Rephrased

So the Fanbase asked me a question about my last post.  Seems it caused some confusion.  This blog is usually a very raw vomiting of my thoughts such that I  rarely remember what I've written once it's posted.  But she is a dear friend and actually engages this rambling enough to think about it (which is saying something) so I went back over my post and am now trying to offer a fuller explanation, which will delve into the theological.

First, let me say that I wasn't making up the ideas I talked about in the last post.  I was merely rumbling them around in my own mind, much like a rat thoroughly inspects its treats before eating them.  The ideas themselves are all well established, centuries-old ideas that have been well treated in Christian record.  They are, in fact, some of the sharper dividing lines between certain large chunks of denominations.  All this to say, I'm not in any danger of moving beyond the lighted sphere of orthodoxy, in the sense that each side of the debate is considered orthodox to some major denominations.  Though if you've only been steeped in one side, the other will no doubt seem nearly heretical.

The funny thing is if you are a Christian, you probably know people whose denomination is on the other side of the fence and never knew there was a fence.  I know for a fact the Fanbase has regularly attended churches on both sides, and judging by her questions, didn't notice.  This is not a slight to the Fanbase.  I mean it only to say, I am struggling with some obscure points of doctrine that mean a lot to me, but won't really impact most people...which is why I hate theology as a discipline in the first place.  End of preface, now the meat.

The struggle for me is over the doctrines of penal substitutionary atonement and imputed righteousness.  These things are endlessly discussed in theological texts, blogs, websites, etc.  So feel free to delve as deep down that rabbit hole as you want.  Here's a good place to start: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/inebriateme/2014/11/thoughts-against-penal-substitutionary-atonement/.  In very brief, the first is a teaching of what Jesus' dying and rising again accomplished and how.  The second is about how salvation works.

Penal substitution says that Jesus had to die to pay for our sins.  The theory, and I stress these are all theories since God didn't see fit to lay it out in long-winded grammar (though I will argue by the end that it is laid out in other ways).  Anyway, the theory says that God is both just and loving.  So he can't abide sin, but he has to forgive it.  To be just, he has to punish the guilty.  But that means killing all his children that he loves.  So God himself decides to take his own punishment for us.  So he sends the aspect of himself known as the Logos or Son to be a human so that he can be fully divine and fully human.  In this way he can 1. support the weight of all humanity's guilt for all sins for all time.  2. take the annihilating punishment of God the Father for us.  and 3. Survive it (the resurrection).  Therefore we as humans can now claim Christ's atonement as ours and are no longer guilty of our own sins, even the ones we haven't committed yet.  God's wrath is satisfied.

This is the doctrine I was steeped in as a kid.  I was trained in theology from a young age and taught to apologize (argue) the faith, since in that particular bent of the faith, it is the duty of every good Christian to be an educated debator for the faith who wins souls by the power of our divinely inspired compelling logic (groan).  But if I'm honest with myself, this doctrine raises so many questions and bad understandings of God.  Of course, I can give you all the answers to dodge the problems, but they are just that: dodges, not resolutions.  Which is probably why that group hasn't won the world in 2000 years time.

For one, how is it just to punish an innocent person?  For that matter, how is it just to let the guilty off because someone else stepped in?  How does that help the guilty get better?  How does that right the wrong they committed?  But worse than that, what does it teach about God?  He seems a twisted father that beats his children black and blue while thinking it's to make them improve.  Or worse yet, the father who beats another kid because his kid did something wrong.  He seems the very opposite of love, or at least schizophrenic about it.  It doesn't at all mesh with the countless verses about love, protection, forgiveness.  In fact, there are far more verses in both the old and new testament that are clearly about God's love and forgiveness and fatherhood than there are verses to support the penal sub model, and those that do could easily be interpreted in other ways.

Moving on.  The second doctrine of imputed righteousness says that Christ's substitutionary work is imputed, put on, the believer so that they are now viewed as righteous in God's sight, even though they are still going to commit sins.  It says that when God looks at a human, he sees the bad we've done, unless we have accepted Christ (done in different ways in various denominations) in which case God sees Christ...in other words, we have a big "PAID" stamp across us, so we're good.  Forgetting the mechanics of this, which are all purely speculation, it still raises many questions, such as why we would be left to continue committing sins?  Why wouldn't it stop?  Why wouldn't it be imputed in a way that it did stop?  It requires some sci-fi time-space disconnect to understand why "new creations" aren't really any newer than the old ones in any humanly discernible way.  I remember the huge let-down when I was baptized and didn't feel any different.  I know some people that kept getting baptized again and again because they felt so much the same they thought it just wasn't sticking, like they were dud dunks.  I felt the same about saying "the salvation prayer".

Not only these questions, but then come the aftermath questions.  Let's say we accept it for a second.  Now what?  Can I just go sin and know it's not going on the record anyway?  Already paid, like a cosmic gift card?  Or do I need to be careful to stay in the salvation?  Perhaps I could get uncovered as easily as I got covered and I'd never know it.  To deal with this, my particular group has ample proof-texts about assurance of salvation to convince us we can't lose it, even if we continue to be terribly bad people.  While others do stress a continuation in faith to keep the record clear.  And still others require a continual re-covering for the new sins.

At this point I should note that the two doctrines are not tied together.  There are denominations who accept one and not the other.

So this brings me to the point of my last post.  I have slowly grown to the point that I can't accept either of the two doctrines.  But what then?  When I try to read the Bible with fresh eyes, I can't hear anything but the old interpretations because I was SOOO steeped in what they mean to the group I was raised in.  So my heart says, "No, it can't be!" and my head says, "But it must!"  And that was what came out in my last post.

Fortunately, I am beginning to see what else is there.  It has taken years of information filtering into my brain, but now it is coming together so that it makes sense.  The trail was blazed by many things that Steve Miegs taught, though I don't know if he remembers them because he was so caught up in the moment when he spoke, I have no doubt he spoke from the Spirit.  C.S Lewis, then laid the real groundwork (I often refer to him as my teacher Jack in this blog) with his talk of halls and rooms and hell being locked from the inside.  The push down the road came from Wayne Jacobsen, who showed me I was not alone in modern times and that if my heart was sick at the system, it was not a flaw in me, but God's truest voice.  Also that what we call churches need not be the Church.  And the fog is clearing at the hands of George MacDonald (Uncle George), who wrote so so many things about this a full two centuries before I would read them.  It is Uncle George who is primarily showing me how to understand the world in this new view.

Of course there have been many others along the way, helping hands and points in the direction.  One of the dearest to me is Dan Dunn, who has never had a shadow of doubt that I was heading right, and never placed an ounce of pressure to do otherwise, even when it forces us to part ways for a time.  He is truly a Christ-like example for me in what it means to love people where they're at.

Which brings me to the summary of this long post.  So what now?  For me, I think we can leave the theology (study about God) and just get to know the real God.  There is only one way to do this.  That is to do what he says.  As Uncle George says, if anyone truly wants to see what Truth might reside in Jesus, he just has to try it out.  There's a reason Jesus didn't leave a theological treatise.  He didn't even write a single word of his own.  He simply DID his work.  So forget the teachings, the processes, the doctrines.  I don't care if you never understand the history or processes, or even call him Lord.  If you want to find out if he was who he said, simply open one of the Gospels and go do what you read him doing.  Simply start with whatever next comes your way.  In whatever way you can act like Jesus, do it and see what happens.  Then do it again and again until you understand.  If there's no value, you'll soon see.  Doing good can't hurt in any case.  But if there is value in it beyond the ordinary good deed, you might just have found the door to the universe.  Work it out and see for yourself.  If you get stuck, let's talk.  No guarantees I'll have an answer, but if God is there, shouldn't he help us find one?

I am convinced, this is the only true means of salvation and I'll go no further for now accept to say that it was proven for me in one simple sentence when a dear friend was downing Christians and then said to me, "but you and your wife are the most Christ-like people I've ever met.  You actually live it."  I almost cried right there on the street.  There could be no better compliment for me and no better proof amidst all my doubts.