Purpose Driven Life

[kayre]

Summary: “To mature your friendship, God will test it with periods of seeming separation....” “The most common mistake Christians make in worship today is seeking an experience [or feeling] rather than seeking God.” To cope with this: tell God exactly how you feel; focus on God’s unchanging nature; trust God to keep promises; remember what God has already done for you.

My thoughts: Refers to Job apparently as literal truth.

As seems to be the pattern now, there’s a lot I agree with here, phrased quite differently than I would put it. One’s faith should not be based simply on emotion; learning to put less emphasis on emotion is a part of maturity. But I have a hard time with the idea of God deliberately withdrawing from intimate contact as a test-- not when so many such dry spells do enormous harm. If we use the parent image, that’s like a parent letting a child “learn from experience” by letting them play in the street, and not intervening when a car comes.

Cites Jesus’ death as the moment when he felt forsaken by God, and goes on... “Why did God allow and endure such ghastly, evil mistreatment? Why? So YOU could be spared from eternity in hell...” Um.. thanks? But why did God make it have to be that way in the first place? Obviously I’m not a fan of the substitutionary atonement theory. If there was no other way to redeem humankind, it must be because God set things up that way.