The only thing that counts....

Galatians 5:6 (the latter half) gives some badly needed clarification to the overly vague idea of "having faith in Jesus" which has become the core of the Christian religious tradition.
I've struggled for years with the disconnect between the church orthodoxy on being "saved by grace" through faith and Christ's command that we love our neighbor.
But this verse ties it all together....
"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."

Faith is an intangible. You can't see it or feel it. If someone says they have faith, the only way you can know is if they show it. Yet, the church puts ALL the emphasis on the intangible. Whether or not someone is a "Christian" and thus "saved" depends not on their love of others, but on their professions of "faith" as determined by their acceptance or rejection of various creeds and dogmas of the church. They put a period after 'faith', so that it reads "The only thing that counts is faith...." And they leave off the rest of the sentence.

Thoughts on Annihilationism

 The Bible is full of passages of God punishing the wicked. And that is understandable. The people who wrote the Bible were constantly beset by enemies who would march into their towns, kill their men, rape their women, enslave their children, steal their livestock, burn their homes and desecrate their temples. 
When they talked about 'salvation,' they didn't mean getting into heaven after they die, they meant save us from these enemy hordes that are killing us!
What they wanted from God was not just 'salvation' but also 'justice'! The wicked need to be punished! If not in this life, then in the next one!
So when Jesus comes along with his message of "love your enemies' and "pray for those who persecute you," can you imagine how radical and disconcerting that would have been? Excuse me? What do you mean 'love our enemies'?? We don't want to love them, we want you to smite them!
I don't think we have ever fully accepted this teaching from Jesus. Instead, we are like "Oh, right. Sure, Jesus. We will 'love our enemies' (wink-wink) with the full understanding that you will smite them later on like they deserve!"
People today are very serious about this afterlife smiting of the "wicked." For years, many people have readily believed that eternal conscience torment is the way that "justice" is served in the afterlife. Suggestions of a future reconciliation are usually dismissed with disdain. But now there is broadening acceptance of a third alternative - annihilationism. Instead of torturing people forever, they just get 'poofed' out of existence. That's still not enough for some people who still want the wicked folks to be smited before they get poofed. But overall, poofing seems to be catching on. That way the rest of us can enjoy our time in Heaven without any guilt about the people suffering in Hell. 
But who are these "wicked" people who are so deserving of this fate? Unbelievers? Unbelievers who do bad things? Unbelievers who do bad. things and aren't sorry about it? People who 'reject God'? In the Bible, as noted above, the wicked are typically the enemies of the protagonists, the Hebrews. Whoever is making their lives miserable at the moment be it the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Romans, etc. But what about later in the story when the Hebrews are ascendent and start ransacking towns, committing mass genocide and so forth in order to claim lands they say that God has granted to them? Are they not being wicked at that point? 
Is there such a thing as 'wicked' people who are irredeemably bad and never good? Don't we all have a little wickedness inside of us? How then can we be divided neatly into 'goats and sheep' or 'wheat and tares'? And is that the way that God sees us? All good or all bad? Or does God see in each of us both the good and the bad?
If God is outside of time, as some are apt to speculate, wouldn't that mean that he sees each of us at every stage of our life all at the same time? He would see me as a baby, an infant, a toddler, a child, a teen, a young adult, a middle-aged man and an elderly man all at the same time! So if the 50-year-old version of me commits a terrible sin, does the baby version of me have to be punished as well? Is God going to poof this baby version of me out of existence? God created a life and now regrets it and doesn't want to deal with the consequences so he is going to end it.
Hmmm. Maybe we need to change the name. Rather than calling it annihilation, we could call it soul abortions. That would probably make it a less attractive alternative, but would it be unfair?

While I don’t think he would have used that term, I believe there is far more evidence that Jesus was a universalist than there is that he was an annihilationist. We are talking about the guy who wasn’t going to give up until he found every lost sheep, every lost coin. I wonder if the story of the prodigal son could be seen as a tale of post-mortem repentance and reconciliation? I mean, it is like the son went through Hell before deciding to crawl back to his father. Or are we to believe that if the son had died before he had a chance to go back he would have been rejected by the father?
Did Jesus think he was only here to save “believers” and that everyone else would be “poofed”? Where is the scriptural evidence of that? He apparently left his followers with the wrong ideas if that were so.
In 1 John 2:2 we have “(Jesus) is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” In 2 Peter 3:9 we have “…(The Lord) is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” Where is the warning about a deadline when God’s patience supposedly runs out after you die?
And then there is this from Paul (or one of his followers) in 1 Timothy 4:10… “…we have put our hope in the living God, who is the savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.”  Wait.. what!?! Especially those who believe? You mean it’s not just for believers only??
If Jesus was only going to save the righteous, the justified, the faithful, the believers, etc. Why did he tell us to love everybody and to forgive everybody - even our enemies? Do as I say and not as I do? Surely not! If I truly love my enemies, as God commands, and then God poofs them out of existence, what does that tell me? Does God really love me? Or is his love conditioned on whether or not I love him enough? 
Here is what Jesus had to say about that in Luke 6: 32-36
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.  Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
I don’t think annihilationism is merciful. I take Jesus’ warnings of punishment seriously. But I think that for punishment to be just, it must be corrective and not just punitive. Annihilation may be better than ECT, but it is still just punitive. 

Biblical Authority

 My views on Biblical authority are decidedly mixed. I don’t have a problem with having a “high view” of the Bible except when it runs contrary to my “high view” of God. The thing is, I get my high view of God from the Bible - mainly through the lens of Jesus. And I feel that this view is confirmed in me through my own personal relationship with God through the Holy Spirit. What I will not do is to allow this high view of God to be watered down by what I would call biblicism - a view of the Bible as inerrant, infallible, etc.

I once had someone quote a dark passage from the Old Testament to me (I can’t remember now what it was about) and I countered with a quote from Jesus. But the person then told me that since the entire Bible is God-breathed that means that every part of the Bible is like a quote from Jesus.  People with that attitude can pretty much justify anything they want with the Bible.

I think the story of Jesus resonates with people because we already know in our hearts that what he is teaching is right and true. Jesus gave us a new way to see God as a loving father, rather than as a stern and vindictive king. I believe that God is the creator of the universe and thus is the father of everyone. As a father, I could never turn my back or give up on any of my children no matter what they did. So I cannot imagine that God would ever give up on any of his children for any reason. I don’t doubt that people can demonstrate that some of the biblical authors had a view of God as punishing wicked people with annihilation. But every view of God in the Bible is a step along a path and not the final word.