Stan Returns To His Love [Act] of Destruction

Today Stan reverts to form. Yesterday Stan took a tremendous step toward love by the eternity act of god. But today he returns to his anxious defense of 16th century brutalism.

His text of Romans 1 seduces him with its narrative of God’s judgment. But he fails to absorb the past tense of it all. “God gave them up.” Verse 24, 26, 28. The scene is from Genesis 6-9. 

“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually….Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.”

Paul is prefiguring Jesus the Messiah as Noah. Later comes Abraham and still later comes Rebecca and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, and then Moses appears, and then Hosea, Isaiah, and finally, Israel as a whole.

But back to the flood of destruction, what does god say after? “Never again will I destroy all life by flood. And I will put a rainbow in the sky to remind me. I will see it and remember that I will never do this again.”

Huh. God changed his mind.

Given human nature we’re likely to feel schadenfruede over those drowned. The wicked creatures. Feels good to see the sinners lost.

Stan and the rest of the Thugs thrill to this kind of brutality.

Let’s read on: Roman’s 2. 

“Therefore you have no excuse, O man, whoever you are, when you judge another; for in passing judgment upon him you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who do such things. Do you suppose, O man, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not know that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. For he will render to every man according to his works…”

Wow! So why does Stan love punishment for others so much? Who does he see being punished with God’s wrath? Catholics? Jews? Muslims? Gays? Lesbians? Black folk? Women? Democrats?

Reading him over the years it seems all these kinds of Americans. Pretty much just because of their professed identity. And one sin by one woman against her son serves for Stan as reason to downplay what we know: millions of women are abused by men that they know. Like 99% of victims of sexual or emotional abuse are women. And 99% of perpetrators are men.

But for the sake of one woman, Stan absolves all men and makes an equivalency in a massive and Willful erasure of the quality and quantity of crimes. 

But what does Paul say in Romans? Is judgment or salvation based on identity? Can those once judged as unclean in identity ever become clean without changing their identity? What happened to Noah’s heirs? What happened to Abraham’s heirs? What about those outside Israel? The rest of the known works? The Gentiles? They were unclean under Jewish law. Their houses could not be entered. Their children could not be considered for marriage. Under Mosaic law they could not be saved unless they obeyed Mosaic law and worshipped as a Jew. 

Paul? Romans 1: “I want you to know, brethren, that I have often intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as the rest of the Gentiles. I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish…”

Wow. Peter’s unclean gentiles in Cornelius’ house are now sought after by Paul. 

Huh. God changed his mind.

Paul is absolutely clear that god’s wrath has nothing to do with identity. He is writing in the growing violence of hate of Roman bureaucracy toward this minority sect of christians. He will get to Rome. In chains. And meet his death there.

It is oppression that Paul is clear will be judged. How people and how a society treats others. Paul again, Chapter 2, “There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.”

I doubt that Stan agrees. His own judgment is too dear to his enjoyment of brutality.

He warned us that there is no quantity but only quality to the “so” in “God so loved the world he sent his only begotten son.” And I wholeheartedly agree. God loves eternally, for which there is measure. No quantity.

But Stan misses the quantity measure in the verse of the truth of God’s eternal love: “the whole world.” The entire created world is the object of god’s love.  And god loves it all so. Eternally.

"He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and THROUGH HIM TO RECONCILE TO HIMSELF ALL THINGS, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross."

All things are in the path of God’s eternal act of love. Who know how it will play out? Don’t judge.

___

As a coda, I return to Jesses’s faith in 16th century protestantism and how the 400 year history of White radical Protestantism has turned sola fide into an excuse to ignore the poor, ignore the imprisoned, ignore the rights of women, the rights of people of color, the humanity of immigrants.

At first. in Roman’s 1, Paul lays down the primacy of faith as against Jewish religious law. 

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’” Paul will go to say that Abraham, too, lived by faith in those impossible sounding promises that god made to him. But he remained steadfast, “no distrust made him waver concerning the promise of god.” “That is why,” Paul writes, “his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Because he did not waver.

Except, that he did. Abraham’s faith wavered when he and Sarah agreed he should have a child by Hagar.

But to Paul, in Roman’s, imperfect faith and imperfect practice does not cancel righteousness. Having a son with Hagar, even though the promise of god was that Sarah would bear the son, was Abraham’s best attempt to make sense of the promise of god. Mistaken as his faith and practice was, he continued in relationship with god and responding to God’s call.

Obviously we are not dealing with just words on Abraham’s lips or just the beliefs in his head. We are dealing with a whole life. Every word, every thought, every behavior, EVERY CONSCIOUSLY HELD FEELING, is, as Stan made the point yesterday as extended to logical relevance by me, an act. An act of love, an act of annoyance, an act of friendship, compassion, hate, envy, jealousy, help, etc

Sola fide? Nope.

Paul, now in Roman’s 2, just mere paragraphs after writing, “The one who is righteous will live by faith,” writes: ”For he will render to every man according to his works [no sola fide]: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.”

Sola fide is a 16th century twisting of Pauline theology with Jewish religious law as its object into a diatribe against 16th century Catholic casuistry and a replacement of Jewish law with radical protestant dogma.