Stages of Christianity.

1 John 2.12-14.

John already stated in previous verses he wrote this letter so his joy might be full, 1Jn 1.4 and so his readers won’t sin. 1Jn 2.1 Here he gives a few more reasons, along with the people attached to the particular reasons: This letter is to τεκνία/teknía and παιδία/pedía, children and invants; πατέρες/patéres, parents; and νεανίσκοι/neaníske, young people, and since adulthood back then began when you were 13, teenagers.

1 John 2.12-14 KWL

12 Children, I write you because your sins are forgiven in God’s name.

13 Parents, I write you because you knew this from the beginning.

14 Youths, I write you because you conquer evil.

14 Infants, I wrote you because you know the Father.

Parents, I wrote you because you knew this from the beginning.

Youths, I wrote you because you’re strong,

and God’s word remains in you, and you conquer evil.

The repetition is Hebrew-style poetry, where you repeat ideas instead of phonemes. Sometimes the very same idea, ’cause John wrote twice that he’s writing parents because they knew this already, and that he’s writing teenagers because they conquer evil. The first three statements are in present tense (γράφω ὑμῖν/gráfo ymín, “I write you”). The second three are in aorist tense, which is a tense we don’t have in English; it’s set in neither past, present, nor future, so it’s timeless. Translators tend to make it past-tense (ἔγραψα ὑμῖν/égrapsa ymín, “I wrote you”) but perhaps it’s better expressed as “I wrote you, write you, and will keep on writing you.” The first three are about why John’s currently writing to his readers, but the last are why John would always write such stuff.

A lot of commentators point out these age groups—kids, teens, parents—refer to different stages of Christian maturity:.

• INFANTS are brand-new Christians.
• CHILDREN are still relatively new followers; I usually call them newbies. They still make a ton of mistakes, and clearly need to develop as Christians, but they’re definitely in God’s family now, and are often excited about it.
• TEENS are probably just a little more mature than literal teenage Christians (many of whom are newbies, so they’re still making tons of mistakes). They’re still zealous for God, but now they have a few successes and victories and experiences under their belts.
• PARENTS are the elder Christians, who’ve been following Jesus long enough to be able to mentor others; in other words to be spiritual parents.

I tend to agree with this interpretation. It makes sense. But I wonder just how far we oughta consider “children” to be a metaphor. After all, 1 John is written in basic Greek with a simple vocabulary, and teaches elementary concepts and basic theology. You gotta teach Christianity to children at some point… so I gotta wonder whether 1 John wasn’t written with a very literal audience of children in mind.

There are those commentators who speculate the groups work a little differently. “Infants” and “children,” they claim, are the Christian community at large, but “teens” would be the Christians in leadership, the people helping John run the place; and that’d include the elder Christians. “Parents” would refer to the top leaders, the ones in charge. I don’t care for this interpretation ’cause it presumes John’s church had special code-words for people in leadership which nobody else in Christendom seems to know about: It’s kinda overlaying gnosticism on top of a very anti-gnostic letter!

Nah; the letter’s primarily for new believers, but maturer Christians can read it too, and get something just as valuable out of it. Yeah, we know all this stuff already (or should); we learned it back when we were newbies. It’s still good review.

Anyway, where do you find yourself? Awestruck newbie, vigorous relatively-new disciple, or well-grounded elder?

Hopefully not wandering newbie, apathetic disciple, or jaded oldtimer.

The new command: Stay in the light!

1 John 2.7-11.

In John’s gospel, Jesus gave his students a new command. The way he talked about it, kinda suggests it’s not just a personal directive from their rabbi, nor a commentary on the bible’s commands like he did with the Sermon on the Mount. This is a new command, meant to be added to the other commands, and followed just as intently.

John 13.34-35 KWL

34 “I give you a new command: You should love one another!

Same as I love you, you all should love one another.

35 This is how everyone will come to realize you’re my students:

When you have love for one another.”

Like all the other things Jesus teaches, Christians have sought any loophole possible for not obeying this one. Usually by claiming those other Christians aren’t real Christians. They have (slightly) different doctrines, do their rituals all wrong, revere other Christian teachers than we do, focus way too much on practices which make us uncomfortable, or play way-too-different worship music. They sin (as if we don’t). They have different politics. They’re too young or too old, too formal or informal, too white or brown (although let’s pretend that last thing isn’t really our hangup; let’s pretend it’s politics again). Pick your favorite excuse.

Anyway. In today’s discussion on 1 John, we got John writing about a new command, and a number of commentators have decided John’s actually writing about the new command; Jesus’s new command. About loving one another.

A few assumptions are part ’n parcel of this interpretation:

• The author of this letter, and the gospel, are the same John.
• The readers of this letter, read that gospel, and know “new command” refers to that new command.
• Because John would never issue a new command on his own. Because he’s not God, of course. Neither are the other apostles. Their writings aren’t commands; they’re just instructions. Although… haven’t Christians historically followed the apostles’ instructions kinda like they are commands?…

Me, I’d say unless John explicitly says he means that new command, it’s not appropriate to leap to such a conclusion. Better to read the letter in the context of itself. What’d John just write about in his previous chapter? God being light; us living in his light. So when John goes back to writing about light and darkness, that’s what we oughta pay attention to: The stuff he just wrote. Why is it Christians regularly seem to totally forget basic reading comprehension when it comes to bible study?

Oh right; our tendency to chop the bible up into little segments and study ’em one soundbite at a time. Kinda like I’m doing in this series. But regardless: These aren’t self-contained soundbites! They’re part of a whole. Read the whole. Study the whole. And don’t lose sight of the whole when you expound on it… even if us commentators sometimes (or pretty darned often) slip up and do exactly that.

On to today’s soundbite:

1 John 2.7-11 KWL

7 Dear Christians, I write you not a new command, but an old command

which you’ve had since the beginning; the old command is the message you heard.

8 Yet I do write you a new command, true for one and all:

The darkness is going away, and the true light is shining already.

9 One who says they’re in the light while hating their fellow Christian:

They’re in the darkness even now.

10 One who loves their fellow Christian lives in the light,

and isn’t triggered by them.

11 One who hates their fellow Christian is in the darkness, walking in the darkness,

and doesn’t know where they’re going for the darkness blinds their eyes.

The purpose of John’s letter is to keep his students away from sin. 1Jn 2.1 And how we go about doing that is we stay in the light which God is. This is the new command.

It’s not, as John pointed out, all that new. Every Christian’s heard it, in one form or another. Follow Jesus. Walk like he did. Teach everybody what he taught. Mt 28.20 “What would Jesus do?” like the T-shirts say. The assumption one usually makes when they embrace a guru, is the goal of being just like that guru. The term “Christian” itself means “little Christ,” or Christ-follower. Does this really need to be spelled out?

And then again it is a new command. Following Moses’s teachings didn’t mean people wanted to be just like Moses. The scriptures actually record Moses’s screw-ups as much as his accomplishments. So you don’t follow Moses; you follow the Law. Whereas in being Christian, we do follow Jesus. We obey his commands too, but Jesus personifies his own commands to a degree Moses never personified the Law (and frankly never could). Following Jesus is following his commands. Following him is a command in itself.

So while it’s not new, it kinda is. There’s never been a guru we could follow to the level we follow Jesus. And frankly, if we’re not willing to follow Jesus to that level, we suck as Christians.

The point of following Jesus, as stated in verse 8, isn’t because “the darkness is past,” as the KJV puts it: Παράγεται/parághete is a present-tense verb, so the darkness is currently passing. It’s not gone yet. When we follow Jesus and walk in the light, we’re helping to drive darkness out. The more of us that are in the light, the fewer places there are for dark to be. Christianity spreads, darkness recedes. And on New Earth, darkness will be utterly gone.

Hatred means you’re not in the light.

I get why commentators mix this “new command” mixed up with Jesus’s command to love one another. Loving one another is integral to living in the light. Note verses 9-11, where John straight-up wrote if you hate one another, you’re not in the light. The commands are very closely connected.

John literally used the word ἀδελφὸν/adelfón, “sibling,” but the general idea is siblings in Christ, sisters and brothers whom God adopted as his children. And if we hate these fellow Christians, either because we haven’t worked out our disagreements, or because of idle prejudices and assumptions made about different denominations, we’re in the wrong. It violates Jesus’s command to love one another. It means we’re still in the darkness, no matter what we claim.

This can be a hard principle for some Christians to follow. For many, partisanship trumps Christianity. Many’s the time I’ve heard a Christian just rip on a politician… who happened to be a fellow Christian. “Hey,” I’d point out, “you know she’s Christian?” In response I’d get a blank or shocked stare… followed by a sputtered diatribe about how anybody who thinks as she does, votes as she does, or is in the party she’s in, can’t possibly be a real Christian. And I shouldn’t be such a sucker that I believe their professions of faith.

Meanwhile I’m being shouted at by someone who’s not acting all that Christlike right now, so it’s pretty clear what John meant by being blinded by the darkness.

Now yes, we Christians are allowed to judge one another, provided we do it fairly, mercifully, in love, and with the goals of building one another up and restoring relationships. So it’s fully within my rights and duties as a Christian to critique a fellow Christian’s manner of following Jesus. If they’re doing it wrong, I can say so—just as if I’m doing it wrong, they can say so. But in none of this judgment are any of us allowed to hate the person we’re critiquing. Not ever.

Were I to hate the other Christians: All the building up, the fairness, the rightness, the mercy, the love, would be gone. ’Cause the judgment wouldn’t be about love and restored relationships. It’s about anger, envy, vengefulness, and damage. I’d be in the pitch-black dark.

Even if they’re horribly sinning, I shouldn’t be triggered by them. The word σκάνδαλον/skándalon was used to translate the Old Testament word מִכְשׁוֹל/mikhšól, “rock one trips over,” which is why it’s so often interpreted “stumbling block” (KJV “there is none occasion of stumbling in him”). But properly a skándalon is the trigger of an animal trap; the part of the mousetrap where you put the peanut butter. “Stumbling” implies they move you to sin, but “triggering” makes it quite obvious how they do that: We get angry, then use the anger to justify everything evil we do from then on. But God wants his kids to control our emotions way better than that.

When we behave this way, we’ve no clue how destructive and hurtful we’re being. We’re in the dark, remember? Properly the light drives out sin, not people. Yet we drive away the fellow Christians we hate, and we offend all the pagans watching from the outside, who rightly respond “If that’s how Christians behave, I want nothing to do with it.” So much for spreading the light.

If we’re angry, we must work it out. If we hate, rebuke the haters. Otherwise we Christians are to love one another, period. No exceptions.

Disobedient Christians.

1 John 2.1-6.

I’ve known various Christians who get really outraged by the phrase “cheap grace.” Grace, they insist, isn’t cheap!

Well of course it isn’t. But “cheap grace” doesn’t mean we think grace is cheap; it means others treat it as cheap. They take God’s forgiveness for granted. They figure Jesus took out a trillion sins by his death… so what’s one more?

Heck, what’s a thousand more? God’s given us a blank check of forgiveness! We can sin ourselves raw, and he forgives all! So why go to all the bother of cleaning ourselves up and sinning no more? Self-discipline is so hard. Easier to just do as comes naturally—and remain the same bitter, selfish wankers we’ve always been.

But we’re forgiven just the same! And still go to heaven!

Hence the popular bumper sticker:

Or window sticker, or button, or hat, or T-shirt; found at many a Christian bookstore.

Now yes, this message can be used to describe just how expansive and generous God’s grace actually is. You don’t have to be perfect to come to Jesus. He came to treat the sick, not the healthy; Mk 2.17 he saves sinners, not paragons. Taken that way, it’s not a bad message.

But that’s definitely not the way Christians mean it. What we typically mean is, “Yes I’m an a--hole, but it’s okay if I’m an a--hole, because Christians don’t have to be perfect. It’s not a requirement.”

Yes it is a requirement. Stop sinning, dammit!

True, we don’t enter God’s kingdom by first becoming sinless and perfect. We get in through God’s grace. But the kingdom isn’t for sinners! It’s for people whom God makes sinless and perfect. He’s trying to transform us. And either we’re on board with his program… or we have no business calling ourselves Christian. Because we’re not.

Obviously I’m basing this rant on 1 John, so here’s the relevant bible quote:

1 John 2.1-6 KWL

1My children, I write these things to you²

so you² don’t sin!

And when anyone sins,

we have an aide with the Father, Christ Jesus.

He does right by us too.

2Jesus is the solution for our sins.

And not only for our sins,

but also for the whole world.

3We know that we know Jesus this way:

We keep his commands.

4Saying we know Jesus

and not keeping his commands:

It’s a lie,

and there’s no truth found this way.

5God’s love is truly completed

by whoever might keep Jesus’s word.

We know we’re in God this way.

6 One who says they¹ abide in Jesus

is obligated to do this:

Just as Jesus walked,

they¹ themselves¹ are to walk like this.

If a person’s not even trying to keep Jesus’s commands, they’re not Christian. They’re not “in God,” not in the light, have no relationship with him. Might think they have a relationship with him, ’cause they go to church and quote bible and said the sinner’s prayer once. But when they treat God’s safety net of forgiveness like a bounce house, they clearly don’t give a wet fart about Jesus. They’re not following him, trappings aside. Not Christian.

So if you’re not keeping Jesus’s commands, repent and start keeping ’em.

We sin, and need Jesus’s help.

1 John 1.8 – 2.2.

There are a number of immoral folks who figure if God has a dark side, it justifies them having a dark side. I wrote on this previously: Gnostics and determinists claim God co-opts evil as part of his cosmic plan. So people figure if he’s not tainted by such behavior, there’s no reason they can’t commit the occasional sin… if it’s ultimately for the best.

Funny how often people wind up committing such “occasional” sins. Seems there are an awful lot of these occasions.

But the very idea is rotten to its core. If God has an evil plan, it makes him an evil God. Period. And as John had to point out, God has no dark side. God is light. Not just in the light, like we can be when we follow God: Is light. In John’s other writing, Revelation, he even describes New Jerusalem as lit by the Lamb himself instead of the sun. Rv 21.23 Since Revelation is all apocalypses, I don’t think it wise to interpret that literally, but certainly you get the idea we’re going to live in God’s presence and goodness, where there will be no room for evil. It can’t exist there.

1 John is written as a corrective to people who develop such messed-up ideas. And, as appropriate for Christians, it’s a gracious corrective. If you’ve fallen for this twisted idea and gone wrong, chill out: Repent, be forgiven, accept God’s grace, and move forward!

Or maybe I’ll just quote John.

1 John 1.8 - 2.2 KWL

8 When we say we don’t have sin, we mislead ourselves, and truth isn’t in us.

9 When we acknowledge our sins, God is faithful and does right by us:

He can forgive us of sin, and can cleanse us of everything wrong.

10 When we say we haven’t sinned, we make him sound like a liar,

and his word isn’t in us.

2.1 My children, I write these things to you so you don’t sin!

And when anyone sins, we have a aide with the Father, Christ Jesus. He does right by us too.

2 Jesus is the solution for our sins.

And not only for our sins, but also for the whole world.

God doesn‘t have a dark side, but humanity surely does. I sure do. So do you; so does everyone. And the only solution to this problem isn’t self-deprivation, isn’t noble truths and an eightfold path, isn’t gnostic revelations of how the universe really works, isn’t to find a bad guy to blame for everything, isn’t any of the usual solutions humans invent. It’s Christ Jesus.

Admit we have a problem, and need our Higher Power.

Maybe you already know this, but 12-step addiction recovery programs borrow their steps from medieval Christian discipleship practices. The founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, in order to get pagans to participate without being weirded out by religion, dropped most of the religious language. They had to keep God in, ’cause it doesn’t work very effectively without him, but they renamed him “the Higher Power,” and leave it to people to pursue him… or not. Celebrate Recovery straight-up calls him Jesus. But all groups recognize they can’t recover without him.

Same deal with sin. Step 1 of our process is to admit we have an addiction—to sin—and we can’t defeat sin alone. Legalists invent or borrow rules, and try to follow them, and fail hard. Their efforts to live perfect lives involve a whole lot of judgmentalism, harshness, and hypocrisy to cover up the many inevitable missteps. But we truly trust God to guide your steps, we shouldn’t require so very many of our own rules!

Step 2 is to admit we need our Higher Power. We can’t conquer sin, won’t conquer death, without God.

We find these ideas in 1 John and elsewhere in the bible. John got directly to the idea of living in the light God is: Acknowledge the truth to ourselves (and don’t hypocritically hide it from others!) that though we really shouldn’t sin, we do. Let’s not deceive ourselves. Let’s not invent some fantasy-world fake Christianity where we’re not really sinners, ’cause Jesus abolished all the LORD’s commands for this dispensation, so we can do as we please. Jesus’s solution, his atonement, doesn’t turn sin into non-sin, and doesn’t undo sin. But it does fix the sin problem, and that ain’t nothing.

Lying about our sin problem, and “making God a liar.”

John wrote about Christians who say they don’t have sin, who say they haven’t sinned. And a number of commentators are pretty sure John really wrote about gnostics. ’Cause seriously: Other than hypocrites, what Christians think they don’t sin?

Oh, plenty. Too many. I grew up hearing many a preacher claim once God forgives our sins, he blots ’em out entirely. They’re gone. Deleted from space, time, and God’s very own memory. He said so more than once.

Isaiah 43.25 KJV

I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.

 

Jeremiah 31.34 KJV

And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

 

Hebrews 8.12 KJV

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.

 

Hebrews 10.17 KJV

And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.

Need more proof-texts? This, these preachers claim, mean God’s deliberately giving himself selective mini-lobotomies. And since they’re no longer in his memory, it’s like we never did sin against him.

But taking these statements literally becomes a really problematic teaching. Don’t we claim God’s omniscient?—he knows all? We can’t very well teach this, and that God suffers from selective self-inflicted amnesia.

It’s more accurate to say God forgives. Yes, he totally recalls our every act. Since he fills time, he’s simultaneously right here, and back there at the point of every sin in our lives. He relives ’em better than someone suffering from post-traumatic stress. But unlike a human, it doesn’t traumatize him. Doesn’t drive him away. Doesn’t make him so hurt he can’t go on… or worse, vengeful. We humans get that way, which is why we usually have to forgive and forget: We can’t get past sins, and forgive people, unless we do so. But God is almighty. And good. And δίκαιος/díkeos (KJV “just”), which I translate “does right [by us],” because nobody deserves grace, but that’s precisely what he gives us: Compassionate, loving grace. He doesn’t do grudges. We’re good. ’Cause God is good.

Okay, so other than weird or heretic teachings about the nature of forgiveness, who claims they have no sin? ’Cause whenever someone foolishly tries it, the rest of us automatically cry foul. “Who d’you think you’re fooling? You ain’t perfect.” Some of us, especially spouses and parents and kids and close friends, can remind us of a bunch of sins; they have a whole list. None of us are so stupid as to claim perfection. Cult leaders will, but that’s only after their followers learn that contradicting them will have terrifying consequences.

But actually lots of Christians claim we don’t sin. We do it by omission: We never confess our sins to one another. You know, like James taught.

James 5.16 KJV

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

We figure our sins are nobody’s business but God’s, so we confess them to him, and only him. Then we act like our lives are just fine; that we never struggle against the darkness—or that every time we do, we totally win.

Or we’ll confess mundane sins. It’s no big deal to admit, “Okay, I sometimes lie. Every so often the wife’ll ask me if her butt looks big in some outfit. Come on, am I supposed to hurt her feelings?” We’ll confess to petty, dumb stuff. The bigger stuff?—we keep that to ourselves, and when people ask us what’s new, we tell ’em nothing we’re really struggling with. “Kids doing okay in school?” We’ll say sure; we’ll skip the fact the kids got suspended for swearing at teachers. “Work doing all right?” We’ll say sure; we’ll never mention the fact the boss chewed us out for using the company credit card to buy weed. The big, embarrassing infractions against God go unconfessed.

As a result, all our fellow Christians really know about us is… nothing. All people ever hear from us are positive, upbeat, funny, victorious stories. Nothing about our real problems and struggles. Nothing about how God helps us through the rough times—’cause what rough times? Our lives are perfect. We’re perfect. Yeah, everybody sins, but as far as we’ve clued everybody else in on our lives, we only have little sins. They, on the other hand, are the only serious f---ups in the church.

Justify this behavior all you want: “I don’t wanna be a downer,” or “I don’t want their pity,” or “Every time I tell on myself, all I get from them is judgment, or platitudes and bad advice, and I have had it up to here with that crap.” I don’t blame anyone for tiring of judgmentalism. Even so: If we don’t confess our sins, we’ve created a pious façade of ourselves, and become hypocrites. We’re making our lives look perfect and uncomplicated—and we know they’re not.

And we’re making God look like a liar. Because we supposedly follow God… and we’re liars. And once struggling Christians find out what our lives are really like when all we’ve shown ’em is the façade, how d’you think they’re gonna feel about God? About our church? About Christianity? Plenty of people have quit Jesus over less.

So let’s not. Don’t lie by omission. We sin. Let’s admit that. Then let’s point to Jesus, the solution to our sins.

God doesn’t have a dark side.

1 John 1.5-7.

Gnostic religions have always taught weirdness about Jesus. Some of these ideas leaked into the first-century church; hence John’s first letter, correcting his church. Loads of these ideas are still around. Some are outright heresy.

Others aren’t technically heresy… because heresy is defined by the creeds, and for whatever reason the creeds didn’t get to that particular error. Often because the ancient Christians figured, “Well of course that’s wrong; haven’t you read a bible?” And of course Christians haven’t read their bibles. (Read your bible!) They let their favorite teachers read ’em for them, and blindly follow these teachers without double-checking any of their proof texts. That’s how gnostics have always got away with it.

And one of the more popular errors is about God having dark side.

It’s based on determinism, the belief God is so sovereign, he controls absolutely everything in the cosmos. God’s the “unmoved mover” of Aristotle of Athens, the first cause of everything, and everything in the universe happens because God wants it to happen that way. He’s in control. Really, determinists insist, if he weren’t wielding total control of everything, we couldn’t legitimately call him almighty.

But if God’s in charge, what about sin? Why is evil, chaos, and death part of our universe if God’s pulling every single string of our cosmic puppet show?

If you’re not a determinist—and I’m not, and I would argue the apostle John’s not—there’s a really simple answer: He’s not pulling every single string of the show. He’s not so inept a creator that he built something, but constantly has to fiddle with it lest it go awry. But if it does go wrong, it’s not God’s fault: His creation has free will. It can legitimately make its own decisions—and choose to do what God told it to, or do its own thing. That’s the cause of evil, chaos, and death. Not God.

Determinists insist no, God’d never cede control of his domain like that. (Certainly they never would, were they God.) And since he doesn’t clamp down on the evil (again, not like they would, were they God) it must mean he determined this evil, chaos, and death oughta happen. He wants it to. It’s not the fallout from our bad choices; it’s part of the plan. A plan full of evil, chaos, and death; so much so it’s properly called an evil plan. Which God’ll sort out in the long run, but in the short run, God sovereignly decrees there will be evil, chaos, and death.

You’ve seen this in sitcoms and superhero movies, like The Incredibles: Somebody wants to look like a hero, so he creates a disaster, fully intending to “solve” the problem himself so everybody can laud him as a hero. Well, this is exactly how determinists describe God: He’s gonna solve all the evil in the world, and as a result receive all the glory. But… didn’t he create the problem in the first place?

And y’notice in the sitcoms and superhero movies, the mastermind usually gets exposed as the person who created the crisis in the first place. And universally denounced as a fraud. ’Cause he totally is. Yet for some reason, determinists never get to that part of the plot: They keep insisting no, even though God’s totally behind the evil, he’s not evil. He can’t be; he says he’s not!

Eventually their incredible explanations get a little too incredible for even them to believe. Which is why so many determinists quit Christianity or turn atheist. And y’know, if God really is the way determinists claim, I don’t blame people at all for rejecting him: That’s not a good God!

But I would counter that’s not God. He doesn’t have a secret evil plan. Doesn’t have a dark side. And he’s still sovereign and almighty; just not deterministic.

If God has a dark side, can we have one too?

Here’s a dirty little secret you’re gonna see among many determinists: A lot of ’em legitimately believe the ends justify the means. If something good is gonna come out of it in the long run, it’s okay to sin and commit evil things as part of the plan. After all, in the deterministic worldview, God himself incorporates every last act of evil into his sovereign plan… and turns it into good. So maybe, just maybe, we can do likewise.

Y’might call this a case of “monkey see, monkey do”: If God gets to dabble in evil and not get burnt, maybe we can do it too. At least with small, manageable, non-felonious evils. Only God is mighty enough to mitigate vast evils, like genocide and institutional racism, so we should maybe stick to small evils like white lies and minor frauds. Anything bigger might spin out of control.

And yeah, if you grew up in a church which taught you God has a dark side, this is definitely a case of poisonous fruit taking root. But frequently Christians choose to join deterministic churches. They love the idea God makes all things work together for good, that everything happens for a reason, that nothing in this universe is meaningless. Finally, here’s a church which tells ’em what they want to hear!—what they’ve always suspected or wished was true. And if they’re this willing to choose an interpretation of God which suits ’em best, stands to reason they’re just as willing to embrace a God who dabbles in evil because they kinda think it’s okay to dabble in evil.

Pharisees had a lot of determinists among them, and y’notice they tended to think the very same way. It’s how the head priest’s argument was so able to sway them. (Joseph Caiaphas was Sadducee, not Pharisee, but you don’t become an expert at herding Pharisees without knowing how they tick.)

John 11.47-51 KWL

47 So they gathered the head priests and Pharisees in senate,

and said, “What do we do? This person does many signs.

48 When we let him do them like this, everybody will believe in him—

and the Romans will come and take away us, this place, and the nation.”

49 A certain one of them, Joseph Caiaphas, the head priest that year,

told them, “You don’t know anything.

50 Nor do you realize it’s better for you that one person might die for the people,

instead of the whole nation destroyed.”

51 Caipahas didn’t say this by himself. But as head priest that year,

he prophesied Jesus was about to die for the nation,

52 and not for this nation alone,

but Jesus might gather together all God’s scattered children into one body.

It was okay, Caiaphas figured, to murder one guy than have him trigger a Roman invasion. (Which, y’know, happened anyway.)

Ends-justify-means is a popular mindset among immoral people, ’cause it doesn’t just get them out of tragic moral choices where they don’t think there’s a way out (even though God always grants us one 1Co 10.13): It lets ’em think they’re morally right because they sinned in a way which benefits them or others. They can use the darkness for the greater good. It’s even okay if it quietly, cancerously corrupts them: Other people get to live good, prosperous lives, so it’s okay if they sacrifice their character and soul for others.

Yep, wrong ideas lead to even more wrong ideas. Sometimes much worse ideas.

Christians stay out of the dark.

God is only the source of good in the universe. Not evil.

There are multiple first causes in the universe. Satan, fr’instance, is the first cause of lies. Jn 8.44 Humanity’s the first cause of all the sin in the world. Blaming God for these things, directly or indirectly, may appear to keep all the power in his hands; it gives people comfort to think nothing happens without God’s permission. But God doesn’t permit evil. He forbids it all the time. Not stopping it from happening in the first place, is not the same as permitting it. Inaction isn’t action. (No, not even passive action.)

God’s gonna eventually judge the world for its evil behavior. It’d be pure hypocrisy if he permitted this evil, or suborned it, or manipulated us into committing it for his own purposes. It’d be evil on top of evil. God’d be nothing but darkness.

But as John pointed out, God doesn’t do darkness. At all.

1 John 1.5-7 KWL

5 This is the announcement we heard from the living word and report to you:

God is light. “Darkness in God” is not a thing.

6 When we say we have a relationship with God,

yet would walk in darkness, we lie. We’re not being truthful.

7 When we walk in the light, like God is in the light,

we have a relationship with one another,

and the blood of Jesus, God’s son, cleans us from all sin.

My former grad school roommate is legally blind. He can see, but not well. The brighter the lights, the better he sees. Our dorm room was dimly lit by 40-watt bulbs, so one day I went to the hardware store and got a 200-watt bulb. You think a halogen torch is bright: This sucker was so bright, when you opened our door it lit up the entire dorm hallway, and the bathroom down the hall. Of course the sun did the very same thing every day, but we were still mighty impressed with this bulb.

God’s the same way. Light wipes out darkness. God beats evil. Gnostics, other religions, and even many Christians make spiritual warfare sound like a tremendous cosmic battle. A Götterdämmrung, to use the German term: The gods fight, the bad gods fall, but the old gods also fall, to be replaced by new gods. In reality there’s no such thing. At the End, the Almighty says, “Kids, we’re done,” and evil stops. It’s no contest. God wins. The end.

I get paranoid email all the time from Christians who are scared witless of one stupid thing after another. The government’s up to something, the president’s up to something, the media are up to something, the Europeans or Chinese or Iranians or North Koreans are up to something, the devil’s up to something. There’s so much irrational fear, and it’s completely antithetical to people whose faith is supposed to be in God. That’s because it’s not in God. They may trust him to save them from hell, but nothing else.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t stay up on current events, and try to fight evil in our communities and nation. But Christians really need to stop flinching in panic every single time we hear of sinners being sinners. How else should we expect sinners to behave? And just because they behave like the pagans they are, doesn’t mean evil is winning. Our God is still infinitely more powerful than evil. To him, their darkness is nothing.

If we believed this, we wouldn’t freak out over every dark and scary thing. Or every semi-dark thing. We shouldn’t see the fruitless, scaredy-cat mania I see so frequently among Christians. Being in the light should make it quite clear these worries are unfounded.

Assuming we’re actually in the light. John made a fairly obvious point: If God’s light, and we have a valid relationship with him, we shouldn’t see dark behavior.

Gnostics used a lot of twisted logic to justify and cancel out their sins. Christians do it too. We argue the Old Testament commands no longer count, ’cause we’re under grace. We argue the Sermon on the Mount doesn’t matter, ’cause that’s how life in God’s kingdom works… but that kingdom won’t arrive till Jesus returns. We’ve come up with all sorts of reasons why sins are no longer sins, ’cause grace. Which isn’t logical. Grace means God forgives us. If sins aren’t sins anymore, what’s to forgive?

John cut through our crap and made it clear: If we claim any relationship with God, yet act like every other pagan, we have no such relationship. Doesn’t matter what we claim. God’s influence should’ve transformed us and borne fruit. If it hasn’t, we don’t have him. Behavior implies salvation. No, we’re not saved by works, but when we lack the works, we have no evidence of salvation. Faith without works is dead. Jm 2.26

Those of us in relationship with God can’t be involved with the dark. We literally can’t: We’re surrounded by his light, which wipes it out. Our close proximity to God means any temptation the dark used to hold, isn’t there. Our focus is on God, only God. We see sin through his eyes: It’s small, stupid, unnatural, and foul.

Note how it’s not sin which hinders our relationships with God. It’s us. In order to be tempted by darkness, we gotta walk away from light. The light’s still there; God hasn’t gone anywhere, and he’s not leaving. He’s like the friend who still texts you even when you never text back. Even though you’re plotting to do all the things you promised him you’d never. Even after you did a few of ’em.

We need to stop reducing our relationship with God to this contractual “I call you Lord and you get me saved” deal. God doesn’t want a business arrangement. He wants children. He wants a real relationship, not an acquaintanceship with frequent name-dropping, where our testimonies consist of God-trivia instead of something we actually did together. (And not something we did together decades ago, ’cause there’s been nothing since.) That’s no relationship. It’s hardly a relationship worth appealing to at the Last Judgment. Yet many of us will try… and sadly for some it won’t work.