Grossly Misinterpreted
My whole life, I’ve heard the message of the cross presented from pulpits and platforms, mostly by well-meaning preachers and teachers, as a moment in time when a good Father abandoned His Son.
You’re likely familiar with it, too. It often sounded like, “The Father looked away. He turned His face. He could not look upon sin.” If you Google the phrase, “God turned His face,” you’ll find endless books and teachings on God’s abandoning, sin-counting, cruel, and punishing nature.
My wife, Karen, as a children’s pastor, paid especially close attention to our children’s curriculum and constantly searched for a children’s Bible that she didn’t have to redact. In one of the best Bibles she found, she still had to black out the grossly misinterpreted interaction between a Father and His beloved Son.
“’Papa,’ Jesus cried frantically, searching the sky. ‘Papa? Where are you? Don’t leave me!’…Nothing happened. Just a horrible, endless silence. Papa turned away from His Boy…”
Do you wonder why we have a Deconstruction movement today? I think it’s partly because many Christians have been forced to build their faith upon the shaky foundation of an oscillating “Papa who turned away from His Boy.”
We have been taught, and then passed along to our kids in their formative years, a “good” God with kindness in one hand and a Skill Saw in the other. We read “Papa turned away from His Boy” to our kids and then wonder why they don’t trust God later in life.
It’s pretty simple. You can’t trust a Father who turns His back on His Son in His most desperate hour of need, but this teaching is woven into our Western Evangelical approach to God. A “Papa who turned away from His Boy” is preached from pulpits, taught in our Sunday schools, found in our discipleship books, and has infiltrated our worship songs.
“The Father looked away” is a lyrical trope employed by many sincere worship songwriters. The song How Deep the Father’s Love contradicts its title with the unsettling lyric, “How great the pain of searing loss—the Father turns His face away.” Apparently, though the Father’s love is deep, it’s not quite deep enough to stay with His Son in His most desperate hour. And that’s a trust-compromising problem.
In the song, God of Calvary, “The sky went dark, the Angels wept,” and “the Father looked away.”
No, He didn’t!
The idea that “Papa turned away from His Boy” is heretical bullshit!
He does not oscillate; nothing separates us from His love…
This article is excerpted from my book, Leaving and Finding Jesus
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Love Keeps No Record…
1 Corinthians 13 is one of the most beautiful descriptions of love, a chapter often used at weddings. So, most of us are familiar.
The chapter describes love as patient and kind and continues by laying out the stunning attributes of God. Tucked between “Love isn’t easily angered” and “Love doesn’t delight in evil” is a powerful world-changing truth:
“Love keeps no record of wrongs….”
Jesus, Love in human form, hanging on a cross between heaven and earth, His body battered, the lie of separation a veil between Him and His Father, the myth of abandonment cutting Him off from sensing His Father’s affection; the fiction that God punishes screaming its message through the iron nails that tore His flesh and held Him fast to a cross, reveals the power of a free will submitted to love.
Jesus—fully God, fully Man, one with Father, intimate with Holy Spirit—forgives. And His forgiveness confronts the transactional, sin-counting, retributive justice payment system—“What seems right to a man.” (1)
Casting back to before the beginning and looking forward to after the end, Jesus keeps no record of the wrong humanity has committed. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” He said. And the power of that Greater Love saves the world.
Do you know what happened when Jesus kept no record of our wrongs?
He couldn’t justify His right to hold onto offense—and all creation was reborn in that powerful conclusion.
And we’ve been invited to live in that same powerfully transformative freedom!
All creation has been invited to awaken to that reconciling measureless revelation. Love doesn’t count sins; it keeps no record of wrong!
(1) Proverbs 14:12
This article is excerpted from my book, Leaving and Finding Jesus