For the Lord is God of justice (Isaiah 30: 15)

 

“We thought we could manage the nature of love, Gods love cannot be managed’

 (Richard Rohr)

 

Justice; treat fairly, justness, fairness, due allocation of reward of virtue or punishment of vice (oxford dictionary)

 

Justice; anger, wrath, vindication, predetermined verdict, judgment, eternal punishment and torment (evangelical definition)

 

 

 

 

A casual glance in my strong’s concordance and I see that the word justice and judgment are closely linked in many verses they are inseparable, truth be told there is no distinction, evangelicals would have you believe otherwise, judgment without justice is a contradiction in terms.

 

When I think of Judgment in the traditional s sense of the word I don’t think so much of the guilt or innocence of a person, but rather the process of pursuing the truth, this by far is a much more objective, and more importantly the only system that can ever be described as just. To attempt to establish the innocence or guilt of the individual alone would appear to be much more subjective one that is fraught (potentially) with multiple agenda’s

 

‘Once you talk of God and eternity love and mysticism, dualism falls hopelessly short”

 (Richard Rohr)

 

The evangelical church presents Judgment in a far different light, one where the outcome has already been decided, if you take this fundamentalist view to its extreme, the only thing that remains (a little like a court order summons!) is to serve the summons, much like a sheriff would. In this scenario the time lapse between the sheriff ‘serving’ the summons and the time that the offender ‘receives’ it, this could mistakenly be described as a ‘time of grace’ this is folly indeed, this would be akin to a man falling out of a plane at a great height, and feeling that the danger is now over, because moments ago he ‘fell out and nothing happened’ the correlation and impact of any event is in direct proportion to its timing.

 

Imagine walking into a courtroom, you are called to appear before the chief magistrate or judge, and before you can open you mouth the verdict and the sentence are pronounced

 

Most people at best, would describe this as a kangaroo court, even the suggestion is outrageous.

 

The evangelical church has so embraced scientific rationalism that it is now guilty of irrationality and reductionism, one that’s based entirely on blind faith, which is the kissing cousin of deductionism and propositionalism. 

 

 

The so called ‘sinners prayer’ is a dangerous dichotomy it is rampant dualism.

Its theological foundations are a few obscure references in Acts and Romans, taken to an extreme it is a ‘get out of jail free card’ all one needs to do is wave it in front of this unholy, unscrupulous judge, and rather reluctantly you are allowed to roam free

 

If by chance the person standing in front happens to drop this ‘ticket’ and you then by chance become the new proud owner of this free gift, you to can pass ‘go’

 

Its very difficult to marry this concept with the John 3:16 description…God so loved the world’

 

This is not some nameless faceless world that God happens to love, its like you saying you love your family, for you the family consists of your wife and four children, each one known and loved intimately for who he or she is, now put this family in the world and lets imagine for the time being that no one else exists, you to would say exclaim ‘I love the world’

 

“Dualism is the process of affirmation and denial”

 (Richard Rohr)

 

 

Reductionism reduces things to the same level as a sales transaction. An autistic accountant must have first preached this sort of ill-founded intelligence, clipboard in hand boxes to be filled out, the great danger with this theology is that it is so out of touch with common reality and common sense that the only place to go is the way of the clinician, no longer is this theology about people it is more to do with black and white absolutes. At the Nuremberg trials softly spoken academics were put on trial… ‘How could you have sent thousands to the gas chambers’ I was just following orders, so far removed from real life that the whole thing became an academic exercise, in a similar way our theology can be guilty of the same. 

 

 

We speak of Gods love being unconditional within this context is very conditional indeed, brittle and inflexible

 

‘We find a subtext starting in Isaiah with the word ‘all’ the Greek word (apostasies) translated means ‘universal restoration’ if grace is true we have to take it to its logical conclusion’ (Richard Rohr)

 

 

We speak of those who have ‘heard the gospel’ and those who have not, what do we mean exactly when we once again are bound by futile dichotomies, what is our definition of ‘having heard’ many people hear the gospel and have no idea to its real meaning justice and judgment are only fair when motives are taken into consideration.