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  • American Politics and the Christian

    D. Kevin Brown has an interesting essay written as he watched the most recent Republican debate. I think a key sentence is this:

    The only way to change a person is on the inside.

    Read Kevin’s post and comment.

  • Mohammad El-Tebow

    I read an interesting editorial this morning at Fox News: What If Tim Tebow Were A Muslim? The author suggests that the frequent mockery he receives would be largely absent if he were a devout Muslim instead of a devout Christian:
    Imagine for a second, the Denver Broncos quarterback is a devout follower of Islam, sincere and principled in his beliefs and thus bowed toward Mecca to celebrate touchdowns. Now imagine if Detroit Lions player Stephen Tulluch and Tony Scheffler mockingly bowed toward Mecca, too, after tackling him for a loss or scoring a touchdown, just like what happened in October.
    I know what would happen. All hell would break loose.
    Stinging indictments issued by sports columnists. At least a few outraged religious leaders chiming in on his behalf. Depending on what else had happened that day, they might have a chance at becoming Keith Olbermann’s Worst Person In The World.
    And there would be apologies. Oh, Lord, would there be apologies — by players, by coaches, possibly by ownership with a tiny chance of a statement by NFL commish Roger Goodell.
    You cannot mock Muslim faith, not in this country, not anywhere really.

    I think that is a good question but maybe not for the same reasons.
    I certainly do think that Muslims get treated differently than Christians, in part because the pseudo-Christianity that marks our cultural religion is the majority report in our society and Muslims of all stripes get lumped in with the 9/11 hijackers. Mocking Christianity is a popular sport for academics, media types and others. What I wonder is why Christianity is not more reviled by a culture that is antithetical to everything the Gospel stands for.
    When I think about this, I also wonder: What if Tim Tebow were Muslim? Would Christians embrace his faith and devotion and defend him from critics?
    I doubt it. Nor should we.
    So why should we expect the unbelieving world to applaud someone open and devout about a faith that that same world hates? How many times does the Bible assure us that in this life we will have trouble, that we will be blessed when persecuted and reviled, that the world will and should hate us because it hates Him? There are two kingdoms and every human is a subject of one or the other, the kingdom of this world and its infernal ruler or the Kingdom of Christ where He and He alone is King. As subjects and ambassadors of Christ the King, we should expect nothing less than hostility from the world. So let’s stop wringing our hands about the vitriol directed at a famous athlete, an athlete who shows more Christ0like character in responding to those attacks that those who purport to defend him. The same people mocking Tebow are the people we are called to love and take the Gospel to.

  • The Nature of Hope

    by Edward W. H. Vick

    If the man of Old Testament days were asked how he had come by his understanding of the world, how it was that he had come to have a standpoint on the meaning of reality, there would be little question as to how he would answer the query, after it had been put in concrete enough terms so that he could understand it. He would refer to what God had done, to the ‘mighty acts,’ and to the traditions by means of which such past acts had been preserved in remembrance. He would speak of the expectation which the recalling of these remembered acts had awakened in him. For his God was not simply the God of his fathers. The teaching which had been handed down was not simply a memory of what was past and done. Yahweh was not the God of the past only. He could stride across the length of the future leaving newly fulfilled promises and newly awakened anticipation in His train. Yahweh was a living God, He had made his will known in His doings. These doings had passed into history and yet were not past. They had passed into history, but they were present in being remembered. But not only that, the God who had performed them then was the God who acted now. The Hebrew lived between memory which was no mere memorial, and anticipation which was no mere wistfulness. He was the man he was because of the God in whom he believed. He had been shaped to be the man he was by his trust in the God in whom he believed. He hoped because he knew God’s promise, and because he knew that it was not exhausted even when it was being fulfilled. He knew that the fulfilment itself pointed beyond itself to what was yet to come in the activity of God’s future.

    It was this forward looking that came to distinguish the Hebrew people, and the Hebrew book, the Old Testament, from other peoples and from other books. It appears in different ways, but it is always there, ‘All presentation of history in the Old Testament is in one form or another inherently open to a future . . . in this connection ‘future’ is always a future to be released by God . . . . This forward looking is certainly not always the same. Sometimes it is more obvious, sometimes less: but it is present everywhere . . . . the prophets looked for the decisive factor in Israel’s whole existence — her life or her death — in some future event . . . . Thus Hosea foretells a new entry into the land, Isaiah a new David and a new Zion, Jeremiah a new covenant, and Deutero-Isaiah a new Exodus.’1

    We are constantly borne forward to what is to come. Faith in the God of the covenant, who is the God of promise and of fulfilment, has its natural accompaniment in the hope that can face the future, not only without fear, but with confident expectation. The greatest acts of God are not those from the past. They are yet to be. God has begun what He has not yet finished. The believer lives between the times, and thus in expectation. His faith is a hopeful faith. ‘Not only words of promise, but also the events themselves, in so far as they are experienced as ‘historic’ events within the horizon of promise and hope, bear the mark of something that is still outstanding, not yet finalized, not yet realized.’2 Here everything is in motion, the accounts never balance, and fulfilment unexpectedly gives rise in turn to another promise of something greater still. Here nothing has its ultimate meaning in itself, but is always an earnest of something still greater.

    The very fact that the Old Testament is a Christian book means that this distinguishing characteristic must be retained in any adequate Christian thought about God. The concreteness of the Old Testament attitude to ‘religion’ (they, of course had no such word), and the concreteness of the Old Testament understanding of God stands guard against different kinds of attempt to forget or to minimise this intrinsic tie to what is past, and the anticipation of what is yet to be which was the distinguishing feature of biblical faith. To put it in other words, faith rests upon that which has been done. It thus has a stake in speaking about history. It anticipates what will be. Genuine faith is never unaccompanied by hope. It knows what hope is because in its history it has seen hope fulfilled.

    We are thus led to the need for clarifying an important term. It is the word eschatology. The Greek word eschatos is an adjective and means ‘last.’ The English term ‘end’ might serve also as a translation. But the English term ‘end’ has an interesting ambiguity which this Greek term does not have. For as well as ‘last’, the English term ‘end’ also means ‘purpose’ or ‘fulfilment.’ To ‘achieve one’s end’ is to ‘get one’s purpose fulfilled.’ Now if we take the Greek term, transliterate it into English (adding a transliterated Greek suffix) the term ‘eschatology’ emerges. It means the doctrine of the end. The term comes to have an interesting ambiguity however. The end can be temporal or it can be purposive (When we learned Greek and Latin, final clauses were purpose clauses). Traditional eschatology has held the two meanings of the term together, when it asserted that the purpose of God was fulfilled at the end of the world. The problem of eschatology was then to relate the final (that is, the last) fulfilment of God’s purpose to that which is here and now being fulfilled in the life of faith. For, it was rightly realised that in an essential sense of the term God’s purpose is fulfilled in the life of faith here and now. The believer has eternal life. This was balanced in the traditional view by the assertion that that was not all that needed to be said, but that it must be insisted that there was life, fulfilled life after this one.

    It is clear that a divorce can take place in two quite different directions. Eschatology can become exclusively futuristic or exclusively ‘presentative’! The former takes place when schemes of eschatological geography, of end-time mapping, replace the proper concern, which should (if the emphasis is going to be put on the future) be the fulfilment of life in the future which follows the events of such neatly mapped-out schemes. The latter takes place when emphasis is placed on the reality of present faith to such an extent that the content of hope is pushed out of range. All that matters is that one believe, that one decide. These are the dangers of fundamentalism and of existentialism respectively.

    There is yet another danger. It is that of holding the importance of hope (however the events of the end-time are mapped, or whether they are at all) in one compartment and the importance of faith in another. One knows that faith in Jesus Christ is essential but this faith is not brought into intrinsic theological relationship to an understanding of the last things. The doctrine of the eschaton, and those of the life of faith and of the Spirit and of the church remain as disjecta membra, never brought into essential connection (that is, integration) with that of the eschaton. As with the doctrine, so with the preaching of the church. It is then that the preaching of the Christian hope, or as it is sometimes called of the ‘Second Advent,’ becomes something less than Christian. Christian hope is secularised even with the retention of the symbolism that points beyond such secularisation. Sometimes it may take on crass form not entirely different from the eschaton promised to the Islamic warrior, as in the case of the Tennessee preacher heard by the writer for whom fulfilment consisted in having a large boat, a magnificent house, every imaginable comfort. He simply transferred these (in the name of Christian fulfilment) to the eschaton. It requires little insight to see that this has nothing to do with Christian hope. The moral of the piece is that in preaching fulfilment, the Christian preaches Jesus Christ, no less. He is to preach Jesus Christ even when he preaches eschatology, rather one should say, especially then. Jesus Christ points to the fulfilment of our needs and provides for what is involved in being a real person. The future is thus first and foremost God’s future, and this means the future of faith and of holiness.

    Thus the subject of eschatology is God. The decisive question which talk of fulfilment raises is simply, What sort of God is it that the Christian believes in, trusts and hopes for? The kind of future and of fulfilment on expects will be determined by the kind of God who (or which) is the object of one’s ultimate concern. All questions in theology finally come back to this one — namely, the question of God. If we cannot speak of God, we cannot speak of God’s future. If God is known by reference to Jesus Christ, the future of the Christian will be the future of Jesus Christ. But if Jesus Christ has not revealed the future of God, must we not say that that future is completely unknown? ‘Only when the present of Christ is an anticipation of the future of God, can it be understood as germ and beginning of that which is to come.’3

    At this point we return to the Biblical understanding of God with which we began. We saw that for the Hebrew, the future was God’s future. The future did not simply come, it was not simply inevitable. It was shaped by the initiating activity of God, and thus quite the opposite of that which would simply happen. In the future, God was expected to come, with power, deliverance, revelation, fulfilment. What God would do, — that was one side of it. What man might expect, — that was the other. The future of the believer was a different future from that of the non-believer. For the believer it did not simply come, it was initiated by God. One spoke of God rather than of fate. This is signified by the Latin adventus, from which we get our English word ‘advent’. The Greek equivalent is parousia, which quite appropriately has come to stand for the ‘end.’ The parousia in the New Testament is the future that Jesus Christ will initiate. The advent, the parousia, is that which will come. It is the actualisation of purpose not simply the passage of time. Without the actualisation of purpose, there is no future. The Christian affirms that Jesus Christ anticipates the future of God in the present in that in Him the purpose of God has come to fulfilment. So as faith is directed toward Him, the possibility of His future is shared by the believer.

    1Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, Volume II, pp. 361, 117.

    2Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p.107.

    3Jurgen Moltmann, Diskussion uber die Theologie der Hoffnung, pp. 212-213.
     

  • On Being Certain

    Edward W. H. Vick
    We had gone away for a vacation, were far from home, had left it all behind and in spite of the weather were enjoying ourselves. Now it was Thursday evening. Before turning in for the night, we decided to listen to the news on the radio. So we turned it on. To my very great surprise the announcer said it was the Friday news. Friday? But it was Thursday. Since announcers make mistakes, and since events are not reported before they happen, we waited. But he went on acting as though he knew what he was talking about. I was certain that it was Thursday. But it turned out that I was wrong. It was Friday.
    Someone whom I knew very well celebrated his birthday on the fourteenth of September, and had done it for years. on one occasion he had reason to examine his birth certificate, which informed him that he was born not on the fourteenth but on the fifteenth of September. He was for a very long time certain that it was the fourteenth. But he was wrong.
    A family of expert naturalists went into the woods as they had done many, many times before. They were especially good at mushrooms. They went home with a bagful and ended up in hospital, fighting for their lives. They were certain the fungi were edible. They were wrong.
    One thousand five hundred and thirteen people boarded the great boat that was making its maiden voyage across the Atlantic. It was the year 1912, and she was the most advanced liner ever built. She was called the Titanic. They were certain of comfort, luxury and of safety. One thousand five hundred and thirteen people never reached their destination. They were certain but they were wrong.
    A young couple were quite certain that their proposed marriage would be a happy one. Other people were not so sure. The psychologist who counseled them advised them that the marriage would be disastrous. But they were certain it would be all right. They were married. The marriage ended in disaster. They were certain, but they were wrong.
    So we could go on.
    It is a fairly common human experience to be quite sure about something and yet to be wrong. Now that raises a very real and very interesting problem. What’s the point of being certain if you may be wrong? What is the status of your certainty? When I say, I’m certain or ‘I’m quite sure’ that says something about me, as much about me as about the way things are. In fact, as our examples show, it often says more about me than about the way things are. To be certain about something does not mean that what I’m certain about is true.
    You can put it in a sentence. Certainty is not the same as truth. Now that is something well worth thinking about.
    I learned, when they taught me about public speaking, that I must speak with confidence, even if I may not feel confident. After all, you can’t convince people about what you have to say if you don’t act as if you were certain. The fact is, I’m sure you’ve noticed it, that when people speak as if they were certain, other people will take what they have to say as true. But that is a confusion. When the speaker says, ‘Let me tell you something I’m quite certain about’ we can’t then simply assume that he is right. To be certain is not the same as being right.
    If one hears something long enough one is apt to believe it. If you go on telling people something long enough, there is a good chance that they will end up believing what you tell them. The fact is that most of what we believe we have taken on authority. We do not, we did not question everything in all of the books that we were given to read. In fact we were in no position to be able to do so. So we had to rely upon being taught what was reliable.
    But, instead of saying, ‘I’m certain’ people sometimes say ‘I know’. Then there is real trouble. You can, as we have seen, be certain of what is not true. But you cannot know what is not true. So when someone says, ‘I know’ when they only mean, ‘I’m certain,’ it is easy to be taken in if one is not careful.
    Some things you should only be certain about if you have sufficient evidence. There is evidence which settles whether it is Thursday or Friday, whether one’s birthday is one day rather than another. If we are not aware of or have not given due weight to such evidence, our certainties are neither here nor there.
    You have heard people arguing. Sometimes they argue about their certainties. ‘I’m sure it is’, says one. ‘I’m sure it is not’, says the other. But what are they arguing about? Nothing is more fruitless than a futile and unnecessary argument. Being certain is a state of mind, and you can get yourself into a state of mind. You can get with people who are more sure than you areor read only the arguments which support your own point of view, or refuse to listen when evidence is discussed. But the state of mind we call being certain may be neither here not there. It may not be worth a fig.
    This means that some people who appear very serious are not half serious enough. I mean, you can make confident noises and gestures about your certainties and never really get down to brass tacks and ask not only, ‘What am I certain about?’ but also, ‘Why am I certain about it?’ and the more important question, ‘Do I have grounds for being certain?’ For the fact of the matter is that we ought to reserve our states of certainty for what is in fact true We should be able to give reasons, cite evidence for our certainties. I believe that it is a moral obligation to examine our certainties with these and other questions in mind. Only so can we call ourselves honest. But we cannot, if we are honest, be superficial about it. It may go deeper than we thought. So ask yourself three questions and stay with them for awhile, for a life time. That should be long enough. What are you certain about? What do you claim for your certainties? Why are you certain? That means, What grounds do you have for being certain.
    What all this implies is that some certainties are unreasonable however much they may please us and however much the prospect of giving them up may distress us. Perhaps in the most important areas of our human life, our illusions are just too expensive. A bigot or a fanatic is certain beyond what is reasonable, beyond what the evidence warrants. And a facade of certainty may be a cover for a real insecurity. But that is another matter – an important one, mind you. Very important! Since some certainties are unreasonable, and we ought to be as reasonable as we can, there is a moral aspect to our question. We ought to examine our certainties.
    Have a look at the following argument and see what you make of it. It sums up what we have so far been saying.
    We are sometimes mistaken when we are certain. To be certain cannot mean that we know the truth. To know the truth some other conditions besides being certain must be fulfilled. If such conditions are fulfilled then a feeling of certainty is irrelevant. Such a condition is the presence of evidence, or of sound reasons. So we ought to seek for evidence and for sound reasons when we wish to attain to the truth.
    The pilot will trust his instruments in spite of his own feelings. His instruments are the windows to reality, his indicators of truth. However, intuitively, he may be certain, he must not trust his intuition in defiance of the readings of his instruments. They provide him with appropriate evidence. So when it is a matter of checking my certainties there is often appropriate evidence to which I can appeal.
    However certain I may be that it is Thursday, if I have not examined the evidence for that certainty then my feeling of certainty is irrelevant. I could get the morning paper, or look at the calendar, I could recount the days from the one I was last certain (!) about, no not that – you see how easily we say the wrong thing – from the one I knew. I could have kept a diary.
    Some people who have considered the matters we have been talking about have ended up by abandoning all claim to be certain. But we must not do that. In fact you can’t
    do it. Just think for a moment about the claim, ‘You cannot be certain of anything’ and you will find it very unusual. It’s queer, this skeptical claim, since it seems to say no and yes at the same time, to deny and to affirm simultaneously. To say, ‘You can’t be certain of anything!’ means that you must be certain of that. So it is self-contradictory, or rather self-refuting, as the following conversation shows.
    ‘Anyone who says he’s certain is a fool.’
    ‘Are you certain of that?’
    ‘Of course I am certain.’
    Even if you try to question every certainty you’ll find that you can’t doubt them all. So watch out.
    Now, there are predispositions to believe certain kinds of people, provided they speak confidently. If a scientist says you can be certain of it, especially it he has a white coat on, people are apt to believe that what he says is true and in turn to speak with certainty about the matter. But the history of science shows that one man’s certainties were another man’s questions. One person’s answer is another person’s quest. One person’s orthodoxy is another person’s scandal. But it is only when the appropriate methods and evidence are forthcoming that one can speak about truth, or even a quest for truth.
    The history of science also provides us with instances of certainties which were abandoned with the understanding of the evidence. It also provides us with examples of bigotry and of foolishness in clinging to long-held positions. At the outset of the modern era, most people who asked the question held that the universe was earth-centered They were certain. They were unanimous, but they were wrong. There are some things the truth of which is not settled by the counting of hands, by disputations, but by the appropriate interpretation of the evidence. The Aristotelians appealed to Aristotle and produced their arguments, but Galileo offered them his telescope. When they refused to look through it, and instead demanded a discussion on Aristotelian lines, they could no longer be said to be reasonable. Since they were no longer reasonable, their certainties were not longer reasonable certainties. Moreover they were in error.
    In religious matters we hear a lot about certainty. So we have to be especially careful, and it must be said – deliberately honest in such things. To say, ‘We are certain’ is not the same as saying ‘We know the truth.’Of course religion is a disputed matter, inside and outside Christianity. You can usually be sure either of long silence or of a good discussion when the question comes round to religion. Since one person’s certainty is another person’s query, the question arises very seriously here. What is the status of my certainty? May I not be projecting my certainties on to reality and calling it by religious names, such as God, revelation, heaven, immortality? Of course I may. It does happen. Not all believers worship the same God, even in the same community. So we must beware.
    The believer confesses the certainty of his faith. The preacher declares it. The theologian examines it. The theologian, if he is worth his salt, refuses to let you take your certainties for granted. He asks the why, the wherefore. He faces outward to the non-believer and asks the questions from without. What are the grounds for your faith, for your beliefs? What are your grounds for your claims about Jesus Christ, for the authority you accept, the Bible, the church? What are the grounds for your understanding of God, as for example, Trinity? What are the grounds for claiming that there is some relation between what you believe and how you live?
    The honest Christian theist is not afraid to face the hard question, to try for an answer. Honesty is one of the Christian virtues most to be valued. If you seek it, you will need patience as well – the ability to face the crisis, to suffer the unknown and to keep trusting when perhaps much seems lost. The prize is theological, intellectual and personal integrity.
    But let is now put the glove on the other hand. For our observations work both ways, for the theist, the believer in God, and for the non-theist, the one who does not believe in God. For it is true of the atheist that his certainty is not necessarily relevant, when he claims, ‘I’m quite certain that God is not as Christians claim him to be, a God of love’, or ‘I’m quite certain that there is no God’, or ‘I’m quite certain that God is not a God of strict justice.’ There is such a thing as a superficial and unreasonable atheism, as there is such a thing as a superficial and unreasonable theism. In neither case can one simply appeal to one’s certainty.
    We feel, I think, that being certain, the mental state of certainty, is only really warranted when it has due support. In our off moments, we may well be fooled by someone’s certainty, especially when we want to believe what he commends. But when we reflect we are not so easily taken in. We’re not taken in when the lunatic says he’s Julius Caesar, or when the actor declaims that he is Richard III, King of England. We then have our critical wits about us. But in cases where the matter is not so clear-cut, we have ways of getting at the truth or falsity of the matter, if we are serious enough.
    Yes, it’s when we value truth that we must examine our certainties. So what are you certain about? Take a long hard look at it. Remember, it ain’t necessarily so.

    ************

    PS. And now I want to write a postscript. I’m quite aware that there are some certainties which my being certain about is enough to show that they are true. It is true that I am awake, that I am thinking (when I am thinking), that I am in pain when I am awake , thinking and in pain, and that is enough for me to know the truth in these instances. It’s quite different for me to say, ‘He’s awake, he’s thinking, he’s in pain,’ because I am not directly aware of some one else’s states of mind. But the religious certainties are about beliefs and relationships and these are mediated. Someone witnesses to me about God. I read things in books which someone has written about Jesus Christ. So they are unlike my immediate self-awareness, and I must therefore seek to show that the religious certainties I have are well grounded. I must talk about them being true and in doing so produce reasons and evidence which point to their truth. Then I can be reasonably certain.
    (Edward W. H. Vick is author of History and Christian Faith, The Adventists’ Dilemma, and the forthcoming Energion title From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully, which will begin shipping next week.)

  • Christ's Sovereignty and the Church

    Earlier this morning, I published a “guest post” on my blog that I thought would be interesting to the people involved in this site. The post was written by Mark from “Sheepfold Ministries” and is called “The Sovereignty of God Over Us and His Church.”
    Here’s a snippet from the post:

    Christ demonstrates both His Sovereignty over the Church, and His love to the Church in the seven messages He dictates to the Apostle John in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. I shall let you read these in your own copy of the Bible, but we can see in these prophetic letters that Christ does have the power to expel individual members and even whole congregations from the Universal Church. No, I do not believe that if one is truly a saint, chosen by God, that salvation can be lost. At times, however, excommunication can occur (such as when Paul advised the church in Corinth to excommunicate the member engaged in sexual immorality), yet we can see Christ’s love for His people and His Church in that He gives the chastised believers and churches the required response to the chastisement, and ends each letter with the comforting and exhorting promise that “whoever overcomes will be rewarded”.

    Jesus warned the Jewish leaders of his day that “the kingdom would be taken away from you,” and in Revelation, he warned several churches that their lampstand (church, from a previous explanation) could be removed.
    Is this possible for churches today?

  • Where should Christians stand?

    In our increasingly politically and culturally polarized nation we are seeing battle-lines being drawn by two groups, groups that stand outside of the traditional political process and that are shaking the political landscape. These two groups, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, have very different goals even if some of their rhetoric sounds superficially similar. You can be sure that politicians on both sides of the aisle are running scared because these groups tend to eschew the normal niceties and rules of politics as usual. They are vocal, energized and inflexible and don’t seem interested in the ways things are done in Washington. They are also a serious threat to the church.
    Many evangelical Christians identify with the Tea Party because of its emphasis on individual liberty and conservative economic policies. The message of the Tea Party fits well with the narrative of conservative evangelical American Christianity. I would be willing to say that many Tea Party supporters are church-going evangelicals and likewise many church-going evangelicals are in sympathy with the positions of the Tea Party. That is troubling to me. Not because the policies are wrong, quite the contrary by and large I agree with them and vote accordingly. Rather it is troubling because the line between a political/economic issue and the Gospel has become blurry. Low taxes are not a Kingdom issue. Opposition to socialized medicine is not a Gospel issue. An overemphasis on the relationship with an earthly political agenda, no matter how correct that agenda might be, can cause a stumbling block to unbelievers and brothers alike and we need to avoid that wherever possible to ensure that there is no doubt that the Gospel is not a right wing political issue.
    Equally troubling are those who wish to anoint the Occupy Wall Street protestors with the mantle of Christianity based on some fuzzy notions of “justice” and because they carry signs poorly written in crayon decrying “greed”. Predictably there are some in the church on the activist political Left who are trying to claim that the Occupy Wall Street crowd somehow embodies Kingdom values and is worthy of support by virtue of its alleged concern for the poor. Of course there are lots of groups and organizations that are concerned for the poor that are either ambivalent or antithetical to the Kingdom of God, from secular groups like the United Way to heretical organizations like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints which has a large mercy “ministry”. So neither mere lip service in favor of disastrous economic policies like what we are getting from the Occupy Wall Street movement nor actual care for the poor is inherently Kingdom work if it does not have its foundation in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For example, none other than Jim Wallis made this declaration a few weeks ago regarding the Occupy Wall Street crowd….

     
    When they stand with the poor, they stand with Jesus.
    When they stand with the hungry, they stand with Jesus.
    When they stand for those without a job or a home, they stand with Jesus.
    When they are peaceful, nonviolent, and love their neighbors (even the ones they don’t agree with and who don’t agree with them), they are walking as Jesus walked.
    When they talk about holding banks and corporations accountable, they sound like Jesus and the biblical prophets before him who all spoke about holding the wealthy and powerful accountable.

    That is an incredibly sweeping statement and one that is likewise incredibly dangerous. Is an ardent atheist who is protesting in New York City in favor of income redistribution which will allegedly help the poor “standing with Jesus”? Is a Muslim or a mormon or a Buddhist who denies Christ but is handing out food “standing with Jesus”? The order here is backward. We who are in Christ are likewise called to aid the poor and the hungry but just because someone is helping the poor and downtrodden does not put them in right standing or even emulation of Christ. Merely mimicking Christ’s earthly ministry while denying His divinity does not make one “standing with Jesus”. Jim needs to be far more discerning and probably should quit entirely when it comes to declaring who “stands with Jesus” based on a liberal political stance.
    We need to walk a fine line here. On the one side, we have done a miserable job by and large as the church in caring of the poor, the downtrodden, the widow and the orphan. On the other side our failure is just that, our failure, and the solution is not to abandon the basin and towel mandate in favor of a flawed and self-defeating system of income redistribution by government confiscation. Rather we must continue to call on the church to repent and change and to demonstrate by our actions the lives of a Christ follower we see modeled in the Bible by His followers and Christ Himself. There is no worldly substitute that will do.
    Where should we stand? With the Tea Party? With Occupy Wall Street? I say neither because neither movement is rooted and grounded in a risen Savior who is Lord of all.
    As witnesses of Christ and ambassadors of the King we should neither identify with the Tea Party nor with Occupy Wall Street. We should identify with Christ and be awfully concerned with any overreliance or over-identification with any secular political movement. I believe that the policies we generally refer to as “conservative” or “libertarian” have the potential to create the greatest economic opportunity for the greatest number of people. I also believe that there is absolutely no correlation between economic security or economic opportunity and the Gospel proclamation. Quite the opposite. In places where people have the most opportunity (America) or the greatest, up until recently, economic security (Europe) we also see the Gospel witness stagnant and stale. Religion and ritual rule the day. Where the Gospel is exploding are in places like Africa, Asia and South America where life is much harder by almost any measure. Our focus must not be on winning political battles or utopian visions of free markets or social safety nets. Our focus must instead be first and always on proclaiming Christ and Him crucified as the only solution to the only problem that matters. In the end wealth or security will matter nothing to the soul lost outside of Christ.

  • True Homeland Security – David Alan Black

    Hello! I’m Henry Neufeld, administrator of this site. You won’t hear from me often, but today I extracted some material written by one of the authors of the books you see in the sidebar. He’s David Alan Black, author of the book Christian Archy. I thought there were some very important points he made. Since one can’t directly link to an entry on his blog, I have extracted this material to The Jesus Paradigm. The title True Homeland Security is one I chose, but I think you’ll understand why I did so once you read it.
    Feel free to discuss this here.

  • Forgive Us….

    “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
     
    This line of the Lord’s Prayer contains so many emotions: hope, love, peace, anger, frustration, and many others depending on where you are in the process of forgiving others, yourselfand even God.  It has been my experience that this is an often misunderstood process and unrealistic expectations due to this misunderstanding often help folks become more bitter and angry and hurt than they may otherwise be.  Let’s just talk turkey and get honest here.  We are not good at forgiveness because we do not understand it.  The Church Universal says we must do it.  Often there is no discussion on explanation as to how.  We are told that if we do not than we are not forgiven ourselves.  We are told to just pray about it.  Often that is it.  There is so much more. 
    First, we can forgive without the presence of God in our lives…….it is harder, doesn’t last as long, is exhausting, and isn’t as sincere but it can be done.  Second, God does not withhold forgiveness from us.  That is a myth that is not consistent with the overall theme of unconditional grace that is provided in the Bible.  We base that on a couple of verses one of which is John 20:23, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld from you.”  Another is Matthew 6:14-15, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you;but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”  Interpretation of these verses depends on how literally you take the Bible.  Over the years I have come to believe that we have confused human forgiveness and Godly forgiveness to the point that we truly expect ourselves to be God-like in our ability to forgive. 
    We base so much of what we do on how we feel.  We feel forgiven or we don’t.  We think we have not forgiven someone if one day we remember something and we are hurt or angry all over again.  Let’s get one thing clear: forgiveness is not pardoning, it is not forgetting, and it is not reconciliation.  Forgiveness is letting go of our own emotions so that the event or theperson no longer has control over us.  If we continue to be hurt, angry, bitter, etc. the even or the person controls us.  Forgiveness is taking control of yourself and your emotions back.  It is perhaps the most selfish thing you can possibly do because you stop wasting time and energy on things that are past, people and events you cannot control, and embittering behavior that will eventaully consume you. 
    I do not believe that God withholds forgiveness.  It is inconsistent with God providing salvation, working to be in relationship with us, and guiding us to become better individuals.  If God is the example we follow in our behavior, why would God tell us we forgive and then withhold forgiveness from us (especially after all the work that God has put into reaching us and forgiving us)?  It simply does not make sense.  I will have to state that the Bible is clear about there being one sin that is unforgivable.  What most of us need to realize is that to get to that point, we have truly become evil and will continually reject God to the point of our own destruction.  That is not God withholding forgiveness, that is a human choice to permanently reject the forgiveness that God offers.  I have come to believe that God understands that we do not feel forgiven and then are so hurt and angry that we are incapable of forgiving someone else.  We need God to truly forgive and heal.  I am not convinced that humanity can do it alone.  Sometimes, it takes a long time to do it even when we are diligent and do the work of forgiveness. 
    The work of forgiveness isn’t often dicussed.  We really think that if we pray about it a few times that we have forgiven someone and it’s all good.  It can happen that way (never underestimate God!).  Most often, we have to choose over and over again to forgive someone.  Most often, we have to work at it and decide to let the pain, hurt, and anger go over and over and over and over again. I firmly believe that what God is after with the above mentioned verses is for us to realize that we have to be active participants in forgiveness.  We must do the work of forgiveness.  We must decided each moment, each time, each event, each hurtful remark, etc. to let it go.  Then we must realize that when it comes back to haunt us, it’s not that we failed to forgive; it is that we failed to forget!  We are not capable of that – that action belongs to God.  So each time, we forgive.  Each time, we put it away again until one day it is truly gone.  This is a process that results in growth, compassion, emotional and spiritual maturity and deepens our relationship with God and with others.  We can come to realize the wonder of God in that God can forget and holds our trespasses over us no more. 
    The harm done to us and to others by withholding forgiveness is unbelievable.  This is one of the most destructive acts that humanity can partake in.  It destroys us spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically.  We have lost control of ourselves and the situation the minute we decide to withhold forgiveness.  We have decided that someone is completely beyond redemption and is no longer worthy of our time and love.  It is a dangerous game to play.  The person the most destroyed is us.  We have relinquished control of ourselves to someone else and we let them play us even if they have walked away and are no longer actively participating in our lives and emotions.  Today, do the work.  Be diligent and consistent and do the work.  Pray about it so that your heart is changed and you are able to let hurt and anger go.  Be with God so that you can be transformed and come to understand that forgiveness releases you not the other person.  There are still consequences.  There are still things that must be done and words that must be said.  Today, choose freedom.
     
     

  • The latest book from Energion

    You can check out my review of the latest book from Energion’s Areopagus Series, Except for Fornication: The Teaching of the Lord Jesus on Divorce and Remarriage here: Book Review: Except for Fornication

  • Does church authority (leaders) nullify Christ's authority?

    No one among the church outright desires to usurp Christ’s authority. Everyone – if asked – would profess that they desire to live under the rule of Jesus Christ as Master and Lord of their life.
    However, that does not mean that we always succeed in living “under Christ’s archy.” (Where have I heard that phrase before?)
    Recently, I published a series of posts on my blog examining how authority among the church (that is, authority exercised by church leaders) may actually be undermining and usurping the authority of Christ inadvertently.
    Here are the posts:

    1. Authority among the church? Starting a new series.
    2. What did Jesus say about positions of authority under his own authority?
    3. In the church, how does someone lead without exercising authority?
    4. Does the existence and recognition of elders indicate that they have positional authority?
    5. Does shepherding and overseeing suggest exercising authority?

    I also added this addendum, which I also think is an extremely important foundation to my argument above:

    I would love to get your thoughts on these posts, and perhaps discuss how mature believers can “lead” others (which we see in Scripture) without exercising authority over them (which we do not see in Scripture).

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