Living In Grey

I made this chart to help explain to someone my definition of Systematic Theology. It is not a magnificent or thought-provoking chart by any means. I just made it to help convey what I wanted to explain.

They way I define Systematic Theology is that it is compromised of four broad, key components. Those components are God, Scripture, Philosophy, and Experience. Each component affects how one views the other three components. For example, your experiences help you draw up preconceived notions of who you think God is. So when you come to Scripture to understand who God is, you read Scripture with these notions in mind. This affects how you interpret Scripture which, in turn, affects your understanding of who God is. This is why in the chart, there are all those arrows bouncing off each component.

Think of Systematic Theology this way. You are building a house and you lay the four cornerstones. These stones are important in building a supportive structure to your house. You label each cornerstone with either the name God, Scripture, Philosophy, or Experience. You place a brick, and on that brick is a thought or a question. Then the next brick that you place on top of it is labeled with the response to the thought or question that was on the previous brick. Then, you place a brick on top of that one and it has another thought or question, because of the response on the previous brick. This pattern repeats, until you finally complete your house. The house represents your theology and the differently labeled brick make up the support for your theology. This support is grounded in the foundation of God, Scripture, Philosophy, and Experience.

So that is how I define Systematic Theology. Granted, more could be added to the chart I assume, but I do not know what else there would be to add. I am open to ideas and suggestions though.

While browsing through the news today, I came across this article entitled “U.K. Job Office Apologizes for Anti-Jedi Discrimination.” Now being a Star Wars fan I, naturally, clicked this article and began to read it. Basically, a man dressed as a Jedi was thrown out of the job center, because he refused to remove his hood. You can read the full article here:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/17/uk-job-office-apologizes-anti-jedi-discrimination/

This is not even the craziest part of the article. The craziest part is that there is an actual link to the International Church of Jediism! Before you scoff at the notion of a church revolving its beliefs around a fictitious movie, I’d like to point out what exactly they believe. On their website (link to website is at the bottom of this blog), they have a link to their doctrine. This is what they would like to promote:

1.) “There is one all powerful force that binds the universe together.”
2.) “There are 2 sides to the force, the dark side and the light side.”
3.) “Good and evil are only axioms of the all powerful and unifying force. The force contains all that is good and all that is bad.”

In retrospect, one must ask how this is any different than any other religion. Many believe in an “all powerful force” that is some kind of deity. Many, if not everyone, believe in the powers of good & evil, and many religions have their views on where good & evil came from. Jediism seems very in tune with many religious beliefs. However, I think that Jediism does more harm for Christianity, and organized religion in general, than it does good.

The members of the Jedi Church know that their belief system stems from a fictitious movie. They will whole-heartedly admit this truth! However, they say their concepts and ideals are “innate truths”, things that their followers have always known to be true. They would say that Star Wars gave them the names and terminology to explain something they’ve known to be true, but did not know how to express it. This is how the Jedi Church explains it:

“The sun existed before it was given a name, and it could be revered as God, however, when the sun finally had a human name, it could be written about and communicated with others. The Jedi religion is like the Sun, it existed before a popular movie gave it a name, and now that it has a name, people all over the world can share their experiences of the Jedi religion, here in the Jedi Church.”

It is true that the sun existed before it was given an official name. Unlike the sun, there was a name for the “one all powerful force that binds the universe together” and that force is named Yahweh. The concept of God is nothing new. Documents have shown that over a span of thousands of years, many intelligent people have postulated the existence of God. Followers of Jediism have always had a name for their “all powerful force.” Their problem was that they did not want to believe in it. They wanted to believe in something different.

Another point that the Jedi Church makes about religion in general is that religious texts are “merely words on paper, with no ability to confirm [their] authenticity.” They also say that, “many religions claim to speak the word of God, but the truth is they are only the written words of prophets or followers of the religion. There is no way to prove or deny that was written was the word of God.”

Their claim that there is no way to prove or deny any religious text is the written word of God is true. A Christian cannot prove with absolute certainty that the Bible is the written word of God. Neither can a Muslim or anyone of a belief system that claims their religious texts are the written word of God. But why do we have to be absolutely certain? The fact is we cannot prove with absolutely certainty that the Bible is the Word of God, but we can prove without a shadow of doubt that it is the Word of God. For example, we have Old Testament and New Testament texts that are hundreds of years a part in terms of when they were written and they are 95% the same. The 5% of errors are mostly minor grammar mishaps, such as punctuation and spelling errors. What does this prove? What this proves is that over hundreds of years, these texts have been translated extremely accurately and that the theme of the message is still the same despite the difference in age. There are also a number of archaeological and historical evidence to support the truth of the Bible (i.e. “House of David” Inscription, Jehoiachin’s Ration Tablets, Ossuaries, Dead Sea Scrolls, Masoretic Texts, the Gnostic Gospels, etc.). We also have philosophical arguments to support the belief in God (i.e. The Kalam Cosmological Argument, The Ontological Argument, The Moral Argument, etc.). We even have science to help support the existence of God (i.e. Irreducibly Complex Machines, the Cosmic Constants, etc.). I say all this to say that though we may not be able to confirm with absolute certainty that the Bible is the authentic Word of God, we can, however, prove without a shadow of doubt that this is the Word of God, because we have plenty of evidence to support our belief.

To conclude, the concepts and beliefs the Jedi Church are activists for are nothing new. These things have been around for centuries. The Jedi Church wants to embrace these concepts and beliefs in a different way, but they have no evidence to support their belief system. They even know that what they believe is false and that their ideas originated from a science-fiction movie! The Jedi Church makes Christianity, and organized religion in general, look like a joke and that religion is nothing more than ideas surrounded by myth, superstition, and fantasy. It will be a sad day when anything can be a religion, even if it has absolutely nothing to support the claims, and with the rise of the Jedi Church, that day may not be too far away.

To read more about the Jedi Church, click the following link: http://www.jedichurch.org/

Last night I killed a roach. Nothing else…just a roach. This is nothing strange or unusual for most people, because most people find roaches disgusting. I am one of those people. Roaches are not like kittens. When you see a roach, you don’t want to pick it up and pat its little thorax and say, “Oh what a cute little roachy you are!” When you see a roach, you probably want to kill the creepy bugger. That’s what I did. I killed it, and I felt a little bad afterwards for killing it.

I guess in the hierarchy of importance, animals are always put behind humans. If we run over a raccoon accidently, we don’t worry or feel too bad because it is just a raccoon. If we beat a dog because we have had a bad day, we don’t worry or feel too bad because it is just a dog. If we cut the fin off a shark and throw it back in the ocean, we don’t worry or feel too bad because it is just a shark. Some might say, “Who cares? They are JUST animals and not humans.” I guess in some people’s minds, they do not believe that animals feel pain; that they are incapable of displaying emotions; that they are soulless beings who have no hope in any way. But is this true? Are animals really soulless?

I do not see why we have to think animals are soulless. Granted, I do not have a thorough understanding of metaphysics and different concepts of souls, but I think it should not be considered unreasonable to believe in the possibility that animals have souls. However, I do not want to get into a discourse about metaphysics and souls, but I would rather take a more practical approach. In Matthew 6:26-27, Jesus states, “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” In context, Jesus is letting his audience know that they should not store up things on earth, but should work towards storing up things in heaven. Therefore, they need not worry, because just as God provides for birds, he too shall provide for his children who are of more value. Though we are of more value to God, it does not mean that He does not value his other creations (i.e. animals) at all. I think at the least, this passage gives us a strong hint that God cares for his other creations, and that He values them in some way.

My fiancé was telling me a story about how she saw a dead raccoon on the side of the road at her apartment complex. The raccoon had been hit by a car apparently. She said there was a living raccoon next to the dead one, and it kept nudging at it as if to say, “Get up.” My fiancé was heartbroken at the sight of this and told me that, “All that poor raccoon was doing was trying to live and now it is dead.” Animals are like us in a sense, in that we are all trying to live. Bad things happen to animals, and bad things happen to humans. Animals deal with emotions such as joy, fear, sadness, and anger, just like humans. No animal wants to feel pain or die an undeserving death, and neither do humans. I may have no proof, as of right now, that there is sufficient evidence to believe that animals have a soul; however, I think Scripture paints a picture of a loving God who cares for all of His creations, humans and animals alike whether they have a soul or not.

To conclude, I think we should look at Genesis 1:26, which is where God tells man to rule over and take care of His creation. This was the first command given to man and one that we should still obey to this day. In light of this, we have no just reason to mistreat, abuse, or unnecessarily kill any creature…whether that creature is a kitten or a roach. After all, they, like us, are just trying to live.

God and his relationship with time is something that I find very interesting. At the heart of this, are the questions, “What does God know?” and “How does He know it?” I finally finished the book entitled The God Who Risks by John Sanders, and I found it to be a very interesting and thought-provoking book. Near the end of the book, he talks about the idea of “simple foreknowledge” and offers two different views. This article will focus on these two views.

First, we should define what simple foreknowledge is. In the book, John Sanders defines it as, “prior to creation, God had a noetic big bang by which he acquired comprehensive direct vision of every single act that libertarian free creatures would actually do in this world.” It should be noted that John Sanders is a proponent for Open Theism, which is a theology that revolves around the idea of God choosing not to know the future exhaustively. I believe that Sanders wants to stay away from the idea that God knows all things exhaustively, because then it makes God out to be the author of the sins and evil that we commit. However, Sanders does agree that there are some things that God just knows and he must reconcile how God knows these things. Sanders talks about two views in his book that try to answer the question, “How does God know what He knows?” They are the Complete Simple Foreknowledge (CSF) view and Incremental Simple Foreknowledge (ISF) view.

According to Sanders, he defines CSF as “God provisioned before the creation of the world absolutely everything that will occur from beginning to end.” For example, I am an engaged man and God knew this before I even became engaged. Not only did He know I would be engaged, but He also knew when I would be engaged, who I would be engaged to, where I would be when I got engaged, and all the circumstances leading up to and surrounding my engagement. In CSF, God acquires all of this knowledge at once. Unfortunately for CSF, Sanders does not agree with it (who didn’t see that coming?) and he points out some interesting flaws in CSF. First in CSF, God does not prevision what might occur, but what must occur. Divine foreknowledge, by definition, cannot be wrong. If God knows it is going to happen like this, then it must happen how God knows it will happen. The problem with this is if God knows something is going to happen, he cannot change it…he cannot intervene in human history. Some may say that this is not a bad thing or that they are fine in believing in a God who cannot change or intervene for us; however, Sanders makes an interesting point and this is the second thing I want to focus on. Sanders says that, “If a God with CSF possess foreknowledge of his own actions, then the problem is to explain how the foreknowledge can be the basis for the actions when it already includes the actions.” He elaborates more on this point by saying, “Such a deity would then know what he is going to do before deciding what to do. God would learn of his own future actions. But that seems to imply that a script has been written and even God is captive to it. A God with CSF would be unable to plan, anticipate, or even decide – he would simply know. This seems to call the divine freedom into question, making God a prisoner of his own foreknowledge, lacking perfect freedom.” To me, this makes sense. If one holds to the idea that God has known before the beginning what we are going to do, then we must do. Just like us then, if God knows before the beginning what He is going to do, then He must do. CSF makes the idea of God’s foreknowledge greater than God Himself, because He is restricted to what He must do by His own foreknowledge. Nobody, I think, wants to say that God a prisoner of His own foreknowledge, so Sanders offers us another option, that option being ISF.

“When God is foreseeing the future he only sees parts of it at a time – not the complete whole at once as in CSF – and learns what will happen in the future incrementally or step by step.” This is how Sanders defines ISF. Think of it like this: God is watching a tape of the future and at certain points he stops the tape to interject what He wants to do. He then pushes play, and lets the tape continue to see how His creations will respond to what He has done. At another point, He stops the tape again. Based on how His creations responded, God decides what He will do and then pushes play. This metaphor I offer is extremely close to the way Sanders puts it in his book. So prior to the creation, this is how God comes to foreknow everything in human history. The benefits to ISF allow God to freely interject in history, it does not undermine God’s divine freedom, and it allows for us to have some form of freedom and decision making abilities. Still, I feel that there are questions and holes in this option. How does time progress if God is constantly stopping to interject and respond to creation? Granted, God acquires this foreknowledge before even creating; but if that is the case, how does He reach the point to create? Also, just like in CSF, it seems that God is imprisoned by His foreknowledge in this view as well. However, this view is more beneficial to having a genuine relationship with God. Still, once God knows what is going to happen, it must happen that way. If that is case, then what is God doing right now if we hold to believing in ISF? Is He just watching what He already knows?

Out of the two views, I think (as of right now) that ISF is the better option. ISF permits us to respond and to act, it takes away from God being the author of our sins and evil, and God is not totally imprisoned to His own foreknowledge. I am curious to know what other people think about these two views and what I have said. Do you agree with CSF or ISF? Why do you agree with one and not the other?

Genesis 3:15 is interpreted by many to be the first Messianic prophecy recorded in the Scriptures. Many believe that the serpent, either being Satan or possessed/influenced by Satan, tempts Eve into eating fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil and then giving some to her husband, Adam. When God decided to dish out punishment to the three that were involved in this treachery, he tells the serpent in Genesis 3:15 that “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heal.” People who interpret this as being a Messianic prophecy conclude that “her seed” is Jesus and “he [Jesus] will strike your head, and you [Satan] will strike his heal” is referring to how Jesus will deliver the defeating blow to Satan, whereas Satan will only deliver a weak blow that will not hinder the mission of Jesus. While this potentially may be true, let us look at it from a different perspective.

14 Then the LORD God said to the serpent:
Because you have done this,
you are cursed more than any livestock
and more than any wild animal.
You will move on your belly
and eat dust all the days of your life.

15 I will put hostility between you and the woman,
and between your seed and her seed.
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.

For contextual purposes, verse 14 begins with God cursing the serpent for what he has done. One would think that if Satan were involved in this deception, wouldn’t the curse be directed towards Satan? Instead we read no mention of Satan being, using, possessing, or manipulating the serpent to do his bidding. What we read is that a cunning serpent is being punished, because of it deceiving Adam & Eve. The verse concludes with what this curse consists of which is the snake being forced to slither on its belly and it will stay that way forever.

Verse 15 begins with God continuing what the serpent’s curse is. The verse mentions first, that God will put hostility between the serpent and the woman. The text continues and also adds that there will be hostility between the serpent’s seed and the woman’s seed. Let us define the terms “hostility” and “seed.” The term “hostility”, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is defined as 1a) deep-seated unusually mutual ill will; 1b) a hostile action; and 2) conflict, opposition, or resistance in thought or in principle. Either of these definitions will work in the context of Genesis 3:15. The term “seed” has many definitions, most of which involve plants. However, Merriam-Webster also defines seed as “progeny.” The definitions for “progeny” include 1a) children, descendants; 1b) offspring of plants or animals; 2) outcome, product; 3) body of followers, disciples, or successors. It is safe to say, that the term “seed” used in the context of Genesis 3:15 is talking about children or descendants. For the most part, seed is used through the Scriptures as a reference towards progeny. The question, though, is this: Is seed singular or plural?

The answer is that seed can be EITHER singular or plural depending on the context. Let us look at some examples in Scripture where the singular form of seed is used:

“And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.” (Gen. 4:25)

“And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed.” (Gen. 21:13)

Here some examples of the plural form of seed being used:

“And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you…” (Gen. 9:8-9)

“And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.” (Gen. 15:5)

“And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac.” (Joshua 24:3)

“And the LORD rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight.” (2 Kings 17:20)

“As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever. “ (Isa. 59:21)

The verses used are taken from the King James Version, however if one reads them in the Holman Christian Standard Bible and other modern translations, the term seed is used either to mean child, children, descendants, or offspring. So the usage of seed can be singular or plural depending on the context. When comparing the singular usage of seed verses the plural usage of seed, one can see that when seed is used singularly, the seed is specified (in the case of our examples, Seth and the son [Ishmael]). The majority of times, seed is used a plural sense. So what is my case? My case is that there is no specific reference to who the seed is of the woman, so there is strong reason to believe that seed in Genesis 3:15 is being used in its plural form. So who is the woman’s seed? Her seed is her children, her descendants. We have no reason to suspect that the woman’s seed is someone specific. The same can be said for the serpent’s seed. This, if true, then brings up an interesting thought. If the serpent is Satan, then who is Satan’s seed? If the serpent is being possessed or unwillingly manipulated by Satan, then why punish the serpent and the seed of the serpent? There is not to my knowledge, no sound answer to these questions if the proposed scenarios are true.

Then what is this hostility that is between the woman and the serpent and their seeds? It seems like there is just a mutual ill will towards each other. Genesis 1 paints of picture of man and beast living in harmony with man ruling over them. Adam does not need to hide or defend himself from the beasts that could potentially harm or devour him. After the fall, this harmony is shattered. Not only is there hostility between man and serpent, but man and all other beasts as well. Also, it seems like the majority of mankind has an intense disliking of snakes and I am sure that if snakes could still talk, then I think the majority would say they have an intense disliking of mankind.

If we go with the notion that “seed” is plural, then we must ask what do we do when verse 15 uses the masculine term “he”? He is, for the most part, a singular term that refers to a male. How then do we harmonize the text if “seed” is plural and “he” is singular? People who consider this a prophecy point to 2 things: The usage of “he” and that a woman is the only one who conceives the child; therefore, the “he” in question is pointing towards Jesus, and the fact that only the woman is mentioned to conceive points to the Virgin Mary. These may be true, but I think there are other options. Yes, the woman is the only one mentioned to conceive, but even back then people knew that it took a man and a woman to conceive. Why not use something like “their seed” instead of “her seed”? It should be noted though, that this is not the only place in Scripture where the author attributes offspring to just the woman (i.e. Genesis 16:10; 24:60). In the next verse, Gen. 3:16, the author tells us that God punishes Eve by intensifying her labor pains. The serpent’s punishment describes the enmity between its offspring and the woman’s offspring, Eve’s punishment focuses on her painful delivery of children, and Adam’s punishment makes no reference to offspring. I think it is possible that the only reason the author references the seed as “hers” is the fact that two verse down, we see her punishment be the painful delivery of her seed. The usage of “he” is odd and seems out of place. Even though “seed” is plural, I think that it is possible that “he” is pointing back to “seed.” For example, in Genesis 28:14 reads “Your offspring [plural] will be like the dust if the earth, and you [singular] will spread out toward the west, the east, the north, and the south.” While there is no specific usage of “he” being used to describe a plural term, I don’t think there is a specific reference with this “he.” It could be Jesus, but it could not be. The author has no idea of Jesus and we have no reason to suspect he does. If we look at just the first three chapters of Genesis, and maybe even the entire book of Genesis, the readers have no reason to think this passage is pointing towards a coming messiah. I think the usage of “he” and “you” in verse 15 are just general terms to describe the endless war these two wage on each other.

To conclude, I don’t think there is enough evidence to say that this is a Messianic Prophecy. The point of this post is not by any means to give empirical evidence that completely disproves Genesis 3:14-15 as a Messianic Prophecy; rather, it is to show that there is reasonable evidence to support a view that holds to this passage not being a prophecy of the coming Messiah. Still, I think Genesis 3:14-15 is just what the text makes it out to be, and that is the curse of a cunning animal and the hostility that there will always be between man and serpent.

Emotions are strange. They are something that I do not understand, especially my own personal feelings (we will also use the term “feelings” harmoniously with the term “emotions”). I always wonder, “Why we have them?” and “What good are they?” I think I am no closer to answering these questions than when I first started trying to understand emotions. Maybe emotions are something that the human mind can never fully grasp. Another thought that I have often pondered is, “What would the world be like without emotions?” Now many will be quick to say that we would be robots and that life may lose a lot of its value, but let’s not be so hasty. Instead of a world where what feels right seems to be the best choice, let us think of a world where logic takes precedence. In this world there would be no stupid choices or doing things because it feels right to us. We make the logical choice and choose the one that is best suited based on many variables (time, purpose, future effects, etc.). For example, in the movie I, Robot, Will Smith’s character, Del Spooner, has a car wreck which causes both cars to be slung into the river. The other car contains a 12 year old girl who seems to be the only one who survived the initial impact. Neither one can escape their vehicle and it appears that both are going to drown. However, a robot shows up and only has time to save one of them. The robot chooses to save Spooner, despite Spooner’s commands to save the girl instead of him. Spooner is saved, but the little girl ends up drowning. Why did the robot choose Spooner over the little girl and ignore the commands of Spooner? The reason is because Spooner had the better percentage of survival. The robot made the most logical choice and it is good he did, because had he not saved Spooner then no one would have been able to stop the robot apocalypse at the end of the movie. However, if the robot had listened to Spooner and saved the girl because Spooner felt like it is the right thing to do, then Spooner would have drowned and it is highly possible humanity would have become enslaved by robots at the end of the movie. If this scenario paints an accurate picture of logic being greater than feelings, then, as a theologian, I have to ask, “Would God be more efficient if He was without emotions?”

A problem does arise if we hold to the idea that God has no emotions. If we believe Scripture to contain infallible truths about God, then what do we do with all the passages that seem to show God displaying emotions? One idea is that we could say that all the statements that show God having emotions are anthropomorphisms. An anthropomorphism is where something is described as having a human form or human attributes. Emotions are an attribute of humanity. Someone who would agree with this would probably have to say that the authors believed God to be ineffable and that are mere emotions are the only words we can use to describe God in certain situations. The problem with this is two-fold: First, to say God is ineffable means that no human concept or word can apply to Him. If true, then this would severely limit what truths we could say about God, if anything. Second, if no human concept applies to Him, then we cannot really know Him so His Word appears useless to us. So why even bother communicating to us? Someone may argue that God has a logical reason for his actions, and this is all they probably could say.

What about Christ and the salvation He brings to all? Why would God do this, if He does not love us? Once again, one would have to say it is the most logical choice for Him to send His Son to die on a cross for the sins of the world. One would say that God’s logical reasoning is perfect and He does these things because of some benefit they bring, whatever that benefit may be. When it comes to the many questions that can be raised about an emotionless God, I think the only thing a person can appeal to is to use anthropomorphisms and God’s perfect logical reasoning as a defense. However, why can’t we say that because of who God is, He has perfect control over His emotions and uses them to make logical choices? I would say that there is nothing wrong with saying that God has perfect control over His emotions seeing as how He is God after all. However, saying that He uses them to make logical choices seems contradictory to me. For example, take the scene from I, Robot that was previously mentioned. Actually, we will change it up a bit. Let’s say that the robot still has its perfect logical skills, but we are also going to give it emotions that it has perfect control over as well. If we put this robot in the car wreck scene, it still cannot make a perfect choice that combines the two extremes. Either it will do what feels right and save the little girl, or it will make the logical choice and save Spooner. Granted of course, this robot is not God. Still, I think it is plausible to say that in some situations God could only do either what feels right or what is logically best if we hold to this idea.

So what do we say? Do we say that it is best for God to be emotionless? As I weigh all the idea and thoughts that come to my head, I would have to say no. I think the picture of God that is painted in Scripture shows an emotional God who out of his goodness and love created us to have a relationship with Him. He created us in His image, which results in some sort of personal connection that we have with Him. Also, He is the perfection of our attributes, which means we have a method of perceiving and understanding the qualities of God. Since He is the perfection of our attributes, then He perfectly controls His emotions and does not let them interfere with his judgment and decision making. It may even be possible that His emotions enhance His judgment and decision making.

An emotionless God seems like a cold, dead God. It seems that His logical reasons for providing salvation, amongst other things, would only benefit Himself. He would not be doing these things because He loves us…He would do these things because He only loves Himself. From my understand of Scripture and my personal experiences, I think that God is a God of emotions and logic who, out of His wisdom, love, and goodness, created us and provided salvation to all so that we may fellowship with Him and worship Him always.