Church Voices

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.

And you thought your church had problems!

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.

Bob Myers over at the BHT notes:

During the Phillies N.L. Championship series, manager Charlie Manuel’s mother died. (His father was a Pentecostal minister who tragically committed suicide when Charlie was in high school.) Statements about his mother looking down on the game, watching it, being the 10th player on the field etc. are rampant on Sport’s talk radio here and they have provoked a littany of others sharing how their deceased loved ones who are Phillies fans manifest their presence when they attend a game or watch it on television.

He goes on to say its interesting the universality of such beliefs as they likely came from evangelicals, Catholics and agnostic types. He makes a couple of observations.

So much for the argument that people in Bible times were gullible, but we moderns live in a scientific age…

We can’t bear to believe any one that we loved is simply “no more”. And this stubborn notion that leads to sentimental superstition is correct. This clearly demonstrates that there’s something against death in our nature. And it makes me have compassion on all who walk around with sorrow in their hearts over a death that occured decades ago.

The second observation is, to me, far more interesting than the first, and one many Christians often overlook in their zeal to look forward to the life eternal. Death is always tragic. It is tragic because we weren’t created to die, and is a reminder of the power and horror of sin. It is also tragic, even when it happens to a saint, because we are without that person and they have left a void behind in our lives. I suspect many Christians feel guilt over their sorrow because they’ve been told its a happy day that their loved one has entered eternity. I also suspect that same impulse prevents many Christians from going to a counselor when sorrow deepens into depression.

I’ll add a third observation to this list. That observation is that no matter what we may think we never make an intellectual decision about what we believe. Oh, I realize you read that sentence and probably think it applies to other people who are not you, but we all do this. Our feelings, perceptions, biases, and other factors that are decidedly outside the intellect form our beliefs as much as the intellect does. This, of course, has application for both evangelism and discipleship and Christians ignore it at the own peril.

Recently, I’ve been reading a post-apocalyptic comic book. It was pretty standard fare, civilization has fallen, and what’s left of humanity is scavenging the corpse of the fallen civilization to survive. During the course of this looting the group of protagonists come across a store house of wealth. There’s gold, cash and other valuables. One member of the looting party sees the lucre and says, “how much is all this worth”, the response by the de facto leader of the party is “nothing”.

Michael Spencer has a post up called One Stock That Needs to Drop. The stock in question is evangelicalism and Spencer makes several points as to why it needs to drop. I would guess that Spencer uses this metaphor because the current financial crisis is on everyone’s mind and the attending stock market drop that goes with it is the focus of many, many news stories. But as Spencer is clearly aware, the stock metaphor is especially apt because the value of stocks are based on the perception of how valuable they are.

A rumor made the rounds that Steve Jobs’ health is in decline, Apple’s stock goes down. There was no change in sales numbers, no change in assets, no change in anything but a whisper about the health of the lead man at Apple, and the panic sales were on.

While I doubt there will be a single watershed event like a post-apocalyptic event, or rumors of a health scare that will cause a single day drop, I do believe that the value of the stock of evangelicalism will leech away over time.

And that’s ok.

In fact it might be preferable. Because much like the character who, in the middle of a post-apocalyptic meltdown where food is scarce and safety is fleeting is busy gathering defunct currency, much of the current valuation of evangelicalism is based on a whole list of job descriptions that just no longer apply, and the more evangelicals try to chase those things the more time, and resources are wasted.

Politics, health, wealth, better living, wisdom, Amway, the power to force moral choices on society as a whole and marketing dollars have all been a big part of the valuation of evangelicalism, and all of it is an illusion. And if that illusion were to go away this instant, many people would go with it. And that would be a good thing. Because the church shouldn’t value any of those things, and the Christ didn’t resurrect to bring us those things. And eventually churches and lives built on those things won’t be able to sustain themselves.

Salvation, love, community, lives of service, humility, disciples, and redemption however, are all a part of the real value of the church. And none of those things have ever moved a stock price upward.

Some day, probably a day not too far away if it hasn’t come already, Christianity in the United States will be a shadow of itself in terms of measurements that matter to people who matter. And it doesn’t bother me at all. Because its time for the church to stop its two-fisted gathering of defunct currencies while the world around them is dead or dying.

Why is it that many unchurched people in our society understand the importance and commitment involved in being immersed (baptized) while much of the church leadership in America places it’s importance below the Ten Commandments (or some other arbitrary delineation degrading immersion to a rule that can be qualified)?

I have known dozens of youths (often teenagers) who have expressed a desire to be immersed into Christ Jesus but whose parents have either refused or told them to wait.  In fact, there is a situation right now in our community where a father doesn’t want his daughter to be immersed because of the importance and weight of such a decision.  One that involves a lifelong commitment to faith in God.  You know, it is an important decision.  Being immersed into Christ is a proclamation to the world that you are committing your life to Christ.

That in and of itself should be enough to keep immersion in its place as part of the conversion experience.  (There are other reasons as well, but this post is not about them.)  Instead we have ministers and church leaders telling people that it’s akin to tithing.  (Hmmm, I don’t even know if that is true since many church leaderships in our country view tithing as a requirement that God makes of Christians.  Would they be the same people to be repulsed at the idea that immersion is a requirement of God to become a Christian?)  Immersion is not something you do when you become a more mature Christian, immersion is what is done to you to begin your journey following Christ Jesus.

I find it ironic that many Christians are so immersed in our culture that they are unable to see their own compromise to a dualistic worldview that results in privatized faith and often a rejection (in part) of Truth as revealed to us in God’s word, and yet many non-Christians have maintained a sense of that Truth despite a conscious rejection of it.

In this presentation by DA Carson he makes many great points, but there is one particular point that I’d like to single out. He illustrates this point by pointing out that when he’s in New York he never identifies himself as an evangelical because to the average secular New Yorker the word evangelical is the Christian equivalent to the Taliban, he concludes this statement by saying “if you don’t know that, then you’re not even in the discussion, go somewhere else”. This illustration caps off his general point that for many people today words like God, faith, spirit, truth, repentance, sin and every other “God talk category” mean something other than what someone with a Judeo-Christian worldview means. We often think that we’re writing on a blank hard drive when we’re communicating/evangelizing, but we’re actually dealing with a hard drive that already has files written on it that have to be changed before its possible to explain the gospel, or what the Bible says.

While this may be daunting, especially since it is a radical shift in less than a generation and a half, in some ways it makes the scriptures even more powerful because this was precisely the same culture Paul was dealing with once he left the synagogue and began to discuss, interact, preach, teach and speak with the polytheistic Greek population. In other words, our current culture, especially as you move into centers of secular populations, more directly reflects the cultures of Athens, Ephesus and other places Paul was founding churches, and so the methodologies and practices of Paul in these polytheistic centers are now relevant in the United States in ways they were not 40 years ago.

In Acts 17 Luke records Paul’s Areopagus address which is preceded with Paul giving the gospel, perhaps in a similar way as a street preacher might today. And this address is completely incomprehensible to his audience. Some dismiss him as a babbler, and others believe he is advocating foreign gods (it should be noted this second group was as wrong as the first group was dismissive, as they shuffled the Living God into the same category as pagan gods who were local and limited, just local and limited in a different zip code). So they bring Paul to the gathering of the Areopagus where they spent their time talking and listening to the latest ideas so that they can try to sort out what exactly this strange little man’s strange little ideas are.

And it is here that Paul begins re-writing the files of the gathering of the Areopagus so they can understand his strange little idea which we have come to call the gospel, and he begins by explaining God was neither local nor limited, but created everything, and everyone and is sovereign over everything. The gospel makes absolutely no sense whatsoever unless you begin with this understanding of God. The idea that Jesus’ work was planned from the beginning, and that he willingly gave up his life and was resurrected only works if you believe God controls everything from the creation of the universe to the close of the universe because if He does not then the death of Jesus is just another forgettable skirmish between deities in which one lost and died, and the other won and killed rather than the singular event that changed history.

I’ve always found the story of Alice in Wonderland to be more creepy than charming (which may or may not be a compliment). The story essentially is of Alice showing up in a world that makes no sense to her. She has no way of knowing what creatures are sentient, what powers are at work, who wishes her harm, who wants to use her presence for their own gain, and what actions will bring certain disaster. In other words, all of her assumptions, and all of her knowledge that has aided her well in her own world don’t apply, and will actually work to hinder her because she is plunged into a world that works in a fundamentally different way from her own. Many times when we give what is in our minds “the simple gospel” it isn’t so simple. We are essentially turning people into Alice and plunging them into Wonderland because we assume they inhabit the same world as the gospel.

Paul recognizes this fact and communicates accordingly in Athens. Rather than describing sin in legal context, he does so in a relational context using works from their own poets. It should be noted here (as DA Carson noted), that though the record of Paul’s address is very short, in all likelihood it lasted for several hours and these are the general headings under which he spoke which serves to further illustrate the care Paul took to insure the message he spoke was the message that was heard.

In fact, Paul takes this a step further and applies the principle not just to his communication, but to his conduct. In Acts 19 we are told of Paul’s ministry in Ephesus, another pagan city filled with a specific pagan goddess. While there a riot initiated by makers of idols for Artemis is stirred up. What finally quells the riot is a plea from the city clerk that these men had neither “robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess”. We can assume that blaspheming Artemis would include saying things like Artemis isn’t real, or by going out and letting everyone know that they’re a bunch of idolaters on their way to hell. Something Paul did do on occasion, but apparently not on this one. Why not? Well, we can presume that Paul was familiar with the law in Ephesus and in order to continue operating there obeyed the law, one which inhibited particular evangelistic method rather than the practice of being a Christian. We see a similar discretion exercised in the previously mentioned passage in Athens where Paul sees the entire city filled with idols and is “greatly distressed”, yet does not begin his address by pointing out how evil and wrong his listeners are, (in fact he begins his address with a sort of compliment as to their religiosity).

Paul does all of this for the sake of the gospel. Can you imagine what the gossip of Ephesus would have been like if a riot had broken out in the city of Artemis which involved Christians? I doubt the story told from lips that worshiped Artemis to ears that listened for Artemis would have been all that complimentary, and would likely have resulted in the banning of all evangelistic and discipleship activity not to mention could have endangered Christianity’s protected status with Rome (as it was still not distinguished by Romans as separate from Judaism and so was a licit religion, at least for another couple of decades).

In Matthew 10 when Jesus sends out his disciples to spread the message that the Kingdom of Heaven is near he tells them they’re being sent out as sheep among wolves, and so they must be as shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves. Being ministers of the gospel means far more than simply repeating the same few lines which make perfect sense to us. It means being shrewd enough so that the gospel is understood by those hearing what we say, and acting wisely enough that the best possible outcome for the spreading of the gospel occurs.

Why do people who claim to know Christ think that they are being good Christians by forwarding e-mails?  I claim here and now that they are being anything but Christian by forwarding those e-mails; they are being lazy, ignorant, timid, and fearful gossip mongers.  (I realize that many have been slowly deceived and pulled into this practice by others, but come on.  Take a minute to think before you act.  Just because it’s easy, doesn’t make it valuable.)

Instead of forwarding an e-mail that you haven’t checked the validity of by taking 30 seconds to look up on snopes.com or simply google it, why don’t you take that 30 seconds to do something useful and forward a dollar for every person on your e-mail list to our brothers and sisters in severe need in Asia (or some other continent) through one of these ministries: International Disaster Emergency Service, Gospel For Asia, Voice of the Martyrs, etc.

Church leaders seem obsessed with or pressured into convincing their listeners that what is taught is “relevant”. No sermon or lesson is complete unless it’s tied off with some desperate pitch on “practical application,” which as a result often seems forced or cheap.

Whatever happened to seeking knowledge for its own sake? Isn’t seeking knowledge and wisdom for its own at the very foundation of what it means to be a person of virtue, by cultivating a rich internal life? Isn’t that the beginning of the path to the good, the true, and the beautiful?

This article from by Becky Akers and published by Yahoo contains some penetrating insights about the nature of the church and the government. Read the whole thing but here’s the part I think is the main thrust:

Throughout history, Christians have usually been on the wrong side of government. The Roman Empire tortured Jesus Christ to death, then criminalized his friends. Later regimes continued that tradition. They routinely hunted down, imprisoned, tortured, and slaughtered people who clung to their Lord instead of the law. Something like 70 million Christians have died for their faith since AD 33.

The church thought to resolve this by grabbing government’s reins. But the same brutality soon surfaced. Believers weren’t safe unless they practiced precisely as their brothers in power dictated.

Incredibly, Christians suffered the same tortures and death at the hands of “Christian” rulers as they had from others. At various times in various nations, “Christians” have persecuted their fellows for acknowledging the pope, refusing to acknowledge the pope, baptizing adults instead of babies, baptizing babies instead of adults, etc. Tragically, Christians high on power forsake the Ten Commandments and the golden rule as quickly as anyone else.

The trouble doesn’t lie with Christianity but with power. The two have always been at odds. Political power is a synonym for “physical force,” for bending people to government’s will regardless of their inclinations, interests, or welfare. But Christianity is love – power’s antidote