Friday, February 4, 2011

Job 18

What a jerk that Bildad is! But at the same time, I don't think there is a single condemnation he brings before Job which is not ultimately accurate. Those who love wickedness and hate God will be destroyed and nothing will be left of them... but what Bildad says nothing about (perhaps knows nothing about) is God's mercy.

On Judgment Day it won't be the good guys who were awesome, smart and strong enough to love God who remain. It will be those who received mercy.

What makes mercy, mercy is that the person who receives it does not deserve it. I mean if my sins were all just a big misunderstanding which were not really my fault then salvation would be justice not mercy. To receive mercy means, by definition, to not deserve it.

Now to know you are saved by mercy rather than justice actually can put you in a rather awkward situation. You know you don't deserve God's love, to enter into his presence, you are unfit to untie His sandal. But at the same time you are compelled to enter into God's presence, to know Him personally, to be received by Him.

As far as I understand the basic Islamic position this is where you end up, not worthy to know God but accepted as a servant/slave. And it is logical, it makes sense. It is mercy enough of God to not smite you and it is pretentious to imagine you could have any sort of relationship with such a holy one beyond that of tolerated worker.

The only way a sinful human could even in theory move beyond this status (which is in itself undeserved grace) would be if God Himself demanded otherwise. What makes a Christian able to call God Almighty "Father" is that this is what He names Himself.

And so a Christian is like a beggar sitting at the outer gates of the Temple who is sent for, washed, clothed and brought past the hall of Gentiles, the hall for the women, past the hall for men, past where only priests may enter and into the Holy of Holies where only the High Priest could enter (once a year with the sanctifying blood still fresh) and presented to God Himself as a Son.

It would be unthinkable if it were the will of anyone other than God.

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