There is an idea currently extremely popular among the spiritual elite of my generation—an idea which is neither spiritual nor elite, but rather unspiritual and elitist. It is the carnal passion for mere dread of a “God” whose lust for physical suffering evokes this emotion of dread as, above all things, the only proper response to the deity’s intense hatred of the human race—or at least, of most of it. Those few whom he has chosen to save, he has only chosen to save because he cannot see them—he has thrown the Blood of Christ over them like a paper bag with holes punched out for breathing, but covering everything else. But if that paper bag were removed, and he were to see the real person underneath, he would be bound by his own holiness to destroy them immediately. All for his supreme pleasure.
Is this the God of the Bible? Is this the one who came “to give them life, and life to the full,” (John 10:10) “to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners” (Isaiah 61:1)? It seems much more like the one who comes “only to steal, kill, and destroy,” and to set traps to watch men fall, then pounce on them for falling, levelling accusations against them for their utter incompetence before the holy standard, and stripping them of the dignity of even the choice of trying. Such a being takes delight in the despair of humanity, a glee and satisfaction in the idea of man’s utterly unsatisfactory condition.
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