god hates you?
The Out of Ur blog posted the video where a notorious pastor to the north proclaims to his listeners that “God hates you.” There was a comment on the blog that I found so well stated that 1) I hope to be that cool of a commenter on blogs one day & 2) I loved enough that I’m reposting it here.
There is a modern theological narrative that suggests that what Jesus purchased for us on the Cross was God’s forgiveness and grace, but what the Scripture really teaches is that *demonstrated* God’s forgiveness and grace by purchasing our redemption from *Sin and Death,* in which bondage we were held as slaves. The relatively recent narrative of our salvation in Christ introduced through the Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory of the Reformers has the unfortunate side-effect of turning God into the sinner’s Adversary and Accuser and Condemning Judge, instead of our heavenly Father (Whose nature and character Jesus expounded in the Parable of the Prodigal Son). It makes God our Enemy, rather than our great Rescuer, Redeemer, and Savior (and as we Orthodox repeat often in our prayers, the “Good God Who loves mankind”). I would not dispute that we are often enemies of God, but I will never allow that He is our Enemy even where He out of His love must oppose our self-destructiveness and sin (for our own good and the good of those whose lives we impact). Otherwise He would have no authority to command us to love even our enemies because “God is kind to ungrateful and evil men.” The Scripture explicitly says that (very unlike human haters), God takes *no pleasure* in the death of the wicked, but rather wills that he turn from his sin and live.
