Are you a caring guy, or a guy with candor? Is it possible to have both in one person?
Absolutely! Just follow the writings of St. Paul of Tarsus. Many Believers think he just goes too far at times; “Throw him out of the church” and “I’ve turned him over to Satan so he might afflict him for a while.” Who gives him the right to judge members of a church?
Other times you see him incredibly nurturing, kind, and patient, honoring to a simple person who did something faithfully (Epaphroditus). He prays, suffers, and fasts for his churches, and for his apprentices, and co-workers. Often he weeps for them. Is that the way Jesus would do it? Yes, again.
Read Christ’s words. See Him trash-talking the money-changers and priests in the temple–all the while beating them with a whip He made with his own hands!
Then there are the 2 bar’ ish brawls he started–not by grabbing a stool, but by flipping over tables!
He rebukes the Pharisees and Sadducees in some of the most vulgar, “unpolite” and humiliating ways. Even with Peter, a man who was close to being his best friend, He lashes out at when He told him, “Get away from me, Satan–get behind me!”
We see him crouched down low to the ground, risking his own life for the woman caught in bed with another woman’s husband. Then we jump to another story in the Bible, where He places loving hands and arms around some little kids–even as the Disciples were trying to shoo them away.
It is hard to admit, but any issue we may have with a judging Jesus, with His “candor-like,” blunt, and unfiltered straight-talking–even caustic behavior, is OUR problem not His.
Maybe we have been brainwashed that God is always NICE–gentle, meek, and mild. That may be true with some people’s chosen view of God, but it is more of a most
maternal view of a love that has gone limp and spineless. Any form of motherly love, or otherkinds of love, as strong as it may feel, is far below the high standard of agape-God’s entirely self-less love.
You and I are judging all of the time.”
If the ‘Nice God-view” is more of your thing, it totally flies in the face of reality. It may be a symptom that either:
- You don’t spend the first part of your day studying under God’s Word, and bringing it into your heart and life
- Or you are listening to lazy preachers who are self-medicating by spending too much time in the New Testament.
- You have made your own construct of a God that does not exist to support your false belief that GRACE is everything.
If any one or all of these are true for you then you, will need to seek the Lord and the whole Bible with all of your heart and make soem serious changes (Repent) as you do.
“Well, Arthur, I am not comfortable with the God of the Old Terstament–I’m more of a New Testament Believer.“
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