Lenten Devotional (21) & Universalism

The Waves of Waywardness

“Do not be misled: God is not mocked. For whatever a man might sow, that also he will reap.”

We cannot deceive the omniscient One. He is not mocked, which is a short way of saying God does not speed toward judgment. He is long-suffering and abundant in loving-kindness (Jonah 4:2). He prefers to carefully observe your ways and see how far you are willing to stray and how long it will take you to call on his name.

The reason God does not judge you immediately when you get on the boat to a place far away is that you would learn your lesson too quickly without much knowledge gained. You must get on the boat and believe that you are genuinely distancing yourself from the God who comes near; to trust in your escape routes among the prostitutes of the prodigal or the waves of waywardness.

God waits to see your ship almost breaking to act. He waits in perfectly executed timing for you to see the cause and effect of your sins, to be at the mercy of pagan mariners. Then, God pierces your soul like a two-edged sword and meticulously brings you back to life like a skilled surgeon.

Prayer: O God, thank you for softly killing us daily and mightily raising us daily to new life and new mercies. May we learn much from our wayward ways and return to your promises which are yes and amen in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

~~~~~~

Notations:

*T.S. Eliot’s East Coker (Four Quartets; Section V) asserts that “As we grow older the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated.” A younger version of myself saw patterns laid out plainly, but the older version sees complexity in layered forms. To paraphrase Eliot, some things just can’t be deciphered.

**Reading through Seraiah’s The End of All Things, it is very clear that pantelism (those who see no future of the resurrected humanity) have made a fundamental hermeneutical error: they have assumed that all judgment and all vindication are created equal (67-76). They fail to see that one judgment speaks directly to the religious order of Israel in the first century, and the other speaks to the religious order of the entire world.

***I am officiating my 35th wedding ceremony, and here is a line from tomorrow’s homily:

This is a Christian wedding, and that means that this ceremony only makes sense through the lens of a world created by Jesus Christ. He is the one who accompanied you from birth to this very moment. The vows you will repeat and confirm are not rooted in mystical syncretism; they are rooted in the presupposition that only the Trinitarian God can give meaning to the institution before you called marriage.

****12 years ago, we wrote this 15-page response to Rob Bell’s worldwide sensation called “Love Wins,” which argued for a universal salvation post-death. Bell went on to leave the faith and join the Oprah club. Here is my concluding paragraph:

Bell’s book is a modern attempt to de-physicalize hell. Its central claim is that the traditional, historic faith has made too much of hell. This is a bold statement; a statement that fails to grapple with the fullness of the Biblical testimony and the richness of the Reformational faith.