Enslavement to the desire for pleasure will destroy us. If Tiger Woods really did have all these different affairs and assignations, then obviously they had nothing to do with relationships, or genuine companionship. They were all about having fun, which is sometimes an antidote to loneliness and boredom -- but lots of people sin who aren't particularly lonely or bored.
It's as if the sin nature we inherited from Adam broke the "off" button in our souls. Sure, it gets further complicated by bad up-bringing or bad educational influences. It can be modified a little by natural temperament. Some people are less prone to run into excess than others. But we are a race of drug addicts. We crave good feeling. The word "lust" covers an array of desires.
But see? See how being jerked by the chain of desire ruins everything else that's really good? Careers ruined, home ruined, family ruined, and not just because of a moment's weakness, but because there's this vein of lust that runs through the entire personality. It doesn't always need to be sexual. People gain pleasure from food, and kill themselves with obesity. They gain pleasure from sloth and amusement, and die from poverty (cf. the Book of Proverbs). It's a terrible thing to be a slave to your own desires. God created the human race to enjoy this world, not to be destroyed by the good things He created.
God's promise of forgiveness relieves the conscience, but it takes every person a lifetime to conquer excessive desire. Desire in excess, without the inner strength to stop myself, is the problem. This can only be countered by the building-up of the inner fibre of the soul. We pray for it, and suffer life's hardships in order to develop it. I would rather suffer difficulties and emerge more in control of myself, then perish under the weight of my desires for applause, attention, safety, enjoyment, or whatever it is I want.
This Sunday, in adult Bible class, we're working our way up to Hebrews chapter 12. There we're exhorted to keep on running, and to throw off every weight, and the sin that so easily entangles. This is a constant process. Like the contestants on The Biggest Loser -- they're able to accomplish things at the end of 15 weeks that would have killed them during the first week. Christians who press on are able to resist temptations now, that we could not resist in the past. Christ faced the cross' denial of pleasure and promise of pain by looking with faith to the glory on the other side of the hill. He didn't fail, so they we could succeed.
It isn't that Tiger Woods is a man, but that he is a son of Adam. Maybe the Lord has allowed him this humiliating public fall in order to bring him to a place of humility. Humility says, "I am an empty vessel. Please save me from this!" The more constant control Jesus attains over me, the more in control of myself I become.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Did the Disciples Believe in the Death of the Messiah?
There is a heretical doctrine being spread among some Bible churches today, nick-named "The Crossless Gospel." It originates out of a group called the Grace Evangliecal Society, led by a Dr. Bob Wilkin. Wilkin's belief, following those of the late Zane Hodges, is that it is not necessary to know about Jesus' death and resurrection in order to be saved. All that is necessary is to believe in Christ as the guarantor of your eternal life. Dr. Wilkin seems to believe that the disciples didn't know about the death of Messiah, and yet were saved people. I began thinking through this novel idea, and the following thoughts occurred to me:
1. You can't wind the Gospel clock backward. God's promise in the Abrahamic covenant, that through Abram all the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3), connected back to God's original promise to Adam and Eve that one of her male offspring would destroy Satan's power and thus release mankind from the curse Satan engineered (Genesis 3:15). Paul calls that promise the Gospel (Galatians 3:8), and it was sufficient to justify Abram of his sins (Genesis 15:6). But the Gospel is an expression of progressive revelation. As the prophets, Jesus Christ, and the apostles spoke, the Gospel message became clearer and more detailed. Melchizedek could be saved without knowing the name "Jesus", but that is no longer possible. Each issuance of new revelation from God was like a clarifying memo issuing down from headquarters, expanding on the original memo. Each new memo adds onto the original, and becomes the new standard. What GES does is turn the revelation clock backward, which is wrong.
2. The Old Testament preached the future atoning death of Messiah. The Law of Moses taught that sins could only be atoned by the shedding of blood by a substitutionary sacrifice. Even though the Law's sacrificial system was only ceremonial and temporary, as the book of Hebrews emphasizes, it was a teaching type of how a sinner could be made right with a holy God. This is why Christ said that Moses "wrote of Me" (John 5:46). Isaiah 52:13-15 was an explicit prophecy of the bloody death of Messiah, and Isaiah 53:4-11 was a bold, explicit expression of the Messiah's propitiatory death. Daniel 9:26 explicitly prophesied that Messiah would be killed, though not for himself. These passages are part of the reason Jesus chastised the Pharisees. "You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me" (John 5:29). This "crossless gospel" theology seems to think that the death of Messiah was a new idea that was only unveiled after Jesus' died, but in fact God had revealed the death of Messiah to the Jews centuries before Christ was born.
3. John preached Messiah's atoning death right from the start. John 1:29. Given that John's audience was entirely Jewish, everyone would have known exactly what he meant when he called Jesus "the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" This is the message about Christ to which Peter and the other disciples responded by faith. This was the message into which they were baptized, so to speak. Jesus was not the first to speak of His death. The prediction of His death did not first begin to emerge halfway through Christ's three years of work. John preached it from the very start of Jesus' public ministry. This is not to say that all people fully understood it. Confused by bad rabbinical teaching and their own wrong ideas about Messiah, Christ's own disciples struggled with it. One of Jesus' female disciples understood it perfectly, and anointed His feet for His burial. Peter on the other hand rebuked Christ later, but Christ attributed Peter's attitude Satan's influence (Matthew 16:21-23), and because he wasn't being mindful of the words of God (v. 23). John the Baptist expected people to respond to his message that Christ was the atoning Lamb of God. Every Jew living knew what happens to the atoning lamb.
4. Paul says that the cross is an essential part of the gospel. 1 Cor. 15:1-4. This is the message that saved the Corinthians (v. 2). The cross answers the most basic question that a thoughtful unbeliever could ask -- How is God able to forgive me? The cross gives the answer to that question. Christ doesn't forgive you on the brute force of His own divine authority. That's Islam. God can remain just, and yet still be your justifier, because Christ died for your sins. 1 Corinthians 15 gives the cumulative, final definition of the Gospel for our time.
The idea of a crossless gospel is deformed and defective. It sounds to me like someone's own cock-eyed notion, born out of a perverse pleasure from being a renegade who imagines himself to alone be enlightened.
1. You can't wind the Gospel clock backward. God's promise in the Abrahamic covenant, that through Abram all the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3), connected back to God's original promise to Adam and Eve that one of her male offspring would destroy Satan's power and thus release mankind from the curse Satan engineered (Genesis 3:15). Paul calls that promise the Gospel (Galatians 3:8), and it was sufficient to justify Abram of his sins (Genesis 15:6). But the Gospel is an expression of progressive revelation. As the prophets, Jesus Christ, and the apostles spoke, the Gospel message became clearer and more detailed. Melchizedek could be saved without knowing the name "Jesus", but that is no longer possible. Each issuance of new revelation from God was like a clarifying memo issuing down from headquarters, expanding on the original memo. Each new memo adds onto the original, and becomes the new standard. What GES does is turn the revelation clock backward, which is wrong.
2. The Old Testament preached the future atoning death of Messiah. The Law of Moses taught that sins could only be atoned by the shedding of blood by a substitutionary sacrifice. Even though the Law's sacrificial system was only ceremonial and temporary, as the book of Hebrews emphasizes, it was a teaching type of how a sinner could be made right with a holy God. This is why Christ said that Moses "wrote of Me" (John 5:46). Isaiah 52:13-15 was an explicit prophecy of the bloody death of Messiah, and Isaiah 53:4-11 was a bold, explicit expression of the Messiah's propitiatory death. Daniel 9:26 explicitly prophesied that Messiah would be killed, though not for himself. These passages are part of the reason Jesus chastised the Pharisees. "You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me" (John 5:29). This "crossless gospel" theology seems to think that the death of Messiah was a new idea that was only unveiled after Jesus' died, but in fact God had revealed the death of Messiah to the Jews centuries before Christ was born.
3. John preached Messiah's atoning death right from the start. John 1:29. Given that John's audience was entirely Jewish, everyone would have known exactly what he meant when he called Jesus "the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" This is the message about Christ to which Peter and the other disciples responded by faith. This was the message into which they were baptized, so to speak. Jesus was not the first to speak of His death. The prediction of His death did not first begin to emerge halfway through Christ's three years of work. John preached it from the very start of Jesus' public ministry. This is not to say that all people fully understood it. Confused by bad rabbinical teaching and their own wrong ideas about Messiah, Christ's own disciples struggled with it. One of Jesus' female disciples understood it perfectly, and anointed His feet for His burial. Peter on the other hand rebuked Christ later, but Christ attributed Peter's attitude Satan's influence (Matthew 16:21-23), and because he wasn't being mindful of the words of God (v. 23). John the Baptist expected people to respond to his message that Christ was the atoning Lamb of God. Every Jew living knew what happens to the atoning lamb.
4. Paul says that the cross is an essential part of the gospel. 1 Cor. 15:1-4. This is the message that saved the Corinthians (v. 2). The cross answers the most basic question that a thoughtful unbeliever could ask -- How is God able to forgive me? The cross gives the answer to that question. Christ doesn't forgive you on the brute force of His own divine authority. That's Islam. God can remain just, and yet still be your justifier, because Christ died for your sins. 1 Corinthians 15 gives the cumulative, final definition of the Gospel for our time.
The idea of a crossless gospel is deformed and defective. It sounds to me like someone's own cock-eyed notion, born out of a perverse pleasure from being a renegade who imagines himself to alone be enlightened.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Classic Problems With Darwinism
CLASSIC PROBLEMS WITH THE EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
Adapted from an article by Rev. Ray Comfort / adaptation by Jack Brooks
Never believe it, when others say that Darwinism has been proven. Darwinism has been picked apart by scientific critics from its very start. The following problems with Darwinism continue to plague it to this day. Here are the classic scientific and social problems with Darwinism -- the problems that won't go away...
1. It is impossible for DNA to have randomly formed.
The amount of information in the 3 billion base pairs of DNA in every human cell -- adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine -- is equivalent to 1,000 books of encyclopedia size. It would take a person typing 60 words a minute, eight hours a day, for nearly 50 years, to type the human genome. If all the DNA in your body's 100 trillion cells was stacked end to end, it would reach the sun and come back 600 times. It is impossible that DNA could have arisen randomly. DNA is a chemical code. It is a language.
2. Similarities do not prove a common ancestor.
This is a fundamental logic fault in Darwinism. Nothing about genetic similarity proves a common ancestor. A bi-plane and a jet share certain common features -- wings, body, tires, engine, controls -- but this does not mean that jets evolved from bi-planes. The 4% genetic difference between humans and chimp sounds small, until you realize that this amounts to 120,000,000 differences in the DNA base pairs. Architects use standard forms (I-beams, trusses) to build a wide variety of buildings. The fact that Building A and Building B share architectural forms in no way proves that Building A came from Building B. The "Tree of Life" is a made-up cartoon.
3. There are no missing links.
If Darwinism was true, then there should be thousands of 'missing link' fossils, such as half monkey, half man. Darwin in his day fully expected transitional fossils to be discovered. 150 years later, there still are no transitional fossils. However, there have been numerous frauds, such as the Archeoraptor (1999: a Chinese farmer glued a primitive bird skull and body to a dromaeosaur tail and hind limbs; National Geographic helped perpetrate this fraud). In fact, nearly all the fossils we have appear, suddenly and without warning, during the Cambrian period. And since evolution is an on-going process, we should still see thousands of transitional life-forms today, in all stages of transition. But there are none.
4. There is no evidence of macroevolution.
Microevolution is when variations happen within a kind, such as when breeders develop many varieties of dogs. Macroevolution says that mutations accumulate over a long period of time, until the organism makes a great change, such as a reptile becoming a bird. But mutation never adds anything new to the DNA. Mutation only alters what's already there, or removes it. Also, mutations are random, and don't necessarily make the organism more fit to survive. It isn't that an organism picks a helpful mutation. And adaptation to environment doesn't change DNA at all. Radiation damages or destroys genetic material.
5. Organisms are much too complicated for Darwin's theory to be true.
For example, the human eye is an incredibly complex organ. For an eye to evolve from a simpler to more complex form, everything in an eye would need to evolve at the same time, at the same rate, and always in ways beneficial to the creature. The extreme complexity of the eye tells us that first, it had to be have been designed, and second, random chance changes could not cause it to 'upgrade.' And this is just one organ. In Darwinism, we're talking about the entire organism evolving in the same way that the eye would need to do. Each organism is a unity of interconnected parts, and every part would need to evolve for any one part to evolve.
6. Darwinism is a masked form of Atheism.
One reason I am not a Darwinist is because I am not an atheist. I don't need an alternative explanation for the origin of the universe and of living things. Darwin was not an atheist, but became an increasingly-embittered agnostic over his lifetime. But his agnosticism was due to sad events he witnessed in life, not to scientific studies. The vast majority of scientists who founded the modern scientific revolution were all believers in God, and most of them were Christians of one sort or another. The modern claim that only atheists are "true" scientists is just boastfulness.
Adapted from an article by Rev. Ray Comfort / adaptation by Jack Brooks
Never believe it, when others say that Darwinism has been proven. Darwinism has been picked apart by scientific critics from its very start. The following problems with Darwinism continue to plague it to this day. Here are the classic scientific and social problems with Darwinism -- the problems that won't go away...
1. It is impossible for DNA to have randomly formed.
The amount of information in the 3 billion base pairs of DNA in every human cell -- adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine -- is equivalent to 1,000 books of encyclopedia size. It would take a person typing 60 words a minute, eight hours a day, for nearly 50 years, to type the human genome. If all the DNA in your body's 100 trillion cells was stacked end to end, it would reach the sun and come back 600 times. It is impossible that DNA could have arisen randomly. DNA is a chemical code. It is a language.
2. Similarities do not prove a common ancestor.
This is a fundamental logic fault in Darwinism. Nothing about genetic similarity proves a common ancestor. A bi-plane and a jet share certain common features -- wings, body, tires, engine, controls -- but this does not mean that jets evolved from bi-planes. The 4% genetic difference between humans and chimp sounds small, until you realize that this amounts to 120,000,000 differences in the DNA base pairs. Architects use standard forms (I-beams, trusses) to build a wide variety of buildings. The fact that Building A and Building B share architectural forms in no way proves that Building A came from Building B. The "Tree of Life" is a made-up cartoon.
3. There are no missing links.
If Darwinism was true, then there should be thousands of 'missing link' fossils, such as half monkey, half man. Darwin in his day fully expected transitional fossils to be discovered. 150 years later, there still are no transitional fossils. However, there have been numerous frauds, such as the Archeoraptor (1999: a Chinese farmer glued a primitive bird skull and body to a dromaeosaur tail and hind limbs; National Geographic helped perpetrate this fraud). In fact, nearly all the fossils we have appear, suddenly and without warning, during the Cambrian period. And since evolution is an on-going process, we should still see thousands of transitional life-forms today, in all stages of transition. But there are none.
4. There is no evidence of macroevolution.
Microevolution is when variations happen within a kind, such as when breeders develop many varieties of dogs. Macroevolution says that mutations accumulate over a long period of time, until the organism makes a great change, such as a reptile becoming a bird. But mutation never adds anything new to the DNA. Mutation only alters what's already there, or removes it. Also, mutations are random, and don't necessarily make the organism more fit to survive. It isn't that an organism picks a helpful mutation. And adaptation to environment doesn't change DNA at all. Radiation damages or destroys genetic material.
5. Organisms are much too complicated for Darwin's theory to be true.
For example, the human eye is an incredibly complex organ. For an eye to evolve from a simpler to more complex form, everything in an eye would need to evolve at the same time, at the same rate, and always in ways beneficial to the creature. The extreme complexity of the eye tells us that first, it had to be have been designed, and second, random chance changes could not cause it to 'upgrade.' And this is just one organ. In Darwinism, we're talking about the entire organism evolving in the same way that the eye would need to do. Each organism is a unity of interconnected parts, and every part would need to evolve for any one part to evolve.
6. Darwinism is a masked form of Atheism.
One reason I am not a Darwinist is because I am not an atheist. I don't need an alternative explanation for the origin of the universe and of living things. Darwin was not an atheist, but became an increasingly-embittered agnostic over his lifetime. But his agnosticism was due to sad events he witnessed in life, not to scientific studies. The vast majority of scientists who founded the modern scientific revolution were all believers in God, and most of them were Christians of one sort or another. The modern claim that only atheists are "true" scientists is just boastfulness.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Zachariah's Doubts
Mary asked Gabriel, "How can this happen?", then accepted it when he said, "It's a miracle." Zachariah the priest asked Gabriel, "How do I know you telling me the truth?" It's no wonder Gabriel was insulted.
It's OK to be cautious. It's not OK to doubt in the face of overwhelming evidence. An angel with celestial glory materialized in the temple, and affirmed the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the process of proclaiming the birth of John. Zachariah was a priest of YHWH, at work in the holiest place on earth. He should never have asked what he asked. The more you know, the more you're held accountable.
Christmas comes around again, challenging our doubts. Why do we believe the Nativity story? Do we even know? Maybe Mom or Dad believed in Christ. That would be a huge blessing; almost incalculable. But why did she believe? Did she know why? The Christian life is meant to be lived on faith, not on willpower.
The depths of our doubts almost cannot be plumbed. Confronted with Gabriel the archangel, Zachariah was thickheaded enough to ask, "How can I know this will really happen?" After Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples met with him and worshiped, but (the text says) "some doubted." Our capacity for rejecting the obvious boggles the mind.
We think everything in the American church would be better if we lived in the 1st century. Ohm, the 1st century of Christianity! It was so pure. Except it wasn't! They were as fouled-up as we are.
Hebrews 11:1 says that Christian faith is assurance and conviction. It would appear that seeing with your eyes, hearing with your ears, and touching with your hands isn't enough. It forms the raw data of the apostolic witness. There would be no Christianity without the eyes, ears, and hands parts. But that data did not automatically produce overwhelming assurance. The soil of our hearts contain a vein of doubt, like worthless lead, running a mile wide and a mile deep. How can it be extracted, and turned into gold?
It's OK to be cautious. It's not OK to doubt in the face of overwhelming evidence. An angel with celestial glory materialized in the temple, and affirmed the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the process of proclaiming the birth of John. Zachariah was a priest of YHWH, at work in the holiest place on earth. He should never have asked what he asked. The more you know, the more you're held accountable.
Christmas comes around again, challenging our doubts. Why do we believe the Nativity story? Do we even know? Maybe Mom or Dad believed in Christ. That would be a huge blessing; almost incalculable. But why did she believe? Did she know why? The Christian life is meant to be lived on faith, not on willpower.
The depths of our doubts almost cannot be plumbed. Confronted with Gabriel the archangel, Zachariah was thickheaded enough to ask, "How can I know this will really happen?" After Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples met with him and worshiped, but (the text says) "some doubted." Our capacity for rejecting the obvious boggles the mind.
We think everything in the American church would be better if we lived in the 1st century. Ohm, the 1st century of Christianity! It was so pure. Except it wasn't! They were as fouled-up as we are.
Hebrews 11:1 says that Christian faith is assurance and conviction. It would appear that seeing with your eyes, hearing with your ears, and touching with your hands isn't enough. It forms the raw data of the apostolic witness. There would be no Christianity without the eyes, ears, and hands parts. But that data did not automatically produce overwhelming assurance. The soil of our hearts contain a vein of doubt, like worthless lead, running a mile wide and a mile deep. How can it be extracted, and turned into gold?
Thursday, December 03, 2009
An Evangelism Question We Should Avoid
"So, how many people did your church bring to Christ last year?"
Would you like to know in what context I've seen this response thrown out in conversation? It gets shot as an attack, if someone challenges a church's ministry methods. "So, how many people did your church bring to Christ last year?", being translated, actually means: "It doesn't matter to me that such-and-so thing we do might be unethical, or contrary to the Bible. We had 'x' amount of positive attendance growth last year, and 'x' number of baptisms. Therefore, everything we do is automatically right."
I attended a service at a large church in Columbia several years ago, in which a troop of beautiful young women came dancing down the aisles as part of the event. Each of these shapely young women were dressed in multi-colored, sparkly leotards. They tossed their hair back and forth, and waved praise flags back and forth to the music. It stumbled me then, and it still bothers me to think about it today. But I bet that, if I'd complained about it, someone would have said something like, "So how big is your church, compared to ours?", or "Look at all the people we reach."
Another way I've heard this question phrased is, "Don't criticize what God is blessing." What that phrase actually means is, "You're forbidden to question anything I do. Why? Because I'm successful. That means that God is on our side and He approves of everything we/I do." Which, by reverse logic, means that God must be disgusted with all our small churches. It's like a church-growth version of the Prosperity Gospel. That question is meant to be a dialogue-killer; it's a pious way to say "Shut up, you loser" to someone.
A response to the attacking, defensive question, "So how many people did your church lead to Christ last year?", might be, "Does evangelism excuse everything?"
Evangelism doesn't excuse anything. The fact that somebody came to Christ does not mean that your interpretive mangling of the text was OK. The fact that somebody came to Christ doesn't make your refusal to tell the church board how you spend your work hours during the week OK. The fact that somebody came to Christ does not make the use of a sexy secular song in order to hook the audience OK. The fact that somebody came to Christ does not make preaching your experiences OK. The fact that somebody came to Christ doesn't mean that slavish mimicry of famous preachers is OK. The fact that somebody came to Christ doesn't explain where the petty cash has been going. And so on.
Evangelism is never an excuse for anything.
Would you like to know in what context I've seen this response thrown out in conversation? It gets shot as an attack, if someone challenges a church's ministry methods. "So, how many people did your church bring to Christ last year?", being translated, actually means: "It doesn't matter to me that such-and-so thing we do might be unethical, or contrary to the Bible. We had 'x' amount of positive attendance growth last year, and 'x' number of baptisms. Therefore, everything we do is automatically right."
I attended a service at a large church in Columbia several years ago, in which a troop of beautiful young women came dancing down the aisles as part of the event. Each of these shapely young women were dressed in multi-colored, sparkly leotards. They tossed their hair back and forth, and waved praise flags back and forth to the music. It stumbled me then, and it still bothers me to think about it today. But I bet that, if I'd complained about it, someone would have said something like, "So how big is your church, compared to ours?", or "Look at all the people we reach."
Another way I've heard this question phrased is, "Don't criticize what God is blessing." What that phrase actually means is, "You're forbidden to question anything I do. Why? Because I'm successful. That means that God is on our side and He approves of everything we/I do." Which, by reverse logic, means that God must be disgusted with all our small churches. It's like a church-growth version of the Prosperity Gospel. That question is meant to be a dialogue-killer; it's a pious way to say "Shut up, you loser" to someone.
A response to the attacking, defensive question, "So how many people did your church lead to Christ last year?", might be, "Does evangelism excuse everything?"
Evangelism doesn't excuse anything. The fact that somebody came to Christ does not mean that your interpretive mangling of the text was OK. The fact that somebody came to Christ doesn't make your refusal to tell the church board how you spend your work hours during the week OK. The fact that somebody came to Christ does not make the use of a sexy secular song in order to hook the audience OK. The fact that somebody came to Christ does not make preaching your experiences OK. The fact that somebody came to Christ doesn't mean that slavish mimicry of famous preachers is OK. The fact that somebody came to Christ doesn't explain where the petty cash has been going. And so on.
Evangelism is never an excuse for anything.
Counseling And The Church
The quickness which the Israelites reverted back to Baal worship after Gideon's death (Judges 8) illustrates a danger in authoritative Christian counseling, especially the type that heavily emphasizes accountability. Counselees can struggle to maintain certain levels of Christian conduct, but they might do so out of personal regard for the counselor rather than out of faith in the Lord. Instead of internalizing, by faith, the counselor's Biblical instruction, the counselee maintains a degree of "holding it together" out of personal regard for their pastor-counselor. Whether out of affection friendship, or fear of rebuke, the counselee can seem to make progress -- until the close relationship with the pastor-counselor ends, for whatever reason. Then, the counselee's life unravels at a shockingly fast rate. Israel got its act together for forty years, out of respect for the divine anointing on Gideon, his status as a war leader, and the fear of being "disciplined with briers." But as soon as Gideon passed, everyone reverted.
One of the reasons secular psychology dominates in American Christianity is the nature of pastoral training in even our most conservative seminaries. Seminaries are dominated by theologians, not pastoral practitioners. Most of them spent many years pursuing doctoral degrees in the fields of theological research, not pastoral practice. They usually had no training in psychology or psychiatry, so their knowledge of those fields is often just as second-hand as the average layman in our congregations. One only has so much time, and only so much money, to accomplish one's education. Most professional theologians, from what I've seen over the past thirty years, have little pastoral experience, and often they had none. What's more, they did not, and do not, even want to be pastors; and yet they are training, for the most part, pastors. As a result, the bulk of content to which future pastors are exposed in seminary is barely explicated in terms of its counseling significance to human life. The seminary student is taught for theology for mastery of content, not application to life. On one hand, it's fair for theologians to ask, "How much can we accomplish in only three years?" Nevertheless, this form of education creates a massive vacuum in the seminarian's pastoral training. We take our first pastorates, and discover that between our theology and real life "a great gulf has been fixed, which no man can cross." Who will fill that gulf? Secular theory is right at hand to fill the bill, even though it is not the answer. It's as handy as fast-food, and as healthy.
One of the reasons secular psychology dominates in American Christianity is the nature of pastoral training in even our most conservative seminaries. Seminaries are dominated by theologians, not pastoral practitioners. Most of them spent many years pursuing doctoral degrees in the fields of theological research, not pastoral practice. They usually had no training in psychology or psychiatry, so their knowledge of those fields is often just as second-hand as the average layman in our congregations. One only has so much time, and only so much money, to accomplish one's education. Most professional theologians, from what I've seen over the past thirty years, have little pastoral experience, and often they had none. What's more, they did not, and do not, even want to be pastors; and yet they are training, for the most part, pastors. As a result, the bulk of content to which future pastors are exposed in seminary is barely explicated in terms of its counseling significance to human life. The seminary student is taught for theology for mastery of content, not application to life. On one hand, it's fair for theologians to ask, "How much can we accomplish in only three years?" Nevertheless, this form of education creates a massive vacuum in the seminarian's pastoral training. We take our first pastorates, and discover that between our theology and real life "a great gulf has been fixed, which no man can cross." Who will fill that gulf? Secular theory is right at hand to fill the bill, even though it is not the answer. It's as handy as fast-food, and as healthy.
Monday, November 30, 2009
For Every EFCA Man Who Thinks Rick Warren & Bill Hybels Should Be Our Patterns...
D.A. Carson summarizes his father's life:
"Tom Carson never rose very far in denominational structures, but hundreds . . . testify how much he loved them. He never wrote a book, but he loved the Book. He was never wealthy or powerful, but he kept growing as a Christian: yesterday's grace was never enough. He was not a farsighted visionary, but he looked forward to eternity. . . . His journals have many, many entries bathed in tears of contrition, but his children and grandchildren remember his laughter. Only rarely did he break through his pattern of reserve and speak deeply and intimately with his children, but he modeled Christian virtues to them. . . .
"When died, there we no crowds outside the hospital, no editorial comments in the papers, no announcements on television, no mention in Parliament, no attention paid by the nation. . . .
"But on the other side all the trumpets sounded. Dad won entrance to the only throne room that matters, not because he was a good man or a great man--he was, after all, a most ordinary pastor--but because he was a forgiven man. And he heard the voice of him whom he longed to hear saying, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your Lord.'"
Taken from Matt Proctor's "Meandering" blog.
"Tom Carson never rose very far in denominational structures, but hundreds . . . testify how much he loved them. He never wrote a book, but he loved the Book. He was never wealthy or powerful, but he kept growing as a Christian: yesterday's grace was never enough. He was not a farsighted visionary, but he looked forward to eternity. . . . His journals have many, many entries bathed in tears of contrition, but his children and grandchildren remember his laughter. Only rarely did he break through his pattern of reserve and speak deeply and intimately with his children, but he modeled Christian virtues to them. . . .
"When died, there we no crowds outside the hospital, no editorial comments in the papers, no announcements on television, no mention in Parliament, no attention paid by the nation. . . .
"But on the other side all the trumpets sounded. Dad won entrance to the only throne room that matters, not because he was a good man or a great man--he was, after all, a most ordinary pastor--but because he was a forgiven man. And he heard the voice of him whom he longed to hear saying, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your Lord.'"
Taken from Matt Proctor's "Meandering" blog.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Why Do People Do Life-Threatening Things?
I've never understood it, just like I have never understood why anyone finds engines interesting. I just read the news report of that poor guy who died spelunking in the Utah cave. It looked from the photo like he left behind a newborn baby daughter. It just baffles me. I've done a few foolhardy things in my lifetime. There was a water tower up in the reservoir near the Watchung Mountains, and once, when I was a teenager, I climbed with a few friends up the ladder to the unrailed top. Someone finally had the brains to lock the ladder and put a railing up there, I heard. But, for the most part, I was always averse to shedding blood, especially my own. I'm sure, if I had the power to look back, that there would have been times I nearly electrocuted myself, fell off the roof of my house pasting shut a leak, or who knows what. But all that would have been unintentional. I cannot imagine deliberately seeking out danger. What kind of aimless, empty life must you be living, if you need to artificially stimulate the release of adrenaline into your blood? Is that it? Sky-diving, bungee-jumping, whatever -- is it a substitute for doing real things that involve danger? I respect military people, and I've been personally acquainted with guys who parachuted into Iraq during Gulf War I, sneaking around the rocks by night to plant listening devices while the Republican Guard was looking for them. One of the elders from our church in West Columbia was a Marine reservist who led one of the tank groups that went in the first night of attack. That I respect, because it wasn't excitement for its own sake. The excitement, fear, and other emotions were all tied to something real they were doing. The feelings were side-effects, not the goal. To deliberately put yourself into life-threatening situations simply to allay your boredom is selfish and decadent.
That Peculiar Bob Dylan Column
Once again this morning, I received another maligning comment attached to a long-ago post I wrote about Bob Dylan, titled Bob Dylan: All Tangled Up In Himself. I went ahead and published this new comment. Most of the comments I've received on that post are too profane (and ignorant) to post. In that old column, I criticized Bob Dylan for the narcissistic life he's led. We live in such a time of low standards that people think Dylan was a great poet. He wasn't. He wrote clever, memorable 4-minutes bits of doggerel for money. He rode the wave of whatever was commercial at the time. When rough-hewn folkies were the in thing, he claimed to be some sort of Boxcar Willie of Minnesota (even though he actually grew up as the middle-class son of a store owner). When folk ran its course, he jumped ship and went electric, earning the eternal wrath of communist-sympathisers like Pete Seegar. I think Dylan's an interesting character, and a self-made icon of the times. I just bought his Christmas album, which is quite the weird thing -- though Must Be Santa is a hoot. He promoted sex (Lay, Lady, Lay, and etc), drugs (Everybody Must Get Stoned), anti-Americanism (Masters of War), a miserable, misanthropic view of people, and a great deal of his life was a mask of deception, and amusing himself at other people's expense. He had a short burst during the late Seventies and early Eighties where it seemed he had come to his senses, but he later said that he didn't worship Christ or "any entity like that." But, even though that Dylan post is old, something about it consistently irritates various visitors no end. I believe it's convicted conscience. By throwing a harsh light on Dylan, the post throws a harsh light on anyone who loves the confused existentialist anti-values that Dylan promoted. This most recent commenter says he's sorry to live in the same state as I. But he thinks I was harsh? Wait until he, I, and Bob Dylan all stand naked in the presence of God. A consuming fire is very harsh. I will be saved from the fire because Christ took the burning for me, by dying. I'm still hopeful that Bob Dylan will sincerely return to the faith he briefly confessed. And I wish the same for all the readers who get mad because I held up Bob Dylan as a way not to be.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
A Very "Twilight" Thanksgiving!
My pitch for a new screenplay:
The thankful Pilgrims struggle up Plymouth Rock, giving praise to the Lord for preserving them during their long and arduous journey. At the top of the rock sits a brooding young man with unnaturally pale skin. He glitters in the light.
"Hello." he says broodily. "My name is Edward. I'm a vampire. Your daughters are cute."
"Aaah!", shout the stout-hearted Pilgrim men, and shoot him.
One giant wolf hiding in the woods says to another wolf satnding next to him, "Let's not introduce ourselves just yet."
The thankful Pilgrims struggle up Plymouth Rock, giving praise to the Lord for preserving them during their long and arduous journey. At the top of the rock sits a brooding young man with unnaturally pale skin. He glitters in the light.
"Hello." he says broodily. "My name is Edward. I'm a vampire. Your daughters are cute."
"Aaah!", shout the stout-hearted Pilgrim men, and shoot him.
One giant wolf hiding in the woods says to another wolf satnding next to him, "Let's not introduce ourselves just yet."
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
My Questionable Reputation!
Sometimes I think I might be one of the few conservative preachers that some people know, who thinks that some of the people on "our" side are kooky.
I say this, because there have been days when I encounter fellow Christians whose idea about what they think I think (about any given subject) or who I am inside (emotionally and relationally) is so wrong, that I wonder what they've been thinking I am all these years. I take the blame for some of these misunderstandings. In the past, I got fired up too fast. I've toned down my rhetoric a lot over the past decade, which is just an example of the Holy Spirit graciously helping me learn to be temperate.
But even so, over the years I find that friends and acquaintances are taken aback when they find out that I feel something about something-or-another, as if there's some template that I, as a conservative evangelical pastor, am expected to mold into. For instance, I would bet that it blows somebody's mind somewhere that I, a conservative evangelical pro-lifer, am not convinced that Sarah Palin is qualified to be the President of the United States. Or that, as a person who likes the Arts, it's not wholesome to read books and got to movies that glorify vampires.
I agree that pop music is spiritually empty at best, morally trashy at worst. But God's common grace has preserved enough goodness in the world, that I still still say that Robert Flack's The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face is one of the most beautiful love songs ever written, and that I sometimes hum ABBA's frothy S.O.S. while I'm driving. There's nothing intrinsically spiritual about classical music, even though I love the music of Bach and Beethoven. I think you could get just as corrupted by Wagner as by Rihanna. And I don't admire the Amish religion. My attitude about Mennonitism and the Amish alone would ruin the women's Christian fiction aisle.
It would probably blow some people's minds to know that, if I were ever to plant a new church, I would probably go for contemporary worship music format, keyed to the indigenous population, and keep a few old hymnals in the back for the classics for when we needed them. I say this, because there are people I know who would just automatically assume that I'm some sort of arch-traditionalist on worship music, just because I don't enjoy the David Crowder Band, or rap music.
My son responded to my recent ministry to the Eastern Kentucky Cru chapter by saying, "I've never seen you speak like that!" It was as if I'd stood on my head. I wore jeans, a polo shirt with a pull-over, paced all around the stage with a throat mic. And this is my son speaking, who's been listening to me speak as long as he's been alive. I didn't do hand-stands, but I was speaking to a room of 250 college students on a secular campus, not a small congregation of mostly married people. I wasn't shooting for the D. James Kennedy look!
I'm all for Christian men accepting their responsibilities as men, and for stopping the chickification of the American male. But I also think that there are a bunch of "reclaiming male leadership" ministries that are ostensibly on "our" side, which are kooky and unbiblical. Just because I say that Dr. Gilbert Bilezekian's theology book on gender roles is still one of the most hermeneutically bad, Bible-mangling, false-teaching-spewing books on the subject (in other words, it's feminist) that I've ever had the misfortune of reading, doesn't mean that I think Vision Forum is good. There are several "conservative" pro-family groups with which I feel uncomfortable. Jim Dobson can be helpful, but it's too much psychology, not enough Bible. And so on. Nobody's got it all together, including me.
I've had people accuse me of being a liberal, because they heard me say that God gives the gift of preaching to some Christian women. They never slowed down long enough to ask me if I thought if there are any guidelines regarding to whom a woman should preach.
This happens often enough that I notice it, and it bugs me, because it interferes with relationships and communication. How much of this is me, and how much of it is other Christian people's narrow thinking? I can't tell. I took a secular test recently, which pegged me as a "conservative, but with centrist-and-libertarian leanings". Maybe it's the "centrist" part throws a kink into the system. Reading back in American history, I don't think everything FDR did was wrong. C.S. Lewis is still one of my favorite writers, even though I do know that he isn't a reliable guide on several things -- he had too much liberal/catholic colorations in his idea,s but I still say he kept moving in the right direction as he grew in the Lord and his Christian life went on! I don't consider America a constitutionally-Christian nation; and certainly not a nation with any sort of covenant with God.
And so it goes. The bottom line is, I just don't like bandwagons. I've never read a Frank Perreti or Left Behind book. I ignored Promise Keepers. I never owned a WWJD bracelet. I like and dislike Rish Limbaugh at the same time. Hannity sounds like a really nice guy, but he can be a broken record; Glen Beck is comical, but a bit nuts. Must be "nuance" (hah).
I was part of three different movements when I was a new Christian, and all three basically claimed to know it all, have it all, and to be better than everybody else: the Plymouth Brethren, the 1970s-era Charismatics, and the Fundamentalist Baptists. Each one of these groups claimed big things for themselves, and eventually I grew up enough to understand that nearly everyone claims that about themselves. Tearing myself free from that sort of parochial mindset was big part of my formative Christian experience.
So maybe the best thing for me to do is to just try and do my best to be clear, and go the extra mile to avoid misunderstandings; and to be diligent to be sure that I don't drift off course in some way. I'm not interested in being as maverick. I don't think mavericks get a whole lot done. But I do like being an independent thinker, and I think it's better to form our opinions based on actual factuals, rather than on uninspired human authority.
I say this, because there have been days when I encounter fellow Christians whose idea about what they think I think (about any given subject) or who I am inside (emotionally and relationally) is so wrong, that I wonder what they've been thinking I am all these years. I take the blame for some of these misunderstandings. In the past, I got fired up too fast. I've toned down my rhetoric a lot over the past decade, which is just an example of the Holy Spirit graciously helping me learn to be temperate.
But even so, over the years I find that friends and acquaintances are taken aback when they find out that I feel something about something-or-another, as if there's some template that I, as a conservative evangelical pastor, am expected to mold into. For instance, I would bet that it blows somebody's mind somewhere that I, a conservative evangelical pro-lifer, am not convinced that Sarah Palin is qualified to be the President of the United States. Or that, as a person who likes the Arts, it's not wholesome to read books and got to movies that glorify vampires.
I agree that pop music is spiritually empty at best, morally trashy at worst. But God's common grace has preserved enough goodness in the world, that I still still say that Robert Flack's The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face is one of the most beautiful love songs ever written, and that I sometimes hum ABBA's frothy S.O.S. while I'm driving. There's nothing intrinsically spiritual about classical music, even though I love the music of Bach and Beethoven. I think you could get just as corrupted by Wagner as by Rihanna. And I don't admire the Amish religion. My attitude about Mennonitism and the Amish alone would ruin the women's Christian fiction aisle.
It would probably blow some people's minds to know that, if I were ever to plant a new church, I would probably go for contemporary worship music format, keyed to the indigenous population, and keep a few old hymnals in the back for the classics for when we needed them. I say this, because there are people I know who would just automatically assume that I'm some sort of arch-traditionalist on worship music, just because I don't enjoy the David Crowder Band, or rap music.
My son responded to my recent ministry to the Eastern Kentucky Cru chapter by saying, "I've never seen you speak like that!" It was as if I'd stood on my head. I wore jeans, a polo shirt with a pull-over, paced all around the stage with a throat mic. And this is my son speaking, who's been listening to me speak as long as he's been alive. I didn't do hand-stands, but I was speaking to a room of 250 college students on a secular campus, not a small congregation of mostly married people. I wasn't shooting for the D. James Kennedy look!
I'm all for Christian men accepting their responsibilities as men, and for stopping the chickification of the American male. But I also think that there are a bunch of "reclaiming male leadership" ministries that are ostensibly on "our" side, which are kooky and unbiblical. Just because I say that Dr. Gilbert Bilezekian's theology book on gender roles is still one of the most hermeneutically bad, Bible-mangling, false-teaching-spewing books on the subject (in other words, it's feminist) that I've ever had the misfortune of reading, doesn't mean that I think Vision Forum is good. There are several "conservative" pro-family groups with which I feel uncomfortable. Jim Dobson can be helpful, but it's too much psychology, not enough Bible. And so on. Nobody's got it all together, including me.
I've had people accuse me of being a liberal, because they heard me say that God gives the gift of preaching to some Christian women. They never slowed down long enough to ask me if I thought if there are any guidelines regarding to whom a woman should preach.
This happens often enough that I notice it, and it bugs me, because it interferes with relationships and communication. How much of this is me, and how much of it is other Christian people's narrow thinking? I can't tell. I took a secular test recently, which pegged me as a "conservative, but with centrist-and-libertarian leanings". Maybe it's the "centrist" part throws a kink into the system. Reading back in American history, I don't think everything FDR did was wrong. C.S. Lewis is still one of my favorite writers, even though I do know that he isn't a reliable guide on several things -- he had too much liberal/catholic colorations in his idea,s but I still say he kept moving in the right direction as he grew in the Lord and his Christian life went on! I don't consider America a constitutionally-Christian nation; and certainly not a nation with any sort of covenant with God.
And so it goes. The bottom line is, I just don't like bandwagons. I've never read a Frank Perreti or Left Behind book. I ignored Promise Keepers. I never owned a WWJD bracelet. I like and dislike Rish Limbaugh at the same time. Hannity sounds like a really nice guy, but he can be a broken record; Glen Beck is comical, but a bit nuts. Must be "nuance" (hah).
I was part of three different movements when I was a new Christian, and all three basically claimed to know it all, have it all, and to be better than everybody else: the Plymouth Brethren, the 1970s-era Charismatics, and the Fundamentalist Baptists. Each one of these groups claimed big things for themselves, and eventually I grew up enough to understand that nearly everyone claims that about themselves. Tearing myself free from that sort of parochial mindset was big part of my formative Christian experience.
So maybe the best thing for me to do is to just try and do my best to be clear, and go the extra mile to avoid misunderstandings; and to be diligent to be sure that I don't drift off course in some way. I'm not interested in being as maverick. I don't think mavericks get a whole lot done. But I do like being an independent thinker, and I think it's better to form our opinions based on actual factuals, rather than on uninspired human authority.
Friday, November 20, 2009
The Final, Ultimate Declaration On The Shroud of Turin.
I don't care.
I've got the four Gospels, eye-witness accounts of Christ's resurrection.
You shroud-lovers ought to go read Judges 8, about Gideon's golden ephod.
I've got the four Gospels, eye-witness accounts of Christ's resurrection.
You shroud-lovers ought to go read Judges 8, about Gideon's golden ephod.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
How To Handle It When A Non-Christian Loved One Passes Away
We Christians believe in the existence of hell because Jesus believed in it, not because we like it. Since he's the Son of God, we're obligated to take his word on it.
The reason a hell even exists is because God is sovereign and holy, and people are evil. If people weren't evil, then hell wouldn't bother anybody. After all, who cares if the devil gets thrown into hell one day? He's a fiend, and we all figure he deserves to be there. But human souls that are, like the devil, in rebellion against God's authority, and are marinated in their sins, have no place in His heavenly home. God would no more allow such a person into heaven, than you would allow a cobra to slither in your door. We worry about tracking mud onto the carpet. God's not going to allow His house to be defiled.
We don't like to think of our loved ones as snak or defilers. That's because we're bound to them by the bonds of affection, and because we've become dull to their sins. We're also ignorant of most of their sins. And we've got so much latent snakiness inside us, that we look at someone else's snakiness and say, I don't get it, what's the big deal? But God never gets "used to" snakiness. God is just as upset by sin today as He was when Adam first bit the fruit.
God in the Bible describes himself as impartial. He doesn't slide the scales of justice based on liking one person better than another. God isn't a citizen of any nation, and he doesn't belong to any ethnic group, so He doesn't favor one country over another, or one race over another. We, however, definitely are not impartial. We say, "But that person is my (best friend, parent, offspring)...!" God says, "That person is a soul who for refuge to Jesus did not flee, so now I must and shall evaluate him/her according to my law."
I think there is a deep seriousness and sobriety that a Christian must feel at the passing of a non-Christian loved one, that we mix in with our sadness. It counterbalances the sad part. God's judgment against sin is not an unexplainable tragedy that peculiarly befalls people from down out of the sky. It's not like leukemia, or tumbling down a flight of stairs. Every person is born into this world that blares the presence of God at them from the first moment they open their eyes. The beauty of the skies, the mountains, and the seas shout the glory of God. The voice of moral conscience speaks truth inwardly to the soul. Even our outrage at the victimization of evil, committed against us or against others, speaks to us of a great Law-giver. Practical evidences of the providence of God happen all around us. Prayers get answered. Food arrives on the table. Sick people get well. Someone loves you.
By the time a person passes from this world into the next, they have experienced a graduate school course on The Existence & Glory of God 101. It's impossible for the departed person to plead ignorance of the glory of God. If they were atheists in this life, it's because they wanted to be.
In the end, we are on the Lord's side. That's what it comes down to. I have chosen the Lord's side. You have chosen to devote your life to fighting my Savior. You have chosen to be God's enemy, so, when the last day comes, that means you are my enemy, even though I love you. Christ drew a line in the sand. You're either for me or against me, he said. Christ said that he came with a sword, to divide families against each other. Whose side are you on? When the children of Israel were rioting, Moses cried out, who is on the Lord's side? The Levites responded, "We are!", and began slaying their cousins with the sword, in order to restore order. Christ in the gospel says, "Who is on my side?", again and again, and again and again over the centuries we take sides.
I don't want you to go into final judgment. I've prayed and worked, even wept, that you would repent. But nobody forced you to sin, not even once were you forced; and nobody forced you to live your life defying God in the particular way you did it. I am not your judge, and for that I thank God. You answer to Someone a million times higher than I. You may be my father, my mother, my sister, my brother, or my child, but I defer the handling of your case to the Lord, who is the only one who can be trusted to do the right thing by you. God is no sadist. He orchestrated the murder of his own Son for you, so that you could be offered redemption. The suffering in your life that you blamed on God, would have been healed by God, if you had brought them to Him, but you refused. Instead, you used them as another excuse to live how you please. I've chosen my side. When the final judgment day comes, I won't feel any divided loyalties. I won't be happy for your judgment, but I won't be un-happy with my Lord, either. I recognize that you are individual living life in the sight of the God who made you for Himself, and I know that, in the end, you will have to stand before God as you, with me standing by and watching from the sidelines.
The reason a hell even exists is because God is sovereign and holy, and people are evil. If people weren't evil, then hell wouldn't bother anybody. After all, who cares if the devil gets thrown into hell one day? He's a fiend, and we all figure he deserves to be there. But human souls that are, like the devil, in rebellion against God's authority, and are marinated in their sins, have no place in His heavenly home. God would no more allow such a person into heaven, than you would allow a cobra to slither in your door. We worry about tracking mud onto the carpet. God's not going to allow His house to be defiled.
We don't like to think of our loved ones as snak or defilers. That's because we're bound to them by the bonds of affection, and because we've become dull to their sins. We're also ignorant of most of their sins. And we've got so much latent snakiness inside us, that we look at someone else's snakiness and say, I don't get it, what's the big deal? But God never gets "used to" snakiness. God is just as upset by sin today as He was when Adam first bit the fruit.
God in the Bible describes himself as impartial. He doesn't slide the scales of justice based on liking one person better than another. God isn't a citizen of any nation, and he doesn't belong to any ethnic group, so He doesn't favor one country over another, or one race over another. We, however, definitely are not impartial. We say, "But that person is my (best friend, parent, offspring)...!" God says, "That person is a soul who for refuge to Jesus did not flee, so now I must and shall evaluate him/her according to my law."
I think there is a deep seriousness and sobriety that a Christian must feel at the passing of a non-Christian loved one, that we mix in with our sadness. It counterbalances the sad part. God's judgment against sin is not an unexplainable tragedy that peculiarly befalls people from down out of the sky. It's not like leukemia, or tumbling down a flight of stairs. Every person is born into this world that blares the presence of God at them from the first moment they open their eyes. The beauty of the skies, the mountains, and the seas shout the glory of God. The voice of moral conscience speaks truth inwardly to the soul. Even our outrage at the victimization of evil, committed against us or against others, speaks to us of a great Law-giver. Practical evidences of the providence of God happen all around us. Prayers get answered. Food arrives on the table. Sick people get well. Someone loves you.
By the time a person passes from this world into the next, they have experienced a graduate school course on The Existence & Glory of God 101. It's impossible for the departed person to plead ignorance of the glory of God. If they were atheists in this life, it's because they wanted to be.
In the end, we are on the Lord's side. That's what it comes down to. I have chosen the Lord's side. You have chosen to devote your life to fighting my Savior. You have chosen to be God's enemy, so, when the last day comes, that means you are my enemy, even though I love you. Christ drew a line in the sand. You're either for me or against me, he said. Christ said that he came with a sword, to divide families against each other. Whose side are you on? When the children of Israel were rioting, Moses cried out, who is on the Lord's side? The Levites responded, "We are!", and began slaying their cousins with the sword, in order to restore order. Christ in the gospel says, "Who is on my side?", again and again, and again and again over the centuries we take sides.
I don't want you to go into final judgment. I've prayed and worked, even wept, that you would repent. But nobody forced you to sin, not even once were you forced; and nobody forced you to live your life defying God in the particular way you did it. I am not your judge, and for that I thank God. You answer to Someone a million times higher than I. You may be my father, my mother, my sister, my brother, or my child, but I defer the handling of your case to the Lord, who is the only one who can be trusted to do the right thing by you. God is no sadist. He orchestrated the murder of his own Son for you, so that you could be offered redemption. The suffering in your life that you blamed on God, would have been healed by God, if you had brought them to Him, but you refused. Instead, you used them as another excuse to live how you please. I've chosen my side. When the final judgment day comes, I won't feel any divided loyalties. I won't be happy for your judgment, but I won't be un-happy with my Lord, either. I recognize that you are individual living life in the sight of the God who made you for Himself, and I know that, in the end, you will have to stand before God as you, with me standing by and watching from the sidelines.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Advice For Young Workers
Here's some shocking, unheard-of advice for Christians seeking work (especially in leadership positions), or people praying about going into Christian work full-time:
* If the organization you're talking to has repeatedly burned through numerous workers in the position for which you're interviewing, in a relatively short period of time, don't take the job.
* If the organization is going to ask you to do things you have never done before, or for which you have no training, don't take the job. Never pretend to be able to do things you haven't done, can't do, or don't know how to do.
* If working for that organization mean that you will end up becoming self-financing, or might go bankrupt, don't take the job. Christ said that jumping off the temple mount was not "faith", it was the sin of testing God.
* If the organization won't let you see their public financial records, don't take the job.
* If the organization won't give you the names, phone numbers, and other contact information of the previous people who held the position, don't take the job.
* If the organization is divided against itself, don't take the job.
* If the organization wants you to "save" them, don't take the job without there first being a candid admission of mistakes and failure on their parts.
* If an organization acts as if they are doing you a huge favor by even considering hiring you, assume they are planning to use and abuse you.
In other words:
Don't be a martyr.
Require fair compensation (not luxurious; fair and livable).
Never believe you can do tasks for which you have no aptitude, interest, or training.
Don't work for organizations that hide essential information from you.
A house divided against itself will fall. Don't let it fall on you.
* If the organization you're talking to has repeatedly burned through numerous workers in the position for which you're interviewing, in a relatively short period of time, don't take the job.
* If the organization is going to ask you to do things you have never done before, or for which you have no training, don't take the job. Never pretend to be able to do things you haven't done, can't do, or don't know how to do.
* If working for that organization mean that you will end up becoming self-financing, or might go bankrupt, don't take the job. Christ said that jumping off the temple mount was not "faith", it was the sin of testing God.
* If the organization won't let you see their public financial records, don't take the job.
* If the organization won't give you the names, phone numbers, and other contact information of the previous people who held the position, don't take the job.
* If the organization is divided against itself, don't take the job.
* If the organization wants you to "save" them, don't take the job without there first being a candid admission of mistakes and failure on their parts.
* If an organization acts as if they are doing you a huge favor by even considering hiring you, assume they are planning to use and abuse you.
In other words:
Don't be a martyr.
Require fair compensation (not luxurious; fair and livable).
Never believe you can do tasks for which you have no aptitude, interest, or training.
Don't work for organizations that hide essential information from you.
A house divided against itself will fall. Don't let it fall on you.
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