Rachel Held Evans

Rachel Held Evans is a writer I've recently started to take an interest in. I read about her first book, Evolving in Monkey Town, some time ago, and put it on my "to read" list, but it's a long list and I haven't gotten around to it yet. But I've visited her blog a few times, and I really like what I've been reading. (That's not something I can say about a lot of Evangelicals!)

Her post yesterday, "The Scandal of the Evangelical Heart," was the best one I've read so far (today's follow-up: also good). She talks about the monstrous consequences of divorcing emotions from theology:

So long as an idea seems logical, so long as it fits consistently with the favored theological paradigm, it seems to matter not whether it is morally reprehensible at an intuitive level. I suspect this is why this new breed of rigid Calvinism that follows the “five points” to their most logical conclusion, without regard to the moral implications of them, has flourished in the past twenty years. (I heard a theology professor explain the other day that he had no problem whatsoever with God orchestrating evil acts to accomplish God’s will, for that is what is required for God to be fully sovereign! When asked if this does not make God something of a monster, he responded that it didn’t matter; God is God—end of story.)

The Calvinist belief in the "sovereignty" of God—often understood to mean that God controls absolutely everything that happens, wearing the universe like a puppet—is probably motivated by a desire to glorify God, to ensure that God is not thought to be less than what God is. The irony is that it easily turns God into a monster, a sad fact that is well illustrated by a quote from John Piper that serves as an epigraph to Evans's post. She only quotes part of what Piper said; I'll quote a little bit more:

It's right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.

God is taking life every day. He will take 50,000 lives today. Life is in God's hand. God decides when your last heartbeat will be, and whether it ends through cancer or a bullet wound. God governs.

So God is God! He rules and governs everything. And everything he does is just and right and good. God owes us nothing.

If I were to drop dead right now, or a suicide bomber downstairs were to blow this building up and I were blown into smithereens, God would have done me no wrong. He does no wrong to anybody when he takes their life, whether at 2 weeks or at age 92.

(from "What Made It Okay for God to Kill Women and Children in the OT?")

 

Yes, you read that right: if you were to die in a suicide bombing, it would be because God willed it, and it would be just and right and good.

If that's the case, what could it possibly mean to say that "God is love"? (1 John 4.8, 16)

(I hope the Rachel Held Evanses of the Evangelical world become more influential than the John Pipers.)