blasphemy or cosmic child abuse

I ran across this video of some Christian slamming some other Christian. Two authors. Turns out the slammer is John Piper and the slammee is Steve Chalke. Chalke wrote a book where he refers to the way the cross is currently taught by conservative Christianity as "cosmic child abuse". Piper pulled out the blasphemy word.

This has intrigued me.

Doing a little research on this I discovered that this was a big controversy in some circles. Circles out of which I am. (what a correct use of English grammar, don't you think?)

The controversy, as best I understand it, is this:

Modern Evangelicals say that God is a just God, and therefore sin always has to be paid for. Sin has to be judged and punished or else God would be found to be unjust and indeed unholy. And even though this generally means that each individual sinner has to pay the consequences of his or her own sins, God (in his mercy) made a way for someone to pay for someone else's sins, if possible. The word they apply to this idea is "atonement". It traces back to the ancient practice of a certain category of sacrifice where a substitution is made, where God counts the death of a "holy" or "accursed" or "dedicated" animal (one set apart by a sinner or a group of sinners for this express purpose) in place of the sinner(s). God then pours out his wrath on this holy animal instead of on the sinner, so that his anger and judgment and wrath against the sinner is quenched, and then the sinner is able to be reconciled with God.

I'm pretty sure I fairly stated this because I was wholly indoctrinated with it. And I would add that it has a certain reasonableness and even beauty to it. If you accept the premise.

But here's where Chalke is rocking the boat. According to Chalke the cross was not Jesus satisfying his Father's demands for justice on our behalf. Rather, Jesus was demonstrating the fallacy of violence and fighting for your rights. Jesus taught that it was worth it, if what was to be gained was precious enough, to turn the other cheek, to not respond to hatred and injustice and violence with more hatred and injustice and violence. It's seen by God as good even to die rather than anwser. The resurrection of Jesus, then, becomes the proof that love is superior. In making his case, Chalke says that to begin with "God is justice" is starting off on the wrong foot. Equivocating God with "justice" is not supported, according to the Scriptures. However, equivocating God with "love" is. "God is love" says John (in 1 John 4). Twice. So viewing the cross, this apex of Christianity, the crux of the Christian faith, from a position of "God is just" rather than "God is love" leads to error.

This is an idea that is gaining a lot of steam among post-modern Christian groups and among Christ followers. It's not going much of anywhere in Christianity, though. The idea is that Christ's willingness to lay down his life is precious, not because his just father demanded it, but because he himself wanted to validate by his own actions that what he taught was good and true and beautiful.

I'm not taking sides here. I'm just standing back and watching the picture change as the colors swirl. With a certain pleasure, I might add, that comes from not being already overcommitted.

I have to say this, though. I'm reading through some of the arguments for "God's holy requirements" and I find them lacking. One source that is rebutting Chalke has listed these:

But God is described in the Bible as light (1 John 1:5) and Spirit (John 4:24). Moreover both Testaments affirm that God is a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24; Heb. 12:29), and dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim.6:16). The sight of God's holiness filled Isaiah with dread and made him conscious of his guilt (Isa. 6:1-5). Christians are called to holiness not impurity (1 Thess. 4:7). This confusion of God's attributes of holiness and love is not just a basic error; it appears to be an intentional misrepresentation to serve his own agenda.

If that's the best you can do, and I'm not sure it is, then I say you're on pretty thin ice. Here's why:

First, God being light and wind does not lean him toward the vengeful aspect of justice in any way I'm aware of. Lights shines wonderfully illuminating things, changing our perception of them and opening our minds. Wind moves things around, whether they were happy where they were or not.

God being a consuming fire has nothing to do with vengeance for people who have sinned against him at all. Look it up. His consuming fire is his jealous love for his beloved. What wouldn't I do for someone I was infatuated with if they were being abused and mistreated? How much more a God who is pure love? (If you look up Deut. 4:24 and Heb. 12:29, also check out Proverbs 6:30-35 and 2 Corinthians 11:1-2. Or just click here to read about God's hot love.)

Unapproachable? I'm not sure how being unapproachable makes God scary or vindictive. I read that chapter, too, and I think it's talking about how not to get infatuated with rich or powerful people, or people you think are necessary to impress, but rather to keep looking to God, who alone is worth worshipping. Even Jesus said "only one is good". And is this really the way they want to go? God is not approachable? If so, they need to get their scratch-out pens out and do some Bible editing (I'm thinking about parts like Ephesians 3:10-12 and Hebrews 4:16)

As for Isaiah, he was aware of his specific guilt--that of his lips, not of his being generally unclean. And I also think it's interesting that no death was required for Isaiah's atonement--in his case a seraph flew a live coal between some tongs he got from a burning altar and singed his lips--in the seraph's words, "See this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."

That Christians are called to holiness and not impurity... duh. Am I missing something? Do you know of anyone out there saying "Jesus wants you to fornicate and defraud people"? I don't. And I don't see how this would tip the scale from "Christ dying to demonstrate violence's folly" to "Christ dying to demonstrate God's justice" anyway. So it's a basically a red herring.

Ok. The point of all this (to me) is something I keep coming upon. There's this trying that every counter-cultural author or speaker has to undergo, whereby he must be subjected to the established truth, whether or not that established truth was ever really God's view or not. This guy, Chalke, is saying that evangelicals have been getting it wrong because they've been starting with the wrong premise (to extremely simplify: "God is just" instead of "God is love"). But then he gets objected to with derivatives of the very premise he questions. What's that about?

Are we so far advanced that we cannot go back and check our premises? Is the tree so full grown that it cannot be uprooted and replanted?