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Societal Evolution, The BSA, and the Meaning of Heresy (Pt. 2 of 2)
English: A warning sign with an exclamation mark (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In my last post I wanted to make the following points: (1) The Boy Scouts of America is not a Christian organization, and it should not use claims of Christian doctrine to support its denial of membership to young men who claim to be homosexual. While the Boy Scouts may teach such concepts as honor and respect, in many other areas the teachings of the Scouts are clearly antithetical to Christian beliefs. I know mine is a minority conclusion, but I cannot help but see the logical implications to many of the core disciplines within the Scouts. (2) The fact that the militant homosexual lobby was able to coerce the Scouts into accepting young Scouts who are openly homosexual is just a precursor to the process of forcing the Scouts to accept adult leaders who are active in the homosexual lifestyle. It is well documented that a majority of Scouts and Scout leaders are opposed to the homosexual lifestyle, but that means nothing to those who would force their deviant views onto others. I closed with a question – at what point does this evolution of societal norms call the church to proclaim the concept of heresy again? A related question would be, what exactly is the meaning of heresy?
I want to begin by drawing a parallel to another issue facing the church today, one that many have accepted as just a normal progression of what the church needs to do to be “relevant” to the predominant western culture today. Notice the argumentation that is used to defend and to promote the position that women are to have equal roles in the spiritual leadership of the church:
- References to Old Testament norms of male spiritual leadership are invalid because we live under the New Covenant.
- Jesus clearly involved many women in his ministry.
- The apostles lived under a patriarchal society, therefore their teachings regarding male spiritual leadership are not relevant in our egalitarian society.
- In at least one instance (the Pastoral letters) it is argued that the author was not Paul, was not apostolic, and therefore not authoritative for the modern church.
- In regard to the Corinthian letters, Paul was confronting a pagan culture where the role of women was vastly different from what women would be doing in the church today. Therefore, the letter of 1 Corinthians is not relevant to the role of women in the church today.
- Galatians 3:27-28 clearly redefines relationships within the body of Christ, therefore we are to count everyone as equal.
- How can you possibly deny the freedom of a woman to serve in a capacity she feels called and gifted to serve the church?
Now, note how the militant homosexual lobby has picked up on those very points to advance their agenda:
- References to the Old Testament are not relevant, as laws concerning homosexual behavior were addressed to Canaanite fertility cults, and we are not living under the Old Covenant today anyway.
- Jesus did not condemn homosexuality in any of his teachings – in fact he taught love and acceptance of all people.
- The apostles lived in a Jewish culture that was homophobic due to the influence of the Levitical purity code, therefore their teachings against homosexuality are culturally bound and are no longer relevant to our more permissive society.
- It follows that Paul’s teachings against homosexuality in Romans and 1 Corinthians are directed against the pagan fertility cults practiced in the first century, and since those cults are no longer relevant today, the condemnations of those behaviors are no longer relevant today.
- Galatians 3:27-28 clearly redefines relationships within the body of Christ, therefore we are to count everyone as equal, and we are certainly not to exclude those who live in a committed, loving, monogamous relationship, whether it be homosexual or heterosexual.
- How can you possibly deny the freedom of a gay man or lesbian woman who feels called and gifted to serve the church, especially since their sexual nature is a gift from God himself, and something that should not be ridiculed or condemned?
Many people get angry when these parallels are pointed out. While they are all for women being put forward as ministers, preachers, deacons, and even elders within a congregation, they are morally repulsed by the idea of two men or two women marrying each other and publicly promoting their union in the church. When the parallels are pointed out they stammer, “But the equal position of women is just different than blessing the sin of homosexuality. Homosexuality is condemned in Scripture, women using their God-given gifts is not condemned!”
Different in degree perhaps. But I question whether the arguments for blessing the homosexual lifestyle and for promoting the elevation of women over men in the church are all that different in substance.
Just a question, but if you accept those seven points in regard to women’s role in the church, how can you deny those six points in regard to accepting practicing homosexuals as members and especially leaders in the church?
If you question my logic or my sanity, simply consider the path of the Episcopal/Anglican Church, the Lutheran Church, and the Presbyterian Church (USA). Each of these denominations long ago accepted the increased role of women in the work and worship of the church. Each did so with the aforementioned reasons front and center. They wanted to be relevant, they wanted to be sympathetic to the needs and gifts of the women in their churches, and they wanted to be seen as being responsive to the changing culture. And each of these denominations are now facing the battle of what to do with practicing homosexuals who use the very same arguments to promote the elevation of homosexuals as priests, bishops, and even archbishops. It is not surprising to many analysts that the more expansive and “affirming” these denominations become, the greater the losses in their memberships. While some former Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians simply drop out of church altogether, it is fascinating to me that many of them are “returning” to the Roman Catholic church. They see in Roman Catholicism something that their denomination surrendered a long time ago – an adherence to the word of God and to the power of church tradition.
Bingo.
When you base doctrine on Scripture alone (Latin, Sola Scriptura) you have a very solid foundation. But, it is not without its weakness. When you allow every person and every group to interpret that Scripture in any way they see fit you are bound to have disagreements and sometimes serious divisions. However, when you add the power of church tradition to the equation you brace that written foundation with a historical foundation. That is why, in the discussion of what books were to be considered a part of the canon and which were to be discarded, one primary “rule of thumb” that was used was “that which is believed always, everywhere, and by all.” Here you have the expanse of time (always), geography (everywhere) and general agreement (by all). Those who refused to accept this three-fold criteria were labeled “heretics.”
What an old-fashioned, out of date, hateful and derogatory word. Heresy – it even hisses when you say it. I would argue that if the church is to survive with any degree of health we had better learn how to say the word and apply the word judiciously and effectively.
In the New Testament the word is used to identify a division – even the church was labeled as a heresy of the Jewish faith. But soon the word came to mean not just a division, but a dangerous and rebellious division – one that was anti-Christian as much as it was un-Christian. It meant that a church, or a group of churches, was forced to examine a teaching, and those who promoted it, seriously and if it failed to meet the three-fold criteria of “everywhere, in every place, and by all” it was deemed to be an “evil spirit” and it was repulsed.
Today we do not speak of heresy very much, if at all. We are told, “do not judge, lest ye be judged.” We are told to be loving and kind and affirming and welcoming. We are told to never, ever, ever offend anyone, lest our good name be drug through the mud. We frame all of our decisions on how they will be viewed by a very narrow group of non-believers, instead of how they will be judged by God.
Somewhere in this path the concept of truth and fidelity to Jesus and to his church, that which has been believed “always, everywhere, and by all” has been forgotten, or consciously discarded. I am deeply concerned with the direction of the Church of Christ today. The scuffle over worship styles has degenerated into a fight over the role of women, and it will become a war when the issue of homosexuality finally explodes.
If we do not return to an understanding that some teachings are sound and some are heretical, that some teachers are healthy and some are destructive, that some practices are truly matters of opinion and some are matters of critical obedience to Jesus and his commands, the church will continue to lose members and, more important, lose its purity in the sight of God (see Rev. 2-3). That means we are going to have to call some teachings heretical, and some teachers heretics. Some people will be offended, many will leave. Or, perhaps the faithful will have to leave.
But if the church ceases to be the church, what difference will it make if everyone stays?
15 Undeniable Truths For Theological Reflection (#14)
Auschwitz concentration camp, arrival of Hungarian Jews, Summer 1944 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This one comes straight from my recent (and not so recent) doctoral studies -
14. Theology cannot be separated from morality and ethics. Healthy, genuine theology demands action. Orthodoxy leads to orthopraxy!
First it might help to clarify a couple of words along the way. Theology, as I have been using the term, is simply the study of and the presentation of the results of the study of, God and his relationship with man. Every person who reads the Bible is involved in theology. Those who read and study in order to teach are involved on another level. Those who do so for a living are involved on another level. But, in reality, the only way to avoid being involved in theology is to avoid any reading of Scripture or any discussion of God and/or God’s relationship with man.
Orthodoxy, by way of etymology, means “right praise” or “correct praise” or some related concept, but which has come down to us today to mean “right, or correct doctrine.” It is the right, or correct, or proper, way to think or believe. Therefore, if we say someone or something is “orthodox,” we mean that the person or the item under discussion is right, correct, or proper. If a person or a belief or an item is “unorthodox,” it means that they have defied convention, are rejecting the norms of a particular group, or are just about a half-bubble off of plumb.
Orthopraxy means right or correct behavior. We in America tend to reward orthopraxy even if the doxy is not quite so ortho. For example, we may praise a child for a certain behavior, even though it is quite obvious that the attitude of the child is anything other than acceptable. As parents we would always love to have the orthopraxy be motivated by orthodoxy, but many times we are just happy that the room is clean, regardless of the stink-eye we get as we walk past the door.
In theology, I’m afraid orthodoxy and orthopraxy are not so separable as for one to be pleasing to God in the absence of the other. Let’s see how God intended one to flow out of the other, and for the other to strengthen the one. We will look at two examples from the life of Jesus.
In the first, Jesus confronts someone who has the orthodoxy down pretty tight, but who cannot seem to follow through with the orthopraxy. A lawyer put a fairly standard question in front of Jesus, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds with a text of orthodoxy, “What is written in the law? How do you read?” Notice the question has nothing to do with doing (at least at this point – it is related to what is “written” and “how do you read?”) The lawyer responds with orthodox perfection – “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Notice Jesus’ response – “You have answered right.” But then he moves to orthopraxy, “Do this, and you will live.” What follows then is what we know of as the parable of the “Good Samaritan.” At the end of the parable Jesus asks, “Which of these…proved to be the neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” The lawyer is much too orthodox to praise the despised Samaritan, so he meekly said, “The one who showed mercy on him.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:25-37).
Now, for the orthopractical who somehow never got the message as to the orthodoxical. In Matthew 15 Jesus is confronted by a group of hostile Pharisees and scribes who question him about the fact that his disciples break the orthodox practice of washing their hands before they eat. Jesus, in response, questions them about the traditional orthodoxy of giving money to the Temple that was due instead to the support of one’s parents. This, he noted, might have seemed on one level to be an honoring of God, but because the intent of the heart was wrong, the effect of the gift was tarnished as well. Jesus then quotes Isaiah the prophet when Isaiah wrote, “This people honors me with their lips [orthopraxy, PAS] but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines [orthodoxy PAS] the precepts of men. (Matthew 15:8-9). In another couple of verses that are key passages in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus refers back to two prophets, quoting Hosea 6:6 (and including Micah 6:6-8) when he says “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13 and 12:7). Now, it could not be said that God never commanded sacrifice (unless you want to remove the books of Exodus-Deuteronomy from your Bible), but the point of the prophets, and Jesus, was that mere sacrifice in the absence of a genuine repentant heart was meaningless (see also Ps. 51). The actions performed might be orthopraxy, but without the orthodoxy they were meaningless, and therefore, vain.
How this situation manifests itself today is tragic to an exponential degree. It is painful for me to remember the number of times I have sat in a Bible class (or worse, taught the Bible class) and had all the right, orthodox answers given to questions about love and mercy and kindness, only to walk to the foyer of the church building and hear the uproarious laughter at the telling of some obscenely racist joke. As vile as that is (and I make no excuse for it, please don’t mistake me), how much worse is the situation where a jury of all white men condemned a black man to life in prison or perhaps even death, not because he was guilty of the crime of which he was accused, but simply because he was a young black man and the victim was white. Those men might have been orthodox in their theological beliefs, but they were anything but orthopractical in their behavior.
You see, theology is NOT some head game in which we find the correct answers and then sit back and wait for the judgment day. Many in the church have turned it into that game, but I fear that they will be in for quite a shock. If your “correct thinking” never translates into “correct behavior” then of what use is having it? Can you find me a verse in the Bible that teaches we will be given a 100 question test and those with 90% or better will get into heaven and everyone else loses?
I honestly believe that Matthew 25 is the most neglected chapter in the entire Bible in most “Christian” churches. We just don’t get it. If you want a clear picture of the necessity of orthopraxy along with orthodoxy, just read Matthew 25. Notice that the accursed in vv. 31-46 are excluded from the King’s glory not because of what they failed to believe, but because of how they failed to act.
Lest you think I am diminishing the importance of orthodoxy, let me direct you to John 14:6 (Jesus, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me”) 2 John 9 (“Any one who goes ahead and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son”) [note: the word for "doctrine" in the RSV is the word didache, which means "teaching"] and Galatians 1:6-9. There can be no question as to the fact that correct doctrine is essential in the Christian walk. But, essential as it is, it is not the sum total of Christianity.
Isn’t it wonderful how I can turn three short, simple and direct little sentences into over 1,300 words of soap and lather? Oh well, I hope you get the point. Let us be careful about the truth and accuracy of our beliefs. But let us be just as careful and diligent to make sure that our actions are in perfect sync with our doctrines.
Aligning Ourselves With God – The Ultimate Front-End Alignment
English: An illustration of alignment and non-alignment. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’ve learned a lot about alignments over the past few years. Mostly because I have a bad back, and I can tell even before I get out of bed if the day is going to be good or one long exercise in getting straight. I know every part of our body is important, but if you have a bad back there ain’t nothing that works right.
So, I was thinking the other day about alignments – how if things are in a straight line things just work so much better. Cars work better if the tires are in alignment. Guitars depend on correct alignment to sound right. Archers know that if the bow is warped the arrow will fly past it’s target. If you let one tiny little mirror get bumped in a telescope the whole thing turns into an expensive kid’s toy. There are many, many areas of life in which alignment is everything.
Which then got me to thinking – do we have the church in alignment with God? That is such an elementary question, but one that I fear goes unasked let alone unanswered. It does not matter if we have one or two things about the church correct if we have half a dozen other things all wrong. If we are not in alignment with what God intends, we will never achieve what he wants us to achieve. Since the church is not growing (or is actually shrinking, depending on which metric you use) I am justified in asking the question – do we have our thoughts, our intentions, our goals, and our efforts in alignment with God?
Alignment number one – God wants mankind to be “in his image.” That is how he created us. That was not good enough for us, so we tried to make ourselves to be “like God.” I know I have railed against using foreign terms if English terms are just as good, but here is where Latin helps us out a little bit. I think most everyone can work through the terms here – God made us to be in the imago Dei. That is, he made us to be in his image. But we wanted to be sicut deus. That is, we wanted to be like God, knowing good and evil. So we traded the imago dei for the sicut deus and we have been out of alignment ever since. Jesus came to this earth to get us back into alignment – to show us how we can have the imago dei once again. That is, Jesus came to teach us how to be fully human. As long as we are trying to be like God we will fail to even be what God created us to be. We need to surrender our craving to be like God so that we can accept being made in the image of God. Once we get that alignment right, several others will fall into place. (I am indebted to the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer for this insight. It clearly was above my pay grade to achieve this insight.)
Within the church are we teaching people how to be fully human? Are we stressing that Jesus, the very image of God himself (Col. 1:15) came to this earth to “redeem” us, that is to bring us back to our created relationship with God? Or are we, like those Pharisees that we love to beat up on, just trying to get people to see things the way we see things, that is, are we trying to be “like God” in the eyes of the world? There is a world of difference between living in the image of God and living like God. The one is a humble but glorious acceptance of what we have been given, the other is a rebellious declaration that we do not need God as long as we have our own intellect and strength.
I think that if the church (as a collective human being) simply tried to live as if it were made in the image of God instead of trying to be God it would be receive the blessings that God intended for it to have. Or, we can keep trying to “be like God” and we can go out and pick goat-head thorns for a living. Not much of a choice if you ask me.
Alignment number two – doctrine is important, but important only as it relates to proper behavior. In technical terms, orthodoxy is important, but only so far as it results in orthopraxy. In Jesus’ own day it was the Pharisees who were the guardians of orthodoxy. They had doctrine down to a fine point. They had all the “book, chapter and verse” citations they needed to accuse and condemn Jesus – especially in regard to ritualistic Sabbath keeping (see Ezekiel 20 especially). But they were utterly bereft in the proper application of that doctrine. Merely having the correct book, chapter and verse did not make their actions right. Jesus taught them what “sabbath keeping” was all about, and it was not what they had in mind. But Jesus’ teaching was in alignment with what God intended, and therefore we are to listen to Jesus and not the Pharisees.
I have written in other posts that I consider myself to be fairly conservative, and as such I must admit that this is one of my weaknesses. As a conservative I tend to look very suspiciously upon anything that looks, smells or feels like an aberration from the “tried and true.” I live by the motto, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The only problem is many times something is broken; but because I have figured out how to use a broken tool quite effectively, I do not realize it is broken. I have to force myself to reexamine my beliefs to determine whether I am holding onto something that is truly “in the image of God” or something that only resembles the truth and is in reality something that is “like God.”
I never want to give up on orthodoxy. I am firmly committed to the concept that God has revealed his will to us, and we must accept and obey that will. In that respect I reject the suggestions of many “moderates” or “progressives” who want to change the church to be more “postmodern” and more in tune with its surrounding culture. Once again, I believe those individuals are simply a modern day example of Adam and Eve in the garden. They want to be “like God,” making their own decisions and deciding what is good and evil instead of wanting to be in the “image of God” and letting God decide what is good and evil. But on the other hand I never want to be so “conservative” that I become “reactionary” and therefore reject the correctives of Jesus when it comes to straightening out my orthodoxy. I have to learn what the intent of the doctrine is so that I can correctly apply the correct doctrine. In terms of the gospel, I never want to become so fixated on proper sabbath keeping that I fail to offer healing and restitution to another human created “in the image of God.”
guitar (Photo credit: imadoofus123)
Whether the object is an automobile, a guitar or your own spine, it is critical for everything to be in proper alignment. Nowhere is that concept more true than in the Lord’s church. I think we need to go in for a check-up. We need to go in for the ultimate front-end alignment. Let us focus on becoming a people made in the image of God, and then we can focus on the proper application of doctrine.
Religion’s Unanswerable Question
James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh (4 January 1581–21 March 1656) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In my last entry I discussed the question(s) that evolution and evolutionists are incapable of answering. And so, in the interest of honest disclosure, in this post I want to share what I believe to be the question(s) that religion cannot answer. I want to underline, in bold face, and in italics, that this is my opinion, and others may disagree completely or in part. I have come to this conclusion after years of study, and as my study is ongoing and ever developing, I am sure that in future days my conclusions will change somewhat. As the apostle Paul said, here on earth we all see as “through a mirror darkly.” So, I am in no way going to claim some kind of spiritual omniscience here.
First, specifically in regard to the question of the origin of life, religion can answer the questions of who and why and what, but the question of when is totally beyond the realm of religion. Our biblical text begins, “In the beginning God created…” That is as far as I, as a Christian, can go. How many years ago did that creating begin? The Bible is silent. The years that are given in the records of the genealogies are given to place certain individuals in certain time frames that the original audience understood. As an assignment in one of my college courses I traced the lineage of the priesthood of Zadok. That singular exercise convinced me that genealogies in the Old Testament are used in a far different way from the “scientific” way in which we used them today. Does Genesis 1-3 give us a photographic image of the creation of the earth? Not as I understand the Hebrew language, the Hebrew method of storytelling (poetry), and the theology that the Genesis author (who, in a large way I believe to be Moses) wanted to convey. Instead of a “photographic” image I prefer to use the idea of a “painting.” Compare a painting of, say, the Revolutionary War with the gritty black and white images of World War II or Vietnam. The paintings convey what the artist wanted us to see and learn about the battle. The pictures showed everything exactly the way it was, no glamour, glory, or rapturous elements looking down from heaven. Moses did not give us a photograph of the creation of the world, he gave us a mural. And, as with any other mural, we have to look at the whole painting to understand each little part.
The other question in regard to creation that religion cannot answer is “how?” Once again our text simply says, “God created.” The most specific it gets is when it says, “God spoke.” We are told God formed man from the elements of the earth, and that is confirmed by our sciences. We are also told that woman was formed from man. Beyond that we are given no details, because, quite frankly, nobody really cared about such things until about 100 years ago. The questions related to how our world operates are a legitimate exercise of the field of science. I happen to believe that a Christian scientist is in a far better position to answer these questions, but once again, that is my opinion. There are many other questions of “how” that the Bible does not answer, and therefore I believe are illegitimate issues for Christians to attempt to answer dogmatically. We can search for clues and work to learn how God has acted in our world, but all of our answers need to be provisional and suggestive.
By way of summary, I would simply like to suggest that somewhere along the way we as Christians have allowed our antagonists to set the agenda and we have surrendered our Spiritual birthright for a mess of scientific porridge. We got sucked into answering questions that we honestly do not have any firm evidence to use, and our own political infighting over these tenuous answers has only served to embolden our opponents. Just as one example, I cannot begin to hold the figure of a 6,000 year old earth. I cannot because (1) my understanding of the Hebrew language and aspects of the Hebrew historiography, (2) I studied about how Archbishop Ussher [the source of the 6,000 year old claim] came to his conclusions, (3) my own [albeit limited] understanding of physics, astronomy and even archeology. However, Ussher’s chronology was incorporated into the printed text of some King James editions of the Bible, and soon it became sacrosanct. Therefore to challenge Ussher’s chronology was the same as denying inspiration of Scripture. Even today we are dealing with Ussher’s legacy, even though few even know about Ussher, and far fewer would subscribe to his methodology if they knew about it.
However, to continue the story, the evolutionists and atheists jumped on Ussher’s chronology and ridiculed it. Instead of saying that the chronology was just a human calculation and letting the theory rest on it own strengths or weaknesses, by defending it as a part of Scripture Christians bought into bad science and seriously weakened their case. I fear that now what most evolutionists ridicule about the faith of Christians and our beliefs about the Bible are only a caricature of what the Bible actually teaches, but is itself a caricature that is actually defended by Christians themselves. In the immortal words of Pogo, we have met the enemy and he is us.
Is there a solution to the impasse between Christianity and science? Absolutely! We need to return to a serious and in-depth study of what the Bible actually does teach and the ways in which it teaches those truths. This means a return to the original languages and the original forms of teaching. It also means we must hold an open mind to the discoveries of archeology, physics and astronomy, as well as the other hard and soft sciences. If our universe is as ordered and as well planned as Christians have been arguing it is for the past several hundred years now, surely God will not mind if we explore how that order and plan actually works. And, scientists need to understand that a pure faith in God is not antagonistic to their life’s work. Science and theology can be, and must be, supportive of one another.
The fact is that science and theology are seeking to answer different, but inter-related questions. Let us work together to find all the answers.
Today’s Positive Thinking Moment: How To Positively Kill Your Congregation
(WARNING: YOUR SARCASM ALERT SHOULD BE SET ON HIGH FOR THE NEXT FEW MINUTES)
Dollar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The 64 million dollar question these days seems to be: What is the one, absolute, failsafe way to make your congregation grow? It seems there are 64 million different answers, so most folks are still left wondering at the end of the day what it will take to reverse the trend of stagnation and decline that they see in their spiritual family. A ginormous amount of effort has been spent on hiring the flashiest and hippest preachers (preaching in ripped jeans and dirty t-shirts seems to be the rage these days), totally revamping the music (praise teams and guitars, anyone?), lighting profuse numbers of candles (anyone check with the fire department on that one?) as well as incense (certainly saves on soap and deodorant) and even the old stand-by of tinkering with doctrine and theology (the charge of the feminism and the LGBT light brigade!). So far nothing has proven to be the silver bullet. Some groups have momentary success with some efforts, but overall the trend still seems to be stagnation or decline.
So, just for giggles and grins, I want to think positively about going the other direction. I mean, if you cannot have success building a congregation, how about killing one? Never one to be at a loss for ideas, these are a few that come immediately to mind:
- Be sure that you have one or more old stalwarts of the faith who fire off racist comments at every opportunity before, during, and after public meeting times. Although it might seem uncouth to mention the “N” word or refer to Hispanics in regard to di-hydrous oxide on their backs, there are surely enough ways to draw some appreciative laughter by making reference to those financially prudent Jews or those hyper-religious Persians who attire themselves with turbans. Yea, verily, the more despicable the race the funnier the joke will be. This will assure that your congregation remains exclusively anglo-saxon and as pure as the driven snow. And, because the nation is becoming more ethnically diverse, your congregation will most certainly never grow.
- Do not stop with race, however. Along with the derogatory comments regarding every color of skin except your own, you have to make sure you ridicule every religious or faith group except your exclusive little tribe. When a particular issue is discussed that you know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you, and only you, have a corner on the truth, make sure you belittle all “those stupid” (and you have to spit the “s” out) Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, and even those “apostate” Church of Christers who no longer believe your Holy Spirit approved interpretation. This way you will be sure to keep all “those stupid” people from wanting to be a part of your group, and with every funeral in your divinely appointed assemblage, your numbers will get smaller.
- One of the most simple ways that a congregation maintains its size or even grows is through the encouraging of young couples to have children and to actually bring those children to worship and class. So, in order to kill your congregation you have to make every effort to make these young families feel like dirt if their children make any kind of noise or mess on the floor of the “sanctuary.” When their little one is teething and is especially fussy, make sure that as many of you as possible can and will turn around and give them the “stink eye.” It would be especially effective if you got up and moved to another pew, making it obvious that the little one was the reason you had to leave your homeland for a dry and arid destination. Since you raised your children as perfect angels who never made any noise or never spilled anything, make sure that you tell the parents how perfect you were in your parenting skills and how utterly bereft of any intelligence they must be. No parent who is concerned about the spiritual well being of their children will want to be a part of your special kind of holiness, and so you can rest assured you will have no need to add additional classrooms or need any Sunday school teachers.
- But why stop with children? Surely you can criticize the dress or hair style or tatoos or behavior of the teenage or college crowd. Make sure they know your disgust at their choice of lipstick, or the fact that they might choose to wear army boots along with their mini-skirt. Never mind that they are struggling with issues you never even had to dream about, use every tool in your copious box to make them feel unwanted, unappreciated, and basically a burden to the congregation. They won’t stay long, and so you will not have to be distracted by their flaming orange or dazzling purple hair any longer.
Nostril piercing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
- Make sure that you do everything in your assembly times in exactly the same order every single Sunday, that you only have a repetoire of about 12 songs that are “approved,” and that you only allow one version of the Bible to be read publicly. It would be preferable if the version was the KJV, and that the preacher spoke using the same Old English verb endings and candences. Whatever you do, do not allow the service to have any kind of connection to modern day problems or that it be considered relevant in any manner. It would be best if every sermon dealt with some arcane interpretation of Scripture such as the “language of Ashdod” or the “braying of Balaam’s ass.” Today’s multitude of unchurched and unsaved people long for the Bible to speak to their hurts and fears, so you can rest assured that none of them will want to visit your congregation more than once, if at all.
- Never, ever, allow the carpet, the curtains, or the upholstery on the pews to be changed. They were purchased with money given by dear old brother and sister Fussbudget, and so they can never be altered.
- Same with the seating arrangement. God intended everyone to stare at the back of someone else’s head. That is why he built so many churches with the same pews and the same pulpit. Don’t buck history.
I could probably go on, but I think I have given you a fairly solid beginning to a path of stagnation and decline. Follow these tried and true methods of killing a congregation and I can assure you that your building will be empty within a decade or two, maybe even sooner.
(IT IS NOW SAFE TO RETURN YOUR SARCASM METER TO ITS NORMAL SETTING)
Unusual sarcasm notice (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Do Christians Love the Bible Anymore?
I am in the process of preaching a series of lessons on the general subject of reading the Bible. I know there is a temptation for every generation to look back with awe and forward with fear, but at this point in my life I have to question the future of the group of people who call themselves the “church.”
I am not that old…at least I don’t think that I am. I can still remember a time when individuals of various religious groups held to their beliefs firmly, sometimes defensively. Today the religious landscape has changed dramatically. When I was a teenager anyone who firmly held to a doctrine or a particular view of Scripture was viewed with respect. There were fierce debates, to be sure. Much of what was labeled as “discussion” was clearly unhealthy. But at least the differences were well known, and there was a foundation that could be built on for honest and healthy debate. Today, anyone who holds to a firm belief in a doctrine or to a particular interpretation of Scripture is viewed as a ideologue, a crank, or a reactionary nut.
The result is nobody holds to any firm convictions anymore. “You believe what you want to believe, I’ll believe what I want to believe, and we’ll all just be friends.” Individuals who hold diametrically opposing views of salvation, the atonement, the nature of God, of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit are told those opposing viewpoints don’t really matter. In fact, I guess you can believe in God or Allah and it is really not supposed to make any difference. Apparently you can believe that there are behaviors that are clearly defined as sin in the Bible, and on any given Sunday you are supposed to worship with someone who is actively practicing that sinful lifestyle just because they “say” they believe in Jesus, whatever that means to them. Just don’t say anything to them, because you might offend them, and heaven knows we are not supposed to offend our brothers or sisters.
It is an often stated truism that says the church needs to get back to Jesus. I am becoming more convinced by the passing years that the church needs to return to the Old Testament. We need to hear again the stories that tell us what God thinks of religious syncretism. We need to read about what God thinks about foreign gods. We need to read what God thinks about his people diluting his laws and his plain directions given through his prophets.
When Jesus said, “the gate is small, and the way is narrow, and few are those who find it” he was not talking about the few in the church and the many in the world. He was talking about the church, and the words were recorded by the evangelist for the purpose of the church calling itself back to moral and doctrinal purity.
We can talk about the emerging church, the missional church, the emerging missional church, the seeker-sensitive church, the institutional church, or the attractional church all we want to and even more than we want to and absolutely nothing is going to change. The only way the church is going to change is if each person who has decided to become a disciple of Christ makes the commitment that they are going have their hearts transformed to be like the heart of God.
And, forgive me if I am old fashioned, reactionary and a right-wing nut case. But the only way that is going to happen is if the disciples of Christ learn to love the Word of God again. That means Bible reading, Bible study, the memorization of Scripture and the discussion and debate about the meaning of Scripture.
The prophets of God can no longer preach “peace, peace” when there is no peace. The prophets of God can no longer “call evil good, and good evil.” God’s people can no longer repeat, “The temple of God, the temple of God, the temple of God.”
For God’s sake, and for the sake of the world – if Jesus died to fulfill the will of his Father, don’t you think we as his followers could at least risk being called a derogatory name in order to defend him?
Rely on your feelings and you die
One of the difficult concepts to convey to a newbie instrument student is the danger involved in relying on their feelings, or senses. Spatial disorientation is not just a weird feeling. In instrument conditions it can kill.
So, there is a procedure to bring the message home. It begins when the student is flying with a “view limiting device” blocking any outside references. The student is then told to close their eyes, and remove their hands and feet from the controls, unless a command is given for them to turn the plane. A good instructor will slowly provide inputs to the plane’s control systems that cannot be felt by the student. A really good instructor will then ask the student to slowly turn the plane. With his or her feet the instructor will counter-act the student’s inputs. Then the instructor will tell the student to level the plane, or even turn in the opposite direction. If everything is done slowly, with just a few subtle changes to the flight controls, the plane can end up in any number of “unusual attitudes” and, if not restored to straight and level flight, will eventually crash. When everything is really good and discombobulated the instructor will tell the student to open his or her eyes, look at the panel of instruments, correctly identify the unusual attitude, and bring the plane back to normal flight.
The thing is, if done correctly (and I had an instructor who was a master at this!), the unusual attitude will feel normal to the student, and a sudden return to “normal” flight will feel unnatural. It all has to do with the function of the inner ear and our sense of equilibrium. Wrong becomes right, and right becomes wrong.
The application for the church should be obvious. There is a reason Satan wants to “fly under the radar” so to speak when he wants to corrupt the church. Division, heresy, all manner of false teachings are not introduced on Sunday and implemented on Monday. Satan is patient. He will work for years if he must to change the equilibrium of the church. And once changed, a return to orthodoxy feels painful – indeed it is painful!
Jude faced just this same situation. Wanting to write a letter of encouragement, he faced a scandalous situation and had to resort to some fairly harsh language (see Jude 4). But time was of the essence, the church was flying in an “unsusual attitude” and had to be set straight.
Flying in the fog is demanding. Our feelings work against us. We have to rely on the instruments, and we have to use all of them together because at any one given moment one or another might fail.
Take care, folks. Let’s keep the shiny side up!
