All Things Seen & Unseen

In reading through the Acts of the Apostles following the stand ard lectionary readings after E aster used in Roman, Anglican and Eastern Orthodox churches we have been amazed at how references to the holy judgement of God are avoided in the guide. For example, Ananias and Sapphira who both lied to God, to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5) and were killed at Peter's word for their sin: no portion is set for reading. This case becomes a model for exclusion of those passages which the church, appar ently, does not want to hear (the so-called, 'terror pas sages' of the scriptures) . Of course this process fits with today's lost sense of sin and its almost exclusive emphasis on the 'love' of God. A s if love need mean that God cannot also judge mankind (Acts 17.31) in this life and in the next. The world clamours for justice when people do bad things and blame God -often the very God they refuse to believe exists- for those bad things. It never considers that God...

I believe that Christians should take the opportunities they receive in their daily lives to speak the good news of God to others they meet.  I n this post I will be trying to lay out one way of understanding what lies behind such witness.  I t's common to represent initiation into the Christian walk as the beginning of a relationship with God . And there's nothing wrong with this conception as long as we keep in mind some important differences between human relationsh ips and relationships with God. 1. God I s N ot A P erson It 's common to hear f o lk say that God is a person. In the evangelical world it's almost a fundamental doctrine and taken for granted.  H owever, although God relates to us in a personal way for we are persons, his being--to use C. S. Lewis' gra phic term--is 'sup er - personal'. What Lewis meant by this language is that God transcends or is beyond what we describe as a person.

In this season of Advent as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, it i s often forg otten that the season is a sharp reminder that Jesus will come one day 'to judge the quick [l iving] and the dead' (old form of Apostles' Cre ed) . The Creed draws th ese words and idea from a t least f our different scriptures of general judgement ( Acts 10.42; Rom 14.9,12; 2Tim 4.1) plus two scriptures on the specific judgement of Christians (2Cor 5.10; Jas 5.9).   We recoil at that thought that we Christians will be judge d but scripture makes this clear beyond dispute.