More Reflecting on Biblical Authority

I don’t believe Bible is the final word of God, in the sense that it carries the most authority–I believe everything God says has authority, regardless of when it was spoken, to whom it was spoken, or how many people believe it was spoken at all. Moreover, I believe there is consistence and continuity throughout all that God speaks.

I do believe that a lot of people discredit God’s Word when it is spoken outside of the Bible, because it may conflict with our own interpretations of scripture–interpretations which we too often tragically refuse to examine. Moreover, we have a discomfort with God communicating spiritually because it is less-concrete (we are unable to examine it for factuality using our non-spiritual faculties) than God communicating through text. Additionally, even when God communicates with us through text, he still communicates to us spiritually–any attempt on our behalf to learn about God through the Bible without being in tune with God’s spirit will result in us misunderstanding who God is and probably spreading that “false-doctrine” to others.

Moral of the story: next time you are tempted to prove something or disprove something using the Bible, stop. Understand that the Bible isn’t a proof text–it doesn’t vidicate people or their doctrine (God’s spirit alone validates people and ideas). It’s not a governing document–it’s a tool (one of many) for God to communicate to His people in conjunction with His Spirit, and it’s a small part of His ongoing story.

Feel free to contribute your own ideas on the subject.

Reflecting on Morality and Religious Pressure

Why do my fellow Christians fight me on the elements of my personality which Christ cultivated? Within me there are countless, large imperfections about which they could warn me, but they concentrate their efforts to destroy those parts in me which express Love to the poor and marginalized; the parts of me which seek to deny myself to lift up the powerless. It seems like they seek to make me the Pharisees against whom Jesus spoke throughout the Gospels–the hypocrites who appear to have cleansed themselves of external sins while taking great care to nurture and grow their internal ones. My soul cries out to my brothers, “get behind me Satan! I’m doing my Father’s work!” and it shouts this not out of anger but out of love. Are we so blind that we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking that our evil desires (though cloaked in religion and twisted to look like truth) are in fact pleasing to God? It didn’t work for the religious elite then, so what makes us think that God will favor the religious elite now?

The Spirit in me and the scriptures both testify that God will always, ALWAYS favor the poor and the broken and the powerless over those who appear to be “correct” and “powerful”. Even if my brain can’t find an adequate answer to their twisted logic, God’s truth appeals to my heart–telling me that I may not understand exactly why, but their ways are dark. So it is and will be: I follow God even when the people who’ve taken claim to his name take a different path. I will follow God into the dark places to rescue his precious people even if it means that many of the Christians call me a glutton and a drunk and kick me out of their churches. After all, Jesus endured that first.

On the subject of morality, it seems that there are people who see two kinds of people in the world: those who seek to uphold morality and those who are trying to “lower the moral bar” so to speak. The problem I see is that people with this viewpoint tend to define moral behavior as behavior exclusive of external sins, but the term doesn’t speak to the presence of internal sins. Internal sins (conditions of the heart: jealousy, self-righteousness, judgmentality, etc) get downplayed for the sake of lifting ourselves over those who suffer from external sins (sins identifiable by actions: sexual sins, drunkeness, etc). In this way, we trick ourselves into thinking that we are justified in denouncing the evils of liberalism and homosexuality and alcohol consumption and partying when we have darker sins clouding our vision. We seek to remove sawdust from our neighbor’s eye without first removing the boards from our own. We take great care to wash the outside of our cups, but the insides are filthy. We love to call people out on their mistakes, because it feeds the lie that we’re better than we are–that we do, in fact, deserve love (which stares right in the face of the Cross and the Gospel of Grace). This self-righteousness seems to plague the church, so if someone is truly concerned about upholding morality in our culture, perhaps we should look first at ourselves and then at everyone else. Furthermore, when we stop viewing the world this way, we realize that if our “morality” is only a product of social pressure, then it is empty and worthless. In this way, we are locked in a pointless battle of who’s definition of morality is correct, ours or theirs? When we are freed from this, we realize the only universal morality isn’t measured by actions, but by the motivations which drive our actions (namely the presence of Love or lackthereof). The issue isn’t where the moral bar should be set or whose moral bar should be used; the issue revolves directly around our own loving and hateful desires. The battle isn’t between us and them, the battle is within each of us, cliché though that may sound. We are our own enemies. We are the primary opposition to the cross–not the muslims or the liberals or the homosexuals. Let’s stop scapegoating and own up to our own failures. Let’s really die to ourselves.

Post-Concert Ramblings…

I wrote this yesterday morning on Facebook. I’m posting it here now. Does anyone know if there’s a simpler way of syndicating Facebook notes and WordPress blogs?

So it’s currently 6:08 AM and I’ve been up for the last forty-five minutes. Last night we went to the Rock and Worship Tour concert at the US Cell Center in CR and now we’re staying at Kristen’s parents’ house in Mount Vernon. And I can’t sleep–I think I’m catching a cold slash my lips are burning. And not burning with the desire to share the Word of God or to sing some incredibly artsy creative song, no, I have two canker sores (sp?) on the inside of my mouth and they feel extra awesome [sarcasm] in the wee hours of the morning.

At any rate, I stole one of Kristen’s guitars and snuck away to their computer room for a little late night acousticness (I’m in denial that it is, in fact early morning. Side note: I’m looking out the window and it’s getting light outside… eew). I kind of feel bad about using their computer without asking. :S

Anyways, the concert was amazing… I tend to go into Christian events with thick skepticism, because I know a lot of people put on Christian events because it’s “what good Christians do” or because “kids who are involved in Christian activities don’t sin” etc.; however, I was comforted by the brief ‘tween-acts blurbs by the lead singers of Tenth Ave North, Mercy Me, and Sanctus Real. I don’t worship well if I don’t believe that those who are leading worship have their hearts in a good place. I don’t want to feel like I’m being conned into some manufactured emotion. If my faith is fake, I’ll happily be an honest Atheist rather than a lying Christian.

The first thing the T.A.N. guy said was how he was still working through the complications of growing up in a “Christian” community and attending a “Christian” school (by the way, I use quotes around that word, because it means a lot of different things to different people and the way I’m using it isn’t really how I think it should be used), and he touched on how we “Christians” approach our relationships with people and with God with a lot more arrogance and false-humility than we should… He said the hardest three words for Christians to say are “I don’t know”, which was said in jest but bears a lot of truth. Anyways, the overall theme of the evening was that we’re all broken people desperately in need of a God who loves us. None of us are better than anyone else. Basically, as Bethany and Derek and I phrase it, we’re all epic failures and the only way we succeed is because Jesus loves us enough to succeed for us. And that to me, far more than trendy “Christian” music and Alt-Christian clothes and even being in the presence of “Christian” music superstars, was cool.

So with that I sit here with a lot of thoughts swirling around in my tiny human brain… First of all, I wish that more Christians really believed that we [read "all humanity"] are all the same in terms of worthiness of Grace (in that we are all equally unworthy of His Grace).

Secondly, I wish people who don’t know Jesus wouldn’t associate Him with us Christians. I’ll elaborate on that one a little: Christians can be prideful and arrogant and falsely-humble and hurtful and a variety of other negatively-inclined adjectives that are in no way characteristics of Jesus nor are representative of his feelings towards humanity in general. We’ve taken His name in vain and dragged it through the mud with us and the result is that the people who are aware of their need for a savior won’t know that that person is Jesus because we’ve made Jesus look like the Devil.

Finally, and this is one that I (as an insecure person) struggle with the most; I wish that we who call ourselves followers of Christ would truly meet people where they’re at rather than lead them to believe that they need to be “good enough” to earn our and/or God’s Love. Especially God’s Love. I think we non-verbally tell people that they need to fit in and look the part before we will accept them. They need to cover up their tattoos, change the way they dress, and stop associating with their non Christian friends unless they are getting [read "pressuring"] them to come to Church.

Just so we’re all clear on this, I believe this next statement so strongly that if this isn’t true, I’m converting to Atheism straight up: God’s love for us is not affected by our performance, and if it were, we’d all be effed. There is no reason for God to Love us–we can’t earn it, it’s freely given. We can’t trick God into Loving us, he already does–we just need to accept it. God’s people aren’t shiny and plastic; God chose a people who are real and broken and scandalous and perfect only in our inability to earn His love. He knows this about each of us and this fact is deeply rooted in His passionate, reckless, scandalous, foolish, intoxicated Love for each of us.

Anyways, it’s 6:53 now and the sun is coming up and that’s an event I haven’t witnessed in roughly a decade so I don’t want to ruin such a good track record. I’m going back to bed. Good night. Or good morning. Whatever.

So it’s currently 6:08 AM and I’ve been up for the last forty-five minutes. Last night we went to the Rock and Worship Tour concert at the US Cell Center in CR [Cedar Rapids] and now we’re staying at Kristen’s parents’ house in Mount Vernon. And I can’t sleep–I think I’m catching a cold slash my lips are burning. And not burning with the desire to share the Word of God or to sing some incredibly artsy creative song, no, I have two canker sores (sp?) on the inside of my mouth and they feel extra awesome [sarcasm] in the wee hours of the morning.

At any rate, I stole one of Kristen’s guitars and snuck away to their computer room for a little late night acousticness (I’m in denial that it is, in fact early morning. Side note: I’m looking out the window and it’s getting light outside… eew). I kind of feel bad about using their computer without asking. :S

Anyways, the concert was amazing… I tend to go into Christian events with thick skepticism, because I know a lot of people put on Christian events because it’s “what good Christians do” or because “kids who are involved in Christian activities don’t sin” etc.; however, I was comforted by the brief ‘tween-acts blurbs by the lead singers of Tenth Ave North, Mercy Me, and Sanctus Real. I don’t worship well if I don’t believe that those who are leading worship have their hearts in a good place. I don’t want to feel like I’m being conned into some manufactured emotion. If my faith is fake, I’ll happily be an honest Atheist rather than a lying Christian.

The first thing the T.A.N. guy said was how he was still working through the complications of growing up in a “Christian” community and attending a “Christian” school (by the way, I use quotes around that word, because it means a lot of different things to different people and the way I’m using it isn’t really how I think it should be used), and he touched on how we “Christians” approach our relationships with people and with God with a lot more arrogance and false-humility than we should… He said the hardest three words for Christians to say are “I don’t know”, which was said in jest but bears a lot of truth. Anyways, the overall theme of the evening was that we’re all broken people desperately in need of a God who loves us. None of us are better than anyone else. Basically, as Bethany and Derek and I phrase it, we’re all epic failures and the only way we succeed is because Jesus loves us enough to succeed for us. And that to me, far more than trendy “Christian” music and Alt-Christian clothes and even being in the presence of “Christian” music superstars, was cool.

So with that I sit here with a lot of thoughts swirling around in my tiny human brain… First of all, I wish that more Christians really believed that we [read "all humanity"] are all the same in terms of worthiness of Grace (in that we are all equally unworthy of His Grace).

Secondly, I wish people who don’t know Jesus wouldn’t associate Him with us Christians. I’ll elaborate on that one a little: Christians can be prideful and arrogant and falsely-humble and hurtful and a variety of other negatively-inclined adjectives that are in no way characteristics of Jesus nor are representative of his feelings towards humanity in general. We’ve taken His name in vain and dragged it through the mud with us and the result is that the people who are aware of their need for a savior won’t know that that person is Jesus because we’ve made Jesus look like the Devil.

Finally, and this is one that I (as an insecure person) struggle with the most; I wish that we who call ourselves followers of Christ would truly meet people where they’re at rather than lead them to believe that they need to be “good enough” to earn our and/or God’s Love. Especially God’s Love. I think we non-verbally tell people that they need to fit in and look the part before we will accept them. They need to cover up their tattoos, change the way they dress, and stop associating with their non Christian friends unless they are getting [read "pressuring"] them to come to Church.

Just so we’re all clear on this, I believe this next statement so strongly that if this isn’t true, I’m converting to Atheism straight up: God’s love for us is not affected by our performance, and if it were, we’d all be effed. There is no reason for God to Love us–we can’t earn it, it’s freely given. We can’t trick God into Loving us, he already does–we just need to accept it. God’s people aren’t shiny and plastic; God chose a people who are real and broken and scandalous and perfect only in our inability to earn His love. He knows this about each of us and this fact is deeply rooted in His passionate, reckless, scandalous, foolish, intoxicated Love for each of us.

Anyways, it’s 6:53 now and the sun is coming up and that’s an event I haven’t witnessed in roughly a decade so I don’t want to ruin such a good track record. I’m going back to bed. Good night. Or good morning. Whatever.

[Reflecting on...] Differences

If people really understood my beliefs the way I mean them, would they be offended?

Should this matter?

If my beliefs are offensive, does that mean they are wrong as per God?

Is God’s truth offensive to anyone when understood properly?

What is it that actually offends people?

Is it really a difference of opinion or is it the hostility and hatred that so often accompany differences of opinion?

Can two people with major differences in beliefs still relationship with eachother?

Can a person Love another person with whom they disagree?

Can God love people who don’t agree wtih Him?

Can God love sinners?

Can God love homosexuals, liberals and/or Muslims?

Can God love people who don’t follow his rules as much as He loves those who do?

Does God’s heart bleed as much for Al Queda as it does for the victims of 9/11?

Does my heart bleed as much for Al Queda as it does for the victims of 9/11?

Should it?

[your thoughts here...]

Edit: Speaking of offensiveness in Jesus’ teachings, I came across this tidbit over at WorD:

“Some people are always going to be offended when you actually teach them what’s in the Bible as opposed to what they assume is in the Bible.” – NT Wright

I don’t know exactly how that ties into this post (because I’m not making a point, really, but asking reflective questions as they come to mind) but I feel like it’s true and applicable.

How the Hell should I title this?

Ugh… Will I ever conquer myself? I made great strides tonight (I’m writing this at 5AM)… I laid down pieces of me, confessing some of the deepest parts of my being to people and putting myself totally on the line. I mean these are parts of my depravity that I rarely let myself see, much less God, much less other human beings. The Truth kicks my ass. A lot. I’m totally vulnerable, but after having worked through it, I’m at peace with even the worst possible reactions to these confessions. I’m confident in myself again. I have some measure of my security and self identity in God where it needs to be and not in my masculinity, fake-spirituality/religiousness, or even my “normality”. I’ve allowed the Truth to wittle me down to a very little man, but a little man who can only rely on God for his identity.

Cliche as that sounds, it’s a great place to be, methinks. Blessed are the poor in spirit and stuff, right? I’m starting to understand why the first are last and the last are first. I’m starting to realize why there aren’t losers when Jesus wins, because Jesus makes himself a loser so we can win. I’m starting to realize that that’s how we are to live. Submissive to others. Vulnerable. I’m re-understanding this death-to-ourselves concept about which Paul spoke so passionately. I’m a little, itty-bitty man who thinks I’m a lot bigger with a lot more power, influence, and control than I really have. I can say that now. And I don’t give a damn if other people think that’s a handicap.

I’m secure, healthy, whole, mature as my heavenly Father is mature, at least for the time being. Depravity will probably seep in and mess with me for a while, but for now I’m resting in God. And there is peace.

Blessings,

Craig

What I learned this Thanksgiving:

I was reflecting on one of my favorite relationships earlier today and this is what I learned from it:

It occurs to me that God’s love for us is very much like a man’s love for a very pretty, yet high-maintenance [read "prideful" or "a little full of herself"] woman. On the surface, it would appear that the woman is using the man to feed her ego–as if the lies of her superior value have tricked him into respecting her. But no–the man is fully aware that the qualities that make the woman think she has value (the things she prides herself in) are in fact thte things that enslave her. Because of his love for her, he pities her for these things instead of loving her for them. He loves her in SPITE of these things. He knows the miserable existence her own arrogance creates for her and his love seeks to free her from it.

Jesus doesn’t love us for how religious we think we are. We haven’t fooled him into thinking we’re good or worthy people. He looks through these lies and sees the scared, pathetic creatures that we really are and loves us for that alone (as opposed for the lies we create to trick him into loving us). He loves us in spite of the lies we tell him about how attractive, cool, religious, or smart we are. We can’t convince him that we have value. At least beyond what he already sees. God is okay with how we are. We needn’t do anything more to earn his love. He doesn’t care that we’re broken (I mean, he cares, but it doesn’t stop him from loving us). We can’t earn it. We can’t even explain it. Period.

Culture War

Barring about an hour during a movie last night, I haven’t slept since about this time (10AM) yesterday (Saturday). I attempted for several hours. I read chapter four from one of my favorite books, Blue Like Jazz, in an attempt to lull myself to sleep. Unfortunately that book is too entertaining or I was too restless–at any rate, I gave up and played Call of Duty 4 online for a few hours. Amazing game. I tend to camp with a silenced AK in inconspicuous corners throughout the map and irritate my opponents to death. But I digress.

After quitting that, I decided to come upstairs and start reading my newest book, Myth Of A Christian Nation, which I found out about here: part1, part2, and part3. The premise of the book, which is written by a pastor of what he calls a “conservative Christian” church (quotes because they’re his words and I try to be cautious about labels–especially shady ones like “conservative” and “Christian”). The central premise of this book is that the American Evangelical Church’s unhesitating alliance with the political Right is destroying the Church’s reputation and God’s by association. And I couldn’t agree more.

Disclaimer: the problem is not that people are associating themselves with conservative political ideas or moral values–the problem begins when people start saying that they’re values are “Christian” values and that anyone who disagrees with that individual is opposed to God. Most people don’t actually say that, but that threat seems to be in the air around many in our Christian subculture.

Anyways, the part that I found to be realy interesting was this:

For some evangelicals, the kingdom of God is largely about, if not centered on, “taking America back for God,” voting for the Christian candidate, outlawing abortion, outlawing gay marriage, winning the culture war, [etc]

The part that caught my attention is the culture war aspect. I guess I always knew it and was always aware of it, but we really are engaged in a culture war, us Christians. We want to make sure everyone understands that our ideas are right and we will stop at nothing to win. We want everyone to know that we’re right and they’re wrong.

If it isn’t obvious to you already, I’ll explain what is absolutely horrible about this frame of mind (and I’ve shared it as much as anyone at times).

First of all, seeking to control the beliefs of other people is not what God’s all about. He gave us free will. He never EVER forces himself on anyone. He doesn’t try to prove himself nor anything he says. He doesn’t operate in political or social power (he operates in weakness and foolishness). And most of all, he doesn’t set himself apart from anyone (save perhaps the religious elite).

That last point means he doesn’t try to make it known that he’s right and we’re wrong. He invites us to reason it out with him and doesn’t force us to agree. If we choose to be ignorant and closed-minded, he lets us. He’s not interested in winning anything because he doesn’t oppose anyone. He doesn’t really establish a group of people as his opposition because their views are wrong (if he did, Jesus would have been much lonlier than he was, considering no one was 100% right except for him).

This is what’s wrong with us trying to win a culture war. If you’re objective is winning, you’ve removed all capacity for love and growth to take place for you or your opponent (lest your opponent decide to take the higher road–then he or she might be apt to improve, but even that is in spite of your efforts and not because of them). Jesus didn’t care to win an intellectual argument. He was interested in showing a broken people that they’re loved by God.

Jesus alone could accomplish that. And he didn’t do it by political power (he denied that one in the desert specifically) or social/religious pressure (he CONSTANTLY opposed this throughout the Gospels). Instead, God showed his love for us by being born in a barn, wandering around homeless, and dying on a Roman cross like a criminal, all so that we can come to know about God’s intense, perfect, renewing Love for us.

Hopefully this leaves you a little more enlightened–especially if you’re as confused about this issue as I used to be.

NOTE: I forgot to add this in, but Megan pointed this out to me last night after reading Velvet Elvis: The Bible is an Open Ended book. God doesn’t try to prove his Word. Furthermore, it really doesn’t assign absolute rights and wrongs but serves as a guide to point to the one true morality: Love. It’s not a rule book. As my college pastor once said, the Bible isn’t a proof text. It’s the living Word of God, open wholly to interpretation. God invites us to read it and reason through it with Him so as to arrive at the one absolute truth. So perhaps we can think twice before we tell other people what God stands for.

Guilt By Association

Hopefully I spelled that right. I think maybe there are 3 “c”s in association? Anyways… Here’s number 3235342564236 on the things that frustrate me about politics, or at least about Christian people in politics who do this (people who don’t claim to be Christian are exempt from my wrath because they aren’t necessarily being hypocritical in this instance; actually all people are exempt because I’m often hypocritical… and it would be hypocritical to have wrath for hypocrites. But I’ll vent anyways).

“Christian” candidates who try to say that other people are bad people based on who they associate with. Duh. Obviously this encompasses anyone who says “don’t vote for candidate X because they hang out with person Y who is known to do action Z”. This is stupid because Jesus hung out with all sorts of sketchy people. Jesus was known as a drunkard and a glutton (Luke 7:34) for the company he kept–and you can be certain that he not only associated with the guilty but loved them passionately.

If we are really serious about electing a “Christian” candidate (in the sense of a Christ-following candidate), maybe we should start looking into a candidate who spends more time around guilty, broken people? Personally, because of the nature of God’s power-system (weakness = strength and first < last) I think the more a person follows Christ, the less likely they will be to seek power, even/especially in the form of public office, but that’s a conversation for another day.

Obviously, take the preceding with a grain of salt–I’m not saying that every person who hangs out with guilty people is innocent, just that the most innocent person in the world hung out exclusively with the guilty. He sought out the broken. So practice some common sense and make sure who you’re accusing is actually guilty–not just because they know or hang out with a “bad” person.

And finally, we all fail. Jesus is all-including. That means letting me and you call ourselves His followers is a stain to His name. If everyone could see you by your worst sins, do you think Obama or McCain would publicly proclaim you to be his supporter?

In Need: Can government help its helpless citizens?

I consider myself politically neutral these days, despite having been both liberal and conservative in the past. Something that always attracted me to the Democratic camp is how they seem to genuinely feel for the poor among us–something that seems to be a very Christian idea. Unfortunately, I soon realized that a big portion of their solution to the problem seems to be throwing money at the less-fortunate.

First of all, I don’t believe that’s a viable solution because I don’t believe money improves anyone’s lives. I really think we need other people who believe in us and who can encourage us genuinely–something I don’t believe a government is capable of providing (because a government can’t tell people to go love people in need of love). No amount of money can do that. This goes to show just how powerless a government can be when it comes to actually making a positive difference in the world.

Secondly, the Republican solution seems to rely on giving tax breaks to the rich and relying on complicated economic trickle-down effects to get money and resources to the poor (which, again, I don’t believe solves the problem). It honestly appears as if many in this camp are using this solution as an excuse to be greedy and cling to their moneys (which is interesting because that makes it seem that Jesus would side with the “godless liberals” over the Religious Right–although Jesus never seemed to fit in well with the religious folks). However, I do agree with the conservatives in that [I believe] it isn’t the government’s job to take care of the needy–it’s the Church’s.

So I love the passion for humanitarianism (a very Christ-like quality that doesn’t seem to occur too often in the Religious Right) but I also feel like their methodology is wrong. But to their credit, (and realize I’m not saying this is true of all liberals) if I didn’t believe in God, I wouldn’t trust the Chruch for much anyways–the next viable option would appear to be the government.

On the flip side, I believe the conservative side has the right intellectual idea, but they seem to lack the compassion to actually care about the needy in the ways that their God does (so it’s kind of funny to me the godless liberals seem to follow God better than the Religious Right–which leads me to believe that perhaps the “godless liberals” have a confused idea about God because of how us “Christians” represent Him).

So to awkwardly tie-together this loose, airy post… Basically I don’t believe it is the government’s responsibility, I admire the liberals’ passion, I am disappointed in the conservative camp for not feeling more emphatically on the issue (especially those who believe God would only ever vote Republican), and I think it would be ephing sweet if we all would stop arguing and handle this without going through the ever-complicated middle-management that is our government. That is to say, if the religious and non-religious, liberal and conservative, etc would take care of the problem through private organizations (who would be focused on the actual problem) and unaffiliated with any church or political movement or some other means. The end.

So I’m writing this on 10/08/08: It seems to me lately that the welfare system may only be 10% effective and the rest may be “wasteful”, but if you think about it, that 10% is still getting used and it’s not like the rest of us need that additional money anyways. I mean, if you have a car you’re among 8% of the world’s most elite population anyways. Moreover, if we were really interested in efficiency, we could always take a little more time and ensure that that money gets used effectively by buying necessities for the needy. So I guess I’m now okay with the Democrats’ passion and their methodology on this issue.

Grace, Works, Salvation, etc

People don’t have value to God because of their works.

Nearly every “good deed” of man has bad intentions behind it. With the exception of honest loving gestures even the greatest deeds of man are done so others see them or so God sees them and thinks the deed-doer is better than they really are.

The only true good deeds are done in honest gratitude towards God for all that he has given–as a humble token of thanks for the price He paid. This is not to be confused with repayment of a debt–such a notion would be in line with a person paying a loved-one back for a gift that was givent to them. It would be insulting and wholy degrading to both the Gift and the Giver.

God didn’t become man and die on a cross so he could hold it over us (even though he could rightly, justly do so). Christ died as a husband would die for his otherwise doomed wife–that is, he asks nothing in return.

The only merit good works have is to show gratitude to God and, in doing so, change us as well. We’re not helping God do his work–the guy spoke worlds into existence, he can certainly allocate resources to the poor (for example) without our help (actually, he could probably do it much more efficiently without us getting in the way) which leads me to conclude that God’s goal isn’t so much to help people phyisically as it is to 1) change us spiritually by making us more generous and loving and 2) to change others who get to witness the love of God either directly or indirectly (as direct recipients of good works or as third-person witness to them). Were God’s goal to change them physically, economically, etc; he wouldn’t need us.

Good works for any other purpose are lies. Lies to convince you, God, and/or others that your’e better than you are–that you’re more valuable and have more worth than you do or even than others do. The only true good deed says “I’m nothing without God and all he has done for me. This is all I have to give and I give it happily to you, God.”

To put it simply, works are a result of faith. They flow from gratitude for the grace we’ve been given (and which we recieved through faith). I believe the oft-quoted James reference, “faith without works is dead” means that one can lose faith and choose to grow apart from God (not necessarily losing salvation) and therefore lose works as well. Where there is faith, works will follow. If there aren’t authentic works, there isn’t faith (at that point in time–there may have been works and faith in the past but a person’s relationship with God might be suffering in the present causing fewer works and less faith at the time).

For God to be unconditionally loving, it can’t matter to Him what we do–good or bad. He can’t love us more or less for what we’ve done or what we will do. Like an ideal parent always loves their child and will always embrace them with open arms, so does God with us. He’s just waiting for us to turn to him and doing everything he can to sway us in the meantime.