How does one respond to this question? (Posted to my Times Union.com blog, BTW) http://blogs.timesunion.com/rogergreen/?p=64

It would seem that your church life is a basic part of your social structure and that you have a need to belong, which will cloud you to the reality that the beliefs your religion espouses are the accumulated myths and superstitions of your ancestors, that have been dogmatized, institutionalized and mounded into a colossal pile of bilge they claim is somehow ultimate truth. Your infantile attachment to this institution can only stunt intellectual development and cause you to not realize the human potential to learn and progress. Personally, I would hate to exist at such a delusional level and wonder how people can think ignorance could possibly be bliss, or if they can comprehend that concept at all. Either way, what a waste.

One thing that I see as critical in all of this is that in order to have a relationship with God we must be creatures of a particular quality. Sin incapacitates our very being, breaks us and perverts us, such that we don’t have the capacity to relate to God. It is as if God is an astoundingly wonderful and glorious symphony, and we are all tone deaf, or just plain deaf, and thus we cannot really hear it and enjoy it. Turning from the metaphorical toward the literal, hearing the song (relating to God) requires more than just a healing or restoration of a defective organ. God is the song that requires our whole and entire being to hear, and thus healing and restoration of our entire being is what is required if we are to have a genuine relationship with him.

Using my analogy, I think this is why effectively dealing with sin is a critical matter in having a relationship with God. Using the forensic model, we could say that God accepts us on the basis of what Christ has done, but that is not much of a salvation if we are still essentially creatures that cannot relate to him, respond to him, hear him both literally and in the metaphorical sense above. We must become like him in order to relate to him, for as the Scriptures say, “deep calls unto deep,” and unfortunately many of us are far from the deep that God calls unto.

So, in reflecting on what you all have said, and in responding to it, it seems to me that when Tozer is talking about conditions of salvation he is talking about what kind of creatures we must become in order to have a genuine relationship with God. Conditions in this sense is like characteristics that describe a particular kind of being, the kind of being that we must be (I originally wrote this sentence as “the kind of being we must possess.” but you don’t actually possess being. It is what you are.)

Again, in processing all this, it strikes me that “conditions” is a problematic term, insofar as it could be read as something you must do to earn. However, I currently don’t see Tozer saying this. Rather, he is using conditions in terms more synonymous with the word “characteristics. So, picking up what I said earlier, Tozer’s conditions can be seen as signs of our becoming, signs of salvation in our life. They are signs because they point beyond ourselves to the work of God, a work that is working in us. On the other hand, they are conditions because we cannot really have a relationship with God unless these conditions are met, which is to say unless we have these characteristics that enable us to genuinely respond and relate to him.

Thank you all for helping me think this through.

I too struggle with Wesley’s (and a number of other’s) concept of perfection. However, it struck me not too long ago that I very clearly limit what God can and is willing to graciously do in and through me by my low expectations and past experiences, which conditions my sense of the possible. So, I am working (with God I hope) to undo this stronghold in my thinking. On the other hand, I want to be realistic about what we can expect in this present age as we wait for the completion of our salvation in the age to come.