Professor, how does the green V model deal with horrendous historical acts done in the red pyramid model? One of my biggest challenges with Christianity as a whole is the way it was used to justify slavery and forced on people, in particular Black and Latino people. I know that these acts are not to be condoned in the green V model but nonetheless they have happened. Does the green V model recognize these problems? How can one come to the green V model if the red pyramid model has made anything dealing with Christianity in accordance with the evils of people?
Great question, thank you. The answer to your question, I think, is found in the following questions,
1. How much experience with the corrupt human ego do we need before we are convinced that God should rule our lives, not us? For all the history of human atrocities, the average person still insists that he/she must rule.
2. Whether on a widespread basis or single, atrocities are just as atrocious, are they not? Which human population has not inflicted horrible abuses and murder on others? Mao in China, Castro in Cuba, Marxists in Russia, “Americans” against the natives here? But what about any given girl or boy, anywhere, who was/is abused over and over again, day after day, with no hope or even sense that there is hope of relief, except to die?
3. This is where the 3d or green V makes the essential difference, in at least 3 ways.
a) what is experienced in the body is limited to the body and time, pressing the soul into God’s providence and experiencing the providence of God at the death of the body – and imagine the magnitude of joy for a soul delivered from suffering?
b) God Himself, and especially the Son of God in His crucifixion, experiences all human suffering all the time and more profoundly than we do – but how else to provide for eternal contentment, peace, love, and harmony for people who are made in the image of God but not God?
c) the immense need in our world for the saving of lives, body and soul, gives purpose to the Christian life, invulnerable and realized as it is spent on the rescue of others.