Some Light Reading

I just finished reading Philip Gulley and James Mulholland's book, If Grace Is True: Why God Will Save Every Person. Philip Gulley's tales from Harmony are engaging and entertaining with a good mix of humor and thought provoking situations. I thought I would read If Grace is True to get an idea of his theology. If God is really going to save everyone, why not? It is up to Him isn't it? Maybe I've been thinking too small or not understanding what I read in the Bible well enough. Time to expand my mind...

Well, the main thing that hit me is, if you want to discard a goodly portion of scripture because it doesn't line up with the way that you feel God should be, you can go almost anywhere with your personal beliefs. I remember a few scriptures (that I won't go quoting at the moment) that deal with not trusting how we feel about things, but trust in who God says He is. Another from Proverbs talks about a way that seems right to a man, but leads to wrong conclusions concerning God and issues of faith. What about free will? What about experiencing spiritual rebirth? Why did Jesus talk about hell? Where do consequences go? Why bother with the church? What is the point of missions or evangelism? Uggh!! I don't mind having to think deeply, but to suspend intellectual honesty goes a bit beyond what I was looking for. Now I realize that I may not be covering this topic in an adequate way for many gentle readers, but this is my take on it this morning.

God has aspects of His nature that we have trouble reconciling with the things that we see going on around us. Natural disasters, premature deaths, and things that just don't work out the way we expect them to strain our concepts of God's love and God's ongoing story of redemptive history. Not everything is humanly understandable or explainable. God knows the big picture and history plays out to His purposes. We can't necessarily know why the Israelites were directed to kill every living being as they sought to possess the Promised Land. We can't fully conceive of Jesus' being completely divine and completely human at the same time. Even the cross can give you a headache if you ponder too hard and for too long. God plainly says that His thoughts are beyond our thoughts in a way that my thoughts are beyond the thoughts that run through the head of my dog. Some things we won't grasp until we see God face to face and some others we will probably never know. He has never promised us answers or understanding.

Getting back to it, the book raised a number of questions to chew on and that's a good thing. It got me thinking about what I believe and I why I believe it. It is definitely worth checking out if you'd like to expand your ideas about the inclusiveness of God and deepen your understanding of what folks in the universalist churches consider to be issues. I wouldn't be quick to brand them as heretics, although maybe they are. But, maybe my God is too small. I'll keep you posted.