How does God's love and providence work with our free will?

A lot has been said over Christian history about how we might understand God's will, His providence, and the difficult wording of predestination used in this opening passage of Ephesians. Our discussion turns to the implications these somewhat theoretical ideas have on the very practical experience of pain and suffering. There are obviously multiple ways to put it all together! We reflect on how it tends to be more fruitful to focus on God's Love and Grace.

When is it more important to love kindness?

Exploring aspects of perverted justice invariably leads to any number of scenarios that defy the just/unjust categorisation. What are we to do in such situations? While Micah 6 calls us to do justice, it also reminds us to love kindness.

What does it mean for God to love justice?

The idea of justice appeals to everyone who feels ripped off, but "God's judgement" can sound threatening. There are aspects of justice that are difficult for us to comprehend, let alone achieve.

Divine wrath can be a difficult concept to put alongside a "loving God".

In fact, this attribute of God is perhaps more prominent in the Bible than in many contemporary expressions of Christianity. It makes sense for us to tend to avoid thinking about it, given the abundance of situations in which human anger is unhelpful. We discuss how anger might fit in to our understanding of God? Is anger ever ok for us? Can we have rigeous indignation without it simply being self-righteous indignation?

God is passionate and compassionate.

We (meaning humans in general and Seventh-day Adventists in particular) tend to be somewhat distrustful of emotions, but it turns out that similar critiques can be applied to reason and other aspects of human experience. One intriguing emotional word used in the Bible to describe God is "jealous", but elsewhere we read that love is not jealous! This is slightly unfair word play because many translations use "envious" or other words instead of jealous, but stimulates interesting conversation. Maybe God's jealousy in the OT is an expression of love.

This belated episode explores what it means to "be pleasing to God".

Some disruptions are referenced at the start of the conversation, and others persisted long enough to delay this episode by more than a week (sorry)! Thinking about pleasing God often leads Christians to ponder the corruption of sin - but the Parable of the Lost Sons in Luke 15 is a great way to remember that sin doesn't eliminate God's love for us. Indeed it was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us!

Is anger incompatible with love?

This question from the quarterly introduction leads in many productive directions. It comes up in this context because many Christian traditions picture God's justice as somehow being associated with His anger. We explore a few lines of thinking about anger and love, and also have a preliminary go at the related question "How do Love and Justice go together?"

We start a new season looking at the God of Love and Justice.

There's a lot in Christian history that suggests love and justice are somehow opposing attributes of God. We suspect this may not be the case, and in this introductory episode on this theme we tackle a few of the questions in the Sabbath School introduction. When discussing God's love, Isaiah 53:11 is a helpful reminder that there doesn't need to be a contrast between sacrifice and delight.