Short Catechism: God as Creator

Brief chat today about God as creator.  What does it mean to say that God is creator?

"That he made everything."

"Did He make that car?"

"Yes."

"I thought the car came from a factory."

"God made the factory."

"I thought the people dug in the ground and then built the building.  How about God made all the materials?"

"Yes."

"And God made science, the rules for what materials do.  So God doesn't make everything directly.  He made the materials and the rules and then gave everything a push."

When God was making the world, He had a choice.  Do I make people into robots, so that they are my slaves who do whatever I make them do?  Or do I let them choose, which of course means that some of them will not make good choices.

So God decided to give people choices.  And that's why bad things happen in the world.  Because some people make bad choices. 

But then again, some people make good choices too!

Short Catechism 2: Our God is an Awesome God

I've finagled the order a little this week.  This third post becomes the second in the series:

1. Mercy trumps justice.
2. God is an awesome God.
3. God wants to save everyone.

These are kernels of chats with my younger children.

Our God is an Awesome God
1. Hard for us even to understand how great God is.
Think of your principal or someone you look up to.  Think of someone really strong on TV or in the movies.  God makes such people look like ants.  He could crush the earth with his pinky.  How do you normally act around someone so strong?

He made the earth out of nothing--so he designed it all, understands it all.  He doesn't need us--he helps us because he likes us!

So how should we act around someone like this--all powerful, all knowing, but someone who made us, likes us, and sees everything we do?  Should we insult him?  ignore him?

2. Sometimes God intervenes, sometimes he lets things go.
We don't know why he saves us sometimes and then other times does not.  Sometimes he swoops in to the rescue like Superman.  If we ignore him long enough, he often lets us go, with all the bad things that happen when we are selfish.  There's a point after which you have lost his phone number and don't even realize it.  You wouldn't know where to find his number even if you suddenly became desperate.

3. After we die, if we have been friends with God, we will be with him forever.  If we have ignored him, he will abandon us to the course we have set in life, separation from him forever, eternal death.

Short Catechism 3: "God wants everyone to be saved"

This was originally my second, now revised to be third in a series of short chats I am having with my children to convey my sense of Christianity to them beyond what they might absorb from some other Christian activity.  The first one was based on James 2:13: "Mercy trumps justice."

The second one is based on 1 Timothy 2:4--"God wants everyone to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth."  Several truths lurk in this verse:

1. First, that people need rescued.  We Christians can quibble over things like how depraved the world and we are.  But it is painfully obvious that an aweful lot of people are in trouble.  They are enslaved to drugs, enslaved to poverty, enslaved to selfishness and greed, enslaved to pleasure and power.  The human animal seems self-destructive by nature.  The world is thoroughly in need of rescue, both spiritually and materially.

2. Secondly, God does not force anyone to be rescued.  He does not predetermine who will be saved and who will not.  If he did, everyone would be saved because he wants everyone to be saved.  However it works in the mystery of his power and will, he does not force it.  He gives everyone a chance.

3. Finally, we want everyone to be saved.  We do not give up easily on the hard cases but, like God, work diligently to see them saved in every sense, spiritually and materially.  We know the leopard can't change his spots, but God can.  With mortals this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.  We interact with the world in hope of salvation, not with the presumption of failure.

Short Catechism: "Mercy trumps justice"

It is important to me that my children know some of the key things I believe.  Needless to say, they do not read my blog and their attention span for deep conversation is not very long.  When my youngest two hit middle school, a certain window to their mind will be hard to open if it is not already open.  So this last couple of years we've been oiling the hinges on that window.

One very key thing in my mind is the fact that even within Christianity, my children will be exposed to many forms of Christianity when I'm not looking.  They might join a high school Bible study where the leader is Baptist beige or have Sunday School teachers or youth leaders who are fairly untrained Wesleyans.  Even a pastor like Steve Deneff often says things that are different from what I think.  Ultimately, they have to choose, but I would at least like them to know what I think.  I would rather them intentionally and thoughtfully choose other options than merely to be driven and tossed by the winds, even the Christian winds of their environment.

Today I began with James 2:13: "Mercy trumps justice."  Justice is when you receive a punishment equal to your wrongdoing.  "An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth."  If you intentionally break someone's arm, justice would be for them to break your arm back in exactly the same way.

My kind of Methodist and Wesleyan believes that God's character as love is more primary for him than God's character as just.  We do not believe that God had to crucify Jesus because of some mindless rule about having to punish wrongdoing.  God wants to forgive.  That does not mean he does not punish.  But God's punishment is meant to help us get on the right track, not to satisfy some underlying need for therapy that God has. 

The cross is an astounding act of God's love, not only because Jesus took the punishment we deserved but because God could have forgiven us by divine fiat.  But it was much more powerful for him to become us and suffer with us.  It better satisfied the innate order of things and thus was more powerful to heal than a mere declaration.