Do (did) you believe that God takes pleasure in the death of the wicked?
I doubt that God even exists to take pleasure. My point is that the central message, the gospel of CICCU's brand of Christianity portrays God as a sadist, or at least as functionally equivalent to a sadist. There can be no true love under the threat of violence. I think even some leading evangelicals have realised this and become annihilationists. The fact that Ezekiel has God saying "I'm not enjoying this, you know, I'm only doing it for your own good" doesn't alter how we're told God actually behaves, which is all that matters. (I think Ezekiel might be surprised to learn that this passage is read as being about non-Christians going to Hell when he thought he was talking about the punishment of the nation of Israel, too, but I guess there's a bunch of typology there which allows evangelicals to make that translation).
I do wonder about the "productiveness" of these missions, even from a Christian perspective. As you know if you heard the same dire warnings as I did from StAG's leavers' talk, most student evangelicals do not remain Christians for long after leaving university. Interestingly, the UCCF people on their own web-boards claim not to have the statistics which Carrie Sandom quoted to me on this one, but as Angela Rayner writes: "To say that I keep stumbling upon people with similiar experiences [of leaving evangelical Christianity after university] is an understatement."
From my, non-Christian perspective, the talks will give the same glib answers as I've heard before, and there's the worrying possibility that people who hear them will convert to CICCUanity. People are grown-ups and can make their own decisions, of course, but I think the mission talks present a very skewed view of both humanity and Christianity.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: This year's CICCU Main Event - DIRECTION
Date: 2005-02-05 12:42 pm (UTC)I doubt that God even exists to take pleasure. My point is that the central message, the gospel of CICCU's brand of Christianity portrays God as a sadist, or at least as functionally equivalent to a sadist. There can be no true love under the threat of violence. I think even some leading evangelicals have realised this and become annihilationists. The fact that Ezekiel has God saying "I'm not enjoying this, you know, I'm only doing it for your own good" doesn't alter how we're told God actually behaves, which is all that matters. (I think Ezekiel might be surprised to learn that this passage is read as being about non-Christians going to Hell when he thought he was talking about the punishment of the nation of Israel, too, but I guess there's a bunch of typology there which allows evangelicals to make that translation).
I do wonder about the "productiveness" of these missions, even from a Christian perspective. As you know if you heard the same dire warnings as I did from StAG's leavers' talk, most student evangelicals do not remain Christians for long after leaving university. Interestingly, the UCCF people on their own web-boards claim not to have the statistics which Carrie Sandom quoted to me on this one, but as Angela Rayner writes: "To say that I keep stumbling upon people with similiar experiences [of leaving evangelical Christianity after university] is an understatement."
From my, non-Christian perspective, the talks will give the same glib answers as I've heard before, and there's the worrying possibility that people who hear them will convert to CICCUanity. People are grown-ups and can make their own decisions, of course, but I think the mission talks present a very skewed view of both humanity and Christianity.