Bill Wettler's Page

Religion or no religion, neurotics who respond to their shame and guilt by trying to compensate think they need to compensate because they think God expects them to.  Now the historical accounts we get from the gospel's DO teach that a harmonious relationship with God is conditional on our behavior. Both John and Jesus started their ministries by calling on people to repent.  Obviously, if we are not loving and obeying God, we are causing ourselves trouble as were the people Christ…

The resurrection showed that the one resurrected has power over life and death and helped substantiate the revelation that Christ was God. Hence what was said about him by eye witnesses was revelation.  More specifically, the written account of his life, was destined to be scripture because his life was the life of God incarnate.  Is a qualification needed here? Of course there is.  Anyone can write a so-called account of the life of Christ and that wouldn't be scripture much less revelatory…

The notion that Moses had introduced a religion that was all about how to earn God’s favor through strict adherence to a system of laws misses the point that the cultic animal sacrifice rituals for atonement or forgiveness were an integral part of that system precisely because there was no one who could do all that the law required.  The difficultly and hence inevitability of failure and hence need for forgiveness did not arise because any one law or command was formidable, but rather…

The book of Job teaches us two things--one, that we are never to consider God obligated to protect us from evil; and two, that people, like Job’s comforters, can and do loose favor with God for making the mistake of thinking God would be unjust to abandon us to evil.  No one should fail to understand, as Job’s false comforters had, that a righteous person, for all his righteousness is still at God’s mercy.  Job’s so-called friends, who thought Job must have been guilty of something before…