The
Ultimate Cop-Out
As many of you know by now, I am a devout follower of God and will not hesitate to state my views on any number of subjects. Hopefully, I’ve reached some of you while the rest of you think I’m crazy. One thing I’ve noticed is that we are quick to provide excuses about what we believe. The foremost excuse that I’ve heard would be the one that goes: “There are so many contradictions in the Bible, how can I believe that”. This is the ultimate cop-out. What makes this a cop-out, is the mere fact that man can neither save nor condemn another man, only God can do that. The tragedy in all of this is that the person stating “the ultimate cop-out” is reciting what someone else told them (in most cases). Or they do not fully understand the part of the Bible in which they read, and thus come to this conclusion. We do not pursue or ask the question: “why is this contradiction here?” What we do actually is look for contradictions in order not to follow the laws in which God has bestowed upon us. Jesus said “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6), which simply means that those who earnestly want to find God will be blessed. The reason why I am writing this paper is to bring these contradictions to light and explain why they are there. Also—I will talk about God’s love and try to help you understand the question “Why does God let bad things happen if he loves us” and “Why do many Christian groups condemn homosexuality” which is a very controversial topic today. Hopefully, you will have an understanding of why the Bible is the way it is and why God is the way he is.
The first thing we must
understand in order to gain anything from this at all, would be acknowledging
God as God NOT human. Many times people complain to me saying, “Why does God
let things happen to innocent people.” I tell them that God does everything for
a reason, and we as mere humans cannot put him in a box. We cannot confine God
to our standards he is on another level. God has his own plan; some of it we
know, and some of it we do not know. But who are we to question our creator: “Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest
against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed
it, why hast thou made me thus. Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the
same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor” (Romans
“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). The main focus of that verse is that God loves you, no matter what happens He will always love you (He did die on the cross for your sins by the way). What many of do however, is stretch God’s love into “Do whatever you want and, and still go to heaven” God loves all of us and wants us all to go to heaven. What God hates (literally) is sin, and as you know sin and humans go hand in hand. God loves us, but God hates the sinful things we do. This is the main distinction we need to make. The act of sinning is what gets many people offended about the Bible, somehow, someone told us to mix a person’s lifestyle and sinning into one thing as opposed to separating the two from one another.
A perfect example of this would
be homosexuality. God loves everyone; he loves people that go to church just as
much as he loves prostitutes, drug-dealers, and homosexuals. The act of
the sin is what God hates so much. The act of fornication, the act
of homosexuality, the act of stealing, the act of lying is the
things that get people in trouble. All sin is the same sin to God, if you tell
a little lie or if you killed someone it is all the same to Him. Somewhere
along the line, people misconstrued a lifestyle with an act of sin, once again
homosexuality. People think that they are living a lifestyle or, that is the
way they came to the world but this is untrue. Something happened to that
person in their mind, and they are merely confused into thinking it’s a
lifestyle. When God sees us sinning, to him it is like watching a beautiful
white lily with dirt on it, letting the dirt settle into the root of the
beautiful lily. Don’t get me wrong, a homosexual is in danger of hell fire,
just as a liar is, or a murderer, or a prideful person. God hates sin.
Leviticus