geocreationism.com

A few years ago, I spent some time on a website that debates Christianity.  It’s a great website, run by a Christian, for debating with atheists the logic behind believing in God.  I say it’s a great site, even though such debates can be harmful to a person’s walk with God, or at least harmful to mine.  The reason it is harmful is because God has gone to all this trouble to win your soul, and then you expose yourself to Satan’s arguments to persuade you otherwise.  Exposing yourself to Satan is never good, and while a single debate might not scathe you, continuous exposure will, and you might not even detect it, until one day you talk to God and cannot tell if He’s really there.  Smart, huh?  You see, when you debate about whether God is there or not, it forces you to try understanding why someone would see His absence.  Truly understanding your adversary in more than just an academic way, which is the only way to have a truly honest debate in my opinion, will result in seeing what they see, and feeling what they feel, which in this case is God’s absence.  When you desire to know God, you will know Him; the corollary to that however is that if you try knowing what His absence is like, He will give you that, too.  And that causes damage that some people never undo. And so, I do not recommend it. (It’s one reason I can debate Creation theories with Christians and not fall away from God… we all have faith in God, and YECs are honestly trying to keep me in God’s will.)

The reason I bring it up is because of the last debate I was involved in on that website.  It was about the omnipresence of God’s love.  I was arguing about an aspect of God I just assumed.  Because His love is everywhere I go, I assumed it was therefore everywhere, period.  The atheist had never felt God’s love, and so was trying to poke holes… by asking whether God’s love was in Hell.  I just couldn’t bring myself to say God’s love wasn’t there, but I also saw His point… if God’s love isn’t in Hell, then where else isn’t it?  Is it possible for me to go someplace and find myself without God’s love?  Of course, I was thinking horizontally (i.e., in a cosmically geographic sense)… I didn’t realize the answer was more vertical (i.e., between the person themselves and God).

To digress for a moment, I have noticed that there some pretty poor Christian debaters out there.  They drive me crazy.  They always respond with scripture (appropriately I might add), and never truly consider the opposition’s argument.  I always wondered why these people couldn’t debate well: how are they going to persuade an atheist if they aren’t willing to meet them where they are at? (Actually, the answer is that God meets them where they are at, but uses us where we are at)  But, I also noticed something else… these Christians also never appeared to waver in their faith.  They quoted scripture, and then left the atheist alone to cope with it themselves.  Perhaps there’s something to that, letting the atheist work out their salvation in fear and trembling… just like me.  Well, I left there trembling, I’ll tell ya!  I’m used to applying that scripture to otherwise faithful Christians with whom I disagree on non-salvific details (such as Creation), but I am not sure I ever applied it to atheists before.  “God’s Word never goes out void.”  Oh yeah, that.  Maybe I didn’t take that scripture seriously enough either, defending God where He didn’t need it.  Actually, I know the answer about my real agenda.  I was defending my own choice, so as not to look like a fool to other intellectuals… instead I just looked foolish to God: good choice, huh?

Now, here’s where I bring my two lines of thought together: This morning, I read Jeremiah 7.  It reads in part,

As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. Is it I whom they provoke? declares the LORD. Is it not themselves, to their own shame? Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched.

Now, God was talking about a specific group of people who likely heard of Him, but worshipped other gods.  It is no different for anything that someone had to reject God to embrace… such as atheism.  Now, I can never know a person’s heart, and so perhaps some atheists fall into the category above and others do not, but that is not the point.  Notice God’s own description of these people: “The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes…”  A peaceful family that works together.  Just the way God wants any family to be, but for the last detail, “… to make cakes for the queen of heaven.”  However, notice something else about God’s love here: “Is it I whom they provoke? declares the LORD. Is it not themselves, to their own shame? Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched.”

At this point, I want to explain God’s Word above in a manner that would make sense to an atheist, but I cannot.  In fact, Jeremiah 7 goes on to say this…

So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the LORD their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.

‘Cut off your hair and cast it away;
  raise a lamentation on the bare heights,
for the LORD has rejected and forsaken
  the generation of his wrath.’

And so now, I have my answer to where God’s love is.  God’s love is wherever His faithful are; and it is absent from those who are not His faithful.  I see now how I fell into Satan’s trap, arguing for the presence of God’s love on Satan’s terms.  Notice that looking up “love” in my concordance would not have brought me to Jeremiah 7, which is why I didn’t find it before.  That debate was damaging to me, yet God’s answer to that challenge is clear.  Those who cut themselves off from God are in turn forsaken by God.  I do not defend it or explain why it is so. I am not called to, but I do accept it, and by extension I accept Him.  He has done far too much for me and through me for me to turn my back on Him now.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 7:45 am and is filed under Bible Commentary, Q & A, Devotional Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.