Jesus’ Rudiments
A friend sent me a link to a podcast interview that rambled, but was mostly concerned with end times prophecy. Confused and concerned, he wanted to know what I thought. In one of their tangents, the interviewee flatly stated: God doesn’t love everyone. Now that’s often implied, but rarely declared, and in case there was any doubt, he added there’s a lot Christians are confused about, that they’ve forgotten how Jesus operated.
His reasoning was internally consistent. Starting with Psalms 6 and a list of the “people” (actually actions) God hates, he qualified Jesus’ statement in Mt 5 that we should love our enemies by saying that our enemies are not the same as God’s enemies, that David in Psalms 139 hated God’s enemies with a perfect hatred…concluding we must love our enemies, but not God’s.
It’s fascinating how reading the same text, we can end up at such wildly different conclusions, all based on our assumptions…our rudiments. Rudiments are basic principles, elements, fundamental skills like the basic stick patterns that lay a drummer’s foundation for everything that follows. If we’ve forgotten how Jesus operated, we’ve forgotten his rudiments. Hard to argue that Jesus’ essential principle is love, understood as oneness, connection with everything and everyone, but…
There are two basic ways people approach God: through God’s love or sovereignty (absolute authority). God is both, but we will focus on one over the other depending on our primary motivation: connection or fear. Interviewee said we must fear God, the one who could kill both body and soul. Fear always boils down to fear of punishment. 1John 4 tells us God is love, and anyone who fears punishment hasn’t known a love that neither punishes nor abandons.
Interviewee tells what he’s convinced of. All anyone can do. We can debate or go back to our rudiments. If Jesus’ rudiment is that everything in life is one, connected, and equally loved, then certain interpretations of seemingly contradictory passages can’t describe the God of Jesus.
Driving a stake in the ground at Jesus’ rudiments gives us our north star, and a push in Jesus’ direction.
