#1: Salvation is giving your life to Christ
- Reasoning; Salvation is not about what you give to Christ but what Christ gives to you. This language makes God reactionary, as though He were waiting for people to give Him something.
- Rebuttal; This analysis commits numerous flaws. Firstly there is the issue that this is largely arguing over semantics, this language has been used with many meanings in mind, not all of which imply the sort of Arminianism McVey reads into it. Secondly, it cannot be denied that salvation does entail giving our life up for Christ’s use in His Church so to a large degree this language is entirely appropriate. McVey equates “salvation is” with “salvation is attained by”. Lastly, this language is even found in the Bible. Christ Himself states, "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it (Matthew 16:25).”
#2: Christians are just sinners saved by grace*
- Reasoning; Once saved a person is no longer a sinner. To consider yourself a sinner after being saved is to deny what it means to be saved to begin with. 2 Corinthians 5:17 states we are a new creation and Ephesians 2:5 states we are made alive together with Christ. McVey States, “calling us sanctified or saints is not a reference to behavior but to identity."
- Rebuttal There is a great deal of truth to this idea, but it neglects once again a major tension in scripture; that of an already but not yet aspect to salvation. There is a sense in which we are a new creation, but there is also a sense in which we are still growing in righteousness. We have already been forgiven, we are being forgiven and we will be forgiven. We have died to sin, we are dying to sin and we will die to sin. We have gained life in Christ, we are living in Christ and we will be glorified in Christ. We cannot pretend that at the moment of conversion we are absolutely sinless, Paul still spills a great deal of ink talking about the importance of disciplining ourselves, consistently repenting and growing in righteousness. To be fair, McVey goes on to state that he believes our new identity should motivate us to new behavior, but if that’s the case his point again seems to be one of mere semantics.
#4: Becoming a Christian means having your sins forgiven
- Reasoning; Our past sins may be forgiven, but if that’s all salvation is then our present and future remain hopeless. We must see not only our old selves as dead with Christ on the cross but our new selves as alive with Him in His resurrection.
- Rebuttal; none needed, here McVey understands the gospel clearly
#5: Our sins are under the blood of Jesus
- Reasoning; Jesus came to take our sins away not merely cover them. Our sins past, present and future are completely gone as though they were never there.
- Rebuttal this is an issue of semantics, and the language of blood covering our sins is Biblical so what’s the problem? Furthermore, here McVey’s system seems to imply that sanctification isn’t necessary. Why should it matter whether I am living for Christ or not? As long as I have faith that Christ forgave my sins, I should be fine. McVey doesn’t seem to accept this conclusion, but its unclear how he avoids it. The proper response to my mind should be that forgiveness is not so clean cut. Rather sanctification and justification are more cyclical, where we daily repent of our sins because of the grace God has given us, He responds with more forgiveness and more grace. Faith, furthermore is not merely a belief that Christ has forgiven us of our sins but trusting God in doing what He has asked of us (see Hebrews 11 and James 2).
#6: Your greatest need is to love God more
- Reasoning; Its impossible for man by his own efforts to love God more. This is why the greatest commandment of the Law is to love God, the Law is meant to point us to our shortcomings and rebellion against God. Rather, the Christian should focus on how much God loves us (Ephesians 3:14-19).
- Rebuttal; Again, this is largely semantics. Nothing McVey says here negates the fact that we do need to love God more, so I really fail to see his point. What’s more, McVey sees a false dichotomy between our obligation to love God and our desire to do so. It is important to meditate on the love of God for us, and this should motivate us to love God more, but we should also still see loving God as our moral duty. One could argue that the point of salvation is to transform our desires to be conformed to the will of God.
#7: The answer to weak Christian Commitment is to rededicate your life to Christ
- Reasoning; McVey writes, “The problem with rededicating ourselves to Christ is self, which is really just another word for the self-sufficiency of the flesh. The essence of of religious flesh, as strange as it might seem, is our trying to live the Christian life.” Salvation doesn’t come by trying, it comes by trusting. See Matt 16:24 “For whoever wishes to come after Me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me.”
- Rebuttal; Again McVey makes the false dichotomy of making an effort to do something with trusting in Christ. McVey imagines that denying ourself means not only denying our selfish desires but our will to do what’s right! This is absolute nonsense, Matthew 16:24 is not saying that we need to stop trying to do good things, rather it is saying that in order to be good we must die to ourselves our own selfishness, our own life goals hopes and dreams for the hope and life that is in Christ. No where in scripture is it taught that this will be easy or won’t take any effort. Being dependent on God, believe it or not, takes a great deal of discipline, which is why discipline mentioned in Galatians as a fruit of the Spirit. Trusting in Christ means trusting that He will allow and fuel your efforts to be successful, not that He will make everything easy for you.
#8: The Holy Spirit convicts unbelievers of their sins
- Reasoning; At the cross, Christ’s atonement covered the sins of all men, including unbelievers. Thus the only sin that has not been covered is the unforgivable sin; unbelief. McVey then quotes John 16:8 “He [Holy Spirit] when He coms, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in me.” He argues here that the last phrase indicates that the true sin is unbelief and so no other sins must matter.
- Rebuttal; I’m starting to think McVey has been smoking some serious joints because I can’t otherwise see how he got to this view of the atonement. Many passages make no sense if all our sins have already been forgiven before we become Christians (e.g. Acts 3). On this view, unbelief isn’t the core issue as McVey contends but the only issue preventing someone from being saved. When it comes to John 16:8 it seems clear to me that the author is arguing that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of their sins because they need to believe and follow Christ in order to be forgiven of those sins. All this being said, it is true that unbelief or unfaithfulness to God is the core issue of our sinfulness before Him.
#11: Your Greatest Responsibility is to serve God
- Reasoning; This idea is riddled with legalism. We have no duty to serve God because He needs nothing from us. We serve God out of a desire to do so and a love for Him. God is not like the pagan gods of old, demanding things from us while threatening to punish us. We should not serve God out of fear because that is the very essence of what paganism got wrong. McVey states that while God doesn’t need you He does desire you as His bride.
- Rebuttal; Complete and utter nonsense! McVey has obviously never truly read Acts, the epistles, James, 1 John or pretty much any of the New Testament! I mean seriously man how do you come to this conclusion? Look at the story of Ananius and Saphira, did God just love them and give them a hug even though they sinned against Him? No, He struck them dead. Or look at Psalm 11:10 or Proverbs 9:10 where the fear of the Lord is the basis of obeying Him. God makes clear in scripture over and over again that while He is a loving God, He takes right and wrong seriously such that if you screw up royally you can expect there to be consequences. For the Christian, these consequences might not be eternal, but they will include the taking away of various blessings. Such a picture of God might offend our modern sensibilities, but that doesn’t make it any less scriptural. God not needing anything from us is likewise irrelevant to the fact that He deserves our worship and devotion by virtue of who He is. And yes, despite what virtually every corporation and private company wants you to believe you can have a right to something without needing it for your very existence. We obviously have a duty to obey God but having this duty doesn’t not mean we must perform that duty with a reluctant and begrudging attitude as McVey seems to think. You have a duty to take care of your family, does that mean you have to hate doing that?
- McVey writes, “…there is a serious problem with someone’s conception of God when He is seen as an employer or master whose interest in us is based on what we have to offer to the relationship.” Actually yes that is how God relates to you and me. He is our master, this is why Paul refers to himself as a bondservant or slave of Christ at the beginning of almost all of his letters. God is using you and using me to accomplish goals, He is not interested in just getting to know us, He wants us to perform our intended purpose and that is not simply being in relationship with Him it is being His representatives on earth, fulfilling our responsibilities as stewards of creation and the body of Christ. By the way, scripture never ever ever describes individual Christians as the brides of Christ, as though He were polygamous. Rather, the Church as a whole is the bride of Christ in the sense that Christ is fully committed to the Church in love, even to the point of death.
#14 We need to focus on overcoming our sins
- Reasoning; focusing on our sins is the root of the problem, because that implies that we are the ones eliminating our sins. Instead we must focus on Christ and He will direct us away from sin.
- Rebuttle; Not much rebuttal here is needed as McVey captures the central aspect of repentance; turning away from our sins toward Christ. Even still, as we focus on Christ we will become more aware of the Will of God and thus more aware of how we are failing to obey it.
#15 We need to continually ask God to forgive our sins
- Reasoning; We don’t need to continually ask for forgiveness for sins because all forgiveness was finished on the cross. To feel required to ask forgiveness daily is to add to Christ’s work.
- Rebuttal; Well on this system of thinking its unclear why we have to ask for forgiveness at all because to do so would still be to say that we need to do something before Christ’s work on the cross takes effect in us. God forbid McVey ever read Matthew 6:14 or Hebrews 10:26 or Acts 26:18.
#16 When we do wrong we are out of fellowship with God
- Reasoning; The story of the prodigal son portrays the Fathers attitude towards us when we sin. Though the son rebelled against the father and betrayed him, the father always held a loving attitude towards the son and when the son returned the father was only glad that he had his son back. This shows that sinning as a Christian doesn’t cause us to lose fellowship with God as God always holds the same attitude towards us.
- Rebuttal; This story is meant to express that returning to God means not continuing to live in sin. If we are serving sin and not God, by definition we have no "fellowship" with God as our master. Only when we return to God can we be forgiven, but as the story points out we can always turn back to God and at no point will he reject us in doing such. Again McVey is letting modern romanticized sentiments of love cloud his judgment.
#17 You should live by the teachings of the Bible
- Reasoning; The Bible isn’t a moral code by which to live righteously. Rather it points to Christ who is our righteousness. Living righteously has nothing to do with how we live but how Christ lives in us.
- Rebuttal; Right because that totally explains what the majority of Paul’s teaching is ethical instruction. Just read Ephesians, Paul doesn’t even seem to clearly distinguish between his Christology and his views that we need to live ethical lives. Christ’s righteousness in us doesn’t mean that we have some abstract ethereal certificate allowing us to get into heaven, it means that now we belong to Christ and must obey Him but also that our obedience is allowed, motivated and driven by Christ. Thus our obedience to Christ just is our participation in salvation as both an event and a process. There is a cycle to it, where our obedience is an expression of God’s grace and provokes more of it. The reason why Paul pits works against faith so much I think is not because He believes we have no obligations to God but that we have no power in ourselves. The kind of work He is speaking of relies on the wisdom of man and self-reliance. Its the attitude of “if you want something done right, do it yourself.” Furthermore such works are done with selfish intentions, they are done only to gain our own righteousness and our own honor and glory. The pharisaic traditions and Jewish traditions as a whole were based on this system; you were responsible for your own fate. But Christ wasn’t saying this went to far, but not far enough. Its not enough for you to give everything for your own salvation, you must give everything up for the salvation of others. Our responsibility as the Church is to bring the redemption of Christ to all humanity and all creation. This cannot be done by our works but the work of Christ in us which then sends us out to do it.
#19 God is disappointed in you when you do wrong
- Reasoning; Disappointment implies that God didn’t know you were going to sin. God always knows you are going to sin, therefore God is never disappointed when you do. Disappointment implies God expects you to do something, God’s grace precludes Him from expecting anything from us, therefore God is never disappointed in us. McVey (at this point a blatant heretic) writes, “Its important to be crystal clear about one thing. That question implies that the main concern God has for you is that you live a moral life — and nothing could be further from the truth. That's the big thing in religion, but its not what God is focused on at all, Your Father wants you to know Him in intimacy. That’s the very essence of salvation (see John 17:3).”
- REBUTTAL; Ok its become clear at this point that McVey is a heretic, he’s crossed the boundary, no Christian tradition has ever held to such a ludicrous idea as what McVey vomits up onto the pages of his book. McVey seriously believes that morality is really just a burden that God arbitrarily placed on us temporarily but that Christ’s death somehow rightly relieved us of. That’s not even a coherent belief let alone a Biblical one! McVey even states, “What does God expect us to do? The answer might surprise you, Nothing! Why? Because God realizes we are incapable of doing anything on our own.” If that’s true its really inexplicable why God placed expectations on us from the beginning, it also makes no sense why Christ had to die as a substitute for our sins. If God expects nothing from us then why are we here? What is our purpose? A being can’t have purpose without expectations! Aha McVey says our purpose is to know God “intimately” whatever that means. So basically the entire purpose of our existence is merely to have conversations with God? Which means what? To talk with Him about the weather? Relationships only work if there is an intended end to them. No one would say our purpose in life is simply to get to know each other better, that makes no sense! And then there’s the fact that none of what McVey has said makes sense given this new revelation. At best here McVey is uttering nonsense but at worst he has bought in completely the Schleiermachers understanding of Christianity as experiencing God relationally (Shleiermacher denied most doctrines of Christianity by the way, including the atonement, the Trinity and the inspiration of scripture).
- Ok now that I got that rant out of the way McVey also makes a major in his analysis of disappointment. Namely, no disappointment does not imply surprise or lack of knowledge. Disappointment can also merely connote disapproval, and if McVey seriously believes that God doesn’t disapprove of our sinful actions or grow in anger at us for committing them then he’s obviously never read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the Psalms, or any of the prophets, or pretty much any book in the Old Testament.
- Reasoning; this reasoning comes from Matt 6:14-15 where Christ Himself states; "For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.” Christ was speaking during the Old Covenant, however, not from the New which He would establish at the cross. Hebrews 9:16-17 states, “in the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living.”
- Rebuttle; Sooo basically the reasoning is the covenant Christ made only took effect after his death on the cross so we should just disregard any of Christ’s teachings that seem to imply that works are necessary for salvation. This seems extremely arbitrary, for why should we think that Christ is not in fact establishing the new covenant in his teachings that place severe obligations on his audience? Indeed, its difficult to think of a sermon Jesus gave that didn’t include calls to repentance and holy living. So basically, if McVey is right, we should disregard the majority of Christ’s teachings. But McVey also contends that if Christ’s teaching in Matthew 6 applies to the New Covenant, then our forgiveness of others adds to the work of Christ. I would merely say that if your views of the atonement require you to disregard the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, something is wrong with your theory of atonement, not Jesus Christ.
I could continue on from here but I hope you get my point. Pastors and ministry leaders like McVey just don’t think things through. They make hasty judgments given emotional sentiments and faulty reasoning. McVey has made errors on the most basic level of analysis. While at some points he actually has his head on straight and gives a good explanation of the gospel (Many of those were the ones I skipped over) most of the time he has his head in the sand and can’t see the forest through the trees! I use this as an example, because I see this sort of thinking “Christianity isn’t a religion its a relationship” all throughout the Church. It has spawned more problems than I can count, and its effect seems to be getting worse. The central of these is probably that if Christianity is solely a relationship with God involving mainly prayer, worship services and scriptural devotionals then there really is nothing coming in the future except more of the same in heaven. Ethics, the mission of the Church and all promises of Christ to return again in glory are moot on such a system. All that matters are your feelings toward God and His feelings toward you.
#4: Becoming a Christian means having your sins forgiven
- Reasoning; Our past sins may be forgiven, but if that’s all salvation is then our present and future remain hopeless. We must see not only our old selves as dead with Christ on the cross but our new selves as alive with Him in His resurrection.
- Rebuttal; none needed, here McVey understands the gospel clearly
#5: Our sins are under the blood of Jesus
- Reasoning; Jesus came to take our sins away not merely cover them. Our sins past, present and future are completely gone as though they were never there.
- Rebuttal this is an issue of semantics, and the language of blood covering our sins is Biblical so what’s the problem? Furthermore, here McVey’s system seems to imply that sanctification isn’t necessary. Why should it matter whether I am living for Christ or not? As long as I have faith that Christ forgave my sins, I should be fine. McVey doesn’t seem to accept this conclusion, but its unclear how he avoids it. The proper response to my mind should be that forgiveness is not so clean cut. Rather sanctification and justification are more cyclical, where we daily repent of our sins because of the grace God has given us, He responds with more forgiveness and more grace. Faith, furthermore is not merely a belief that Christ has forgiven us of our sins but trusting God in doing what He has asked of us (see Hebrews 11 and James 2).
#6: Your greatest need is to love God more
- Reasoning; Its impossible for man by his own efforts to love God more. This is why the greatest commandment of the Law is to love God, the Law is meant to point us to our shortcomings and rebellion against God. Rather, the Christian should focus on how much God loves us (Ephesians 3:14-19).
- Rebuttal; Again, this is largely semantics. Nothing McVey says here negates the fact that we do need to love God more, so I really fail to see his point. What’s more, McVey sees a false dichotomy between our obligation to love God and our desire to do so. It is important to meditate on the love of God for us, and this should motivate us to love God more, but we should also still see loving God as our moral duty. One could argue that the point of salvation is to transform our desires to be conformed to the will of God.
#7: The answer to weak Christian Commitment is to rededicate your life to Christ
- Reasoning; McVey writes, “The problem with rededicating ourselves to Christ is self, which is really just another word for the self-sufficiency of the flesh. The essence of of religious flesh, as strange as it might seem, is our trying to live the Christian life.” Salvation doesn’t come by trying, it comes by trusting. See Matt 16:24 “For whoever wishes to come after Me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me.”
- Rebuttal; Again McVey makes the false dichotomy of making an effort to do something with trusting in Christ. McVey imagines that denying ourself means not only denying our selfish desires but our will to do what’s right! This is absolute nonsense, Matthew 16:24 is not saying that we need to stop trying to do good things, rather it is saying that in order to be good we must die to ourselves our own selfishness, our own life goals hopes and dreams for the hope and life that is in Christ. No where in scripture is it taught that this will be easy or won’t take any effort. Being dependent on God, believe it or not, takes a great deal of discipline, which is why discipline mentioned in Galatians as a fruit of the Spirit. Trusting in Christ means trusting that He will allow and fuel your efforts to be successful, not that He will make everything easy for you.
#8: The Holy Spirit convicts unbelievers of their sins
- Reasoning; At the cross, Christ’s atonement covered the sins of all men, including unbelievers. Thus the only sin that has not been covered is the unforgivable sin; unbelief. McVey then quotes John 16:8 “He [Holy Spirit] when He coms, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in me.” He argues here that the last phrase indicates that the true sin is unbelief and so no other sins must matter.
- Rebuttal; I’m starting to think McVey has been smoking some serious joints because I can’t otherwise see how he got to this view of the atonement. Many passages make no sense if all our sins have already been forgiven before we become Christians (e.g. Acts 3). On this view, unbelief isn’t the core issue as McVey contends but the only issue preventing someone from being saved. When it comes to John 16:8 it seems clear to me that the author is arguing that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of their sins because they need to believe and follow Christ in order to be forgiven of those sins. All this being said, it is true that unbelief or unfaithfulness to God is the core issue of our sinfulness before Him.
#11: Your Greatest Responsibility is to serve God
- Reasoning; This idea is riddled with legalism. We have no duty to serve God because He needs nothing from us. We serve God out of a desire to do so and a love for Him. God is not like the pagan gods of old, demanding things from us while threatening to punish us. We should not serve God out of fear because that is the very essence of what paganism got wrong. McVey states that while God doesn’t need you He does desire you as His bride.
- Rebuttal; Complete and utter nonsense! McVey has obviously never truly read Acts, the epistles, James, 1 John or pretty much any of the New Testament! I mean seriously man how do you come to this conclusion? Look at the story of Ananius and Saphira, did God just love them and give them a hug even though they sinned against Him? No, He struck them dead. Or look at Psalm 11:10 or Proverbs 9:10 where the fear of the Lord is the basis of obeying Him. God makes clear in scripture over and over again that while He is a loving God, He takes right and wrong seriously such that if you screw up royally you can expect there to be consequences. For the Christian, these consequences might not be eternal, but they will include the taking away of various blessings. Such a picture of God might offend our modern sensibilities, but that doesn’t make it any less scriptural. God not needing anything from us is likewise irrelevant to the fact that He deserves our worship and devotion by virtue of who He is. And yes, despite what virtually every corporation and private company wants you to believe you can have a right to something without needing it for your very existence. We obviously have a duty to obey God but having this duty doesn’t not mean we must perform that duty with a reluctant and begrudging attitude as McVey seems to think. You have a duty to take care of your family, does that mean you have to hate doing that?
- McVey writes, “…there is a serious problem with someone’s conception of God when He is seen as an employer or master whose interest in us is based on what we have to offer to the relationship.” Actually yes that is how God relates to you and me. He is our master, this is why Paul refers to himself as a bondservant or slave of Christ at the beginning of almost all of his letters. God is using you and using me to accomplish goals, He is not interested in just getting to know us, He wants us to perform our intended purpose and that is not simply being in relationship with Him it is being His representatives on earth, fulfilling our responsibilities as stewards of creation and the body of Christ. By the way, scripture never ever ever describes individual Christians as the brides of Christ, as though He were polygamous. Rather, the Church as a whole is the bride of Christ in the sense that Christ is fully committed to the Church in love, even to the point of death.
#14 We need to focus on overcoming our sins
- Reasoning; focusing on our sins is the root of the problem, because that implies that we are the ones eliminating our sins. Instead we must focus on Christ and He will direct us away from sin.
- Rebuttle; Not much rebuttal here is needed as McVey captures the central aspect of repentance; turning away from our sins toward Christ. Even still, as we focus on Christ we will become more aware of the Will of God and thus more aware of how we are failing to obey it.
#15 We need to continually ask God to forgive our sins
- Reasoning; We don’t need to continually ask for forgiveness for sins because all forgiveness was finished on the cross. To feel required to ask forgiveness daily is to add to Christ’s work.
- Rebuttal; Well on this system of thinking its unclear why we have to ask for forgiveness at all because to do so would still be to say that we need to do something before Christ’s work on the cross takes effect in us. God forbid McVey ever read Matthew 6:14 or Hebrews 10:26 or Acts 26:18.
#16 When we do wrong we are out of fellowship with God
- Reasoning; The story of the prodigal son portrays the Fathers attitude towards us when we sin. Though the son rebelled against the father and betrayed him, the father always held a loving attitude towards the son and when the son returned the father was only glad that he had his son back. This shows that sinning as a Christian doesn’t cause us to lose fellowship with God as God always holds the same attitude towards us.
- Rebuttal; This story is meant to express that returning to God means not continuing to live in sin. If we are serving sin and not God, by definition we have no "fellowship" with God as our master. Only when we return to God can we be forgiven, but as the story points out we can always turn back to God and at no point will he reject us in doing such. Again McVey is letting modern romanticized sentiments of love cloud his judgment.
#17 You should live by the teachings of the Bible
- Reasoning; The Bible isn’t a moral code by which to live righteously. Rather it points to Christ who is our righteousness. Living righteously has nothing to do with how we live but how Christ lives in us.
- Rebuttal; Right because that totally explains what the majority of Paul’s teaching is ethical instruction. Just read Ephesians, Paul doesn’t even seem to clearly distinguish between his Christology and his views that we need to live ethical lives. Christ’s righteousness in us doesn’t mean that we have some abstract ethereal certificate allowing us to get into heaven, it means that now we belong to Christ and must obey Him but also that our obedience is allowed, motivated and driven by Christ. Thus our obedience to Christ just is our participation in salvation as both an event and a process. There is a cycle to it, where our obedience is an expression of God’s grace and provokes more of it. The reason why Paul pits works against faith so much I think is not because He believes we have no obligations to God but that we have no power in ourselves. The kind of work He is speaking of relies on the wisdom of man and self-reliance. Its the attitude of “if you want something done right, do it yourself.” Furthermore such works are done with selfish intentions, they are done only to gain our own righteousness and our own honor and glory. The pharisaic traditions and Jewish traditions as a whole were based on this system; you were responsible for your own fate. But Christ wasn’t saying this went to far, but not far enough. Its not enough for you to give everything for your own salvation, you must give everything up for the salvation of others. Our responsibility as the Church is to bring the redemption of Christ to all humanity and all creation. This cannot be done by our works but the work of Christ in us which then sends us out to do it.
#19 God is disappointed in you when you do wrong
- Reasoning; Disappointment implies that God didn’t know you were going to sin. God always knows you are going to sin, therefore God is never disappointed when you do. Disappointment implies God expects you to do something, God’s grace precludes Him from expecting anything from us, therefore God is never disappointed in us. McVey (at this point a blatant heretic) writes, “Its important to be crystal clear about one thing. That question implies that the main concern God has for you is that you live a moral life — and nothing could be further from the truth. That's the big thing in religion, but its not what God is focused on at all, Your Father wants you to know Him in intimacy. That’s the very essence of salvation (see John 17:3).”
- REBUTTAL; Ok its become clear at this point that McVey is a heretic, he’s crossed the boundary, no Christian tradition has ever held to such a ludicrous idea as what McVey vomits up onto the pages of his book. McVey seriously believes that morality is really just a burden that God arbitrarily placed on us temporarily but that Christ’s death somehow rightly relieved us of. That’s not even a coherent belief let alone a Biblical one! McVey even states, “What does God expect us to do? The answer might surprise you, Nothing! Why? Because God realizes we are incapable of doing anything on our own.” If that’s true its really inexplicable why God placed expectations on us from the beginning, it also makes no sense why Christ had to die as a substitute for our sins. If God expects nothing from us then why are we here? What is our purpose? A being can’t have purpose without expectations! Aha McVey says our purpose is to know God “intimately” whatever that means. So basically the entire purpose of our existence is merely to have conversations with God? Which means what? To talk with Him about the weather? Relationships only work if there is an intended end to them. No one would say our purpose in life is simply to get to know each other better, that makes no sense! And then there’s the fact that none of what McVey has said makes sense given this new revelation. At best here McVey is uttering nonsense but at worst he has bought in completely the Schleiermachers understanding of Christianity as experiencing God relationally (Shleiermacher denied most doctrines of Christianity by the way, including the atonement, the Trinity and the inspiration of scripture).
- Ok now that I got that rant out of the way McVey also makes a major in his analysis of disappointment. Namely, no disappointment does not imply surprise or lack of knowledge. Disappointment can also merely connote disapproval, and if McVey seriously believes that God doesn’t disapprove of our sinful actions or grow in anger at us for committing them then he’s obviously never read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the Psalms, or any of the prophets, or pretty much any book in the Old Testament.
- Also on John 17:3 it states “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” The Greek word for know is “genosko” which simply means to perceive and understand, though in some contexts it can indicate sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. In semitic culture to know something as true or to know a person as they are is to live according to that knowledge. For the 1st century Jew any thought that is not matched with action is a vein thought. In other words, if you claim to know God but do not live according to that knowledge (aka obey God) then you do not really know God. Intentions must be met with action otherwise those intentions are superficial at best and lies at worst. See 1 John for examples of this reasoning.
#43 If you don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive you- Reasoning; this reasoning comes from Matt 6:14-15 where Christ Himself states; "For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.” Christ was speaking during the Old Covenant, however, not from the New which He would establish at the cross. Hebrews 9:16-17 states, “in the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living.”
- Rebuttle; Sooo basically the reasoning is the covenant Christ made only took effect after his death on the cross so we should just disregard any of Christ’s teachings that seem to imply that works are necessary for salvation. This seems extremely arbitrary, for why should we think that Christ is not in fact establishing the new covenant in his teachings that place severe obligations on his audience? Indeed, its difficult to think of a sermon Jesus gave that didn’t include calls to repentance and holy living. So basically, if McVey is right, we should disregard the majority of Christ’s teachings. But McVey also contends that if Christ’s teaching in Matthew 6 applies to the New Covenant, then our forgiveness of others adds to the work of Christ. I would merely say that if your views of the atonement require you to disregard the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, something is wrong with your theory of atonement, not Jesus Christ.
I could continue on from here but I hope you get my point. Pastors and ministry leaders like McVey just don’t think things through. They make hasty judgments given emotional sentiments and faulty reasoning. McVey has made errors on the most basic level of analysis. While at some points he actually has his head on straight and gives a good explanation of the gospel (Many of those were the ones I skipped over) most of the time he has his head in the sand and can’t see the forest through the trees! I use this as an example, because I see this sort of thinking “Christianity isn’t a religion its a relationship” all throughout the Church. It has spawned more problems than I can count, and its effect seems to be getting worse. The central of these is probably that if Christianity is solely a relationship with God involving mainly prayer, worship services and scriptural devotionals then there really is nothing coming in the future except more of the same in heaven. Ethics, the mission of the Church and all promises of Christ to return again in glory are moot on such a system. All that matters are your feelings toward God and His feelings toward you.
