{"id":730,"date":"2013-07-30T11:35:09","date_gmt":"2013-07-30T17:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/?p=730"},"modified":"2013-07-30T11:35:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-30T17:35:09","slug":"distractions-part-five-a-split-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/30\/distractions-part-five-a-split-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Distractions Part Five, A Split God"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cHear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! 5\u201cYou shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5<\/a> NASB95)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We have to talk about God being One because a main tool used to distract from, eliminate or severely prune the Law is to cast it as a different message from another God. It\u2019s as if Jesus and the Father were two separate gods kind of at loggerheads with each other. If a person wants to dodge the Law he can pretend it came from someone who either changed His mind or didn’t mean what He said in the first place. We also have to talk about this because there is a big group of people who advocate for the Law in a believer\u2019s life yet deny the deity of Jesus.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You may already accept that God and Jesus are one, but you may not realize exactly what it means. The church tends to skip over that part. For instance, if God and Jesus are one, then Jesus gave the Law at Sinai. So when He tells us in Matthew 28<\/a> to teach the disciples \u201call I commanded,\u201d it includes the Law that He \u201cfilled up full\u201d or fulfilled.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"guernica\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A cubist painting looks like it has been cut up and put back together out of order. You know, the nose is where the ear is supposed to be, and the eyes are not lined up. Every part is out of place (Like Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica,” pictured above). The picture of God painted by the modern church now looks sort of cubist. God is variously described as a fierce, distant and unfriendly god, or a buddy from out of town who winks at sin. He\u2019s either a god of cloud and flame and lightening, or a pacifist hippie flower child who spouts one-liners about peace and love.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We use artistic license like cubism to interpret the patterns in the Word and make a picture that doesn’t even resemble the original. One pattern is for Jews and another is for the church. This part is for me and that part is for you. There are \u201cold\u201d and \u201cnew\u201d god models. The old god is supposed to be a severe, demanding god of bloody sacrifices and death. The new god is a sweet guy who looks the other way when we sin. The old god beat us up with rules we couldn’t obey and restricts what we eat. The new god came to change all the stuff the old god gave us, and died so we could eat a ham sandwich. We have created, as Dr. Michael Brown says, a \u201cworldly, cultural Christianity\u201d with a \u201cJesus who radically empowers us\u201d rather that a \u201cJesus who radically changes us.\u201d I agree with him that \u201cthat\u2019s why we have \u2018Christian\u2019 lingerie models and \u2018Christian\u2019 rappers who frequent strip clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The picture of God is critical to faith. When we paint Him as capricious, powerful and judgmental, giving us laws we could never obey, we can\u2019t trust Him or do what He says. On the other hand when we paint Him with the color of sentiment (without justice or holiness) our false picture might let us do what we want even if it kills us. But it isn\u2019t love.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From the book Whole Bible Christianity a draft of which is available to read at www.wholebible.com\/Whole_Bible_Christianity.htm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! 5\u201cYou shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5 NASB95)   We have to … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,422,472,5,131,216,108,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authority","category-balance","category-continuitydiscontinuity","category-god","category-holy-spirit","category-jesus","category-law-2","category-whole-bible-christianity-book"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":740,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions\/740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wholebible.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}