Category Archives: God

The Christian Worldview as Master Narrative: Redemption Accomplished

Posted by Dan C. on

Al Mohler, Monday, January 10, 2011

The third great movement in the Christian metanarrative begins with the affirmation that God’s purpose from the beginning was to redeem a people through the blood of his Son – and that he does this in order to show the excellence of his name throughout eternity. The God of the Bible is not a divine strategist, ready with a new plan in the event his original plan fails. The God of the Bible is sovereign and completely able to accomplish his purposes. Thus, when we come to the great act of God for our redemption we come to the very heart of God’s self-revelation.

Beyond this, an adequate understanding of human sin brings us to the inescapable conclusion that there is absolutely nothing that the human creature can do to rescue himself from his plight. We find ourselves in an insoluble situation and are brought face to face with our own finitude. What is worse, all our efforts to solve the problem on our own lead only into an even deeper complex of sin. We are rebels to the core, and our attempts to justify ourselves lead only into deeper levels of sinfulness.

When we come to the rescue of sinners, the Christian narrative points directly to Jesus Christ as the one sent by God to die as a substitutionary sacrifice for sin and to inaugurate the kingdom of God as Israel’s Davidic messiah.

Of course, Jesus Christ does not enter the biblical narrative only at this point. As the prologue to the Gospel of John makes clear, Jesus Christ is the eternal Logos through whom the entire cosmos came into being (John 1:1-3). The Word through whom the worlds were made now enters human existence, assuming authentic humanity, in order to identify with us and to save us from our sins. The doctrine of creation leads to the doctrine of redemption, for the cosmos was created as the theater of God’s redemptive acts.

Redemption is God’s work from beginning to end. The Gospel explains that God, in order to maintain his own righteousness, must to exact an adequate punishment for sin. Yet, while we were his enemies, God saved us by providing the very sacrifice that he required.

Just as God revealed himself in the most exclusive terms (monotheism), he also reveals his gospel as exclusive of any other means of salvation. And as at every other point in the story, we are completely dependent upon the Bible for our knowledge of Christ and of the Gospel. It is only through the Bible that we come to understand who Jesus is—very God and very man—and to understand the purpose for which he came, suffered, died, and was raised from the dead. We come to understand that the Gospel alone explains how the requirements of divine justice can be satisfied and sinful humanity can be rescued from the wrath of God.

Once again, God’s sovereignty and holiness are displayed even as the drama of redemption demonstrates God’s power and character. The Gospel does not reveal God’s mere intention to save. At every turn, the Bible reveals God’s power to save and his determination to do so for the glory of his own name.

The plan of redemption is set out in Scripture through a succession of covenants that find their fulfillment only in Christ. As the New Testament makes clear, there is one Gospel that is addressed to all people and all peoples. God’s determination is to redeem the people from every tongue and tribe and people and nation in order to show the excellence of his name.

The Christian worldview must also be framed around the fact that God is calling out a people, cleansed by the blood of his son. Over against the autonomous individualism of contemporary American culture, the Christian narrative establishes our identity in Christ as part of a new humanity. This new humanity is, in this age, established as the church. Those who come by faith to know the Lord Jesus Christ are incorporated into the life of the Church as a foretaste of the fullness of life in Christ that will be fully known in the kingdom yet to come.

Every worldview must explain if there can be some rescue from the human predicament, however that predicament is described. The master narrative of Christianity defines that predicament in straightforward terms — we are lost, dead in our sins, and the very enemies of God. But, thanks be to God, we are not left there. The Gospel of Jesus Christ declares salvation and redemption to all who believe in him.

Our salvation is not a matter of therapy or technique. There is nothing we can do to earn or to deserve God’s salvation. But what we were powerless to do, God did in Christ. No other promise of salvation will do. The Christian master narrative excludes all other means of rescue and redemption. This central truth explains why the Christian worldview is filled with such hope, but is grounded in such humility. God is saving a people from every tongue and tribe and people and nation, and the story of our redemption is the great turning point in the narrative, but it is not the end of the story.

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Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., serves as president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

The Manger and The Cross

Posted by Dan C. on

The days before Christmas can be a tiring season of preparation, planning, shopping, and wrapping. But I think as we prepare for the Christmas celebrations, dinners, travel, and gift giving, it’s equally important that we pause and prepare our souls for Christmas.

During this time of year, it may be easy to forget that the bigger purpose behind Bethlehem was Calvary. But the purpose of the manger was realized in the horrors of the cross. The purpose of his birth was his death.

Or to put it more personally: Christmas is necessary because I am a sinner. The incarnation reminds us of our desperate condition before a holy God.
Several years ago WORLD Magazine published a column by William H. Smith with the provocative title, “Christmas is disturbing: Any real understanding of the Christmas messages will disturb anyone” (Dec. 26, 1992).

In part, Smith wrote:

Many people who otherwise ignore God and the church have some religious feeling, or feel they ought to, at this time of the year. So they make their way to a church service or Christmas program. And when they go, they come away feeling vaguely warmed or at least better for having gone, but not disturbed.

Why aren’t people disturbed by Christmas? One reason is our tendency to sanitize the birth narratives. We romanticize the story of Mary and Joseph rather than deal with the painful dilemma they faced when the Lord chose Mary to be the virgin who would conceive her child by the power of the Holy Spirit. We beautify the birth scene, not coming to terms with the stench of the stable, the poverty of the parents, the hostility of Herod. Don’t miss my point. There is something truly comforting and warming about the Christmas story, but it comes from understanding the reality, not from denying it.

Most of us also have not come to terms with the baby in the manger. We sing, “Glory to the newborn King.” But do we truly recognize that the baby lying in the manger is appointed by God to be the King, to be either the Savior or Judge of all people? He is a most threatening person.
Malachi foresaw his coming and said, “But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.” As long as we can keep him in the manger, and feel the sentimental feelings we have for babies, Jesus doesn’t disturb us. But once we understand that his coming means for every one of us either salvation or condemnation, he disturbs us deeply.

What should be just as disturbing is the awful work Christ had to do to accomplish the salvation of his people. Yet his very name, Jesus, testifies to us of that work.

That baby was born so that “he who had no sin” would become “sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” The baby’s destiny from the moment of his conception was hell—hell in the place of sinners. When I look into the manger, I come away shaken as I realize again that he was born to pay the unbearable penalty for my sins.

That’s the message of Christmas: God reconciled the world to himself through Christ, man’s sin has alienated him from God, and man’s reconciliation with God is possible only through faith in Christ…Christmas is disturbing.

Don’t get me wrong–Christmas should be a wonderful celebration. Properly understood, the message of Christmas confronts before it comforts, it disturbs before it delights.

The purpose of Christ’s birth was to live a sinless life, suffer as our substitute on the cross, satisfy the wrath of God, defeat death, and secure our forgiveness and salvation.

Christmas is about God the Father (the offended party) taking the initiative to send his only begotten son to offer his life as the atoning sacrifice for our sins, so that we might be forgiven for our many sins.

As Smith so fitly concludes his column:

Only those who have been profoundly disturbed to the point of deep repentance are able to receive the tidings of comfort, peace, and joy that Christmas proclaims.

Amen and Merry Christmas!

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C.J. Mahaney leads Sovereign Grace Ministries in its mission to establish and support local churches. After 27 years of pastoring Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland, C.J. handed the senior pastor role to Joshua Harris on September 18, 2004, allowing C.J. to devote his full attention to Sovereign Grace. He serves on the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and on the board of The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

God’s Ways and Our Ways

Posted by Dan C. on

”For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” – Isaiah 55:8-9

I have yet to find a loving parent who would present to a child a choice between two alternatives, one of which would be extremely harmful (life terminating). Yet that is exactly what God did in presenting to Adam a choice concerning the fruit of a certain tree – ‘eat that fruit and die!’ (Gen 2:17). A wrong decision would result in physical and spiritual death, the former eventually and the latter immediately.

Concerning ‘how’ men are saved and find eternal life we come up with and love the notion that salvation ‘depends’ on human decision, as if God sent His Son to die to only to make salvation possible, when to consider such a thing, for human parents, would be entirely loathsome if not unimaginable. I actually asked a man recently if he, as a parent, would kill his child to make something, anything, merely possible and he glibly answered, “Of course not, but God did!

Concerning repentance for sin and belief unto salvation, some of us are fond of saying that God would never command us to do what we, in our own strength, are unable to do (Mark 1:14-15). I have yet however, to find any human parents who has not done exactly that, in order to demonstrate to a child, that child’s utter dependence upon them.

It seems that when it suits us, we let God be God, but when we would rather He be like us, we say He is like us. Why do we do that?

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” – Eph 2:8-9

The best I can come up with is that we think we must understand a great mystery, or we just love to boast. It would do me well to remember Abraham’s words when, while bargaining for Sodom, he said:

“Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.” – Gen 18:27

The Sovereignty of God Over His Creation

Posted by Dan C. on

“Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’ calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it. – Isa 46:8-11

Albert Barnes’ Notes:

Isa 46:10

Declaring the end from the beginning – Foretelling accurately the course of future events. This is an argument to which God often appeals in proof that he is the only true God (see Isa_41:22-23; Isa_43:12; Isa_44:26).

My counsel shall stand – My purpose, my design, my will. The phrase ‘shall stand’ means that it shall be stable, settled, fixed, established. This proves:

1. That God has a purpose or plan in regard to human affairs. If he had not, he could not predict future events, since a contingent event cannot be foreknown and predicted; that is, it cannot be foretold that an event shall certainly occur in one way, when by the very supposition of its being contingent it may happen either that way, or some other way, or not at all.

2. That God’s plan will not be frustrated. He has power enough to secure the execution of his designs, and he will exert that power in order that all his plans may be accomplished. We may observe, also, that it is a matter of unspeakable joy that God has a plan, and that it will be executed. For

(1) If there were no plan in relation to human things, the mind could find no rest. If there was no evidence that One Mind presided over human affairs; that an infinitely wise plan had been formed, and that all things had been adjusted so as best to secure the ultimate accomplishment of that plan, everything would have the appearance of chaos, and the mind must be filled with doubts and distractions. But our anxieties vanish in regard to the apparent irregularities and disorders of the universe, when we feel that all things are under the direction of an Infinite Mind, and will be made to accomplish his plans, and further his great designs.

(2) If his plans were not accomplished, there would be occasion of equal doubt and dismay. If there was any power that could defeat the purposes of God; if there was any stubbornness of matter, or any inflexible perverseness in the nature of mind; if there were any unexpected and unforeseen extraneous causes that could interpose to thwart his plans, then the mind must be full of agitation and distress. But the moment it can fasten on the conviction that God has formed a plan that embraces all things, and that all things which occur will be in some way made tributary to that plan, that moment the mind can be calm in resignation to his holy will.

And I will do all my pleasure – I will accomplish all my wish, or effect all my desire. The word rendered here ‘pleasure’ (חפץ chepēts) means properly delight or pleasure 1Sa_15:22; Psa_1:2; Psa_16:3; Ecc_5:4; Ecc_12:10; then desire, wish, will Job_31:16; and then business, cause, affairs Isa_53:10. Here it means that God would accomplish everything which was to him an object of desire; everything which he wished, or willed. And why should he not? Who has power to hinder or prevent him Rom_9:19? And why should not we rejoice that he will do all that is pleasing to him? What better evidence have we that it is desirable that anything should be done, than that it is agreeable, or pleasing to God? What better security can we have that it is right, than that he wills it? What more substantial and permanent ground of rejoicing is there in regard to anything, than that it is such as God prefers, loves, and wills?

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Albert Barnes was born in Rome, New York on December 1, 1798. He graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, in 1820, and from Princeton Theological Seminary, in 1823.

Barnes was ordained pastor of the Presbyterian church in Morristown, NJ, in 1825. He was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, 1830-67, where he resigned and was made pastor emeritus.

The Shack: Helpful or Heretical?

Posted by Dan C. on

A Critical Review by Norman L. Geisler and Bill Roach

The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity by William P. Young (Wind Blown Media, 2007, 264 pp) is a New York Times best seller with well over a million copies in print. Literally hundreds of thousands have been blessed by its message, but its message is precisely what calls for scrutiny.  Responses to The Shack range from eulogy to heresy.  Eugene Peterson, author of The Message predicted that The Shack “has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his. It’s that good!” Emmy Award Winning Producer of ABC Patrick M. Roddy declares that “it is a one of a kind invitation to journey to the very heart of God. Through my tears and cheers, I have been indeed transformed by the tender mercy with which William Paul Young opened the veil that too often separated me from God and from myself.” (http://theshackbook.com/endorsements.html). People from all walks of life are raving about this book by unknown author “Willie” Young, son of a pastor/missionary, and born in Canada. He is a graduate of Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon.

The Background of the Book
The Shack is Christian fiction, a fast-growing genre in the contemporary Christian culture. It communicates a message in a casual, easy-to-read, non-abrasive manner. From his personal experience, Young attempts to answer some of life’s biggest questions: Who is God? Who is Jesus? What is the Trinity? What is salvation? Is Jesus the only way to Heaven? If God, then why evil? What happens after I die?
             In the final section of the book titled “The Story behind THE SHACK,” he reveals that the motivation for this story comes from his own struggle to answer many of the difficult questions of life. He claims that his seminary training just did not provide answers to many of his pressing questions. Then one day in 2005, he felt God whisper in his ear that this year was going to be his year of Jubilee and restoration. Out of that experience he felt lead to write The Shack. According to Young, much of the book was formed around personal conversations he had with God, family, and friends (258-259). He tells the readers that the main character “Mack” is not a real person, but a fictional character used to communicate the message in the book. However, he admits that his children would “recognize that Mack is mostly me, that Nan is a lot like Kim, that Missy and Kate and the other characters often resemble our family members and friends” (259).

The Basic Story of the Book
             The story centers on a note that Mack, the husband and father in the story, received from “Papa,” who is supposed to be God the Father. It reads, “Mackenzie, It’s been a while. I’ve missed you. I’ll be at the shack next weekend if you want to get together” (19). From this, the story moves through the personal struggles Mack has with such questions as: Why would someone send me this letter? Does God really speak through letters? How would my seminary training respond to this interaction between God and man?  The story takes a turn when Mack’s son almost drowns while canoeing. During the chaos his daughter is abducted and eventually killed. This is what caused Mack to fall into what the book calls “The Great Sadness.” This time period is supposed to reflect his spiritual condition after the death of his daughter and the questions he has been asking for many years.
            Grieved with the death of his daughter and the possibility that the note might be from God, Mack packs his bags and heads for the shack. The point of this journey is to suggest that his traditional teaching, Sunday prayers, hymns, and approach to Christianity were all wrong. He comes to the conclusion that “cloistered spirituality seemed to change nothing in the lives of people he knew, except maybe Nan [his wife]” (63). In spite of being an unlikely encounter with God, Young uses this fictional encounter as a vehicle for Mack’s spiritual journey and encounter at the shack.
            While at the shack, Mack discovers that God is not what we expect Him to be. In fact, God the Father is a “large beaming African-American woman,” Jesus appeared to be “Middle Eastern and was dressed like a laborer, complete with tool belt and gloves,” and the Holy Spirit is named Sarayu, “a small, distinctively Asian woman.” The book identifies these three people as the Trinity (80-82). After trying to reconcile his seminary training with this new encounter with God, he concludes that what he had learned was of no help.

An Evaluation of the Book
            Young’s point is clear: forget your preconceived notions about God, forget your seminary training, and realize that God chooses to appear to us in whatever form we personally need; He is like a mixed metaphor. We cannot fall back into our religious conditioning (91). The Shack attempts to present a Christian worldview through the genre of religious fiction, but just how Christian it is remains to be seen.

Problem One: A Rejection of Traditional Christianity
Beneath the surface of The Shack is a rejection of traditional Christianity (179).  He claims that traditional Christianity did not solve his problem.  Even Seminary training didn’t help (63).  He insists that Christianity has to be revised in order to be understood, reminiscent of McClaren’s Emergent Church book titled, Everything Must Change.  However, one might question whether it is Christianity that needs revision or Christians that need to be revitalized. One thing is certain; Christianity should not be rejected because it has some hypocritical representatives.  To be sure, some Seminary training is bad, and even good Seminary training doesn’t help, if you don’t heed it. But the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater.  Christ established the Church and said the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Mt. 16:16-18).  The Shack, as gripping as its story is, trades a church occupied with people who hear the Word of God  preached for an empty shack where there is neither.

Problem Two: Experience Trumps Revelation
            An underlying problem with the message of The Shack is that it uses personal experience to trump revelation.  The solutions to life’s basic problems come from extra-biblical experience, not from Scripture (80-100).  Non-biblical voices are given precedent over the voice of God in Scripture.  These alleged “revelations” from the “Trinity” in the shack are the basis of the whole story.  While biblical truth is alluded to, it is not the authoritative basis of the message.  In the final analysis, it is experience that is used to interpret the Bible; it is not the Bible that is used to interpret experience. This leads to a denial of a fundamental teaching of Protestantism.

Problem Three: The Rejection of Sola Scriptura
            The Shack rejects the sole authority of the Bible to determine matters of faith and practice. Rather than finding a Bible by the altar in a little old country church and getting comfort and counsel from the word of God, he is instructed to go to an empty shack in the wilderness with no Bible and get all he needs to cope with the tragedies of life from extra-biblical voices. The Shack’s author rejects what “In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture…. God’s voice had been reduced to paper…. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients…. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book” (63).
            However, the Bible clearly declares that “Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17, emphasis added).  Indeed, our comfort is not found in extra-biblical revelations but is realized in that “through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom. 15:4).  In short, the Bible is sufficient for faith and practice.  No new truth beyond the Bible is needed for doctrine or living the Christian life.  Of course, this does not mean that God cannot bring biblical principles to our minds when needed through various experiences, even tragic ones. He can and He does. Nor does it mean that God cannot guide in circumstances that help us in the application of biblical principles to our lives. He can and He does. But these experiences bring no new revelation. They are merely the occasion for God focusing our attention on the only infallible written source of His revelation, the Bible and the Bible alone. To forsake this fundamental principle is to leave Protestantism for Mysticism.

Problem Four: An Unbiblical View of the Nature and Triunity of God
           In addition to an errant view of Scripture, The Shack has an unorthodox view of the Trinity. God appears as three separate persons (in three separate bodies) which seems to support Tritheism in spite of the fact that the author denies Tritheism (“We are not three gods”) and Modalism (“We are not talking about One God with three attitudes”—p. 100).  Nonetheless, Young departs from the essential nature of God for a social relationship among the members of the Trinity.  He wrongly stresses the plurality of God as three separate persons: God the Father appears as an “African American woman” (80);  Jesus appears as a Middle Eastern worker (82).  The Holy Spirit is represented as “a small, distinctively Asian woman” (82).  And according to Young, the unity of God is not in one essence (nature), as the orthodox view holds. Rather, it is a social union of three separate persons. Besides the false teaching that God the Father and the Holy Spirit have physical bodies (since “God is spirit”—Jn. 4:24), the members of the Trinity are not separate persons (as The Shack portrays them); they are only distinct persons in one divine nature.  Just as a triangle has three distinct corners, yet is one triangle. It is not three separate corners (for then it would not be a triangle if the corners were separated from it), Even so, God is one in essence but has three distinct (but inseparable) Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Problem Five: An Unbiblical View of Punishing Sin
            Another claim is that God does not need to punish sin. He states, “At that, Papa stopped her preparations and turned toward Mack. He could see a deep sadness in her eyes. ‘I am not who you think I am, Mackenzie. I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It is not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it’” (119).  As welcoming as this message may be, it at best reveals a dangerously imbalanced understanding of God.  For in addition to being loving and kind, God is also holy and just. Indeed, because He is just He must punish sin.  The Bible explicitly says that” the soul that sins shall die” (Eze. 18:2).  “I am holy, says the Lord” (Lev. 11:44).  He is so holy that Habakkuk says of God,  “You…are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong…” (Hab. 1:13).  Romans 6:23 declares: “The wages of sin is death….” And Paul added, “‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’ says the Lord” (Rom. 12:19).
            In short, The Shack presents lop-sided view of God as love but not justice. This view of a God who will not punish sin undermines the central message of Christianity—that Christ died for our sins (1 Cor. 15:1f.) and rose from the dead.  Indeed, some emergent Church leaders have given a more frontal and near blasphemous attack on the sacrificial atonement of Christ, calling it a “form of cosmic child abuse—a vengeful father, punishing his son for offences he has not even committed” (Steve Chalke, The Lost Message of Jesus, 184).  Such is the end of the logic that denies an awesomely holy God who cannot tolerate sin was satisfied (propitiated) on behalf of our sin (1 Jn. 2:1). For Christ paid the penalty for us, “being made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God through him” (2 Cor. 5:21), “suffering the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18).

Problem Six: A False View of the Incarnation
Another area of concern is a false view of the person and work of Christ. The book states, “When we three spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitations that this entailed. Even though we have always been present in this universe, we now became flesh and blood” (98).  However, this is a serious misunderstanding of the Incarnation of Christ. The whole Trinity was not incarnated.  Only the Son was (Jn. 1:14), and in His case deity did not become humanity but the Second Person of the Godhead assumed a human nature in addition to His divine nature. Neither the Father nor Holy Spirit (who are pure spirit–John 4:24) became human, only the Son did.

Problem Seven: A Wrong View of the Way of Salvation          
         Another problem emerges in the message of The Shack.  According to Young, Christ is just the “best” way to relate to the Father, not the only way (109). The “best” does not necessarily imply the only way, which then means that there may be other ways to relate to God. Such an assertion is contrary to Jesus’ claim, “I am the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes unto the Father except through me” (John14:6).  He added, “He who believes in Him [Christ] is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of  the only begotten Son of God” (Jn. 3:18).  Jesus is not merely the best way, but He is the only way to God.  Paul declared: “There is one God and one mediator between God and Men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).

Problem Eight: A Heretical View of the Father Suffering
          The book also contains a classic heresy called Patripassionism (Literally: Father Suffering).  Young claims that God the Father suffered along with the Son, saying, “Haven’t you seen the wounds on Papa [God the Father] too?’ I didn’t understand them.  ‘How could he…?’  ‘For love.  He chose the way of the cross… because of love’” (p. 165).   But both the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed (A.D. 325) made it very clear that it was Jesus alone who “suffered” for us on the Cross. And that He did this only through His human nature.  To say otherwise is to engage in “confusing the two natures” of Christ which was explicitly condemned in the Chalcedonian Creed (A.D. 451).  Suffering is a form of change, and the Bible makes it very clear that God cannot change.  “I the Lord change not” (Mal. 3:6).  “There is no shadow of change with Him” (Jas. 1:17).  When all else changes, God “remains the same” (Heb. 1:10-12). 

Problem Nine: A Denial of Hierarchy in the Godhead
The Shack also claims that there is no hierarchy in God or in human communities modeled after Him.  He believes that hierarchy exists only as a result of the human struggle for power. Young writes of God: “‘Well I know that there are three of you.  But you respond with such graciousness to each other.  Isn’t one of you more the boss than the other two…. I have always thought of God the Father as sort of being the boss and Jesus as the one following orders, you know being obedient….’ ‘Mackenzie, we have no concept of final authority among us; only unity. We are in a circle of relationship, not a chain of command…. What you’re seeing here is relationship without any overlay of power…. Hierarchy would make no sense among us’” (121).
        However, Young cites no Scripture to support this egalitarian view of God and human relations—and for good reasons since the Bible clearly affirms that there is an order of authority in the Godhead, the home, and the church.  Submission and obedience are biblical terms.  Jesus submitted to the Father: “O My Father,… not my will be done but yours” (Mt. 26:39). “He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death…” (Philip. 2:8).  In heaven “then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him, that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28).  Children are to submit to their parents: Paul urged, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord…” (Eph. 6:1).  Likewise, women are urged: “Wives submit to your own husband, as to the Lord” (Eph. 5:22). “The head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3).  Members are to “obey your leaders” (Heb. 13:17).  Indeed, citizens are commanded “to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient…” (Titus 3:1). 

The hierarchial order in the Godhead is the basis for all human relationships.  And pure love does not eliminate this; it demands it.  The Bible declares; “This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments” (1 Jn. 5:3).  Portraying God as a Mother, rather than a Father, reveals an underlying anti-masculinity in Young’s thought.  He wrote, “Males seem to be the cause of so much of the pain in the world. They account for most of the crime and many of those are perpetrated against women…. The world, in many ways, would be a much calmer and gentler place if women ruled. There would have been far fewer children sacrificed to the gods of greed and power” (148). He does not explain how this would not be a hierarchy if women “ruled” the world.

Problem Ten: Ignoring the Crucial Role of the Church in Edifying Believers
         The Shack is totally silent about the important role the community of believers plays in the life of individuals needing encouragement.  In fact there is a kind of anti-church current born of a reaction to a hypocritical, legalistic, and abusive father who was a church leader (1-3).  However, this is clearly contrary to the command of Scripture.  A bad church should not be replaced with no church but with a better church. God gave the church “pastors and teachers, to equip the saints…for building up the body of Christ…” (Eph. 4:11-12).  Paul said, “To each [one in the body] is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7).  Young replaces a Bible-based church in the wildwood with a Bible-less shack in the wild. Comfort in bereavement is sought in a lonely, Bible-less, empty shack in the wilderness where one is to find comfort by heeding deceptive presentations of God. At this point several scriptural exhortations about being aware of deceiving spirits come to mind (1 Tim. 4:1; 1 John 4:1; 2 Cor. 11:14).  As for the need for a church, the Scriptures exhort us “not to forget the assembling together as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as we see the day approaching” (Heb. 10:25).  Without the regular meeting with a body of edifying believers, proper Christian growth is inevitably stunted.

Problem Eleven: An Inclusivistic View of Who Will be Saved
         While The Shack falls short of the universalism (“All will be saved”) found in other emergent writings, it does have a wide-sweeping inclusivism whereby virtually anyone through virtually any religion can be saved apart from Christ.  According to Young,, “Jesus [said]…. ‘Those who love me come from every system that exists.  They are Buddhists or Mormons, Baptist, or Muslims,…and many who are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institution…. Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians.  I have no desire to make them Christians, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa….’ ‘Does that mean…that all roads will lead to you?’  ‘Not at all…. Most roads don’t lead anywhere.  What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you’” (184).

Again, there is no biblical support for these claims.  On the contrary, the Scriptures affirm that there is no salvation apart from knowing Christ. Acts 4:12 pronounces that “There is no other name under heaven, given among men, by which we must be saved.”  1 Tim. 2:5 insists that “There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.”  And Jesus said, “unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins” (Jn. 8:24).  For “whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (Jn. 3:36).  And “whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (Jn. 3:18).

Problem Twelve: A Wrong View of Faith and Reason
        The Shack embraces an irrational view of faith. It declares: “There are times when you choose to believe something that would normally be considered absolutely irrational.  It doesn’t mean that it is actually irrational, but it is surely not rational” (64).  Even common sense informs us that this is no way to live the Christian life. The Bible says, “’Come now let us reason together,’ says the Lord” (Isa. 1:18:). “Give a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15); “Paul…reasoned with them from the Scriptures” (Acts 17:2). “These were more fair-minded [because] they searched the Scriptures daily…whether these things be so” (Acts 17:11). “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God” (1 Jn. 4:1, emphasis added in above quotes).  Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” and reasonable Christians would add, “The unexamined faith is not worth having.”

Problem Thirteen: It Eliminates Knowledge of God
       According to Young, God is wholly other; we can’t really know Him.  He wrote: “I am God. I am who I am.  And unlike you…” (96). “I am what some would say ‘holy and wholly other than you’” (97). “I am not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think” (97).  One basic problem with this view is that it is self-defeating.  How could we know God is “wholly other”?  Wholly other than what?  And how can we know what God is not unless we know what He is?  Totally negative knowledge of God is impossible.  Further, according to the Bible, we can know what God is really like from both general and special revelation. For “Since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen…even his eternal power and Godhead…” (Rom.1:20).  As for special revelation, Jesus said, “If you had known me, you would have known my Father also” (Jn. 14:7) and “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (Jn. 14:6). God does speak of Himself in His written Word (2 Tim. 3:16), and when He does it tells us something about the way He really is. His words are not deceptive but descriptive.

Problem Fourteen: It Entails Divine Deception
         According to The Shack, God is revealed in ways contrary to His nature. The Father is revealed as a black woman and having a body when He is neither. The reason given for this is that in love God revealed Himself in ways that would be acceptable to the recipient (who had a bad father image) but were not so.  But this is case of divine deception.  God is a spirit (Jn. 4:24) and He has no body (Lk. 24:39). God is never called a “Mother” in the Bible. It is deceptive to portray God’s Nature in any way that He is not, even though ones motive is loving (91-92).  A lie told with a loving motive is still a lie.  Of course, when God speaks to finite creatures He engages in adaptation to human limits but never in accommodation to human error.  Portraying God as having a black female body is like saying storks bring babies.  Young calls it a “mask” that falls away (111). But God does not have masks, and He does not masquerade.  “It is impossible for God to lie” (Heb. 6:18). Paul speaks of the “God who cannot lie” (Titus 1:2). It is only the Devil, the Father of lies, who engages in appearing in forms he is not. “For even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14). To be sure, there are figures of speech in Scripture, speaking of God as a rock or a hen, but they are known to be metaphorical and not literal, since there are no immaterial rocks and God does not have feathers.

Conclusion
          The Shack may do well for many in engaging the current culture, but not without compromising Christian truth. The book may be psychologically helpful to many who read it, but it is doctrinally harmful to all who are exposed to it. It has a false understanding of God, the Trinity, the person and work of Christ, the nature of man, the institution of the family and marriage, and the nature of the Gospel. For those not trained in orthodox Christian doctrine, this book is very dangerous. It promises good news for the suffering but undermines the only Good News (the Gospel) about Christ suffering for us.  In the final analysis it is only truth that is truly liberating.  Jesus said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32).  A lie may make one feel better, but only until he discovers the truth.  This book falls short on many important Christian doctrines. It promises to transform people’s lives, but it lacks the transforming power of the Word of God (Heb. 4:12) and the community of believers (Heb. 10:25). In the final analysis, this book is not a Pilgrim’s Progress, but doctrinally speaking The Shack is more of a Pilgrim’s Regress.

*Dr. Geisler has a BA, MA, ThM, and PhD (in philosophy). He is an author of some 70 books and has taught philosophy and ethics at the College and Graduate level for fifty years. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Apologetics and Theology at Veritas Evangelical Seminary (www.VeritasSeminary.com). His articles and materials are available at www.normgeisler.com.

God’s Wrath Against Unrighteousness

Posted by Dan C. on

God gave them up. . .

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

The wrath of God isn’t reserved solely for the second coming of Christ, or the final judgment when those who rejected The Son will be cast into outer darkness. God’s wrath against sin is also demonstrated right now, right here, on planet earth, in our country, in your city, on your street, perhaps even in your home.

We are told the reason for God’s wrath being revealed right here, right now, is the failure to acknowledge God; the general knowledge of God that is in the heart of every man. This would apply not only to the professed atheist, but all those for whom there is a god, but whose god is not the sovereign God who created the universe and everything in it,

We are then given three ways that those that fail to acknowledge God are ‘given over’. The word translated “gave them over” or “gave them up” is a word that basically means “to give into the hands of another, to give over into one’s power, or to deliver one up to the custody of another.” In other words, God removes His restraining hand, that bit of moral conscience that we all seem to have because of that inner knowledge of God, and men are completely controlled by their own sinful natures, seemingly without any remorse or sense of conscience concerning their deeds.

Men are ‘given over’ to the impurity of their hearts, to dishonorable passions, and to debased minds. And while we tend to focus on sins of homosexuality, Paul also gives us a ‘vice list’ that covers ‘all manner of unrighteousness’ not necessarily specific to sexual sin! Paul is telling us when we at refuse to acknowledge God as He is revealed in His creation, that there exists a very slippery slope that hits bottom with God removing his restraining hand (moral conscience) from our lives and with us being ‘given over, given up, released to our sinful nature, and possibly abandoned by God.

My friend, dear reader, if that’s true, it has to be the worst possible state any living person could be in – abandoned by God, and without hope!

Our prayer this morning is that if you are reading this, God is still speaking to you and you are listening.

If you are reading this and think it nonsense – that God is not angry at your sin and even now He is not revealing His Holy wrath against it – perhaps that God doesn’t even exist, think again. You are in grave danger, and as an earlier passage in the same chapter of Romans tells us – you stand without excuse , without any reasonable defense), before the holy, perfect, and just judge of His entire universe!

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“God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

Man’s Will and God’s Will – Horatius Bonar

Posted by Dan C. on

“Cannot I do with you as the potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in my hand, O house of Israel.” – Jer. 18:6.

“I do not deny that in conversion man himself wills. In everything that he does, thinks, feels, he of necessity wills. In believing he wills; in repenting he wills; in turning from his evil ways he wills. All this is true. The opposite is both untrue and absurd. But while fully admitting this, there is another question behind it of great interest and movement. Are these movements of man’s will towards good the effects of the forthputting of God’s will? Is man willing, because he has made himself so, or because God has made him so? Does he become willing entirely by an act of his own will, or by chance, or by moral suasion, or because acted on by created causes and influences from without?

I answer unhesitatingly, he becomes willing, because another and a superior will, even that of God, has come into contact with his, altering its nature and its bent. This new bent is the result of a change produced upon it by Him who alone, of all beings, has the right, without control, to say, in regard to all events and changes, “I will”. The man’s will has followed the movement of the Divine will. God has made him willing. God’s will is first in the movement, not second. Even a holy and perfect will depends for guidance upon the will of God. Even when renewed it still follows, it does not lead. Much more an unholy will, for its bent must be first changed; and how can this be, if God is not to interpose His hand and power? ”

Horatius Bonar (1808-1889), Scottish minister and hymn writer.

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Above excerpted from the larger work by the same title, which can be read here.

On My Mind: The Skinny God – By David Wells

Posted by Dan C. on

Many years ago, J. B. Phillips wrote a book called Your God is Too Small. It was quite popular at the time, in 1952, although it now seems rather quaint. The juvenile understanding of God Phillips was attacking then is, by contemporary standards, rather innocent. This, however, is a book which I believe should be written afresh every decade. For is it not the case that our internal bias (cf. Rom. 1:21-5) constantly tilts us away from God’s centrality and toward our own? And does this not lead us to focus more on ourselves and less on him? Even worse, don’t we then substitute our importance for his greatness?

This inward bias is now being mightily encouraged by our experience of the modern world, the upshot of which is our fascination with our self. Those who are well fed seldom think about food but for the hungry this becomes a consuming preoccupation. And for modern people, the self has likewise become an obsession. We are the starved. How else can we explain the fact that America has half the world’s clinical psychologists and one third of the world’s psychiatrists? Over approximately the last thirty years, the number of clinical psychologists has increased 350%, clinical social workers 320%, and family counselors 680%, so that today we have two psychotherapists for every dentist and there are more counselors than librarians. The plagues of the modern self are providing sustenance for an extraordinary number of professionals, as well as driving a burgeoning publishing industry.

At the root of these statistics are two related developments. On the one hand, it is undeniable that life in our contemporary world is extraordinarily difficult, that the toll it extracts is high, and that the wounds it inflicts are deep. We, today, live with more stress, with higher levels of anxiety, than any prior generation. We have more people passing through our lives on a daily basis than ever before because of telephone, fax, e-mail, and even television and yet we are often lonely because so few ever matter to us personally. We often are not rooted in any place but wander around our society like perpetual migrants and we may not even have families to which we are connected in any meaningful way. The constant change, the terrible speed of it, the escalating number of choices we have to make, all extract their cost. And we must also live in a society that is fragmenting in fundamental ways. Between 1960 and 1993, violent crime increased 560%, single parent households 300%, births to unmarried mothers 400%, and teen suicide 200%. So, it is no wonder that we feel alarmed and insecure and that we also become preoccupied with the wounds and pains within.

On the other hand, many (even in the Christian world) have drunk deeply at the trough of popularized psychology and appear to accept its two basic assumptions. First, we believe that we can find release from these pains through the right technique. If we are anxious, guilty, insecure, lost, unmotivated, unappreciated, ineffective, or friendless, we need worry no more about it. There is an answer, though we will have to pay to get it. Second, we have come to believe that our top priority should be that we seek our own authenticity before all else and that others, such as spouses or friends, may have to be treated as a threat to our own growth. Hence, where these assumptions have intruded upon the Church, our spirituality has become extremely privatized, highly individualistic, inimical to commitments, and quite ethically indifferent. Because this is so, we lose our appetite for God, our taste for his Word, and our sense of dependence on Christ. Our God, too, has become too small and is now often lost amidst our inner preoccupations.

There are, of course, those who genuinely need professional psychological care but the overwhelming proportion of those who have cast their faith in psychological terms do not. Their appetite for the therapeutic has come about for other reasons. In part, it reflects their own inner emptiness and the pain which this creates; in part, it rests on our growing cultural sufficiency, that what God’s grace, power, and regeneration once did, we can now do for ourselves; in part, it reflects a greatly diminished sense of sin and our refusal, quite often, to bear the pain of any self-reproach at all; and in part, it seems to reflect our lost ability to see any purpose in life outside of the self, an inability that both fuels our self-indulgence and stokes our need for more distraction.

What seems so obvious to anxious, pained, bewildered moderns is what is so wrong. We are having to learn again, even in the Church, that Christ’s paradox is always true: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:39). Losing one’s life flies in the face of all of the counsel we are receiving today that it is by finding the self, cultivating the self, expanding the self, and actualizing the self, that we will find life. Today, self-restraint and the self-abnegation‹which faith requires‹have become obscenities. And we miss the point entirely if we think that this is simply a quarrel between two competing views of therapy.

No, what is at stake is whether or not we will be able to see the greatness of God, and whether what we see will enter into the innermost fibers of our being, for this is where our true spiritual health resides. The greatness of his power, wisdom, and goodness, and his greatness in creating, sustaining, and ruling over all of life, are not simply doctrines to be talked about but truths to be appropriated. His greatness in giving and judging his Son in our place, as well as his greatness for what he has yet to do one day in putting truth forever on the throne and error forever on the scaffold, should be matters of great weight to us and great joy for us. The psalmist spoke of longing, of fainting for God, of being enraptured with his beauty (Ps. 84:1-2), of having a compelling thirst for him (Ps. 42:1). How out of place this would be in many of our churches today! The truth is that our diminished “god” simply lacks the power to summon up such longing, such hope, such pleasure, in those who have come to worship him. But if our God has become small and skinny, he has been diminished only in our understanding and experience. He has not really been diminished. So why can we not hope that the Church will yet be surprised to discover his greatness afresh? Why can we not hope that those who long for God, who are enraptured by his beauty, who thirst deeply for him, will become the norm rather than the exception? I know of no reason.

This article first appeared in the July/August 1997 issue of Modern Reformation.

Dr. David F. Wells is the Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts

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He is Risen!

Posted by Dan C. on

Perhaps the greatest testimony of the importance of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is found in the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthian church:

“And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” – 1 Cor 15:14-20

Paul provides six disastrous consequences if there had been no bodily resurrection:

1) preaching Christ would be senseless (v. 14);

2) faith in Christ would be useless (v. 14);

3) all the witnesses and preachers of the resurrection would be liars (v. 15);

4) no one would be redeemed from sin (v. 17);

5) all former believers would have perished (v.18); and

6) Christians would be the most pitiable people on the earth (v. 19).

But Christ has risen from the dead and “has become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (v. 20), assuring that we will follow Him in resurrection.