This past week Jonathan Merritt shoveled some exceptionally deep steamy piles of shit. Many of his posts are rather self deceptive and ignorant but they usually are spaced out a bit more evenly. The more ridiculous pieces generally have at least a handful of days to separate them but not this week. His March 18th interview with A.W. Tozer is pretty lame on both ends. Merritt asks a number of obvious and credulous questions with Tozer giving predictably feeble answers. For example, Tozer insists that the scripture based version of God is ridiculous and should be discarded. I, of course, don't dispute that conclusion but Tozer proclaims the more abstract version to be the right one. Based on what? There is no attempt to back up the assertion with anything beyond negative comments on the scriptural version. It never occurs to either of them that disputing one version of a concept does not automatically verify an alternate version. I particularly found the wording of the first question very amusing. It included the phrase "an invisible God" which screams out to have a very simple question be asked in follow up. What really distinguishes "an invisible God" from a non-existent God?
Just two days later Merritt posted "Setting the record straight on Jesus, ‘the friend of sinners’." As you may have surmised neither Jonathan or any of the individuals he quotes actually sets "the record straight on Jesus." Every single one of them cherry picks and interprets various biblical passages to derive the messages they personally prefer. There are passages where Jesus seem to be disposed to befriending and helping sinners. However, there are also passages where Jesus turns into a zenophobic bigoted asshole (which I have written about on other occasions).
Surprise, surprise, Jesus is both. No one will ever "set the record straight on Jesus" since the only known information* comes from scripture which is itself a mish-mash of vague, incoherent, or contradictory passages.
*I use the term information since there isn't a single verifiable fact about Jesus.
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