Fred Young

Christ-follower, Husband, Father, Paw Paw, Pastor, Grace Addict, Recovering Legalist, Sports Nut.

[Fred Young @PastorFredYoung]

@RandalRauser Blessings as you continue your good work.

[Fred Young @PastorFredYoung]

@RandalRauser Not offended at all.
It just seems demeaning and dishonoring.

You have such an ability to present thoughtful arguments that name calling seems at best unnecessary and at worst UnChristlike.

[John Crowder ☩ @TheNewMystics]

Jesus is not the “Savior of the World” if He is the Savior of the Some.

[John Crowder ☩ @TheNewMystics]

The Gospel is God’s union with humanity, apart from our faith, repentance or obedience. He met us not in our Sunday best, but in the depth of our forlorn darkness, brokenness, confusion and despair. Faith is not the agent of union, but the recognition of it. Your faith did not generate the incarnation.

[Russell Moore @drmoore]

Racist. Deranged. Humiliating to our country. The fact that we have decided to pretend to this is normal every day is a moral abomination. Have we any shame?

And every day an entire generation is being told it is “Christian” to support this. God have mercy on us.

[John Crowder ☩ @TheNewMystics]

The new heaven and earth entail not a Men-in-Black memory wipe to forget all that was lost. The great Renovator came not to cauterize the amputated limbs of humanity, but to resurrect, heal and recover all things to their intended end. Restoration means that evil will become undone without diminishing the integrity of our suffering. As Tolkien said, everything sad is going to come untrue.

[Fred Young @PastorFredYoung]

@AndyStanley @sometherapist Great book!!
His Gates Will Never Be Shut is another great read

[Fred Young @PastorFredYoung]

When it looks like it's all falling apart, have faith. It may be falling together and you just can't see it yet. Fatih when we don't understand. That is the grace walk experience.
Steve McVey

[Francois du Toit @francoislydia]

Jesus didn't come to persuade an angry God to be nice towards mankind;
he came to persuade an indifferent and hostile humanity about the goodness of God!

[Dr. Scott M. Sullivan @DrScotMSullivan]

What does it say about your moral intuition if you can calmly affirm that God will allow infinite suffering and torturing people in hell fire forever, but bristle at someone saying, “This cannot be true of the God of love”?

What kind of spiritual formation leaves us more scandalized by the mere suggestion of someone challenging the doctrine, than by the implications of the doctrine itself?

It seems to me that if your moral alarm does not go off at the claim that God damns souls to endless pain,
But it does go off when someone calls that claim monstrous, then it’s not your theology that needs defending; it’s your conscience that needs reformation.

The real scandal isn’t in the one who objects.

It’s in the long silence of those who should know better.

[Dr. Scott M. Sullivan @DrScotMSullivan]

The Myth of Self-Inflicted Damnation
A more sophisticated defense of Hell tries to absolve God of cruelty by shifting the blame onto the damned themselves. It goes something like this: God doesn’t torture anyone. The damned choose to reject Him, and the torment they experience is simply the natural consequence of that rejection. God merely honors their choice.

On this view, Hell is not a divine punishment, but a kind of metaphysical self-harm. The damned exile themselves. They cut themselves off from the source of all joy, truth, and beauty and suffer as a result. But this suffering, we’re told, is self-inflicted. God is simply respecting their freedom.

At first glance, this may seem like a morally cleaner doctrine. It seems to let God off the hook. But it collapses under the same moral and philosophical pressures as the others.

Let’s begin with the problem of culpability. Are we really to believe that souls who have seen the full truth of God, grasped His nature, and comprehended the eternal consequences of their decisions still freely and knowingly choose everlasting torment? On what possible understanding of “rational will” does this make sense?

Once again, if a soul rejects God, it is not because it clearly sees and hates Goodness itself it is because it is confused, wounded, ignorant, or spiritually malformed. No one, seeing clearly, chooses fire over light. So if the soul is in agony, the cause is not freedom, but brokenness and brokenness calls for restoration, not abandonment.

But more damning still is the image of God this view implies.

Suppose someone is locked in a private hell of their own making and trapped in bitterness despair hatred, and self-torment. Is the morally righteous response to sit back and say, “Well, they chose this. I’ll let them be”?

Imagine a father whose child is spiraling into addiction or madness. Suppose the child locks himself in a room and begins tearing himself apart. Would the father shrug and say, “I won’t interfere it’s his choice”?

Of course not. A good parent doesn’t respect self-destruction. He interrupts it. He intervenes. He saves.

To say God allows eternal self-torture in the name of respecting freedom is to strip the word Father of all moral meaning. It turns divine love into passive observation. But love is not passive. It does not sit on its hands. It does not watch suffering forever and call it justice.

The truth is unavoidable: if God has the power to save, heal, and restore, and yet does nothing then He is complicit. And no metaphor, no theological abstraction, no appeal to mystery can soften that.

[Andy Stanley @AndyStanley]

A faith that can’t be questioned can’t be trusted.

[Rich Villodas @richvillodas]

We begin the day in silence because God should have the first word. We end the day in silence because God should have the last word.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

[The Tentative Apologist @RandalRauser]

1. Torturing people is evil.
2. God would not do anything evil.
3. Therefore, God would not torture people.
4. The Eternal conscious torment (ECT) theory of hell entails that God tortures people.
5. Therefore, the ECT theory is false.

[George MacDonald @MacDonald_daily]

All the doors that lead inward to the secret place of the Most High are doors outwards—out of self, out of smallness, out of wrong.

[Rich Villodas @richvillodas]

Protestant Christians set out to make America Christian and ended up making Christianity American.

- Stanley Hauerwas

[George MacDonald @MacDonald_daily]

All the snow that fell on the black winding river vanished, as death and hell shall one day vanish in the fire of God.

[Andy Stanley @AndyStanley]

God’s holiness is not at odds with his mercy.

[The Tentative Apologist @RandalRauser]

It's crazy that some Christians claim Christian universalism undermines the atonement when Christian universalism posits that the atonement is 100 percent effective at reconciling creation.

That's like criticizing a medicine for having a 100 percent cure rate!