I came across this on the website of one of my old profs today and thought I’d share it with you:

Evangelicals [Christians] know that while God is  love (1st John 4:8) and can therefore do nothing but love, when God’s love encounters human sin his love “burns hot”, as Luther liked to say.  God’s anger or wrath, then, is never the contradiction or denial of his love.  (Indifference is always the antithesis of love.  After all, the people with whom we are angry we at least take seriously; the people to whom we are indifferent we’ve already dismissed as insignificant.)

God’s anger “heats up” only because He loves us so very much and so very relentlessly that He can’t remain indifferent to us and won’t abandon us.  Profoundly He loves sinners more (or at least more truly, more realistically) than we love ourselves, since our self-love, perverted by sin, issues only in self-destruction.  And as the cross on which He “did not spare his own Son but gave Him up for us all” (Romans  8:32) makes plain, He longs to spare us torment more than He longs to spare Himself.

Rev Dr Victor Shepherd, “What’s an Evangelical?“

God’s love is not tame. It’s powerful and true!

Be My Escape truncated song lyrics are below (by Relient K … full lyrics here)

Also check out a beautiful acoustic piano version of Be My Escape

I’ve given up on giving up slowly, I’m blending in so
You won’t even know me apart from this whole world that shares my fate

And I’ve been housing all this doubt and insecurity and
I’ve been locked inside that house all the while You hold the key
And I’ve been dying to get out and that might be the death of me
And even though, there’s no way in knowing where to go, promise I’m going because

I gotta get outta here
I’m stuck inside this rut that I fell into by mistake
I gotta get outta here
And I’m begging You, I’m begging You, I’m begging You to be my escape.

I’m giving up on doing this alone now
Cause I’ve failed and I’m ready to be shown how
He’s told me the way and I’m trying to get there
And this life sentence that I’m serving
I admit that I’m every bit deserving
But the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair

I am a hostage to my own humanity
Self detained and forced to live in this mess I’ve made
And all I’m asking is for You to do what You can with me
But I can’t ask You to give what You already gave

I fought You for so long
I should have let You in
Oh how we regret those things we do
And all I was trying to do was save my own skin
But so were You
So were You

Is it possible that God has been at work in your life all along?

When I was a kid, I never paid much attention to the bus stop signs. In fact I was totally oblivious to their existence. Yet eventually there came a time when I decided I would like to start taking the bus. And then I started seeing bus stop signs everywhere! When I actually started looking for them, I saw them on the same streets that I walked every day. It’s not like they suddenly appeared; I’d just never taken the time to notice them before.

In the same way, is it possible that God has been working in your life the entire time, and you just haven’t recognized His handiwork? Could it be that the cravings that we all have, that sooner or later begin to nag at us, like craving intimacy, and destiny, and meaning, are really pointers to the God who created us and instilled these cravings in us?

» View the Soul Cravings videos

» Crave question: Has God been trying to get your attention?

» More Soul Cravings questions

» Going deeper: What’s Jesus got to do with it?

Thinking about how both God & evil can coexist … given this proposed dichotomy: “God can either do literally anything and everything, or he cannot”:

If God can do literally anything and everything, this includes things that are contradictory. Ex, he can make a square circle, or can create something the smells purple. If this is so, there is no problem with God’s goodness and the existence of evil in the world, because since God can do anything, such seeming contradictions should not faze us.

On the other hand, if God cannot do literally anything and everything (as is suggested in the Bible, ex God cannot lie), then this means that there are certain things that God cannot do. Thus, it is at least possible that the existence of free-willed creations (which could freely choose evil) and God’s omnibenevolence (perfect goodness) and omnipotence (all-powerfulness) are not incompatible, since it may not be possible for God to have the former (free will) without the latter (evil) to some degree.

This is part of the argument given in Alvin Plantinga’s landmark (but difficult since it’s written for philosophers) book God, Freedom and Evil … at least, as I understand it. (Short essay based on the book is available here.) He goes into considerably more detail in that book and no doubt with much more precise terminology and philosophical acumen than I have here. Not sure why it suddenly came to mind today, but thought I’d type it out. It makes sense in my own head …