt. 12:24-25 And Jesus goes on to expose the sin and the error of the pharisaical teaching ending with the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. The Pharisees knew very well that he was speaking this to them. Jesus was furious with the Pharisees and their false teachings. This was the ultimate judgment against their hardened hearts. Simply stated, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is exactly what the Pharisees did, it is attributing the acts of the Holy Spirit to Satan. This is the sin that is unforgivable to God. It is real, it is unforgivable, and it has nothing to do with whether you believe in Jesus or not. It is so frustrating when the Bible believing church has to dance around and apologize for the clear words of Christ.
Here’s a second example of a passage that religious readers stumble over. “And at that time many will fall away and will deliver up one another and hate one another. “And many false prophets will arise, and will mislead many. “And because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold. “But the one who endures to the end, he shall be saved.” Matt 24:10-12 this kind of passage simply doesn’t jive with the well leavened Christian teaching that no one who was saved can fall away or lose their salvation. This preposterous and un-biblical religious dogma has been so ground into Christian teaching, that all Scriptures such as this one are usually avoided, or excruciatingly reinterpreted. If one is not saved, how can one fall away? What are you falling away from? How can the false prophets mislead those who are already unsaved and misled? Clearly the false prophets will mislead those who know the truth. One cannot mislead someone who believes in falsehoods. How can people’s love grow cold if they are all degenerate sinners with no capacity to love in the first place? – Which is what the Calvinist believe. How can one endure to the end in order to be saved? I thought to be saved you didn’t have to do anything, but apparently according to the Scripture, if you believe the Scripture, you must endure in order to be saved.
The entire Bible follows from the original sin of Adam and the original fall from grace in the garden of Eden when man chose to disobey. If mankind can fall from grace in the garden of Eden, how much more can he fall from grace, if he so chooses, in this fallen world?
And this leads to a third well-worn religious dogma that I’ve grown so weary of and yet is leavened deep in Christian culture. It is the notion that we don’t to do anything in order to get saved. This notion comes straight from the confused teaching of Calvinism which has been watered-down in the contemporary Christian church, and yet it remains. Yes God’s gift of salvation is free but it doesn’t mean we don’t do anything. Consider this analogy; when a gift package arrives at your door, do you leave it on the stoop? Do you bring it into the house? Do you unwrap the package? Of course you do! The gift can be delivered to your door but it does you no good if you don’t open it. It also does you no good if you don’t use the gift or try it on if it’s a garment. If you don’t try the garment on, which requires effort and work, you haven’t really accepted the gift have you? This would be the perfect picture of the seed in the parable that sprouts up quickly and receives the gift with joy but then never opens the gift or uses the gift and that person quickly fades, withers, and yes falls away. Sorry, it’s everywhere throughout the Bible. It is difficult to avoid.
What if you try it on and you don’t like the gift? Well according to the once saved-always-saved folks, you can’t return the gift; but instead it’s forced on you.
The opening of the gift is something you must do and it is a work. The belief in Christ is a work as they asked Him, “ “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” It is outrageous that the Calvinists actually say that Jesus is saying that God is doing the work. How blind to the Scriptures can you be?! They are asking what works they can do and Jesus tells them precisely what is the work that they are to do. I guess Jesus was unaware that we have no free-will or capacity to make this choice?
And yet in this and many other things the prevailing religious dogma of the church will go on. It is so hard to fight against it. Most of the time I don’t even bother. I just sit there and cringe and grumble on the way home. Oh I wish we had a church that taught the liberating truths about free-will, repentance (something you must do), and God’s grace which is not predestined upon us but something we must actively choose. God does not impose himself on us and make us love him even though he could, he does not. Furthermore, when we are saved by free will choice we do not then lose that free will when we get saved. How absurd is it to suggest that we are saved by freewill and then once we have obtained eternal life, lose the very freewill that got us in. Heaven then becomes a prison that one can get in but can never leave. Sounds like the “Hotel California”. But this is the half-Calvinism goofiness of the eternal security crowd. If we lost the free will, with no ability to walk away, we would be merely slaves and not sons.
It is for these reasons that the church remains an escapist entity both striving to not be “in” the world but ending up following and being “of” the world. It ends up being an escapist paradise where religious doctrines are repeated ad nausea and the real world is never explained or comprehended.
All truth is God’s truth.
We are to live in the world but not of the world. The church has it backwards.
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So this was a different kind of email this week. I hope I didn’t bore you or anger you too much. But I thought it was time to state things quickly and clearly as to what I believe and what is clearly taught by the real God in the Scriptures. The real God is so much better and deeper than the religious God.
Get to know Him. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Proverbs 9:10 The contemporary church has lost the concept of the fear of God. For this reason they do not teach wisdom. Wisdom is an old-fashioned concept and it doesn’t fit the newfangled contemporary church; the church of “He Gets Us” which I spoke about two weeks ago.
Additionally, Seth Hancock also wrote an interesting follow-up to his article I mentioned two weeks ago. You can find it here entitled “Jesus was not a sissy, so why do American ‘Christians’ paint Him as such?”
So I think that is probably enough for this week. I know you’re all exhausted if you have even made it this far. Perhaps next week I will get my song done and recorded which I’ve been working on for the past week or so. I gave you a hint at it last week. I’ve got most of the verses down but they need final refinement. I’m a stickler for refinement. It’s a blessing and a curse. By the time I get the song out and recorded, the war will probably be over. I’m like Monty Python’s “The Bishop” who always shows up a little too late.
Until next week, follow the path of righteousness, don’t launch weather balloons that confuse our military leaders, and stay far from the camp of the Covidites.
Bill Ward