The other night I was watching a video clip on you tube of Mark Driscoll a big brash aggressive pastor from the US from the reformed movement who was explaining to his church why a Holy God hated evil doers and then went on to explain why we were all evil doers until we were saved. The whole sinners in the hands of an angry god routine. But the Good news in this story to him was that Jesus came to earth and lived a perfect sinless life and incomprehensibly (to Pastor Driscoll) gave himself to be a sacrifice to take on the angry wrath of God, to basically protect us from God. This scenario emphasised the holiness of God and how a holy and just God had to deal with sin before he could relate to us.
This a scenario which doesn,t square with me and what I understand of the Father as revealed in Jesus, Jesus seemed more interested in loving people, healing people, drawing in the lost ones, the stories he told portrayed a father who's heart aches with compassion for his children.
Undeniably however God is holy, I'm just not sure what his holiness looks like. Any insights?
1 comment:
Hi everyone,
I'm just now trying to work out how I post something on our Splendid nobodies website. Finally feel the head space to contribute to the conversation. Re the holiness of God. I wonder if God's holiness isn't more to do with his perfection i.e. He is perfect love. I really struggle with the idea that God is so Holy he can't look upon sin or be around sinfulness. Is just doesn't suare with the life of Jesus. I read the Shack book which along with the Baxter Krueger perichoresis stuff deals with this issue of God having a major problem with us and 'loving' us even though he can't stand the sight of us because of our sinfulness. I think in this regard their insights about God being for us and willing to go to extraordinary lengths to reconcile us to himself are really helping to bring back into balance a distorted view of God's holiness. Looking forward to the retreat. Rachael
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