For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. -John 3:16

World is not merely nations in this text. Such a distinction, while required in order to prop up the doctrine of limited atonement, is simply not found in the text. What the text does say, however, is that God loves the whole world (without distinction so that we understand God to love all men, as is his revealed character throughout Scripture) in such a way as to give his only begotten son for the same (that is, all men without distinction, elect and non-elect, chosen and non-chosen) and that whosoever will may believe in Jesus and be saved (indicating how one may go from being one of the not-saved to one of the saved or non-elect to elect “in Christ”).

The glory of God here is that God is both willing (so loved) and able (that he sent) to save all men without distinction so that there is hope (whosoever will) for all men.

Curiously this verse does not say that God only loved the elect, only died for the elect, and that only the elect will (through irresistible and forceful changing of a person’s will against their desires/wishes/choice) be saved.

After this encounter with a fellow brother in Christ a while back regarding Miley Cyrus’s “pole dance”¹ I was recently sent an email from the young marrieds director of a local church containing a link to a blog post regarding the latest Miley Cyrus controversy involving a lapdance given to her homosexual producer.

My initial reaction went like this:

I can’t help but wonder why Miley Cyrus is such a favorite punching bag among evangelicals. Is it because she came from an SBC background?

With constant criticism like this it’s little wonder she has walked (more like run) away from her SBC roots…

To which I received a response from the blog post’s author that went like this:

Please note that I’m not “punching” poor Miley. She’s just a kid. It’s her father’s careless attitude that troubles me.

And no, he can’t control her or make decisions for her. But when a dad takes such a “whatever” attitude about the trajectory of his teenage daughter’s life, it begs for a response. I just want to challenge dads to a higher standard.

To which I ended up writing a rather lengthy response which follows:

Miley is really not a kid.

Her net worth is between 60-80 million dollars and there is widespread speculation that if she continues at her present rate she will be a billionaire by the time she is 20.

Billy’s brief flirtation with success in the early 90s must have made some sort of an impression on him because he made it a requisite that he be given a co-lead with his daughter on her Disney show. In his words, this was so that he could be there in her most formative years and early in her entertainment career to do what I would consider to be nearly impossible which is to help guide her through the cesspool known as the American entertainment industry.

Today Miley is 17 years old, at the time the video was shot she was 16. The writers at the NY Times also failed to mention that her lap dance was with her producer, who is openly and adamantly gay.

When asked publicly about his daughter’s actions what do you really expect Billy Ray to say? Do you expect that he say he is disappointed in her and that she is grounded? Do you expect him to take her over his knee?

If I were in Billy’s shoes I can’t say I wouldn’t have said the exact same thing he said in an effort to not drag out into the public what is inherently a private issue between a father and his daughter. A daughter, by the way, who is in one of the most poisonous atmospheres known to man during one of the most critical developmental periods of her life.

Tell me, does anyone think that exposing Miley to public shame and ridicule qualifies as responsible and wise parenting?

Could he have worded his comments differently? Sure. Is he known to be a master linguist? Not really. So why not give the man a break.

When it comes to Miley Cyrus I think a healthy dose of Romans 14:4 is in order. Not that we can’t or shouldn’t comment on the morality or wisdom of the actions of a public figure like Miley. But I think our discussion of public figures in overly simplistic terms simply does not do justice to the complexity of the situation.

In the end we must also ask ourselves what good it does to publicly ridicule and lambast those who purport to be our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ (which both Miley and Billy both do).

Do we really expect our admonitions of Billy to even reach his ears/eyes? If not, why bother grandstanding on the issue?

It’s not like we can really use Miley and Billy as an example “us regular folk” ought to follow simply because we 1.) don’t live in that world nor do we 2.) have access to that staggering amount of resources.

So if we aren’t serious about coming alongside Billy and offering to build him up through constructive edification. And if we can’t really make a 1 to 1 comparison between Billy’s parental chores and our own. I vote we leave the Cyrus family alone. Instead of railing against them on the internet, why not pray for them (and not in a public shamefest way)?

Who knows, perhaps the God we serve will do the impossible yet again and not only deliver Miley from the toxic environment she is in (that is, the American entertainment industry) but also form her into a powerful witness to His Glory.

1. and I still maintain that if you think that was a pole dance then you are simply a prude who needs to visit a strip club and see a real pole dance

Here’s what Pat Robertson had to say about it:

I’ve heard many atheists and anti-Christians take Pat’s comments above as reinforcements to support their belief that Christians are intolerant, bigoted, and wholly devoid of compassion. It’s this group of people I want to address..

There are many of us whose hearts do break for the pain, suffering, and evil that has been unleashed upon the people of Haiti. While we do maintain that God is wholly sovereign over the world we also vehemently deny assertions like the one made by Pat Robertson.

We don’t consider him to be unsaved or a devil in disguise. Since we are all members of a much larger family which includes those hurting in Haiti, we simply maintain that men like Pat are like the black sheep that run in all families.

Except, we also recognize that in this family we were all black sheep at one point in time.

Yes, we are all very much aware that there is a cancer in the body of Christ and we are desperately trying to fight it.

But where does that cancer come from? We know full well it comes from the hearts of sinful men who are still in need of a savior.

No, we aren’t perfect. We just know someone who is.

The exact age at which one acquires sufficient cognitive awareness of their actions (which, in turn makes them accountable for their actions) is not known. Jewish tradition holds to it being around the age of 12 (bar mitzvah). Other traditions such as Methodists have confirmation at the age of 13 (a commonly accepted age).

Some passages that lend weight to this teaching are:

• Jonah 4:11 – God seems to compare innocence of the unconscious animals to the children of Nineveh.
• Deuteronomy 1:39 – This is perhaps the clearest affirmation of the doctrine of the age of accountibility as it is a clear charge to the Israelites to teach “your children who do not yet know good from bad”. This verse helps pave the way for the Deuteronomy 6:4
• Isaiah 7:14-16 – Speaks about he complete righteousness of the promised messiah. This verse is especially powerful since it also affirms that children do sin before they are consciously aware of it.

Additionally the following verses give us additional reason to think that:

• Genesis 18:25 God’s judgement are not arbitrary. They are based on conscious and willful disobedience.
• Deuteronomy 24:16, Ezekiel 18:20 God does not charge the sins of the fathers to the children (or vice versa). We are each accountable for our own sins.
• Luke 12:42-48 Our knowledge determines our degree of punishment.

For more information on the age of accountability, take a look here and here

Some of the extreme examples of recent stances taken regarding the judgement of God is the relatively new practice of imprecatory prayer³ where advocates literally pray for the death of specific individuals such as President Obama. This practice is said to have come from select Old Testament texts where various figures such as the Psalmist, David, and others prayed for their enemies to be vanquished.

I’m not sure this is what Jesus had in mind when he told us to pray for our enemies⁴.

Most Christians don’t go this far, thankfully, but they do adopt a slightly milder view of God’s wrath and judgement through unfortunate events⁵ and natural disasters⁶. While this view of God’s judgement often comes from a noble desire to uphold God’s sovereignty which often, unfortunately, crosses the line into causal determinism and, in order to reconcile the two, forces the holder of such a view of God’s sovereignty to ignore clear Biblical teaching about judgement in order to explain why a sovereign God would cause such tragic events to unfold rather than prevent them.

This issue ultimately leads to the question of evil in general, which is covered far better elsewhere, but I want to focus on the simple question of God’s judgement and what we can and can’t say about it in light of some clear teachings from the Bible.

The nature of God’s judgement can be summed up by the three words Jesus spoke on the matter from the cross. It is finished⁷ . The Bible clearly states that Jesus paid for sin once and for all at the cross⁸ . After Jesus rises from the dead we don’t read of anyone being punished for their sins but we are told that this is a time of grace until the final judgement comes where all remaining unrighteous will be dealt with. In fact, we are told that there is only one sin which will determine our innocence or guilt according to Matthew 12:32 and that is the acceptance of the witness of the Holy Spirit to Jesus, the Son sent to pay for our sin. In other words, to blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to call God a liar by refusing to believe in His Son.

An astute observer will note Ananias and Sapphira⁹ as an example of God judging (and smiting) people after the resurrection of Jesus.

However I would point out that, in addition with Paul’s admonition of 1 Corinthians 5:5 to “deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord”, Hebrews 12:17 tells us that when we are adopted into God’s family we are disciplined as sons . Because of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints (once saved, always saved) we shouldn’t think that Ananias and Sapphira were judged in the sense that they somehow lost their salvation but were rather disciplined.

Only by claiming that Jesus did not actually die for the sins of all men could you claim that God is still at work judging and smiting the wicked or else we would have a problem with God requiring double payment for sins. This, too, is something many in the reformed camp end up accepting as a result of their theology¹⁰ which ultimately raises more issues than it solves.

As for claiming natural disasters and random events as judgements from God we need to look back to the Old Testament and how God brought judgement then and how what we call judgement today just doesn’t add up.

The first thing we should note is that the prophets in the Old Testament were sent to proclaim the coming wrath of God in order to 1.) give the people time to repent and turn to God (or did you think grace and mercy were unique to the New Testament) and 2.) to remove all doubt as to where the coming calamity came from and why.

With most (if not all) modern forms of “judgement” we see no prophet and we also, frequently, do not see the precision in scope we see in the Old Testiment. In other words, innocent civilians are caught up in many so called acts of judgement we hear about today.

While some theological systems do not hold to the notion of an innocent bystander and are perfectly fine with the idea that God would indiscriminately pour out his wrath on the righteous as well as the unrighteous, Abraham shows us God’s character in regard to judgement in Genesis 18. Before undertaking the task of bargaining with the Lord, he asks “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?”, and later asks “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” This should show us, along with God’s statement about the Amorites ((Genesis 15:16 tells us that their sin had not yet reached its full measure)), that when God judges, he states his case clearly and limits his wrath to those he has also warned and given ample opportunity to repent.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard when it comes to building a Biblical worldview is the admonition to remain consistent in what we believe and teach. In other words, we have no business telling people about the grace, mercy, and love of a God who has indeed paid everything on the Cross if we are, at the same time, going to tell them that God is, at this time, judging the world for the sin he supposedly already dealt with at the cross.

1. particularly the USA
2. generally whichever one we don’t like at a particular moment
3. http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_12690952
4. Matthew 5:44
5. Such as 9/11 and bridges collapsing
6. such as tsunamis and hurricanes
7. John 19:30
8. Hebrews 10, notice that Paul mentions the finality of Jesus’s sacrifice and the corresponding futility of thinking we can “add” anything to it.
9. Acts 5:1-10
10. Which is sad, because it shows how bad theology can color a natural reading of the text, turning God into a capricious monster.