@jakeofalltradesmusic

1 year ago

In 4:52-5:52, you touched on a very sore spot for me in my walk with Jesus. Describing how in the American/Protestant church, the message is, "You're horrible, evil, and you need Jesus." I've been inundated in that narrative for probably a decade or more, and hearing you guys say that that's not there narrative the Bible is giving is simultaneously setting off red flags that this is going to be a heretical podcast episode, but also giving me a glimmer of hope that maybe you'll say something that will deconstruct this theology that has led me to hating myself and feeling hopeless for the last decade. "Why hopeless if Jesus is your hope?" one may ask. Because, in the American/Protestant church, in Revelation and Daniel and anything in the Bible concerning End Times, everything is supposed to get hopelessly bad until God destroys it all and creates everything from scratch, and only the few real believers (and there seems to be a conserted effort to make every little thing a qualification for whether or not you're really saved in the American/Protestent church) will be with Jesus to rule and reign with Him. Well, I've been on the opposite end of the qualifiers for why I'm not really saved because I'm more horrible than I can ever truly understand, and no amount of surrendering my life to Christ has changed that, so as long as I'm alive and as long as the world exists, there's no hope... Until I'm dead. That's what I learned through American/Protestant Christianity. So when you say that they're wrong, I'm highly skeptical, because they train you to think that anyone that disagrees with them is questioning the very Word of God and therefore is Satanic, but man, do I hope you're right, for I might not be miserable for the rest of my time on Earth if you are right... Otherwise I'll keep baring my misery til I stand before God in judgment and hopefully, I was actually saved at some point and my failures don't point to the idea that I was never saved to begin with. 6:27 - 7:22 describes that very well too. Thank God that He's putting up with me. Thank God He isn't just sending me to Hell right now, because that's what I really deserve to be, so any hardship or horror you go through is Grace by comparison.

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