Recently, an Evangelical woman named Kelly Benson left the following comment on the post titled, An Open Letter to Pastor Tom Hauser, Global River Church (written by my friend Suzanne). I have edited Benson’s comment due to her lack of proper spelling and punctuation use:
I’m a member of Global River church. I’m not going to blast you for putting this up. It’s how you feel and your experiences. I don’t know [the] full detail of what happened, but I can tell you it’s not like that now. I don’t know how it was then, I know, speaking from personal experience, I have been set [free] from [demonic] oppression by Global River Church. This is what [I’ll] say: that my God, your God, my Jesus, and your Jesus, are a God of second and third [or so] chances. They [God? The Church?] don’t give up on you, and maybe this experience [of yours] had to happen to you to make you see [that] he [Suzanne’s husband, Jim] needed a doctor. Maybe, I don’t know. I just know we are no longer [affiliated with] the Vineyard [denomination]. We have come a long way from [where?] we are now. [We] always have been God fearing and God loving, and whatever your experience, I hope you get to see God in his true light and majesty. [If you do,] you will never go back. It [God’s love] is the most amazing love there is. God bless you always, and I hope you’re in his love now.
I will leave it to Suzanne to respond to Benson’s statements about Global River Church. I want to focus on several claims Benson makes about God, Jesus, and second/third chances.
First, Benson assumes that her God and Suzanne’s God are one and the same; that her God is the one true and living God. However, as anyone who has studied Christianity in general and Evangelicalism in particular, I know Christians worship a plethora of deities. Ask a group of Evangelicals to define and describe “God” and you will end up with numerous answers. The Bible says that there is one Lord, one Faith, and one Baptism, but a close examination of Evangelicalism reveals many Lords, many Faiths, and many Baptisms. Benson does what many Christians do. She assumes that her personal beliefs and experiences apply to everyone.
Benson claims that if you see God in his true light and majesty you will never go back. Yet, countless readers of this blog testify that they have seen God in his true light and majesty, yet they came to a place in their lives where they realized that the God whom they thought they saw and experienced was a myth. People can and do walk away from Christianity. Pastors, evangelists, deacons, missionaries, Sunday school teachers, Christian school teachers, Christian college professors, and other people whose lives were wholly committed to following Jesus are now unbelievers today. As studies continue to show, Evangelicalism is bleeding adherents left and right. Instead of spouting cheap cliches, Benson might want to focus on why so many devoted followers of Jesus are exiting the church stage left.
I want to focus in conclusion on Benson’s claim that God is a God of second and third chances. This is a claim often made by Christians, but is it true?
Benson presupposes the existence of her peculiar version of God, and that her God gives people second and third chances when they break his law or disobey him. There’s no possible way for her to know whether this claim of hers is true. By faith, she believes that it is, but it is impossible for her to know for sure.
If we go to the Biblical text, we can find numerous instances where God did not give people second or third chances. Take Judas. Did God give him a second chance? No. Or Uzzah — the man who steadied the Ark of the Covenant with his hand and God struck him dead for touching the Ark? Or Ananias and Sapphira? Both of them told a lie before the church about the sale of property, and God struck them dead on the spot. In Genesis 1-3, we find Adam and Eve breaking the law of God by eating fruit from the tree of knowledge. Did God give them (or the human race) a second chance? No. Did God give Lucifer and his fellow angels who rebelled against him and were cast out of Heaven a second chance? No.
I could go on and on with illustrations from the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God, proving that Benson’s deity is as Richard Dawkins suggests:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
And if someone suggests that they worship Jesus or the God of the New Testament, may I remind them that Jesus is God, and that he is the same yesterday, today, and forever; that the book of Revelation records the violence, carnage, and bloodshed Jesus will one day pour out on billions of people — many of whom never had a first chance, let alone a second chance.
Benson and her fellow church members are likely decent people who grant others second and third chances. However, the God they worship is not.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I don’t know how anyone reads the Bible and comes to the conclusion that their God is a benevolent deity. Countless stories portray him as an absolute terror.
Back in my days as a Christian I was the one who gave dozens of chances to a god who failed to answer prayers as promised in scripture. Like Charlie Brown with the football I believed that next time would be different but it never was. Finally I escaped my indoctrination and came to the conclusion that this god was not real.
Bruce: “If we go to the Biblical text, we can find numerous instances where God did not give people second or third chances. Take Judas. Did God give him a second chance? No. Or Uzzah — the man who steadied the Ark of the Covenant with his hand and God struck him dead for touching the Ark? Or Ananias and Sapphira? Both of them told a lie before the church about the sale of property, and God struck them dead on the spot. In Genesis 1-3, we find Adam and Eve breaking the law of God by eating fruit from the tree of knowledge. Did God give them (or the human race) a second chance? No. Did God give Lucifer and his fellow angels who rebelled against him and were cast out of Heaven a second chance? No.”
Zoe: Just too good not to highlight again Bruce. In the entire story (Biblical text) the only person that gets a second chance etc. seems to be Kelly’s God of the story.
Well, any god that burns unbelievers forever isn’t a good, loving god anyway.
I think of Max Ehrman’s lines: “Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.”. That genius line speaks to a personal spirituality, a personal “God” if that word must be used. Everyone’s spirituality is various and inherently personal, evolving from life experiences. My premise is atheism or agnosticism is not incompatible with spiritualism, however one defines it. This article is about an external God, a less coherent, less individually relevant spirituality defined not by self but by others exposing one to manipulation by those others. I’d suggest the desire for an internal vs. an external “God” demonstrates two main human mindsets. The predominating type craves to be led, told what to think feel and do, and the other temerously self directs. These are the natural herd followers and the mavericks.
The only love or even kindness any of us can experience —and therefore the only possibility of a “second chance”—comes from other humans and, possibly, some animals. (I’ve messed up with my cat but she still cuddles me.) Mind you, not all humans will be loving toward us and give us second chances. But we have a greater chance of a “do over” with a random fellow human than anyone in the Bible had with their God.