Tuesday, August 05, 2014

If God has to adopt us, then who orphaned us?

I usually ignore most of the theological patter on Facebook.  I've got a lot of Christian friends so being exposed to trite formulations and trendy cliches is an occupational hazard.  But the Retired Senior Pastor of my last church comments from time to time and I have to take him seriously:  he's an accomplished theologian and writer and very intelligent and articulate man besides.  So here is what he said:

A perspective on theological terms: God adopts us into his family, and fully welcomes us into it - that's the fruit of justification. The Spirit works in and with us so we fully belong there, and show family resemblance - that's the fruit of our sanctification.

Now I realize that he's just being professorial here and defining terms for people so they understand what is going on when God saves them.  But it provokes a timeless question in me and his formulation made the question jump into particularly stark relief:

But what happens to orphans that God does not adopt?  And who sired all of these orphans?  And how did they get orphaned in the first place? 

Now I suppose the pastorate would say that each of us orphaned ourselves when we disobeyed God.  Yet each of us could only disobey God because God sired us, knowing full well that the moment we were born He would dump us at the orphanage like some randy old millionaire who keeps siring illegitimate children with birth defects because he can't be bothered to wear a condom.  Then in the fullness of time the lusty old coot goes back to the Orphanage and picks out a few of the most promising of His kids to 'save', fully expecting that they will praise Him for saving them from the orphanage He dumped them in.  The rest of his children - His issue - He leaves to slowly starve to death while loudly blaming them for their fate as (literally) "those God damned orphans".

Why would He do that?  I mean if He's Love and Peace and all? Or is He just the ultimate mean old coot?



No comments:

Post a Comment