Church Voices

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 2 Kings 5 we have the story of Naaman. The basic synopsis of the story is that a successful general of a successful kingdom develops leprosy. A Hebrew who he took as a slave points him to Elisha for help (hmmm…. a Hebrew slave points the person who made him a slave to salvation…. that sounds familiar for some reason). Elisha tells him to dip himself in the Jordan seven times and he’ll be cured. Eventually he does and is cured.

However, the story leaves us with some questions.

For example 2 Kings 5.1 says, “Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the LORD had given victory to Aram.” At this point Naaman is a pagan, involved in military campaigns that were at least threatening enough to Israel that the king of Israel later in the story believes the king of Aram is picking a fight with him, and he had taken at least one Hebrew as a slave in the course of his military campaigns. Why would God back a pagan commander against his covenanted people?

In 2 Kings 5.17 Naaman says, “please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the LORD. 18 But may the LORD forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master enters the temple of Rimmon to bow down and he is leaning on my arm and I bow there also—when I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the LORD forgive your servant for this.”

Essentially what Naaman is saying is that he’s going to be worshiping God, but occasionally he’ll be bowing down in a pagan temple to a pagan god to keep his king from killing him.

What? How can this be? Imagine someone saying, “well, I worship Jesus, but occasionally I go to pray at the local Mosque to keep my boss from firing me”. Surely Elisha is going to really let him have it.

“Go in peace,” Elisha said.

What’s going on here? I have no idea, it seems so contrary to much of scripture. Is there something more here that I’m missing? Or is this simply a combination of God reaching out to all people at all points in history combined with allowing new followers of God to grow where they’re at?

From here:

“Inside that hole rests the insert, nine coils made of copper and strengthened with silver wire as thin as 100 atoms across. Together, the copper and silver create the strongest material known to man, according to Greg Boebinger, Director of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Florida, where the magnet is being built.”

In case you don’t know, copper and silver are soft metals by themselves.  Almost any alloy can be used for said illustrations, this one happens to be recent and uses metals that aren’t often considered for alloys.

I laughed in victory when I read in the most recent issue of Popular Mechanics what I knew all along - You don’t need a special antenna for HDTV. 

This is actually disconcerting given that TV stations, large elctronic stores, and many many more have been saying for the last couple of years that you’ll need to buy an HD Antenna to go along with your new HDTV.

I would just like to point out, I use a paperclip.  I kid you not.

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.