Bessette is a mechanical engineer living in Roanoke who designs heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems for commercial and institutional buildings. He is a member of Sovereign Grace Community Church.
I am responding to Frederick Fuller’s March 29 commentary, “Man forms God in his own image.”
Fuller’s first two sentences give away his evolutionary presupposition. The evolutionist cannot believe in any God and maintain a consistent worldview since evolution is anti-God; nature created itself.
The evolutionist commonly states, “God did not create man, but man created God.” While I do not agree that man formed God in his own image (a reference to evolutionary thinking), I do believe that many men (both Christian and non-Christian) form God in their own image.
Let me explain. Man often, when trying to rationalize his sin, will pick certain portions of the Bible to support his thinking and ignore the portions of the Bible that do not support, or specifically deny, his thinking.
This is clearly what Fuller does in his diatribe against ultra-right conservatives. Fuller complains that Sean Hannity fans would say able-bodied people fed at the public trough should be working and if they don’t, they should starve. This is a false statement. Hannity fans have compassion for the poor (just as Jesus did), but don’t believe it is the government’s responsibility to bail them out. Fuller goes on to claim that since Jesus always helped others who came to him, then “a true Christian gives anything to anyone without qualification.”
This is the part where Fuller shows himself to be an ideologue with little regard for the complete text of the Bible. But why should he? He does not believe the Bible, as noted in the first sentence in his commentary : “I do not believe God formed man in his own image.” This belief plainly shows that Fuller does not believe what the Bible tells us in Genesis. When one does not believe the beginning of the Bible, one has no reason to believe the rest of the Bible.
Claiming that he has “searched everything ascribed to Jesus in the New Testament,” he states that he cannot “find one word from Jesus that turns aside anyone from help.” Fuller then goes on to ask the question, “Where does he [Jesus] ever judge anyone and not help them?” Here Fuller confuses Jesus helping others by healing and giving knowledge of himself and, yes, judging others (such as the Pharisees in Luke), with giving money to the poor.
The Bible never shows us Jesus handing out money to the poor. The Bible never has Jesus telling us that the government should hand out money to able-bodied people who refuse to work. The Bible does tell us, however, in at least 17 New Testament verses, that the church (Christians) should help the poor. Jesus never once tells the church that there should be no pre-qualifications on this giving.
In fact, the Bible is quite clear that those who do not work should not eat (Thessalonians). So, Fuller is confusing Jesus’ directives for the church to help the poor with his own ideas about Christianity, which are clearly lacking truth.
One rather profound statement toward the end of Fuller’s diatribe against Christianity is most poignant. Fuller states, “I do believe there are some who, by conservative ideology, are not worthy, such as everyone.” This statement, by itself, is quite true; however, once again, Fuller misses the point. He uses the term worthy to indicate that some people do not consider others as being worthy of receiving help, but the Bible plainly tells us that no one is worthy, not to receive help, but to receive forgiveness for our sins and salvation from God.
I hope and pray that God the father would draw Fuller to Jesus so that he too would recognize, as most Christians do, that the Bible is the written word of God and that it is God who created man in his own image.
