![\"Copyright:](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/429\/2015\/01\/Copyright-a-hrefhttpwww.123rf.comprofile_belchonock-123RF-Stock-Photoa.jpg\")
<\/a>She was 85 and nearing the end of her life. I\u2019d never met her before. You might call her a \u201clapsed Christian,\u201d or maybe she was one of the \u201cnones.\u201d She hadn\u2019t been to church in decades. She called for a visit because she had anxiety about death. But what broke my heart was her anxiety about God.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi,\u201d I gently greeted her.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello pastor.\u201d She replied. She began telling me about her Catholic parents, her \u201cfall\u201d from Catholicism, and that she never felt \u201cat home\u201d in a Protestant church. She stated that she hadn\u2019t stepped into a church in thirty years, and her relationship with God had suffered for it. And now, on her death bed, she felt the weight of guilt and anxiety of abandoning God.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not in a state of grace,\u201d she said with spiritual and emotional pain.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when my heart broke. She felt guilty because she believed she had abandoned God and so God had abandoned her. I began to think of all the damage many religious people have caused throughout the centuries by imposing guilt upon people. A religion that piles on the guilt isn\u2019t worth following. A god who inflicts guilt upon us isn\u2019t a god worthy of belief.<\/p>\n
There is a pernicious theological claim that states God responds mimetically<\/em><\/a> to us. That God imitates us. So, when we turn away from God, God turns away from us. When we abandon God, God abandons us.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a lie. Don\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n Sure, the Bible can be interpreted in that way. People often point to the Adam and Eve story as evidence. Adam and Eve turned their back on God by eating the forbidden fruit, so God turned God\u2019s back on them. Many claim that God has been angry at Adam, Eve, and their children (that\u2019s everyone!) ever since. Strangely, these people continue, God had no other way of dealing with his pent up anger than to inflict violence upon His own Son.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve heard that story before. It\u2019s called penal substitutionary atonement. Again, don\u2019t believe. It\u2019s a lie.<\/p>\n The whole premise of penal substitutionary atonement is a lie. God didn\u2019t respond to Adam and Eve by mimicking them. God didn\u2019t turn from them. In fact, God went in search for them. \u201cWhere are you?\u201d God asked Adam and Eve.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the truth of the Adam and Eve story, it\u2019s the truth of the biblical story, and it\u2019s our truth. When we abandon God, God doesn\u2019t abandon us. God doesn\u2019t respond with wrathful anger. Rather, God responds with grace and compassion that seeks to be in relationship with us.<\/p>\n As the great 20th<\/sup> century rabbi Abraham Heschel explained, the primary point is not our search for God, but rather God\u2019s search for us. \u201cAll of human history as described in the Bible,\u201d wrote Heschel, \u201cmay be summarized in one phrase: God is in search of [humans].<\/em>\u201d (God in Search of Man<\/em><\/a>, 136).<\/p>\n For Christians, Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God\u2019s search for humanity. In this particular human being we see that atonement has nothing to do with God\u2019s pent up wrath or violence, but everything to do with the truth of God\u2019s grace and forgiveness. The Gospel of John<\/a> tells us that, \u201cthe Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father\u2019s only son, full of grace and truth\u2026From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.\u201d In each Gospel we discover that God didn\u2019t need the cross in order to forgive. The truth of God\u2019s \u201cgrace upon grace\u201d is that God forgives sinners, tax collectors, and cowardly disciples, in other words, everyone, before Jesus even went to the cross.<\/p>\n God has never atoned for sins through wrathful violence. God doesn\u2019t respond to us mimetically. When we abandon God, God doesn\u2019t abandon us. Jesus is the particular revelation of what the Bible generally reveals: That God makes atonement, that God became at-one with us, not through wrathful violence, but through nonviolent love and forgiveness. It was human wrath that hung Jesus on a cross, not God\u2019s. How does God respond to our wrath? As John wrote, with \u201cgrace upon grace.\u201d Jesus revealed that grace as he hung on the cross and prayed<\/a>, \u201cFather, forgive them, for they know not what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s the truth about God. But the truth about Adam and Eve is also our truth. We often find ourselves abandoning God. And when we do, we don\u2019t need to feel guilty because we know that God will never abandon us. God doesn\u2019t respond to human sin with wrathful anger, but rather God searches for us, responding with the divine truth of grace upon grace and love upon love.<\/p>\n But from experience I can tell you this \u2013 imposing God\u2019s gracious and nonviolent love upon others doesn\u2019t work. It only increases their anxieties and makes them defensive. So, how did I respond to the elderly woman suffering from anxiety? Not by saying, \u201cNo! You are wrong about God! And you are always in a state of grace!\u201d and then lecturing her about God\u2019s nonviolent love. Rather, I tried to channel God\u2019s nonviolent and nonjudgmental love to her. I listened to her story and invited her to talk about her anxieties about death and God. A strange thing happened as she expressed her anxieties \u2013 her body, voice, and emotional state became calm.<\/p>\n That might seem strange, but as we channel the nonjudgmental and nonviolent love of God in the face of fear and anxiety, we give and we receive God\u2019s grace upon grace.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s what God\u2019s nonviolent atonement is all about.<\/p>\n (For more on the Nonviolent Atonement, see Michael Hardin<\/a>\u2019s recent article \u201cPenal Substitution is Dying, Thank God!<\/a>\u201d)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" She was 85 and nearing the end of her life. I\u2019d never met her before. You might call her a \u201clapsed Christian,\u201d or maybe she was one of the \u201cnones.\u201d She hadn\u2019t been to church in decades. She called for a visit because she had anxiety about death. But what broke my heart was her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1651,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[494,375,20,107,129,137,198],"class_list":["post-2116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abraham-joshua-heschel","tag-adam-and-eve","tag-atonement","tag-jesus","tag-mimetic-theory","tag-nonviolence","tag-theology"],"yoast_head":"\n