The original argument I made: the Hell-intensive evangelism (exemplified by Ray Comfort's Way of the Master) promotes an image of God as unstable, all-powerful bully. In righteous anger, God condemns people to an eternity in Hell; only by committing their lives to him (preferably in an attitude of gratefulness that the Eternal One would save wretches like them) can humans escape. If Superman demanded a similar deal from the citizens of Metropolis, he'd be a villain.
I made three counter-arguments, the second of which I'll deal with today. That second counter-argument? Hell isn't the point; love is. At the end of the day, God is God, and we're not. To overlook that is to underestimate the magnitude of the Christ event, where God substituted Godself for us, taking the punishment due to us. Realizing the miracle of the Advent and crucifixion, to suggest that God is a tyrant is extraordinarily shocking.
My objections to this counter-argument?
My first objection repeats a bit of a point I made yesterday: You can't overlook Hell. In the WotM narrative, it's Hell--the fear of punishment--that provides the appeal for Christianity, not love. The WotM pitch leads with conviction and punishment: you've broken God's law, which makes you guilty enough (somehow) to spend the rest of eternity without hope of reprieve in the fiery bowels of Hell.
At this point in the evangelistic encounter, provided that the person is A) convinced that they have sinned, and B) convinced that they're headed for Hell, then the rationale behind the way of salvation that God offers is irrelevant. So God saved us because God loved us? Great. But what if the story were instead that God had sent Jesus to save us because, say, God is addicted to human devotion and wanted a convenient way to weed out those humans who weren't willing or able to devote everything to him. That wouldn't be love, exactly, but a sick kind of need. Or what if the story were that God sent Jesus because he wants to make the devil angry by denying him a monopoly on human souls?
The thing is--it wouldn't matter. The Way of the Master would be just as effective--its motivational effectiveness falter not one bit--if evangelists substituted some emotion other than love (or no emotion at all) as the reason God sent Jesus. The WotM banks on people's fear of Hell, not on people's attraction to God's love. People want to avoid Hell, and if they have to devote themselves to Christ to do so, they will. It's nice that God saves out of love, but then it'd be even nicer if there weren't a Hell at all, wouldn't it?
Just to be crystal clear, I do believe that God loves us, and I think that love matters a great deal. My point, however, is that the WotM evangelistic strategy makes that divine love secondary, even superfluous.
Objection Two: So... does God love us or hate us? The WotM argues both simultaneously and makes no real effort to deal with that contradiction. God loves humanity, but hates sin (which according to scripture often slides right into God hating sinners, to be perfectly frank). When humans sin, somehow that mortal act overcomes God's divine love--at least to the extent that nothing but a divine blood sacrifice can restore the relationship.
What... what kind of love is that? Remember, in Christ's sacrifice--God's love for the world made manifest--we Christians are to see the pattern of love and servanthood that we are to take as a life example. I am unable to think of a moment in the gospels where Jesus ceased to love (Maybe the cleansing of the temple? Maybe calling the Pharisees a brood of snakes and vipers? Even those don't hold up). Even as soldiers crucified him, Jesus said, "Father, forgive them." He needed no blood sacrifice to reach out and touch the leper. He needed no blood sacrifice to speak to the tax collector. He needed no blood sacrifice to save the woman caught in adultery from judgment.
I have difficulty reconciling Jesus' example of love with the hatred (or at least the limited love) that the WotM argues shapes God's attitude toward us.
Finally: As powerful as the WotM insists that God's love is for humans, humans can imagine and practice a love that seems much stronger.
How is Jesus' love--this love that breaks laws, shatters barriers, cares about the enemy, frightens us with its intensity--how is this love at all like a love which, at the slightest sin, turns to hate? Even if you somehow say this love doesn't turn to hate, in the WotM narrative God's love at least weakens enough for there to be established a gap between humans and God, a gap that only Christ's death can bridge.
But think about any long-term relationship of love between humans, say a marriage of fifty years or a parent-child relationship. Are these relationships free from sins or betrayals? Certainly not. I'm no expert, but in my own relationship, I've learned that love--real love--depends upon how you deal with and recover from such mutual failures. Sure, sometimes those failures or betrayals are too much, and the relationship ends. But a relationship unable to endure even one little betrayal--well, that's more of a one-night fling, isn't it?
And aren't Christians, in their relationships to others, expected to be even more loving than that? "Love your enemies; pray for those who persecute you." How many times must I forgive my brother? "Seventy times seven." We aren't as Christians allowed to have gaps established between us and others, even and especially those who wrong us.
My point: How is it that human love can in so many instances overcome betrayals that God's love (as framed by the WotM) seemingly can't? If our sin--any sin, no matter how trifling--separates us from God's love, doesn't that make sin (or, conversely, God's holiness--his intolerance of sin) stronger than God's love? Doesn't that make my own parents' love for each other (40+ years) and love for me (33, going on 34) stronger than God's love?
More tomorrow,
JF
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