Really? I don’t think so.

Only a superficial reading of the Bible, or as most Christians do, a non-reading of the Bible, coupled with what a minister or priest or preacher once said, lead to that sort of understanding.

A Christian in doubt need only consult his or her Bible to see how God deals with the wicked, in both the Old and the New Testaments. Even Jesus Christ, while on Earth, didn’t waste His time with the wicked. Look through the Gospels to see how he dealt with the pharisees and the moneychangers in the temple. And see His instructions to the disciples regarding the cities that would not listen to His message.

Why then do pastors keep clinging to the same clichés when it comes to Christian behavior? Perhaps they love the touchy-feely message of the New Testament, which would be a wrong reading of the gospels. Perhaps they’re not comfortable with judging others. Perhaps they themselves are superficial and haven’t taken the time to read through the Bible properly. Who knows… What I do know is God doesn’t waste His time with bad people. Jesus condemned their behavior constantly, berated them, judged them and warned them to change, then left them to their own devices. Remember free will? It still applies, for both good and evil.

What then of turning the other cheek and all the rest of it? Yes, we ought to, when it’s someone we love, or when it’s someone who we see is trying to lead a good life but has stumbled, someone who’s made a mistake but wants our forgiveness. Jesus constantly forgave His disciples’ shortcomings and glaring defects, because they were trying to obey Him, and He wanted to work with them. He went into Matthew’s house (the tax collector) because he wanted to be good in spite of his bad lifestyle. He associated with good people, stayed with them, spent time with them, but only tolerated the bad ones, or eliminated them from His daily walks altogether.

Some might say we don’t have His insight into the human soul, so we can’t tell who’s truly good and who’s truly bad. Perhaps, but I don’t think He’d begrudge us if we eliminated someone from our lives who is constantly gossiping about us, or making things up about us, or lying to others about us, or lying to us. And He’d definitely not mind if we had nothing more to do with someone who’s tried to cause us harm, physical or financial or some other kind. It’d be foolish of us to continue to associate with those kinds of people, both from a worldly and Godly point of view. You can keep turning the other cheek to those people, and they’ll keep on slapping you. They don’t deserve our kindness, nor our time, nor our consideration.

Keep this in mind the next time someone says you ought to turn the other cheek… And if you don’t believe me, search your Bible.

Let’s do a little Bible math. We’re going to put a few knowns together with an unknown to see if we can get a logical result, not the horror story stuff churches have spread around for centuries.

Common dogma: Man + Sin = Death + Hell (Brimstone, Eternal Torment, Fires, Wailing, Etc.)

Common sense dogma: Man + Sin = Death (see below for explanation)

In both cases, there are a few givens that must be noted. The funny thing is they apply to both cases equally.

| The punishment for sin is death, as the Bible plainly states it. What happens after death is the subject of much imagining, yet the Bible also plainly states that the dead are dead, for good.

| Jesus died for our sins, as the Bible also plainly states it.

Now let’s elaborate on the logic behind the conclusion pointed out above. The solution can be found, as with other Bible questions, in the life Jesus led while on earth, and in His death. His life was a model, a perfect example of the close relationship, the oneness that man can achieve with God, and His death was the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

→ If Jesus died for our sins, then the complete punishment for sin must be death.

If the punishment for sin is death, and if Jesus died for our sins, then permanent death, not hell, is what we, too, can expect if we die as sinners. If we are Christians, we must accept that conclusion as true, or we put at risk Jesus’ sacrifice for us. It means we don’t really believe in Him, as He asked us to do. You see, if we believe extra punishment, like hell fire and brimstone, is needed beyond the sinner’s death, then Jesus didn’t really atone for our sins.

That’s because, as we all know, He died on the cross, was buried the same day, and was raised back to eternal life on the third day. Nowhere in the Bible will you find a mention of Jesus burning in hell for our sins while in the grave. Therefore, if Jesus’s death was enough sacrifice for our sins, and keep in mind He was carrying the full load of sins for all humanity, then the complete punishment for sinners must be death.

Let me state this again so it registers with you. It’s a crucial part of our Christian faith that Jesus died for our sins and paid in full for them. If he did, then the punishment for sin must be death and death alone, not eternal torment, or brimstone, or the devil with a pitchfork turning you over in the fire.

If the latter were the punishment, then Jesus didn’t really die and atone for our sins, since He didn’t partake of the real punishment. And that can’t be, since it’s one of the cornerstones of our Christian beliefs. Do you see how the wrong dogma falls apart when you think about this?

If you’d like to have it explained in more detail, watch this video called “The Lake of Fire“.

“Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade him from his ways, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the wicked man to turn from his ways and he does not do so, he will die for his sin, but you will have saved yourself.”

As a believer in God and in God’s Law, I feel the need to share what I have learned from the Bible with others, in the hope that if they’re doing something that may be wrong, they might learn it’s wrong and turn from it. I’m not saying what I write is necessarily right — who knows, I could be wrong too — but at least I’m trying to shed light on the truth. I’ve always said that it’s each person’s responsibility to seek out the truth for themselves. It’s not about forcing people to believe in certain things or behave in certain ways. It’s about letting them make free, yet informed choices about their beliefs. If I can only get someone thinking and searching for the truth and for the right path in their life, then I’ve done my job.

Here’s how God feels about it:

“Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?’

“Therefore, son of man, say to your countrymen, ‘The righteousness of the righteous man will not save him when he disobeys, and the wickedness of the wicked man will not cause him to fall when he turns from it. The righteous man, if he sins, will not be allowed to live because of his former righteousness.’ If I tell the righteous man that he will surely live, but then he trusts in his righteousness and does evil, none of the righteous things he has done will be remembered; he will die for the evil he has done. And if I say to the wicked man, ‘You will surely die,’ but he then turns away from his sin and does what is just and right — if he gives back what he took in pledge for a loan, returns what he has stolen, follows the decrees that give life, and does no evil, he will surely live; he will not die.”

“None of the sins he has committed will be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he will surely live.”

Those were verses 11-16 in the same chapter (33) in Ezekiel. Now isn’t that something to rejoice about?

God replies in verses 8 through 13. Verse 8 says:

“I am listening. What is God’s message? Yahweh’s message is peace for His people, for His faithful, if only they renounce their folly.”

It sort of leaves you wondering what these people’s “folly” is, doesn’t? Remember what Solomon wrote once? “Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,” he said. I imagine this “folly” of theirs must be the opposite of wisdom. They must give it up and move toward the opposite side of the spectrum, toward wisdom. To do that, they must begin to fear God. Verse 9 confirms this. The pieces are starting to fall into place, aren’t they?

“His saving help is near for those who fear Him, His glory will dwell in our land.”

God is waiting for these people to start fearing Him, and He will right then offer His help, which is described quite beautifully in verses 10 through 13. You might think this “fear” that keeps getting mentioned here is some sort of unnatural fright that God inspires in believers. Not at all. This psalm is a great example of true repentance, because it shows its two important stages, which show whether it (the repentance) is genuine or not.

Stage 1 is asking for forgiveness and for help. That’s done in verses 4 through 7. Forgiveness is implied here, and that’s the way it is. God is ready to forgive us as soon as we ask for it. His love is boundless. But our repentance isn’t complete unless Stage 2 occurs, and that’s where “fear” comes into play. What the Bible means by “fear” is that we should be concerned about God when we are next faced with a choice to sin. We should be afraid of causing Him pain and suffering. Because He suffers every time we sin, and He suffers even more after He’s forgiven us and we commit the same sin, again and again.

That’s what “fear” means. It means having enough respect for God to think about Him when we are faced with choosing to sin and fulfilling our trite, flesh-driven desires. Do we have enough respect for Him? Do we fear Him enough? Do we realize that we’re hurting our all-powerful Creator, who gave us life and who could take it away in an instant? Do we realize we’re hurting the One being that is always ready to help and bless us, no matter what, if only we’d turn to Him?

That’s the question this psalm poses. It’s a powerful question, and one that we all need to ask ourselves.

The psalm expresses the writer’s desire to be close to God. The terms used are God’s courts, His altars, His House, Zion, His threshold. Earthly counterparts are contrasted with these Godly places in verse 10: “Better one day in your courts than a thousand at my own devices, to stand on the threshold of God’s house than to live in the tents of the wicked.” Notice how the author doesn’t make apples to apples comparisons here. He refers to God’s threshold, which is the entrance to the house but not inside the house, while he talks about living “in the tents of the wicked”. This is to make the contrast even more evident, which is the same reason for the “one day” to “thousand” days comparison as well.

I chuckled at verse 11 when I read it: “Yahweh refuses nothing good to those whose life is blameless.” After all, whose life is blameless but Christ’s? But one has to look at this in the historical context. The Feast of Shelters occurs five days after Yom Kippur, which is the most important Jewish holiday of the year. It is the Day of Atonement, when one obtains forgiveness for all of the sins from the past year. Therefore, it stands to reason that a person going to the Feast of Shelters would rejoice at having obtained reconciliation, and thus, a blameless life, in the eyes of God, after Yom Kippur. They could refer to their lives as “blameless”, more or less, if they hadn’t done anything bad in the few days between the two holidays.

By the same token, our lives can be blameless as well. You see, a Jew could obtain forgiveness from sins by making a sacrifice and confessing their sins over the head of that animal or bird. Their record after that reconciliation with God would be blameless. We too, can confess our sins and claim the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, thus reconciliating ourselves with God and obtaining forgiveness for our sins. Christ’s sacrifice rendered individual animal sacrifices unnecessary, since He was the sacrificial Lamb that the Old Testament prophesied.

While we do not have a Feast of Shelters, we can sing this psalm, if we so desire, on our way to church, knowing that we have obtained forgiveness through Jesus Christ and our prayers, encouraged by the hope of the new life that awaits us after this one, a life of eternity spent with God, in His courts.

In view of this admission, brief and full of empty promise as it is, the question posed in verse 12 becomes rhetorical: “Why have you broken down its fences?” There’s no fooling anyone here. The author of the psalm knows why, we know why, and more importantly, God knows why — He had a very good and just reason.

The psalm is otherwise full of metaphors, which by themselves are quite beautiful. In the larger context, I fail to see what value they bring to a prayer which was meant to have less flourish and more honest repentance. Nevertheless, I like the reference to God as a shepherd in verse 1, the presentation of Israel as a vine in verse 8 (this image is carried through to the end of the prayer), and the wonderful entreaty (repeated in verses 3 and 19), “let Your face shine on us and we shall be safe.”

Taking another step back from the text, I have to wonder how many of our own prayers are like this. We’re always asking God for more things, complaining about how things are going, wanting it to be better, but not wondering why they’re going that way, and what part we played in causing things to work out that way.

Israel had it easy — or at least it looks that way in retrospect. What I mean by that is that they knew they had to stay close to God in order to survive and thrive as a nation surrounded by hostile, pagan people. Nowadays it’s a lot harder to see God’s presence among us. We can easily slip into superficiality in our beliefs, and go to church or the synagogue while not really clinging to God as if our lives depended on it. We begin to think we can make out just fine on our own, that we don’t really need God. Before we know it, we wonder what’s the point of religion, and then things really start going downhill…

Because it’s so much harder to see God at work in today’s world, it’s very important that we keep an account of our prayer requests, and see when and if they’re fulfilled. I’m talking about even those simple little requests — like those times when we ask Him to keep us safe as we’re driving home, or to make our tires last a few months longer, till we can afford new ones. If we do this, we’ll be surprised, even shocked, as we tally up the count and discover Him right there, beside us, the whole time, working things out for our protection and benefit, quietly, peacefully, lovingly.

In those moments of awe, the perfect thing to do is to fall on our knees in a quiet spot, and thank Him. I tell you, if we truly knew how many times God helps us, every single day, by keeping us from danger, or working things out to our benefit, or creating opportunities for us to use our talents, we would never doubt His existence and love for us.

Oh, I have nothing against prayers for forgiveness — but this psalm isn’t one of them. In all 13 verses and hundreds of words, there are only four words that resemble such a prayer. You’ll find them in verse 9: “wipe away our sins”. I don’t consider that a prayer. When you look at the tone, it’s more of a request. As a matter of fact, I find the tone of this entire psalm brash and unrepentant.

Instead of falling on his knees and begging God for grace and redemption, the author of the psalm blames Him for allowing pagans to invade Israel and Jerusalem. He complains that people have been killed, and that the nation of Israel has become the laughing stock of its neighbors. There is no remorse in this psalm — there is only reproach toward God. The author requests that Israel receive its deliverance for the sake of God’s name; he invokes this as a right, since they considered themselves God’s people. Truly, they had been chosen, but it was never a birthright. It needed to be deserved, and the privilege of God’s favor remained with them only when merited. Otherwise, this psalm wouldn’t have been written.

How quickly people forget that God owes us nothing! We owe Him everything, but most of us of us do nothing for Him.

Even more repulsive is the request for vengeance on not only the nations that invaded them, but on their neighbors, for daring to laugh at their misery. Add to that the hollow-sounding declarations of verses 8 and 13, where the author asks God not to count against them “the guilt of former generations”, then promises to thank Him “for ever”, and to recite His praises “from age to age”, and you’ve got one pitiful psalm.

What about the guilt of that generation, the one that sparked God’s anger in the first place? There’s no mention of that in the psalm! I need do nothing to refute the claim made in verse 13. History itself proves it false.

I wonder, how hard is it for people to learn (Jew and Christian alike) not to make false promises to God? Do they think they’re fooling Him? Or are they fooling themselves?

I’m pretty sure this prayer fell on deaf ears, but then that should come as no surprise to the attentive reader.

It’s obvious the nation of Israel was going through hard times when this psalm was written, and this psalm is a plea for action from God. The author is afraid that the Lord abandoned them forever, and His anger with them will not cease. It’s interesting that the psalm is open-ended. There is no final plea, simply a remembrance of the times of old: “You guided your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.” It befits the psalm. It gives the impression that the author expects God to make the next step, whatever that will be.

The questions asked in this psalm apply to all of us. After we do something bad, after we sin, we feel terrible, too. We begin to wonder, was this it? Has God now abandoned us? Will He never again “show favour” to us? But the answers depend purely on us, you see. That’s because God is constant. He always loves us. His anger with us ceases. He wants to show us favor. But we must do our part. Even if we have fallen, we must continue to come to Him. We must ask confess our sins in prayer and ask forgiveness.

Then the healing process begins. As we continue to walk with Him, we feel His presence in our lives once more. We begin to discern the blessings He pours out on us. We feel His love encircling us, protecting us from danger, taking us through our days and strengthening us. We begin to know He exists again, and His wonderful Holy Spirit makes its dwelling place in our souls once more. But we must stay close to Him. The moment we stray, we fall again, and depending on the gravity of our sin, we must start from scratch again. It’s a painful process for us, and it’s even more painful for God, because He loves us and every one of our sins hurts Him, no matter how little they are. The most important thing though, is to continue in our walk with Him. If we seek Him earnestly, we will find Him. He will be there for us, always.