Category Archives: Faith

Does Your Church Deny Itself?

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At the church we attended yesterday, the sermon text was from the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Mark and, once again, I found myself thinking about Christ’s words as they might apply to the organized church as well as to individual Christians.

To paraphrase,

… He summoned the crowd together with His disciples, and said to them, “If any church wants to come after Me, it must deny itself, take up its cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his soul will lose it, but whoever loses his soul for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it benefit a church to gain the whole world, and forfeit its soul? For what could a church give in exchange for its soul?”

The pastor spent some time on what “denial” means in this context, i.e., what it means for us to deny ourselves. But what church denies itself?

In my experience, a church only denies itself if it’s not bringing in enough offerings to cover whatever it wants to do or buy– and even then, I’ve seen churches go into debt (often couched as “stepping out in faith”) to finance projects that were more wants than needs, and that served themselves more than others. I do not recall being a member of or associated with a church that systematically denied itself in order to bless or benefit others more consistently or more thoroughly.

Do you know of one? This example came to my attention recently: a church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, that over the years has bought and forgiven millions of dollars’ worth of medical debt. Have you heard of any others?


(Image: “Matthew 16:24,” by GuardtheDoors, on DeviantArt under Creative Commons.)

And what might it mean for a church to deny itself and take up its own cross? What church is prepared to follow its Savior to Calvary, to sacrifice itself — its riches, its reputation, even its very existence — for the sake of the gospel?

Too many churches — and even one is too many — seem instead to sacrifice the gospel for the sake of worldly standing, influence, and power. Those churches build monuments to themselves more than temples to a holy God: sheepfolds in which to shelter more and more converts that join their flocks, rather than training grounds to develop more and better disciples to send out in service. They focus their attention so much on those inside the church that the wider world becomes blurry in their vision, sometimes to the point that the world outside the church may as well not even exist — or, if they do cast a quick glance at and reach out to the world outside the walls, their efforts are perfunctory and only a pale imitation of their Lord.

Whether corporate churches or individuals, may God forgive us for all the good we could have done for others if we were not so focused on doing good for ourselves.

___

If you’re interested in more thoughts along these lines, I’d be honored if you took a look at my book, A Church More Like Christ.

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Not Very Christian of Me

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Confession can be good for the soul. Will you take my confession?

I confess that I would like — in the sense of taking perverse enjoyment — to kill a man. Two men, in fact. Or, possibly better yet, to maim them: beat them to bloody pulps and leave them to contemplate their crimes in as much pain as I could inflict.

Not very Christian of me, I know.

Here’s what I wrote about one of the base-born whom I would like to destroy: a child molester who has never been called to account.

I know of a case where a particular brand of Calvinism led an otherwise upstanding Christian woman to discount her middle-school molestation by a college dropout (and purportedly good, strong Christian) as “God’s will.” They were, she claimed, “in love”—and while it’s true that Scripture tells us love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8, perhaps alluding to Proverbs 10:12), we might debate whether it covers what would get one party on a sex offenders’ register. As it was, neither that victim nor another I learned of later were willing to call the perpetrator to account; and hearsay, alas, is insufficient to interest law enforcement.

And here, I confess how much I would like to wound him and another abusive fiend:

As one who harbors a certain amount of unforgiveness in his heart—truthfully, a significant amount, particularly toward men who have abused women I love—this part of the Lord’s Prayer [i.e., “forgive us … as we forgive”] gives me pause. These men have never asked for forgiveness, which would force my hand and put the onus on me to live up to Jesus’s instruction to forgive numerous times (Matthew 18:21-2), and I expect they never will: My anger toward them is all internal. These men did not sin directly against me, but nonetheless all I feel for them is marginally controlled fury. As much as I remind myself that the Lord claimed the right of vengeance (Romans 12:19, after Deuteronomy 32:35), part of me would dearly love it if I could be, to corrupt St. Francis of Assisi’s prayer, made an instrument of the Lord’s wrath.

How I wish the Lord would change my heart — cool the burning rage, soothe the intolerable pain, or (even better!) excise the cancerous memory — so I can go through my days without wishing for the opportunity to swing a baseball bat, a tire iron, or some even more dangerous weapon at their smug, self-satisfied faces.

Anyway, that’s my confession.

rage
(Image: “Rage,” by istolethetv, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

From time to time, I see a post on social media along the lines of “the only thing keeping me from killing someone is not wanting to go to jail,” and I can relate to that — but avoiding jail isn’t the only thing that stays my hand. I’ve been told that neither of them are worth it, and I see the wisdom in that. But, primarily, I want to be better than either of them can ever hope to be. But sometimes that’s not as satisfying as I might wish. I would settle for selective amnesia, by which I might evict all thought of them from my head.

How about you? Is there anyone you wish you could injure, or kill, or visit with some other form of vengeance? I’m genuinely curious if anyone else would admit, would confess, to the same deadly desire.

___

P.S. Believe it or not, those passages of confession are from A Church More Like Christ. It’s a short book, and thankfully has more in it than just me railing against abusers.

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Unwanted Epiphanies

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Today is Epiphany, when we Christians celebrate the wise men visiting the infant Jesus.

An epiphany, in more general terms of course, is some sudden insight, some moment of revelation, some instant of burgeoning wisdom.

And sometimes, epiphanies suck.


(Image: “Epiphany,” by Beck3D, on DeviantArt under Creative Commons.)

Discovering unwanted, unimagined, heartbreaking facts, after which we can never return to that state of innocence, of blissful ignorance we previously enjoyed — those epiphanies can be soul-crushing. The pain, the bitterness, lingers.

Maybe on this day we can be more like the wise men, who saw a good sign and reckoned it for what it was, and then fitted out their caravan and sallied forth.

Hopefully what we find will bring more joy than pain, more happiness than hardship. And hopefully it will be enough to comfort us, and maybe to heal us, when unwanted epiphanies come our way.

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You – Yes, YOU – Are Salt and Light

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Whoever you are, wherever you are, as you read this, I believe you are the salt of the earth and you are the light of the world, as Jesus told his followers they were two-thousand-some years ago.

If you’re not familiar with what Jesus said about salt and light, here’s a paraphrase from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter five, the Sermon on the Mount:

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will it be made salty again? It is then good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot.

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do we light a candle and put it under a basket, but on a candlestick so it lights everyone in the house. So let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

To be considered salt is to be both useful and valuable. In the ancient world, salt was extremely important: not just as a flavoring but as a preservative and even as currency (the word “salary” derives from salt). A few years ago, in fact, I wrote a trio of blog posts about salt in which I examined such things as how just the right amount of salt is needed and “salty” language and even how “Immigrants Are Like Salt”.

And to be the light of the world is not only to be useful but to be, quite literally, illuminating.

I believe that you, whether you are of any faith — Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Shinto or Taoist or what-have-you — or no faith, are salt and light. Yes, whether you are a theist or an atheist, whether you are devout or agnostic, you are — not “might be,” not “ought to be,” but are — salt and light at least to some degree.

Why do I think that? Because

Jesus told his listeners that they were — and, by extension, we are — the salt of the Earth and the light of the world, and it is worth noting that Christ was not speaking to Christians because no one at the time would have been considered such. We must conclude, then, that everyone, whether a professed believer or a staunch antitheist, is salt that is either savory or has lost its savor; likewise, everyone is a light that is either on a stand or under a basket.*

Salt of the Earth
(Image: “Salt of the Earth,” by David Campbell, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

It is true that Jesus’s audience was primarily Jewish, but I feel certain some Gentiles who either lived in the area, were passing through as merchants, or were observing the crowd as Roman soldiers might, must have heard what he said. I believe his words were meant for them as well. And while many things in the Hebrew Bible apply only to Jewish people, and many things in the New Testament apply only to professing Christians, this can be true of everyone, for all time.

So I conclude that you, in whatever situation you find yourself in, and wherever you go throughout your life, are salt and light. And so am I. As such, it is up to us whether we will be flavorless and thereby worthless salt, or whether we will be flavorful; and it is up to us whether we will be dim lights or hidden, or whether we will shine brightly on the world around us.

___
*From A Church More Like Christ, now available as an e-book, a trade paperback, or an audiobook.

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Is This Book Right for You?

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My latest nonfiction book, A Church More Like Christ, is now available for pre-order!

Specifically, the Kindle e-book can be pre-ordered, and will be delivered on 3 September. It costs $1.99, which I hope folks will find reasonable.

If you’re wondering whether the book is right for you, the back-cover copy may give you an idea:

A church like Christ would
• Teach like Jesus
• Worship like Jesus
• Pray and live and love like Jesus

Is your church a force for good, a light in the darkness, an outpost of God’s kingdom in the world? Do the wounded find comfort and healing in your church? Do the broken find repair and restoration? Do the vulnerable find help and hope? Does your church offer refuge for the oppressed, a hand up to the beaten-down, and recognition to the unseen? If so, this book may not be for you.

If not—if your church is divided against itself, or focused only on itself, or more judgmental than caring—it may be that the church is not as much like Christ as it could be. A Church More Like Christ can help you examine how Christlike your church is, and give you new ways to think about what it means for a church to live out the faith it practices.

If the church were quicker to comfort than to condemn, quicker to heal rather than harm, quicker to love than to hate, disparage, or ignore, perhaps it would be a greater source of inspiration, strength, and change in people’s lives—and in the world. If so, it would be, in effect, more like Christ.


(A Church More Like Christ graphic courtesy of Stephen Minervino.)

If you decide the book might interest you, by all means pre-order the e-book at this link; or, wait for the paperback to be released on 3 September and order that instead! (It’ll be $7.99, which again I hope folks will find reasonable.)

And if you know anyone else who might be interested, please let them know!

___

For other musings and oddball ideas, see
– My other recent release! Elements of War (paperback)
– My Amazon Page or Bandcamp Page, or subscribe to my newsletter

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New Book, New Cover!

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My new nonfiction book, A Church More Like Christ, will soon be available for pre-order, and here’s the cover! My son-in-law, Stephen Minervino, designed it, and I think he did a fantastic job!

The book is dedicated as follows:

To all who Seek, may you Find—
And may what you find bring you Joy, and Peace


(Front cover of A Church More Like Christ.)

Stay tuned for more details! Meanwhile, if you’re interested, you can check out my last nonfiction offering, Elements of War.

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Yes, Keep Them Separate … and Unequal

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It seems to me that Church and State need not be separate if the people running them could be trusted to … well, could be trusted.

In other words, Church and State need to be separate so long as either seeks to control the people.

And since all too often both seek — sometimes in overt and sometimes in insidious ways — to control, to dominate, rather than to liberate the populace, they must be kept separate. It is bad enough to have two separate institutions seeking control, sometimes vying for it, but it would be orders of magnitude worse to have them acting in concert to control the citizenry.

Of course, each will claim to act in the people’s best interests. But do they? Consistently enough to be trusted to act without restraint or supervision? Well enough that, rather than paying them lip service (and, admit it: we quite often do), we should turn over our own agency and responsibility to them? In a word: No! Neither Church nor State may be trusted to act dependably in all our best interests.

To be clear, I do not believe that every single pastor, priest, elder, deacon, senator, representative, mayor, council member, and so forth is naturally untrustworthy. Some, no doubt, have unflappable integrity. But in service to their institutions, and when invested with the power of increasing authority, they may act more to benefit their organizations — and to secure their places within the organizations — than anything else. They may begin their service out of legitimate heartfelt concern for others, but the higher they rise in the hierarchy the more they may shift to self-interested service, if not outright service of self.

So it is in all our best interests — the best interests of those of us in the trenches of real life — to keep Church and State separate.

The Separation Of Church And State
(Image: “The Separation Of Church And State,” by Ian Sane, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

And, in my view, it is in all our best interests to keep Church and State at least a little unequal, with the balance of power between them tilted in favor of the civil State. In our own lives we may place our thumb on the scale and pay more heed to the Church, but upsetting that balance for the nation at large would be a bad idea. The State at this time in our history seems to be leaning toward greater and greater centralization and ever more draconian and even tyrannical exercise of its power, but with a little wisdom and effort we may still check its excesses without open conflict. However, a State in service to a Church — no matter what brand or how well-meaning — would, by virtue of its finding its guidance in holy writ, be less likely to question either its motives or its actions and therefore more likely to stride into abuses that could only be corrected by bloody rebellion.

Speaking of bloody rebellions, think back for a moment to our Declaration of Independence. It posits that we institute governments to secure for citizens the rights they naturally have been endowed by their creator. That is as close as Church and State need to be: that the Church recognize the civil authority, and that the State recognize that it is the guarantor, not the provider, of the people’s rights.

And despite the name, it is good to remind ourselves that we do not establish a government in order that it will “govern” — i.e., control — our lives, but that it will use its power to prevent us and others from interfering with or damaging one another’s lives. Government is a necessary evil, as Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense. Unfortunately, in our day it has grown so large that much of it is an unnecessary evil, but putting such an evil in too close proximity to the Church would sully the Church more than the Church would ever be able to sanctify the State.

___

For other musings and oddball ideas, see:
– My Latest Release! Elements of War (paperback)
– My Amazon Page or Bandcamp Page … or subscribe to my newsletter

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Out of Context? Out of Our Minds

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This thought occurred to me tonight:

To take any single verse of the Bible and claim that it represents God, or describes God, or gives insight into the mind of God, is like taking one cell of a body and claiming that it represents the whole person, or describes the person, or (especially) gives insight into the person’s mind. And larger parts are not much more definitive–a chapter is like an organ, a book like a bodily system, but only the entire living body really represents, describes, or gives insight into the person.

Some part of the person is in the cell, in the organ, in the system; even at the subcellular level (the letters, the words) resides the DNA that outlines the totality of a person. But cellular DNA is only potential, and the cell is not the person. Just so, the verse is not God, nor even a microscopic glimpse of God.


(Image: “The Gutenberg Bible,” by Kevin Eng, on Wikimedia Commons.)

More literally, the verse is not the Bible, and the Bible taken as a whole is still not the Lord God. The Bible, taken as a whole, is a picture of God–and often not a very clear picture–but it is not God.

It may be that a single cell describes the entire population of human beings that have ever lived and will ever live, better than a single verse in the Bible describes the totality of God.

But, what do you think?

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Misunderstanding God’s Will

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I commented on Facebook yesterday that I think God’s will is very misunderstood.

I think it’s more descriptive than prescriptive. I think of Christ telling us what the kingdom of Heaven is like, with the idea that we might build something even a little bit like it here rather than worrying about what it takes to get us there.

I think it’s less directive and more indulgent. I’m a big fan of free will, so I dislike the idea that God’s will entails God pushing buttons and pulling levers behind a curtain to control what we do. We are like children, and sometimes parents can be quite indulgent when it comes to their children. Sometimes the children suffer for it, and sometimes it amounts to natural consequences.

In short, I don’t think God’s will controls our day-to-day existence, though according to it God may from time to time choose to intervene in our lives.

"If there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, totally free of God's sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled" - Dr RC Sproul
(Image of waterfall from The TRUTH Will Set You Free, on Flickr, under Creative Commons.)

Then again, it’s likely that I am too conformed to this present world, not fully transformed by a renewed mind, and unable to prove what God’s “good and acceptable and perfect will” is (Romans 12:2), so I may be misunderstanding it completely….

Which was sort of my point in the first place.

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Epicurus, Seneca, and Jesus

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Let the record show that I am not very well-read in the classics. I’ve read fairly widely–i.e., on a wide range of topics and in a variety of genres–but not in great depth aside from a few favorite authors. (I should probably not admit that, considering my trade these days, but I’m trying to correct that error–if error it be.)

At any rate, I am, admittedly rather slowly, trying to broaden my reading horizons–especially as regards works of antiquity. So for a few weeks this year I read a selection of Seneca the Younger’s letters, which I found entertaining, challenging, and sometimes enlightening.

Bust of Epicurus
(Image: “Portrait of Epicurus, founder of the Epicurean school. Roman copy after a lost Hellenistic original,” from Wikimedia Commons.)

For instance, in letter eleven of the Robin Campbell translation, Seneca quotes Epicurus (whose bust is pictured above) as saying,

We need to set our affections on some good man and keep him constantly before our eyes, so that we may live as if he were watching us and do everything as if he saw what we were doing.

Remind you of anything?

I flashed immediately to the “What Would Jesus Do?” craze: the WWJD bracelets and other accoutrements. Not that Seneca would have had Jesus in mind–the two were contemporaries, but lived far apart and never would have met–nor Epicurus, since he was doing his thing three hundred years before Seneca! But Seneca obviously approved of the idea of fixing our mind on some good person we respect, and acting as if that person could observe us.

For some of us, Jesus fits that description and that role better than anyone else. For others, some other revered person may work better. But it was interesting to see that the idea itself was quite ancient–and who knows if Epicurus didn’t get it from someone else before him? 

And the question this leaves for each of us is, Who will we choose to live as if they’re watching us do what we do?

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