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If you think I am a lying heretic, let me help you out…

By Jeremy Myers
20 Comments

If you think I am a lying heretic, let me help you out…

One downside to having the “Ask a Bible and Theology” question section on my sidebar is that some people feel it is an invitation to send me hate mail.

Ever since I put it up, I get a few nasty messages every week from people who think I am a lying heretic leading poor lost souls to the pit of hell through false teaching and heretical ideas.

Usually, they want to engage me in a back-and-forth email debate. Often, I get the feeling that if we lived in a different century, they would want to put me on the rack or give me up to the flames to burn the error from my soul.

lying heretic

Here is one such email I got last week:

Jeremy I am a very well educated theologian and I am personally challenging you to Scripturally support the LIE in which you propagate upon immature Believers.

Scriptural proof is one thing but personal IMOโ€™s are of little theological value.

Once again โ€“ I am here should you want to defend you LIES.

I have neither the time nor the desire to engage in fruitless email debates with people like this (or to point out his grammar mistakes).

However, people are entitled to their opinion, and I fully admit that there are areas of my theology which need correction.

So, if you think I am a lying heretic leading immature believers astray, let me help you point out my error.ย Take these two steps.

  1. Start a blog of your own
  2. Writes posts on your blog in which you refute my ideas, point by point

If you include a link in your blog post to my blog post you are refuting, I will get a notification in my blog that you have written this blog post, and I can come over and read your post to learn about my many errors. If you make good points, I may even comment, or notify my blog readers that I am changing my views because of your compelling Scriptural and theological arguments.

I am so serious about this, I am willing to help you start your blog for FREE. Learn more here about starting your own blog.

I just checked, and these domains are currently available:

  • jeremymyersisalyingheretic.com
  • jeremymyersisthemouthpieceofsatan.com
  • alltheheresiesofjeremymyers.com
  • iamsmarterthanjeremymyers.com
  • jeremymyerssucks.com
  • thebadtheologyofjeremymyers.com

Jump on these domains quick, though, because once they’re gone, they’re gone!

God is z Bible & Theology Topics: Blogging, heretic, lies, Theology - General

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I Support a Woman’s Right to Choose…

By Jeremy Myers
47 Comments

I Support a Woman’s Right to Choose…

womens right to chooseI am not talking about abortion. …Not yet anyway.

I support a woman’s right to choose between paper and plastic at the grocery store.

I support a woman’s right to choose what kind of light bulb she uses at home.

I support a woman’s right to choose whether or not she and her family have health care.

I support a woman’s right to choose what kind of food to put her children’s lunchbox.

I support a woman’s right to choose whether or not to carry a gun.

I support a woman’s right to choose when, where, and how to discipline her children.

I support a woman’s right to choose her religion and whether or not to talk about it in public.

I support a woman’s right to choose how she defines marriage.

I could go on and on about all the ways I support a woman’s right to choose.

But what I find so sadly ironic is that the same people who support a woman’s right to choose about whether or not to terminate her pregnancy are often the same people who do not support a woman’s right to choose all the things listed above. They want to give women the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion, but they don’t want to give women the right to choose between paper and plastic.

You know a great business idea for somebody? A puppy abortion clinic. Or maybe a kitten abortion clinic. You know how many stray dogs and cats there are on the world? Wouldn’t it be great if a pet owner could take their pregnant cat or dog into a clinic and have all the little puppies or kittens aborted? Then they wouldn’t have to deal with the mess of delivery, and standing outside Walmart for hours on end trying to get rid of puppies and kittens to strangers.

I am jesting of course, but do you know what would happen if somebody started an abortion clinic for puppies and kittens? There would be outrage! You might even get arrested for cruelty to animals. Who knows? Maybe someone from PETA would come and bomb your clinic.

And yet most people think nothing of it when we talk about aborting children. A woman has a right to choose what to do with her body.

But that’s just it. It is not her body. It is someone else’s body. A child’s body. It’s a little girl or a little boy. Do not they have the right to choose what happens to their body? Tell you what…. I support a woman’s right to choose as long as that same right is extended to the little girls and little boys. Let them be born and then when they are old enough to understand, give them a choice about whether they want to live or die.

People talk about how conservatives wage a war on women. I think it is time to start talking about the war on children. And unlike the so-called war on women, the war on children has millions of casualties.

Millions of babies have been killed, slaughtered, burned, and destroyed.

In this ongoing war on children, more children have been killed than all the Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Are you “Pro-Choice”? This post probably won’t convince you to change your mind. But if you want to remain “Pro-Choice,” please start to be consistently “Pro-Choice” and let women (and the rest of us) have the right to choose in the other areas of life as well.

God is z Bible & Theology Topics: abortion, Discipleship, pro-choice, right to choose, war on women

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Is it loving to say, “You’re Going to Hell”?

By Jeremy Myers
41 Comments

Is it loving to say, “You’re Going to Hell”?

youre going to hellI have been studying the doctrine of hell recently, and by coincidence, ran across the following video.

The quality is pretty bad, but you don’t really need the images to get the… horror of it… Not the horror of hell, but the horror that Christians would use such tactics to try to scare people into heaven.

What makes it worse is that this video is obviously geared toward High School Students. The video is called “A Letter from Hell.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFZ1pt0WX5c

Yikes!

I recently heard of a church that at a Youth Rally had 100% conversion. The speaker passed out little pieces of paper and had everyone write their name on their paper. Then he brought up two garbage cans, and in one, put some paper and lighter fluid and lit the thing on fire. Then he told the kids that the flaming trashcan represented hell, and the other represented heaven. He had the kids line up, and pass by the cans putting their piece of paper in the can where they wanted to go when they died…

Amazingly, not a single kid put his name in the flaming can! Instead, everyone wanted to go to heaven. The church reported that 100% of the kids at the rally were converted.

Now that’s evangelism success.

…Or is it?

Last week, Mark Driscoll tweeted that all unbelievers are going to hell.

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/421674123132416000

Thanks for clearing that up, Mark. We wondered where you stood on this issue and am glad you gave the watching world yet another reason to realize how kind and loving we Christians are…

But seriously, Mark’s point was that it is loving to tell people they are going to hell.

I know, I have heard the arguments:

If a man was about to drive his car off a cliff, the loving thing to do is to warn him. So also with hell. If a person is headed for hell, the loving thing to do is warn them.

If that’s true, then why did Jesus talk about hell so little? Why is it rarely (if ever) mentioned by Paul or Peter? The New Testament authors do not try to scare people into heaven with threats of hell. 

OK, some of you Bible scholars are thinking to yourself, “Jeremy doesn’t read his Bible. Doesn’t he know that Jesus talks about hell more than He talks about heaven?”

Yes, I know that this is what some people claim. But it simply isn’t true. The passages where Jesus mentions “weeping and gnashing of teeth” are not talking about hell, but about profound regret for a life poorly lived that some Christians will experience at the Judgment Seat of Christ (cf. Matt 8:12; 22:11-13). Most of the references to “fire” in Jesus’ teaching are not about hell, but about some sort of temporal divine discipline; not eternal conscious torment. 

going to hellI think maybe the only place Jesus talks about hell is with the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (which is likely a parable), and when Jesus says that hell was made for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41), and sadly, some people end up there as well. 

…Speaking of which…. if hell was made for the devil and his angels, why are they on the earth now? Hmmm…. simmer on that one for a while. 

Look, when Jesus, Paul, Peter, John and everyone else in the New Testament sought to invite people into the family of God, they did it winsomely. They didn’t threaten or coerce. God does not force people to love Him. God does not rape.

Even in the early church, people became Christians because they saw how loving and generous the Christians were (see Acts 2-3). 

Look, people are never going to truly respond to the Gospel if you tell them that unless they accept Jesus they will be going to hell. Many people are already living in hell, and they think God has done this to them, and another such threat from God only reinforces there idea of this angry God up in the clouds who is out to kill and hurt them. Do we seriously want people to “come to Jesus” with this sort of picture of God in their minds? 

No!

Not only because it doesn’t “work” but more importantly, because it isn’t true!

God looks like Jesus, and Jesus always loves people into the Kingdom.

You know what is really loving? Not warning people that if they don’t believe in Jesus they will go to hell. That’s not loving, nor does it draw anyone to God or into His Kingdom.

What is really loving is living in such a way that people notice a difference in your life. They see your joy, your grace, your generosity, and your patience in trials. They never sense judgment coming from you, but only acceptance and love. If given the opportunity, you can use words to invite people to follow Jesus with you, and experience the true contentment, peace, and joy that comes from living in such a way.

That is loving, and best of all, it’s true.

God is z Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship, evangelism, hell, kingdom of god, love

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Gossip – Stop it!

By Jeremy Myers
2 Comments

Gossip – Stop it!

gossip - stop itOne thing we Christians love to do is gossip. I suppose that due to the Papparazi gossip machine and gossip-heavy magazines like โ€œPeopleโ€ it is only natural Christians fall into this social trend of listening to and spreading rumors about other people. Itโ€™s natural, but then, so is all sin.

Ironically, in churches today, we are more prone to condemn โ€œhomosexuals,โ€ โ€œabortionists,โ€ and โ€œdemocratsโ€ than those who gossip. But did you know that the Bible speaks out against the sins of the tongue more than any other sin? I have a sneaking suspicion that the Bible condemns gossip more than all the other sins combined. Someone should do a study on that.

So, if you like to point the finger at others, and send e-mails about how Mr. Leader is moving into heresy (i.e., anything you donโ€™t believe), and make phone calls to put your neighbor on the โ€œprayer chainโ€ (Gasp, Can you believe she got pregnant out of wedlock?!), what you are really doing is committing the number one sin of Scripture.

You know what I say to all of this? Watch the following video to find out.

This poor lady is dealing with a different issue than gossip, but the advice she received can be applied to those of us who gossip: STOP IT.

God is z Bible & Theology Topics: Christian sin, Discipleship, gossip, humor, sin, sins

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What Heaven Will Be Like

By Jeremy Myers
25 Comments

What Heaven Will Be Like

Remember Susan Boyle? She went pretty far in the Britain’s Got Talent show back in 2009. But I recently was thinking about her and what heaven will be like, and realized there is something she teaches us about life, dreams, eternity, and heaven.

Watch this video before reading the rest of the post.

Susan BoyleHere is an article for more informationย about Susan Boyle:

Susan Boyle’s story is a parable of our age. She is a singer of enormous talent, who cared for her widowed mother until she died two years ago. Susan’s is a combination of ability and virtue that deserves congratulation.

So how come she was treated as a laughing stock when she walked on stage for the opening heat of Britain’s Got Talent 2009 on Saturday night?

The moment the reality show’s audience and judging panel saw the small, shy, middle-aged woman, they started to smirk. When she said she wanted a professional singing career to equal that of Elaine Paige, the camera showed audience members rolling their eyes in disbelief. They scoffed when she told Simon Cowell, one of the judges, how she’d reached her forties without managing to develop a singing career because she hadn’t had the opportunity. Another judge, Piers Morgan, later wrote on his blog that, just before she launched into I Dreamed a Dream, the 3000-strong audience in Glasgow was laughing and the three judges were suppressing chuckles.

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It was rude and cruel and arrogant. Susan Boyle from Blackburn, West Lothian, was presumed to be a buffoon. But why?

Britain’s Got Talent isn’t a beauty pageant. It isn’t a youth opportunity scheme. It is surely about discovering untapped and unrecognised raw talent from all sections of society.

And Susan Boyle has talent to burn. Such is the beauty of her voice that she had barely sung the opening bars when the applause started. She rounded off to a standing ovation and – in her naivety – began walking off the stage and had to be recalled.

Susan, now a bankable discovery, was then roundly patronised by such mega-talents as Amanda Holden and the aforementioned Morgan, who told her: “Everyone laughed at you but no-one is laughing now. I’m reeling with shock.” Holden added: “It’s the biggest wake-up call ever.”

Again, why?

The answer is that only the pretty are expected to achieve. Not only do you have to be physically appealing to deserve fame; it seems you now have to be good-looking to merit everyday common respect. If, like Susan (and like millions more), you are plump, middle-aged and too poor or too unworldly to follow fashion or have a good hairdresser, you are a non-person.

I dread to think of how Susan would have left the stage if her voice had been less than exceptional. She would have been humiliated in front of 11 million viewers. It’s the equivalent of being put in the stocks in front of the nation instead of the village. It used to be a punishment handed out to criminals. Now it is the fate of anyone without obvious sexual allure who dares seek opportunity.

This small, brave soul took her courage in her hands to pitch at her one hope of having her singing talent recognised, and was greeted with a communal sneer. Courage could so easily have failed her.

Yet why shouldn’t she sound wonderful? Not every great singer looks like Katherine Jenkins. Edith Piaf would never have been chosen to strut a catwalk. Nor would Nina Simone, nor Ella Fitzgerald. As for Pavarotti But then ridicule is nothing new in Susan Boyle’s life. She is a veteran of abuse. She was starved of oxygen at birth and has learning difficulties as a result. At school she was slow and had frizzy hair. She was bullied, mostly verbally. She told one newspaper that her classmates’ jibes left behind the kind of scars that don’t heal.

She didn’t have boyfriends, is a stranger to romance and has never been kissed. “Shame,” she said. Singing was her life-raft.

She lived with her parents in a four-bedroom council house and, when her father died a decade ago, she cared for her mother and sang in the church choir.

Then, when a special occasion comes along, they might reach, as Susan did, for the frock they bought for a nephew’s wedding. They might, as she did, compound the felony of choosing a colour at odds with her skin tone and an unflattering shape with home-chopped hair, bushy eyebrows and a face without a hint of make-up. But it is often evidence of a life lived selflessly; of a person so focused on the needs of another that they have lost sight of themselves. Is that a cause for derision or a reason for congratulation? Would her time have been better spent slimming and exercising, plucking and waxing, bleaching and botoxing? Would that have made her voice any sweeter?

Susan Boyle’s mother encouraged her to sing. She wanted her to enter Britain’s Got Talent. But the shy Susan hasn’t been able to sing at all since her mother’s death two years ago. She wasn’t sure how her voice would emerge after so long a silence. Happily, it survived its rest.

She is a gift to Simon Cowell and reality television. Her story is the stuff of Hans Christian Andersen: the woman plucked from obscurity, the buried talent uncovered, the transformation waiting to be wrought.

It is wonderful for her, too, that her stunning voice is now recognised. A bright future beckons. Her dream is becoming reality.

Susan is a reminder that it’s time we all looked a little deeper. She has lived an obscure but important life. She has been a companionable and caring daughter. It’s people like her who are the unseen glue in society; the ones who day in and day out put themselves last. They make this country civilised and they deserve acknowledgement and respect.

Susan has been forgiven her looks and been given respect because of her talent. She should always have received it because of the calibre of her character.

The song she sings comes from Les Miserables, which may be one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs ever. Every time I watch the movie, I weep at the part of the movie where Fantine sings for her broken dreams.

Fantine I Dreamed a DreamHere are the lyrics:

There was a time when men were kind,
And their voices were soft,
And their words inviting.
There was a time when love was blind,
And the world was a song,
And the song was exciting.
There was a time when it all went wrong…

I dreamed a dream in time gone by,
When hope was high and life, worth living.
I dreamed that love would never die,
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.
Then I was young and unafraid,
And dreams were made and used and wasted.
There was no ransom to be paid,
No song unsung, no wine, untasted.

But the tigers come at night,
With their voices soft as thunder,
As they tear your hope apart,
And they turn your dream to shame.

He slept a summer by my side,
He filled my days with endless wonder…
He took my childhood in his stride,
But he was gone when autumn came!

And still I dream he’ll come to me,
That we will live the years together,
But there are dreams that cannot be,
And there are storms we cannot weather!

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living,
So different now from what it seemed…
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed…

Now why am I writing about all this here? What has so caught my attention about Susan Boyle and Fantine? Why does this song make me tear up?

Because this song, and Susan’s story, is the song of us all. Every person on earth has broken dreams, shattered hopes, lost loves. We all have a “Rosebud” (See the movie Citizen Kane). If you are like me, you often wish that life had a “do over” option. There are times and places in life you wish you could return to, but never can. There are grievous mistakes you made in life which you wish you could go back and undo. There are some memories you wish you could relive, and others you wish you could avoid.

And for many, I think that as life goes on, our list of things we wish we could have done, could have said, could have been, could have seen, gets longer and longer. This is why some people embark on their Bucket List.

But I sometimes think that in heaven, in our eternal life which begins after we leave this one, one of the things we will do for eternity is getting to do, go, be, and become all those things that we never got to experience in life. In the book, Safely Home, Li Quan wants to write and teach, but because he is a Christian living in Communist China, he spends most of his life running and hiding and fearing for his life. I don’t want to ruin the end of the book, but let me just say that at the end, his hopes and dreams are more than fulfilled.

Fantine sings this:

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living.

If you have unfulfilled dreams, shattered hopes, damaged relationships, know this: in the New Heavens and New Earth, part of the process of “wiping away every tear” will be, in my opinion, allowing Jesus to help you fulfill those dreams, achieve those hopes, and restore those relationships.

Heaven is not about sitting on clouds playing harps. It will be like this life, but without the pain, regret, and fear.ย  Life will be what it was always meant to be.

You will learn to sing like Susan Boyle, or dance like a prima ballerina, if that is what you want.

You will train to climb that mountain, or write that book, if it sounds enjoyable.

You will laugh uproariously with that loved one.

You will sit and read and discuss theology with Moses, Paul, and Jesus, if that sounds like fun.

You will ride horses on the beach and be able to read their thoughts while doing so. You will lay down with a lion and let his purring lull you to sleep.

Creation was made to be our playground; not our hell. And in the new heaven and new earth, it will become our playground again. Heaven will be like Susan Boyle, with each of us finally getting to do what we were made for.

God is z Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship, dreams, heaven, hell, hopes, new earth, Susan Boyle, Theology of the End Times

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