Return Of The Love Buts (A New Hope)

Return Of The Love Buts (A New Hope) February 26, 2020

Some of you may have been following the saga of the “Love Buts” that started last week here on the blog, and then followed up with a rebuttal. Today I have great news to share.

The Story So Far….

After publishing a post here – Attack of the Love Buts – about how many Christians often want to balance my comments like “God IS Love” and “Those who live in love live in God and God in them” with corrections that begin with, “God is Love, BUT…” [hence the title], I received a very long email from someone who wanted to further correct my false teaching and heretical progressive Christianity with even more “Love, BUT” examples for me to consider.

The email not only assured me that I was deliberately misleading people with my “God IS Love” heresy, but also questioned my integrity by suggesting I would never share his rebuke on my blog so people could decide for themselves. So I did.   [See The Love Buts Strike Back]

Of course, he responded once more. This time he doubled-down on the “false teacher” nonsense and got deeper into the God of Wrath who must burn sinners in hell forever. [You know the drill].

So, honestly, I just didn’t have it in me to continue the conversation any further. Rather than take his objections point-by-point, I decided to send him a YouTube video clip and ask him to let me know what he thought about it.

My hope was that the video would help him take a step back and reconsider his position without having to engage in an endless back-and-forth email debate that frankly could steal hours or days of my time.

Here’s the reply I sent him:

Have you seen this? Curious what you’d think about it:

 The next morning I received this reply from my friend:
Dear Keith,
Thank you for sharing this link, I will respond in due course after contemplating it for a while. 
The Lord has begun to reveal something quite startling to me about love and hate. 
I will spend time in prayer and submission, waiting for further clarity but suffice to say, my brother, you will be one of the first with whom I will discuss these things for as iron sharpens iron we all learn often through a level of friction. 
May the Lord guide you and bless you as you seek to be filled and moved by the love of God. 
Yours faithfully
So….wow. That was a complete change of heart and tone. Who knows? Maybe there really IS a new hope for my “Love But” friend?
One can only hope.

What made the difference? Perhaps my friend Brad Jersak is just better at explaining the love of God than I am. That’s probably it. Or, maybe it took another perspective, a story, a video, or just something other than my blog and this email thread to shake him out of it.

Who knows? I’m just really blessed that at least something seems to have switched on the light bulb in my friend’s head concerning the love of God.
As long as people wake up to the Jesus-like God of the New Testament and start to believe that God really IS love, that’s fine with me….no matter how they “get it” I just want them to get it.
Otherwise, we continue to wrestle within ourselves with a schizophrenic God who is love, but who is also wrath; who wants no one to perish, but chooses some to burn forever; who says His love endures forever and His wrath is for a moment, but who turns into a God whose love endures a moment while His wrath burns forever.
If we could really just allow ourselves to believe – down to our bones – in a God who loves us, really, really LOVES us, because this is who God is, then maybe we can start to get on with this ministry of reconciliation we’ve been given; and let everyone know that God was in Christ NOT counting our sins against us, but reconciling the WORLD to Himself.
I’m ready whenever you are.
**

Keith Giles was formerly a licensed and ordained minister who walked away from organized church 11 years ago, to start a home fellowship that gave away 100% of the offering to the poor in the community. Today, He and his wife have returned to El Paso, TX after 25 years, as part of their next adventure. They hope to start a new house church very soon.

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