This blog will include articles, books, and relevant comments on Authentic Christianity. This blog is intended to inform and enlighten readers with articles and books, as well as comments relevant to Kingdom Christianity versus Institutionalized Christianity or “Christendom”—as well as how we can get back to Authentic Christianity
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Jesus, Your So Wonderful To Me - worship alabanza Χριστός 耶稣
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsqqvaO3vMw
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
 | 中文敬拜诗歌 Chinese Worship and Praise Music WMA |
中文敬拜音乐视频
Chinese Passion Music Video (MP4, 9mb)
Monday, November 8, 2010
Fascinating article I decided to post–it comes from the discovery Institute
DARWIN'S THEORY AND SOCIAL DARWINISM: THERE IS A CONNECTION
By: John G. West
Discovery Institute
May 1, 2009
Scientists and political activists during the past century have drawn on Darwinian theory to promote one utopian crusade after another, including forced sterilization, scientific racism, euthanasia, and an ever-expanding government justified in the name of the “evolving Constitution.” The typical response of Darwinists to this record of coercive “Social Darwinism” is to deny that it has any genuine connection to Darwin or his theory of evolution. But when one examines the historical record in detail, the effort to disentangle Darwinism from “Social Darwinism” is hard to maintain. This can be seen most clearly in the case of eugenics.
Eugenics was the science of human breeding, and it resulted in the compulsory sterilization of more than 60,000 presumed “defectives” in the United States by 1958, including many who probably would not be considered mentally deficient today.
The intellectual leaders of the eugenics crusade were largely university-trained biologists and doctors, and they pushed for eugenics because they thought it was fully justified by Darwinian biology. It should be stressed that eugenists represented mainstream evolutionary biology, not the fringe. They were affiliated with institutions like Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Stanford. They were leaders in America’s most prestigious scientific organizations. Biologist Edwin Conklin was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
The intellectual leaders of the eugenics crusade were largely university-trained biologists and doctors, and they pushed for eugenics because they thought it was fully justified by Darwinian biology. It should be stressed that eugenists represented mainstream evolutionary biology, not the fringe. They were affiliated with institutions like Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Stanford. They were leaders in America’s most prestigious scientific organizations. Biologist Edwin Conklin was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
The eugenists’ underlying fear was articulated by Charles Darwin himself in The Descent of Man, where he criticized modern society for undermining the natural “process of elimination” by building asylums for the mentally ill, homes for the handicapped, hospitals for the sick, and welfare programs for the poor. Darwin was even concerned about vaccinating people against small pox! “No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man... hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”
Darwin does goes on to indicate that we can’t follow the dictates of “hard reason” in such cases without undermining our “sympathy… the noblest part of our nature.” But such misgivings represented a lame objection at best. If Darwin truly believed that society’s efforts to help the impoverished and sickly “must be highly injurious to the race of man” (note the word “must”), then the price of preserving compassion in his view appeared to be the destruction of the human race. Framed in that manner, how many people could be expected to reject the teachings of “hard reason” and sacrifice the human race? Darwinan political theorist Larry Arnhart whitewashes history when he argues that Darwin was only concerned about “good eugenics” such as banning incestuous marriages. If this were the case, why did Darwin warn of the dangers to the human race of helping the poor, caring for the mentally ill, saving the sick, and even inoculating people against smallpox? Darwin clearly supplied a logical rationale for eugenics in The Descent of Man, even if his personal scruples made him ambivalent about pressing his concerns to a logical conclusion. His followers, of course, were not so squeamish.
Those who insist that eugenics was somehow a distortion of Darwinian biology must account for the fact that the vast majority of leading Darwinian biologists for several decades clearly thought otherwise. Indeed, they promoted the tenets of eugenics as “strict corollaries” of “the theory of organic evolution.” They had a point.
If one truly believes that human progress is dependent on a vigorous struggle for existence, then any diminishment of natural selection in human society will raise legitimate concerns, and efforts to reinstate selection through eugenics may well appear rational. Indeed, once one understands the evolving nature of “human nature,” it is difficult to see any in principle objection to all sorts of efforts to transform human nature through bioengineering.
Larry Arnhart attempts to outline a Darwinian argument against radical human bioengineering, but his argument is less than persuasive. “Our desires have been formed by natural selection over evolutionary history to promote survival and reproduction,” he writes. “Knowing this should make us cautious about using biotechnology to radically change our evolved nature.” But why?
Natural selection is a messy, hit-or-miss process of dead-ends and false starts. Why shouldn’t human beings use their reason to direct their evolution in order to produce a new kind of human being? What is so sacrosanct about existing human dispositions and capacities, since they were produced by such an imperfect and purposeless process? Arnhart seems to want to clothe human nature with a kind of sacred awe that will restrain human beings from tinkering with it. But such awe is alien to the Darwinian mindset. In his autobiography, Darwin recounted how he had once had such feelings, but they had evaporated. He lamented: “I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body; but now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind.” In the Darwinian framework, there is nothing intrinsically right about the current capacities of human beings, so there can be nothing intrinsically wrong about trying to alter them. Indeed, “human nature” in its traditional sense is a non-sequitor in Darwinian terms.
In the end, Arnhart’s main arguments against radical human bioengineering are his prediction that it may not be technically feasible and his hope that it may be restrained by certain deeply-ingrained human desires. Let’s certainly hope so, but Darwinism itself provides little or no barrier against such schemes. As Carson Holloway points out in The Right Darwin, the Darwinian account of morality all but invites “wholesale biological engineering.” (p. 185)
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
COSMIC CONFLICT
Greetings in the name of Jesus!
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COSMIC CONFLICT
The last blog I uploaded was an outstanding article by Dr. Gregory Boyd PhD, who has an incredible insight into some aspects of the nature of God and the cosmological conflict that is our world. He calls this the Trinitarian warfare worldview, wherein from a biblical standpoint one can see that the world is not all that it should be. We live in a fallen world, as a result of sin entrance of the world, just as the Bible speaks in Romans chapter 5. Sin entered into the world and destroyed the true perfected beauty God originally intended. Throughout the Bible we see that there is a supernatural and invisible conflict that is taking place between God, with his angels, and the devil and his angels.
From what we can understand the Bible, which is the word of God, that some point in history there was a rebellion, in open rebellion, against God's rule, and God's government. This resulted in one third, from what we understand of the Bible, of the angelic/celestial beings rebelled against God, with their leader, who was Lucifer, whose name means the “shining one”, who from what we can understand in the Bible is that he was the covering cherub. Lucifer was not an angel. He was more like an Archangel, or more specifically he was a cherub, which the description of them can be found in the book of Ezekiel. It says that he was the “cherub that covered”, in that there are at this point surrounding the throne of God in heaven, that place where God dwells in his full manifestation, according to the word of God there are four cherubim underneath the throne of God, they're the four living creatures described in Daniel as well as the book of the Revelation, that surround the throne of God, and there are the Seraphim to hover above the throne of God, where Isaiah declares that he saw them crying out holy, holy, holy!
This cosmological conflict between the forces of good and evil affects our daily lives in ways that it is difficult to understand unless you have a keen sense of understanding of the spiritual round.
The spiritual realm is just as real as the physical realm, in fact it is more real. The spiritual realm that is differentiated from the material realm in that material substances are subjected to the physical laws that state according to the second law of thermodynamics, known as entropy, which I know is about heat loss, but is applicable in the sense that everything in the universe is going from a more complex state of existence to a more simple state of existence. The universe is winding down–not winding out. Everything is decaying, and without an extern all source of energy, as well as the wherewithal to utilize it, the world is falling apart, as well as the universe. Stars are growing–stars are dying.
In fact, we can see that we live in a closed system, however we have an external source of energy, the sun. However the sun, in and of itself, has not beneficial effects on the Earth, without photosynthesis, which is able to utilize the energy given off by the sun and converted to plant growth, etc. But in of itself the energy from the sun causes things to break down, unless there is some mechanism by which that energy can be utilized.
So spiritual realm, however is not subject to the laws of physics, and it is governed by a completely different set of laws. And in this realm there exists a host of various kinds of entities, celestial beings, for lack of a better term. Celestial beings that exist in this material realm and interact with the material realm, but they are just as invisible to the senses and to the natural eye as radio waves, infrared waves, ultraviolet light are to our five senses. The fact that our five senses cannot detect the spiritual realm does not negate the existence of it. We have indirect proof of this realm seen in the nature of the state the world is in. In general, evil triumphs. And evil is an entity, and has its own leader, which is the one who is in complete rebellion against God, his name is now Satan, which means adversary, or opponent to God. Because he opposes God's will, and in the Garden of Eden he was given the dominion of the earth by the first man Adam, when he made a moral choice to disobey God, and he himself became a rebel, and sin entered into the world, and we see the fruit of that disobedience to God in our world today.
In the book of acts chapter 10 verse 38, it states that Jesus Christ came into the world, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth could go about doing good and healing all those who were sick and oppressed of the devil. The devil oppresses people. Sickness, generally, is caused by the devil. Of course I understand her natural causes to illnesses, but that's not how we were originally intended to be.
The formation and errors in our DNA code cause illnesses, which can be genetic, or various illnesses, such as cancers, etc., can be a direct result of environmental factors that can alter the DNA and produce rogue malignant cells, which we call cancer. Interestingly, cancer is cells that are rogue, rebellious, cells that become parasitic, and feed off of one's body. The more they feed, the more they grow can destroy The Natural Way, God intended us to function.
All sickness, I believe, is a result of this cosmological warfare that is happening all around us. All evil in the world is a direct result of this. As Dr. Boyd states, that we are in a battlefield, in this great struggle between God and the devil. The devil, according to the Bible, when he was Lucifer, rebelled against God because he was filled with pride, check out Chapter 18 of the book of Ezekiel, as well as the 28th chapter of the same book. Pride, was the first sin. When Lucifer was lifted up with pride, in his heart, that is where his rebellion towards God began. And it affected all of God's creation. Lucifer was a create
d being. And yet, the description of the devil, who is Lucifer, was one of great beauty, talent, and interestingly, musical ability. Many Bible scholars feel that Lucifer was in charge of the worship in Heaven. So, we can see how, as Satan is now, according to the Bible “the God of this world”, how he uses entertainment, and especially music to indoctrinate and brainwash people against God.
The way I see it, and I think I have a biblical viewpoint, is that Satan hates God, would love to hurt God, but obviously he cannot harm God in a way that could do any damage to him, and Satan knows that God loves people. God created man in his image. Man was the crown of God's creation of the earth. Therefore, Satan knows that God loves people. If Satan is able to, which he was, get mankind to rebel against God, God being just must punish the rebellion against himself, just as he will eventually, as stated in the 20th chapter of the book of Revelation, the devil himself, so the devil wins, in one sense, by having God, in a sense, like a chess game, having to give up valuable pieces, which he doesn't want to lose.
This is all predicated on the fact that we have a free will, just like the Angels before us, to make moral choices. God does not interfere with our ability to make free moral choices. God sends people, and his angels, to help to influence us to make the right choices, just like Satan sends people, and his fallen Angels, and demons, to influence us as well in his way to rebel against God. But neither entity is able to force us against our will. We must make a moral choice. And, the real person who we are, is the sum total of all of the moral choices that we make.
So, God himself, in reality, doesn't put people in hell, but allows people to make the free moral choices that God in his divine justice must punish rebellion, just as any government cannot allow rebellion to fester, neither can God allow rebellion against his moral government. So, we must understand that God is doing all he can in order to bring us into his kingdom, to destroy the works of sin in our lives, take us from being slaves to the power of sin, and he delivers us from the kingdom of darkness, which according to Jesus Christ the whole world is under the power of the evil one, where Jesus had said that he saw Satan fall like lightning, to the kingdom of light, to the kingdom of God's eternal son, who purchase us with the blood of his son, as a propitiation, a peace offering, the righteous and just God had to demand, and yet, in his great love for us, he sacrificed his only son on the cross, as John described, “behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!”, and that's exactly what he did.
Jesus took our punishment. That's why the idea of purgatory is antithetical to the Bible. You cannot pay for your sins. The Bible says the wages of sin is death, then eternal death, is forever, and the place called the lake of fire.
The Bible tells us that it is not God's will that any should perish, but that all should come to salvation. It is not God's will that Adam chose to disobey God, as well as his wife leave, and sin entered into their genetic code, into their DNA, which has produced what we see today in the world. There have been very few years, globally, when there hasn't been conflict. People are basically selfish. People are basically sinful. Because the principle of sin has entered into mankind passed down the generations from Adam to ourselves.
What one needs to ask oneself is, how many sins did it take until God got fed up with Adam and Eve, and asked them to leave paradise? Well, the answer is pretty simple. Just want.
So then you need to ask yourself, well, how many sins have I committed, well, I'm sure it's more than one probably millions! So, it stands to reason, if that one sin, as transpired in the Garden of Eden, can cause God to have to expel Adam and Eve from heaven, therefore one sin can keep you out of heaven.
The only reason people don't go to heaven is because of their own personal choices. They are the sum total of their choices. Their moral choices. When they have made choices to rebel against God, they become rebels. Rebels are not allowed in heaven. The rebellious must be punished by God, therefore he has a special location in existence, that location is called hell, which is a holdover cell, until according to the Bible, every person will stand before God in judgment for the things that they've done. Those, according to the Bible, whose names are not written in the lambs book of life, are cast into the lake of fire. And that is their eternal destiny, not based on some arbitrary decision got made time passed, but solely based on the sum total of the moral choices that they made. And that moral choice was not to hate sin and love God.
Every person in hell will be there because they chose to go there. God knows the thoughts, intentions of the heart. His judgment is just. He is righteous, good kind and merciful, but is also just. And in his justice we cannot allow rebellion against his moral government to stand.
Authentic Christianity is this. You can't do enough good to get into heaven. However, you don't have to do a lot of bad to go to hell.
The only way that we can get into heaven is by absolute 100% righteousness. And of ourselves were incapable of that righteousness. That's why we come to the Lord Jesus Christ, repent, change your minds, and ask God to forgive us for our sins, at the same time we make a moral choice to follow God and his kingdom. We make Jesus Lord of our life. Either Jesus Christ is Lord of all, as some have said, or he is not Lord at all!
Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that comes to dwell in us, gives us the ability to overcome sin in our lives. We do not become sinless. But we sin less. The Bible says that when a person is walking in love there is no occasion for stumbling in him. The key to holiness is to walk in God's kind of love. You can lookup the 13th chapter of the letter of Paul to the Corinthians in order to hear and exquisite description of love.
This description is not something you find in Hollywood! Hollywood's type of love is a parasitic, fickle, emotionally based expressed romanticism that in reality is harmful not helpful. It looks to others to fill its needs. Is not unconditional. As a result of Hollywood's perversion of what love is, the divorce rate is at record highs. By the way, the entertainment business, is run by a cabal, and that cabal is not made up of men, but of demonic powers and entities, that inspire people to create and write things that are meant to maintain Satan's control over those seasons slaved to do his will, almost entirely unwittingly! Satan is ahead of all TV studios. All movie studios. And, he loves music! Remember, as I stated earlier, that used to be his job.
The entire world is under the control of the devil, but the good news is this–the time is short for him to go to rule the world. We see that the culmination of the history of mankind is at its apex. There will come, according to the Bible, a world leader, known as the antichrist, whom the world will love and they will adore him.
The best example of the antichrist, which the apostle John said the spirit of the antichrist was in the world, would be Adolf
Hitler. In hindsight we see Adolf Hitler as an absolutely evil man. The reality, in Germany, he was the savior for the Germans. Remember while the rest of the world was in a severe oppression, Hitler came after years of turmoil in the Weimar Republic of Germany post-World War I, promising prosperity, and a rekindling of Germanic pride. People loved Hitler. He represented order. You represented community. He represented many things to the people of Germany that gave them hope for their future. People did not see him as a crazed megalomaniac mass purveyor of genocide, the picture of him that we see is from the benefit of hindsight of history. He came at the precise moment when chaos reigned in the post World War I Weimer Republic suffering from himself from all hyper inflation, unemployment, and unreasonable war reparations put upon them by the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler fed the pride of the German people. In the end, however the very people that love and worship Adolf Hitler, were destroyed by him.
He led them down a path, which they thought was to prosperity, but was one of deception and destruction.
Jesus said there's two roads. The road that leads to destruction, the road that leads to hell, and eventually the lake of fire. He says this way is broad smooth and many people are going on. But he said that the road that leads to life is very constricted, very narrow, very few there be that find it.
Why is it that so few follow the real Jesus and authentic Christianity? The Bible has said men loved darkness rather than light. They don't want to come to the light. They don't want to have their sins revealed. They don't want to humble themselves. Their favorite song is, “I Did It My Way” And God will allow them the free choice to suffer in eternal agony and torment solely based on the moral choices that they made.
Good works cannot did choose salvation. But if you have no good works are not saved. The Bible says that you're not saved by works of righteousness, but it's according to his mercy that he saved us. But it there are many warnings in the Bible that if we continue in unrighteousness, the Bible says God will not be mocked, you will reap what you sow. If we don't continue in holiness we will be left outside of the kingdom of God. Where Jesus said there is darkness and wailing and gnashing of teeth. In actuality, Jesus spoke much more about hell and heaven.
The Bible warns us over and over again to flee God's wrath. We must run away from sin. We must realize that if we continue to make the wrong moral choices God will judge us for our works.
You cannot work your way into heaven but you can easily work your way in the hell. Even if you're Christian. Sorry, but no such thing as “Once Saved Always Saved”
If you think that all you need to do is go to a church and make a mental decision to be a Christian, in order that you might obtain a “get out of jail free card”, without truly repenting, changing your mind, about sin turning from your sins and turning to God, most like you are not saved. However, even if you are saved, the Bible is filled with warnings, that if you don't repent of your sense, if you continue in a particular sin, you will reap what you sow, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that we were saved by faith alone—Sola Fides—the rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation. In actuality, the book of James,, contradicts Luther's battle cry where the Bible says that you are not saved by faith alone, you must have corresponding actions to your faith, there must be works with your faith, otherwise you have a dead faith. Faith without works is dead. It's not faith alone. It's faith with works. That's what the Bible says. I did not make it up.
I personally am not a Protestant, nor my following the Roman Catholic tradition. I have good friends in both camps. I'm a Christian. I based everything I believe what the Bible teaches. Not the traditions of men.
Whether your tradition 1700 years old, as in the case of the Imperial Roman Catholic Church, or 500 years old as in the case of the reformed Catholic church–the Protestant church. Martin Luther wanted to reform, that is,re-form, the Roman Catholic Church to bring it back to the place it was in the day of his theological idol, Augustine. Calvin did the same thing. Both were followers of Augustine of hippo.
While many Christians are followers of Augustine of hippo, I've chosen to be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.
To me it's quite simple. What is the Bible's teach. What did the apostles teach and practice. What did the early Christians teaching practice. And, if that contradicts the new doctrines created after the institution of the Imperial Roman church/state marriage which produced Christendom, or the very end form of Christendom as expressed in the Protestant Reformation, I find that I would rather side with the early Christians, those that were kingdom Christians, those that were authentic Christians, not to say that there are not within both of those camps legitimate, and authentic Christians, I find it much easier and better for us to stick with the early church and what they taught, as they were taught by the disciples, or the disciples of the disciples.
Their practice of Christianity, and the practices that resulted from the marriage of church and state under the Emperor Constantine are entirely different.
And, all of that is part of the spiritual
warfare that existed. State and spent 300 years persecuting Christians, and he found that, Tertullian the early church historian stated, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church!” The persecution of the Christians only produce more Christians. Satan had a better idea. Influence Christianity from inside instead of persecuting from outside. His plan worked. Christianity, which became institutionalized, was co-opted by the devil, and formed into a synagogue of Satan, which was reflected in the actions of those leaders whose action was more in keeping with thier father.
The early Roman Imperial Church persecuted other Christians, such as the Donatists, and burned other Christians to the stake. Also they burned some heretics as well. None of this was practiced by the early Christians. Jesus Christ burned no one at the stake! Jesus Christ did not enforce his will on people. The subsequent Crusades that grew out of the institutionalized church was simply an expression of the influence of the devil had. It was his church. They're been true Christians all throughout history, even in the Roman Catholic Church as well as the Protestant churches.
Look up the Anabaptist and Wikipedia to get a look at how a group of people who were first part of the Reformation, now known as the stepchildren of the Reformation, decided to live according to the commandments of Jesus and live the sermon on the Mount. They did not believe that you could be sprinkled with the baby and become a Christian. They believe that you must be born again to enter into the kingdom of heaven. That's very difficult for baby to do. They were pacifists. They took Jesus's words literally. Just like the early Christians. They didn't burn any one of the state who contradicted their believes. Unlike the Protestants who drown them and burn them, as well as the Roman Catholic Church who tried them as heretics, when they found them guilty, tortured and burned them at the stake.
When did Jesus ever say burn heretics at the stake? Which epistle written by Paul, Peter, John the apostle, James, Jude, ever advocated forcing people to believe in Jesus Christ or punishing those who disagreed with them with death?
And yet, this is what many unbelievers think of Christianity. They see the institutionalized church. They see what the institutionalized church has done in the world.
They don't see kingdom Christians. They don't see authentic Christianity. They don't see Christians living as the early Christians did—pacifists, humble, kind, sacrificial, loving, truth speaking, holy living, Bible believing, Christians.
I suppose that is because Jesus so it better than anyone, “the road that leads to life very narrow and very few there be that find it!” Very few are true disciples of Jesus Christ. Are you one?
Or have you chosen the form of godliness that denies the power thereof? Have you chosen a prosperity oriented gospel, that fulfills the American dream for you?
Or, you chosen to follow the narrow way, the way of the cross, the way of Jesus, the way of those saints who've walked the lonely road of being a Kingdom Christian. Being an authentic Christian.
There is a cosmological conflict. And more particularly, that conflict concerns your own soul in your own eternal destination.
Choose your destination wisely! The Lord Jesus Christ, God the father, and the Holy Spirit, will not force you to come to heaven. You must make that choice yourself.
To make that choice you must follow the very words and teachings of Jesus. Not the twisted perversions of those that do not care about your eternal soul.
The prophet Jeremiah said that God was going to send them shepherds after his heart. Shepherds that are not telling people what they want to hear–but what they need to hear!
In our modern society the favorite (profit) prophet of most Christians is the prophet Hananiah. Jeremiah said that they say “peace peace, when there is no peace” are you listening to those that tell you what you want to hear.? Or are you looking for the word of God to sharply discern and you everything that is contrary to God's word, and repenting, and give your life wholeheartedly to?.
Unfortunately, according to Jesus, in the parable of the Sower, three quarters of the seed that falls on the ground does not bear fruit. In essence Jesus is telling us, that of the 100% of those who truly do become Christians, only 25% will bear fruit, and make it into his kingdom. 75% will be lost due to the very factors Jesus delineates in that parable.
God is absolutely merciful. He gives us a chance after chance to repent. Either the book of Revelation Jesus says that he had given Jezebel space to repent, but she wouldn't.
Cry out to God for his infinite mercy, and repent of your sins today, before it's too late. According to the Bible time is short. The culmination of history, and the culmination of this age is about ready to come to an end. The final conflict and battle between God and Satan just around the corner. The Bible speaks of the battle of Armageddon. Jesus Christ is coming back, but is coming back for pure bride, spotless and without wrinkle.
Be blessed in a increased knowledge of the goodness, kindness, and also the severity of God. Bubbles is a fearful thing to fall in the hands of the living God. But there is mercy. Run to the mercy seat while there still is time. Run to Jesus Christ. He awaits you. Humble yourself God will lift you up.
There is no sin that Jesus will not forgive. Confess your sins to Jesus. Repent, have a change of heart and mind. Follow the master.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
SATAN AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
Gregory Boyd, Ph.D
Six Theses of the Warfare Worldview
The trinitarian warfare worldview seeks to reconcile our experience of radical evil with the conviction that reality is created and sustainedby an all-loving, all-powerful God. Six principles form the foundation for this view. These principles are based on Scripture’s account of God’s battle with Satan as well as our experience with the war-zone reflected in the world around us.
1. Love Requires Freedom
By definition, love must be freely chosen. We are able to program computers to obey our commands perfectly, but we don’t consider them “loving.” They lack the capacity for love because they have no choice but to do what we say. Humans would be in the same category as computers if God merely “programmed” our actions. In order for creatures to be loving, they must have the freedom to do otherwise.
2. Freedom Implies Risk
The freedom to choose or reject love constitutes a risk for God. Creatures may make choices that oppose his will for their lives and the lives of others. This risk is illustrated throughout Scripture, beginning with the Garden of Eden. Many of us have experienced the painful consequences of misused freedom in our own lives. God considered love to be well worth the risk inherent in giving his creatures freedom.
3. Risk Entails Moral Responsibility
God’s creatures are held responsible for how they use their freedom. We don’t hold computers responsible when they fail because their failure is ultimately the responsibility of their programmers. They could not do other than what they were programmed to do. Because we are free to choose or reject love, we can be held accountable for how our choices affect those around us.
4. Moral Responsibility is Proportionate to the Potential to Influence
The potential a creature has for love is proportionate to the creature’s potential for evil. The greater the creature’s potential for love, the greater risk their freedom entails, for they may choose to use their potential for evil instead. Greater potential also entails greater responsibility for how the potential is used.
5. Power to Influence is Irrevocable
Genuine freedom must be irrevocable. If it can be revoked, creatures cannot be held responsible for their use of it, nor can they fully realize their potential for love. Within the parameters of the freedom God gives creatures, God must tolerate evil. Since God is omnipotent, he is able to accomplish his will within these parameters without compromising his own integrity or limiting the potential of his creatures by revoking their freedom.
6.Power to Influence is Finite
God’s creatures are finite. Although their freedom cannot be revoked, it can be thought of as “probational.” The scope and duration of their freedom is conditioned by many variables and ultimately determined by God’s will. The warfare between God and creatures who choose to use their freedom for evil is not eternal. Christ will vanquish his enemies in the end and creatures will be completely free to participate in the triune love of God at last.
7.What is the Warfare Worldview?
The warfare worldview is based on the conviction that our world is engaged in a cosmic war between a myriad of agents, both human and angelic, that have aligned themselves with either God or Satan. We believe this worldview best reflects the response to evil depicted throughout the Bible. For example, Jesus unequivocally opposed evils such as disease, demonization, and even natural disaster (i.e. Jesus rebuked the storm) as originating in the wills of Satan, fallen angels, and sinful people, rather than of God.
This view is not ontologically dualistic, because while the Bible clearly articulates war between good and evil, it also clearly articulates God’s sovereignty. The battle that is currently raging is not everlasting, and when it ends, we are assured of God’s victory. In fact, the victory has already been won in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ (Col. 2:13–14), but the demise of evil has not yet been fully realized. Christians are called to wage spiritual warfare (Eph. 6:10–17) against evil through prayer, evangelism, and social action.
While most of the apostolic fathers held views that were similar to the warfare worldview, the view which has been prevalent in western church tradition since the 4th century teaches that everything that ever happens, whether good or evil, does so according to God’s will. Thus, the western church has wrestled with the “Problem of Evil” throughout most of its history—and rightly so. The warfare worldview, however, makes sense out of evil, human freedom, the power and urgency of prayer, evangelism, and social action.
Instead of resigning ourselves to our circumstances when we encounter evil, the warfare worldview encourages Christians to revolt against evil as evidence of Satan’s activity, rather than God’s mysterious will. Satan, fallen angels, and sinful people have wills of their own, and they are responsible for everything that happens which is not consistent with the character of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.
Questioning the Blueprint Worldview
The Bible uniformly teaches that God is the Creator of everything and the sovereign Lord of history (e.g. Gen. 1:1; John 1:3; Col. 1:16–17; Deut. 10:14; Dan. 10:34–35; Ps. 135:6ff; Acts 17:24–27; Eph. 1:11). At times he exercises unilateral control over what transpires in history, miraculously intervening to alter the course of nations or of individuals, and even predestining some events long before they come to pass (e.g. Isa. 46:10–11; Acts 2:23, 4:28). Because he is omnipotent, his goal of acquiring a “bride” (the Church) and establishing an eternal kingdom free from all evil will certainly be achieved (e.g. 1 Cor. 15:25–28; Eph. 1:16–23; Col. 1:18–20; Rev. 20:10). Scripture’s majestic portrayal of God is that of a sovereign, omnipotent Creator who is confidently guiding the world toward his desired end.
Many Christians have concluded that in order for God to accomplish his goal for creation, everything that happens in world history must somehow fit into his sovereign plan. This assumption has permeated the Church throughout most of its history. The assumption is often expressed in cliches Christians are sometimes prone to recite when confronting tragedies like cancer, crippling accidents, or natural disasters. Believers sometimes attempt to console themselves and others with statements like, “God has his reasons,” “There’s a purpose for everything,” “Providence writes straight with crooked lines,” and “His ways are not our ways.” (1)
I call this understanding of God’s relationship to the world “the blueprint worldview,” for it assumes that everything somehow fits into meticulous plan and mysterious purposes of God—a divine blueprint. The view takes many different forms, but each version shares the assumption that, whether ordained or allowed, there is a specific divine reason for every occurrence in history. As traditional and popular as the blueprint worldview is, it is not without significant difficulties. For one thing, this view makes it exceedingly difficult to reconcile the evil in our world with the perfect goodness of God, especially when applied to specific instances of suffering and evil...
Introducing the Warfare Worldview
.....Scripture does not support the view that there must be a divine reason behind all events. This brings us to a second and even more fundamental problem with the blueprint worldview: It is, I contend, rooted in an imbalanced reading of the Bible.
While Scripture emphasizes God’s ultimate authority over the world, it also emphasizes that agents, whom God has created, can and do resist his will. Humans and fallen angels are able to grieve his Spirit and to some extent frustrate his purposes (e.g. Gen. 6:6; Isa. 63:10; Luke 7:30; Acts 7:51; Eph. 4:30; Heb. 3:8, 15; 4:7). Scripture refers to this myriad of other angels and humans who refuse to submit to God’s rule as a rebel kingdom (Matt. 12:26; Col. 1:13; Rev. 11:15), and identifies the head of this rebellion as a powerful fallen angel named Satan. It is clear that God shall someday vanquish this rebel kingdom, but it is equally clear that in the meantime, he genuinely wars against it.
This prominent biblical motif expresses what I call the “warfare worldview.” The world is caught up in a spiritual war between God and Satan. Unlike the blueprint worldview, the warfare worldview does not assume that there is a specific divine reason for what Satan and other evil agents do. To the contrary, God fights these opponents precisely because their purposes are working against his purposes.
Suffering takes on a different meaning when it is considered in the context of a cosmic war as opposed to a context in which everything is part of God’s meticulous plan and mysterious higher good. In the warfare worldview we would not wonder about what specific divine reason God might have had in allowing little children to be buried alive in mud or a little girl to be kidnapped. Instead, we would view these individuals as “victims of war” and assign the blame to human or demonic beings who oppose God’s will. Following Scripture, we would of course look to God for comfort in the midst of our suffering, trust that he is working to bring good out of the evil, and find consolation in our confidence that the war will someday come to a glorious end. But we would not look to God’s purposes for the explanation of why any particular evil occurred in the first place. In the warfare worldview, this is understood to be the result of the evil intentions and activity of human and angelic agents.
As is the case with the blueprint worldview, the warfare worldview is not without difficulties. Foremost among these is the question of how this view can be reconciled with the biblical teaching that God is the all-powerful Creator of the world. Since the warfare worldview denies that God always has a specific reason for allowing evil deeds to occur, must it not deny that God is able to prevent events he wishes would not take place? We may state the dilemma this way: It seems we must either believe that God does not prevent certain events because he chooses not to or because he is unable to. The warfare worldview denies that God always chooses not to intervene, for this would require the belief that there is a specific divine purpose behind everything. Hence the warfare worldview must accept that, at least sometimes, God is unable to prevent evil. But how then can we continue to affirm that God is all-powerful?
My conviction is that, unlike the questions that the blueprint worldview raises, this question has a plausible answer. The trinitarian warfare theodicy argues that the answer lies in the nature of love. As Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God’s essence is love (1 John 4:8, 16). God created the world for the purpose of displaying his triune love and inviting others to share in it (cf. John 17:20–25). I argue that it was not logically possible for God to have this objective without risking the possibility of war breaking out in his creation. The possibility of love among contingent creatures such as angels and humans entails the possibility of war. Six theses follow from the nature and risk of love. These theses, if accepted, render intelligible the warfare worldview of Scripture as well as the problem of evil.
End Notes
(1) This assumption extends to our broader culture as well, as evidenced, for example, by the fact that insurance policies customarily refer to natural disasters as “acts of God.”
(2) See e.g. K. Surin, Theology and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986); T. W. Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990); and M. Scott, “The Morality of Theodicies,” Religious Studies 32, no. 1 (1996), 1–13.
(3) See W. Kaufman, ed., Religion from Tolstoy to Camus (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1961), 137–44.
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