By Mark Woods. Oxford, UK: Monarch Books, 2016.
I agreed with some stuff in this book and here are some thoughts I had along the way.
1. God May not Have a Plan for Your Life and That's OK
Calvinism is blasphemous. God doesn't have to write the script from before the beginning of time in order to be sovereign. Rather, He knows every possible scenario that could ever happen and can step into any of them.
I really don't know how Calvinists can't understand the different types of God's will as, if they're parents, these three kinds of God's will are exercised daily, probably several times a day the younger the child.
God's prescribed or preferred will = Don't hit your brother!
God's permitted will = he hits his brother anyway.
God's decreed will = you break them up before the consequences get worse than they are.
As for the soft version of the "God has a wonderful plan for your life" lie, I would sure like to know who first popularized this statement.
As I look back over my life to even before I got saved, I see God's hand. If I hadn't gone to public school through grade 8, I wouldn't have had any idea of what a normal childhood is like. If I hadn't gone to a school for the blind from grades 9-12, however, I wouldn't have met two friends who today are a brother and sister in Christ and I would never have gained confidence as a blind person. If I hadn't then returned to my local high school for a year, I wouldn't have learned a lot of the skills, especially organization and time management, that I needed to make it through adult life. If I hadn't gone to the CNIB's Transitional Training Centre, I wouldn't have learned practical skills I need to make it in life. If I hadn't gone to college for radio broadcasting, I would probably never have gotten the job with Scriptures for America. If I hadn't also worked in network marketing for six years, I wouldn't have gained useful experiences and skills. If I hadn't attended the local Baptist church for 14 years, I wouldn't have met many other dear people whom I fellowship with as brothers and sisters even today.
My biggest regret is that I hadn't become a Christian much earlier so I could have clearly seen God's hand and had a relationship with Him that much longer.
When a baby is learning to walk, you don't hold them in place so they can never fall on their bum. Neither do you deliberately push them down on their bums. Rather, when it comes to suffering, God continues to have His people live in this fallen world even after they're saved so that they will experience the hurts, disappointments and sufferings of this world. This is for various reasons which Woods talks about in the next chapter.
I like the analogy about the various roads with the various forks.
2. God Doesn't Heal Everyone, and He Doesn't Want To
A better title for this chapter would have been "God doesn't always deliver you from your suffering" as the chapter talks more about different circumstances of suffering than just sickness.
Healing and miracles are less rare than Woods would probably like to think. Being a Baptist, I wonder if he actually believes God heals today at all.
The churches are really not good at accomodating people with physical disabilities.
As for people with mental disabilities, this is yet another reason why the institutional church model doesn't work. There are simply too many people with depression, anxiety, and behavioural issues who don't fit into the traditional liturgical meeting model with lunch afterwords. The church must change its model of fellowship.
What does Woods mean by spiritual disabilities?
3. Beginning at the Beginning: Why we Need to Talk About Origins
At this point, Woods reveals himself either to be intellectually dishonest, an idiot, or working for the other side.
In this chapter, Woods approaches the first two chapters of Genesis as though they are a metaphorical account of Creation thought up by Hebrews during the Babylonian exile to champion their faith over that of the pagans whom they were among.
First of all, there is no evidence of this being so. The writing style of the beginning of the first book of the Bible is just as factual and historic as the rest of the historical narrative of God's Word. We have Hebrew poetry in the Old Testament and we have Hebrew storybooks extrabiblically. If the first two chapters of the Bible were a myth, this would be clear by now.
Second, Mark, if the first two chapters aren't literal, why stop there? Maybe the whole of Genesis, all five books of Moses, and most or all of the Bible is some kind of spiritual metaphor as well.
Jesus spoke as if He believed the first two chapters of the first book of Moses to be factual. Was He ignorant, as C. S. Lewis said, thus making Him not fully God and thus not the deity Christians worship?
Also, God is not the author of confusion. Writing an account of Creation, then having "Science" "discover" those supposed facts were all wrong, would, however, indeed make God the author of confusion.
"Anyway: at some point I realized that I didn't believe in young-earth, six-day creationism any more. It just seemed clear to me that the Genesis accounts were a different type of literature and that reading them as history made as much sense as trying to follow the plot of a maths textbook."
"Lean not to thine own understanding."
Evolutionists have to constantly talk about millions and billions of years because that's the only way their so-called theories can seem plausible. "Sure, we've never seen evolution (except for micro-evolution or natural selection which is a totally different thing) actually taking place, but that's because it takes millions and billions of years. That's why, in the thousands of years of human history, there's never been any recorded incident of, for example, a reptile evolving into a bird. It all happened over millions of years before homo sapians got here. Have faith in that, you Christian numbskull."
"I don't want to engage here with the scientific arguments against young-earth creationism." That's because you'd lose.
He then goes into how God gave us minds to investigate the deep things of science.
First of all, all those who started the modern fields of scientific discipline were Christians and they believed in a literal six-day creation. Their belief in God was what motivated them to use their God-given minds in the first place.
Second, if you have a scientific community made up of or dominated by people who come to it with a worldview that there is no God, then what conclusion do you think they're going to come to? "Because all their learning leads them to the same conclusion: that the universe started with a Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago, and that we are the product of countless generations of evolution." Duuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh.
"In fact, scientifically-minded people who want to hold on to a young-earth theory can only do so by increasingly desperate special pleading." Oh my gosh, you are so ignorant. Look into the good evidence, more and more being added every day even by the secular scientific community, for the six thousand year, six day earth.
If the first two chapters of Genesis are merely metaphorical then Christianity is no better than the ancient pagan religions because, if evolution is true, the so-called creation of our world involved more deaths than the Babylonians, Greeks or Romans ever thought of including.
Plus, what more hope or assurance do we have than the pagans? Maybe God is not done yet and we will wake up-or not wake up tomorrow into a world that is totally unreliable and different from the one we went to sleep in tonight.
Why the heck does Mark Woods even bring up the Pope, let alone his Agenda 2030 encyclical.
First of all, the Pope is truly the antichrist of antichrists.
Second, the whole idea of him and his position is antithetical to true Christianity in which Jesus teaches, "The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them but see that you do it not."
Third, this guy hasn't kept up with the news, except for a ten-page daily briefing, since the seventies. How does he know the current state of the world?
It is pretty obvious the West has a massive problem with over-consumption.
First of all, though, if evolution is true, then maybe our destruction of the environment in the pursuit of pleasure, comfort and convenience is just humanity's way of helping along "The elimination of the lower races by means of natural selection." Goodness knows, we wouldn't want to screw with that.
Second, who is going to be in charge of reining in over-consumption? How are they going to go about accomplishing this?
Third, any time in history anyone has tried to do this, it has resulted in much opression, injustice and death, although maybe that helped evolution along, too.
"... that there are roles appropriate for men and for women." Since the writing of this book, Mark Woods has gone on to conceive, give birth to and breastfeed a child.
Don't get me wrong: Christians get really hung up on and lean too much on their own understanding when championing "Traditional gender roles." The real message the church should be saying to the so-called trans-gendered out there is "You were created as a woman or a man, even if you aren't a typical example of what a man or woman is supposed to be in our society, and that's perfectly OK."
Really, of course, there is no such thing as trans-gender. Many of those people have simply had poor or abusive examples of what a man or woman is. Still others are seeking attention because they have a void that only the love of Christ can fill. Others received poor nutrition or were exposed to harmful chemicals in utero. Still others are just a bunch of perverts who like waving their fake junk in kids faces.
"Some people even argue that it's wrong to try to limit the population ..."
Again, a) Who will be in charge of limiting the population and how will they do it? b) Any time in history, including recent history with China's one child policy, attempts to limit the population have resulted in dishonesty, duplicity, oppression, injustice, death, and unforeseen consequences.
On page 54 Woods gets into vegetarianism and how man didn't eat meat before the fall. If the first two chapters of Genesis aren't literal then maybe Jesus' return and making the world perfect again aren't either. If we were never in a perfect state and thus can't be expected to be returned to a perfect state then why shouldn't I eat all the animals I want?
The writer of Hebrews was smarter than you with what he wrote at the beginning of chapter 11.
4. Evangelism is not About Saving People from Hell
I agree with the basic statement of this chapter's title. Evangelism truly isn't about saving people from Hell. On the contrary, that thinking is Christian humanism. However, an eternal Hell which burns with conscious torment for the unbeliever is real and true and Christians must make unbelievers aware that there is an alternative to this nasty but just punishment.
"I confess I wonder about that. The idea that God would deliberately create millions of human beings in the knowledge that they were hellbound-because the vast majority would either never hear the gospel in the first place, or if they did would never respond to it-is counter-intuitive, for a start. And leaving the eternal destiny of others up to human beings, who as we all know are inclined to be more than a little lazy, foolish, impatient, and often just not very bright, hardly seems fair."
First of all, God did not create humanity hell bound. He created them to have a relationship with Him. We chose and choose to sin and reject His love.
Second, the eternal destiny of millions does not depend on their fellow human beings. Romans 1 and 2 clarify this wonderfully.
Firstly, we are all born knowing God. Every person in the world knows Christianity is true, but we suppress that knowledge in unrighteousness because us sinful people want to do what we want to do.
Second, Creation (the literal six-day kind, not the metaphorical supposed Babylonian exile kind) testifies to God's existence. The intelligent, loving God who wants a relationship with us smacks us in the face every day but we don't want to believe its him who created, sustains and furnishes us throughout our earthly existence.
Third, our conscience testifies to God's existence. If we're only ultimately higher-evolved microbes then how and why do we have a conscience and a moral code?
"However, the fact that I don't personally like an idea doesn't matter too much, not if I want to be serious about discipleship." Which is why you have to twist the Scriptures to annihilationism or universalism in order to be still able to claim to follow God's truth.
Annihilationism is wrong because God's standard is perfection. The righteous are rewarded with eternity in Heaven because they've clothed themselves with Christ's perfect righteousness. God doesn't grade on a curve. Thus, anything short of the perfection that can only come through a relationship with Christ is 100 percent imperfect in God's eyes, keeping in mind what James said about he who broke one of God's laws has broken all of them. Thus, the wicked must be equally punished with eternity in Hell.
Love hopes all things and I hope that many people had a deathbed repentance. However, I know most won't. Few be that find the narrow way because they don't want to admit they can't do anything to save themselves, or even that they need saving in the first place. If my father is in Hell, it doesn't bother me because he had his choice. God didn't send him to Hell: he sentenced himself. The three factors from Romans discussed above were at play. He had also heard about Jesus and knew people, including myself, who could have helped draw him nearer, assisting the Holy Spirit as His servant to convict dad. If my dad didn't act upon the light he had then, again, that was his choice.
Getting back to what I guess is the main point of this chapter, evangelism isn't about saving people from Hell. Neither is it about many other things.
Not only is Jesus true, He is the truth. The so-called gods of the other faiths are cruel if only for the fact they ask sinful man to save themselves by following the principles laid out by these gods and just hoping they've done a good enough job. The God who created the world in six days actually came down to Earth and did it all for us.
Though church can be good for us, it isn't always and I think if the institutional church were gotten rid of the body of Christ would be much more effective. After all, one of the excuses unbelievers give for not becoming Christians is experiences growing up in the institutional church or the many faults of the present-day institutional church played out in the news and in everyday life.
People should become Christians because Jesus Christ, our creator, sustainer and provider, loves us so much He originally created us for the purpose of, and still wants to have, a relationship with us. God is love so His relationship is all about true love, a love for which nothing else can substitute. Acts 2 38
5. Forgiveness is Much Harder Than we Think
I kind of grew up with these mistaken ideas about forgiveness. I am so glad that, in the last several years, authors and teachers such as Mark Woods are correcting these misconceptions.
6. Spiritual Growth: how the Church Gets in the Way
Human beings do not become God. This idea is antithetical to the Bible.
The priest and the Levite did not pass by the Samaritan because they feared becoming unclean. They were headed from Jerusalem to Jericho, thus not having to worry about not being able to enter the temple after touching someone who was wounded.
Either way, the institutional church inhibits spiritual growth. In one case, you have the situation many churches face today: the building is used once a week and either sits empty the rest of the week or is rented out to community organizations, most of which don't have much of anything to do with the Word of God. Or, the church is used throughout the week for prayer meetings, Bible studies and services but the members of that church spend so much time doing church stuff they don't have time or space to grow in Christ among the world. Regardless, church buildings take a lot of time and human effort, not to mention money, to maintain and keep up.
7. Prayer is About God, not About Us
If setting aside a daily time of prayer isn't working for you, instead look at prayer as the conversation with God which true prayer is and keep the line open all day long, listening to God as well as talking to Him. This doesn't mean formal times of prayer are unimportant or ungodly or that people can't pray prayers written by others (as long as they understand and mean them): this is just a fuller understanding of this vital part of the Christian life.
8. How Good Teaching is Killing Good Preaching
There was a lot of food for thought in this chapter.
I can understand looking at preaching as a sporting event. I've actually told pastors, "You really smacked one out of the park." When you see a good home run or goal, save or catch in sports, you know that the player knows what goes into playing the game well, or at least doing that one thing well, and has decided to do it. Knowing how to do something is one thing: actually doing it and really putting forth what's needed to do it well is another.
I can also think of preaching like a drama. Before more serialized shows like "Breaking Bad" came along, a lot of scripted television was formulaic. In an age before reruns or home video or video on demand, if you told a guy at work about this awesome show you'd seen and he wanted to check it out, he couldn't be expected to join a show in the middle of a story, or at least not one that was very complex. He would want to see the same thing you told him happened the week before when you saw the show. Now, we can join a television show in the middle of a complex story and use a myriad of options to catch up on things.
That's kind of the way with history, His story, the drama of the universe that is currently playing out and which human beings are a part. Right now, we are in the first few chapters of Revelation, just before the great tribulation. Most of the show has aired, if you will, but there are several episodes coming up worth watching. Good preaching helps us catch up on the previous seasons, so to speak.
It is harder for me to understand good preaching as poetry as, thanks to attending the Ontario public school system, I didn't really study poetry in school. However, I can see that God's word is full of much metaphor and straight poetry.
9. Church and State: Why it Doesn't Always Have to be a Battle
There was food for thought in this chapter as well but I disagreed with a lot of it.
Christians in the West aren't being persecuted? Tell that to the bakers in Origon who refused to bake a cake for a same sex wedding and had their bakery closed, thus necessitating the husband to take a job in a garbage dump. The persecution is only going to get worse.
As Woods says, though Christendom made mistakes a-plenty in the past, the debates (such as on slavery) were at least held within a framework of whether it was right or wrong in the eyes of God. We've eliminated God from our politics and social system and in the process of doing so came unmoored from truth, thus abandoning reality at the same time.
As far as my thoughts on providing goods and services for a same sex "wedding" are concerned:
First of all, the reason this is an issue is because those who practice the sin of homosexuality are now classified as a protected group of people. Given what I said above about becoming unmoored from truth and reality, how long before drunkards, i.e. alcoholics, are designated a protected class and a person working at a bar is jailed for refusing to serve a beer to somebody who was visibly intoxicated. After all, alcohol use disorder is a sickness, it is not a crime to be sick, and, golly gee, that is just who that drunk is as a person, you selfish biggot.
For the most part, the bed and breakfast owner refusing to house a same sex couple no more hates those two men or women as people than the bartender who cuts off the drunk. Both are engaging in destructive practices for pitiable reasons and we don't wish to do these lost image bearers a disservice by condoning or helping propel them further into their sin.
Second, most of the homosexuals who have brought these discrimination cases before the courts are professional you-know-what disturbers. We know this because, for one thing, normal people, including, to be fair, many homosexuals, don't react the way, for example, the couple turned away by Kim Davis did. For another, its not as if there aren't fellow LGBT people who would gladly provide those services. I mean, its not like there are any gay florists, right?
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