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Archive for the ‘Christian Living’ Category

Why I Don’t Preach the Law

25 Jan

A man recently asked me why I did not preach more about sins and their consequences. Why, for example, did I not talk more about what he called “obvious” sins, and about how they would bring pain and punishment.

Now, perhaps this is an area where I need to be challenged. It is possible that I am reacting to the absurd preaching I heard in my youth, that centered on long hair on men, pants on women, and other evils such as movies, rock music, and mixed bathing (they meant swimming with both genders).

But then again, I am not so sure that my list of “obvious” sins would look the same as my questioner’s.  As I have grown, it seems to me that sins of the mind and heart (pride, resentment, lack of love) are much more deadly than the sins of the flesh.  But there is a deeper reason that, though I will talk of sin, I will not make it the focus of my preaching. And that reason has nothing to do with the reason of some churches today (that talking of sin is unpopular and does not help reaching out to the lost).

I don’t focus on law (hereby defined as an focus on getting people to sin less, with emphasis on pain and punishment for disobedience) for the following reason: It can never make a person godly. Never. Not in a million years, not if I was the best preacher on the planet.

The reason, I think, is not hard to see. Think of the reasons a person motivated by law (or any other external force) has for any moral reform they might perform:

  • The avoidance of punishment or discipline
  • The avoidance of the natural consequences of sin
  • A desire to enjoy life without guilt
  • A desire for a good reputation
  • A desire to live up to a certain view of themselves
  • A desire for their life to “work” better.

    Now, except for the third item, none of these are BAD reasons. In fact, they are wise, in one sense of the term anyway. We can’t go against the grain of the universe without getting splinters.  But in the end, they still leave this person helplessly locked up in self.  They do not change the person’s heart; they confirm and deepen the heart’s pride and self-focus.

    The better way is marked out by the Apostle Paul in Romans 2:4 and 12:1, where he points out that it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance, and that we should seek to honor God because of His mercy.  It is when my heart, ravished and overwhelmed with God’s kindness and love for me, desires to follow God in order to please Him that I grow more into what God wants me to be. And that, if it comes at all, comes only by preaching the grace of God over the pain of sin.

    The Lutheran theologian Walther gets it just right:

    An enforcer of laws, like a jailer, is not concerned about the condition of the heart of the person with whom he must deal, but only about enforcing that person’s obedience. He stands before his victim with a scourge and tells him that the scourge will come down on his back if he does not obey. The jailer is not concerned about godly motives among his prisoners. The prisoners, on the other hand, while they are fast in stocks and in their cells and are forced to obey, are revolving plans in their minds how to avoid being caught at their next theft. That is what a preacher of the law does to the members of a Christian congregation: he puts them in stocks and fetters them.

    Let no minister think that he cannot induce the unwilling to do God’s will by preaching the Gospel to them and that he must rather preach the Law and proclaim the threatenings of God to them. If that is all he can do, he will only lead his people to perdition.

     
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    Posted in Christian Living, Church

     

    The First Church Service I Ever Walked out of

    16 Dec

    I’m not much of a protester.  Too easy going and all that.  I did walk out of a movie once, but it was so long ago I forget why.

    I have certainly never walked out of a church service in anger. Until this month.  Two weeks ago I walked out during the middle of the pastor’s “sermon”. Here is why.

    The church in question is Living Word Bible Church, in Mesa, Arizona.  I was staying with my elderly mother for a week, and she lives a couple miles from the church.  She goes to a different church, but that morning (long story) I did not go with her.  I really did desire to go to church, however, especially since it was the second Sunday of advent. But since I had no car with me, this meant a good Sunday morning walk.  I picked out two likely candidates on my phone’s web browser, then headed off to one of them. I soon realized I would not get there in time, so I detoured and walked to Living Word Bible Church instead.  I knew little about it, but I figured since they had both “word” and “bible” in their name that they would at least try to be a teaching church (unfortunately, by this logic Grapenuts would have both grape and nuts).

    I made my way in from a side street, and the first thing I noticed was that the congregation was very racially diverse.  Score one for them.  I was quite disconcerted, however, at the name of the bookstore which dominated one corner of the massive foyer: “Winner’s Bookstore”.  Major red flag.  The most common heresy of the modern American church is the idea that God’s design in salvation is to make us successful in earthly categories like success and wealth.  Ever an optimist, I hoped this was an aberration, and made my way into the sanctuary.

    The service began with the pastor of the church, one C. Thomas Anderson, announcing that this was going to be a special miracle service.  Okaaaayyyy.  To me, the idea of “planning” miracles is as ludicrous as “planning” revivals.  But I had walked two miles to be in church and worship, and was not going to leave.  Or so I thought.

    The band then belted out three songs.  Though all three had words on the screens, I don’t think the first two were really intended to be congregationally sung. They were too fast and the timing too odd to work as corporate worship songs. In any case, neither was about God at all. The first asked the question, “Are you ready?” and answered it with the repeated refrain, “I’m as ready as can be”.  The second was about me living a miraculous, blessed life.  Both songs basically functioned like the music of pep rally, and indeed the whole service brought back to mind the forced enthusiasm of my high school assemblies before the big game.  The third song was actually quite good (or maybe my expectations were so low that any song actually about Jesus would strike a cord).  I hadn’t heard it before, but it was about Jesus meeting my needs.  Yes, even though it was a Jesus song, it was exalting him primarily for how he helps me in this life (which I don’t find a bad thing as long as it is balanced by more objective worship songs).

    The pastor comes back on stage.  He begins talking about how the church needs to get out of debt.  I notice before the service they showed a video about planning for a new building “three times the size of our present one, with ten thousand seats”, so apparently the goal is to get out of debt so we can get back in debt. This especially struck me as odd, since the service (one of three that morning) was less than 40 percent full.

    Pastor Anderson then launches into several minutes describing the greatness of the church and its strategic place (somehow Mesa is the epicenter of the country).  At this point I am a little distressed.  More than twenty minutes into the service, and I have heard almost nothing about Jesus or even God, but a good deal about the church and the pastor.

    The Pastor transitions to talking about how much greater the church could be if it was out of debt. I look again at the pledge sheets handed out before the service.  He tells us that they will create a permanent landscape on one of the walls. If you give a certain amount, you will get a place on the landscape. 250 bucks will buy you a bronze tulip with your name, while $250,000 will place you on a silver eagle in the sky, and for only a million dollars you get a piece of the rainbow.  Pastor Anderson takes pains to point out how your children and grandchildren (and, of course, everyone else) will always be able to see how much you gave. I couldn’t help wondering about the words of Jesus regarding giving: “don’t let your right hand know what you are doing, so that your giving may be in secret” (Matthew 6:3-4).

    This transitions into Pastor Anderson holding his wife and himself up as examples.  Three times, we are told, they agreed to give God “everything”.  And of course God rewarded them for this.  “God gave us a mansion. If you have ever been to my house, you know it is a mansion. And God gave it to us at cost”.  This was spoken so arrogantly that I began to feel queasy.  He goes on, “And you should see all my cars!”

    And here, I could take it no longer.  It was well past the half-way part of the service, and it was apparent there would be no bible teaching.  The cross of Christ had not been mentioned one time, nor had Jesus himself been mentioned except almost in passing.  I will claim no great gift of discernment, but I was pretty sure any “miracles” generated in this man-glorifying pep rally were not going to be from the Holy Spirit.

    I walked out.  I wept for a minute outside, then began the walk home.

     
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    Posted in Christian Living, Church

     

    Can a Good Christian be a Good Soldier?

    11 Nov

    A few weeks ago I met with some teens from my church and invited them to ask me any question they desired about the Bible or the Christian life.  The first question was from an intelligent young man considering enlisting in military service.  His question was, “is it okay for Christians to be soldiers?”

    As today is Veteran’s Day, it would be a good time to repeat this question.

    I answered in two parts. First, I noted that in the Gospel of Luke, when a group of soldiers asked Jesus about what it meant to follow him in their life situation, His answer was, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely – be content with your pay.” In other words, don’t abuse your power for personal gain.  He noticeably did not tell them to seek civilian life. 

    Secondly, I tried to point out that the real question here (as is almost always the case) is motive.  It is certain that some men and women join the military out of a desire to serve their countrymen by protecting them from the violence of others.  In doing so, they are fulfilling the highest ideal of the Christian life: love.  Military service of this kind, like law enforcement, is the form love takes in view of violent enemies and criminals.  It is at least as noble as any other profession, and more noble than most because this kind of love involves risk and sacrifice.

    Of course, a person can also join the military for lesser reasons: economic necessity, a desire to pay for college, a hope for excitement or even simply out of a desire to inflict violence on others.  Most of these would not be examples of Christian virtue (and the last would be vice).  In this, the position of the prospective enlistee is similar to the position of the prospective doctor, lawyer or pastor: the virtue comes not from the position, but from the motive.

    Thank God for those who have loved us by protecting us.

     
    4 Comments

    Posted in Christian Living

     

    C. S. Lewis on why God is not more Obvious

    11 Nov

    A while back I wrote a post on why God is not more obvious.  C. S. Lewis answered the same question a hundred times better and more creatively, in his book, The Screwtape Letters.  The book purports to be a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior demon, to Wormwood, a recent graduate of Hell’s Training College. In these letters, Screwtape gives advice on how to tempt and destroy a human soul.

    One such letter follows.  I put it here because it is a superb piece of writing, and may help some of us who have wondered why God is not felt or seen more in our everyday lives, or why, when we have been growing in the knowledge of God, we do not seem to always possess a growing “feeling” of His presence. 

    The emphasis is mine.

     

    My dear Wormwood,

      So you ‘have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away’, have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Subgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one every told you about the law of Undulation?
       Humans are amphibians– half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for as to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation– the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life– his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.
       To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself– creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because he has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in,, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.
       And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs– to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtual as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

    You affectionate uncle
    Screwtape

     
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    Posted in Apologetics, Christian Living

     

    Christian Idolatry

    25 Oct

    When most of us think of idolatry, we tend to think of some half-naked savage offering a goat to a propped up wooden statue.  But in the scripture, idolatry was just as often the “worship” of the true God in the wrong way.  For example, when Aaron brought forth the golden calf, he did not acclaim it a new god, but rather, “this is your God, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” In the same way, the first king to set up idols (Jeroboam) set up golden calves, each on one end of the country.  These were no doubt intended to symbolize the power of Yahweh, (or perhaps serve as his “ride”). Jereboam did not create these to be a rival god (like baal) but an easier way of worshipping God: “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, that brought you up out of Egypt”

    In other words, idolatry is not simply worshipping a statue of a false god, but rather an attitude toward God, gods, or the supernatural

    What is that attitude?  It seems to me the attitude of idolatry has two main components.  First, the focus of the idolater is on himself, not the glory of the one being worshipped.  Second, the act of worship becomes an attempt to manipulate God, gods, or the supernatural to give good things to the worshipper (or to keep bad things from happening to them).

    Picture the village idol-worshiper, coming to the temple.  He brings with him an animal to sacrifice, or perhaps a gift of money.   What is his motive? Is it not to secure favor from the god or goddess, in order that his prayer is heard, and his life goes better?  He would not put it this way likely, but he attempting to control the supernatural for his own desires.  He is asking heaven to let his will be done, not seeking to do the will of heaven.  His worship is ultimately a worship of himself.

    Is it not true that much of what passes for Christianity is only a slightly elevated form of idolatry?  This church attender gets up on Sunday morning out of a combination of habit, guilt and fear.  He gives a little in the offering plate, primarily in the hope that God will either bless him or at least keep calamity at bay.  His thoughts during the sermon are not on the glory of God, but his own life, and how to get God’s favor.  He goes home, happy his religious duty for the week is over.  He sins, and perhaps prays a prayer of repentance to ward off God’s punishment.  He obeys part of the ethical code he knows the Bible teaches, but this is primarily to maintain his reputation and again secure God’s blessings.  In short, it is less true to say he loves God than to say he loves himself, and wants to manipulate God in his favor.  Can anyone deny this man is an idolater by practice, even if a Christian in name?

     
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    Posted in Christian Living

     

    Declaration of Dependence

    05 Jul

     

    We Americans, we love us our independence.  It all started when we kicked those control-freak Brits out of our house with the famous, “Declaration of Independence”.  Since then, the image of the independent, tough-guy, loner American has become our local deity.  We worship, at the multi-plex shrine, the various incarnations of our god, from John Wayne to Clint Eastwood to Rambo.

    In short, the Declaration of Independence has become, not only a historical document detailing our rebellion against England’s tyranny, but a totem of our worship, the dna of the spirit of our age.  We are independent, and proud of it!

    Except that we’re not.  I mean this not only in the more trivial sense that we are part of a global community (unrest in the middle east sends my gas prices through the roof) but in the more profound sense that part of what it means to be human is to be dependent. 

    We are dependent on other humans, of course.  Oh, you could give away all you have, and hole up by yourself in some cave in the desert, eating scorpions for lunch and crickets for dinner.  But you won’t.  There is no way that scenario comes out on the positive side of the cost/benefit analysis. 

    But the dependence on my mind is the dependence on Jesus Christ for daily spiritual needs.  In his final words before he faced the cross, he told those who followed Him, “Without me you can do nothing”.  Repeat those words in your mind a few times (or a few dozen times).  He spoke this in the context of our need to “remain” or “abide” in Him, and the illustration he used is of a tendril of a grape vine that can only produce grapes if it stays connected to the grape vine.  Thus, His point was not that those who don’t know him need salvation, but that for those who know him the most important thing to do is stay connected with Him, and that this is not something that occurs automatically (else He would have hardly wasted his breath). 

    It seems to me, then, that what we need is not the American spirit of independence, but the Christian spirit of dependence. Perhaps every morning, and whenever it is brought to mind, we should repeat the words of Jesus, “without Him I can do nothing”.  This could be our great “Declaration of dependence”.

     
    1 Comment

    Posted in Christian Living

     

    What I Hate (and Love) about Mission Trips

    20 Jun

    Note: most of the post below was originally posted last year before my trip to Russia.  I still feel the same way, and thought I would re-post it.

    It is now 10:00 pm on Monday night.  Most of my family (including myself) are getting up at 2:00 am to leave for a mission trip to the Dominican Republic. This is my fifth mission trip, which is not that many considering my age (actually, you can stop thinking about my age now). I have been to Mexico twice and the Dominican Republic once before, and once to Russia.

    Here is what I hate about mission trips: you are totally out of control. You take life on its terms. All you can do is respond rightly.

    Now, to some degree this is true whenever you travel internationally. But if you go as a tourist, you are free to complain to the motel about the room tempature, you can choose your activities that day, you can decide what you will eat for lunch. On a mission trip, you can do none of those things. Your agenda is set by others. You normally have no choice in your food. And, since you don’t speak the language, you are totally dependent on others to communicate for you. In many ways, it is like being a toddler again.

    And that is also what I am learning to love about mission trips.

    You see, as a pastor and father, I get looked at as an “authority figure”. Like it or not (and I do feel a great deal of ambivilance here) I am often the one who is seen of as “in control”. A person in this situation is severely tempted to make a classic blunder: to think that they really are “in control.”

    But I’m not. I get reminded of that when my best ideas fall flatter than Wile E. Coyote right after that 500 pound anvil falls on him. I get reminded of that when words I have spoken have exactly the opposite of their intended effect. I get reminded of that alot.

    But on a mission trip, the reminders are constant. I know I am not in control. And I have found that the only way to be reasonably happy and helpful on a mission trip is to embrace my powerlessness. My prayers become less asking God to help me in my plans, and more asking Him to help me respond rightly to His plans for my day.

    And that is why I love mission trips. The master said, “unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God”. I think that means that child-like faith and trust are essential to living as His children. And it is here, listening to voices I do not understand, waiting for others to help me, and to show me what to do, it is here more than in the pastorate that I feel like the little child I am supposed to become.

     
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    Posted in Christian Living

     

    Grace and the Bird Feeder

    07 Feb

    It’s been a year since I filled the bird feeder outside my office window.  But the ice and snow convinced me that food would be hard to find for my feathered friends, and I picked up some feed at Wallyworld.

    Yesterday morning I filled it with several pounds of seeds.  No birds came that day, nor this morning.  This afternoon, though, one lone sparrow happened to stumble upon the feeder.  He’s outside my window now, thinking he’s won some avian lottery. I guess he has.

    It is, perhaps, pointless to speculate on what goes on in a brain the size of an almond.  But I can’t help speculating about what the little sparrow, which may have gone several days searching for food without success, now thinks when he realizes he has several pounds of prime bird feed all for himself.  I’m not expecting gratitude.  But I wonder about wonderment.  Does he worry about a trap? Does he try to eat all he can, lest it disappear? Does he find it odd at all?

    Probably not, I suppose. The food is simply ‘there”.  But if he had the same categories of thought we do, this one would have to fall under the title: “Grace”.

    Grace, because he did not earn it; I bestowed it because of my nature, not his.  Grace, because there is nothing he can do to repay it.  I simply like watching him.  Grace, because it is more than he needs or can consume.  It is an overwhelming bounty. 

    As I have gotten older (no smiles here, please) I either solved some puzzles that used to bug me about the Bible and God’s plan, or decided the answers didn’t affect my day to day obedience with Christ anyway.  But two questions baffle me more and more as the calendar pages of my life flip away.  First, why in the world does God love me (or any of us)?  What could the maker of the universe possibly get out of it? Why Grace? Sitting here, watching with pleasure the sparrow revel in his bounty, I suppose is as close as I will ever come to understanding why God delights in what He in no-wise needs. 

    The second question, I’m afraid, is only heightened, not alleviated by my bird watching.  That question is this: why do I, despite all I “know” about the idea of grace, still refuse to live fully in it? Why do I strive, as if I needed to please God?  Why do I worry, as if somehow life could do me ultimate harm?  Why do my increasing responsibilities mean decreasing joy?  Doesn’t grace mean that I have only one responsibility: to live in grace? 

    I would be baffled if my feathered friend flew off hungry and tired to scratch through the snow and ice for a hidden seed; I suppose God is never baffled, but the closest He comes, surely, is seeing his children leave the feeder of grace, and work and claw and scratch to find meaning, security and love. 

    Ah, Lord, you have placed a bounty of grace before me.  May you smile as you see me enjoy it!

     
    3 Comments

    Posted in Christian Living, Profound Prattle

     

    What the [*beep] is wrong with a little profanity, anyway?

    12 Jan

    Is swearing a sin? 

    If you ask people what is wrong with swearing, you will tend to get answers like, “its rude”, or, “it makes you look stupid”, or “it offends people”, or “it labels you as immature/unpleasant/inarticulate, etc…”. Most of which I agree with. Still, being rude or showing oneself as immature is hardly a sin.  And that is the question I am getting at: Is it morally wrong to swear? And if so, why?

    When I was young, the Bible verse trotted out here was the fourth commandment: “You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain”.  It was never explained to me how using certain words for bodily excrement or sexual intercourse would be taking God’s name in vain.  Only later did I realize that the verse was talking primarily about lying (while swearing by God’s name one was telling the truth). 

    However, the principle behind this command seems to transcend that specific application.  The principle is that some things (like the name of God) are holy and good, and to misuse them is to desecrate and profane something God values.  Both “desecrate” and “profane” have the same basic meaning: to de-holy something, or to use something beautiful and special for ugly purposes.  Picture someone spray-painting their initials onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and you have the picture.

    This explains why words that trivialize sacred and serious things (like hell or damn and God and Jesus) are profane words.  They abuse or trivialize the ideas behind the words.  This is not a light matter for anyone who cares about spiritual things (or about words).

    Somewhat less clear, on this analysis, is profanity centered on sexual activity, human waste, or the body parts associated with those two things.  Often two words will mean exactly the same thing here, while one is a “swear word” or “dirty word” while the other is not. 

    I would point out two things.  First, we again see the desecration described above if we remember that sex is a holy and good thing.  It is a gift of God, and, at its best, carries significant spiritual and theological meaning.  To intentionally use words that by association are considered rude and offensive to describe God’s gift of sex is to profane that very gift.

    Second, our squeamishness with bodily waste is no doubt influenced by its association with the sexual regions of our body.  I’ve never heard a “swear word” for vomit, or the mouth from which vomit proceeds, but excrement is a different story.  So the point above about de-holying (desecrating)  the gift of sex seems to come to play in these words by way of association.

    Finally, we must admit freely that words change meaning over time, and any list of “dirty words” is arbitrary.  Rather than a list, it seems the thoughtful person would ask why a certain word is considered rude and offensive, and if use of that word profanes something good (or trivializes something important).

    As for me, I don’t want to focus on not saying some list of words, as if they had some inherent evil power.  But neither do I want to tag graffiti on the Sistine Chapel.

     
    15 Comments

    Posted in Christian Living

     
     
    Random thoughts on life, the universe and everything