Mark Byron

Edifier du Jour:Habakkuk 2:18-19(NIV)

¹⁸ “Of what value is an idol carved by a craftsman?
    Or an image that teaches lies?
For the one who makes it trusts in his own creation;
    he makes idols that cannot speak.
¹⁹ Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’
    Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’
Can it give guidance?
    It is covered with gold and silver;
    there is no breath in it.”

We're at a point where our creations can give guidance of a limited sort. GPS systems linked to maps can create routes for us, although the shortcut the map found could have problems not seen on the map. The newest smart-phones come packing with a voice-recognition based researcher, but even she has her limitations, coming up with a pro-life persona (that's a feature, not a bug:-) and recommending smart-phones other than her home brand.

However, they have no soul or spirit. If I recall my Hebrew correrctly, the word for breath runs close to the word for spirit. They can only spit back what is in their database; even if their database is the whole Web, there is a lack of something that makes us human. Garbage in-garbage out; their inputs lack the Holy Spirit's guidence.

Edifier du Jour:Habakkuk 2:2-3(NIV)

² Then the Lord replied:

“Write down the revelation
    and make it plain on tablets
    so that a herald may run with it.
³ For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
    it speaks of the end
    and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
    it will certainly come
    and will not delay.

The first chapter of Habakkuk is a pair of "Don't just stand there, do something, LORD" complaints. Portnoy wasn't the first Jew with complaints.

After a chapter of kvetching, God replies. He acts on time, His time.

We're supposed to be patient here. Patience is a bit like cleanliness, it's both next to godliness and next to impossible. However, that's what's being asked, and God doesn't give us what we can't handle in some way.

Too Generous?

Usually, when a pastor has a sermon on giving, they have their hand out for some church fundraiser. That wasn't the case on Sunday, when our pastor was doing a sermon on giving to ones fellow man in need.

An interesting case study came across the screen yesterday in the form of a Ben Stein column; he was being hit up for a loan from a friend to help repair a damaged pool.

"I just need thirty thousand," she said. "That's all."

That seemed like a lot to me but I told her I would think about it. I hate the way everyone wants money from me. I just hate it.

I do not want to wind up broke because I gave away my money to people who asked me for it. I have done way too much of that already. I never get repaid and the people who were supposedly broke and homeless show up in Mercedes at luxury restaurants.

I am scared about myself. I am way too gullible for this world.

Last I checked, Stein's Jewish, but God's plugging for generosity didn't start with the incarnate Jesus.

Stein may well be "too gullible for this world" but it is not this world that we're being primed for. It's that kind of giving without expecting a return, albeit a bit grudgingly here, that we're being called to do.

I'm not in position to cough up 30K, but doing something like paying $3 for someones tab at the dollar store might work; on Mother's day after church, the guy in front of us had a credit card the reader didn't like and no other cash or plastic on hand. By the time I remembered the sermon I just sat through and thought to have the clerk put it on my tab, the guy had moved on.

Such "random acts of kindness" shouldn't be random, but hard-wired into our system with the help of the Holy Spirit. I wouldn't be surprised if He is working on Stein's conscience as well as ours, since I don't see a rule where He can't tweak non-believers from time to time.

 

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 6:7-8 (NIV)

⁷ Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. ⁸ Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

While there are good ministries that don't make it and churches that succeed despite being spiritually clueless, usually form will tell. Even the ones that seem to be mocking God and thriving despite that will come back down to earth in time.

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 6:1(NIV)

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.

Church discipline is a touchy subject, especially in a church-shopping era where someone who really doesn't want to repent can go to another church where either (1) he can be a stealth congregant and not be noted for his sin or (2) they accepts his habits. At least one denomination has been founded to fill the latter.

Assuming the person wants to do a 180, the key word is gently. Bringing the person up front and saying "Joe here got caught with his pants down with his secretary. Pity the scumbag and steer clear of him until we say otherwise" isn't the way to go. In some cases, especially when it was an elder of some sort that strayed, you might need some sort of public acknowledgement of what happened and why they're stepping aside from leadership for a time.

However, the goal isn't to shame, it's to rebuild and redirect.

The last part of the verse is good to note; trying to disciple someone recovering from bad habits does run the risk of getting you dragged into their world. For instance, someone getting moved off of a p0rn habit might have the mentor having to fight off his own issues on that front as they help another guy ditch the vice.

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 5:22-23(NASB)

²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

This has long been one of my go-to verses. Steven Curtis Chapman's Heartbeat of Heaven is the earwig to go with it, having the fruits as a refrain, flipping the last two in order.

I'm going with NASB today, since the NIV opts to go with forbearance instead of patience. As a former finance prof, I associate forbearance with going easy on under-water S&Ls in the late 80s; the Keating Five were being paid to encourage such "forbearance." Since that's where forbearance entered my working vocabulary, I have a hard time treating it as a fruit of the Spirit rather than a vice.

That might sum up the Andy Stanley-versus-the-legalists fight; is he showing forbearance in the sense the NIV translators are shooting for or in the sense that I hear the term? His fans would argue for the former while I and the heresy-hunters lean towards the latter, although I can hear the counter-argument and don't discount it.

Joy, kindness and goodness is also on that list. A lack of kindness and joyfulness often marks the heresy-hunters; they aren't a happy bunch. They seem to forget that there are people on the other side of the argument who will often miss the critique due to the bile that it is often presented with.

That's why this passage is hard to do right, standing for God's truths in a graceful and loving manner is a tough balancing act, but one we're called to do.

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 5:19-21(NIV)

¹⁹ Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, ²⁰ idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions,  factions, ²¹ envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Note verse 20 once you get south of sorcery. Lots of stuff that applies to the modern church, especially in its on-line manifestation. So much for unity in the body of Christ, as Mr. Edelen noted last week-

Unity gets a bad rap in some Christian circles. Being an “ecumenist” is tantamount to denying the Lord publicly, at least in the eyes of some.

Different factions, tons of disputes, dissent as a birthright. Not that we need to be in perfect lock-step on every point of doctrine, but the oldie from the 70s comes to mind-"there ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy, there's just you and me and we just disagree." Often, if we get off our high horse, we'll find common ground or at least agree to disagree.

The alternative is a bunch of one-person churches where we agree with all our churchmates on every issue, since we ran off anyone who had a different gospel. That's not to say that a good theological debate isn't needed at times, that church discipline isn't called for, but grabbing for the Red Mallet of Excommunication as your first move isn't the way to roll.

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 5:13-15(NIV)

¹³ You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. ¹⁴ For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁵ If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

A servant's heart is hard to get, at least without the help of the Holy Spirit. The tail end of verse 13 should be a all-purpose check on behavior.

Are you serving? How is this helping the other person? If it's an indulgence on our part, whether that be of a physical vice or a mental vice (theological point-scoring is one the devout can fall into), it isn't helping.

Is it humble? That doesn't mean you have to roll over and play dead, but treat your brother in Christ as a brother and not a serf to be bossed around. Also, on a issue of contention, leave things open for you to be wrong for a change; it sometimes happens.

Is it loving? We need not forget that tough love is called for; part of looking after ones fellows is to call BS when needed and back people away from bad behavior and bad views of God and people. That being said, we need to do it in such a way that strives to improve the other person rather than merely make an example of them. The right mix of carrot and stick is always hard to achieve.

 

Edifier du Jour:Galatians 5:4-6(NIV)

⁴ You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. ⁵ For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. ⁶ For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

How do we take "the law" in a modern context? We don't have too many modern believers trying to be Orthodox Jews and Christians at the same time, which is what Paul was dealing with. Paul's ministry was focused on the Gentiles, where he was building a by-pass where the Gentiles could come straight to Christ without having to go through the trappings and baggage of Jewish tradition.

Circumcision was the big symbolic step in becoming Jewish in that day (and in this era as well, if you're not already there due to the American tendency to circumcise all baby boys for hygienic reasons). Given the fact the the modern church is largely drawn from the Gentile side of the aisle, that's not a 21st century problem.

What is a 21st century problem is tacking on churchy customs and doctrines as part of "the Gospel," especially when the defense of such customs is done in a strident tone. "Faith expressing itself through love" is Paul's call for the church. Applying that in the middle of "worship wars" or various stances on creation or various takes on eschatology can be hard, especially when partisans will holler that you're denigrating the Gospel if you don't agree with their take.

Doing things lovingly doesn't mean rolling over and playing dead for the heretics among us or not calling out sin where it lies. It does call for a gentler tone in many cases where a prophetic, in-your-face tone would be counter-productive, for the voice crying in the wilderness doesn't always have to have the amps cranked to 11. We also will need to double-check to see if we're fighting over extra-biblical culture rather than spiritual truths before getting our war-paint on.

Love Ties, Wins in OT

Let's drop back three yards for a moment and check out 1 Corinthians 13:13

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Andy Stanley's sermon of this morning was under the microscope after being bashed for being too easy on homosexuality this week. He didn't answer the question directly today, but focused on majoring in loving ones fellow man.

Every time we pick up the scripture to find a law or a command or an instruction on anything – and there are hundreds of them in the Bible – remember that Jesus asked us to make sure that we "look at all of that through the filter of" the two greatest commandments: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments," he said.

God, Stanley added, does not want us to use His law "to unnecessarily hurt and disenfranchise people."

Some people are going to be hurt by what we say even if we say it lovingly, but we don't need to do things that score points if it scares off someone we're trying to help.

On one level, Stanley is dead on. Love is the first answer to how we respond to people, not bile. Whatever sin someone might be burdened with, the idea that this is a child of God whom He cares for comes first; repairing a broken relationship with God and the sinner is more important than doing a Master of the Obvious smackdown of the sin.

However, given that he was being grilled on a given front, some sort of note on the gay front would have been helpful. The sermon will get ignored by the heresy-hunters who want to put Stanley in the Rob Bell Memorial Doghouse for doing Love Wins 2.0 since he didn't directly address the question.

Stanley might well be lurching in a more universalist route like Bell, but he seemed to be delivering a very good message at the wrong time, at least as it related to answering his critics; that being said, getting into a pissing match with Al Mohler isn't what a sermon is about, teaching your flock is.

Edifier du Jour: Galatians 4:4-7(NIV)

⁴ But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, ⁵ to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. ⁶ Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” ⁷ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

It's a bit trite at times to trot out the idea that Abba in Aramaic was closer to Daddy than Father in tone. There's a sense of intimacy there that you don't get with "father", which you have to have a good English schoolboy accent to pull off with a straight face when addressing your dad.

When you go back to all those classic hymns, they are using the intimate second person rather than the formal third person; instead of being stuffy and archaic, the thees and thous are actually the abba-daddy format that were used for freinds and loved ones. We'd have to redo our modern love songs if we kept that, where I would have grown up with Thou Makest Me Feel Brand New or Thou Lightest Up My Life.

We're heirs of God. However, we'll never actually inherit much, since God doesn't die, (unless Neitzsche gets in on things) but we share in God's kingdom as His sons and daughters. Not bad.

Edifie du Jour-Galatians 4:1-5(NIV)

What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. ² The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. ³ So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. ⁴ But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, ⁵ to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

That is an interesting take; the Law as regent, the guy who runs the kingdom while the prince is too young to become king. Of course, any Jews in the audience would have their cookies frosted, since they're seeing the faith they grew up with dissed as inferior child's play.

Note the end of verse five; the sonship is what I was riffing on yesterday, not quite remembering that this would come up in this chapter. Regardless of our gender, we're all sons of God, for it would have been the eldest son who inheritied the father's wealth.

Edifier du Jour: Galatians 3:28-29(NIV)

²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Verse 28 is a go-to verse when you want to fight racism, ethnocentrism and any number of things that divvy us into camps. However, it's verse 29 that I want to jam on, escpecially after Sunday's sermon.

Pastor Kessler was talking about being citizens of God's kingdom in a sermon on prayer. However, we have more than just citizenship with God, we have been adopted into His family. We are considered heirs in verse 29, children of God.

Thus, we inherrit more than just our share of the national debt in this passage.

Edifier du Jour-Galatians 3:15-20(NIV)

15 Brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. ¹⁶ The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,”[i] meaning one person, who is Christ. ¹⁷ What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. ¹⁸ For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.

¹⁹ Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator. ²⁰ A mediator, however, implies more than one party; but God is one.

One legal issue that I recall being mentioned is that without both parties getting something of value, there is no contract. The "Seed" was able to provide that counter-weight Himself.

Edifier du Jour-Galatians 2:15-16(NIV)

¹⁵ “We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles ¹⁶ know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

Paul ragged on favortism earlier in this chapter, but he lets loose with an anti-Gentile barb here. That might be tongue-in-cheek, given that the letter-of-the-law attitude of many Jews of the day left them immunized to the spirit of the law; it's more important to be following Jesus than to get all the menu kosher.

No one's perfect and no one can follow all the rules all the time; Jesus died for all those sins so we didn't have to be pitching a perfect lifetime. We had a perfect game pitched earlier this month, only the 21nd in major league history. If you patched together a century-plus of baseball history and put them on one player, he'd only be two-thirds of the way to a perfect season (your typical starter gets about 35 starts a year).

Perfect seasons are out of reach. Perfect lifetimes are (get out your best Vizzini) inconceivable. That's why Jesus needed to be the sacrifice to end them all.

Edifier du Jour-Galatians 1:21-24(NIV)

²¹ Then I went to Syria and Cilicia. ²² I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. ²³ They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” ²⁴ And they praised God because of me.

God can turn people around, turning enimies into adopted sons and daughters. In Paul's case, he was so fired-up of a Jew that he assumed Jesus was yet another kooky false Messiah; when he got a spiritual 2-by-4 from a resurected Jesus pointing out that assuming that all Messiahs are false is bound to be wrong eventually. I give Paul some credit for rejecting him for an otherwise-honorable reason.

That leaves hope for the Dan Savages of the world. A less honorable cause, to be sure, is prompting his persecution of believers (It's lighter than stoning believers to be sure, but nonetheless nasty; ask Rick Sanorum along with the devout "pansy-[butt]" teens who walked out on him), but there is hope even for him.

Rather than slide back into "It gets worse" snideness, praying for one's foe to do a 180 and find that Giliad balm for the pain and nastiness inside him is the better answer. God has saved mass murders (Dahlmer, Son of Sam, Bundy) who were real savage beasts, so there's hope for everyone.

Edifier du Jour-Galatians 1:11-17(NIV)

¹¹ I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. ¹² I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

¹³ For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. ¹⁴ I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. ¹⁵ But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased ¹⁶ to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. ¹⁷ I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.

Paul has an arrogance that turns many folks off, but when you got your knowledge downloaded direct from God, it can result in a bit of confidence.

What I find interesting here is verse 17. It seems to not quite mesh with Acts 9's take on Paul's conversion. In Acts, he's blinded and is healed three days later in Damascus, then goes to Jerusalem. Arabia isn't in the mix, and this isn't an era where you can bop a plane to Riyadh for the weekend.

The best I can think of on short notice is that he wandered off to the south towards Arabia for a bit, digesting what had just happened and not being quite ready to do a public 180 on this new cult. It has echoes of Jonah, who headed west towards Spain when he was supposed to head east towards Iraq. However, it seems that no big fish was needed to redirect Paul; not too many are in the Arabian desert anyway.

Much to the dismay of folks who wish Paul hadn't set as high a bar on discipleship, he did make it to Damascus and on to a good hunk of the Roman Empire.

Edifier du Jour-Galatians 1:10(NIV)

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Serving God often means telling people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. The latter has a ready market, which Joel Osten's visit to Washington's new baseball stadium is a nice expression of. While his message isn't devoid of the Gospel, it plays to people's wants rather than needs a bit too much for comfort.

The Catholic move to bring their corps of American nuns back on the same page as Rome seems an interesting need-to-hear application. The activists nuns wanted a church more to the left on both policy and theology, and the powers that be said no. While some Catholic theological points aren't followed on this side of the Tiber, most seem to be a solid defense of traditional Christianity which aren't open to amendment.

God comes first rather than the "progressive" desires of some or regressive desires of others; if the two seem to be at odds, the Gospel as historically understood wins in a traditionalist venue like the Roman Catholic Church. That historic understanding is sometimes flawed, but has a better batting average than the Church of What's Happenin' Now.

I recall Piers Morgan's take on Kirk Cameron's "antiquated" Christian thought. New doesn't always mean improved. People don't always get what they want out of the Gospel if what they want is bad for them in the long haul. As one British writer once noted, you can't always get what you want, but you just might find that you get what you need.

Paul would concur.

Edifier du Jour-Galatians 1:6-9(NIV)

⁶ I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— ⁷ which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. ⁸ But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! ⁹ As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!

This verse can be misused to create churches with a seperatist streak, anathamatizing anyone who has minor differences in theology as a "different gospel." Baptists who fall into the Landmarkism meme are a case in point, where they equate their take on the Bible as the gospel and all others as heretics. A less pernicious variant of that might well be the neo-Reformed Together for the Gospel conferences, which are more like Together for Reformed Theology; at least they bring Reformed-friendly Baptists, conservative Presbyterians and capital R Reformed churches together and put church polity and means of baptism on the back burner for a time.

However, avoiding that and erring on the side of inclusion opens the door to all kinds of heresy, creating the church that stands for nothing and falls for anything. Joel Osteen bringing Mormonism under the Christian tent would be an example in the news, as would the varying flavors of Episcopal theology from evangelical to Anglo-Catholic to universalist liberal.

Heresy hunters often call themselves "Discernment ministries", but discernment is a word that needs to be reclaimed from that bloc; figuring out what's an agree-to-disagree point (style of music in church, grape juice or actual wine for communion) and what's a deal-breaker (God as an evolved man, universalism) is vital for a solid theological base.

Edifier du Jour-Galatians 1:2b-5(NIV)

To the churches in Galatia:

³ Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, ⁴ who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, ⁵ to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Substitutionary atonement is the big five-dollar phrase that comes to mind here, that Jesus suffered and died on the cross taking our punishment for us. That's a large part of the core of Christian thought, that Jesus died for our sins, becoming the sacrifice to end them all. That's the Good Friday part of the equation; the Easter part is that he rose again and is with God to this day.

The other interesting part of this passage is the "present evil age" part; we normally think of our modern culture is the near-pinnacle of evil compared to the past, but our modern culture at least has a veneer of the Gospel informing it. The same couldn't quite be said of the first century Roman empire. We're still in an evil age, just one with its own vices.

Edifier du Jour: Galatians 1:1-2(NASB)

¹ Paul, an apostle (not sent from men nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead), ² and all the brethren who are with me,

To the churches of Galatia:

Paul is literally on a mission from God. That might be one reason that a lot of folks don't like Paul, for there is a confidence in his writing that comes across as arrogant if you question his calling. Such bravado has the more jaded saying "Oh, yeah?"

He also has a posse with him. A lone fruitcake who thinks God is talking with him is one thing, but Paul has brothers and sisters behind him; that's how the NIV covers "brethren." If they are nuttier than Paul, that gives some credence to the message.

Blessed Assurance

One of the things that leads me towards a Reformed view of theology is the comfort in eternal security. The P in TULIP is Perseverance of the Saints, that God won't let you go once He has you.

The alternative is a faith that can be lost. For someone fighting depression, that's a scary thought, one that can lead to a bit of a death wish that one could lock their salvation in by dying while one's still in God's good graces rather than living and risking blowing it down the line. I recall fighting that though off about three years ago, when I was unemployed, facing bankruptcy and going to a Arminian church that had losing one's salvation as a real prospect; having God kill me now and lock things in seemed a viable alternative for a few minutes that Sunday morning.

That "once saved, always saved" Reformed stance is good for a food fight and can lead to some spiritual sloppiness amongst the "frozen chosen", but it keeps one from a worry of whether your faith is real enough, especially when anxiety and depression make one a bit reserved and not the best street evangelist; how much "fruit" is enough?

Thus, even though I find little comfort in the limited atonement side of TULIP, wanting all to have a shot at salvation, I can't easily be in the Arminian camp; having a faith to hold on to that isn't going away is vital for my sanity.

Edifier du Jour: Psalm 12:1-4(NIV)

¹ Help, LORD, for no one is faithful anymore;

those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.

² Everyone lies to their neighbor;

they flatter with their lips but harbor deception in their hearts.

³ May the LORD silence all flattering lips and every boastful tongue—

⁴ those who say, “By our tongues we will prevail;

our own lips will defend us—who is lord over us?”

David was kveching about things that seem all too modern; people are quick to get full of themselves and think they are their own boss. Not quite true, even in a US culture that is quick to question all authority.

More Than a Show

This passage from Hebrews 10(NIV) came to mind as we move out of Holy Week-

²³ Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, ²⁵ not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

That encouragement part is often left out of the loop as we do church these days. A typical service, whether it be in a megachurch with a Grammy-nominated house praise band or a one-service small-town church, is a theological show, where the congregant sings along to the music, drops something in the offering plate (or not) and listens to a good sermon. The closest thing to encouragement you get is a greeting time between songs, which doesn't lend itself to true fellowship and more a perfunctory set of hand-shakes and howyadoins of the people around you.

Paul (or whoever penned Hebrews; we're not sure) is looking for some level of engagement when we get together above what we get in modern churchdom. The lack of such engagement can have people be comfortable with just the occasional trip to church, especially on Easter. You would seem to need some interactive part of the service if we were to meet what the writer was looking for; breaking up into small groups to pray or discuss things seems a bit trite within a service, but that is one way to move towards something more Pauline.

Heart-Witnesses

We just got back from Easter service, and our sermon had an interesting thought towards the end; eye-witnesses are more effective then expert witnesses.

So often, commentary on-line leans towards the latter, as dueling theologians and heresy hunters go after small points of heterodoxy and heteropraxy. Such debate rarely brings outsiders to Christ or expands the Kingdom of God.

If I can borrow from that other King James, we believers are all witnesses... of God's love. As the old hymn goes, "You ask me how I know He lives; He lives within my heart." That's something that photochemical analysis of the Shroud of Turin can't do.

Edifier du Jour:John 10:11-13(NIV)

¹¹ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹² The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. ¹³ The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

In Jesus' speech, the Pharisees were likely the hired hands who didn't have their flock's best interest at heart, although that wasn't directly stated.

My mind is turning to applications of that. Which of us resembles Jesus' Good Shepherd and which of us more looks like the hired hand? How many of use run from the wolf, or start to negotiate with the wolf or even for the wolf.

Heck, why not give the wolf the pulpit, the better to understand his view; after all, eating sheep isn't cannibalism, it's just lunch or dinner. We're all fellow carnivores, after all.

I'm thinking of the phrase "sheep-stealing" as it applies to church-changing. The phrase assumes that a church owns its people; if it's being run by a hired hand, the former church doesn't even own the sheep, so it can't be stealing.

If folks aren't being looked after properly, they need to go where there is a shepherd that cares for them and knows them by name and won't get thrown to the wolves, whether the preditors are legalism or amorality or materialism or any number of heresies.

Independents Have No Party Line to Follow

Here's an interesting Michael Spencer post that his disciples at IMonk reposted this week. My title might be a bit flip, but Spencer was looking at the problems of toeing a theological party line as an evangelical. His main focus was on creation issues (you're not going far in life sciences as a young-earth creationist and not going far in church circles as a old-earther or IDer), but the same can be true about any number of theological issues. Southern Baptists can get fired for being too Pentecostal or too Calvinist (if you're not in a neo-Reformed hotbed, in which case being too Arminian can get you the left foot of disfellowship) or too liberal; I'm reminded of the Kentucky Baptist regional body who rejected one prospective member church for being too Reformed and another church for being gay-friendly.

However, most of us don't have to worry about that too much unless we have careers that are theologically/ideologically sensitive. When I taught finance, I taught at church schools that weren't that picky about theological fine points as long as the Gospel was respected amid the internal rate of return math and at for-profit schools that didn't mind the occasional church reference amid good finance teaching. Even when I did my doctoral work at a state school, I could throw in a theological reference now and then; it didn't hurt that bringing the Gospel into finance leaned it to the left a bit, making things a bit less greedy and a bit more communitarian.

Thus, we're freer from having to worry about a theological party line if our jobs don't depend on it. Pastors may have little leeway in questioning their denominational distinctives or apprecating the distinctives of other flavors of the church, but mere churchgoers have much more freedom of thought as long as they aren't making an active stink about an issue. If our job isn't in some secular hotbed where orthodox Christian thought is unwelcome, we have freedom to be ourselves and let the theological chips fall where they may.

That lets us be freer to go where God leads, without having any third rails to get zapped upon.

Some Things Just Are

I'm rewinding the tape a couple weeks to go back to a pair of posts. One was from John Piper on the bad tornado outbreak of early March from a somewhat hyper-Calvinist vantage point and a Internet Monk bashing of said post.

Who do we blame for such "Acts of God"? It's easy to give God credit when he's taking out your enemies; I recall Piper getting some rhetorical points when a tornado ripped through a liberal Lutheran church when the ECLA was meeting down the road from Piper in the Twin Cities. However, I don't see such put-the-fear-of-god-into-them with the most recent outbreak.

There's a non-trivial overlap between the Bible Belt and Tornado Alley. If this is God's vengeance, God must be a liberal Democrat, for He keeps whopping down stuff in red states.

On one end, we have your reformed-types who want to give God credit for everything, good, bad and ugly, lest that dreaded free will get into the mix. That can lead to a bad case of fatalism, for we can do nothing on our own. That makes sense from a salvation stand point, but from a day-to-day living standpoint, it can be discouraging, especially if circumstances don't seem to fit into any good plan for your good.

On the other end, we have your more Arminian crowd who puts the onus on the believer to get things done. When you couple that with a hands-on God of charismatic thought, you get a Word of Faith framework that gives God the credit and the faithless the blame; if you were truly faithful, God would bless you, and since you're not being blessed, you must not be faithful. That's not encouraging to the person struggling through things like bad health or depression.

Somewhere in the middle is a livable spot where things are. Not due to a lack of faith or a micromanagement from above, but just are. Rather than blame yourself or blame God, it might be more comforting to have bad things just happen.

Our faith then is walked out by making the best of whatever happens. When bleep happens, make some fertilizer out of it, getting things to grow despite the bleep.

 

Profit Centers and Prophet Centers

The church bulletin was plugging a retirement planning seminar; that's nice.... if you have a job and disposable income to put into a retirement plan.

Retirement planning is often a money-maker for charities (the local Christian radio station does those quite a bit), as they'll include a plug to include the church in their will and to do vehicles that spit out yearly retirement income and leave a remainder to the church once you assume ambient temperature.

I was reading a 2009 post of mine where an Akron megachurch I went to in grad school got dissed for being anti-poor; churches tend to lean towards the successful and can tend to ignore the poor, especially the poor that are already in the church, as such anti-poverty ministries are often seen as outreaches rather than helping the folks in the flock.

Of course, the Bible was on the case from Day 1-James 2 comes quickly to mind

¹ My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. ² Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. ³ If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” ⁴ have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

We can head there if all the church activities outside of Sunday worship seem to come with a price tag; $10 for this class, $30 for this Valentine's Day dinner, $17.50 for the book for that class, $5 for goodies at the teen outing (that's not my current church, by the way, but a image from a past church that shall remain nameless). The church is supposed to be more of a prophet center than a profit center and making church activities (a) have a price-tag and (b) have a default of "going Dutch" can scare people of lesser means off.

Creed 101-Part III-An Eight-Pound Miracle

I'm going to try to get back to more regular bloging and more spiritual blogging. One reason that it has been hard to write as of late is that it has been a tough stretch and I struggle to stay positive and hopeful.

However, I find that being transparent about what is going on in my walk, for better or worse, is helpful to others. If I'm such a misfit that I have nothing to lose by being transparent, I might as well be boldly transparent (to borrow from Luther's "sin boldly") as I write rather than meekly silent.

Anyways, I want to return to the Apostle's Creed series that I tried to start a while back.

The third part of the Apostle's Creed goes thusly, describing Jesus-

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,born of the Virgin Mary,

I'm surprised that people have a problem with that story. If we buy into the first part of a creator God, we have established that we have a deity that is in the miracle business.

On the way back from dropping Eileen off at a baby shower, there was one of those pass-it-on character trait billboards on M-20 celebrating the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" US hockey team with the caption, "Yes, we do believe in miracles," answering Al Michaels' rhetorical question from the end of the win against the Soviets.

People are willing to flip about the prospect of the miraculous in simple sporting events, like an Olympic hockey team or (to rewind the tape a few months rather than a few decades) a Tim Tebow comeback. At the same level, they'll quickly dismiss the idea of God actually doing His own in vitro fertilization without any petrie dish or donor sperm. That brings up the interesting question-what would Jesus' DNA have looked like? Baring any Da Vinci Code-style heirs, we'll never know.

We have a hands-on God. That's not comforting to folks who don't want a personal God, who'd prefer a deity like George Burns' version in the 70s who last miracle was the '69 Mets, a god who did the Big Bang and got outa Dodge. For such deists, ongoing miracles are uncomfortable, for that brings about the prospect of a God who cares about the present day.

Like the old Hallmark line, God cared enough to send the very best, an eight-pound miracle (by the time He got born; the miracle proper was likely in the milligram range). Where's Al Michaels in the creche scene?