Culture War?

Shortly after James Dobson retired, he gave a speech to the Focus on the Family staff that talked about how we have lost the battle of the culture war.  Could the reason for the lack of progress in the “culture war" be that Jesus called the church to "go and make disciples", not go and try to change the culture?

Lots of attention, finances, time, and energy have been diverted into ministries that fight “the culture war” at the loss of the local church.  The local church lives, breathes, and interacts within the immediate context of its community.   If followers of Jesus would simply follow the command to pray, witness, and assemble together regularly for worship and instruction, instead of making millionaires out of parachurch celebrities,  the church would effectively carry out God’s calling to make disciples, instead of fighting a “culture war” we were never called to fight.

Ask not what your church can do for you...

Occasionally, I get calls where I’m asked, "What does your church have to offer me?"  In order to answer that I would have to call every person in the congregation, since they are the church, and ask them what they think we offer them.  The real issue is that this kind of call is a telling sign of the times - consumer Christians looking for a product, instead of looking for a place where they can serve the Lord.

I am highly encouraged that when this kind of person calls during one of his or her church shopping episodes (some people do it on a monthly basis), I can say without hesitation, “We have people here who will serve Jesus and those He sends to us.  That’s what we have to offer you.”  This may not be the product the person shopping for, but it's exactly the product early Christianity had to offer.  For instance, there are many, many accounts of Christians, who would stay behind in villages when plagues hit and all other healthy villagers would flee.  These Christians, who didn’t fear death, stayed behind to serve the sick and either nurse them back to health or help them die with dignity and the knowledge of eternal life found in Jesus Christ.

If you have genuinely given yourself to Jesus Christ and placed complete faith and confidence in Him for eternal life; if you have really acknowledged Him as Lord and have died to your old self-serving self and become a New Creature in Christ; you shouldn’t find yourself among the church hoppers/shoppers.  If you are, leave behind the mindset of a consumer looking for a product - that is not a reflection of true Christianity.  Instead, look for a place that is in need of what you have to offer in time, talent, and treasure.

Don't call mega-churches, they pay the people that “serve” there.  They don't need people who want to serve as a part of a sacrificial lifestyle modeled by Jesus himself.  All they need from you is your money and the warmth you bring to one of their seats when you attend.  They may have great music because they hired the latest greatest musical/worship genius, and they may have myriads of children's programs so you don't even have to see your child while at church or teach them anything Christian at home (after all isn't that why we pay the pastor so much, to teach our children so we don't need to?), but they don’t allow you the opportunity to truly serve the Lord.

Instead, look for a smaller church that values your contribution of yes, finances, but more so, what you can offer of yourself to others, whether it's with children, adults, the poor, or the hurting.  Look for a church that is in need of someone to teach your children, or work in the nursery, or have someone who will visit the sick.  Look for the church that genuinely cherishes your willingness to live the Jesus life along with them - your desire not to to be served, but to serve. Find a place that follows the real Jesus who said:

“whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

            

Matthew 20:26-28 [emphasis added]

Look for a church whose worship music is pleasing to God, even if it isn’t appealing to you.  After all, why are we worshiping, to perform for the consumer or to sing to an audience of one, the Lord Himself?  Do we worship the Lord, or do we worship the worship?  The truth is, we even don't know which type, style, or worship band God likes.  We choose worship music based on our own preferences and assume God shares our taste.  As with everything else, God looks at the heart, not necessarily the product.  There are those that literally cannot carry a tune (I stand next them sometimes), but sing with all their heart to God.  That is more acceptable to God than a well performed song coming from a cold, distant heart that enjoys the accolades of the consumer more than the reward of knowing one has expressed love for their God.

Lastly, look for a church with people that you wouldn't normally associate with.  That way, you learn to love all people, regardless of social status, color of skin, financial abilities, culture, etc.  That is how we begin to see people through the lens of Jesus who loves all, died for all, and values all - even us.

After thirty years of being a Christian and watching the westernization of the American church, my heart grieves at the loss of The Church. It has been replaced by churches that are in competition with each other and with the world - churches that have competing programs dictated by consumers' wants and desires. In the process it has  created, perhaps so slowly that it's not realized,  an unauthentic reflection of what Jesus meant by the term church. 

Church has become a shopping center for spiritual needs, and a place where idolatry occurs amongst the celebrity preachers, worship leaders, and such.  Each service is practiced and rehearsed to appeal to the sensitivities of the patrons who pay to watch a good show.  A real Church gathering is meant to be directed to God through the prayers and songs of God's people.  Let God be the judge of whether the service was "good" or not.

Instead of band rehearsals, and pastor coaches, and professionals polishing their skills to manipulate the masses, it is time to relearn the art of prayer, Bible reading, and worshiping in Spirit and Truth.  We need to spend more time on our knees for both ministers and congregants.  We should have calloused knees instead of polished performances; worn out Bible pages instead of out of context verse-of-the-day screen projections; repentant hearts that long for the Holiness of God instead of wondering how we can wrestle a little more money out of God's hand to sustain our American dream; real Holy Spirit power instead of trinkets and religious paraphernalia sold at the church bookstore to charm our way through the week.

Let's become real followers of Jesus.

Against Calvanism, by Roger Olson

I am looking forward to the release (in October, I believe) of Roger Olson's new book Against Calvinism. I am not sure exactly how much of what I am about to say is covered in Olson's book, but I am looking forward to what he shares.  I have copied a short synopsis of the book's content from Amazon's site:

Against Calvinism [Paperback]

Roger E. Olson (Author)

Calvinist theology has been debated and promoted for centuries. But is it a theology that should last? Roger Olson suggests that Calvinism, also commonly known as Reformed theology, holds an unwarranted place in our list of accepted theologies. In Against Calvinism, readers will find scholarly arguments explaining why Calvinist theology is incorrect and how it affects God's reputation. Olson draws on a variety of sources, including Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience, to support his critique of Calvinism and the more historically rich, biblically faithful alternative theologies he proposes.

It is about time that someone says what should have been said long ago, and what I have been saying for quite a while:  Calvinism does not deserve the place it has in accepted theologies.  It is fatalistic, flawed, deterministic, unscriptural, a horrible portrait of the God of the Bible, and has led many into flawed conclusions about life and God.

If one is honest in the study of Calvin and his Geneva experiment, the conclusions should be obvious.  I, for one, cannot and do not consider the Calvinistic position one that can even be remotely considered when studying the Bible.  But maybe I have be predetermined against all logic and free will to think this way....it's a mystery (sarcasm).

The Calvanist would have you believe that the torture and brutality of the Holocaust, horrible deaths and wars, catastrophes, and massacres by brutal dictators have been all been preordained in the decrees of God prior to creation or just after.  You are also to believe that somehow the perpetrators of those crimes will be held accountable by God, even though God foreordained that they would do it.  Does that make sense to you?  How can they be guilty of evil if they did what God ordained them to do?

Calvinists have to manipulate the Bible to get it to support such insanity.  The meticulous control of a "good" God that interprets all kinds of evil as being good is too much of a cruel game to believe.  Yet it has been promoted unchecked for so long.  It's time for it to be exposed for what it truly is - Plato's god, not the God the Bible.

I am grateful for the scholars that are now interpreting the New Testament and Old through the lens of Jewish Hebrew thought instead of the Hellenized Greek culture and philosophies.    This may offend some, but at this point it's worth the offense if it can help eliminate the insanity of the inconsistent, illogical, terrible thinking that has been promoted as truth ever since Plato's disciple Augustine.  That's a strong statement, but error like this has to be disarmed ASAP.

I have worked with too many people who have been told by misinformed people that pain, misery, disease, brutality, wars, rapes, baby killing, natural disasters where little children are buried alive under mudslides, and all the other evils that destroy life, family, and sanity are somehow God's doing.  That it's all part of some secret plan that never gets revealed to them and is a lesson from God where the point of the lesson is never revealed.

One statement I can hardly stay silent about when spoken in my presence is, "God must be teaching me something" in reference to some calamity that someone is experiencing.  This statement usually comes after the person realizes that he has no other answer for what's happening.  What he doesn't realize is that the “something” is never clarified.

When I teach my children something, they know what the “something” is.  I don't keep it a secret from them.  If they don't know what the lesson is, then I really didn't teach them.   They never have to chalk it up to some mystery.  God gave us the Bible, not evil and tragedy, to teach us "something," and He has given us His Spirit to aid in that process.   He never brings tragedy to our lives to try to teach us. The Bible and the Spirit - these are the means by which He teaches His people.

Fatalism, the doctrine that all events are subject to fate or inevitable predetermination, is not consistent with the Biblical witness.  Although Calvansts insist their view is not the same as fatalism, the similarities are too strong to pretend that they are not the same.  A barn can be painted any color; it's still a barn.

I hope and trust that if Calvinism is true and everything is predetermined, that part of God's predetermined plan is to do away with Calvinism - which is a statement that is about as logical as the system is itself.  I thank God for the Roger Olsons and others who are willing to finally call Calvanism what it is.

I don't agree with Rob Bell's assessment of some doctrines, but the man was labeled a heretic almost immediately for merely presenting the idea that there may be no hell.  To me, Calvin's teachings, which I have read extensively, qualify as heresy, if not blasphemy at times.  Jesus warned about attributing evil to the working of the Holy Spirit, and that is exactly what Calvanists do. Again, a strong statement, but if you look at Jesus and what He taught, and then look at Calvin and what he taught, you'll see that there just isn't any compatibility between the two.

Let's preach the real Gospel, the one that says that God so loved the world that He sent His Son for all people.  Calvinists say, “all who are ordained to be saved" instead of just “all” when they use this scripture.  That is just one of the many things that they have to modify to sustain their position.  Jesus taught that Salvation is for all humanity, if they turn, repent, and believe in Him - it can't get any plainer than that.  In fact, you have to purpose to mess something that simple up, which, unfortunately, happens too often.

God is good; He is the author of good.  He is not evil; He is not the author of evil. God is not in partnership with Satan to bring evil to you.  He is bigger than that - He is not a petty God that has to be in control of all things to make sure everything goes His way.  He is not mysterious either.  Paul says that the mystery of the Gospel has been revealed and by the Spirit and can be made known.  God isn't manipulative or dishonest, saying one thing but doing another. There is no hidden god behind the God of the Scriptures.  He is not disingenuous as the Calvinists make Him out to be.  He is Almighty and doesn't have to play games with his creatures to get His way.

Without hesitation I can say that Calvin does not merit the attention he gets when studying theology.  It's time for him to be left behind so we can move on to discover how glorious and wonderful God really is.

FYI: The Bible Was Not Written With the Western Culture of the 21st Century as its Paradigm for Intepreting Life

I suppose in the Protestant tradition it is because people assume that all they need to understand the Bible is their brains and a good translation, that good commentaries on Bible books are too seldom consulted. But a moment’s reflection will show that the brains and Bible and Spirit plus nothing approach is sadly deficient, because what happens, of course, is that any active reader, without guidance, reads their own culture and preferences and ideas into the Biblical text.

     Most of the free resources you find online for Biblical studies are: 1) badly out of date and out of print; or 2) not worth the pixels they are using up to display on your screen; or 3) really bad and misleading information.

 ~ Dr. Ben Witherington III, Bible scholar and professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary

I am appalled at what passes for sound Bible resources and commentaries, especially those written by lay people.

No one is completely freed from assumptions when approaching the scriptures, but it is extremely important to find reliable sources to consult.

Dr. Witherington is saying that it is important to realize the dangers of interpreting scripture through the lens of present day cultural assumptions.  Most of the modern/postmodern ways of thinking that many assume are rooted in absolute truths are actually philosophical constructs from various thinkers that wrote during the Enlightenment/Age of Reason.  If we would just accept that the Western way of thinking is NOT the same as the thinking from the middle-east during the time of Jesus and the early Christian authors, we would finally find ourselves appreciating the depth and wonder of the Scriptures in a whole new way.  In addition, we would know how to effectively apply Scripture to our 21st century living.

In that wonderment, with our minds renewed to an accurate understanding of the Word of God, our lives would be truly changed and Christianity itself would have a greater impact on our culture.

The Brave Men and Women on Our Airwaves

Comedy central is coming out with a show about Jesus, called JC.  It is about Jesus living in New York because he is fed up with his father for various reasons. 

I have to say that I am amused that these “brave” souls who consider themselves equal-opportunity offenders are so quick to ridicule Christianity, then back down when their lives are threatened by Muslims who take it to heart when their prophet is depicted in a bad way.  They cower, because the Muslims threaten to kill them for their blasphemous depictions.  Christianity is an easy target for Comedy Central and the writers of this show, because it poses no danger to them.  Christianity calls its followers to Love their enemies and never do them harm, just as Jesus Himself loved and forgave those who were driving the nails into His hands and feet while He was being brutally crucified.  The love of God is so great that even while we are/were still enemies to God, He died for us.
 
In most cases, the people who criticize the Christian faith are the ones that most fear it.  Their attempts to ridicule, minimize, and do away with Christianity end up simply revealing their fear.  I pray for these people.  I pray that they would realize that while they think they are greater than God and getting away with their mockery, God is actually having mercy and showing love towards them, with the desire that they would turn to Jesus as their Lord and savior.  It is the kindness of God that leads man to repentance, not the retaliation of God's people.  God never loses a battle; He always wins and He always wins through love.

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.  Romans 5:10


Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? Romans 2:4

In this country, as in Europe, Christianity is losing its influence on the culture.  Regaining that influence is a worthy cause, as long as it is done according to the principles of God's Kingdom, with love being the main principle. 

The ideology used to establish the United States of America was undeniably Biblical; it is based on Biblical principals and moral values.  For instance, the formation of a government with checks and balances acknowledged that man was fallen and subject to corruption and dishonesty (a Biblical truth).   To keep power out of the hands of just a few, the representative government with the three main branches was designed.  Unfortunately, the Biblical principles this country was founded on are being diminished as other ideologies attempt to replace them.

Christianity will never be eliminated, because although it is in this world, it is not of this world.  Until Jesus comes and the consummation of all things is at hand, the church will be here, even if it may have to go underground at times.

As a Christian, I think it is a worthy investment of time and energy to regain the parts of our culture that have given way to secular, humanistic ways, and to retain those that still exist.  This, however, must be done within the laws of the land (allowing for civil disobedience), and in accordance with the Christian commitment to living by the Spirit to promote goodness, Godliness, moral values, etc. 

It is counterproductive to become angry, belligerent, and hateful, and use the tactics of the world.  Christians don't need to sit back and let the culture digress without a fight, but we must remember how we are to fight.  We are to fight out of a heart of love and compassion, even for those who stand opposed to what we are trying to accomplish.  We can love our enemies and at the same time oppose what they are about.

We won't bring the Kingdom of God to the earth in its fullness; that will come when Jesus returns and judges all things and sets them right.  But we should bring aspects of the Kingdom of God to every area of influence we have.  We should not be delusional and think we will perfectly establish righteousness on the earth, but we should work toward that, because we are ambassadors for the Kingdom of God while we are here. 

So, we fight for the rights of unborn children to be kept safe and protected from those who would do them harm.  We fight for the right to exist and worship in a free country, and we fight for the right to express ourselves and our faith without censorship.  We fight for the continued implementation of Biblical principles that, when followed even by non-believers, bring about the best for a society.

One thing we cannot forget, though, is that ultimately, our main goal is to proclaim Jesus' Lordship.  Our goal is to provide every person within our reach the opportunity to understand the Salvation offer that God extends to man through Jesus Christ.  We labor first and foremost for the salvation of each and every person we encounter. 

We must keep our focus and walk in the love of God.  We must be actively involved in promoting the Kingdom, preaching the Gospel, and being involved in our culture in every area we can, and we must trust God to do His part. The Kingdom of God can come to bear in every area of influence that we have - the church can impact and better any society it is a part of.

No matter how hard the world, the flesh, and the devil attempt to minimize and destroy Christianity, it will never disappear.  We will never lose, because Jesus is on the way, and God's purposes will be fulfilled.  There is no need to fear, the Christian church is the only true reality that will last into eternity.   Amen

We Christians must grow in our confidence that we can go directly to God for answers and solutions to life's dilemmas.  God has a solution or an answer to any and all of the things we face in life.  James encourages us to ask God if we lack wisdom in a given situation, and He will give it to us.  (If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him - James 1:5)  

Jesus presents us to the Father; He takes us with Him when He enters the Father's presence as the God-man on man's behalf.  Just as the High priest under the old covenant entered into the presence of God with the names of the tribes of Israel on his breastplate, symbolically carrying the whole of Israel into the presence of God on their behalf, so our High Priest of the new and better covenant carries our names into the presence of the Father.  Sinlessly, He wears our humanity as he approaches God the Father.

As we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we are united with him through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our being.  When this occurs, what is true of Jesus' relationship to the Father becomes true for us.   Jesus perfects our worship, perfects our prayers, and even perfects our faith (looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith - Hebrews 12:2).  He continues to mediate between God and us, and because of this, we can and should go to the Father with complete confidence that we are accepted and listened to when we pray.

The Christian community has leaned too heavily on someone else having an answer for them.  We can see evidence of this by looking at the myriad of how-to books and seminars and the vast amount of para-church ministries that specialize in providing solutions for Christians.  These books and organizations try to teach us everything from how to get wealthy, how to parent, how to have a good marriage, to how to pray.  The preacher/teacher should simply teach the truths of the Scriptures and allow those who are listening to seek God for the application of those truths.

The process of seeking God for the application of Scriptural truths causes us to grow in our relationship with the Father.  Western culture wants solutions and answers NOW, and doesn't want to work to get them.  We want someone to tell us how to do things instead of learning them for ourselves.  If we operate this way, we end up with feeble Christianity - our faith will be weak, and our lives become shipwrecked.  The Scriptures invite us to go to the Father ourselves, and Christ has made a way for us.  God will listen to you as He listens to Jesus, because Jesus presents you to Him.

Look to God personally.  Learn about Him and wait on Him.

Hebrews 6:19-20:  This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God's inner sanctuary.  Jesus has already gone in there for us. He has become our eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek.

Hebrews 10:19-22:  Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.