Someone on facebook wrote this:
Several people "liked" this bit of blasphemy. Cancer as a blessing? Ah, the stuff pious Christians say!
Some of the greatest blasphemies are disguised as Christian platitudes. Not that I'm saying that God wouldn't put cancer on someone... God can do whatever He wants...but there are certain things I just think go against Scripture.
I remember a woman who went around giving teaching seminars. She's very famous in her circle of Black evangelicals. People pay to hear her speak. And she said something like: "God doesn't give you more than you can handle. If life is treating you badly, it's because you haven't learned what God was trying to tell you. And God will keep messing up your life until you turn to him."
Ah yes, another case of one of God's friends thinking she's tough, thinking she knows God, but really giving a very cruel unpalatable God.
The Lord warns us through the apostle Paul: "Be not many teachers." The Lord warns us not to put a stumbling block before people. The Lord warns us not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. Yet it's become par for the religious course for the church to be filled with people who think they're teachers. Sharing one's faith in God is about God and our heart. It's about why we love Him. It's about our encounter with His holiness. It's not about going about teaching and preaching and thinking you're supposed to challenge people with "hard" sayings. God's worst enemies in evangelism are often those who think they are His friends.
Anyway, rant aside...my response to this guy was:
Jesus never called any sickness a blessing. God never called any sickness a blessing. We live in a fallen world where sickness can come to us because of human agencies, the environment, our eating habits, our own sins, or the works of demons. God is able to bring blessings to us and TURN troubles to good but he does not give us blessings in the guise of sickness. Anyone who has had cancer can be blessed by God but God did not give the cancer. Autistic children who suffer a great deal of pain and isolation aren't blessed. Someone might walk around saying how blessed they are about someone else's pain but that doesn't mean the person experiencing the sickness is blessed or that the blessing was sent by God. As for life being about the spiritual being or the earthly being, I recommend David Pawson's commentary "DeGreecing the Church" in which he shows how the separation of spirit from body is a Greek idea and not something one finds in the scripture. The passages in the Bible that seem to speak as if the body and earthly being is one thing while the spirit and spiritual things are other things....are passages wrongly understood by the Greek-influenced church. One of the effects of the transfiguration on the mount is to show that the holy spirit made Jesus' clothes glow white. Spirit affected earthly things. Paul could heal people by a handkercheif; once again, no difference between spirit and earthly matter. The holy spirit uses our bodies, our hands, our tongues, to heal... The Jewish belief is that he spirit and the body are intertwined; the Greek idea separates them.
Then there was this:
It is written, weeping may endure for a night, but Joy cometh in the MORNING. what does this mean? It means sorroow, anxieties, fears, anguish is created by spiritual blindness which comes from one being EARTHLY MINDED, but when Spiritual enlightening breaks forth in their Life, and they see what LIFE really is(spirit, not earthly) they REJOICE in ALL things cause they SEE them ALL working for GOOD.
To which I replied:
Jesus wept. He wept all night in Gethsemane. He wept when Lazarus died. Jesus was never earthly minded. I understand that we sometimes are too earthly minded to see what God is doing but pain is a part of human life. The thing is to endure during the tribulation and the night of sorrow and to know that good will come at last.
To which he said:
Jesus didnt weep in Garden of Gethsemane He was suffering. One can suffer and have JOY. WOrd tells us to REJOICE in our suffering. SORROW is an antonym of the fruit of the Holy spirit..antonyms of Fruit of Spirit is SIN. Jesus had no sin,NOTHEING earthly abt Jesus thoughts or walk..ALL the Spirit of God. He was showing us US, how we anguish over desiring our will, but than showed us, not our will be done, thy will be done.
As for with lazarus, there is a deeper meaning behind Him weeping. The ppl around him all thought He was a prophet, they didnt know He is God. By Him weeping in front of them BEFORE He RAISED UP LAZARUS from grave, He became a weeping prophet in their eyes. The weeping prophet to the ppl was JEREMIAH. The name Jeremiah means, GOD WILL RAISE UP. By Jesus weeping in front of the ppl, BEFORE He raised up lazarus from grave, He was showing them that He isnt a weeping prophet they think He is, but He is GOD who raises up the dead, which the weeping prophet Jeremiah prophesied abt was coming. Notice, Jesus didnt WEEP in sorrow when He heard His cousin John the baptist was beheaded.
Then I answered:
"Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared" Hebrews 5:7
"Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. 16Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. " Hebrews 4:14-16
Jesus is perfectly God and perfectly Man. To give him suffering without anxieties, fears, and anguish is the kind of gnosticism the church fathers preached against...and the result is we end up with a Savior who only "pretends" to know our despair and anguish.
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were [our] faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Isaiah 53:3
The Holy Spirit “intercedes for us through wordless groans” Romans 8:26. Groans are cries and weeping, I think. The Holy Spirit is in and of Heaven...without sin...so why would the holy spirit groan. I will also add that Paul told us to "weep with those who weep" - Rom 12:15 ...so unless he meant we are to weep in joy at the plight of other folks, I think God made tear ducts to enable our bodies to deal with sorrow. God made us capable of all emotions: joy, sorrow, grief, anger. And we are made in His image. Nothing wrong with feeling grief...and even spiritually minded people can weep in grief.
Then I did this (because I was seriously pissed at the odd Jesus he was creating):
And then I seriously considered unfriending the guy. So-called Christian teachers are the hardest people to correct because they are always so lacking in humility.
My autistic neph was not a curse or punishment, but a BLESSING. My mothers cancer wasnt a curse or punishment, but a BLESSING. Losing woman i loved wasnt a curse or punishment, but a BLESSING. Losing my business wasnt a curse or punishment, but a BLESSING. Why? cause LIFE is abt the Spiritual being not the earthly being, and ALL these BLESSINGS are God's way in molding me in His Image and Likeness!
Several people "liked" this bit of blasphemy. Cancer as a blessing? Ah, the stuff pious Christians say!
Some of the greatest blasphemies are disguised as Christian platitudes. Not that I'm saying that God wouldn't put cancer on someone... God can do whatever He wants...but there are certain things I just think go against Scripture.
I remember a woman who went around giving teaching seminars. She's very famous in her circle of Black evangelicals. People pay to hear her speak. And she said something like: "God doesn't give you more than you can handle. If life is treating you badly, it's because you haven't learned what God was trying to tell you. And God will keep messing up your life until you turn to him."
Ah yes, another case of one of God's friends thinking she's tough, thinking she knows God, but really giving a very cruel unpalatable God.
The Lord warns us through the apostle Paul: "Be not many teachers." The Lord warns us not to put a stumbling block before people. The Lord warns us not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. Yet it's become par for the religious course for the church to be filled with people who think they're teachers. Sharing one's faith in God is about God and our heart. It's about why we love Him. It's about our encounter with His holiness. It's not about going about teaching and preaching and thinking you're supposed to challenge people with "hard" sayings. God's worst enemies in evangelism are often those who think they are His friends.
Anyway, rant aside...my response to this guy was:
Jesus never called any sickness a blessing. God never called any sickness a blessing. We live in a fallen world where sickness can come to us because of human agencies, the environment, our eating habits, our own sins, or the works of demons. God is able to bring blessings to us and TURN troubles to good but he does not give us blessings in the guise of sickness. Anyone who has had cancer can be blessed by God but God did not give the cancer. Autistic children who suffer a great deal of pain and isolation aren't blessed. Someone might walk around saying how blessed they are about someone else's pain but that doesn't mean the person experiencing the sickness is blessed or that the blessing was sent by God. As for life being about the spiritual being or the earthly being, I recommend David Pawson's commentary "DeGreecing the Church" in which he shows how the separation of spirit from body is a Greek idea and not something one finds in the scripture. The passages in the Bible that seem to speak as if the body and earthly being is one thing while the spirit and spiritual things are other things....are passages wrongly understood by the Greek-influenced church. One of the effects of the transfiguration on the mount is to show that the holy spirit made Jesus' clothes glow white. Spirit affected earthly things. Paul could heal people by a handkercheif; once again, no difference between spirit and earthly matter. The holy spirit uses our bodies, our hands, our tongues, to heal... The Jewish belief is that he spirit and the body are intertwined; the Greek idea separates them.
Then there was this:
It is written, weeping may endure for a night, but Joy cometh in the MORNING. what does this mean? It means sorroow, anxieties, fears, anguish is created by spiritual blindness which comes from one being EARTHLY MINDED, but when Spiritual enlightening breaks forth in their Life, and they see what LIFE really is(spirit, not earthly) they REJOICE in ALL things cause they SEE them ALL working for GOOD.
To which I replied:
Jesus wept. He wept all night in Gethsemane. He wept when Lazarus died. Jesus was never earthly minded. I understand that we sometimes are too earthly minded to see what God is doing but pain is a part of human life. The thing is to endure during the tribulation and the night of sorrow and to know that good will come at last.
To which he said:
Jesus didnt weep in Garden of Gethsemane He was suffering. One can suffer and have JOY. WOrd tells us to REJOICE in our suffering. SORROW is an antonym of the fruit of the Holy spirit..antonyms of Fruit of Spirit is SIN. Jesus had no sin,NOTHEING earthly abt Jesus thoughts or walk..ALL the Spirit of God. He was showing us US, how we anguish over desiring our will, but than showed us, not our will be done, thy will be done.
As for with lazarus, there is a deeper meaning behind Him weeping. The ppl around him all thought He was a prophet, they didnt know He is God. By Him weeping in front of them BEFORE He RAISED UP LAZARUS from grave, He became a weeping prophet in their eyes. The weeping prophet to the ppl was JEREMIAH. The name Jeremiah means, GOD WILL RAISE UP. By Jesus weeping in front of the ppl, BEFORE He raised up lazarus from grave, He was showing them that He isnt a weeping prophet they think He is, but He is GOD who raises up the dead, which the weeping prophet Jeremiah prophesied abt was coming. Notice, Jesus didnt WEEP in sorrow when He heard His cousin John the baptist was beheaded.
Then I answered:
"Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared" Hebrews 5:7
"Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. 16Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. " Hebrews 4:14-16
Jesus is perfectly God and perfectly Man. To give him suffering without anxieties, fears, and anguish is the kind of gnosticism the church fathers preached against...and the result is we end up with a Savior who only "pretends" to know our despair and anguish.
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were [our] faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Isaiah 53:3
The Holy Spirit “intercedes for us through wordless groans” Romans 8:26. Groans are cries and weeping, I think. The Holy Spirit is in and of Heaven...without sin...so why would the holy spirit groan. I will also add that Paul told us to "weep with those who weep" - Rom 12:15 ...so unless he meant we are to weep in joy at the plight of other folks, I think God made tear ducts to enable our bodies to deal with sorrow. God made us capable of all emotions: joy, sorrow, grief, anger. And we are made in His image. Nothing wrong with feeling grief...and even spiritually minded people can weep in grief.
Then I did this (because I was seriously pissed at the odd Jesus he was creating):
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And then I seriously considered unfriending the guy. So-called Christian teachers are the hardest people to correct because they are always so lacking in humility.
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