Cruelty, or consequence?

I started reading through the book of Ezekiel a while back, and one doesn't have to read too much before realizing the intense displeasure and anger that God felt toward the inhabitants of Jerusalem.  The first several chapters describe how God was planning a siege by a foreign army against the city that was to result in starvation and even cannibalism (ch. 5, vv. 9-10).  Chapter 5, verses 5-6 state pretty clearly what God was upset about, and in chapter 6, verse 10, Ezekiel records God as saying, "I did not threaten to bring this disaster on them without a reason."

A thought that struck me after reading these chapters is how a lot of people - especially non-believers, but sadly even some claiming to believe - would consider such actions on the part of God to be too harsh and evidence that God cannot be a God of love.  After all, was Israel not his chosen people?  Were they not through whom God was going to reveal the Messiah?

Yet in these chapters, God is very repetitious as to not only what he was angry about, but what he was going to do about it - and what he eventually did do about it.  Therefore, one can only conclude that God had given his people fair warning to repent, i.e. to turn from their idolatry and turn back to Him, the One who lovingly brought them out of the brutality of slavery in the first place.

Other Old Testament books also make it plainly clear that the Israelites as a whole - not just the residents of Jerusalem - had been given much warning about staying away from the things that displeased God at other times in the past.  Yet most times the nation as a whole, apart from those few who sought God, would be stubborn and "rebellious", in God's words, would keep on seeking their false gods.

So in light of God's patience and His repeated warnings in the form of the many prophets that He sent to warn his people, was God cruel or were the people simply reaping the consequences of their rebellion, getting their 'just desserts'?

I would argue that true cruelty would have been God striking people down with absolutely no warning whatsoever.  This would be akin to a father spanking his child with absolutely no warning whatsoever that the child was repeatedly doing something disrespectful or rebellious that the father was growing more angry about.

Yet because God loves us, He gives us fair warning when we're going astray.  But all rebellion must eventually be met with consequences if it continues in the face of constant warnings.

If my children, when they were small, had the bad habit of trying to touch a hot stove element, what should I as a loving father have done?  I believe if I was cruel, I would have thought, 'Let them touch the darn thing.  At least they'll learn the hard way not to do it the next time.'  But as a loving father I would have slapped their hand if I saw it getting too close if my verbal warnings were being ignored.  The pain of a slapped hand would have been a better substitute for the pain of a burnt hand.

What I mean by this is that often pain is, unfortunately, a necessary means of correction.  We humans are often too stubborn and arrogant to listen to warnings or learn from the mistakes of others, and too prideful to think that we won't repeat any mistakes.  As Scripture so rightly states, "Pride comes before destruction, and an arrogant spirit before a fall." (Proverbs 16:18).

Destruction and falls are often quite painful, but I would argue that they never result from a lack of  warning.  Whether the inhabitants of ancient Jerusalem or you and I in the here and now, God will send many people and situations into our lives to warn us when we're on a bad road, when we're heading toward making a harmful decision.  He'll even give us that sense of conviction, that heavy feeling in our heart and mind that really should or shouldn't do this-or-that - that is, unless we've worked hard at suppressing that conviction, or conscience.

It's at that point that we need to make a decision:  do we do what our hearts know is right, or do we do things 'our way'?  The inhabitants of ancient Jerusalem decided - as repeatedly and clearly stated - to continue to stiff-arm God, and they paid dearly for it.  What about you?  Is life always about doing things your way, or do you have the sensitivity to be open to what God might have to say, again through using people and situations in your life?

I know that some people reading this might be wondering why we have to be punished in the first place, why we must suffer consequences for rebellion against God.  You might be thinking, 'Why should I be punished for not doing something God's way?  I thought He gave us free will?  If He's a loving God, He'll respect our free will and not punish me for not living according to what the Bible says.'

"Woe to the one who argues with his Maker - one clay pot among many.  Does clay say to the one forming it:  What are you making?  Or does your work say:  He has no hands?" (Isaiah 45:9)

If you're a believer and you know that God is your maker, why do you - a clay pot - argue with God?  Or why do you keep ignoring the counsel of Scripture and that of the people and situations that God brings your way, out of love with a desire to protect you?

If you're a non-believer, when will you open yourself up to the notion that perhaps you're not the end-all and be-all to existence, that there is something - Someone - greater than the human will and spirit, and that you're actually accountable to Him?  How many more times will you try and fail, or strive and find no satisfaction, or suffer pain and loss until you realize that it's just better to acknowledge God and to do things his way, to let Him run your life - to give the steering wheel over to Him?

He's not trying to bring pain and suffering into your life, but He wants to warn and protect you from the consequences of bad decisions.  He didn't inspire the 40+ authors of what is now called the Bible to write things to make you miserable and bored and bound by religious tradition; He wrote commandments and rules and laws and guidelines so that things may "go well" with you in this life, and in the life beyond.  Out of love, so that you don't have to suffer for an eternity.

But again, there are consequences to decisions to rebel against God.  It's just a fact of existence, and whether you believe or not there's simply no getting around it!  Because God is your maker, He and He alone has the right to decide what they are, and thus He has the right to decide to bless you for decisions that are in obedience to his word and to punish you for decisions that are made out of stubborn, willful, prolonged rebellion to His word.

Stated bluntly, God made the rules.  He decides what's right and wrong.  And your decisions affect not just your quality of life here on earth but also your eternity.  He made Heaven and Hell, and He decides how a person ends up in either place.  If you're upset about all of this, is it worth refusing to accept the rules and suffering the consequences for ever and ever (and ever)?  Is "your way" really that important?  Remember about pride coming before destruction?  Pride sends people to Hell, NOT God.  He could have been cruel in this regard, but the loving God has given us the choice of where we end up; we aren't "sent" by Him to either place.  Sound like pretty fair rules to me.

If you're still angry with God and think all this is totally unfair, shake your fist all you want, but think about the power and sovereignty of just Who you're shaking it at.  And think about whether you'd rather heed His loving warnings now, or face the consequences one day after it's too late to change your mind.  Consider this description of what will happen on the day when Jesus judges everyone who has ever lived throughout history.  Whose side do YOU want to be on?

"Then I saw a great white throne and One seated on it.  Earth and heaven fled from His presence, and no place was found for them.  I also saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.  Another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged according to their works by what was written in the books.

Then the sea gave up its dead, and Death and Hades gave up their dead; all were judged according to their works.  Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.  This is the second death, the lake of fire.  And anyone not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire."  (Revelation 20:11-15)

A happy ending

It's hard to imagine anyone but the most hard-core of people not liking stories with a happy ending.  It seems as though everyone I've ever met or heard about seems to like them.  Whether it's a huge volume like Lord Of The Rings or the Narnia series - the books or the movies - or whether it's something very Hollywood like Pretty Woman or wonderfully inspiring like Rudy or the recent movie The Blind Side, there's just something that draws people of all cultures, belief systems, and socio-economic status to stories like this, real or fictional.

It's almost as though we all have this built-in desire for true justice and for things to work out right in the end.  But as soon as the book is shut or the final movie credits start to roll, we're forced to come down off the high and step back into reality.  'Too bad things couldn't be that way in my life', you might think, or 'If only things like that could really come true'.  Sadly, these are thoughts we're more apt to think in our youth.  By the time most of us reach our thirties, we don't even entertain thoughts of any such wonderful things happening in our lives.

But is this true?  Is there really no happy ending for our lives?  (Most of you know where I'm going with this, but bear with me.)  Is life really nothing more than "death and taxes"?  You know, even speaking as a Christian, there are days when I lose perspective and really get bogged down and even depressed about life.  Hey, I'm only human after all - even the most spiritually inclined people can get down about things.

Before I decided to put the full weight of my trust in the promise of the Bible - eternal life to all who believe in the name of Jesus Christ - I must admit that I had no hope of anything and I got regularly discouraged and depressed.  Thoughts of suicide entered the mix on occasion.  Sure, I was working toward a university degree and my future was full of promise, but because I thought I'd be extinct at the end of my life span, I didn't know what I was ultimately working toward.

What was the point if this life here on earth was all there was or would be?  What would be the point of trying to leave a legacy when I would have no recall of it once I died?

But now, seeing things through the lens of the Bible, I see this life entirely differently.  I've never really had a "bad day" since I asked Jesus to forgive me and to become the Lord of my life; it's more like a "few bad hours" at most.  And I realize that life is so much more than money and achievement, although at times it's easy to lose perspective of the important things in life.

The non-believer thinks that people like me are living a fantasy, trying to think "happy thoughts" to ease the pain and burden of this life through belief in a make-believe deity, a figment of my imagination.  I've never been a happy-go-lucky sort of person, but rather a deep and reasoned individual.  I devote a great deal of time and energy into things before making a decision about them, and my decision to accept God's gentle nudges in my life in order to believe in him - as much as I tried to resist at first - were no different.  God was gently pounding away at my thick, narrow-minded, assumptive skull for about two years before the reality of his existence became glaringly obvious to me.  And once that occurred, only then did the promise of eternal life - of the greatest happy ending imaginable - also become glaringly obvious to me.

I know that non-believers think people like me are deluded, brainwashed - whatever - to believe in what the Bible has to say about anything, let alone this promise of eternal life to those who put their faith in some historical figure named Jesus.  But even though I've mentioned this in a previous post, it bears paraphrased repeating now:

What if the Bible is for real?  What if its claims are actually true?  If this is the case, what do I have to gain by believing what it says about Heaven and Hell, for example, and what do I have to lose by not believing?

I realized that if I was wrong and the Bible was right, then I'd be paying the price for an eternity, one of separation from God in a place the Bible calls Hell.  Could I have rationalized Hell out of existence if I didn't want to believe it wasn't for real?  Likewise with Heaven?  Did I want to take the chance and not believe in God and the Bible because I was arrogant, prideful, or afraid of what others might think of me?

I eventually decided that I'd rather assume that God and the Bible are for real - the price would be too great and horrible not to! - and in so doing I accepted Jesus into my life.  Since then, the confirmation of the reality of God and his unfathomable love (not fear of him anymore!) and the absolute truth of the Bible (and no other documents claiming to be "scripture") has been very real and very immense:  God's Spirit living within me has been fast at work revealing these things ever since.  And therefore I have the most unshakable, most confident assurance that by one simple act of faith several years ago - a moment, really - my existence will indeed have a happy ending on the basis of the claims of the Bible, not on fantasy.

Although this conclusion seems foolish to many, I live day to day with this assurance that they will never have apart from Jesus Christ, and therefore I don't fear death - or life - like they do (even though they don't admit it).  If this hope is my "crutch", so be it.  But I'd rather have a crutch like God in my life than the meaningless and non-eternal crutches like status, possessions, career and/or climbing the corporate ladder, drugs, self-help books, atheism, evolutionism, New Age gurus and the like that non-believers put their faith and trust in.

The gullible ones

(This post is not intended to make fun of or insult non-believers; it has not been written in a sarcastic tone.  Rather, some observations will be made about how they view believers in God in order to set the stage for my main points later on.  So if you're a non-believer, please note this and maintain an open mind as you read this post.)

Non-believers make some pretty interesting assumptions about believers in God, one of them being that only gullible people would put their faith in some unseen entity and give it a title like "God".  It's as though a non-believer making such an assumption thinks that some Bible-thumping preacher did some 'ooga booga' sort of brain-washing speech that caused people to believe in and follow God like blind, mindless robots.  They assume the believer left their brain at the door and are now under the control not of an infinite Creator, but rather a figment of their imagination that allows those preaching the message of this God to exploit believers for the sake of mind control and financial gain.  (Lest non-believers think that they are not under such exploitation themselves from non-spiritual interests, I'll tactfully discuss the blindness of non-believers later on.)

What I also find interesting is how non-believers will never sincerely ask just how such people came to believe in God for fear that the message they hear might cause them to get "sucked in" themselves.  To avoid this possibility, they instead stand at arm's length and make assumptions about this God and those who are his followers.  Unfortunately, their assumptions are made with an air - even an arrogance - of authority, as though they could possibly know more about God than those who actually follow and claim to have an intimate personal relationship with him.  This is no more outlandish than someone assuming that a complete stranger to you and your friend knows more about your friend than you do.  And what's worse is how the masses of non-believers will buy into these assumptions rather than, as mentioned above, objectively asking the believer about what brought them to faith.

In other words, non-believers accuse believers of gullibility, but aren't they ultimately the more gullible?  They are basing their beliefs about God upon false information borne out of a lack of experience and relationship with him.  They haven't walked both sides of the "spiritual fence", so to speak, like a believer has, yet they talk as though they know what being a believer is all about, as though they've 'been there and done that', spiritually speaking.

I have also noticed how nearly everything a non-believer mentions about a believer is negative.  Countless believers throughout history have given testimony of the power of God to heal broken lives, bodies, and relationships - in many cases baffling the intellectual powers of their day (read the book of Romans, chapter 1, in particular verse 22) - and yet the non-believers have constantly tried to find human or tangible explanations for these miracles.  The idea of an unseen entity, mysterious and more powerful than them, is scary because they cannot explain or control it, so they do their best to try to discredit it.  Because God can't fit into their "box" of understanding, in their minds he therefore must and should not be for real.  They want control because they think being under the control of the one who created them is somehow a bad thing.

They also only see man's religious attempts to please God, the "he loves me, he loves me not" sort who think they're believers, and blind themselves (or are blinded?) to those who enjoy the non-religious relationship of grace through Jesus Christ that God originally intended for everyone, the one which only becomes real to those who want and accept this relationship (these are the true, "saved" believers who have put their faith in Jesus Christ).  Therefore, in the eyes of non-believers, nothing good can come out of believing in God despite testimonies of true believers that indicate otherwise because all they see (rather, want to see) is the pious, holier-than-thou, religious attempts at living up to a system of man-made do's-and-don'ts and the hypocrisy of failure when they don't live up to it.

(If you're a non-believer and anything I've written so far is offensive or questionable to you because you've assumed I've just pulled these thoughts out of mid-air, don't take it personally.  I haven't invented these notions of how non-believers view believers in God; I've simply tried to state the mindset I had while I was a non-believer for the first 22 years of my life.  Your mindset may differ from my old one on a few specific points, but overall your view of God and his followers is probably not much different, but I digress ...)

If I've seemed surprised at how non-believers make assumptions and accusations about believers and seem to be blinded to the truth of who God really is, I'm actually not.  It doesn't surprise me in the least because I was once a blinded assumer and accuser myself.  I was deceived into thinking that I was under nobody's control - man's or otherwise - when in reality I was under the total and absolute control of the enemy of God who wants nothing more than for all humans to believe that he and God do not exist.

This enemy, who goes by the name of Satan or the title of "Devil", does everything possible to keep full control over us without us even knowing it.  Why would he want such control?  Because he wants to drag us along with him into the eternal punishment and torment that he knows he has earned through his rebellion toward God.  Why does he not want non-believers to know that he exists and controls them?  Because he wants them to live under the illusion that they are in control.  Then they won't resist when he leads them around like puppets on a string, distracting them and leading them ever further from the message of Jesus.  For if they hear this message and put their faith in Jesus, they will have found the one and only means by which they can forever escape Satan's control and find eternal life rather than endure eternal punishment and torment.  (Read about Satan's ultimate demise in the book of Revelation, chapter 20.)

Even though Satan tries to keep people from knowing about and believing in Jesus, people unfamiliar with the Bible might be surprised to realize that even Satan and his demonic agents know about and believe in the existence, power, and true identity of Jesus.  Here is one such account:

"In the synagogue there was a man with an unclean demonic spirit who cried out with a loud voice, "Leave us alone!  What do You have to do with us, Jesus - Nazarene?   Have You come to destroy us?  I know who You are - the Holy One of God!"" (Luke 4:34)

Jesus also had a lot to say about Satan's control over unbelievers while he was here on earth.  Here is just one passage:

"Why don't you understand what I [Jesus] say?  Because you cannot listen to my word.   You are of your father the Devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires.  He ... has not stood in the truth, because there is no truth in him.  When he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of liars.  Yet because I [Jesus] tell the truth, you do not believe me ... If I tell the truth, why don't you believe me?  [Because] The one who is from God listens to God's words.  This is why you [non-believers] don't listen, because you are not from God." (John 8:43-47)

In other words, the Father of the believer in Jesus Christ is none other than God himself, whereas the father of all non-believers - and non-Christians - is none other than the Devil himself.  So again, non-believers don't understand believers nor do they really want to understand because they are under the controlling lies of Satan - according to this and other Bible passages - who wants them to remain blind to the truth of God, a truth that if accepted means forgiveness and eternal life from God that Satan once had but no longer has.  Satan is like Adolf Hitler at the end of the Second World War, who wanted to drag everyone else down with him instead of signing a peace treaty because he knew his end was near.  He wants as many gullible non-believers as possible to share in the eternal suffering that he knows is awaiting him.

If a non-believer ever gets the nerve to question me about my level of intelligence and/or degree of integrity, and/or accuses me of gullibility because I believe in God - in particular Jesus - I hope I will have the ability to calmly and rationally ask them if they've ever been fully a non-believer AND a believer like I have.  I have the right and the authority to state what I claim to know about God/Jesus because unlike the vast majority of humanity, I've lived fully immersed for several years on both sides of the "spiritual fence".  Any non-believer simply does NOT have any such authority because they cannot speak objectively about what it means to be a believer - they simply haven't walked a mile in my shoes or those of any other believer, so their arguments frankly lack any and all credibility.

Non-believers can make all the assumptions they want about me, but they can never change or take away the account of how I lived when I hated and rejected the notion of God, how this God chose to make himself known to me and begin to change my heart, how I eventually accepted this loving God and his free, no-strings-attached offer of forgiveness and eternal life, and how my life has been all the better ever since.  In other words, non-believers are unfortunately the gullible ones - not believers - and I say unfortunately because their non-belief has them headed straight to a horrific eternity unless they choose, only while still on this side of eternity, to accept the free gift of salvation and the resulting eternal life offered only through faith in Jesus Christ.

"The End"

Most people generally don't like to think about what will happen after they die. I know people in the insurance industry who find that one of the hardest things to do is bring up the topic of life insurance with people. Some people are simply too pre-occupied with life, but most want to sweep the topic of death under the rug and avoid dealing with it for as long as possible. People tend to do this with things that are too mysterious or especially that they lack control over. They get scared if they think about the idea of their own death too much, so their typical defense mechanism is to ignore it altogether.

But there is a great danger in ignoring this reality. While they're alive, people risk their loved ones suffering hardship if they fear death to the point of not getting a will made up or setting up a life insurance policy. But the Bible speaks of a far greater tragedy if the reality of death is not addressed on this side of eternity. And even those who do take care of things like life insurance aren't really better off if they don't come to God to set up what I like to call their "death insurance" policy.

So what about you? When the credits in the story of your life roll to a close and the words "The End" appear, what will be your fate? Will it be what the atheists assume (with nothing to back it up), and you'll no longer exist in body and soul? Will you just extinguish? If so, then all your pursuits for pleasure and wealth are all in vain. They have no meaning whatsoever. You'll just live it up in this life, die and be extinguished forever, and therefore have no memory or enjoyment of all you strived to be and to do. What good was it that you enjoyed pleasures apart from God if you won't remember them? What a great thing to look forward to (not)! And to think that people consider Christians weird because they place their hope in a future beyond this life.

So what is this future that Christians have their hope in? Well, the Christian who wastes this side of eternity consumed with chasing pleasure and wealth will also be disappointed by not being able to enjoy any of these things or take them into eternity. However, they will still be ushered into an eternal existence with God because they had asked for Jesus to forgive and cleanse them at some point during their earthly existence, when they were in the right frame of mind and not chasing after the wind.

Did you get that? The Bible makes it clear that a decision to accept the forgiveness of Jesus must be made while a person is still alive on this earth. Doing it while face-to-face with Jesus would be a no-brainer. Therefore, God requires us to have faith, to trust in what is unseen on earth before it is seen after our body dies. And by the way, even the most hard-core atheist or devil-worshipper will be meeting Jesus face-to-face after they die physically to give an account of their lives to Him. (I wonder what they'll say once they meet the very One who created them yet denied the existence of?) The Bible even states "every knee should bow ... and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord" (Philippians 2:10). Some translations replace the word "should" with "shall". Also notice the emphasis on the word every (as the atheist and non-Christian squirm ...).

Some non-believers might have the mindset that this won't happen if they choose not to believe in what the Bible says about life after death. The might be like me who, while I was making every effort to reject God in my life, had the self-conceived notion that people will experience life-after-death according to what god or system (or lack thereof) they believe in. So, for example, I thought that the atheist would be granted their belief of non-existence after death, and the Muslim or Jew or Christian their idea of eternal life after death. In other words, I had the fool-brained notion that our thoughts would somehow have the power to dictate our reality after death. As for my reality, I didn't know where I would go because I didn't want to think about it. I was too scared of the idea of my own death and trying desperately to enjoy my life apart from God, so I chose to ignore it.

But I'll say the same thing I've said in a previous post and which I'll repeat in future ones: you can deny, refute, and ignore the Bible all you want, but what if you're wrong? What if the Bible is for real, and what if everyone does end up in eternity, either heaven or hell depending on whether or not they accept the free gift of salvation that Jesus offers while still alive here on earth? Can you afford to be wrong?

Because "The End" isn't really the end after all. The Bible makes it clear that we live on in spirit after our body dies. The person who chose to get right with God and get their "death insurance" policy while still alive on this earth will live an eternity in His presence free from the pain and frustrations of the existence they had on earth. But the person who chose to ignore God and the reality of death will live an eternity separated from His presence - away from His acts of kindness that He showed to them on earth, shown so that they would come to Him. That person will instead be at the mercy of Satan and all his angels ("demons") - along with all people who rejected God - in a place of eternal torment and regret that the Bible calls "hell". A place where no good and all bad occurs, all the time and forever.

By the way, whoever has the idea that they'll get to see their friends and relatives in hell has no basis for this assumption. You can bet that God's enemies will all be working together to ensure that every other soul there with them will not be able to have any of the good that they've been denied.

So what will your end be? Actually, the choice is up to you, not God. God doesn't send people to hell, but we choose whether we go there or not. God has given us this power of choice because he wants our obedience to Him to be chosen and not forced. Now if that's not love, then I don't know what is!

Again, our end depends upon whether we want to accept God's forgiveness through Jesus or not. I sincerely hope that any non-believer reading this will make the right choice.