Church Voices

At the stroke of midnight a group of 12 men gather.  They have gathered to made decisions on policy and doctrine for the entire protestant world. 

Tall man: Alright, I call to order this super secret meeting of the real ultimate Christians.  What’s first on the agenda?

Fat man: The gays.  We need to decide what to do about the gays.

Tall man: Right, right.  Ok people what say you on the issue of the gays.

Skinny man: The Bible is clear they are sinners.

Short man: Absolutely, the Old Testament and New Testament are both clear on the issue.  Sinners.

Tall man: Alright, good, glad we got that cleared up.  Can I have a motion to adjourn?

Man: There’s more to it than that.

Bearded man: What are you talking about?  The scriptures are clear.

Man: They are clear.  But we’ve left off so much more.  How should we minister to homosexuals?  Don’t we need some sort of apology and repentance for our actions towards them?  How should Christians expect the government to act on issues directly related to this? 

Bald man: You’ve clearly abandoned the Bible.

Slight man: You’re not kidding he has.  He’s abandoned the clear mandates of scripture.

Tall man: You can bet we’ll have you removed from your position over this.

Man: I’m not denying homosexuality is sinful, but there’s so much more to this than that.

Fat man: You have lost the way, and are a wolf in sheep’s clothes. 

Pale man: You’ve called good evil, and evil good.

Tall man: You’d better believe this won’t go unpunished.  This meeting is adjourned.  You’ll be hearing from us.

Man: But… I… we didn’t even decide how to live with …. how to treat…. they’re our neighbors…  and… what about those within our churches… and… but…

And….. scene!

For the last 20 months I’ve been on a theological crash course that’s illuminated the scriptures for me almost more than any other experience in my life. That crash course is called fatherhood. Interestingly enough one of the statements that has been made repeatedly to me is how great it would be to be a baby. Everything is taken care of for you, you’re fed, everyone loves you, and you have no responsiblity.

I don’t think this is true.

It must be incredibly hard to be a baby. You have no idea why you’re being taken to the places you’re being taken to, you have no idea who most people are, or what’s going on at all. Every parenting advice book I’ve read has the same advice: babies need routine because they have no idea what’s going on.

Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.

When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
1 Corinthians 13.9-13

These verses are often quoted in the context of discipleship, usually in terms of discussing what someone used to do or used to believe, with the implication being that anyone who does those things, or believes those things are still immature and will grow out of it if they are truly disciples.

These verses have absolutely nothing to do with discipleship.

Instead these verses describe our life here, and our life in eternity. Here we don’t have any idea what’s really going on. Like babies we have a very limited knowledge about how God is working, about what is happening to us, and about how the world works. The terrible irony of how this verse is wrongly used is that those who claim to now be knowledgeable, unlike their previous child-like state are people who are unaware of how much we can’t possibly know.

That’s not to say that we can’t know anything. Even babies know something of their world.

Babies know their parents love them.
Babies know when they hurt.
Babies know when they’re hungry.
Babies know their family members.
Babies know when they’re not at home.

Not to stretch the metaphor too far, but I think its fair to say we know the rudimentary make up of what’s going on. We know who loves us, we now what He did to save us, but much of the how and why of what’s happening, especially when we hurt isn’t clear. Sometimes a baby hurts because a doctor has administered a life giving shot, other times a baby hurts because he has a life threatening illness, and no baby alive has figured out which is which.

Any number of short and simple descriptions of a Christ-follower’s life is available to us in scripture (to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God is my favorite of the bunch), but how and why this world and how and why God operates in this world often isn’t clear, and all too often the things obscured by the cloudy bits of the mirror are what separates us from each other. We have been given a clear command that we are to love each other and we will be known as His disciples by that love, meanwhile churches split, relationships dissolve, and no clear disciples of Christ are known because of arguments about what is behind those clouds have been allowed to dominate the focus, energy and ambition of the church.

How sweet are your words to my taste,  
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Psalm 119.103

If you have ever investigated techniques for losing weight you have come across the advice to slow down when eating your food. Many times the advice includes references to French traditions which turn a meal into a shared experience with friends, that includes savoring your food.  The end result is that you eat less food, and still feel full, and so you eat less calories without having to eat rice cakes and oat bran. 

The march of progress have brought us many excellent advances.  The printing press has brought cheap Bibles to the average person.  An excellent advance that we all applaud. However, what we may not have considered is that this advance fundamentally changed the way we use scripture.

Imagine you are part of the early church.  You have the opportunity to hear pieces of scripture at gatherings of the early church.  You are able to hear pieces of the old testament on the Sabbath at temple if you happen to live near enough to one.  But what you take with you on a regular basis is what you hold in your mind.  Now, everyday for you doesn’t include pen or paper so you’ve become very adept at remembering important information, but what you can remember is far less than what you can carry around with you in a Bible produced on a printing press that will be invented in 1400 years. 

So how do you interact with scripture?  Chances are you won’t be going to Bible studies that methodically parse scripture verse by verse, and you won’t be looking up individual words for study.  Instead you’ll be contemplating small chunks of scripture for days if not weeks at a time.  Savoring each word, examining it from every angle, considering the implications for every facet of life.

Lets say you and I set up a meeting at a coffee shop at 8AM.  How many minutes past 8AM does it take you to pull out your cell phone and tell me to get my late carcass over there?  Five minutes?  Maybe ten if you’re particularly patient.  And what do you do while waiting?  Are you listening to music?  Playing games on your phone?  Working on your laptop? 

On the other hand, if you were living in a world without instant communication, where travel involved using your two legs or riding something with four how much more patient would you be?  Would it be unreasonable to wait hours for an appointment?  Or even days if you were meeting in a distant city?  What would you do while waiting or traveling?  You’ve got time, and you’ve got scripture in your head.  What do you do? Contemplate scripture.

I wonder if we miss out on some of the sweetness of scripture when we take a buffet style approach to it.  So many times I hear about the shallowness of a particular church, or of Christians in general.  It may be just plain old laziness or it may be the entire paradigm that has been created by mass production is the problem.

One of the most abused pieces of scripture is Proverbs 22.6:

Train a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not turn from it.

Not too long ago I heard second-hand about a Sunday School teacher (and Bible College grad, and former minister) opine to his class that this is a promise of God, and that if you really properly trained your child then at some point they would return to the church. Its this sort of thing that makes me want to light myself on fire.

A maxim in the NFL goes that if you can run the ball well you will win games. This particular pundit disagrees. and offers up as evidence the recent game between the Cleveland Browns and New York Giants. He accurately points out that the Giants dominated the run game, while the Browns won the battle for air supremacy, and concludes that it is the passing game that determines winners, and not the running game.

Case closed. Right?

Well, lets not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet. Because a closer look at the box scores shows us something else. That something else is that the Giants turned the ball over three times, including an intercepted pass that was run back 94 yards for a TD (which is essentially a 14 point swing since the Giants were six yards from paydirt).

While a good day running might not be a guarantee to a victory, it is probably generally an indicator of victory, so long as you’re not handing over the ball to the other team.*

Biblical wisdom functions similarly to football wisdom. They are observations that are generally true. They are not mathematical formulas wherein you do X and always get A. Generally someone who works hard will end up materially better off than if he did not. But occasionally life kicks a hardworking man in the teeth and gives a big fat cupcake to a lazy fattie.

And usually a child raised in the faith will remain or return to the faith he was raised. But sometimes that doesn’t happen. And when it doesn’t it has to be heartbreaking to their parents. Teaching that a child who doesn’t remain or return to the faith did so because either God broke His promise, or the parents weren’t faithful to God doesn’t do anything but turn that heartbreak into an unbearable load of guilt that isolates and crushes.

This reminds me of another piece of scripture:

“Yes,” said Jesus, “what sorrow also awaits you experts in religious law! For you crush people with unbearable religious demands, and you never lift a finger to ease the burden.

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A common practice in ancient Rome was to leave unwanted infants on a hillside to die of exposure. As Christianity spread it became common for those infants to be saved by Christians as a way of advancing the kingdom of God in the great here and now. This practice is now looked back on as a great source of pride by current Christians. I doubt very much that ancient Romans even recognized this as an abhorrent practice.

Every era has its unseen vices. Practices that are so deeply ingrained in the daily routine of life that the horror of the practice fades away to background noise.

The unseen vices of America’s past include slavery quickly followed by societal and lawful racism. Americans today recognize the sin easily, and so today actively grapple with its effects, and the current forms of racism. Americans of even 60 years ago did not.

But what about today? What are the unseen vices of the current age? While I’m sure I overlook a great many, I humbly suggest usury as a prime candidate. Consider the following story:

The New York Times has an article that tells the unfortunate tale of Diane McLeod and her love affair with debt. She started out “debt free” when she got married, but after a divorce she’d managed to accrue $25,000 in credit card debt. Despite not having a down payment or any assets, Diane was given a $135,000 mortgage. Over the next few years, illness, underemployment, and shockingly irresponsible spending combined disastrously with the bank’s willingness to refinance her loan as her home appreciated (for a fee, of course). 5 years later, Diane owes $237,000 on her mortgage. She’s in foreclosure now, and a recent sheriff’s auction of the home did not draw a single bidder. A similar house down the street recently sold for $84,000 less than she owes on her home.

The NYT says there is a bright spot at the end of the tunnel for Diane. She’s still getting credit card offers from “Urban Bank.”

Recently an envelope arrived offering a “pre-qualified” Salute Visa Gold card issued by Urban Bank Trust. “We think you deserve more credit!” it said in bold type.

A spokeswoman at Urban Bank said the Salute Visa is part of a program “designed to provide access to credit for folks who would not otherwise qualify for credit.”

The Salute Visa offered Ms. McLeod a $300 credit line. But a closer look at the fine print showed that $150 of that would go, as annual fees, to Urban Bank.

Its clear that we’ve long passed the point where credit cards (and banks that issue them) have are not trying to earn a living off of interest in the form of short term loans that are paid off. Instead, their goal is to create debt that is never paid off. Credit card loans are essentially becoming assets. They don’t care if you have the ability to pay off the loan because they don’t want the loan paid off ever. They just want a constant revenue stream.

Christians of the past recognized the danger of usury. St. Jerome concluded that on the basis of Deuteronomy 23.20 earning any interest at all should be banned (as all men are brothers, sharing a common creator), Augustine concluded “to live by usury is exceedingly unnatural”, Saint Anselm began the shift in thinking that lead to the belief that charging interest was the same as theft, in 1139 the second Lateran Council denied sacraments to unrepentant usurer, by 1142 a decree had been issued that forbade re-payment greater than the amount actually lent, and St Thomas Aquinas and his disciples generally concluded that earning money lent on interest was wrong with a few exceptions. The list can go on and on, these are just some of the larger examples.

Of course to come to such a conclusion would require some major re-thinking of how Christians conduct themselves. The obvious being to avoid using, being employed by, or investing in credit cards, rent-a-centers, check cashing business and other businesses that earn money by charging exorbitant fees and interest on those least likely to be able to re-pay it.

What might hurt a bit more is the examination of the role that banks play. The sub-prime mortgage meltdown demonstrates that even large, reputable banks have acted in a way that is contrary to scripture. For most of us this isn’t a huge concern as we have the ability to use the services of a bank when and how we choose, and so can choose to use our money and borrowing power in a way that is consistent with scripture.

However, for those who find themselves in a banking career a bit more discernment is required. Do the scriptures forbid a Christian from being a teller at a reputable bank who may or may not be engaged in producing credit cards and other less than wise lending services? What should someone who is rounding out the end of their career as a bank president at a local branch do? They are bound to take care of their family, but at the same time their skills are now all in areas that would require them to work for a business that oversees auto loans. What about a car salesman who doesn’t actually make loans, but knows that many of the people he sells to can’t afford the loans they’re signing? While Christians can probably exist in these industries in some capacity, these questions are rarely, if ever, wrestled with.

There is one area to thank God for the progress made in. I thank God that men like Dave Ramsey have sounded the alarm on money management and debt in general. I also thank God that many churches are involved in educating their communities in this area.

We were riding in the car running errands the other day when our 4 year old daughter asked my wife to tell her the story of Jesus dying on the cross again.  She’s heard the story in her numerous illustrated Bibles we read her, as well as in Sunday School and during Children’s church.

So my wife replied somewhat to me, somewhat rhetorically, “Where do I Begin?”

Our daughter: “At the beginning.”

Makes sense.  So my wife and I together say, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

It gave us a good laugh at the time, but as children tend to do, my daughter got at the heart of much that is important to the story of Jesus with her simple answer.  I’m currently reading the book Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey.  In it she proposes Creationism as foundational to communicating the gospel.  I have to agree.  The story of Jesus’ death on the cross only makes sense in light of creation.  Which is why it can be difficult to evangelize in cultures (such as ours) that declare that we are only a part of nature which has it’s roots in itself (Darwinism is a form of this naturalistic worldview).

Maybe when we tell the story again, we really do need to start at the beginning.

While they were at Lystra, Paul and Barnabas came upon a man with crippled feet. He had been that way from birth, so he had never walked. He was sitting and listening as Paul preached. Looking straight at him, Paul realized he had faith to be healed. So Paul called to him in a loud voice, “Stand up!” And the man jumped to his feet and started walking.

When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in their local dialect, “These men are gods in human form!” They decided that Barnabas was the Greek god Zeus and that Paul was Hermes, since he was the chief speaker. Now the temple of Zeus was located just outside the town. So the priest of the temple and the crowd brought bulls and wreaths of flowers to the town gates, and they prepared to offer sacrifices to the apostles.
Acts 14.8-13

In Lystra Paul continued to preach the gospel, while there a man was healed because he had faith, the response of the Lystrans is interesting. Instead of turning to praise the Living God and leaving behind their previous beliefs they instead integrate what they have just seen into what they already believed. In fact, as they go to worship Paul and Barnabus, Paul continues to explicitly tell them what they believe about the two of them is wrong. The scriptures record, that despite this brute force approach it was still difficult to stop the people from worshiping them.

Quite a bit of noise has been made from certain segments of Christianity about the certainty of belief, they have attacked any theology that allows for any re-assessment of belief in any portion of any of our theological positions. These segments of Christianity have much in common with the Lystrans who despite Paul’s clear preaching and the demonstration of the power of the Living God still integrated Paul and Barnabas into their wrongly held beliefs.

As followers of Christ we are called to the truth, but we are also keenly aware of our own shortcomings in terms of both sin and ability (if the two can even be separated). As such we need to find ourselves in the delicate high wire act of clinging to orthodoxy, yet open to rebuke and correction by the Spirit through the scriptures. If our first reaction to anything we disagree with is to condemn the advocate of such a position as a damnable heretic of the most idiotic kind and then to complain to those who agree with us that this is nothing more than “itching ear” false preaching, it may be that we find ourselves in Lystra, instead of reality, and bending our knees to our particular culture, or intellect instead of Christ.

Then Peter said, “Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days. The apostles and the brothers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God.
Acts 10.47-11.1

If you paid attention in Sunday school you know that the answer to the question “what is the word of God” has two proper answers: the Bible, and Jesus. You can write those down and move on to the next question.

Here’s the thing though, neither one of those answers are appropriate for what happened in Acts 10 and 11. These Gentiles didn’t receive a Bible (neither the Old Testament, nor the yet unwritten New Testament), and while you can argue they received Jesus in the sense of having faith in him, its not the same sense as “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”.

So what is the word of God?

Sometimes I come across someone who has a particular issue that has swollen so large in their mind that they can’t see or think of anything else. No matter what particular scripture they read, no matter what they are praying about it all comes back to that issue. The issue might be something like instruments in worship, worship style, once saved always saved, end times, pre-destination, or any other number of theological hot button issues that have occupied people through the years. When this happens invariably you end up with verse after verse being pulled out in defense of the scriptures, lots and lots of words spill out and phrases like “its right there in the Bible” pepper the fire-hose like stream of consciousness.

No matter how much scripture is found in this situation, there’s no word of God in it. Because the word of God isn’t just particular words written by prophets and apostles (and James) it is the core message of Jesus sometimes called the gospel. What the apostles and the brothers recognized as the word of God is what brought the Holy Spirit, and baptism:

You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached— how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.

“We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message.

What this means is that you can spend a whole lot of time quoting a whole lot of scripture, and still not have the word of God.

One of the most important questions a Christian can ask his or herself is “What is God’s will for me?” The number of books written on this subject by popular Christian authors such as Charles Swindoll and John MacArther reveals that the many lay Christians are either asking or interested in the question.¹ The vast majority of self-help style books that fill Christian bookstores to the brim, I’d be willing to bet, are likely to have a chapter devoted to the question. I want to suggest that the answer to the question is painfully clear. “If it is so clear”, you might ask, “then why do so many Christians find themselves at a loss as to how to answer it?” Part of what makes the question so knotty is its ambiguity. What exactly is the question? What do we mean by “God’s will” or “the will of God” when we ask it of our lives?

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I’m working my way through Jeremiah (referred to around my house as the emo prophet) and came across chapter 33. In this chapter God relates how he’s going to lay the smack down on Israel. Check this out:

For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says about the houses in this city and the royal palaces of Judah that have been torn down to be used against the siege ramps and the sword 5 in the fight with the Babylonians [a] : ‘They will be filled with the dead bodies of the men I will slay in my anger and wrath. I will hide my face from this city because of all its wickedness.

Ouch. But don’t worry it all works out in the end:

” ‘Nevertheless, I will bring health and healing to it; I will heal my people and will let them enjoy abundant peace and security. 7 I will bring Judah and Israel back from captivity and will rebuild them as they were before. 8 I will cleanse them from all the sin they have committed against me and will forgive all their sins of rebellion against me. 9 Then this city will bring me renown, joy, praise and honor before all nations on earth that hear of all the good things I do for it; and they will be in awe and will tremble at the abundant prosperity and peace I provide for it.’

But the key to this passage is found a bit later on:

14 ” ‘The days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.

15 ” ‘In those days and at that time
I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line;
he will do what is just and right in the land.

This is messianic prophecy. The messiah is how God’s promises will be fulfilled. Unfortunately, all too often, we can get caught up in the details and forget that this entire thing we call Christianity is focused on Christ. Arguments about the reformation, baptism, free will, or any other issue need to always keep in mind that center is Christ. If our theology becomes anything other than either an expression of Christ, or looking to Christ then its as empty as Jeremiah 33 without the restoration.