Being Saved
The central issue for the version of Christianity I grew up with was whether you would go to heaven or hell after death. The churches I attended all taught that your ultimate destiny depended on whether or not you had been saved.
Wrath and Punishment
Was Jesus Born So He Could Die?
In the churches I attended growing up, I was told that Jesus died so my sins could be forgiven. My teachers said that my sins deserved the ultimate penalty. But since Jesus had endured the punishment that I deserved, I could receive God’s forgiveness by accepting what Jesus had done for me.
Did That Really Happen?
There is a better way than adopting the literalist readings of either Dawkins or conservative defenders of everything ascribed to God in biblical stories. Just as we might acknowledge that a biblical writer can have an overly anthropomorphic view of God, we can say that a biblical writer can have a view of God that is morally deficient, which comes from common ways of thinking about deity at the time.
A Wrathful God
Some people think that if God is described in a particular way in the Bible, the account must be accepted as accurate. But reflective believers tend to say that we should not take literally portrayals that ascribe human imperfections to God.
God’s Delight
One of my former pastors used a blessing at the end of the weekly worship service that contained the following line: “May the God who loves you take delight in your living.” I found the line striking because it contrasted sharply with ways I had learned to think about God.