If you have been reading this blog for the past eighteen months or so, you will know that I have been trying to write a book called When God Pled Guilty. The writing process of the book has been of twists and turns, stops and starts, but I finally feel that I am getting back on track, and so decided to write a post which kind of gets everyone up to speed and provides a bit of the back story. This is that post.
It all Began 15 Years Ago in Seminary
Though I did not initially set out to write a book on this subject, the idea for the book began about 15 years ago when I wrote a paper in Seminary about the origin of violence and evil. My proposal then was the same thing I am proposing now, that although God is not guilty for the sin and violence of the whole world, He takes the blame for it, that is, He bears responsibility for the sins of the world, because God knows that as the creator of all that is, the buck stops with Him! He is, in some sense, responsible! The primary place we see God taking responsibility in this way is in Jesus’ death on the cross.
That is what I argued 15 years ago, and have been trying to flesh out ever since. Much of this is seen in various sermons, books, articles, and writings from those fifteen years. Some of this is online; most of it is not.
A Commentary on Jonah
Two years ago I started writing a commentary on Jonah. I stalled out in chapter 1, however, because of the storm which God sent upon the sailors, and for which, there life was put in danger because of the disobedience of Jonah.
I wondered then, as many others have, “Did God really send this storm? If Jonah had not gotten thrown overboard, would God have seriously drowned these innocent sailors because of Jonah’s rebellion?” I decided then that I could not finish my life’s goal of writing commentary on the entire Bible (which seems impossible now) without fleshing out to a greater degree the proposal from 12 years earlier.
So I set the commentary aside to research and write a full-fledged explanation of how to understand the violence of God in Scripture in light of the crucifixion of Jesus.
When God Pled Guilty
As part of my research and writing for this book, I read well over 100 books, many of which were quite helpful. Somewhere along the way, someone Tweeted to me that Greg Boyd was writing something similar, and so I checked out some of his recent sermons online and found that he does indeed seem to have a similar idea, though I still am not sure that he is arguing the same thing I am. We will have to wait and see when his book comes out.
I will fully admit though, that some of the main points of my “Chaos Theory” were gleaned from Greg Boyd’s sermons and writings. His insights into the “whirlwind” of what is going on around us in the natural and spiritual realms were really helpful in explaining some of the violence we see in the world today.
I was making what I thought was pretty good progress. I had developed my theory to my satisfaction, and then turned to Scripture to try to see if my proposed way of reading Scripture could actually make sense of the biblical text.
I started with the Flood in Genesis 6-8. That’s when I hit the wall. My theory drowned in the flood. I did the dog paddle for a while, trying to find some drift wood of the wreckage of my theory on which to float, but pretty soon, I sunk too. I wrote a lot about the flood, but I couldn’t finish my study of these chapters because it seemed I was missing some pieces to my proposal.
I had written 100,000 words for my book, and ended up with nothing but words.
I gave up for several months. I talked with some people. I read some books. Actually, I read LOTS of books.
I Read, Thought, Talked, and Wrote
During this break, not only did I read a lot of books, but I thought a lot about the proposal, I talked with some people about it, and I wrote and wrote and wrote (Writing is how I learn and how I think).
I made some tweaks to the proposal and wording, and decided to try again. You have been seeing some of the recent developments in various posts over the past month.
By the way, even though I deleted quite a bit of my original 100,000 words, the manuscript now sits at 140,000 words. And I am only half done. Sigh. A normal book is about 50,000 words, so I don’t know what I am going to do…
Anyway, I am ready to go back and get beat over the head with the Bible. I am about to continue my wrestling match with Scripture.
Tomorrow, I am going to pick back up with the flood account and try to finish my explanation of what happened in that horrific event.
Here’s the thing though … What I write will probably make no sense to you unless you are somewhat familiar with the basic idea of my proposal, and have also read some of the background posts to the flood. So I invite you to go check some of them out. They are all listed on the When God Pled Guilty contents page.
After the flood, we will begin to work our way through some of the violent texts in Scripture, until we eventually arrive at the Book of Revelation, and then conclude with a study on Hell.
So … see you tomorrow in the flood! Hopefully I can finish the book this year!
A commentary on the whole Bible? You were ambitious. But apart from that, Hemmingway said he deleted vast amounts of his first draft, and it sounds to me like you have started a Hemmingway-esque process. The delete key can be your best friend.
Yes. The delete key may be exactly what I need… or a ruthless editor.
That paper you wrote in seminary 15 years ago….what did the professor think?
He strongly disagreed, but gave me an A- for “depth of research.”
I would love to have that book.I don’t like God being branded as violent and ruthless by liars.
Well, if you are a subscriber to my email newsletter, keep your subscription active, because when the book is done, it will go out to subscribers.
Here is one more book for you to read. 1.99 on Kindle.
http://www.amazon.com/Blame-Biblical-Answer-Problem-Suffering/dp/0962897124
Is God in control of everything that happens when he has given men and angels free will?
Yes, I have read that one and will reference it my book.
Looking at this wrong.
Good is a matter of definition.
Evil is a matter of definition.
God created some plans.
Those who follow him, participate in his Plan A.
Those who don’t follow him, participate in his Plan B.
Those who neither follow him, nor do not follow him, participate in Plan C.
For all I know, there are also Plans D through ZZZZZ.
God granted angels one set of powers, and responsibilties.
God granted cherebum a different set of powers, and responsibilities.
God granted humans yet another set of powers, and responsibilities.
Repeat for each form of life in the multiverse.
God accepts responsibility, because he granted his creations the power to choose to not follow Him.
This is not unlike the political leader resigning from office, because the janitor, with whom he had neither contact, nor any relationship with, sold state secrets to the enemy.
Jonathan,
Thanks for commenting. I am not sure if you are disagreeing with me or agreeing with me. Many of your points have been previously argued by me. This post was an invitation to go read some of those posts to get up to speed on the argument so far.
I understand your frustration. As a writer, I often know what I want to say but not now to say it. Sometimes, when I hit roadblocks it’s because my theories are wrong, or I need to approach them from a different perspective. Don’t worry about word count at this point. Just get it all out there, and then go through later and brutally hack it down to about 80,000 words. Once you’ve said what you have to say, you can figure out how to condense it. If I can turn a 250,000 word novel into an 80,000 word novel, you can too.
I know what you are trying to accomplish, and respect the genuine love for God that motivates it. However, I think you are struggling so much because you can’t prove your theory without invalidating and explaining away large portions of the scripture that provides the foundation of your faith. You can’t say that God isn’t violent, because the evidence is there – not merely in the Old Testament, but also the new. Jesus may have been the sacrifice, but His parables hint at the approaching punishment for those who reject Christ. To prove your theory, how much of scripture has to be explained away or simply ignored? And once you start doing that is when people get out the torches and pitchforks and scream “Heretic!”
I think we have to be really careful about justifying God in an attempt to explain His actions. By refusing to accept him for who the Bible says He is, whether or not it is right, implies that we are allowed to “judge” God according to our own moral standards. He has no reason to apologize. He does not take the blame for our sinful actions. Expecting Him to places Him on our level – and He doesn’t belong there. Moses learned the hard way that you do not put yourself on the level of God. There is no “we,” there is only Him.
Whew! You cut a 250k novel down to 80k? Amazing.
Does any of that cut material ever resurface in future books? It’s disheartening to just delete all the blood and sweat.
Yeah… I did. In a novel’s case, it’s different — you’re just cutting the fat: plots that don’t need to be there, excessive descriptions, etc. (I work as a magazine editor so I’ve learned how to cut, cut, cut, without losing the point of the narrative. If you do it right, cutting enhances the point.)
On a topic closer to like what you’re doing — about twelve years ago, I ran an in-depth website examining the Christian symbolism in “The Lord of the Rings” films. I tried to figure out how to make it book-sized (all total? I’m estimating that sucker was 400,000 words!). It was frustrating. I tried different ideas. I tried ripping all the meat out and leaving the bones. That was boring. I tried reworking it into a daily devotional. That worked okay but was kind of “meh.” Just as I was about to give up in frustration, I got an idea — call it “Watching The Lord of the Rings With God,”* and write it as a series of conversations between God and me, as the narrator. It worked. It made the topic fun and entertaining, but also hard-hitting.
Writing a factual book, you walk a delicate balance between informing and lecturing. You have to appeal to your reader and hold their interest. I wasn’t doing that, either with the long and drawn out approach or the shorter, meat ‘n’ bones version. I had to let go of all my past work, all the frustration and thought that went into it, and start over. It wasn’t fun, but I loved the end result. I didn’t “waste” my earlier blood and sweat, because it was part of the learning process and getting to know the material in-depth. That’s essential before you can start dismantling it in such a way as to present a shorter version of it. (You have to know the long version so well, you can take a two hour plot and condense it into one hour, then if needed, into a five minute segment.) Once you KNOW the material you’re working with you can figure out how to condense it into a format that is both easy to read and of a reasonable length. But you have to think outside the box.
The fact that you are even doing this (ie, challenging everything anyone has ever been taught) proves you’re already thinking outside the box. I’m sure you can come up with a way to make your book a decent length and to the point. But sometimes, you just have to experiment — my end result started as free-writing one Saturday morning when I was on the brink of giving up.
* And yes, I did indie publish it. Unfortunately, as you’ll find out when you do finish your book, getting anything distributed in the mainstream publishing market is like banging your head against a wall.
Thanks, Charity. I think that the Lord of Rings trilogy and The Hobbit is actually a super edited down version of all that Tolkein actually wrote. There are whole volumes of side stories and back story to the events in those 4 books.
Anyway, yes, I will probably try to put out a single book of manageable length once I am done writing the entire book. But before I can edit it, I have to get it all down on paper.
I will probably indie publish it since that is what I usually do with my books.