Has "does God love you" replaced "are you going to Hell?"

A new catch phrase for many Christians today is "God loves you".  We say that God has sent His one and only Son to die on the cross just for you!  What an amazing new way to evangelize.  Now we can ask people "does God love you?"  If they do not know the love of God we then have an opportunity to tell them about God's amazing love.  But, has love just merely replaced asking people whether they are going to Hell?  I believe it has, and I believe that we are beginning to going from one extreme to the next.

I personally was not around during the era of the evangelism techniques of the early 1900's.  But, reading Christian history, many evangelistic techniques were to ask people whether they believed in heaven or hell and then to follow up with the big question of which do they see themselves going.  What a way to evangelize!  People are based whether or not they are living a good moral life.  Their relationship with God was not the more important question to ask.
It seems however, that today we seem to ask the question whether people have a relationship with God.  We ask whether they know God's love and know the price that God paid by sending His Son to the earth to die for our sins.  This time it is not based on how they live, but whether they have heard the good news and know they can have a relationship with Him.
Within these two different extremes of thought there is a theological ("study of God") difference.  The going to heller's think of God as the Sovereign, Almighty, Holy Divine Being that will judge us if we do not live a good life.  Some say that God will choose whether you go to heaven or whether we have the freedom to.  But, the main concern is if you want to punch your ticket to heaven, you better turn your life around and start acting right.
The other side sees God as an all loving all personal God.  God wants to have a personal relationship with you and He came down to earth in the form of a man to have that relationship.  This is where God is believed to have "not considered equality with God...and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself..." (Phil. 2:6, 8).  Jesus can relate to us, he shows us love and shows us how to love God and others.
Both of these are important to evangelism and is why I am writing this blog.  It seems that we have moved from one extreme to the next.  Yes, God is an all Sovereign being, but He is also all loving and relational.  God will love us because He created us and wants to have a relationship with us.  However, God will judge us for living an immoral life of idolatry and sin.
If evangelism is to bring people to a relationship with God, then it needs to focus on both of these extremes and bring them together giving balance to each.  The church has tended to walk away from other to fend for themselves when they converted from Hell to Heaven, and they do the same when the speak love.  Let evangelism be about loving others and helping them to see that heaven is not about getting your ticket punched for doing good works, nor is it based only on God's love, but it is about accepting God's love in our lives and then living that out.  We need people that are willing to walk others through that process to follow the example of Christ's life on earth and to have a relationship with God.

Is the Bible right?

Growing up, we are taught that the Bible is right on all issues.  Its easy to label that as a characteristic of the Bible because it is from God, so obviously it is right.  However, this blog post would be considerably be short if there was not something more to it.  Lately, within the Church of the Nazarene, controversy over the Biblical text has emerged.  Some challenge the Article of Faith on Scripture that now reads:
We believe in the plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, by which we understand the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation, so that whatever is not contained therein is not to be enjoined as an article of faith.
The challenge comes where it reads "inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation".  Within the Church of the Nazarenes last General Assembly (a gathering of Nazarene elders to discuss changes that may need to happen in the Nazarene Manual), someone believed the article should read: "inerrant throughout, and the supreme authority on everything the Scriptures teach". As we look more in-depth at this article, there may be a few things that need cleared up. 
First, what in the world is this word "inerrant"?  The word means "without error" or "incapable of error".  A second definition that I would like to explain is "divine inspiration".  This phrase shows that God has revealed Himself to the biblical writers of Scripture.  Some, on the issue of divine inspiration, say one of two things.  Either, God had complete control of the biblical writers and the writers wrote down everything that God told them to, or God worked through humans, but humans in their own way wrote what God revealed to them.
Understanding the way of divine inspiration is crucial to understanding this word inerrancy.  First, if God had complete control over the biblical writers, then we could by reason, state that the Scriptures are inerrant "on everything".  However, the Church of the Nazarene, and other denominations have agreed that God worked through the biblical writers humanness, so we could not describe the Scriptures as inerrant in all things.  (For a clearer interpretation of inerrancy and this issue see Thomas Oords blog: http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/the_bible_and_evolution/).
Much of the challenge has come from a fundamentalist approach to looking at Scripture.  Funadmentalists believe that everything in Scripture is right and even go as far as to deny all of today's science.  They believe that science does not influence the Bible, but that the Bible influences science.  I do not believe either, neither do all Nazarenes, agree that modern science is right on every issue.  But, they do bring us to a deeper faith of God and the vastness of His creation.
I personally believe that the Nazarenes article of faith on Scripture does not need to be changed for several reasons.  1) God worked through humans in the writing of Scripture.  The Scripture has several contradictory parts that are not so important that deny our faith.  The Gospels, for example, have different ways to describe the gospel narrative.  Matthew, Luke, and Mark all tell the Lord's Supper story different than John.  So, do we say they are wrong, no we just say that the writers interpreted them differently.
2) The Scriptures are inerrant to revealing God's will concerning our salvation.  John Wesley, an early Anglican preacher and founder of Methodism, found Gods work of salvation through the Biblical narrative.  God reveals His love for us throughout Scripture.  The Scriptures speak to us of Gods work in our lives and the grace that He offers us.
I hope this helps you understand the challenges going on today not only within the Church of the Nazarene, but within other denominations as well.  If you would like more information of this topic, see either Square Peg by Al Truesdale, or All Things Necessary To Our Salvation by Michael Lodahl.

Forgotten God (Holy Spirit)

Over the summer I read Francis Chan's book Forgotten God.  I do not plan to go through this post and describe everything that Chan talks about through his book, but I would like to first recommend this book for those who may find interest in what I have to say.

Francis Chan's main argument in his book is that Christians have focused so much on God the Father and Jesus Christ that we have totally forgot about the Holy Spirit's work in our lives.  I believe that some from my own denomination do not even realize the impact the Holy Spirit has on our very lives.  I have been wrestling with the question if the Holy Spirit is even to be one with the Trinity (God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) for how little it is mentioned in our postmodern society. 
Now, I am not saying that I have completely disregarded the Holy Spirit and its work in our lives.  But, I do believe that it has been neglected.
In the Biblical narrative, we find the Holy Spirit mentioned twice as key doctrinal points.  Acts 5:3-4 and 2 Corinthians 3:17 assert that "the Lord is that Spirit".  John Wesley asserted the Holy Spirit more than any part of the Trinity in his work on A Plain Account of Christian Perfection.  Wesley stresses the need for the Holy Spirits work in our lives as God begins to cleanse us back to His image.
I believe the Holy Spirit is necessary for this very purpose.  When Adam and Eve fell into sin by wanting to be like God (see Gen. 3), the Image of God (or Imago Dei) was ruined inside of us, and we all need to work of the Holy Spirit to cleanse our lives.  We, as humans, must be willing to admit our brokenness and and our need of God in our lives.  This is were God will then give us the grace we need and enter into our hearts to restore that image to His likeness.

Do not misunderstand me on this, I do not believe we become one like God and are not able to sin.  I believe that God restores our hearts so that we can communicate with God.  I also believe that the want to sin is not there.  We are still tempted by Satan and are still able to sin, however, our hearts want to serve God because of the Spirits entrance into our hearts.
This is why I believe the Holy Spirit is necessary for our lives.  Without the emphasis on the Spirit, communication and cleansing in our lives is not there!  Yes, Christ provides the way to God, and God the Father gives the grace so we can be His children, but it is the gracious gift of the Holy Spirit that we are able to listen to the Father calling out to us.