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faith, hope, insanitybytes22, love, relationship, The Word, theology
Sometimes it seems to me as if we try to do things totally backwards. I remain absolutely convinced that we must know God, get a good feel for His nature and His tremendous love for us, before we tackle big theological questions. Know the Author and Finisher of our faith, even before we read His book.
That may well sound crazy, but it really isn’t. We teach kids about love, about relationship, before we begin to teach them about the bible. God is love and they have to know what love is before they can begin to know who God is. Hopefully, we keep teaching them about love and about the bible and it keeps building, precept upon precept.
I was kind of blessed as a kid, I spent about ten years alone talking to God, secretly building a relationship, without the church, without the bible, without other Christians. I did not feel blessed at the time, but I do now. That was a priceless gift. How I came to know Him so well, to grasp many scriptural principles, is one of God’s mysteries, one of those supernatural things that just cannot really be explained. I know God is real because God revealed Himself to me.
I was about 13 before I first saw a bible, but it was already familiar to me, I opened those pages and there He was. I recognized Him immediately. I devoured the entire bible in about 15 hours, absolutely delighted, the greatest love story every written, and exactly like I had imagined it.
Very few things tripped me up, gave me pause, made me hesitate, because I could see it through God’s eyes and God is love, God is unmerited favor, God’s intentions towards us are benevolent, kind. Of course, over the years I have since unwrapped many more layers as scripture has revealed itself to me more deeply.
I was recently reminded of one thing that tripped me up however, the sins of the fathers, generational curses, why sin could be passed down 3-4 generations. That was not the God I knew at all, because He is just and fair. He would never make a child suffer for the sins of a father. Or a great, great, grandma. So I wove some excuses, bad translation perhaps, maybe a proclamation against passing sin down to your offspring, maybe some legalistic thing limiting it to four generations, maybe a cultural or contextual piece I was missing….
Regardless I wasn’t swallowing it. God was good, that was not good, so I had a piece of cognitive dissonance going on. Somewhat comically, I had that cognitive dissonance going on while trying to wade through many family issues, multiple generational curses I couldn’t even see…… since I didn’t believe in them.
There’s something rather funny about explaining to God that such ideas were completely unacceptable to me, I refuse to believe in them, while walking right down the middle of them.
God is good, always. That’s the golden rule, so if something trips you up the error is always going to be on your end, a misunderstanding, a misinterpretation, or a bit of cognitive dissonance.
I came to get a good feel for the sins of the fathers, for generational curses and eventually realized it just is what it is. God isn’t doing it to be mean to us, we simply inherit a lot of baggage by virtue of our birth. Some people inherit more, some less, and some people spend half a life time trying to untangle ourselves. God is good though, He sets the captives free.
Sometimes atheists will swing by and yell at me, “God is horrible, God condones slavery, God makes children suffer the sins of the father.” Some of those atheists are some very good theologians, but they don’t know my Father. They know His Word, but they do not know the Author and Finisher of my faith. God is good, always.
If you miss that one foundational building block, that cornerstone, nothing else will ever make sense, and Christian or not, theologian or not, you will simply render His word completely incoherent. 1 John 4:8 tells us, “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”
Know God.
Brandon Adams said:
“I remain absolutely convinced that we must know God, get a good feel for His nature and His tremendous love for us, before we tackle big theological questions.”
I had a similar thought last night – I’ve always read the Bible as a list of commands that I never get right, and it diminishes my interest in reading it. But what if I examined every command through the filter of love instead? In fact, much of the New Testament contains keys in each passage to doing just that. I’m thinking about making it a series.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Amen, Brandon! I think a series would be wonderful. 🙂
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christinewjc said:
God’s Word is an honest book, so it records the sins, failings, and pitfalls of man as well as the goodness of God. “Curses” being passed down through generations could happen because of the addictive nature of some situations. For instance, alcoholism can be passed down to the children of alcoholics (I’ve read scientific studies about this) so those who might be even more vulnerable than others are wise to abstain.
Good post, as always! I liked being reminded that “He sets the captives free.” He set me free and I’m so grateful to Jesus for that!
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insanitybytes22 said:
You make a really good point, the bible is also recording the antics of mankind. So Solomon had hundreds of wives, but that is not to say that God is commanding polygamy. Jonah was swallowed by a whale, but God is not directing us to flee Him and hop on a ship. Here are some rules about not abusing your slaves,but that is not an endorsement of slavery. And so it goes on down the line. Context is very relevant. 🙂
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RichardP said:
“… one thing that tripped me up however, the sins of the fathers … why sin could be passed down 3-4 generations.”
Just curious. When this thought was tripping you up, did you understand that it applied to “those who hate me” . And did you know then of the follow-up thought “… but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” ? Exodus 20:3-7
Taking in the whole counsel of God helps us not get fixated on a specific point that to us seems unfair – knowing first-hand what the whole Bible says before getting stuck on a particular part.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Well, I think it is very difficult, if not impossible, to take in the full council of God if we do not have a good grasp of God’s nature. So intellectually you can read those things, but they still will not resonate if you do not have a clear picture of God’s love.
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gmgoetz said:
Amen. Another good post. Thank you.
God is LOVE all the time. God loves all the time.
George
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Anna said:
I heard a preacher say once that we are in the middle of generational sins like we are in the middle of a river. Those sins flow down and round us in an inescapable way, but as you pointed out, He sets the captives free.
What you describe above is true faith however you may come to it. Be it years sitting in a church pew or the wooing and visitation of our merciful God who has sought out the one who has not been connected to His church. It is trusting that His Word is good and seeking out understanding from that vantage, trusting that He is love and letting Him define love.
Thank you
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Wally Fry said:
Well. Yeah. I love theology and doctrine, but those things are certainly not necessary for a saving relationship. Thank Him for it, as when I was saved 10 years ago, frankly I had never cracked open a Bible really. I was also “blessed” on year to teach a class of 10 kindergartners in VBS. That’s another story LOL, but the point being we never even opened the Bible. We say around my make believe campsite and talked about the Jesus who loved them for almost an hour.
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MJThompson said:
It should be a ‘no-brainer’ – EVERYTHING we learn STARTS with a relationship! I’m like you, I came to ‘know’ God before I was able to comprehend the Bible, fellowship with other believers, and desire spiritual maturity. Indeed, even Scripture declares it is impossible to know the ‘things’ of God unless and until you KNOW God.
“But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” – 1Cor. 2:14.
Of course, we’re ‘preaching to the choir’ because only those who already have a right relationship with God by virtue of the indwelling Holy Spirit CAN rightly comprehend this. PEACE!
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Mel Wild said:
That’s funny, like Brandon Adams, I was talking about this very thing with my leaders yesterday! I totally agree. I don’t think we can rightly understand the Bible without first understanding the nature of God, and we find that in the person of Jesus Christ. And it’s because of this backwards thinking that we have so many ugly versions of the Gospel among “Bible believing” Christians.
On that note, isn’t it strange that, traditionally, we start our children in Sunday school teaching them about Noah’s flood because of the cute animals…”yeah, hey kids…gather ’round…it’s judgment of God time!” 🙂 What we should be doing is first telling them about the life and teachings of Jesus first, having them understanding God’s unconditional love for us as you said, and THEN and only then, letting Jesus interpret those passages for us.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Amen, Mel! It is quite encouraging knowing there are people in the world really get this. It’s kind of important.
Good point about Noah, I hadn’t thought of that before.
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MJThompson said:
Indeed, the Bible should never be read in chronological order. That’s why most evangelists pass out New Testaments and advise their converts to begin reading the book of John – the best PERSONAL portrayal of Jesus. But even so, we are to introduce Christ the person first, NOT teachings about Him in hopes that they will result in conversions.
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oneta hayes said:
Very good, IB. I’m so glad to have your testimony of how God revealed himself to you through years that you had no “formal” teaching by others. I also believe testimonies of people who have no Christian teaching who say that at a particular point in their lives the pick up a Bible and start reading – that God used that means to bring them into salvation. In my case I learned from family and Sunday School teachers. I’m so glad God is imaginative enough to reach us all in an individual way. Revelations similar to yours confirm the scripture that nature itself can be a revelation from God. I’m so glad to hear your story.
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SharaC said:
Love this… easy to get hung up on the generational stuff if you’re looking at God through a filter that doesn’t represent who He really is. The great thing about all of it is that He is greater than all our baggage and once we surrender to Him and His ways all that ‘stuff’ is totally under His authority and can be dealt with.
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irtfyblog said:
“I was kind of blessed as a kid, I spent about ten years alone talking to God, secretly building a relationship, without the church, without the bible, without other Christians.”
As I read that, it came to me that you fit in with all the pillars of the faith listed in Hebrews 11 because every one of them were separated from society…no church…no bible…no other Christians…and trained by God to recognize His voice, learn His ways and to KNOW Him so intimately that they trusted Him implicitly.
You’re in good company, IB. 🙂
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silenceofmind said:
Insanity,
This post contains some very heady and hard won insights that are critical for a healthy spiritual life!
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Nikhil Raj Gupta said:
Wonderful Article
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