Contents

Copyright

Forward

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: Blood Boiling

Chapter 2: God the Dictator

Chapter 3: Blurry Pictures

Chapter 4: Job, Mystery, and a Theory

Chapter 5: Fun With Wrath

Chapter 6: The God Who Solves Pain

Chapter 7: Stories

Chapter 8: Jesus and Zeus

Chapter 9: Closing Thoughts

About the Author

Beloved Publishing

Copyright © 2014 Stephen D Morrison

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

First Edition: January 2014

Printed in the United States of America

Published by Beloved Publishing (BelovedPublishing.com)

Cover design thanks to Krista Zerbin:

(Facebook.com/KristaZerbin.art)

ISBN: 978-1-63174-000-8

Foreword

By Ethan Bricker

I first met Stephen Morrison at Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry in the mountains of Redding, California. When we first met each other I understood Stephen had a fascination for the gospel. He was absolutely intrigued and awe struck by the incarnation and crucifixion of Christ. From the few hours I spent with him on our first hangout (which involved swinging off ropes and cliff diving into WhiskeyTown Lake) I could already tell the gospel was not a boring or mundane story to Stephen, but it was a candy land of mystery that he was determined to discover vigorously.

Since first meeting, I have had the honor and privilege of going to coffee with Stephen more times then I can count to talk about the joys of theology and grace. I received the greatest gift a person like myself can receive in a friendship: someone to come with me on the adventure of uncovering who our Father is, and what He’s really like. Through countless times of “I don’t get it!” And, “how is God really that good?!” We may have lightly scratched the surface of the goodness of God together in those times of thorough wonder.

When Stephen asked me to write the forward to his first book, entitled The God Who Solves Pain, I was so eager to get my hands on it. I knew just by the title that this would be somewhat of a narration of all those incredible conversations my friend and I had so often. This book has been through countless conversations, studies, prayers and intimate encounters that Stephen has carried throughout the years. I am so grateful and fortunate to have seen some of those conversations, prayer sessions in each others homes, and heard the stories of encounters God has given Stephen that have led up to this manuscript.

The God Who Solves Pain has steeped in the heart and soul of Stephen for years. Through years of laughter and worship to the King he has stumbled upon something that will change the world forever. A God who, contrary from common belief, wants the best for His kids. This book confronts any of the belief systems that have been developed by life experience and not by relationship with the Father. Stephen dives deep into the beauty of knowing who our Father is and through that how we can identify what is the act of God and what is the exploit of the Devil. The God Who Solves Pain clearly illuminates the truth that if it looks like stealing, killing, or destroying it’s the devil. Not God. (John 10:10)

This book will equip you to carry the real authentic good news of the gospel. It will disinfect any bit of fear mongrel mentalities in you. It will exterminate any religion on you and replace it with the certainties of the incarnation celebrating our eternal union with Christ. No longer will you live a life placing God as the cause of natural disasters, cancer, and death. You will start to see how much God really lives for humanities well being and comfort. I guess that’s why He’s called Jehovah-Rapha. (Exodus 15:26) Many of your questions will be answered in this book, but many may not as Stephen sends you on a voyage to discover who God is to you through intimate relationship.

God truly is in a good mood after all. You will giggle and you will weep as you see God as the God who actually doesn’t destroy, but who preserves and heals. You won’t be able to put the book down or put out the flame that it sparks within your heart. One thing is certain; you will never be the same after reading The God Who Solves Pain.

Acknowledgements

First of all, I owe a debt of gratitude to two men who have greatly influenced many of the ideas in this book: Bill Johnson, and John Crowder.  Thank you for paying the price for this message!

I'd also like to thank my friends and family for their ever enduring support, love, and kindness:

To Mom. Thank you for teaching me how to be like a turtle.

To Dad. Thank you for motivating me and inspiring me to work hard and pursue my dreams.

To Josh and Carley. Thank you for being my friends both growing up together, and now that we're adults.

To Grandma and Grandpa. Thank you for demonstrating love to our family, and for inspiring my love for books.

To Ethan Bricker. Thank you for your friendship, and for the hours and hours of theological discussions we've had.

And of course, the biggest thanks of all goes to my amazing wife. Your joy, your love, your support, and your encouragement has meant everything to me! I love you so much Ketlin! Always and forever you have my heart!

Introduction

I've been called a heretic only twice in my life. Once online by a friend, and another time by a best-selling author I’ve never met. Both had their reasons, namely, the contents of this book. So here is a fair warning: this book is not normal. What you're getting into, in getting into this book, is something that may not sit right with your average-Joe-Christian. This book presents ideas about God that are not popular or common. This book very well might change everything you thought you knew about God, and the way He interacts with our pain.

Accordingly, you may find yourself frustrated, and if I’m honest, I wholeheartedly hope you do. Frustration sometimes is a necessary feeling in the movement towards change. While I don’t enjoy being labeled a heretic, sometimes “heresy” is necessary. Heresy is defined as anything that goes against commonly held orthodoxy.

I hope, with all my heart, that this book will aid in the rocking of orthodoxical-boats. Boat rocking isn’t really the goal, but it may be necessary in order to achieve my goal. I believe that there is something horribly wrong with the current beliefs we as a church have accepted about pain and God’s relationship with it. So here’s a fair warning: you may not like this book, or agree with it. Although it may just alter forever the way you see God.

With that said I guess I should introduce myself, and explain why I feel qualified to write something like this. I mean let's be honest. I’m not a scholar; I have no letters after my name. I’m young. Which may very well be reasons for you to dismiss my ideas entirely, but I hope you don’t. I make absolutely no claim in having figured everything out. However, I simply come to you as a student. I write as someone who is still learning, growing, and exploring in God.

As a student, I can relate to students. If you are a learner then this book is for you. If you are ready to accept a new way of thinking then I welcome you to experience mine. Join me in the fun. Our God is far better than you think. I promise. We should, as students of God, always be continually reminding ourselves of this fact. God is far beyond our wildest comprehension, and therefore we can not live under the assumption that we have it all figured out. We are still learning, and discovering how wildly good God truly is.

Which means that all of us, at the end of the day whether we admit it or not, are students. We are living, learning, growing, and exploring this wonderful God of ours. I bring no qualifications to the table in the discussion, and honestly neither does anyone else. We are all students of God. The moment anyone tries to claim otherwise, such a person is only fooling themselves.

Anyone who claims to have a clue about God is the most clueless of all. He is God, after all. All theology, at the end of the day, is guesswork- taking stabs in the dark at the infinite being. The moment you think you understand God, is the moment you understand the least.

Which ultimately leads me to why I write this book. I’m not writing to prove a point, although at times it may seem as such. Ultimately I write to change your mind about God. I want to present a new way of thinking about pain, but more importantly about God. I hope above anything else that after you finish reading this book- whether you throw it away afterwards, and reject everything I say or not- I hope and pray that you see God in a new way. I hope God becomes good- really, really good. Inexhaustibly, irresistibly, undeniably, and infinitely good.

The goodness of God shining bright in the midst of a book about pain is my goal. It is a rather odd goal, but nonetheless, it is my goal. May you see God aright, and joyfully celebrate His goodness. May you see His smile, hear His heart, feel His love, and encounter His kindness. I pray that this book gets rid of every mindset that has ever stopped you from believing in a God who is so ridiculously good that you just can’t keep yourself from laughing wildly at the sheer joy of knowing Him.

- Chapter 1 -

Blood Boiling

I don't know about you, but I can't stand it when God gets a bad name. Whether it's from a t.v. show, a movie, or a news story. It bugs me when the God whom I adore is degraded, and distorted.

But ironically, what I've found to be the case is not that the world gives God a bad name so much as we do. Christians, I find, are the worst at giving God a bad reputation.

The other day a friend of mine sent me an article that, in my mind, did that very thing. It was an article written about how God has "decided" He's about to kill millions of people. A notable Christian leader wrote this. He felt that God had told him as a warning to everyone in God’s crosshairs.

To be frank, it pissed me off. The article infuriated me. I was soon pacing the floor of my tiny apartment kitchen— blood boiled; fully frustrated.

The article was a warning for the imminent destruction of the entire state of California.

When I read the article at first I wanted to laugh. I thought it was one of the most ridiculous things I had ever heard. The author wrote that God is going to send an earthquake to completely destroy the entire state, wiping out all its major cities, and their inhabitants. This minister recounted seeing a vision of the Golden Gate Bridge snapping in half, and the entire Bay Area flooding. I thought they were joking. No one can really be that cruel, can they?

But my desire to laugh quickly went away as I realized that this was not a joke. My blood boiled. They actually believed this stuff, and had convinced many others to believe it with them. They actually thought God was going to destroy the entire state of California.

I started to think about what it all meant. Did God really want to destroy California? I mean, I personally love California. It’s one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. It's where I went to school, met my wife, and fell in love with her. California will always hold a special place in my heart. It seems unthinkable of God to destroy it.

Not just for my sake either. I mean, come on, there are millions of people who live in California. 38 million to be exact. Is God going to kill all of them in hot wrath? Is that really the kind of God we worship, serve, and teach to our children?

This really makes God look bad.

And it brings up some really bad theology that I believe has plagued the church for far too long—strange ideas about the nature of God, and His relationship with pain.

I have had several conversations with friends and acquaintances about this subject. Sometimes these conversations can be encouraging, but other times they’re simply horrifying. I’ve begun to realize that a lot of Christians have been taught some really strange things about all this.

When it becomes somehow okay to prophetically pronounce the doom of 38 million people, then there is something horribly wrong in our thinking.

There’s Something Wrong

Why do bad things happen in our world? Why do people die, get diseases, and suffer from disasters? Where is God in the midst of all this pain?

The way a lot of Christians understand God and His relationship with pain is simply shocking to me. How is it okay for us to believe some of the things we believe? When we try to give an answer for the relationship between God and pain, we Christians have some ridiculous responses. Let's just be honest with ourselves.

When someone asks the universal question of, “why do bad things happen to good people?”, we will commonly answer in one of the following ways:

“Who are you to question God?”

“God is testing your faith. Just trust Him.”

“God is angry at you for your sins. You deserve this punishment.”

“God is graciously letting you live on earth. Who are you to get upset when He gives you pain? He could kill you right now if He wanted to, just be thankful that He hasn’t already.”

But aren’t you tired of that? I know I am.

Everyday people die, get cancer, have car accidents, suffer trauma, lose limbs, contract diseases, starve, thirst, and freeze. People are beaten, sold into slavery, raped, stolen from, attacked, and tortured. Our world is full of pain.

Our response to this pain just makes matters far worse. There is something wrong here:

Cancer is a loving God's way of teaching us how to be better people?

God willingly destroys entire cities, states and even countries out of His holy judgement?

God kills because He’s angry at our sin?

Whenever a little child gets raped, God is teaching us patience?

Have we lost our minds?

The Four Forces

A lot of bad theology exists because, I believe, we have misunderstood one very simple idea. I think somewhere in our minds, we have accepted the idea that God is the only “force” capable of causing bad things to happen. If this is the case, then of course it makes sense to blame Him for all the evil things that have happened in the world, as I feel we often do in Christianity.

However, this way of thinking is fundamentally flawed. God is not the only force responsible for pain. In my mind, there are essentially four forces that can cause pain to happen.

These forces are humanity, nature, the demonic, and God. Each of these forces, both biblically speaking and practically speaking, are capable of causing bad things to happen in our world.

For my money, I’d figure God as the least likely to cause pain out of that list. Simply because He is a good God. His very name speaks to His goodness. The word in English for God is identical to the Anglo-Saxon word for “good.” (Anglo-Saxon being the origin of the English language.) They were originally correlative terms; seemingly interchangeable.

But what do you think? These four forces are all capable of causing pain. Does this argument end our discussion then? Have I successfully proven to you that God is not behind the pain and suffering of our world?

An Objection

I doubt that I have convinced you. For one simple reason: if God is in control, then God can use any and all of these forces to do whatever He wants.

It doesn’t matter if there are other forces that can theoretically cause bad things to happen. If God is in control of all these forces, wouldn’t that make God still to blame for pain? Even indirectly so?

Which means we need to talk about control. Is God in control? Is He pulling the strings behind every single good, bad and ugly event that happens in our world?

- Chapter 2 -

God the Dictator

Is God in control?

Most Christians would say He is. It's a phrase we often say to comfort one another. "Don’t worry, God’s in control." But is He really?

In the last chapter I introduced the four forces as an alternative to God causing pain, but we quickly came to a stand still. If God is in control, then wouldn’t all of the other forces just be an extension of His will?

When we’re thinking about the relationship God has with pain, the four forces argument by itself isn’t necessarily an adequate excuse for God. He may still be responsible for all the horrible things that happen in the world.

The way we answer this question is pivotal therefore in understand God’s relationship with our pain. So I am going to go ahead and give you what I think about this, and spend the rest of the chapter telling you exactly why.

No. God is not in control.

What I think you need to understand is that there’s a massive difference between control and sovereignty. I do believe, with all my heart, that God is sovereign. I just don’t believe He is in control. We often get the idea that God is in control from a faulty understanding of His sovereignty. But here I will argue that sovereignty is completely different from control.

Right now if you went online and to look up every bible verse with the word “control” in it, you would discover that not once in the entire bible does it ever say, “God is in control.” Do a quick word search for yourself and you’ll see. The idea that God is in control is actually not a biblical idea. Despite what you have previously heard or been taught. The bible never actually claims that God is in control.

However, look up the word “sovereign”, and you will find hundreds of verses in the bible that talk about God's sovereignty. If we are strictly looking at what the bible says about whether or not God is in control or sovereign the answer is clear. God is sovereign, but not necessarily in control.

Sovereignty and control are not the same thing. We often take the biblical idea of sovereignty, and apply our own notion of control onto it. But sovereignty is not control, and I will tell you why.

What Is Control

To control means to directly impact an outcome.

When it comes to God, if He does in fact control the world, this then would mean that He causes everything to happen. Therefore making every good and bad event the direct action of God. Because if God is in control, then nothing can happen without God allowing for it to happen. For God to allow something to happen is just the same as God making it happen.

So essentially if God is in control then everything that has ever happened, everything that is happening now, and everything that is going to happen is happening because God is making it happen.

Isn’t that right? If God really is in control and something happens that He did not directly make happen, would He still be in control? Logically not. Therefore, if God is in control then everything that takes place in the world is His doing.

You may begin to see what I’m getting at. I don’t think those who claim that “God is in control” have actually thought through what they’re really saying. To claim that “God is in control” is essentially to blame God for everything that has ever happened in the world: the good, the bad, and the terrifying.

We have wrongly assumed that it’s a good thing for God to be in control. But I believe that if God is actually in control, it would be the worst news the world has ever heard. A God who is in control is a God who ceases to love the world. This idea turns God into the world’s greatest enemy. Because a God who is in control is a God who is utterly opposed to our well being. He is the culprit behind our worst days, our darkest moments, and our most terrifying encounters with evil.

If God is in control then ultimately it is God who kills people on the streets of our cities, it is God who brutally rapes women all across the world, and it is God who gives cancer to innocent little children.

Is that really what you think God is like?

This seemingly innocent idea about God all of a sudden turns into a terrifying one. A God who is in control becomes a God who is far worse than anything we can imagine. It makes God worse than Hitler, Stalin, or any other evil human being combined. God becomes the God who brutally killed millions of Jews and who started the world wars.

This innocent little idea suddenly makes God responsible for the holocaust.

Does that terrify you? It terrifies me.

Can’t you see what this does to the nature of God? He is not longer a good God, but an angry God. He ceases to love the world, and He becomes obsessed with killing us. Perhaps this is why many Christians, and non-Christians alike, have a difficult time relating to God. He is just too mean. He isn’t really good.

It’s the nature of God that’s at stake here, and it is the highest price of all. What we think about God changes everything about the way we see the world. If God is in control, and He causes all this evil, pain, and death to happen, then why would anyone want to be in a relationship with Him? A God like that is not a God I would want to know.

If you were best friends with Hitler, would you still be his friend after hearing about his concentration camps? Would you willing serve him, and love him despite knowing all the horrible things he is doing to the world? Of course not. You would be terrified, and instantly distance yourself from him. The same thing happens whenever we misunderstand the nature of God. When we make God into something that He is not, we do the world a serious disservice. It may seem like I’m splitting hairs here, but it really does matter.

A God who is in control is an absolutely terrifying God.

Good God

This is why I am fully convinced that God is not in control of the world. I know that God is not a mass murdering lunatic, He is not a serial rapist, He did not cause the holocaust, He did not start the world wars, and He is certainly not the enemy of the world.

I refuse to allow any theology or doctrine to exist that undermines the nature of God as good. This one truth is the most important theological truth about the nature of God: He is good—irresistibly good.

He’s not good in the way we commonly use the word. He isn’t good as in: “how are you doing?” “Oh, I’m doing good.”- No. God is good as in: unbelievable, undeniable, smack-you-in-the-face good. His goodness is the foundation of His nature. He does everything out of His goodness. If I were to describe God in one word, it would be good. He is infinite goodness, far beyond anything we can imagine.

When Moses asked God to see His glory, what did the Lord do? He showed him His goodness. (See Exodus 33:18-19) You see, they are actually the same thing. His goodness is His glory. His glory is His nature, it is what He is like (although I understand that is a very oversimplified definition of “glory”). What God is like, according to Moses’ encounter with God, is infinite and overwhelming goodness. His glory is His nature, and His nature is good.

God is glorious; He is wonderful; He is inexpressibly good. The foundation of who God is, is goodness. This reality is then the foundation of all proper theology. Without a firm confidence in the goodness of God, theology loses all of its practical application. It is His goodness that we need to know more than anything else. We need to experience His goodness. He is absolutely good, and this fact changes everything about how we see the world.

The notion that God is in control, when brought to its fullest revelation, starkly undermines the nature of a good God. It is for this reason that I cannot accept the notion of a God who is in control. It undermines the nature of God as good. Which simply cannot happen.

If God is good, then God is not in control. If God is not good, then God is in control. You cannot have both. A God who is in control is not a God who is good. If you demand to have a God who is in control of the world, then you are demanding to have a mass-murdering, cancer-giving, war-starting God.

Your Will Be Done

Let’s hypothetically say God actually is in control. Why then would Jesus have us pray for God’s will to be done on earth? (See Matthew 6:9) He asked us to pray for God’s will to be done in one of our most important prayers, known as the Lord’s prayer. If the will of God is already happening all over the world in the form of cancer, disease, war, death, and destruction then why should we pray? If God is in control, then maybe we’ve gotten it wrong for centuries. Maybe we’re not supposed to actually pray the Lord’s prayer? God’s getting what He wants already, so why pray for something He already has?

The obvious solution is to realize that God is not in control. God’s will is not always done on the earth. If His will was already done, then Jesus wouldn’t have told us to pray for it to happen. Jesus knew that God was not making everything happen in the world, and that sometimes there are other forces at play. Jesus knew that God wasn’t in control, and so He told us to pray for His rulership to take place here on earth. The Lord’s prayer includes, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”— which means that God is not in control.

This thought brings us back to the four forces. God is not the only force at work on the earth. There are other factors that can contribute to the current state of the world. We pray for His will to be done, because there are competing wills trying to get their way on the earth besides just God’s.

God’s will is conditional. We have to choose it, and sadly lots of people don’t. A great example of this comes from 2 Peter 3:9. Peter tells us in this verse that the will of God is for none to perish.

If you believe that God is in control then you are going to eventually have to become either a universalist, or a hyper-calvinist. Universalists believe that God gets what He wants, and what God wants is for everyone to go to heaven. They claim that all roads lead to God. So if God is in control, then everyone goes to heaven because that’s what God wants. When God is in control He gets what He wants. This is basic universalism.

Hyper-Calvinists believe that God has predestined every single person to either heaven or hell. They take the sovereignty of God and push it to the utmost extreme by making every single human being’s fate predetermined. They claim that there are some who are destined to heaven no matter what they choose, and that there are some who are destined to hell no matter what they choose. God is in control, and since people do go to hell, they only go there because God has predestined them to go there.

But both of these extremes are problematic. Not all roads lead to God, as universalists claim. Jesus is the only way. Nor is everyone’s eternal destiny already predestined, as hyper-Calvinists claim. Jesus died for the whole world, not just for the selected few. Any thought that goes against that is a disgrace to the cross.

The will of God is not always done. Jesus wouldn’t have us pray the Lord’s prayer if it didn’t change anything. God is not in control of everything that happens, and the Lord’s prayer clearly proves that point.

Was Jesus God

One more time, just in case I haven’t convinced you yet, I am going to press my point even harder.

If God is in control, then Jesus was not God.

That’s right. If God is in control then you will ultimately have to conclude that Jesus was not God. And not only that, but you are also going to have to conclude that Jesus was actually the greatest enemy against God.

Think about it like this: If it’s truly God’s will for people to have cancer, sickness, disease and for them to ultimately die, then Jesus spent His whole life working in direct opposition to the will of God. If God was giving people sickness, and causing them to die then Jesus was working against God. Because Jesus spent a lot of time healing the sick and raising the dead. Was He working against God?

Obviously no one in their right mind is going to stand up on a Sunday morning and preach that Jesus isn’t God. But how many times have you heard it preached in church that God gives people sickness to improve their character? Or how many times have you heard it said at funerals that it was actually God’s will for the person to die? If all that’s actually true, then essentially what’s being said is that Jesus was not God. Specifically because Jesus healed the sick and Jesus raised the dead. If sickness and death are God’s will then Jesus was fighting against God. If Jesus was fighting against God, then either God is divided and schizophrenic or Jesus isn’t God.

Just this summer I was sitting in a church like that. The pastor actually stood up and said, “Sometimes God does not have a good plan for your life.” The message was all about how God is in control. The conclusion of the pastor was that if God wants to give you cancer He will. He’s in control, and so He can do whatever He wants.

Do you see how twisted this way of thinking is?

When Jesus was on the earth, Acts 10:38 tells us that He “went about doing good, and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.”  (Emphasis mine)

Did you get that? God was with Him. God was healing the sick, and raising the dead with Jesus. God doesn’t cause sickness, and God does not cause death. If we believe that Jesus was God, then we should also believe that God is fiercely opposed to sickness, death, pain, and destruction.

Let me ask it this way: do you think God is in the business of stealing, killing, and destroying?

The way a lot of Christians talk might have you convinced He is, but perhaps we’re confused. You see, in John 10:10 Jesus says that, “The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Things have not changed. God is still the God who gives life abundantly. It is the devil who is in the business of stealing, killing, and destroying. Period.

Jesus was God, and He was not working against Himself when He healed the sick and raised the dead. The will of God is not for people to have pain. He is not behind the pain our world faces. It is simply not the will of God to cause death, disease, or destruction.

God Is in Charge, Not in Control

I hope I’ve made my point clear enough: God is not in control.

He is in charge though, and this is how we can properly understand what the bible means when it talks about the sovereignty of God. Sovereignty is defined as supreme power or authority. God is the King of Kings and He is the Lord of Lords (Revelation 19:16). He is supremely in charge. While not everything that happens is His will, He is still in charge of the world. He is the King.

The best way to understand the difference between sovereignty and control is to think of each in governing terms. Sovereignty, then, is best compared to a monarchy, and control is best compared to a dictatorship.

God is sovereign like a king; not in control like a dictator. He is not demanding His complete and total will upon everyone— both the willing and the rejecting alike— He is offering His will as an option. An option that I believe is always the best option. However, not everyone always listens to the King.

God is not a dictator in control of the world. God is a King madly in love with the world. As King, God wants the best for us. He gives us His will as an option, despite the fact that some may choose otherwise.

He is a King who loves His world with a great and unending passion. He does not deal with us as a dictator—through force and control—but as a kind-hearted, all-loving King. He gently leads us by His kindness, mercy, and grace.

Dictators rule by force, kings by kindness. Earthly kings may sometimes act like dictators, but the Kingship of God is the perfect model of what a King is like. He is not cruel or distant from His subjects. He is in the midst of us, leading with a courageous heart.

God is our King, and He is in charge of our world. He rules despite the fact that there are forces seeking to destroy His subjects. Our King is always for us, not against us. His will is for our good, not our calamity. No good King takes pleasure in the suffering of his people, or causes that suffering to happen. Good Kings do everything for the best of their subjects.

Dictators use force to gain control by stepping on whoever they need to step on. Dictators abuse their power and selfishly manipulate their subjects. This is not what God is like. God is not in control like a dictator, God is sovereign like a King. Our God is the good King, who rules the world with grace.

God is not against you, He is for you.

- Chapter 3 -

Blurry Pictures

You may be wondering: “What about the Old Testament? God sent plagues, disasters, and sickness all the time back then didn’t He?”

You may think that I have forgotten about Pharaoh and the Egyptians, Noah and the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, along with Job and the many other biblical accounts where God does the exact thing I am saying He doesn’t do— kill people, cause disasters, and hand out sickness. So what's all that about?

If what I am proposing is true, that God doesn’t cause pain, then how am I to reconcile that with the wrath of God in the Old Testament? God seems to contradict Himself throughout the bible. He seems to have an anger issue in the Old Testament, but then suddenly in the New Testament He seems to not be mad

anymore. Why? Is God schizophrenic? Does God hate us one day, and love us the next? What is God really like, anyways?

Who is God

There are a few different approaches we can take when trying to understand the nature of God. The first approach is through systematically listing all the attributes of God that can we find in the bible. The goal with this approach is to generate an exhaustive list of everything the bible says God is like, and then to make our conclusions from that list. Let’s give it a try. This approach could look something like this:

In Genesis God creates: God is a creator.

In Genesis God sends a flood to kill everyone but Noah and his family: God kills people when they're bad.

In Exodus God plagues Egypt: God sends plagues and natural disasters in order to get what He wants.

In Exodus God makes the Israelites wander through the desert for forty years: God gives us hard times in order to teach us how to be better people.

And so on..

Now, I believe that this approach is horrendously problematic. As you can see, if you simply list out all that God does you will create a lot of weird ideas about what He is like. From a list like that you could easily conclude that God is a mass murderer who is dedicated to the destruction of humanity.

That’s not really an effective way to get to know someone, is it?

I didn’t do that to my wife when I was trying to get to know her— that’d be sort of creepy. I didn’t follow her around day by day, exhaustively making a list of everything she did. I didn’t try to understand her because of what she does. Instead, I spent time with her, and got to know her for who she is.

My wife is a complex person, as people are, and I would be a fool to try and make my conclusions about her based solely around what she does. She is a person, not a machine. Her actions come from who she is, not the other way around. Her actions don’t define her, who she is is what matters. When I got to know her I asked her questions, and listened to her responses. I learned about her through personal interaction.

Systematically going through the scriptures and listing everything God does is not an effective way to understand who God is either. Lists will never give us the complete picture of what God is like. He is a complex being— not a machine that can be understood solely by what He does.

We have to always keep in mind how dangerous theology is apart from the revelation that God is a living and active person. As a person He is much more complex than we think. The moment we can draw God with nice neat lines we are no longer dealing with God as He is, but rather as we imagine Him to be.

It’s dangerous to become too familiar with God. Thinking that you understand who God is is the very first fatal mistake you can make in theology. He is not a book you study, He is a person you get to know.

So what then is an appropriate alternative to understanding what He is like?

Jesus, the Complete Picture

If we are looking to discover what God is like we should look no further than the life of Jesus. Jesus Christ alone is the perfect and complete picture of what God is like. God’s complete picture is not found hidden among the old stories of the flood, the life of Job, or the demise of Pharaoh. The complete picture of God is only found in the person of Jesus Christ.

Paul wrote that Jesus is the “..image of the invisible God..” A few verses later he tells us that within Jesus “all the fullness of God” dwelt. (Colossians 1:15,19) Jesus is what God looks like; not in part, but in full. This verse means that Jesus is fully God, but it also means that Jesus is what God fully looks like. All of God dwells in Christ. If we want to know about God all we have to do is look at Jesus.

Only Jesus is the full revelation of what God is and what God does. Any ideas we can come up with about God will always be partial, misleading, and oftentimes completely off the mark. Jesus alone is what God looks like, acts like, sounds like, and talks like.

The error in systematically listing all the attributes of God is that we treat each attribute as if they're equal, but not everything we see in the bible about God is an equal revelation. Jesus alone is the full revelation of God. By listing everything we see in the bible about God we will end up with a lopsided understanding of His nature. We will have an understanding that oftentimes overemphasizes certain aspects that are not so emphasized in Christ, and that under-emphasizes aspects about God that are emphasized in Christ.

When Jesus came to the earth He came revealing who God is. Everything Jesus is and does is given to us so that we can know God. He is the living portrait of God. If you truly believe that Jesus was God, then you must see that Jesus is what God looks like.

This is how we know what God is like: we look at Jesus.

Definitions

When we fail to see that Jesus is the perfect image of God then we will continually misunderstand His nature. We should be looking at Jesus as the full image of God, but most of the time we don’t. What tends to happen instead is we take our list of attributes, and we understand them by our terms. We define God by our terms, instead of by Jesus’. Thus creating a God who looks just like us.

A classic way of understanding God is like this: God is all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere at all times. God is holy and just. He is sovereign, kind, and wise. And so on.. We list His attributes, and hope to make conclusions from that list. Now of course all of those attributes are true about God. I don’t want you to think that understanding the attributes of God fails to be an important pursuit. However, the problem lies in where we find the definitions for these truths.

We take these attributes of God, and we try to define them through our human understanding. We take out our dictionaries to find out what power means, or holiness means, or justice means— and we use those definitions to understand God. We take our ideas about what it means to be all powerful, for example, and we perfect that idea. We make it a divine idea, and we plaster onto the face of God.

However, our understanding of power is not the same understanding of power that God has. The way we understand power is through right-handed force. That is, we think of power as the ability to make something happen through forcefulness. Being powerful means that you lord your power over another.

So when we think of God as omnipotent, we are thinking of a God who holds His power over all humanity. We say things like, “God will not be mocked”, as if to threaten the world with our God’s power. The way we understand the power of God is by comparing it to a human standard for power.

But we need to see that it is only in Jesus that the attributes of God find their perfect definition. The definition of God’s power comes from Jesus alone. The perfect display of God’s almighty power is not revealed to us through the flooding of the world, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or anywhere else in scripture. The perfect display of God’s almighty power is found in the life of Jesus Christ.

How does Jesus show us the power of God?

Jesus displays the mighty power of God by dying a humiliating death on the cross. The cross was God’s ultimate display of power. He did not change the world through right-handed forcefulness, but rather through left-handed weakness. God doesn’t save the world through our understanding of power. God saves the world through His power, showing us that it is extremely different than what we once thought.

When we hear that God is all powerful, we think of a God who can kill us at any moment. We imagine a God who holds His power over our heads so that at the drop of a hat He can smite us with holy wrath. But according to Jesus, power does not look like that. The power of God is best displayed when Jesus stretched out His arms and died a humiliating death on the cross. This is what the power of God looks like.

Jesus the Dictionary

Jesus is the dictionary of God’s attributes. It’s not so much that I want to discredit all the work theologians have done throughout the years in giving us the attributes of God. Rather, I want to make sure we realize that the only way to rightly define those attributes is through the life of Jesus.

Jesus redefines our terms. He is the dictionary that we reference to whenever we want to understand what God is like. When we take the attributes of God, instead of understanding them by our terms, we must understand by Jesus’ terms.

Yes—God is sovereign, holy, righteous, and merciful; just perhaps not in the way we think. The way we define God should only be through the life of Jesus.

I hope that you are beginning to figure out that we don’t usually believe in God as He actually is, but rather we believe in God as we are. We take all the best traits that we as humans consider admirable, we perfect them, and stick them onto God— calling them His attributes. Instead of looking at Jesus, we mostly look at ourselves. We define God by our understanding rather than the life of Jesus.

The attributes of God are found in the life of Jesus only. We cannot define His attributes through our limited human understanding. I have often found that the way I understand something and the way God understands something are two totally different ways of thinking. His attributes are wildly different than we once thought. When we look and find these attributes at work in the life of Christ, we will find a new definition for God. We create a God that looks like us when we define Him by our terms, instead of by Jesus.

Perhaps this is why the church today seems to have lost any sense of amazement. We have forgotten the art of being completely bewildered and astonished before God like the early church was. Maybe it’s because God isn’t God anymore as He is, but rather as we think He is. We don’t stand in awe of Him anymore because He looks far too much like us.

We have become far too familiar with a God that we barely know.

This familiarity has caused us to create bad theology, boring traditions, and worst of all: bored people. If we are bored with God the problem isn’t on His end. God is never boring. We get bored with God when we think we understand Him. But I do not care if you have a doctorate in systematic theology, or even if you are St. Paul himself— you do not fully understand God. Period. Be ever aware of mystery, and stay child-like as you explore His goodness with a heart of joy.

Incarnation

The incarnation of the Son of God is perhaps one of the most profound events that has ever taken place in all of human history. God became a man, showing us that He has a face and a name. The incarnation of the Son of God is the stunning news that God is not willing to give up on us. While we may get Him wrong, misunderstand His heart, or fail Him utterly, God refuses to give up. He comes as a man, and He shows us what He is really like. In Jesus we come face to face with the goodness of God and His absolute unwavering resolve to love us unconditionally.

Jesus is the way God wants to be seen— whether we like it or not; understand it or not. Jesus is the perfect picture of what God is like. Jesus came painting a beautiful picture of God for all to see and know what He is like.

Ever since Jesus left us this portrait of God, religion has been continually trying to cover it up— as religion always does. The Pharisees were furious at Jesus because the God He claimed to reveal to them was not the God they wanted. The Pharisees had bible verses to prove why they were right about God. The Pharisees could prove that Jesus was not God because the God they believed in simply did not act like that.

The Pharisees were certain they had God figured out, but Jesus came to reveal who God really is. The Pharisees were so appalled by the God revealed in Jesus that they killed Him. They couldn’t handle the idea of a God who eats with sinners, spends time with prostitutes, and calls out the losers of society to be His disciples.

The unceasing resolve of Jesus to love the unlovable, befriend the outcast, and give grace to the undeserving is precisely what drove the Pharisees mad. They hated Jesus, and resolved to remove the memory of His life forever. Ironic enough, it was this very drive of religion that eventually led to the ultimate triumph of God. His death is the greatest victory of God over all the power of religion.

The incarnation was an offensive display, because God is sometimes an offensive God. He loves sometimes to offend our minds so that He can reach our hearts. He loves to mess up our understanding of what He’s like. He is not like we thought. He is far, far better than anything we could ever imagine.

God will never contradict His word, but He is happy to contradict our understanding of His word. Be a student, and learn who God is. Not as you see Him, or as you’ve been taught to see Him. Pursue to know the God you find in Jesus. You’ll find He’s the most astonishingly good God you’ve ever dreamed about.

Jesus and Pain

So when it comes to pain, and the way God deals with it, what can we conclude?

Did Jesus ever once give anyone sickness? Did He ever kill, or send a natural disaster?

No, Jesus never did any of that. Therefore, we must conclude the very same about God. Jesus said, "Anyone who has seen me, has seen the Father." (John 14:10 AMP)

When we see the life of Jesus we are seeing the perfect image of the Father. Upon such a realization we should joyously conclude that God is, in fact, not out to get us. God is not sending death, disease, and destruction to cause us pain just for the fun of it. That’s not what God is like.

When it comes to pain we far too often blame God. However, if we take Jesus seriously, we should realize that God doesn't cause pain. Ever. Jesus never did, and I believe God still never does.

God does not send us sickness to teach us a lesson, He does not send natural disasters to judge our countries, and He does not kill people. Despite how religion has lied to you before, let me encourage you for a moment. God is not out to get you. He simply is not mad at you.

God is not punishing you for what you have or have not done this week. God is a good God, and He is not angry. He’s in a good mood. He’s not the grumpy, white-bearded judge hanging out up in the sky somewhere looking for an excuse to punish you at any given moment. He’s Jesus: living, loving, dying, raising, and redeeming mankind so that you may know His goodness.

God is not mad at you; He’s mad about you. He is wildly obsessed with everything you are. He loves you radically and Jesus came to reveal that very truth.

Jesus never once was the cause of death, disease or destruction. Jesus healed the sick, He raised the dead, and He cursed storms.

That is what God is like.

- Chapter 4 -

Job, Mystery, and a Theory

There is no denying the fact that God at one time, for whatever reason, did do the things I am saying He doesn’t do. If you hold the bible as truth, then you have to reconcile that issue. God did kill people, and He did give them pain. He caused all kinds of awful things to happen that seem so unlike the God we see displayed in Jesus.

Was it just an off day for God? Was the Old Testament just a fluke on God’s part, or what?

You may very well have accepted my proposal to look at God through the life of Jesus, but that still doesn’t answer all the questions. God may not cause pain anymore, but there was still a time when God did cause pain. And that is undeniable. How do you reconcile that with the image of God we see in Christ?

I know as an author I’m supposed to have great answers for any and every question that’s thrown my way, but maybe I could break those rules just this once. When it comes to the picture of God we see in the Old Testament compared to the picture of God we see in Jesus, I have to be honest with you: I don’t know.

I don’t know why the Old Testament picture of God looks so different than Jesus. I don’t know why God killed people, gave them sickness, and sent horrible disasters in the Old Testament. I really wish I knew, but I don’t.

And truthfully, I don’t think I should know. God is God, right? Who I am to say that I fully understand Him?

Infinite God

When we talk about God, we can’t forget that we are dealing with a God of infinite proportions. He is not one-sided and simple; He is infinitely complex. There is no way that we can possibly claim to understand Him entirely. As finite beings, with a finite understanding, we will never be able to comprehend the immensity of an infinite God.

Listen to the way Adam Clarke, the brilliant bible scholar, defines God:

“The eternal, independent, and self-existent Being: the Being whose purposes and actions spring from himself, without foreign motive or influence: He who is absolute in dominion; the most pure, the most simple, and most spiritual of all essences; infinitely benevolent, beneficent, true, and holy: the cause of all being, the upholder of all things; infinitely happy, because infinitely perfect; and eternally self-sufficient, needing nothing that he has made: illimitable in his immensity, inconceivable in his mode of existence, and indescribable in his essence; known fully only to himself, because an infinite mind can be fully apprehended only by itself. In a word, a Being who, from his infinite wisdom, cannot err or be deceived; and who from his infinite goodness, can do nothing but what is eternally just, right, and kind. Reader, such is the God of the Bible; but how widely different from the God of most human creeds and apprehensions!” (Taken from Adam Clarke’s commentary on the entire bible.)

We live in a church culture today that thrives on knowing everything you can know about everything. We have a wealth of resources at our disposal: endless commentaries, thorough concordances, and scholarly lexicons. We seem to have the answers to every problem the bible hands us.

Now, I am of course thankful for all those wonderful resources. However, in the midst of so much information it could be easy for someone to assume that we actually have a clue about God. Let me tell you plainly: we do not. Despite living in “the information age”, we would be stupid to ever think we understand God completely.

He is infinite, and fully known only to Himself. As Clarke said, “an infinite mind can be fully apprehended only by itself”. It’s impossible for us to claim that we fully understand God. Anyone who tells you different is just plain lying. It will take all eternity to comprehend the complexity of God’s character. That is, if it's even possible at all.

The bible, the book about God, is equally complex. Anyone who says they have it all figured out is a fool. The first error in theology is thinking you understand it all. The bible is a book filled with mystery, because God is a mysterious God. The Old Testament especially is filled with mystery. We can’t claim to fully understand exactly why God did the things He did in the Old Testament, precisely because we can not claim to fully understand God.

That is of course not to say that the truth of the bible is unknowable. We are supposed to study the bible, and learn from its truths. However, we can’t give into a mindset that demands we have a solution for every single issue the bible presents us with. We have to allow for mystery in the bible, not because the bible is impossible to fully understand, but because the God of the bible is.

I don’t claim to know why God looks the way He does in the Old Testament, and I really don’t feel like I have to. I do value studying the bible, but not at the cost of erasing all its mystery. I’m okay with leaving the Old Testament as some what of a mystery, because I understand that God is a complex person.

While I can’t give you concrete answers here, I can offer up some advice. I want to open up some new ways of thinking about God and the Old Testament that might shed some light on our discussion, and possibly answer some questions. We can’t be quick to erase mystery, but we can use certain truths to guide us in the midst of mystery.

Embracing Mystery

Whenever I read the Old Testament I read it with Christ in mind. I do not define God by the Old Testament, I define the Old Testament by Jesus. The revelation of God in Jesus has more weight to it than the revelation of God I see in the Old Testament.

The way we understand God is always through Jesus. It has to be, or else we will make tragic theological errors. When we see the God of the Old Testament we have to see that God through the lens of Christ. Jesus is the ultimate reference point that we keep in mind whenever we read the stories of God that seem to contradict the life of Jesus. The key here is trust.

Trusting Jesus is the big deal when it comes to understanding the Old Testament picture of God. We have to trust that God looks like Jesus. Period. He does not look like a God who kills people, sends disease, and causes natural disasters. God has to look like Jesus, because Jesus came for that very purpose. Jesus came to reveal God.

In the midst of mystery, we trust Jesus. It’s as simple as that. Jesus alone holds the final word on what God is like, what God does, and what God says. I may not understand why God wiped out the whole world in the flood, but whenever I come across a story like that I trust Jesus. I trust in the God I see revealed by His life, and believe wholeheartedly that Jesus is what God looks like. No matter what seems to contradict that perspective.

I’m of course not talking here about rewriting the bible. I don’t use this as an excuse for cutting out all the parts of the bible that I don’t like. I do fully accept that God caused bad things to happen in the Old Testament. However, Jesus never did. He simply never killed anyone, or caused them harm. Since He is the perfect image of God, not anything else, then I must trust that picture even over other pictures given in the bible. The Old Testament picture of God is still a valid truth, but it’s just not the complete one.

God is so complex and infinite. Perhaps one day we will all know why the Old Testament is the way it is, but until then all we have is trust. It’s really all we’ve ever had. We trust in Jesus because it’s all there is.

In the midst of mystery we must trust in Jesus. He alone is the perfect image of the Father.

Truth

This is of course not to say that one truth is more true than the another. The truth that the Old Testament reveals about God is 100% true, and the truth that Jesus reveals about God is 100% true. However, the truth about Jesus is a more complete truth about God. It supersedes the truth that the Old Testament presents.

Only Jesus claims to have the final word on what God is like. He is the complete picture. He doesn’t cancel out what the Old Testament had to say about God; He completes what the Old Testament started. He is the complete revelation about God. The Old Testament at best is a partial revelation.

It’s much like the relationship between the Law and Grace. In the New Testament we see the covenant of grace, and in the Old Testament we see the covenant of the law. Both the Law and Grace are entirely true, and good. However, these truths often seem like complete polar opposites.

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3 about how the law of Moses was glorious, but how the Grace of Jesus was even more glorious. He says that the ministry of condemnation (the law) was glorious, but that the law of righteousness (Grace) is now even more glorious. He doesn’t say that one cancels out the other, but rather that one outshines the other.

Grace outshines the law. It doesn’t cancel it, it supersedes it.

Likewise, it’s not that Jesus is more true than the Old Testament. Instead, Jesus outshines the Old Testament. The picture we see of who God is like in Jesus is a picture that far outshines the picture we see in the Old Testament. It doesn’t cancel that picture, it outshines it.

We don’t interact with God through the law, but through Grace. Grace outshines the law. Likewise we don’t interact with God based on His Old Testament picture, but rather through the picture given to us in Jesus. Jesus outshines the Old Testament.

Setting Standards

One reason why the God of the Old Testament should not become the ultimate way we understand God is because the Old Testament never claims to establish the standard for how God deals with us. Nowhere in the Old Testament is there the claim that God deals with humanity this way or that way exclusively.

There is however, such a standard set in the life of Jesus. Jesus is the image of God. As the image of God, Jesus is the standard for the way God deals with humanity. Jesus reveals to us not only what God looks like, but how God acts. The way Jesus deals with pain is the standard for the way God deals with pain.

The Old Testament never sets such a standard in any of the stories you find there. You actually see the opposite on several occasions. In particular, the story of the flood.

The flood was the horrific event where God destroyed all humanity, except for Noah and his family. After the flood is over, what does God do? Does He threaten to do it again if we don’t behave? No, He does the exact opposite. God promises, after the flood, that He will never do it again. He sets a standard that is the opposite of what we would expect. He doesn’t set up the flood as a standard for how He deals with us, rather He says it’s how He won’t deal with us anymore.

Jesus alone sets the standard for the way God will deal with human affairs. There is not a single story in the Old Testament that God establishes as the a standard for how He will act. Only in Jesus do we see the perfect way that God has chosen to interact with humanity.

Jesus and Job

A problem arises quickly when we try to set a standard for the way God deals with us that the bible never sets. A perfect example is the story of Job.

Job is the story of a man who loses everything because of God. In this story God lets satan kill his family, take away all his possessions, and give him sickness. Many try to use this story as proof for the idea that God allows pain to happen.

But Job does not set the standard for the way God deals with humanity, only Jesus does. The story of Job has been used way too many times to tell people how God is causing their pain. However, Job was never meant to be our story. Job suffered, but so what? The bible never says that God deals with humanity like He dealt with Job. Job is a special case, not the standard.

Jesus is not a footnote to Job; Job is a footnote to Jesus. Jesus alone sets the standard for how God deals with humanity.

God does not test us by giving us pain. Jesus never once did that to anyone. Therefore, we must conclude the same thing about God and the way He interacts with us today. The story of Job isn’t the story of what might happen to you if God is in the mood for testing you. The story of Job is the story of Job. It is not your story, or my story.

Jesus is the perfect image of the Father; not Job. Many use the story of Job to say God causes pain, but in order to do that you must ignore the truth that Jesus alone is the image of God.

This is the problem that arises when we try to understand God apart from Jesus: we paint a bad picture of what God is like. The picture we often paint puts fear in our perception of God, and it makes Him out to be our enemy. God becomes the God who gives us tests that we can never pass. This notion teaches us that when pain happens God is not with us in that pain, but rather God is distant from us watching to see whether or not we pass His test. God becomes a test giver, not a grace giver. When we set a standard for God that the bible never sets, we will always end up with a distorted view of God.

But Jesus does not test us with pain; He was tested for us. Jesus was tested with our pain. He passed our test with flying colors by dying triumphantly on the cross. In Christ, God has freely given us all a big fat A+ to all of His tests forever.

The death of Jesus Christ is the proclamation that God has given up on the test giving business entirely. There are no more tests to pass. God has died to His old test-giving-ways once and for all. Whatever test He gave to Job doesn’t exist anymore. Jesus took that test for you, and He passed. God is simply not interested in testing you ever again.

The type of theology that elevates the life of Job over the life of Jesus is pure heresy. It spits in the face of the cross, and the outrageous grace we see displayed there.

God is not testing you like He tested Job. Job was never supposed to be the standard, only Jesus can make that claim. God has died to test-giving the minute Jesus passed all your tests on the cross for free. That’s the heart of the Gospel.

A Theory

Now there is still one more idea that I want to present to you. I hope that what I have written so far about navigating the Old Testament has been helpful for the way you think about God, and the bible. However, I don’t want to leave you with only helpful ideas.

I started off this chapter by telling you that I don’t know why the Old Testament is the way it is. While that is still true, I am not completely as clueless as I might have led you to believe. I still have no concrete answers for all the issues in the Old Testament, but I do have a theory.

However, before I present it to you please understand that this theory is just that— a theory. It’s an interesting perspective that I’m offering here, not a concrete fact. I am not fully convinced myself that it is the right theory, but I do think it’s a good one.

So please take the following with a grain of salt. It is just a theory.

In Colossians 1:21 we read,

"And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds..."

The phrase that's translated in this verse as "alienated and hostile in mind" is a phrase that literally means, "imaginary enemies" or "enemies in your own mind".

Paul is saying here that we were once enemies with God in our minds. We lived under the illusion that God is our enemy. As a part of the fall of mankind, our perception of God became distorted. Adam and Eve hid from God in the garden, and expected His punishment. We created a God that was our enemy. But was God ever actually against us?

I believe God was never our enemy. Since the beginning of time God has always been for us. Rather, because of the fall, we lived under the illusion of being His enemy. We acted as if God had rejected us when He never did. God always accepted us. We were the ones who rejected God. In the fall, our mindset got twisted and the way we perceived God became distorted.

So What Does That Mean?

My theory is that perhaps this fallen mindset of rejection and alienation from God affected the writers of the Old Testament. The illusion they lived under was that God was mad at them, and that He was their enemy. I think that maybe this can explain why the Old Testament is full of an angry God. The mindset of the Old Testament writers was that God was their enemy. Naturally this led to their conclusion that God caused a flood, or that God was testing Job, or whatever else. God was the imaginary enemy of the Old Testament writers, and that mindset affected the way they wrote about God.

But hold on a minute. Before I am written off as a heretic let me clarify what I mean. I am not in any way saying that the bible fails to be inspired of God. That is still completely true. The bible is, and always will be the inspired word of God. Any way you read it, it’s still going to be inspired.

But perhaps in some instances, the bible is inspired to give us a picture into the mindset of the old covenant. Rather than the bible always giving us a picture into what God is like. Maybe the Old Testament is more about the fallen mindset than it is about God. Maybe in this case it's about our mindset towards God, and our fallen illusion of Him being our enemy.

To restate myself, because I feel it’s necessary to avoid misunderstanding, this idea I have is still just a theory.

It is a theory however, that lines up nicely when you see that Jesus always seemed to go directly against the thinking of His time. Jesus, through His teachings and His actions, brought the revelation that God isn't our enemy—He is our friend. God is for us, not against us. That revolutionary idea didn't sit right with the religious leaders of His time who loved to make relationship with God as difficult as possible. It eventually drove the Pharisees to kill Jesus.

To some degree then, this could explain why the Old Testament is the way it is. Perhaps it's more about giving us a look into the fallen mindset that Jesus came to undo, than it is about giving us a look into who God is.

But like I said, please take all this with a grain of salt. It is still just a theory I have. I'm honestly not even fully convinced that I believe it myself.

I do think it's a interesting idea though, and I wanted to offer it to you as a possibility. It is not a concrete fact, nor is it something I would hang my whole theology on. It is just one of those interesting theological ideas to think about. Just don’t put too much weight on it.

- Chapter 5 -

Fun With Wrath

I used to love the wrath of God. It seems silly, but during a season of my life the wrath of God used to be the most important part of His nature to me.

I was what I would call a fire-and-brimstone man. I thought it was my mission in life to tell everyone what’s wrong with them, and how God is out to get them. I believed that in order for someone to be saved they had to first encounter the reality that they are a horrible person that God hates furiously.

Yes, I was that guy. I used to wear a T-shirt with the ten commandments on it. I considered it my mission in life to convince the world that they’re sinners, damned to hell. I would go around asking people if they thought they would go to heaven, and then continue to spend the next ten minutes working to convince them of why they were wrong.

Thankfully, I didn’t stay like that for long. Despite my passion for preaching the law, it lasted only a few years. It wasn’t long before I was hunted down, ransacked, and overmastered by the beauty of Grace.

The moment I encountered the Grace of God, I became marked. I no longer saw my mission in life as convincing everyone of their sin. I realized that the love of God was far more powerful. I realized that God is not angry at the world, but that He actually loves the world.

That may seem so simple to you, but for me this was such a profound revelation. I quickly abandoned all my fire and brimstone preaching, and I took up a new lifestyle. One that was all about love. I learned to value love more than wrath. Grace exploded my heart with joy.

I cringed whenever I heard about the wrath of God. It seemed like I was the complete opposite person. I used to love hell-fire preaching; after this I despised it. The wrath of God seemed like a foreign concept for me. Because of my past I rejected anything that might sound like wrath. I went all the way to the other side. I was all love, and no wrath.

But I still could never ignore the fact that the bible is full of the wrath of God. What did I do with it then? Well, I mostly ignored it. I focused on the love of God, and hardly ever, if at all, would I mentioned the wrath of God.

And isn’t that what most Christians do as well? Don’t we oftentimes just ignore the wrathful side of God, and embrace the loving side?

Thankfully though, in my recent years I have learned to reconcile the two. You may not even think it’s possible, but I have learned to love wrath again. I have come to see that the wrath of God is actually really good news for humanity.

The way I understand the wrath of God has drastically changed since my early days of hell-fire preaching. I have recaptured a sense of amazement for the wrath of God, and I want to share it with you.

God Is Mr. Love

Perhaps the most profound revelation of God that we see in the New Testament is the revelation of His love. And while it is one thing to say that God loves us, it is something different entirely to say that God is love.

The stunning revelation of the New Testament is not just that God loves us, while that is truly fantastic, but that God is love. We see this in 1 John 4:8, when John clues us in on this amazing reality. This beautiful and simple truth has echoed through the ages: God is Love.

God is Mr. Love. At the very core of His being, the very personhood of His nature, and everything that He is, is love. God is love, and that fact is one of the most outlandish claims the bible makes.

This stunning fact means that God cannot do anything apart from love. Simply because God cannot deny His nature. Everything we see God do must be seen as the act of love.

So when we understand the wrath of God, we have to understand it in this context. The wrath of God is not another side to God, nor is it the opposite of love. The wrath of God is an extension of the love of God. The wrath of God is love in action precisely because it is the action of a Being who is infinite love.

We often see the wrath of God and the love of God as two completely different and separate parts of God. Which is a disastrous error. This notion creates a God who is unpredictable at best, and schizophrenic at worst. But God is not schizophrenic. God knows who He is. He is unfailing and unchanging. He is love eternal. Yesterday, today, and forever—He is love.

The way we think about the wrath of God must be accountable to the truth that God is love. God is not love with some separate part of Him that’s hatred. The love of God is the core of His nature, and therefore the action of wrath must been seen as love in action. Wrath is love’s violent resolve to have the best for the beloved.

The wrath of God is the expression of a God who is infinite love. It is not a separate side to God. Wrath is love in action. “For God so loved the world...” is the only proper context for the wrath of God.

The Resolve of God

The passionate resolve of God is to have us as His beloved children; safe, happy, and accepted—found in His arms of delight. It is for this reason that God decided to create the world. He didn’t make the world one day because He was bored. He made the world because He refused to exist one more day without us.

The world was born because God wanted us. He wasn’t obligated to make us, and He certainly wasn’t unhappy to either. The story of creation is filled with the Joy of God manifesting. He made the world because He wanted us to exist.

The profoundness of this fact is important to realize. God didn’t just make the world because He wanted people to serve Him. God made the world, and everything in it, because He wanted humanity. He doesn’t just tolerate our existence, He wildly celebrates us. God was happy to make us, and that happiness is the echo of His resolve.

He is passionately for us. Even before creation, God has always been for us. Since before the world was made, God was dreaming about humanity. He dreamed about us, and out of joy He made us. Humanity is the love-dream of God made manifest.

God resolved in making us so that we would be His. His desire for us is that we would belong with Him. He made us for Himself, not out of selfish ambition, but out of pleasure. He made us to belong in the acceptance of His love. He made us to live in the unconditional acceptance and love of His heart, and to enjoy existence with Him.

This passionate resolve to love us and have us as His beloved children is the motivation behind why God made us.

This same resolve is the motivation for the wrath of God.

When Adam and Eve fell, they were met with the wrath of God. This wrath of God was not burning against them, but rather this wrath burned furiously against all that sought to destroy His beloved. The resolve of God to have humanity as His beloved children was threatened with the fall.

The wrath of God therefore is properly understood in this way. He absolutely loves us with an unconditional love, and therefore He is violently against anything that seeks to destroy us. It is this violent opposition, with the motivation of love, that is the proper way to understand the wrath of God.

Since the fall Adam and Eve, the wrath of God has always been for us. His wrath has always been an extension of His burning love, and passionate resolve to have us as His beloved children: adopted into His fellowship, and enjoying the acceptance of His kindness.

The fall of Adam and Eve was met with wrath. This wrath is not the wrath that we understand it to be, but rather the wrath of love. God is love and as love He can only love, and when love is met with opposition, wrath is the only fitting response to that opposition. The wrath of God is against anything that interferes with His love. The fall of Adam sought to destroy God’s dream for humanity, and therefore it was met with wrath. Not the wrath of punishment, but the wrath of unending love.

Wrath is For Us

The wrath of God has never burned against us. God has never had wrath towards us, in that He is angry at us. Rather, the wrath of God is, and always has been, for us. It is for us, because it is passionately against anything that seeks to destroy us. The love of God is the ultimate YES of God to adoption, and the wrath of God is the ultimate NO. This NO is the response of love towards anything that seeks to destroy the beloved.

God is not mad at you, He is mad about you. His wrath is for you.

In Romans 1:18 Paul writes, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”

I have often heard this verse used to explain that God is angry at all those who sin. Preachers often use this verse (I used to as well) in order to show people that they are under the hot wrath of God, and therefore must repent. But is that really what this verse says?

“The wrath of God is against ungodliness and unrighteousness.” This verse does not say anything about the wrath of God being against people who are ungodly and unrighteous. This verse says that the wrath of God is against ungodliness and unrighteousness. Knowing the difference is a big deal.

If we understand that the wrath of God is an expression of His love, then we need to rethink verses like this. Why would God hate ungodliness and unrighteousness? Precisely because God loves us, and is passionately for us. Ungodliness and unrighteousness are not beneficial. Sin is like a cancer that infects our bones. It is bad for us, and it is always working to destroy us.

God hates unrighteousness and ungodliness like He hates cancer. Anyone who has seen the effects of cancer on a loved one will come to the same conclusion. We as a society passionately hate cancer. It's not because we hate cancer patients, but it's because we hate what cancer does to people.

This is precisely why God hates sin. God hates sin because He knows what it does to us, and He is violently against anything that seeks to destroy us. This is the wrath of God. We hate cancer because we know what it does to people, and God hates sin because He knows what it does to people.

The wrath of God is not against people, but against sin. It would be ridiculous to get mad at a cancer patient for showing signs of their cancer, and it is equally as ridiculous to think that God gets mad at us because we show signs that we are fallen creatures.

God is not mad at you, He is mad about you. He is ridiculously crazy about you, and He has resolved to be against anything that tries to bring you harm.

A Good Father

God is a good Father. He does not hate His children, He hates what seeks to harm them. God hates sin, because He loves you. The wrath of God is only properly understood as such. It is the Father’s heart of love that is bursting out towards His children.

If you have children then you will understand this best. It is natural for a parent to want the best for their children, and to be opposed to anything that tries to harm them. Let’s say one day you’re at the playground with your child when all of a sudden a stranger comes along and starts beating him up. What would you do? Any parent who would ignore their child has something seriously wrong with them. As a parent the most natural response for you would be to step in and stop the stranger that is causing your child harm.

God has wrath, but He is love. He is the good and loving Father. An expression of that Love is wrath. He is the Father who is against anything and everything that seeks to destroy us, and therefore He is a God of wrath. But this wrath is not wrath as we once thought. God is not mad at us, He is mad about us. He is crazy about us, and accordingly, He is fiercely opposed to anything that can harm us.

His wrath is not against His children; wrath is not punishment for wrong deeds. His wrath is the refusal to give up on His dream for us. God, our good Father, has dreamed about us since before the world was. He dreamed about our fellowship together. He dreamed about having us by His side, accepting the warmth of His embrace. He dreamed about loving us, enjoying us, and laughing with us. This dream has not changed, and nothing is strong enough to remove it from His heart. His wrath burns against anything and everything that tries to interfere with His dream for us.

The Cross

We are the love-dream of a kind-hearted Father. The wrath of God is good news because it best displays this truth. The wrath of God is good news because it is the action of the love of God. It is the absolute refusal of God to give up on His dream for us.

This love is best displayed at the cross. Here our loving Father demonstrates the endless power of unconditional love by free dying for the undeserving. God would rather die than give up on you. God would rather suffer unjustly at the hands of humanity, than give up on humanity.

The love of God is best displayed on the cross, and at the same time we also see His wrath. The cross is not the revelation of an angry God, but the revelation of a loving God who refuses to give up on you.

The wrath of God was displayed on the cross: not from the heart of an angry God, but from the heart of a loving God. God poured out wrath at the cross as His final judgement against the sin and alienation that plagued the race of humanity. On the cross God announced His final and eternal NO against sin and its effect upon humanity.

Old Testament

We need to change the way we understand the wrath of God according to these terms. The wrath of God simply can not be another revelation separate from the love of God. The wrath of God has to be held in context with the notion that God is love.

God does not burn with hot wrath against us in the Old Testament only to change His mind about us in the New Testament. God’s eternal resolve is to have us as His beloved children; adopted, accepted, embraced, free, and loved. This resolve did not suddenly change with Jesus. This resolve was perfectly manifested with Jesus, but we can’t forget that it has always been in God's heart.

When we read the Old Testament we need to read it afresh with this understanding of wrath. When God showed His wrath He was not showing wrath as punishment, but wrath as the echo to His infinite dream. His wrath was always for us, and never against us. He wasn’t mad at us, He was mad about us. This love that He has for us is a love that finds expression in passionate action against all that seeks to harm us.

I hope you are beginning to see just how extremely good God really is. There is no dark side to God that is waiting for you to mess up so that He can strike you with His wrath. There is only love in the heart of God for you.

Wrath Concluded

So I hope you see the truth in this. God is not out to get humanity; He is passionate about loving humanity. He is so passionate about loving us that even death can not stop Him from His dream.

Many preachers and bible teachers today would love to have you know that God hates you until you manage to do good enough spiritual stuff to make Him like you. But I hope you see that this simply is not the case. The Love of God is unconditional, and that means you don’t do a single thing to earn it. It also means that you can’t do a single thing to un-earn it. His love is a gift, and He is not taking it back any time soon.

There is not a single religious, moral, or spiritual deed you have to perform to convince God to love you. He loves you. Period.

His wrath is not separate from His love; it is a part of His love. His wrath is working for you, violently removing all that is against you. His wrath is against sin because sin is trying to kill you.

While some may say that I am trying to weaken the Gospel, and change the parts of the bible that I don’t like—I hope you can see the truth. The Gospel is good news despite how much the church has tried to turn it into okay news. If I am at fault here, then let me be at fault for announcing unreservedly the absolute goodness of the Gospel, and of our God.

If you want to believe in a God who hates you, go be a mythologist. If you want to be a Christian then come to terms with our God: the God who outrageously loves the world.

If you want to preach an angry God, go preach mythology. The God of the bible is not angry. He is wildly, furiously, and outrageously in love.

- Chapter 6 -

The God Who Solves Pain

A lot of bad theology gets fixed when you look at Jesus. All former ideas of a God who causes pain will fade away with one look at the life of Christ. God is not the God behind pain; God is the God who solves pain. That’s what Jesus is like, and therefore, what God is like.

When we look at pain and suffering in the light of Jesus, it should be clear. God is not passive in the face of pain. He doesn’t sit up in heaven twiddling His divine thumbs, letting pain happen all throughout the world. When we look at Jesus we see something entirely different. We see a God who is active in the solving of pain.

How did Jesus reveal this? Simple: Jesus healed the sick, He raised the dead, and He calmed storms. He walked the earth as a force of good, and in constant opposition to suffering. Jesus was active in the solving

of pain. He healed sickness, fixed death, and stopped destruction. When Jesus did it, it should be settled. That’s what God does. God heals the sick, God raises the dead, and God calms storms. Seems simple, doesn’t it?

But how quickly we forget. We have flipped the nature of God and His relationship with pain completely upside down. We have made God the cause of pain, instead of the solution to pain. In doing so we have completely misunderstood the heart of God, and preached the opposite of who He really is.

God the Healer

When Jesus healed the sick He was announcing, once and for all, what God thinks about pain. He settled the matter entirely. The life of Jesus declares God’s war on pain. Despite how quick we are the say the contrary, Jesus is adamant. God is the God who solves pain.

On just about every page of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John you will find miracles. The record of Jesus’ life on earth is flooded with miracles. It’s hard to read about Jesus and ignore His miracles. In order to cut out all the miracles of Jesus, it would require a massive pair of scissors.

His miracles are stories we like to read about, but have we actually let them speak to us about God? We love to talk about how amazing it must have been to see Jesus do miracles, but we often miss the point that Jesus was revealing God to us whenever He healed the sick. We liked the magic show, but we missed the God show. The miracles of Jesus point us to a miraculous God.

Jesus did miracles because that is what God is like. God is a supernatural, miracle-working God. He heals the sick, raises the dead, and calms storms. Jesus didn’t come to show off His power. Jesus performed miracles to show off God.

God is the God who heals. However, this truth is not the end of what Jesus came to reveal. Jesus did not come to show us a God who heals as an action, Jesus came to show us a God who is a healer. There’s a massive difference. A God who heals is a God who can stop healing. A God who is a healer is a God who heals all the time.

In Exodus 15:26 it’s written that, “...I am the Lord, your healer.”

If God simply healed at one time, then He can also stop healing at another time. However, if God is a healer, then the way we see God’s relationship with pain changes drastically. God is a healer, which means He is always healing. God does not work miracles because He is bored and needs a hobby. God heals because that is who He is. It’s what He is like. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Therefore, God has not ceased healing, because God has not ceased to be Himself.

To say that God no longer heals anymore is just as dangerous and stupid of a thing to say as claiming that God is no longer God. God still heals today because God is still Himself. God heals because that is who He is. To say that God does not heal anymore is to deny God the right to be Himself.

Trying to tell God that He can’t heal anymore is like trying to tell the sun to stop shining. You can try, but I doubt you’ll get anywhere. If you insist upon cessationism—which is the belief that God quit healing after the first apostles—you are trying to change the nature of God. God is a healer, and that will never change because God can not cease to be Himself. If you don’t like healing, and you want to remove it from your theology, just know what you’re getting yourself into.

Tough Luck, Buddy

God doesn’t fit inside our theology. He is God. Boxes have never been His thing. Trying to say that God doesn’t heal anymore is like trying to fit God inside a shoe box. Limiting God is a pointless pursuit. This is the nature of God whether you like it or not: God is a healer. Jesus makes it all crystal clear.

Therefore, any idea about how God “allows pain to happen”, must be rethought. The life of Jesus makes a claim that is wildly different. According to Jesus, God does not allow suffering. According to Jesus, God heals. It’s time to throw away the box, and let God be God. He is not a sickness giver. He is a healer.

But just for the sake of an analogy, let’s say that God does allow pain. Let’s say that I am wrong here, and that our God is a God who allows suffering to happen for whatever reason. Could you image how the life of Jesus would have been different?

Instead of healing the sick, Jesus would have gone around making everyone sick. If I’m wrong, and that’s the kind of God we serve, then wouldn’t He have done that? If God causes sickness, wouldn’t the New Testament be filled with stories of Jesus giving people sickness?

Just for analogy’s sake I will retell the story of Blind Bartimaeus—except for this time, let’s pretend God is the God who allows sickness to happen like far too many Christians believe:

“Jesus and His disciples were on their way to Jericho. As they left, large crowds followed them. On the side of the road sat Blind Bartimaeus. When Bartimaeus heard that it was Jesus passing by he cried out, ‘Son of David have mercy on me.’ Jesus didn’t hear him over the crowd, and so he yelled out louder. ‘Son of David have mercy on me.’

This time, Jesus heard Him and stopped. Jesus called for Blind Bartimaeus. When he came to Jesus, he told Jesus what it was he wanted. ‘I want to see’, he said. To which Jesus replied with, ‘Oh Blind Bartimaeus. Don’t you know? God has allowed for you to have this blindness. Your faith is being tested. He works all things out for your good, remember? I can’t heal you because my Father in heaven wants you sick. Tough luck, buddy.’”

Said Jesus, nowhere, ever. And thank God too. Listen to how this story really goes:

“Then they came to Jericho. And as He was leaving Jericho with His disciples and a large crowd, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the road. When he heard that it was Jesus the Nazarene, he began to cry out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Many were sternly telling him to be quiet, but he kept crying out all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ And Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him here.’ So they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take courage, stand up! He is calling for you.’ Throwing aside his cloak, he jumped up and came to Jesus. And answering him, Jesus said, ‘What do you want Me to do for you?’ And the blind man said to Him, ‘Rabboni, I want to regain my sight!’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and began following Him on the road.” (Mark 10:46-53)

I hope you can you see how much we have gotten this wrong. It should be simple. Jesus healed the sick. Jesus is what God looks like. Therefore, God heals the sick. Right? Where did we ever get the idea that God gives sickness, allows pain to happen, or that He’s stopped being a healer? I can tell you for sure, I don’t know where we got such ideas, but I know where we didn’t get them. We didn’t get these ideas from the bible.

The Divide

Now let’s be realistic. There is a divide between what is biblically true about God, and what is seen in our everyday lives. Theology aside, we can not deny the fact that pain is happening every day all around us. If God solves pain, then why isn’t pain gone by now?

This is the divide between what we know to be true and what we see in our everyday lives. We know that God is a healer, and that He solves pain. However, we cannot escape the fact that there is still pain that apparently He hasn’t gotten around to solving yet.

How are we supposed to deal with this problem?

What I believe we do a lot of the time in Christianity is that we take this divide, and intellectually try to solve it. Which leaves us valuing our experience above what the bible holds as truth. We look at the state of the world, with all its pain, and we let that tell us who God is. This is what most likely is the cause of the bad theology surrounding the relationship between God and pain. We take what we see in the world, and we use that to define God. We say that God doesn’t heal anymore because, well, we don’t see it happen anymore. Our experience becomes more true than what the bible says to be true.

The two sides of the divide contradict each other. On one side, the theological side, God always heals. On the other, the experiential side, pain happens every day without God doing a single thing about it. Most will choose to agree with the practical, experiential side. Plainly because it just makes more sense. It seems unrealistic to believe that God always heals pain. Choosing that side of the divide always results in frustration and embarrassment.

We live in a culture where logic is king. Therefore, anything that seems illogical is deemed as illegitimate. In our culture, anyone who thinks that God heals the sick all the time is probably going to find their sanity getting questioned from time to time. Such notions defy logic. Therefore, in Christianity we mostly neglect the biblical truth that God heals the sick... despite the fact that the bible holds it up as truth in the life of Jesus.

This is how we get the idea that God causes pain, or that He allows pain to happen. We try to intellectually bridge the gap between this divide. We may very well accept that God is a healer theologically, but in reality we don’t believe that at all. What we truly believe is that God causes pain, or that He allows it to happen. Biblical theology about the God who solves pain has been sacrificed at the altar of human reasoning and human experience.

But the testimony of Jesus continues to be adamant on the matter. God is the God who heals the sick, raises the dead, and calms storms. The God that Jesus reveals to us is the God who solves pain. We can’t throw this truth away just because it seems intellectually offensive. God is a healer, and that will never change.

We have a problem on our hands then. How are we supposed to deal with this massive divide between what we know and what we see?

I suggest we do, yet again, what we’ve been doing for most of this book. Which is the only thing we can ever truly do: look at Jesus. Is there a way we can look at the life and teachings of Jesus and find an answer for this divide we see?

The Great Commission

Before Jesus ascended from the earth, leaving the reigns in our hands, He had a few instructions. What if these final marching orders could be helpful in our problem? Let’s have a look:

“And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:18-20)

This, of course, is the great commission in which Jesus gets us all fired up about making disciples. I love this passage, and think there is much to be said about the intended meaning. However, I want to draw your attention to something that you may have missed before.

When Jesus commissions the disciples to go and make more disciples, He prefaces it with this: “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” Why would He do that? Is Jesus just showing off? “Hey guys, look at how awesome I am.”

My conviction is that Jesus is always intentional. Whenever He spoke, or acted He would do so with extreme intentionality. He knew what He was saying mattered, and therefore He took special care to make sure it was just as it should be.

Jesus must have had a reason, beyond just showing off. So why would He want us to know that He has all authority in heaven and earth?

Authority

I believe that our answer to the first part of His commission is found in the last part of His commission. Jesus starts by saying that He has all authority, and ends with saying that He will be with us. He promises that He will always be present with us, in the midst of making disciples. It’s probably my favorite part of the whole commission. Jesus’ promise to always be with us makes all the difference in the world.

As encouraging as it is to know that Jesus is with us as we go into all the world, I don’t think it is all that He meant by it. I don’t think His only goal was to encourage us. I believe this promise is connected with the beginning of the great commission, when Jesus says He has all authority. Jesus wanted us to know that He has all authority not just because He wants to show off. Neither did Jesus want us to know that He will be with us, solely to encourage us. I believe that when Jesus tells us that He has all authority it is because He wants us to know what we have when we have Him.

He wanted us to realize that when we have Jesus, we have all authority.

We are not sent out into the world on our own efforts, or authority. We are sent with the full backing and authority of God because Jesus is with us. When Jesus is with us, it makes all the difference in the world.

The word in Greek that’s used here for authority is a pretty dense word. It refers to authority in the classical sense of the word, that is, the ability to rule, but it also means the ability to perform a task. In other words, it is the capacity, and the freedom to rightly act. This type of authority is the authority Jesus is referring to here. He is talking about both the rulership of God, and the capacity of God.

So what then does this mean for us?

The authority of Jesus means that we can do what He did. It means that, as the hands and feet of Jesus, we have the authority to do as Jesus did. Not because we have the capacity within ourselves, but because the God who solves pain is with us. We are His delegated authority on the earth. As believers, we are His hands and His feet. We are the hands and feet of Jesus—the God who solves pain.

What If

With this in mind we should look again at our question. There is this divide between what we know about God, namely that He solves pain, and the reality of pain’s existence on earth. We have pain all around us, and so why isn’t the God who solves pain doing anything about it?

Think about it like this: If we are the hands and feet of Jesus, then who is ultimately responsible for what happens in our world? What if God isn’t the one who’s allowing for pain and suffering to happen? What if we are?

We are the hands and feet of Jesus. So, wouldn’t that mean that it’s our responsibility? Jesus has been given all authority, He is with us, and we are His hands and feet. Add all that up, and what conclusions do you make? Don’t you think that perhaps it isn’t God that is allowing suffering, and that maybe it’s actually the church?

What I’m suggesting is that maybe we can find a way to deal with this divide without undermining either theology, or practicality. I believe that adding the church into the equation, as the hands and feet of Jesus, can help us find our solution.

We have the capacity to solve pain with God. We have been given that type of authority as believers. We often talk about pain as if God is the only one who is powerful enough to do something about it, but haven’t we been given the power? “...you will receive power...” (Acts 1:8)

You may think I am undermining the sovereignty of God. Am I then saying that God is no longer all powerful?

Well let’s think of it in a different way. Let’s take this same concept, the idea that we have the authority of God to do what Jesus did, and apply it to evangelism. If the Church, as the hands and feet of Jesus, doesn’t go into all the world and preach the gospel, then will anyone get saved? Logically, we know that no one will. We have been commanded to preach the Gospel. If we don’t preach it, the world doesn’t hear it, and if the world doesn’t hear it, they can’t respond to it. We have been given the authority to preach the Gospel, and see men and woman come into the Kingdom of God. If we don’t do any evangelism, no one gets that opportunity.

We understand this idea perfectly fine when it comes to evangelism. We don’t blame God for allowing non-believers to exist in the world. We understand that we have been given the authority to preach the Gospel, and therefore it ultimately lays on our shoulders. If a person never hears the Gospel, it’s not because God allowed that to happen, it’s because we did.

So then why do we blame God for allowing sickness?

Evangelism has always been seen as our responsibility. We have the power and authority to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. If the Gospel doesn’t get preached, then logically we don’t blame God, we blame ourselves. We are the ones who are called to preach the Gospel.

Solving pain is what God does, because it is who God is. This same God is living inside of us. Jesus is with us, and with Him is all the authority of God to do what He did. Namely, to solve pain.

In Mark’s account of the great commission we read it like this:

“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned. These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (Mark 16:15-18)

In Mark’s account of the great commandment, Jesus makes it clear. The supernatural is supposed to follow those who believe. Laying hands on the sick and seeing them recover is a part of the great commission. Likewise Jesus says it this way:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.” (John 14:12)

What are the works of Jesus? Jesus solved pain. You could argue that Jesus meant something else, but that would be you forcing your own opinion on the scriptures. It’s impossible to look at the life of Jesus and not see that His works included healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons, and calming storms. It’s of course not everything He did, but it is impossible to ignore His miracles. If we take Jesus seriously here, then it should be evident that Jesus expects believers to do the miraculous like He did.

A Suggestion

The way of thinking that says God allows pain and suffering to happen is a way of thinking rooted in powerlessness. Which is assuming that God is the only one who has the authority to solve pain. Despite the fact that the bible gives us the clear commandment to solve pain with Jesus. The early apostles—along with countless other saints and heroes of the faith throughout history—demonstrated this truth for us by performing miracles in the authority of Jesus.

So this is my suggestion: Perhaps we are the ones who have allowed pain and suffering to happen. Instead of looking at pain and suffering and asking, “why has God let this happen?” maybe we should be asking, “why have we let this happen?”

While I know this is a bit of a stretch for some of you, I invite you to take it home with you and think it through. You don’t hear stuff like this taught in church very much, and so I understand if you have a hard time believing what I am saying. All I suggest is that you don’t think you know everything, and at least give it a chance. Explore this type of thinking, and see how you find it. Search the bible for yourself, and see what you may have missed. I’m not asking you to take my word for it, but I am asking for you to look and see for yourself.

Divine healing, and miracle working is not a subject that comes up much in your average American church meeting. Just because you don’t hear it from the pulpit every Sunday doesn’t mean it’s not in the bible. Take a look for yourself. I did, and what I found changed my life.

You can reject my theory, and that’s okay. Just don’t go changing God. God is not the sickness-giver, the life-taker, or the destruction-maker. Look at Jesus, and see God for who He really is. When it comes to pain, God is not the cause. God is the God who solves pain. He really is that good.

- Chapter 7 -

Stories

I want to share a few stories with you that I have personally experienced where our God solves pain. It’s one thing to offer you the theology of a God who solves pain, but it’s another thing entirely to give you the practical hope for such a God. It wouldn’t make much sense, at least in my mind, to go on talking about this pain-solving God without also giving you a few examples.

Kenya

I was in Kenya for a missions trip a couple of years ago. It was a great trip, and lots of amazing things happened. We got to help run a children’s school, preach at churches, and bless the local community.

Plus I got to watch God do miracles.

One day our team was at a hospital praying for people. They wouldn’t let us into the hospital ward itself so we sat outside the front entrance. We talked to people, heard their stories, and prayed for anyone and everyone who would let us.

Many amazing things happened, but I specifically remember praying for a man in crutches that day. I noticed him go past our group while we were talking to someone else, and so I grabbed one of the translators to follow after him. When I caught up with him I asked through translation if I could pray for his foot. He was going to the hospital that day to get it looked at by a doctor. His foot was bandaged, and he couldn’t walk on it.

He said we could pray, and so I knelt down and prayed. I prayed a short simply prayer, and that was it. I asked him if he could test it out to see if his foot was any better. What happened next is something I will never forget for as long as I live.

The man gently put his foot down onto the pavement, and applied pressure. So far so good. Next he slammed his foot down to the ground as hard as he could. Suddenly he took his crutches and walked away. No limp. No struggle. I almost could say that he galloped away. He walked off joyously holding the crutches he was once dependent upon. Everyone in front of the hospital wildly erupted with joy as we cheered him on. He walked right out of the hospital that day, completely healed.

Shopping Mall

I was with a team of students again, but this time I was in the small town of Redding, California. We were going out on a Friday night to see what God wanted to do. We headed to the local mall and went around looking for someone who would let us pray for them.

We found a group of teenagers hanging out in front of the mall. We talked with them for a while and got to know them. Slowly after a little while about half of them left. In the end we were left with three young girls. We were talking with them for a little bit until I decided it was time to get bold.

I asked if any of them had ever seen a miracle before. They gave me a strange look. I’m sure they were wondering whether or not I was crazy or just joking with them. So I asked again. They said no. Next I asked if they'd like to.

Who wouldn’t say yes to something like that? What happened next was really a test of faith for me. Here I was promising these girls a miracle and I had no idea if it would happen, but I knew who my God was.

I sort of felt like there might be something wrong with one of their legs. So I asked and sat them down to test it out. After a quick look it was plain to see that one of the girls’ legs was significantly shorter than the other. There was at least a 3 inch difference. So we prayed.

Her two friends gathered around to watch, and I prayed a short simple prayer. Before I was even halfway through praying, all of a sudden, her left leg shot out. Everyone sort of gasped. It was incredible. I stopped praying and excitedly asked everyone if they had just seen that too. We all felt dumbfounded. We all just watched this girls leg grow out three inches right in front of our eyes.

It was an amazing night. All three girls gave their lives to the Lord. God had proven to them that He loved them, that He was real, and that He cared about them. We encouraged our new friends and hugged them as their parents arrived to take them home.

Bookstore Healing

I remember the first time I ever prayed for someone and they got healed. It was about four years ago, I was working a part time job at a local Christian bookstore in Ohio. I was just learning about healing and about taking risks to see God move. So I decided to stretch myself that day and pray for any sick people I saw come into the store.

I saw a young man walk in on crutches and my heart skipped a beat. Here it was, God was giving me a chance to see Him do something amazing. I sheepishly approached this man and asked him about his foot. He said it was a sprain. When I asked him if I could pray for it he said yes, and so I prayed my best prayer. After praying for him I thanked him for letting me pray, and I went back behind the counter.

Later on that evening, probably twenty or thirty minutes later, he approached the counter. He excitedly told me that he had been walking around the store and noticed that there was no longer any pain in his foot. When he first walked in the door there was a lingering pain, but he said that there was no longer any pain!

I was just about as shocked as he probably was. I wasn’t sure what to say or do so I just asked him if I could pray again for him. I prayed a quick prayer of blessing and thanked God for what he had done. The man thanked me and walked away without any pain!

I love this story because it’s a reminder for me that sometimes God will work despite our lack of faith. I didn’t really expect anything to happen when I prayed for him. I just knew that I wanted to see miracles, and the only way I knew how to do that was to go and take a risk. I wish I could see the look on my face when he told me that there wasn’t any pain. It was a moment I’ll never forget.

In Jesus Na...

I went over to a friend’s house one day because we were planning on hanging out. I was living in Redding, California, at the time, attending a school. When I showed up to his house I found him sitting on the floor. When I asked him what he was doing he said that he was measuring his feet.

You see, the school I went to in California was a rather different school. We didn’t take tests, or get grades. We hardly even had what I would call real homework. Instead, we learned how to pray for the sick and see them recover. It was quite unique.

My friend was measuring the length of his legs. At my school it’s become common to see miracles. One thing we see a lot is when someone has a leg that’s shorter than the other and we pray, and then it grows out to match the other one. So my friend was measuring his legs to see their length.

I got down to help him and noticed that they were definitely a different length. His left leg was probably a few inches shorter than his right. So I decided to just command that leg to grow. I started praying, “In Jesus’ na...” when suddenly I saw his leg shoot out. I didn’t even get to finish my prayer. Jesus touched his leg and right in my hands I felt it grow. He said he felt it too. We both were amazed and started laughing. It was so easy! His legs now suddenly were the same length. Amazing!

Tumors Disappearing

During my mission trip to Kenya, I was able to be part of one of the most amazing miracles I’ve personally ever witnessed. Our team had gone to an AIDs clinic in town. We preached the gospel and prayed for the sick. Many people gave their lives to the Lord and many amazing miracles happened. One of them in particular blew me away.

A woman who had just given her life to the Lord was asking for prayer for her tumor. She had a tumor on her stomach and needed surgery for it. Sadly, though, she didn’t have enough money for surgery. She told us that she is probably going to die soon because she can’t afford to remove it.

But we prayed and asked God to take care of it. A member of our team was praying for her and recalls feeling the tumor under her shirt. While she was praying she felt the tumor disappear.

That’s right. Right under her hand she felt where there once was a tumor, now there was not. She got to feel it disappear from her body in an instant.

The woman who previously had a tumor and who previously was going to die began to cry. She was so happy that God would do that for her. She began saying, “God really cares, He really cares about me!” She felt so much love from the Father in that moment. She now knew that God loved her and that He really cared about her.

Social Media Revival

One of the most interesting miracles I ever experienced was a healing that happened through Facebook and Twitter. I was feeling creative and bold in seeing healing and so I just decided to post a status update with a word of knowledge. (A word of knowledge is a word from God about a person that is divinely inspired.) I felt like asking if anyone had neck pain. So I posted a status, and tweeted a tweet. I wasn’t sure if anyone would respond or not, but about an hour later I was overjoyed to discover what Jesus had done through something so simple.

Two of my friends responded to the posts. The first was a friend of mine on Facebook. He responded by saying that his neck was feeling completely better. I asked him if it hurt and he told me that it did until he read my status. He said that when he read my status he noticed that the pain was completely gone in his neck!

Not long after that I had a reply on twitter. Another friend of mine told me that the same thing happened to him. He said it felt 100% better now. When he read my tweet, he noticed that there was no more pain in his neck. Amazing!

It just goes to show that God can use anything to heal, and that He loves creative risks of faith.

Spontaneous Eruptions of Praise

I was in a church meeting one night during my second year at school of ministry. The preacher was calling out words of knowledge and praying for the sick. I don’t remember everything that he called out, but I do remember him specifically declaring healing for dyslexia, headaches and back pain. After a quick prayer for those ailments, many students reported a massive difference.

I remember being so overwhelmed as the whole church seemed to erupt in spontaneous praise for what God had just done. It seemed like a joy bomb had just gone off. Everyone in the church was so full of joy for what God was doing. Many students were excitedly declaring that they were no longer in pain. Those who previously had back pain went up to the front of the room and started touching their toes, and doing things that they previously couldn’t do. Some students who had scoliosis for years started weeping when they touched their toes with no pain, which is something they hadn’t done in years. We celebrated exuberantly with them.

A few students got healed from dyslexia, and one of the girls went to the front of the room and read her bible out loud for everyone to hear. She had no more dyslexia! It was amazing to watch. Even students who had small ailments like headaches, were joyously healed. The result was magnificent.

It was a moment I don’t think I’ll ever forget. The spontaneous eruption of praise was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. We were all so thankful for what God had done. As a collective group we began joyously celebrating, singing, and running around the room. It was an amazing time watching God move so powerfully and beautifully. His goodness was on display that night. We erupted with praise because Jesus is amazing.

Jesus Loves Gays

A great privilege I had as a student at school was the opportunity to serve with the church’s Pastor on Call ministry. About once every week I would go in to answer phone calls for a few hours. People would call in from all over the world to receive prayer and I had the privilege of praying with them.

Sometimes we would have people walk directly into our office for prayer too. One of my favorite moments was when a man walked in who had just moved to town, and I got to pray with him. He was about forty years old. We sat in the office, and I asked him what he needed prayer for. He proceeded to tell me a lot about his life, and the struggles he had. We came to a point in the conversation where he told me that he was a homosexual.

He wanted to know what I thought about that. I told him the only thing I know: God really loves homosexuals. He really opened up his heart to me, and I could tell that he was hurting inside. So as I listened I started asking God for for something to encourage him with.

I am always so thankful when God speaks. His voice changes every situation. He gave me an encouraging word to share with this man. It wasn’t necessarily profound, or complicated. Just a simple word. As I started sharing it with him tears started rolling down his face. He was weeping.

He told me that no one had ever spoken to him like that. He thought God was mad at him for practicing homosexuality. But God’s love wrecked his heart, and made this grown man cry. I asked him if He had ever heard the good new of what Jesus has done for him. He hadn’t, and so I happily told him about the cross.

When I asked him if he wanted to accept Jesus’ free gift of grace and forgiveness, he said yes! I lead him in praying, and then I blessed him. I prayed for God to reveal his love to him in a powerful way. He was so thankful, and felt blessed by God.

I remember seeing him at church many times after that. God truly touched his heart, and transformed his life. God loves everyone; homosexuals included.

Healing

God truly is an outrageously good God. He is the God who solves pain. I hope these stories have been inspiring, and even challenging for you. But above everything else, I hope they astonish your heart with how great God really is.

Additionally, if you have any pain in your body right now start testing it out. Revelation 19:10 says, “For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” Meaning that, whenever you hear a story about what God has done (i.e. a testimony) that story becomes prophetic in nature.

God is the God who solves pain. If you have pain right now I believe He can heal you as you read this. Test it out and see if your pain is gone. I pray that the God who solves pain would reveal Himself to you right now.

God is a good Father who loves to do amazing things through His children. I am no one special, but Christ in me certainly is. I’d encourage you then to ask God if He would show you how He wants to work through you in transforming the world with His amazing power and love.

- Chapter 8 -

Jesus and Zeus

Repentance is a core function of life. Repentance is vital to our relationship with God, with the world, and even with ourselves. The lack of repentance or the abundance of repentance is the deciding factor to whether we thrive, or survive.

Repentance is about how you think. The Greek word the bible uses is metanoia, which literally means to change your mind. It’s interesting how different that definition is from the repentance I grew up learning about in Church.

It’s often been taught that repentance is a lifestyle change, or some kind of behavioral modification. However, the Greek seems to make a different case for repentance. When Jesus says “Repent”, He wasn’t saying “change your behavior.” Jesus was saying “change your mind.”

Repentance will eventually lead to a change in behavior. However, repentance itself is not about changing behavior. When repentance is preached it is often assumed as changed behavior, probably because the natural result of a changed mind is a changed life. However we can’t mistake the fruit for the root. Repentance isn’t changing what you do; it’s changing how you think.

When we repent, we get changed. Repentance doesn’t change us by our self works; repentance changes us by thinking according to the truth. Repentance is about your mind, not your actions. Your behavior ultimately comes from what you believe, and so repentance does change you. But repentance isn’t changing your behavior; it’s changing your mind.

In Romans 12:2 Paul writes that we are “transformed by the renewing of our minds”. Transformation in the Christian life does not come from trying harder, going to church more, or from doing all the right spiritual, moral, or religious activities. We are not transformed by doing; we manifest transformation by believing.

Our actions follow our beliefs. If our actions change without our beliefs changing, we will not be transformed. We will essentially do the exact same thing Jesus blamed the Pharisees of doing. Namely, washing the outside of the cup while ignoring the inside. (See Matthew 23:25-26.) What we believe sometimes matters more than what we do. The internal beliefs we have about God are more important than the external actions we perform.

Transformation

Our beliefs are one of the most important issues in the Christian life. Repentance matters therefore, because repentance means believing the truth. We repent when we believe the truth about God, ourselves, and the world around us. We change our minds, and ultimately our perception. Repentance proceeds to manifest transformation.

Repentance is about perception. We live and die by the lifeblood of repentance because we live and die by the way we see. Our perception matters because our perception defines us. When we see the world we rarely ever see the world as it is. Instead, we see the world as our perception allows us to see it. Perception creates our world. The way we interact with God and the world around us is a product of our perception.

Repentance, therefore, becomes extremely important when we deal with God. Our perception of God is never perfect. We need to continually change the way we think about who God is and about what God does. This change creates space for manifested transformation, and ultimately a deeper relationship with God. But without a good perception of God, we will be doomed to interact with Him in a problematic way.

Perception

Repentance brings transformation because when we perceive rightly, we interact rightly. Our understanding of what we deal with will change the way we deal with it. Consider the following illustration.

What if I told you that there’s a slot machine in Las Vegas that always gives you back ten times whatever you put into it? It has a 100% success rate. For every ten dollars you get a hundred, for every hundred dollars you get a thousand, and so on. What would stop you from buying a plane ticket right now, and dumping all your money into that slot? If it’s a guarantee to win every time you play, wouldn’t it be logical to empty all your bank accounts and rush off to Vegas? What would stop you?

The only thing stopping you from doing just that would be your belief in the machine. What you believe about the machine, if you believe what I say about it or not, will determine how you interact with it. If you think this slot machine is just like any other slot machine, then you probably wouldn’t put everything you own into it. Your interaction is the direct result of your belief.

If you actually believed this was true about the slot machine, I have no doubt you would invest every penny you have into it. But if you didn't believe that about the machine, you would undoubtedly treat it just like any other machine. What you believe about the machine changes the way you interact with it.

The same is true for the beliefs we have about God. Our perception of God will ultimately determine how we interact with God, and the depth of our relationship with Him. If we see God as a mythical monster sitting up in the sky waiting to destroy us at any moment’s notice, the lives we live will reflect that belief.  When we believe that our God is more like Zeus than like Jesus, our hearts will flood with fear.

Zeus and Jesus

The church sometimes preaches a God who is more like Zeus than a God who is like Jesus. The god some Christians believe in is the god who randomly sends his wrathful lightning bolts of judgement upon the earth in the form of death, disease, and destruction. The Zeus-god of our imaginations is a the furthest thing from the God revealed to humanity in Jesus. Jesus healed disease, raised the dead, and put a stop to destruction. But the god of our imaginations, the horrifying Zeus-god, gets preached far more than Jesus.

Having this kind of belief about God will mark our lives with fear and anxiety. We will be continually afraid of when this Zeus-god will strike next. “Who’s he going to pick next to get cancer? What city will be destroyed with a tornado next?” When we believe that god is Zeus, sitting up in the sky waiting to throw His lightning bolts at us, then we will live in constant fear of him. Such a mystical god is impossible to have relationship with. We can’t love what we’re terrified of.

But what if we believe in a God who loves us unconditionally, and who has nothing against us? What if our God is not Zeus, waiting up in heaven with lightening bolts of pain? When God is not out to get us we will not be bound by fear. When we understand that God accepts us and loves us we will have assurance. When we see God rightly, we will interact with Him rightly. Our souls will be baptized in assurance when we see that our God is not Zeus, the boogie man, or the flying spaghetti monster.

When we see that our God is good—ridiculously good— our hearts will be flooded with assurance. This assurance is the oxygen of our existence. We are built to live on this assurance. We are not created to live in constant fear of what God might want to do to us by giving us pain or causing horrible things to happen to us. We are created to live in the firm, unwavering assurance of a God who loves us, cares for us, and enjoys our company.

When we have a God who causes pain and suffering, we have no assurance. We can find no security in a God like that. When our God is unpredictable and scary, we are filled with fear and anxiety.

But God is good. He is so wildly good that words alone can’t scratch the surface of His kindness. He’s a ridiculously good God: so outlandish in His love, extreme in His patience, and irresistible in His kindness. When we see God for who He is, we find ourselves at home. We find our souls secure in assurance.

The way we understand God should ultimately lead us to trust. If the way you think about God does not lead you to trust, then there is something wrong with your beliefs. Trust matters because without trust, relationship is impossible.

Trust

No relationship can be built without trust. The measure in which we can trust God is the measure in which we can benefit from relationship with Him.

When we believe in a God who is out to get us—who at any moment can send us disasters, death, and disease just because He wants to—trust will be in low supply. A God like that is a God who is un-trustable. When our perception of God tells us that He can cause us torment at any given moment, the natural result is a life of fear.

If God causes pain to happen, then we can not trust God. If we can not trust God we can not enjoy relationship with Him. It is for this reason that I have written about God’s relationship with pain. It comes down to trust. Can we really trust a God who, at any given moment, gives children cancer, and makes people die?

Trusting God is extremely important. If we can’t trust God, we can’t enjoy relationship with God. If God to us is a mythical hammer in the sky waiting to strike at any moment, we cannot enjoy relationship with Him. A God like that is a God who can’t be trusted. A God of punishment is not a trustworthy God. The threat of punishment invites fear into our relationship with God, and this fear will ultimately seek to kill that relationship.

Our relationship with God is in danger when we don’t understand His nature properly. What we believe about God and His relationship with pain matters because it influences our ability to trust Him. Without trust, our relationship is threatened. Trust is the foundation of relationship. Without trust in a relationship, there is always going to be the danger of imminent destruction.

Perception really is everything. Perception tells us whether or not we can trust. Trust tells us whether or not we can have relationship. Without relationship, God is just a figure that we worship on Sunday mornings, but forget about on Monday. If we don’t have genuine relationship with God, it’s not because God is lacking in His attempt to make relationship work, but because the way we see God is faulty.

Backsliding

Trust breeds relationship. It is a foundation for relationship that must exist or the relationship will be manipulative at best, and non-existent at worst. Which is something you see happen a lot in Christianity. Our churches fill up with mask-wearers. This happens so much to us that we’ve invented a term for it: backsliding.

But backsliding isn’t always their fault. When we preach a God who is more like Zeus than Jesus, we preach a God who is not trustworthy. Our theology about God and His relationship with pain looks more like the theology of Zeus. If God is the force behind our pain, either directly or indirectly, our beliefs will create backsliders. Because such a belief ultimately undermines who God is, and turns Him into a God no better than Zeus. Which is terrifying.

Our theology about God teaches people how to interact with Him. If we are teaching a God who sends pain and punishment from heaven, aren’t we teaching a God who can’t be trusted? If God really does give us cancer, death, and destruction at any moment, will anyone really want to have relationship with Him?

When trust falls apart, relationship soon follows. What if this is why so many believers backslide? We teach them that God cannot be trusted by teaching them that God could kill them at any moment. We practically hand them a reason to run away from Him. When the goodness of God is being undermined by a bad theology like this, backsliding abounds.

I can’t count how many times I have met someone who says they used to believe in God, but gave up on Christianity because they couldn’t accept a God who would cause so much pain to happen. Maybe someone they knew got cancer and died. The church probably told them that God was to blame, and that they just needed to trust Him.

This idea stole their trust away. You can’t trust in someone who you are afraid might be out to get you or the people you love. It’s a ridiculous idea to think that we could ever trust God if the God we teach is a God who gives us pain. That’s like trying to tell someone to trust in Hitler. I don’t care how good you try to tell me Hitler is, He does bad things. He killed lots and lots of people. If this is what God is like then we cannot trust Him.

The picture the church paints about God is killing our relationship with Him. The problem is not always on the believers’ end, and it’s certainly not on God’s end either. Relationship with God is normal, and connection with His heart is what every single human being longs for. So why doesn’t everyone want to know God? Perhaps it is because we have taught the world about a God who is not trustworthy. We have preached Zeus to the world, not Jesus.

God is Not Zeus

But thank God, for He is nothing like Zeus. Our God is a good God. He is the God revealed in Jesus. He is the God who solves pain.

Are you beginning to see how vital repentance truly is? Our perception is everything. The way we see God is so vital to the way we interact with Him. Our relationship with God is dependent upon the way we see Him. If we see Him aright, we relate to Him aright. If we see Him wrongly, relationship with Him is threatened.

Repentance is why Jesus came. He came so that we could understand what God is like. Jesus came to show us that God is not like Zeus. God is not like the mythical gods who haunt our nightmares. He is the good God; good beyond our wildest dreams.

If we see God by anything other than the person of Jesus Christ we will misinterpret what He’s like. It’s as simple as this: Jesus is what God looks like. We must repent and see according to that standard. We must see God through the life of Jesus. Any thoughts we have about God that are contrary to Jesus must be rethought, and repented of.

Jesus is what God looks like. Repentance is the practice of looking at Jesus and changing our mind about God based on what we see. When we look at God through any other lens, we will see God poorly.

This is what repentance means and it is why we are told to do it. We repent because God absolutely craves relationship with us. He wants us to know Him, and trust Him. He wants real genuine connection with us, and for that to happen we have to see Him for who He really is.

Repentance is about enjoying relationship with God. It is not a religious task we do to make God love us. Repentance doesn’t earn relationship; repentance enjoys relationship. We can only fully enjoy our relationship with God when we are able to see Him for who He really is.

Laughing Repentance

The heart of God burns passionately for this one thing: relationship with humanity. He wants us to give up all our foreign notions of an angry God, and leave them out for garbage. Notions of an angry, punishing God are nothing short of rubbish. Throw them away, and never think about God like that ever again.

God is not behind our pain. He has no ulterior motive beyond the love that He desperately longs to give to us. God is extremely good. He is not out to get you, punish you, or cause you pain. God is the God who solves pain.

So forget all those silly ideas about a God who causes pain. Forget any notion that makes God look like anything but Jesus. Forget them and be free.

Be free to embrace God as He truly is. Embrace the freedom of being His beloved child. Repent and see that God really is far better than you have ever dreamed He could be. You will jump joyously and shout extravagantly in the exhilaration of unconditional love. You will dance in the fields of trust and sing the endless songs of His pleasure.

Repentance is a joy. Repentance does not find us at the altar in a puddle of tears before an angry God. Repentance finds us at the altar hilariously happy in the ecstatic revelation of who God is.

When we see God aright—when we repent—we will find ourselves sweetly filled up with unspeakable Joy. And for that, we will laugh. We laugh like mad men who have just struck an endless supply of gold. We laugh wildly and freely because we have discovered that God is far, far better than we've ever dreamed He could be. He is better, and we are continually repenting to see it. Repentance is far from a sorrowful act. True repentance sees God for who He is, and can't help but to dance exuberantly in the sheer pleasure of it all. Repentance sounds like laughter and fun. We have embraced our Father, we have glimpsed His goodness, and we have become undone with gladness.

- Chapter 9 -

Closing Thoughts

"Trust Jesus, then. After that, theologize all you want." Writes Robert Farrar Capon in his brilliant book, The Parables of the Kingdom.

You see, ultimately, as believers, we are not called to have all of the answers to all of the questions about all of the difficulties in all of the world. We are not called to have perfect intellectual theology, nor to understand every single portion of the scriptures.

We are solely called to trust Jesus.

Our existence begins with Jesus, it is sustained by Jesus, and it will continue on for all eternity in, by, and with Jesus. Trusting Him, Who is our life, ultimately, is all that matters.

So above everything else I hope you see this. Trust in Jesus, and in the God He joyously displays to us.

After you get a hold of that, you are free to theologize about whatever you'd like.

Disagree with me, brand me a heretic, or do whatever else you’d like to do. Just trust in Jesus while you’re doing it.

Cultivate an unwavering trust in the person of Jesus and, I promise you, absolutely everything else will work itself out. Get that and you get the point of this book.

I hope that in the process of looking at Jesus I have been able to show you a God who is far better than your wildest dreams.

Much of this book has been a continual pointing back to Jesus. Jesus didn’t come to answer our questions, He came as The Answer. When we have Jesus, we have The Answer. Or more properly, The Answer has us.

When Jesus came to the earth, He didn’t teach apologetic classes about pain. He didn’t intellectually answer all our questions about pain. Instead, He came as The Answer, solving our pain.

In the death of Jesus we see the death of sin—the death of all badness and pain. We aren’t given a why; we are given a Who. We are given Jesus. Which is more than enough for me.

God didn’t send information to save the world, He sent a man. It’s the Who that matters, not the why. It’s good news because it means that all our intellectual debates and theology really can’t save the world. Only Jesus can, and has, done just that.

What matters is not the why: what matters is the Who. The Who has come, and He has solved pain. This is the God who is better than our wildest dreams. We may never fully come to understand pain and suffering, but at the end of the day we have Him. And that, my friends, is what really matters.

Put all your eggs in one basket.

Throw all of your money on red.

Trust in Jesus.

Everything else will work itself out.

Now, if I could sum up the message of this book, I would say it as such: God is good—irresistibly, inconceivably, inexhaustibly; crazy-stinking good.

About The Author

Stephen D Morrison is a graduate of Bethel's School of Supernatural Ministry in Redding, California. Stephen is married to the love of his life, Ketlin. Together they are traveling the world, enjoying life, and pursuing their dreams.

Stephen is passionate about preaching the outrageous grace of God, and His incredible love for humanity. Stephen loves writing about how good God is, about theology, and about our new life in Christ.

Stephen enjoys drinking coffee, reading, writing, playing music, and making art. For more about Stephen, along with regular articles, please visit his website: http://www.SDMorrison.org

If you’d like to invite Stephen to come and speak at your church or event, please send an email to Stephen@SDMorrison.org

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Table of Contents

Copyright

Forward

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: Blood Boiling

Chapter 2: God the Dictator

Chapter 3: Blurry Pictures

Chapter 4: Job, Mystery, and a Theory

Chapter 5: Fun With Wrath

Chapter 6: The God Who Solves Pain

Chapter 7: Stories

Chapter 8: Jesus and Zeus

Chapter 9: Closing Thoughts

About the Author

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