the radical moderate

Grace and Tolerance

2011-07-07T12:04:00.000-07:00

What is courage?

Courage is not the absence of fear. Anyone who is fearless is clueless. The world is a dangerous place, and anyone who knows no fear is liable to have a short lifespan. Anyone who is not afraid of God's wrath is a fool, too.

Courage is not fearlessness, but having fear and doing what is expected anyway. It could be argued that courage is only possible in the presence of fear, since it takes more courage to do the right thing when you know full well the hardships and dangers it may entail. It is that ability to face our fears that is true courage.

This article is not about courage in general, though, but about that particular kind of moral courage we call grace. Grace is the ability we share with God to show mercy to those who do not deserve it--including ourselves. Grace is the willingness to overlook a person's sin and love them anyway.

Courage is not being fearless, but what we do in spite of our fear. Grace is not being non-judgmental, but being willing to recognize the sin in others, and love them anyway. Grace is something we give in spite of our feelings and opinions, not because of them.

Our culture is unique in being the only one to regard tolerance as its highest virtue. No one who exists in Western culture can miss the constant drumbeat of tolerance. This is not true of the cultures that are less pluralistic. Muslims certainly do not understand our worship of tolerance, neither do the Chinese or Russians. Even so, there is not a single place in this world that has not been exposed to the cry of nonjudgmental tolerance. Our movies, television shows, books, and even news programs proclaim it loudly. In fact, the only sin our society recognizes is being judgmental. We condemn racism, sexism, homophobia, and exclusive religion wherever they exist, and often where they do not. Modern society cringes when someone says their religion is superior to others, even though any thinking person must regard their opinion to be true, and others false. We do not tolerate intolerance.

This is a lie, of course. We are all judgmental to some degree, whether we like it or not. If we aren't, we need to be. Should we tolerate murder, theft, racism, or addiction? We were created to have judgment about what is right and wrong. Moral conscience and moral discernment are part of who we are.

Jesus did not just say "judge not," as most people think. He actually said that we should be judged with the judgment we judge others. We all judge, but Jesus warns us to be careful how we do it.

That's where grace comes into the picture as a kind of moral courage. Grace is the ability to love others despite our judgment of their opinions and actions. A person who lives by grace does not deny what is good or bad, but does not treat others according to whether they are good or bad. A grace-filled person can look at people with whom they sharply disagree or disapprove and recognize the image of God in them. Their sins and their errors are real, but we love them anyway, as God loves us.

This simple concept is all but forgotten in our modern culture. The world seems to believe that to love the sinner, we must also love the sin. Tolerance means accepting everything. Those who think this way become incapable of real grace when they encounter an idea or action which they cannot stomach. Christian grace, however, is not so restrained. We are capable of separating the sinner from the sin, of loving accepting the former without accepting the latter. We love the sinner in their sins, while they are still sinning.

The so-called non-judgmenalism of the world gives us only two options. Either we must accept everything everyone does perfectly normal and acceptable, or we must shun him. If we don't agree that the gay lifestyle is normal, we must hate gays. If we don't agree with a man's politics, we want nothing to do with him. If have a friend who is promiscuous, we must either shun him or accept his alternate lifestyle. It's all or nothing with them. The intolerantly tolerant, project their own inadequacy of grace on Christians, because they are incapable of accepting them without stereotype or caricature.

Grace, however, is much more flexible and practical. It allows people the freedom to have opinions or to live lifestyles which we do not agree with, without our ceasing to love them. We aren't perfect, just forgiven and neither is anyone else.

Grace is demonstrated in the three great relationships in our lives.

First, it is demonstrated by God. "For God demonstrated his love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8. Jesus was not tolerant of our sin, but he was tolerant of us. He denied the revulsion that must have risen inside of Him every time he saw the way people lived, and still sacrificed Himself for us. He did not wait until we were perfect. He did not tolerate sin, but he did love the sinner.

Second it is demonstrated by ourselves towards ourselves. Many Christians live under the mistaken impression that God cannot love them if they sin. They think that if they were ever to lose their sin, then God will start loving them. Nothing could be further from the truth. God loves us now, in spite of our sin. Furthermore, He expects us to love ourselves in the same way.

Third, it is demonstrated in our love to others. The story of the Good Samaritan illustrates this beautifully. The Good Samaritan did not have to know or approve of what the man who was beaten on the road did. He didn't know if he was straight or gay, Jewish or atheist, a law-abiding citizen or a criminal. All that mattered was that he was broken and bleeding. This is not to say that if the Samaritan knew what the man did or what he believed, that he would have approved. It's just that the Samaritan saw a person hurt, and had to help.

No one said it is easy to love in the face of sin, any more than it is easy to have courage in the face of fear. But that difficulty is what makes it grace. It takes no love to love the lovely. It takes divine love to love the ugly. That love is called grace. It far better than mere modern tolerance. It is far more honest, too.

The Walking Wounded

2011-06-10T09:45:00.000-07:00

The 2011 synod was a much more pleasant experience than the last one. It seems that the storm clouds which gathered over last year's meetings, though they not completely gone had mostly cleared and patches of sunlight shone through. This certainly was the result of the diligent prayer of so many members for unity. The leadership of Steve May and Andy Putnam had a lot to do with it. I think that many of those who were so angry last year simply came to their senses and backed off. We all lose our heads in battles, but only the wise admit it.

I'd be tempted to say that such theological and moral debates as we had last year were over and forgotten this year. But this is not so. Even if the majority of us had stopped fighting the effects of those battles are still with us. World War II, Korea, and Vietnam are over, too, but we still have wounded veterans.
Theological battles are like cannon barrages--we all line up and spout off our angry words, but we do not see the human damage they do to the other side. We are shielded the results of our words by emotional distance.
When a professor is accused of heresy, he does not only feel the sting, but so does his wife, children, parents, and friends. His loved ones often take it harder than he does. Friends become enemies, students suffer, and reputations are permanently marked. A minister forced from his pulpit loses not only a job, but his church family, friends, home, security, and emotional support. A trustee is accused of being a poor influence, he takes is personally, whether or not the accusation is shouted or spoken calmly. They never completely forget the slight. It does not matter if we think the accusations are true or not, they take a serious human toll. There is no such thing as loving if we are not willing to walk with that person through the pain of recovery. There can be no true Christian concern if it does not involve real human contact. It's easier to pretend that the pain we inflicted is not our responsibility than to actually come to grips its results.
The reason I am writing about this is because of two friends I saw this week. Both I have known as loving, easygoing Christians, with a strong faith in Christ, a desire to win the lost, and a strong faith in the Lordship of Jesus and His infallible Word. Both had been hurt in the battles of the past two years. Not only were they hurt, but their families, their friends, and their churches were also hurt in the process. Neither has been able so far to get beyond the pain. Both were still struggling to get beyond the hurts and forgive. I do not blame them at all for having a hard time with letting it go. Forgiveness is a process, not a declaration.
I once heard it said that the church was the only army that shoots it wounded. It is easy to let the past go, but we have to remember those who are still experiencing that pain. Maybe eventually they will get over the hurt of the Erskine debacle, but not now, not yet. We should keep them in our prayers, our thoughts, and our hearts

Remembering and forgetting

2011-05-02T12:26:00.001-07:00

The enemy of faith is not doubt. The enemy of faith is forgetting. Faith requires we remember. Faithlessness happens when we forget. This is the secret of Christian life and discipline.

One of my favorite passages is 2 Peter 1:5-9

" For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. "

Peter lists the fruit of the Spirit--those qualities of Jesus that the Holy Spirit adds to our nature. These graces grow one after another out of the heart that is continually watered by Christ.

In other words, spiritual fruit does not need to be manufactured. It just grows as we are attached to the living vine of Christ, who Himself is attached to God.

But what if the fruit do not appear. What went wrong?

Verse 9 "But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins."

If the fruit does not appear, then we have forgotten the cleansing of Christ.

Have you ever read the Exodus from the Bible? It is amazing that the Israelites so easily forgot the hand of God in their lives.. They saw the ten plagues, walked across the Red Sea on dry land, were fed by miracle food, watered from a moving rock, and led by a pillar of fire, yet they kept forgetting. They worried that they were going to die of hunger or thirst or be destroyed by enemies less than a tenth their size. They forgot the miracles they saw right in front of their eyes. The nation of Israel forgot the commandments over and over. The disciples forgot about Jesus' miraculous power and worried. They forgot His promises of resurrection. The church forgot salvation by grace for fifteen hundred years. Even today we don't seem to able to remember God's promises.

A man goes on a business trip, and meets an attractive woman. Suddenly, he forgets his wife and his wedding vows. A dieter sees a tasty snack and forgets he cannot have it. We see other people's sins and forget our own. We see dangers and forget God's protection. We face death and forget eternity. We face life and forget His blessings. We have amnesia of the soul, and forgetfulness of the heart.

There is only one cure for our forgetfulness--constant repetition. We need to keep praying, keep rejoicing, keep reading, keep singing, and keep worshipping. The moment we look away, we will begin to forget, and that could have disastrous results.

That's why we keep praying worshipping and reading the Bible--not so that we will learn, but so we won't forget.

Have we forgotten we are brothers? Have we forgotten our own sins? Have we forgotten that we follow in the footsteps of Jesus? We cannot keep what we cannot remember. If we remember, we still forever need to be reminded.

Maundy Thursday Message

2011-04-20T07:31:00.001-07:00

I became an ordained minister 31 years ago. Since then, I have led or assisted in almost two hundred communion services. In most of them I read the “words of institution,” as they are found in 1 Corinthians 11:23-32. Not until a couple of years ago, did I come to question what I thought was it meant, 27-32

Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.

Let’s face it--how many people have you known who have gotten sick or died because of communion? How can communion make you sick?

Yet here it is in the Bible. According to Paul, communion caused some to be sick and others to “fall asleep” that is, to die.

One interpretation is that if we take communion with a guilty conscience we are cursed by it. But I have known many unrepentant sinners to take communion, yet none of them have gotten sick by it. Besides, if sinlessness were required for communion, none of us should take it.

Another explanation is that if we take it without understanding we are guilty. But again, there are ignorant people in every church. Some whole denominations misinterpret communion, in my opinion yet you don’t see them getting sick because of it.

Here’s where I think we have it wrong. The ritual of communion was in Paul’s day very different from what it is today. In the early church, communion was the culmination of the agapae or love feast that came after the formal service. The church fathers, such as Ignatius of Antioch, Pliny the Younger, Hyppolitus of Rome, Tertullian, and many others. Everyone shared a full meal together. It was what we call today a covered dish dinner, eaten as a symbol of unity and love.

Anyone who has ever attended a church social knows what a great time it can be. But we also know what headaches they can cause, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11: 17-23.

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. (In other words, Paul was really ticked off.)

18-19 In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt, there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God's approval.

Have you ever been to a covered dish in a church where people were not getting along? The fellowship hall becomes a war room, full of whispered conversations and angry looks. One group sits together at one table, while another group sits at another.

Disagreements don’t bother Paul. On the contrary, disagreements in the church are a healthy way of arriving at the truth. What bothered him was how they expressed their disagreement. Instead of seeing disagreements as opportunities for the common edification and growth, they were an occasion for pride, jealousy, even violence.

I once heard an elder threaten to lay a tire tool to the skull of another over a “theological disagreement.”

Some disagreements were over doctrine or practice. Some were over racial or ethnic differences. Many had to do with the way the church should relate to the world around them. Some were divisions between rich and poor. All were harmful to the peace of the church.

But these divisions were not the only problems--they weren’t even the worst problem.

20-21 When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk.

People seemed to have forgotten that this was a “love” feast. In their minds, it was just another covered dish. They were not asking the question “How can I used this as an opportunity to show my brothers and sisters how much I care for them?” Instead they were saying “How do I keep Peter from eating all the biscuits?”

The result of this was that those who were slower got nothing, while those who were faster got too much. So instead of it being a love feast, it was a gluttony festival—an all-you-can-eat night at Shoneys.

But even that was not the worst.

Don't you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!

People watched what the others brought. Those who brought a lot thought they were getting cheated. Those who brought nothing resented those who did, because they were not bringing more. If people did not contribute to the meal they sent them home or made them get to the back of the line. Those who brought a lot got to go first.

Paul contrasted their attitude with Jesus’ at the Last Supper

23-26 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Paul begins. “The Lord Jesus On the same night he was betrayed.’

Why betrayed? Why not on the same night he was arrested? On the same night he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane? Why not on the same night he washed his disciples feet?

Jesus knew Judas was betraying him, but he washed his feet anyway. He made sure the Judas got a good meal before he went out to betray him. He loved him and continued to love him whether he betrayed him or not. Jesus gave Judas a sop from his own hand, which meant that Judas had to be near Him in a place of honor. Love people regardless of what they do to you. Love your enemies and care for those with whom you disagree.

He broke bread and said, “this is My body.” Jesus was saying he is going to have His body broken for us just like that bread. He took the wine and said, “this is My blood.” He would bleed for us, because He loved us. If Jesus can be broken and bleed for us, maybe we can be a little bit nicer to each other.

For whenever you eat this bread or drink this cup, you show forth the Lord’s death until He comes.

Whenever you sit down to eat together, remember who you are. You are Christ’s Body, held together by the sacred sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. He bled and died for each one of us. When you sit at the table, we show ourselves to be His family.

In this context, verses 27 through 32 finally sense. I have never seen anyone get sick of die because he or she did not understand the mysteries of communion, but I have seen people get sick and even die because of bitterness, jealousy, and unforgiveness. I have not seen people get sick and die from grape juice and crackers, but I have seen churches get sick and die because they were forgotten by the people in the pew next to them, who regarded them not a sister or brother, but as a set decoration for the drama that is their more important lives.

When we have communion, where is the Body of Christ? The answer is easy--we are it. The Body of Christ are the people with whom we share this feast. When we don’t see Him there, and instead see them as merely human, then we miss the reason for communion and might as well eat juice and crackers alone in our rooms.

I urge you to look around this room, and see the Body of Christ, not just eating juice and crackers together, but humbling ourselves before the Lord in repentance and sorrow. Then we discern the Body together. This is the body that should concern us, not food and drink, but flesh and blood.

For God So Liked the World

2011-03-26T16:55:00.000-07:00

One of the first religious books I remember reading was CS Lewis' The Four Loves. Lewis describes four kinds of love based on four Greek words for love--Sturge, Eros, Phileos, and Agape.

Here they are in grossly oversimplified terms.

Sturge is a passing enjoyment, such as "I love baseball" or "I love chocolate."

Eros, is a sensual, consuming passion, obsession, or addiction.

Phleos is friendship love, the love in commonly shared relationship or experiences.

Then there is agape love. This divine love is only possible fully through Divine intervention. It is a sacrificial love, as Christ loved on the cross. It is not a love because of liking anything about a person, but liking in spite of everything unlikeable about a person. This love is the blessed, chaste love of a true saint.

When I read that book, I wanted to be a true saint. (I still do, though I have never achieved it.) This was the love I longed to have--a love that does not depend about liking anything about people, but only depends on the love God has for poor lost sinners such as ourselves.

Agape love is not so much an act of he heart as of the will. It is, as Finney put it, a "decision to seek the highest good of another." I can decide to love my enemy, and seek his highest good without having to like him. Agape love is sacrificial, giving ourselves to others.

That was my understanding in my days of youthful idealism.

Since I have grown older, though, I have come to realize that agape love, though it may be the highest, is not the only kind of love God wants us to have for others. Agape allows us to love people we do not like. But it does not settle the issue of whether or how we should also like them.

We need to be careful about "sloppy agape." That is a general and ideal love, but not personal and specific. It is not enough tolerate the lost, but to welcome them. We may claim we love a person in Jesus, while detesting everything about them. This kind of love is not love at all, but paternalism and condescension--a misuse of the doctrine of Christian charity.

A purely ideal concept of love lacks both passion and staying power. We may be able to love those we do not like, but we cannot keep it up for long. Sooner or later, no matter how pious we may act, our love needs to grow into real, honest affection or it will not last.

Think about broccoli for a moment. Many people hate broccoli. (Not me, I actually like it.) Those who hate broccoli may be determined to eat healthy, and they know broccoli is good for them, so they force it down their throats. But how long can they keep doing this without either developing a taste for it, or dropping it from their menus?

Or take marriage. A person may marry another as a result of prearranged marriage or out of a sense of duty. But unless that person develops a geniune liking for their spouse, that marriage will be unsatisfying for both. This is not to suggest that people should divorce if they do not feel love, but rather that we find something likeable about our spouses if we do not already have it. If ideal love does not turn into honest affection, then that marriage is doomed.

We can suppress our feelings, but it will wear us out in the end. No one can work at something they do not like to do forever without respite. We will not stay with people we honestly do not care for, without making them and us miserable. At some time, our feelings will conquer us.

This idea of liking as well as loving is absolutely essential for the spreading of the Gospel. For hundreds of years we have been preaching evangelism. Also for hundreds of years, the majority of Christians have simply ignored the call. They love the world, in a spiritual sense, and do not want to see others go to hell. But they do not like the world. Many Christians find the current age so abhorent that they want nothing to do with it. They move into fortresses of their own making, isolating themselves from "sinners" so they will not be contaminated by the things of the world, whether or not that world has anything to do with the gospel itself. We make excuses for hating the world around us, condemning aspects of music, dress and language that do not fit our cultural, non-spiritual norms. We do this to further emphasize our differences with the culture around us. We do this for the same reason teenagers of my generation wore their hair long or dressed in miniskirts--because we wanted to be different from our parents' generation. It's not that we didn't love our parents and grandparents. We just didn't like them, or anything about them. As we grew up, we learned better, when our children did the same to us.

John 3:16 begins "For God so loved the world." God does not just love the world, he honestly likes it. God may not like what the world does or what it believes, but God, like the parent of a rebellious teenager, sees something of Himself in them. He experiences genuine affection for us, as well as loving us in an esoteric sense.

Many Christians cannot grasp this. That is because many of us have an "all or nothing" mentality regarding our likes and dislikes. If we do not like a man's politics or religious opinions, we drop him in a bin in our mind that is labeled "Don't like." If we agree with a person, we drop him in the "like" bin. I don't believe God thinks this way. He recognizes the fact that there is very little difference between those we like and don't like. We have the same DNA. We were created in God's image. We are affected by the same sinful nature. There are actions, ideas, and attitudes which we should not like, that's true. But it up to God to decide who is or is not condemned in their sin. Even in the worst of us, there is something to like and admire.

Phileos love, that is friendship love, is built on commonalities. Our common interest, passions, and failures make us far more like each other than different.

We share similar interests. Among men, it may be more effective evangelism goes on at the lake or on the golf course than in the church. Christians who golf with non-Christians forge a friendship which provides a bridge for the Gospel to get to their hearts. Those places where we share neutral activities with others--the gym, the mall, or the marketplace, become those places where we come to like unbelievers, which leads to loving them. Some Christians are more afraid of unbelievers affecting them than they are excited about affecting unbelievers themselves. We share the same passions. Not long ago, I was asked to hold a funeral for a relative of someone in my church who had been a lesbian. The grief of her "significant other" was no less real than our grief for a spouse. Pain is pain no matter who has it. A sensitive, caring believer will recognize the pain in others, whether or not that pain is theologically justified. Jesus wept over Lazarus, even though He was about to raise him for the dead. He did not chide Mary and Martha for their lack of faith. Our own pains enable us to understand the pains of others.

We also share the same sins. We once lived in the same apartment building with an unmarried couple who were addicted to drugs. We got to know them and talked to them about their problem, even though we never used drugs. But I found that my own struggles with food were not that different in form from their struggles with drugs. It differed only in consequence and intensity.

We believers are comfortable with the fact that we are sinners. We just don't like to admit we have sinned, or have anything in common with those we consider to be really bad sinners. Our sins are small, but their sins are big. We regard ourselves as sinners in a general, esoteric sense, but do not like to admit to any particular sin. Yet it is our admission of our fallenness and failures which helps the unbeliever believe that God means it when he says "I forgive." It is our failure, not our successes that give us the ability to befriend the lost. We were lost, and now are found. We still sin, but we still find grace.

God doesn't just love the world. He likes it. He enjoys the enjoyable things about it, even though he hates the things that are broken. If we follow in His footsteps, then we ought to do the same.

Miracles

2011-03-14T07:44:00.000-07:00

I have a quirky fascination with pseudoscience--UFOs , bigfoot, ancient aliens, etc. I don't believe in any of it, but it's fun to see what passes for proof on tv these days.

I have friends that take all this very seriously, though. They really do believe that there are aliens in the sky, giant apes in the woods, and ghosts in the attic. These are intelligent people --sometimes even brilliant people--but they seem ready to take extraordinary claims at face value with less than ordinary evidence.

The biggest mystery about these tales is not the what, but the why. Carl Sagan once famously said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Though there may be unexplained evidence, there is no evidence of any of it that rises to the level of extraordinary. In spite of the lack of good evidence, why do we keep looking for ghosts and aliens?

I think is because we were created that way. God placed in us the knowledge that the world we see is not all there is. There are forces beyond out imagining, and that those forces affect our lives today. Even people who have rejected religion seem to want to believe in something beyond the ordinary. They would rather believe, like atheist Richard Dawkins, that intelligent design by God is impossible, but that it is entirely possible that aliens created life.

The modern fascination with the supernatural I believe is due to the decline of a belief in a supernatural God. Much modern religious thinking discounts the miraculous, and focuses on naturalistic religion.

In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, Western culture adopted a mechanistic view of religion in which all things happen according to the laws of logic and physics. Deism is of course the extreme of this view, but that is only the far edge. Before we get to deism there are many scholastic approaches to Scripture which assert that nothing supernatural happens today.

This is unfortunate, because the supernatural is precisely what the world yearns for. That desire to touch the divine was built into us by our Creator. When we exclude the divinity from our world view, then the supernatural is all we have left. In the old days it let people to believe in ghosts and leprechauns. Today, it is bigfoot and aliens. Ether way, we are looking for something for knowledge beyond our understanding.

Our knowledge of the laws of nature is not absolute, but fluid. Newton gave way to Einstein. A mechanistic understanding of subatomic physics gave way to quantum mechanics and strange attractors. Technological advances have come so fast that what we think is of as magic or science fiction one day become commonplace the next.

In such a world, is it really so hard to admit the possibility that there is a God? Or to admit that that God can play by different rules than we know? We must go further and admit that if there is a God, then He must operate outside of nature and be by definition supernatural. I would go even farther and suggest that a real God must make himself known by real miracles, by revealing himself through breaks in the natural order.

Reduced to it's core, the message of the Bible is this--trust God. Do not lean upon your own understanding. In return for this trust, God rewards us with the revelation of His supernatural Presence, which is above time and space.

The problem with modern religion, it seems to me, is that in our effort to make religion palatable to unbelievers, we have removed from our churches the one thing that makes religion attractive to believers and unbelievers alike--miracles. We have adopted a view that supernatural manifestations of Hiis divine power and presece were for ancient times, but not for today. We may tell the stories of those times, we may even believe them, but we do not seriously expect God to repeat them today. But in ancient times, it was those miracles which drew people to Christ. In a world obsessed with the supernatural, why is it unreasonable to expect God's miracles to draw people to Him today?

We need to pray for miracles and expect them, and not just for our own benefit. The world needs to see them, too. We need to get ourselves out of the way and expect God to show Himself to our modern world the same way He did to the ancient one--by His sovereign manifestation of His power.

Some random thoughts on worship

2011-03-09T06:15:00.001-08:00

A few random thought on Christian worship

A couple who went to our church in Florida started attending a different church, a larger, more contemporary church.

She said "We love the people in your church, but the people, the service, and the programs at the other church are so alive."

I said "Did you ever see a sponge."

"Yes," she said.

"How about a cheetah?"

"Yes," she answered with a puzzled expression.

"A cheetah is alive. Isn't it?"

"Yes"

"And a sponge is alive too, isn't it."

"Yes."

"Well, if God can make the cheetah and the sponge then he must like a variety of animals. Just because a cheetah moves fast, and a sponge does not move at all, does not mean that one is more alive than the other. God made us all to move at our own pace."

I was proud of that answer at the time. But in retrospect, it really was not very effective. People don't go to the zoo to see sponges. People want to see movement. People do not want to see an unmoving God, either. They want to see Him move--or at least feel Him and hear Him. People go to church to be reassured that God is present and alive.

Perhaps the reason so many of our churches are ineffective is that people come looking for a divine-human encounter, ministers come to get people to go do something.

They are here to worship, we are here to work. We are like the stage hands at a symphony, too busy arranging chairs and opening curtains to hear the music. We ministers have heard it all before, and our ears have grown too used to its hearing, so we no longer feel the Spirit as we preach.

The longer I am in the ministry, the more convinced I am that while the pastor displays Christ before the people, the people must also display Christ before the pastor. Pastors need to see Him revealed in the collective community just as much as everyone else. Public worship is a collective revelation of Christ. I don't know how we do that by onl letting the pastor speak and the choir sing. Occasionally, we see Christ revealed in congregational singing, but it's much harder to see it in the corporate mumble that constitutes most hymn singing. We sing as if we are ashamed to admit that we aren't sure about what we are singing. Corporate singing is so bad we must cover it up with loud organs or guitars and drums, depending upon our worship style. Where are the testimonies of what God has done? Where are the cries of a corporate desire for God? We have achieved an orderly, regular service by squeezing out of it all passion and spontaneity. Why can't the people testify to what Jesus has done for them? Why is it only the preacher and choir members who have a responsibility to exhibit the living presence of Christ?

If the reason Christ put us on earth was to build beautiful buildings, we have succeeded wonderfully. If the reason Christ put us on earth is to build a living tabernacle, then we have failed miserably. We are not in the building of preserving buildings and institutions, but in saving souls. Let realtors worry about buildings. Let's just be God's temple.

Theology is the yeast of the church. But who eats yeast. We have to put it in something and give it time to grow. The only time theology does us any good is when it is applied creatively and sincerely to the human condition over time in the warmth of the spirit.

Much of our worship makes me wish for the liveliness of a funeral. We cannot expect to move the living to God when our services resemble our mourning for the dead.

Why is the only principle we Reformed Christians discuss is the regulative one? Shouldn't there also be a creative one as well? Aren't we called to bring our whole being--our whole heart, gifts, talents, and imagination to Him? Is God more interested giving control and order, or in giving life? If we are created in God's image, and our creativity is part of that image, then are we really doing our best if we do the same thing in the same manner week after week, without even thinking about it? If we loved our wives with regulation and without imagination, it would be grounds for divorce.

Preachers and congregations have been at cross purposes almost from the first day we had preachers and congregations. The preacher want the congregation to be an army on the move. Congregations want the preacher to assure them that everything is all right already and they don't have to move. Preachers push people to action, congregations counter with inaction. They like it the way it is. More often than not in this tug of war, the congregation wins. In the end, the preacher usually gives in and gives up. That's why God finds us lukewarm.

Preachers do not move the congregations because they do not love them as they are. They love them for their potential, or they love them in a spiritual sense, but the do not see them as people who are just as they are worthy of God's love now. Preachers are like bad husbands who see their wives as people that they must improve before they the can give acceptance. Their constant drum of shoulds and coulds communicates guilt, not grace.

Why do we have to help God be majestic? We put a great deal of time and effort in the church trying to create an artificial sense of holiness with ritual, architecture, and music. We put preachers in high pulpits just to exalt the Word, but the people are not fooled. They know to exalt the preacher. God doesn't need all this. Our attempts to drum up a sense of the presence of God in worship are like ants trying to prop up an elephant. God is present. We need to get out of the way and let Him exalt Himself.

My greatest desire is to be in a congregation where no one has to say "the Lord is in His Holy Temple. Come, let us worship Him." because we will already experience His presence all around us.

The Leaven of the Pharisees

2010-11-04T09:38:00.001-07:00

When I was in college, I read a book entitled The Leaven of he Sadducees, or Old and New Apostasies by Ernest Gordon. It was an old volume, published in 1926, long out of print. I wish someone would reprint it, because it is an important book. In it, Dr. Gordon chronicles the descent of modern denominations into Unitarian/liberal beliefs. Many long-standing bastions of Christian thought, such as Harvard, Andover, and Princeton became in a relatively short time secular institutions, indifferent or in most cases hostile to the Gospel. It is a lesson we today must still keep in mind.

However, It is not the only lesson we need. One thing that Gordon and others who have fought long and valiantly against encroaching secularism often fail to ask is what makes Christian institution susceptible to these influences in the first place?

Creeping liberalism, like most heresies and apostasies, more common in well-evangelized countries. The Third World, where Christianity is even today on the rise, seems to have little worry of it. It is Europe and America, where Christianity had long been held to be safe, that we see the rise of universalism and the devaluing of Scripture. If we suppose that this apostatizing trend is simply the work of the Devil, or some function of human depravity, then how do we explain that It mainly happens on one kind of Christian community--the ones which have mainly already been evangelized. Why don't we say the same trend among developing churches? They have other problems with apostasy, to be sure, but not this same liberalizing trend.

Think of apostasy as a virus. Viruses strike us, all, but they afflict some people more regularly. If we are already weakened, or our immunization system is suppressed, then we are more likely to get sick. If the spiritual life of the Body of Christ is weakened, then it is more likely to catch a spiritual disease, such as apostasy. In the wild, termites and other decay-producing organisms do not strike live plants, but dead ones. Where there is life there

Faith as an Unnatural Act

2010-10-06T15:13:00.001-07:00

On Wednesday nights, we've been following the trip of the Israelites with Moses to Mount Sinai from he book of Exodus. When Moses went up on the mountain for forty days and nights, the people he left behind became nervous, then rebellious. They demanded a God they could see, who could be right in front of them to give them courage as they traveled through the desert. So they had Aaron make a golden calf on their behalf. The golden calf was most useful, not only because of his artificially comforting presence, but because he was a god who would always go exactly where they wanted, instead of the messy business of having to blindly following the God of Moses.

I can't say that I blame them. I would have probably done the same thing, giving the situation they were in at the time. They were a million and a half people on a barren plain in the middle of the desert. There was no natural source of food or water anywhere. would anyone in their right mind have recommended that they should stay in the middle of such a barren wilderness indefinitely? Even in a land where there was plenty of water and good grassland, it doesn't seem likely that they would survive. Common sense would have told them that this was a hopeless, untenable position.

Or think about the disciples on the day of Jesus' crucifixion. Many if not most of them seemed to have temporarily lost their faith. Wouldn't we? How many people do you know, get up and walk out of tomb after three days in an airless cave? In real life, people don't just get up and walk away after they've been buried. Common sense would suggest that when our loved on is out in the cemetery, we should let go and let the healing begin. Anyone with any common sense at all would not stand around waiting for a resurrection.

I want to be honest here, but I also want to be careful. I am not condoning their actions. The Israelite should not have built a calf. The disciples should have waited with hope. But these two examples illustrate an important lesson. Common sense is not always right when you are talking about heavenly matters. There is nothing common or sensible about the wisdom that comes from God. We serve a supernatural God, not a natural one. He doesn't have to play by our version of the rules, and neither do we when we are on His team.

"Faith," the writer of Hebrews said "Is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." We cannot walk by faith and by sight, It has to be one or the other. It's fine to follow our own knowledge when we have not heard from Him, but we must do it tentatively, ready to change when He speaks.

We may wish that God would show us what is around the next bend, but if He did, we would not walk beside Him. We would run ahead, lag behind, and saunter at our own pace. Faith will never make sense to us. God's desire is to keep us walking right by his side, obediently looking to Him for guidance and direction.

Presbyterians like to think of ourselves practical people, doing things in a slow, conservative, deliberate fashion. We do this without thinking whether or not practicality and faith can walk together without contradiction. To be rational is to lean upon our own understanding. When we are being rational, we have to know before we do. Faith asks us to do before we know. When the Hebrews started into the desert, they were marching into certain disaster without divine intervention. When the Peter and John went to the empty tomb, they did so with no more evidence than one hysterical woman.

How can faith be practical? Sometimes it can't.

I'm not suggesting we all take foolish chances. We must make sure we hear the God's Word before we take a leap of faith. Moses certainly sought and received confirmation before he marched into Pharaoh's court and demanded he let his people God. The disciples followed Jesus because they had seen three years worth of miracles. They diligently sought to understand God and had proof of His existence, before they stepped out in faith.

Faith is more of a skill than anything else. It something we develop with practice. The more we practice, the more we learn to stand on the sometimes shaky ground of faith. If we are going to walk on water, it is a good idea to get out sea legs first. Unfortunately, we are too impatient to practice faith. We don't pray through our situation. We get up off our knees quickly so we can do something, anything, rather than to wait around for an answer. When our schemes for church ministry don't work, we quickly find somebody to blame scheme again, rather than ask the question "What is God telling me in this defeat?"

If we are going to be people of faith, being naturally wise is not enough. We must be unnaturally, supernaturally wise, walking with our eyes on Jesus, listening for His voice, and taking His advice.

A Puritan Approach to Fishing

2010-09-16T13:51:00.000-07:00

I have just finished a little booklet on evangelism, according to the Puritan method, by a modern author whose name I will not mention. It is really an amazing book. Somehow the author manages to write fifty pages on the subject of evangelism without even once suggesting that we talk with unbelievers except from the pulpit. Instead, the book declares that the one and only method of evangelism is to preach from the pulpit the "whole counsel of God," using "plain sermons" done in the Puritan style, heavy on doctrine and archaic language.

It is not a book on how to evangelize sinners, it is a book on how to evangelize sinners three hundred years ago. The majority of the book is occupied with what is wrong with modern evangelistic methods. After having read this slim book, I am ready if ever meet an Eighteenth Century sinner.

I respect the Puritans. I respect their love of the Bible, their prayer and piety. But their approach to evangelism was a product of their time when even unbelievers came to church, and the vast majority of people believed in God and respected the Bible. This is not the case today. Today, the majority of people have no idea what the Gospel is, and have no inclination to find out. The never set foot in a church or place of worship except on holidays and weddings. If a preacher believes that the only way of evangelizing is through the pulpit then he should move his pulpit outside in the front yard of the church, where at least he has a chance that a passersby might accidently hear and believe.

But enough about this book. It did not do much to make me rethink my view of preaching or evangelism. It did, however, cause me to rethink my view of fishing. What if we applied the same approach to catching fish. What a difference it would make!

The Bibles supports fishing, I am happy to say, as an activity which can be readily practiced by believers. After all, did not God Himself fish when He drew out Leviathan with a fishhook? Did not the apostles fish on the sea of Galilee? Did not our Lord, on more than one occasion, command his disciples to fish? And what about Jonah? It is heartily reassuring to know that fishing is AOK with God.

But what are we to think of the modern diversity of fishing methods, and the proclivity of many so called "fishermen" of our day to fish in strange places for strange fish? The foolishness of their activity is shown by the number of times, once they have a fish on the hook, they subsequently let it fall away. Their shallow, worldly approaches to fishing may attract many fish, but they often lose as many fish as they land. With such large numbers of fish, they often do not have time to properly clean them. And how many of those are the best quality? They regularly land trash fish as well as good ones.

It is not enough to fish--we must fish as God intended! That means the use of a net, preferably on the sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee is the only place where God specifically commands any to fish. That one lake should be sufficient for us. Though it might be difficult for the average fisherman to make it to Israel, the rewards of knowing that we are righteous fishermen, attentive to His word ought to be enough to make the extra trouble worthwhile.

In the Holy Scriptures, the fish caught, were those which God intended for us to catch--those preordained for our consumption. Indeed, did not our Lord tell Peter which side of the boat to cast upon? Was not the number of the fish caught recorded in Scripture on one occasion(157) so we might know that the number of fish was specially ordained? Without our Lord's command and specific direction, the disciples came back empty. Without a clear sense of the Spirit's leading and God's specific command, they should not have even tried.

The modern fishermen cares naught whether his fish are rightly or wrongly caught. All he cares about is filling is cooler. The modern fishermen uses unnatural means, such as artificial bait, fish finders, and outboard trolling motors. He focuses on quantity instead of quality, when he should be trusting in God to bring the fish to him, as Peter did of old. Does he not hear his Lord's command, saying "Throw over to the other side of the boat?" Shocking!

As with everything else a pastor does, proper fishing begins with proper preaching. Fish need to be intellectually challenged to jump into our nets. It must be explained by clear and simple proclamation that it is their duty as lower creatures of the water to obey us, their masters. They need to respect the authority given to us over nature in Genesis 1:28.

A proper fisherman be a man of prayer. He must get his heart right before God. Then if he does not catch fish he will know that he is really at fault for not praying with sufficient intensity and passion for fish. Once he has prayed with force and intensity, then he must stand over the lake pleading with tears, saying "Come thou fish! Come and be captured for the Lord's sake!" He must read to the fish from the Scriptures, (King James preferred), admonishing them that it is their duty to become part of our diet. He must comfort the fish, by revealing the glories that await when he is filleted, breaded, and dipped in tartar sauce! Surely it is his only the fish's willful disobedience in loving his meager life, coupled with our lack of zeal in our prayers and preaching, that has kept these creature from their appointed places in our frying pans.

But what if our cooler is still empty at the end of the day? What if we catch nary a single fish? It matters not. We can still rejoice, because we know that we have fulfilled our Lord's command to fish. We have done our duty, whether or not any fish have actually come into our nets. We can go back the next week and the next, getting no results, because we are firm in our assurance that the fish whom God has foreordained will come, even if we have not seen any yet seen them, or any other. And if the fish seem to be laughing at us under the surface, and think us to be a bunch of loonies, then indeed our empty stomachs are proof of our faithfulness and obedience, as we have not stooped to worldly methods of fishing.

But what if we never catch any fish at all? Rejoice anyway, brethren. We have the advantage of having more time to spend in his study the Word, finding more and more things to disapprove of in ourselves, and more of what God has forbidden in fishing. We can study all night, since we are not burdened with the necessity of actually cleaning any fish.

Amen and amen!

Surfing the Wave of the Spirit

2010-08-28T11:15:00.000-07:00

Joy and I were having a conversation the other day about churches and how they grow. This is a bad time for growing a church. For at least the past ten years, church attendance has been falling at a rate of about one percent per year. It is a time of great opposition and disinterest in religion, especially in Christianity. That, coupled with the recession has hurt all churches, especially ours.

What makes a church grow spiritually? I know those things which keep it healthy--love, the preaching of the Word, sound teaching, etc. These make a church more likely to grow. But there are plenty of loving churches where the Gospel is preached and growth is slow or nonexistent.

There are nonspiritual reasons for growth, too. Churches on main roads generally grow faster than churches on back roads. When a church reflects the needs and desires of a particular portion of the contemporary culture, it will grow, too. (There is really no one monolithic "culture" in our world, just wide collections of many cultures, leaving room for almost every kind of church to find a niche.) But this can happen whether or not God is in it, I'm afraid. Growth or lack of it is no sign of godliness.

There are other factors which are also cited for the growth of churches--relevance, purity, concern for the lost, faithfulness, and many others. All of these may have an impact on the growth of the church but none of them in themselves means that the church will grow.

Look at the Christian landscape today. How many churches are growing--I mean really growing? How many are reaching the lost in any large numbers? What we see are many congregations, offering many different techniques and styles, mostly without significant success.

Now think about the churches that are still growing today. They can be high or low church, contemporary or traditional--they can be very, very different both in practice and theology. But there is one thing they all have in common--a sense that the Holy Spirit is there.

The degree to which a church is likely to grow depends upon the expectation of the people that the Holy Spirit will move in their midst. There have to be signs and wonders, not necessarily in the Charismatic sense, but certainly in the spiritual sense. People have to see that something supernatural is going on.

People are drawn to Christ by the moving of the Holy Spirit, not by preaching or praying alone. We must ask of God, and we must see an answer. In growing churches, there is a full expectation that God will make Himself known. They come to church expectantly, not knowing what He will do next, but convinced that He will do something.

People often use sports illustrations to explain the church. Let me suggest a new one --surfing. Churches grow when they catch the wave of the Holy Spirit.

The church is not built on our own effort. It is not a race, where the strong and the fit succeed. It is not a game requiring strength and ingenuity. Church growth is an enterprise powered by the overwhelming power of God. Its force is irresistable, unstoppable, and inevitable. Our task, if we are serious about growing churches, is to look for that power and ride it. It involves less planning and less study of the world, and more planning and more study of God's intentions and actions today. We need to catch the waves. We cannot create them.

The first wave started at Pentecost. On that one day, three thousand people were added to the church. The disciples rode that wave for some time Another wave came when the church was under persecution, through the underground movement of evangelism. All through the history of the church - the Prostestant revolution, the missionary movements, the great awakenings, the holiness, pentecostal, and Charismatic movement, the Wesleyan revivals, the Moody revivals, the crusades of Billy Sunday and Billy Graham, the preaching of Jonathan Edwards, and so forth, we see the Spirit moving in waves and eddies. None of these movements last forever, any more than waves on the sea last forever. Every movement of the Spirit in the church inevitably is brought down by pride, jealousy, and heresy. The waves may crash; the tide remains. God continues to move in the church, using different people and different names. Even so, the church goes on.

As far as we are concerned today we have two choices, we can catch the wave, or miss it. We can ride the Spirit, or be knocked down by it.

If we are to grow in this generation, we must not look to restore the waves that have gone on. Nor should we try to create a wave, molded to what we think it should be. We should look, neither to the present, past, or future, but to God. We should seek Him out, to try and discern where He is working His signs and wonders today. I don't mean finding the next trend or fad, but we should genuinely seek what the move of God is. We are like surfers in the water, looking for the next big swell. When we find it, then we ride it, allowing the power of the wave to carry us forward.

What will the next wave be and when will it come? I have no idea. It is not for us to know really. But we can seek God with all our hearts, and stand eagerly before Him. If we seek to be moved by God, God will move us, and the next wave of the Spirit will come here as well.

The Good Jesus and the Scoundrel Church

2010-08-19T14:01:00.001-07:00

I confess that I have not read any of the many books by the neo-atheists. I have about as much chance of reading them as Obama has of reading the collected works of Rush Limbaugh-and for the same reason.

Nevertheless, I was intrigued when I passed by a display of new- works at the local Borders Book store, and saw the newest book by Philip Pullman--The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman. Pullman's wrote a series of children's books, His Dark Materials, as a slam on Christianity and the church. I have not read them , but those who have tell me that they get more anti-religious with every volume.

But I can't get that title of his new book out of my head --The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.

It astounded me that Pullman would even call Jesus a good man. He repudiates everything Jesus taught and attacks the church are vitriolic slander. Yet he still calls Jesus a good man.

• Carl Sandburg, an agnostic and a socialist, attacked evangelist Billy Sunday in his poem To a Contemporary Bunkshooter. The same poem, though, carries this line

"Don't tell me about Jesus. He looked clean and he smelled clean, and people wanted to be around Him."

Hardly a ringing endorsement. Yet like Pullman, Sandburg could not get around "the good man Jesus." Of course Jesus more than a good man to us, but the fact that even the worst critics of the faith seem to still respect Jesus makes me pause with wonder.

Why do they hate Christianity so, yet admire Jesus? The secular world distinguishes between the two. Yet the only thing they know of Jesus comes from the church. They ought to see Jesus and the church the same, but they don't. The callousness and corruption in the modern church has driven people away in droves.

Pullman's main gripe with Christianity not really with Christ, but with the authoritarianism of the Catholic and Anglican churches. He does not seem to be able to imagine a Christianity that is not incased in robes and cathedrals and where it leaders wash feet instead of ruling from thrones. He sees it as all pomp and power-driven. And to a large degree he's right.

Much of the modern disgust with the church comes from the publicity surrounding some child abuse cases. They blame the Pope personally for every rogue priest that ever disgraced his calling. Sandburg's disgust was over the excesses of sensational evangelism. He blamed all preachers for the abuses of he few.

This is what the world sees of Christianity--Catholic hypocrisy and Evangelical chicanery. There is a huge majority of Christian churches that have not disgraced themselves with their anger or their antics. But even we must confess that we our fellowship is a poor reflection of Jesus. The church should have the same odor as its master--a clean, refreshing smell of honesty, humility, and charity. But we often stink with the odor of treacly insincerity, institutional corruption, and pompous judgementalism.

The church one all important mission on earth--several of them. Glorifying God in worship, evangelism, missions, societal transformation, just to name a few. Whatever our views on the mission of the church is not the most important thing. Whatever our mission, we should all behave the same, because we have the example of Christ. We are one body and one church, with one Lord, one Spirit, and, one faith. We don't have to agree on everything. We just have to get along.

On being judgmental, part 4

2010-08-07T06:52:00.000-07:00

Judgmentalism, mosquitoes, and termites, all have one thing in common. Despite all the problems they cause, God gave them to us to serve a useful purpose.

I recall a story I once read about a man who had suffered a catastrophic train accident. A piece of steel passed through his head, severing the portion of the brain where emotions originate from, the portion that houses the intellect. He fully recovered physically, but he became like the fictional Mr. Spock of Star Trek, a person with no emotions.

He could not respond when people showed love to him. He did not respond to the anger of others. He could not hold down a job. He could not make the simplest decisions, such as whether to wear a red or blue shirt. His ability to make decisions was entirely absent.

Judging and feeling are irrevocably linked. You can't have one without the other. If we feel, then we value. And if we have values, we also judge.

Jesus said "Judge not, in order that you not be judged. For with the judgment you judge others, you yourself will be judged." Jesus did not mean we should never judge, but that when we judge we should do it the way we would like it to be done to us. If we want others to judge us generously, we should judge them generously, too. If we would like others to butt out of our business, then we should stay out of theirs, too. The Golden Rule applies to judging, too.

Nevertheless, there are some times when we must judge. Sometimes our role in life puts us in the position of judging--such as when we are jurors, parents, administrators, or employers. Sometimes, we are called on to render our portion of a collective judgment---when we vote or serve on jury duty. Every soldier on a battlefield is called upon to judge whether the life of the enemy is more important than his own.

We try to judge fairly, but we are not always fair, nor should we be. There are times when we will be prejudiced. We are rightfully prejudiced in favor our spouses and children. No matter what we say, we can never be impartial towards those we love.

We judge constantly in the ordinary aspects of life. We choose one color of shirt over another. We choose roses instead of daisies, Fords over Chevies, a vacation by the beach instead of a vacation in the mountains. If we had no feelings in these matters, these choices would be impossible. If we have feelings in these matters, then we will judge according to those feelings.

The idea that we should never judge is simply wrong. It isn't that we judge, it's how we judge that matters.

So how do we judge?

1. We judge when it is our business to judge. We all have feelings about certain people and certain behaviors. We may not approve of homosexuality or adultery. I certainly do not. But when I encounter homosexuals or adulterers, no matter what my feelings may be regarding their behavior do not matter. They are not mine to judge. God is the one who will judge them, not I. I must put my feelings towards their behavior aside and treat them simply as human beings.

2. We judge when we have all the facts. The kinds of judgments that cause the most mischief are those that are made quickly and in ignorance of the whole truth. Suppose, for example, we know a woman who has moved out on her husband. The husband appeals to our sympathy, saying the marriage bond is forever, and she was in sin. What we may not know is that he has been physically and emotionally abusing her for years. Until we actually know both sides, we should not judge.

3. When we must judge, we should to is with leniency and generosity. With the judgment we give others, we will be judged.

Imagine there is a future society where all cases in court were tried, not before a judge or jury, but by a supercomputer. The computer would digest all the evidence of a crime, calculate probabilities, and draw a conclusion of guilt or innocence. We would still need judges to decide upon appropriate sentence. That is because judges exist to grant leniency, not punishment. Every criminal could receive the maximum sentence, but it is up to the judge to decide whether that sentence should be lightened due to other circumstances.

Our judgment, too ought to be about mercy, not punishment. We could ostracize a friend for doing us harm, but we do not have to. We can choose to forgive. We can believe that a casual comment was sarcastic or cutting, or we could take it as face value, and give the person the benefit of a doubt. Any fool can take offense--it takes a wise man to forgive. If we have the intellect to accurately judge the offenses to others, then we ought to have the good sense to overlook them unless it is absolutely imperative that we do so.

We cannot help but judge. It is part of our emotional nature to do so. But do we have the good sense to leave off judging the servants of another, and mind our own business? Let's attend to our own personal courtrooms, and leave the rest to God.

On Being Judgmental, Part 3

2010-08-06T10:15:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder if extreme judgmentalism should not be classified as a kind of personality disorder. We are all judgmental at times, but there is an impulse to judge that goes beyond the normal in some people. Being judgmental creates an illusion of being in control. If we cannot control what goes on around us, we reach for the false security of being able to make sense of it. If we can label the things around us as good or bad, we have simplified things into two camps. That makes us feel slightly more secure in our place in life. It also leaves us with a feeling of usperiority over others. Passing judgment gives us a feeling of the moral highground. This is odd, because people who have the same vices still feel somewhat more moral if they can judge others to be sinners for doing the same things that they know they are doing.

This brings up the greatest challenge for the judgmental--self judgment. If we do not judge others or judge God, we still may judge ourselves.

Paul must have suffered from self judgment, judging by what he said in 1 Cor 4:3-5

3 I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself . 4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes.

Paul's conscience is clear because he is forgiven, not because he is perfect. God has taken away from him the penalty for sin.

That was not always true for Paul. When he was a Pharisee, under the law, Paul spent a lot of time in self-judgment. Self-judgment was (and still is) viewed by many as a good thing, a trait that will get us on the road to self perfection. But self-perfection is a dead-end street. We will never get there until we are reborn in the new kingdom of God without the stain of original sin. Until then, we will make errors, mistakes, and even wllful sins.

Most Christians show signs of extreme judgmentalism. Why do I say that? It isn't because they necessarily express their judgment of others. Some do, but most have learned to keep judging to themselves. "Judge not, that you will not be judged." No, I believe Christians struggle with judmentalism because of the misery in their lives. Christians ought to be a happy people, a joyful people. But when we look at Christians honestly, we recognize that most of them are not. That is because inside they still beat themselves up for being bad people. Most of us are more keenly aware of our own sins than we are of others.

Self judgment is basically the same as the judgment we pass on others. All judgment is a desire to feel superior. If we judge others, we are trying to feel superior to them. If we judge circumstances, we are basically telling God what to do. And if we judge ourselves, we are really judging the One who made us.

If you struggle with self-esteem issues, I'm not trying to put you down. Neither am I telling you to stop judgment. Then we would be judging ourselves on how judgmental we are! Instead, I would suggest some readjustment of perception of the way things are, that's all. If we see God more clearly in His relationship to us, then we will also see ourselves the way He sees us.

Here are a few things that God thinks about us.

1. We are fantastically beautiful in the eyes of God. We are the epitome of creation, and the most beautiful thing to Him in the whole world. He did not say of squirrels and monkeys that they were made in His own image. He did not look at turtles and chickens and say "This is very good." He did not die for dogs. He died for us. We are to God as fantastically beautiful as our children were when we first held them in our arms.

2. He is generous with our faults. Sometimes we stress that God is perfection, and that we are all imperfect and sin-stained. But God has a relationshiop with us nevertheless. He talks to us, and comforts us. This is in spite of the fact that our sins are far more numerous and serious than we think they are. The sins we notice are like a spot of mud on a pigs nose--we see them as great, but if we could really see the rest of us, we would know that they are really small compared with the sins we don't see. Our good deeds are are like the collar on a dog. They may be the only clothing we have, but it sure doesn't cover much. God could care less. He loves us, not because of what we do right, but in spite of what we do wrong. He is more generous to us than we are to ourselves.

3. He is passionate about forgiving us. If the value an object is proven by what we are willing to pay for it, then our forgiveness must be the most valuable thing in the world. God paid the price of the cross for us. How, then can we call it of no account? Why do we insist upon holding onto the guilt of past sins when in fact God has paid the ultimate price for it?

4. He wants to walk beside us always. Whenever I am tempted to hold a grudge against a person, one of the questions I have to ask myself is how much that grudge is worth. Is it worth disrupting my life for it? Is it worth changing jobs to avoid seeing them, or changing churches? Is it worth splitting up a family or ruining a friendship? Most of the time, I conclude that grudges are just too expensive.

Self grudges are highly expensive, too. They cause us to avoid confronting ourselves. When we don't like ourselves, we resort to all kinds of diversions and amusements to keep from dealing with genuine issues. We avoid uncomfortable realities, hide from ourselves uncomfortable facts, and think that, if we never think about it, our guilt will go away. We can make it go away for a time, but it is really still there, and the cost of avoidance becomes bigger every day.

God could act the same way to us, but He doesn’t. He would rather overlook our faults, and forgive our tresspasses than to break our friendship. God does not abandon us. It is we that run away from Him, usually because we do not think He can handle our sinfulness. Rest assured, God can.

The biggest argument I can make against judgmentalism is that it is a waste of time and energy. We waste time thinking about oughts and shoulds and have no time left to deal with what is and isn't. Judging self is no more useful than judging God and others.

Nevertheless, judgments do have its uses, which we will talk about in our next installment.

On Being Judgmental, Part 2

2010-08-03T16:21:00.001-07:00

Judgmentalism is more than something that we are towards other people. It is also what we do to God. It is impossible to be judgmental without judging God.

My grandchildren, Ethan and Chloe, seem to have already been bitten by the judgmental bug. We know this because whenever they don't get what they want, they say "This is the worst day ever." I ask them "Why is it the worst day ever?" Then they tell me about how they did not get the snack they want or the toy they want, or that someone did not allow them to play with matches or stick their fingers in an electric socket. Never mind that whatever authority did not allow them these privileges did it for their benefit. Never mind that they say it coming home from a movie that they loved. Never mind that they had just eaten their favorite lunch and played happily all day. One little "no" makes it the worst day ever.

These little children are expressing a misguided view that is common even with the grown ups around them. Why do we think that our worst day was our worst day? What happened to make it a bad day? For that matter, what made our best day our best day? Are we sure?

Whether a day is good or bad is not up to us. Every day is a providential day, one decreed by God to be the day we receive. Somehow, though we feel it is necessary to label days or events good or bad, and to store away the memory of the day in some neat little pigeon hole in our mind.

But in God's mind, how do we know what is good or bad for us? Illness breaks and softens us. Riches can destroy us. A wedding day is a great day, but becomes a bad memory when the marriage ends in divorce. A firing is a bad day, but becomes a blessing when it opens the door to a greater opportunity. All we have and are comes from the hand of a God who loves us and has a plan for our lives. God can make a good day from a bad one, and a bad day from a good one.

When we label the events of our lives as good or bad based on a moment's pain or enjoyment we are no better than ungrateful children. We are judging God's motives and purpose. If we had the faith we claim to have, we would be happy with what we have, enjoying the moments we have, instead of trying to judge our moments as good or bad.

Having judged God, we move on to judging others. Since we can't accept what God has given us, we can't accept others, either. We want to put labels on people, just like we do on our moments. Is this person good or bad? Are they working for our benefit, or are they out to get us? We do have friends and enemies, to be sure, but most people have their own agendas, most of whom have nothing to do with us. They are neither trying to help us or hurt us, but are living their own lives, under the all-judging eye of God. It is not our place to decide if they are living to God's satisfaction. Instead, it s our job to do good to all people, especially those who call themselves our brothers and sisters.

If we can learn to enjoy what God has given, and give up our right to judge the moments, then we can also perhaps learn to enjoy others without judging them. Every individual who comes across our path was put there, or allowed to be there, by a benevolent God who seeks only our benefit. No one is an accident, and no one can come near us without God's permission. Once we give up the right to judge others, we are free to see the blessings that may come from them.

Later, I'll talk about who we judge the most.

On Being Judgmental, Part 1

2010-08-02T08:16:00.001-07:00

I don't know if this is a product of turning old, but the older I get, the less judgmental I become. Maybe it’s a product of old age. As we age, we mellow, and an absolute black and white view of the world starts to gray around the edges. Things are not so clear-cut as they once were. Neither am I smart as I used to think I was. I must have become dumber as I have gotten older.

Of course, there is such a thing as being too non-judgmental. Some things need to be praised, while others deserve condemnation. Clearly, we can err two far in either direction.

That being said, why is it that we Christians, especially conservative, Bible-believing Christians, seem to lean in favor of judgment? I mean we seem to go out of our way to judge others. How is it that among those who are saved by Grace and rescued from hell only by the forgiveness of Christ, we still find ourselves judging others? Daily we reenact that parable about the man who was forgiven millions, yet could not forgive that pitiful amount owed him. More than that, we don't seem to stop there. We can't overlook the debts that are not even owed us. It seems to be enough for us to withhold fellowship and love from people who owe us nothing, but instead owe it do someone else.

This is a little vague I know, so let me get more specific. Let's say we read about some popular preacher has made some controversial statement that may mean he has changed his views on a controversial subject. This person is not of our denomination. Their ministry in no way affects ours. Yet we are compelled to correct him, and tell others not to listen to him. The statement might have been out of context. It might not be so bad as we thought. But why is it our business to find that out, or to correct them if they are not in our fellowship? It is not just a question of rushing to judgment--it is our compulsion to judge if we don't have to.

Or let's say that we hear an aquaintance might be cheating on his wife. Is his sin against us? Is it our business to know his business? Bill Gothard once famously said that gossip was telling something true or false about a person when we are neither part of the solution or part of the problem. If we are neither the solution or the problem, then why do we want to throw ourselves in the middle of someone else's business?

I know some people will say about this: "Don't we have an obligation to correct a straying brother?" "Shouldn't we be concerned that false doctrines or practices would creep into the church?" We do, of course. That is why we should go privately and talk with those who we think might be in moral trouble. But that's not what we do. That requires courage, and most of us don’t have it. Instead, we spread our views around to others, and never get around to talking directly to them. As far as the purity of the church is concerned, there does need to be clear teachings on some things. But it is, after all God's church and not ours. He is capable of defending it far better than we are. Our job is to instruct the flock under us, and not assume responsibility over people in other flocks. We do not have the wisdom to always tell what is good or bad, or right or wrong about another. Judgmentalism is a slippery slope. Saying that we must judge in one circumstance makes it easier for us judge the next time. Before we know it, we have assumed the position of judge over others whenever and about whatever we please.

Why do we need to judge? If God had wanted us to judge others, He would have given us the title and the authority. It is our flesh, not our spirit, that cries out for the power to judge others.

Moe about this later.

What is a "Radical Moderate?"

2010-04-19T21:46:00.001-07:00

The term “radical moderate” may sound like a contradiction of terms, but it is very intentional. For too long, our denominational discourse has been driven by arrogance, extremism, and ugly, judgmental attitudes on both sides. Some people will not be happy unless they have a crusade to fight.

Loving and respecting one another is not just a good idea—it is a divine command. Without love, the visible church is an unmitigated failure.

Before we begin, let’s define some terms. By “moderate” I do not mean what might be called moderate in the broader community, but as it is within the doctrines and principles of conervative Reformed Protestant Christianity. I take for granted that most of my readers agree with those principles. These principles include:

• Orthodox Christian doctrines as set down in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds. Including the deity of Christ, the Trinity, salvation by grace alone, and the necessity of belief for salvation, and so forth.

• The inerrancy of the Bible in its original autographs. It is our only guide to faith and practice, and constitutes the basis for anything we say or do.

• Calvinist, Presbyterian, Reformed beliefs as set down in the Westminster Confession and the Catechisms. These are not by any means infallible, but they do constitute the best (but not perfect) expression of Biblical theology and understanding.

• Personal conversion and evangelism as the primary means of promoting God’s kingdom in the world. Salvation comes through having faith in Jesus as one’s personal Lord and Savior, not by good works, ecclesiastical ritual, or anything else.

Even for those who affirm these statements, there is still plenty of room for disagreement. We are a diverse group of believers who worship in different ways, speak different languages, and differ on a great many issues. The purity of the church demands that we hold to the essentials, but love requires that we not draw the circle of fellowship any smaller than it actually is.

We are not all the same. We are traditional and contemporary; Republican and Democrat; white and black; male and female; old and young; Scottish, Hispanic, Korean, African, Pakistani and Chinese. We are not defined by ethnic or sociological similarities, nor do we all share the same history. But we all have a right to be heard with respect.

For that reason I would suggest we add one more to the list of eternal truths above—tolerance.

Tolerance is not agreement, nor is it endorsement. It is just good manners—a commitment to treat each other as we would want to be treated. That means not exaggerating the differences between us, not engaging in combative hyperbole, and allowing others the freedom of their own conscience. Too often tolerance has been confused with wimpiness. It is anything but. Peacemakers have been historically the first to get shot. The image that best describes the moderate to me is that of Samson—as we push against both sides, we often have the roof fall on our heads. I wish that were not so, but sometimes that is the only way to bring down temples of prejudice and pride.

This blog is my way of helping to promote this peace. I am hoping that others will contribute to this blog as well. At the bottom of this post I have put a list of subjects I would be particularly interested in having others write. However, no post will be accepted that does not coincide with these values:

1. No cause is more valuable than the people involved.

2. We will discuss anything, as long as we discuss it with mutual love, respect and civility.

3. We will not question the morals or motivations of others,

4. We will not engage in name-calling, marginalizing, or labeling.

5. We will not engage in personal attacks, or denigrate those who disagree.

6. We will seek to encourage the peace and prosperity as well as the purity of the church

7. We will not put down other denominations, but will build up the whole Body of Christ.

So with that in mind, I seek your help. I am looking for people who will help by contributing to this blog. I also solicit your readership, your comments, your contributions, and your prayers.