In these days leading up to Christmas, I've been thinking a lot about the holiness of God and how in our desire to make God into our best bud, Christians often forget that above all, God is holy. Instead we say God is love or Jesus loves you or that God loves you. It seems to me that subconsciously, modern Christians are avoiding the use of the word holy. It's too big for us. Love brings God down to our size, since we have, however flawed, an idea of what love is about since we all have someone whom we love and who loves us.
Holiness implies a mystery that we can never understand, a majesty we can never approach or negotiate with, a challenge to our thoughts and our behaviours. It isn't that God isn't love and it isn't that God doesn't love us but His love is as far above our understanding of the meaning of the word as to be something entirely different altogether. In searching the Internet, I came across a reprinted sermon here on the very same topic.
People put bumper stickers on their vehicles, with the ubiquitous John 3:16 verse on it. They put similar signs on their business and on their barn roofs. Whatever happened to holiness? Whatever happened to the Name that is so holy that religious Jews will neither say it nor spell it? I found this interesting article on the question of how Christians define God as opposed to Jews.
Why do we have such a need to make God into a buddy - sort of like Oprah - non-threatening - someone we can sit and gossip with and call Jeez. Pat Him familiarly on the back when He makes a particularly astute comment and tell other people what nice guy God/Jeez actually is as long as we 'accept Him as our personal Saviour' and confess our sins and then we can do what we want because He understands. Like Oprah. He loves us. Love is negotiable and comforting. Holiness is not. Holiness has no compromise.
It is another thing altogether. It implies something separate from the creation, a mystery, a hidden thing. Awe is missing from much of the modern Christian's mindset. We make God into our image - better than us but still in our image with our understanding. Fundamentalists believe in the creation of the heavens and the earth in a literal six days and have no problem saying so - but do they tremble when they say it? Do they have even the smallest idea of what that implies, what they believe, what it means to have such a power to create all that is or to create even the smallest part of it, like a butterfly? If they understood, how could they fail to tremble?
Exodus 15:11: Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?
I think that some of this attitude we have to Jesus being our buddy is attributable to something I have formerly brought up - cheap grace. It seems to me that many churches who emphasis a formal accept, believe, and confess salvation with the emphasis on grace have promoted a dumbed down, unholy version of Christianity, a Christianity devoid of self-discipline and discipleship in which the motto might as well be do-what-you-will because you are forgiven anyway.
Such a faith doesn't require anything of you since it teaches that you can never be in danger of losing your salvation. Oh sure, you might be a few stars short in your crown but never in danger of Hell, which is, so many teach, reserved for atheists and non-Christians, who may in fact every day of their lives humbly feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit prisoners and the sick, but who are not Christians in the sense that they recognise Jesus as God come in the flesh.
Jesus covers our many sins of ignorance. He stands between us and the Accuser before God. He is the only begotten Son of God without whom we have no hope. But He is also holy and doesn't suffer fools gladly. Following Christ requires holiness and self-discipline. As Paul says to the Hebrews 10:
For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
It is the offended holiness of the Lord that set the cherubim east of the Garden of Eden with a fiery sword. It is the holiness of the Lord before which Moses is instructed to take off his shoes, and upon questioning who it was who addressed him, is told, I Am that I Am. God does not have any obligation to explain himself to humanity. God is not explainable. His thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways not our ways.
Later, on the mountain of revelation, all Israel must be cleaned and have fasted, and still stand off, neither man or beast touching the outskirts of the mountain.
Exodus 19:10 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify them to day and to morrow, and let them wash their clothes, and be ready against the third day: for the third day the LORD will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai. And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death:
There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount. And Moses went down from the mount unto the people, and sanctified the people; and they washed their clothes. And he said unto the people, Be ready against the third day: come not at your wives.
In the emphasis on God's love, we seem to have taken away most of the majesty, most of what makes God, God. We take it away in our casual use of God's name, our quickness to attribute our understandings and our ways to God, in our glibness at grasping onto the notion of our salvation and then plastering it across every imaginable human construct.
Any person, confronted with the fact of the living God, with the majesty and fearsome nature of Him before whom the angels cover their faces, (I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory, Isaiah 6) would say, like Isaiah,
Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.
Layla
Showing posts with label salvation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label salvation. Show all posts
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Salvation
Before I tackle the issue of faith, I have a question to ask you. Have you ever gone shopping - found everything on your list - paid for it, with a receipt to prove it - and then found you had somehow managed to come home - straight from the store, without some of the paid for items?
Somehow I managed to do just that today. I paid for everything on my list. I got everything on my list. Two items are not anywhere to be found and I've searched high and low so I for sure haven't misplaced them. So either the grocery store clerk didn't have my bags in one pile and I neglected to take one, or, I have lost my mind. I would vote for having lost my mind if I didn't have a receipt for the items that I don't have. Or is the receipt merely proof that I have lost my mind?
Please tell me I am not the only one this happens to. I remember thinking that the clerk must be new because she didn't know how to ring anything up so I am thinking (short of having lost my mind) that she might well have made a mistake since she just wasn't very efficient. Now what are my chances on a cash sale of getting either my money or the items tomorrow when I will ring up the store? The things I am missing are too large for me to have accidentally thrown them in the garbage. (Although I did go through the garbage just in case.) And why did I only notice this in the middle of the night?
ARGH!
Okay, enough of my griping. Regarding children and salvation: first of all I think we have to define what we see as salvation in Christian terms.
Some people believe that you have to ask Jesus to come into your heart. That is salvation, regardless of the age of the person. For most people that I have met that believe in that definition of salvation, they insist that those exact words have to be used and anything short of those words is not salvation, although the person may *think* they are saved. And I have also heard that if you don't know the exact date that you were 'saved' you aren't really saved because salvation is such an important thing that you would no more forget the exact date and time of your salvation then you would forget your own birthday. (God has a time card we all have to punch - who knew?!)
I do not at all dismiss that definition of salvation. For some people, knowledge and love of God can come like a bolt out of the blue Paul on the road to Damascus, that person somehow instantly becomes aware of the powerful presence of God.
For others though I think salvation - or the idea of God - is a something that happens gradually - one step forward, and two steps back. It is never formalized in words but expresses itself naturally in a growing awareness of the divine, and a growing desire to get closer to the divine much in the way that a child grows without being consciously aware of it, from babyhood to adulthood. A child never announces one day that from that day forward he or she wants to be 22 and presto! the child is 22. A child grows towards adulthood and all the longing in the world to be an independent adult is not going to make the child age any faster.
I understand what you are saying about the feelings that you had when you were born-again. My experience was not dissimilar, believe it or not. I don't recall ever being told specifically that I was a sinner and was going to go to Hell if I didn't accept Jesus as my personal Saviour. At that time, in the Mennonite church I grew up in, child evangelism was not something that was taught.
We were taught the stories in the Bible but without any sort of morality tale attached to the end of it. Many Mennonites of a certain generation didn't talk about God much in their every day lives. Their attitude was similar to that of many Jews, that to speak too openly of the divine was to cheapen it. Another thought was that if people couldn't see from how you lived what you believed, your words really didn't matter much. By their fruits you will know them, and all that.
However even though conversion wasn't a part of growing up Mennonite when I grew up Mennonite, around the age of 5 - which could have been 4 or it could have been 6 - since I don't know the date and time, I became aware of the presence of God in relation to me. Not as an abstract concept, not as a received faith - but me and God. I don't like to use the word 'saved' but I think that what I experienced then is what people who use the word 'saved' would call born-again.
It was bedtime and I've always been an insomniac. And it felt to me as if the entire room was filled with love - very suddenly - and that love was very specifically God. It had nothing to do with my parents or my community or my church or the bedtime Bible stories that my mother told me. It was so much more personal and real than that. It was God in the room with me. And He loved me and I was as sure of that as I was sure of my own being. And He was telling me I was His child. And I loved Him back so fiercely that I felt that I surely would see angels any second.
I immediately told my mother about my experience - for some reason I felt I had to but I was terribly embarrassed to do that. We didn't talk about God all that much. It was something you lived. We didn't go around saying, "Oh, praise the Lord for this" or "Praise the Lord for that." Obviously since I was a child in a Christian family, I had always believed in God because my parents believed in God. Everyone believed in God. It would never have occurred to me that anyone didn't believe in God. But it wasn't personal until then.
And my mother's reaction was - an embarrassed smile and a pat on the head. That made me even more embarrassed. And we never talked about it again.
When I hit my teens, I tried really hard not to believe in God. It didn't suit me to believe in Him. And how was I, or anyone else to know, that I was worshipping the 'right' God? People wouldn't worship the 'wrong' God on purpose. Everyone thought they were right. And since everyone thought they were right, what were the chances that I had been lucky enough to have been born into the real, 'right' faith?
Clearly there was nothing that I had done to choose my family or culture. So why should my Christian beliefs be right? Maybe the Buddhists had it right. Or the Muslims. Or pagans. Or the Catholics, a faith, that due to the history of persecution of Mennonites by Catholics in times past, caused greater angst among Mennonites than all of the other religions combined. Or maybe there wasn't any god anywhere at all.
So I read because that is how I cope, that is what I do. I try to understand. I read the Koran, and bits and pieces of other people's holy scriptures, but no matter how hard I tried, I still believed that the Jews were a people chosen by God, a holy people, and through them, and through Jesus, a light was given to the Gentiles and that that God, that I Am That I Am was the true and only God. My understanding of Him might be faulty but I have never been able to dismiss what I experienced when I was 4, or 5 or 6.
It really would have suited me much more to be a vaguely spiritual, artistic, animal rights type of person, who lived off the land. My inner me is a flower child :-) It just wasn't cool or intellectual to be a Christian, not to mention, even at the risk of being called judgemental, that there are so many public Christians who are an embarrassment to the intellect. I don't particularly care to be associated with anti-intellectual fanatics with a gleeful delight in telling others they are going to Hell.
It was hard to behave in a Christ-like way. Pacifism to me, meant on an everyday level, going the extra mile, if asked, and unasked, even by those you just knew did not wish you well. It meant not defending myself against bullies in school who assumed, that if you didn't defend yourself, even verbally, that you were a coward or some pushover who could be talked into anything and didn't have the brains to know you were being used.
You know how girls can be, particularly girls in junior and high school. They can be mean and never think twice about it. And when you are a teenager it matters terribly to be accepted. And I didn't defend myself because that was my understanding of Christ's life. I could have. I knew exactly how cruelly true I could have made my words - I had a 'gift' for seeing people's weak spots. I could have demolished these schoolyard bullies and I knew it. But I didn't. I couldn't. It wouldn't have been Christ-like.
Immigrants, from whatever country, are often a target of bullies. One incident I remember particularly well was a new girl in my class. One of the class bullies would do those girl things like telling all the other girls in the class not to speak to the new girl for the entire day. To give her the silent treatment. Or in the lunchroom, this bully would tell all the other girls at the table to lift their feet off of the floor because the new girl's feet were on the floor and she had 'germs.'
So all the girls would lift their feet and squeal, "Germs!"
But Christ would not have wanted me to behave like that, and although I wanted more than anything just to blend in, to be unnoticed, I couldn't let Christ down like that. That was my thinking. So I didn't do what all the other girls did, from the most popular to the least (it's a funny thing that people often don't speak out about injustice because they are afraid they might be the next one picked on).
So the ringleader reversed her tactics. She announced that I now had the germs and everyone was supposed to lift their feet off the floor due to my germs. Guess whose feet came off the floor? The new girl's feet. The girl I had stood up for. She did not have the courage to meet my eyes.
Now all of this reminiscing and such about salvation, does have a point to your post, believe it or not, besides recounting childhood wounds. I believe that salvation can be lost - that there is no such thing as once saved, always saved. That you can choose not to be a Christian and part of choosing is your choice of behaviour - your fruit.
Now first of all, I am not saying that such young children as we all were then were going to Hell, but with regards to your description generally, of how you were saved when you were very young and then later did things that you knew were wrong with the idea that you were always saved - would you have done some or any of those behaviours if you had believed that your very soul was in danger of Hell?
Teenagers do stupid stuff in spite of themselves and I have done more than my share as well. But if I had believed that my salvation could never be lost no matter what I did, I think that I would have done much worse things than I did do. But I did fear losing my salvation. That was what restrained me from a lot of things that I am fairly sure I would have done otherwise.
I think that this idea of 'once saved, always saved' is the core of the problem with the more public sins of well-known Christians like Jimmy Swaggart and Bakker and such.
In Hebrews 6, Paul says:
4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
To me this means that for anyone to claim a belief in God, and then to live deliberately or carelessly, and contrary to moral behaviour, not because of a mistake but because that person is counting on God to bail him out at the end anyway, even if minus a star or two in their crown, that person is shaming the holiness of the Most High, devaluing salvation, and metaphorically crucifying Christ over and over again, with each new, sincerely insincere repentance of sin.
I don't know how else the passage can be understood.
It is not the only passage that speaks about the possibility of the loss of salvation. The Spirit, speaking to the churches in Revelations. In the third chapter, for example, the church is told: I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God.
Why does the Spirit call them dead if they are saved? 'Death,' in much of what Jesus has to say, refers to spiritual death, which is Hell.
And: Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.
And: I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
If they are forever saved, no matter how they behaved, then why does Jesus say he will spue them out of his mouth? Why does He reference those few who have not defiled their garments and make a point of saying that they will 'walk with him in white? If everyone is walking in white, I don't see why there would be a need to mention it.
You've made reference before to how you believe that those verses refer to people who aren't 'really' Christians, who are cultural Christians by virtue of birth and family. I don't quite follow that argument because it seems like it works more like an excuse. Those who believe that once a person has accepted Jesus into their hearts have no possibility of going to Hell but at the same time leaving a place where if people who did accept Jesus into their hearts do end up going to Hell, then we can always say well, he didn't really accept Jesus into his heart.
Maybe that person really did accept Jesus into their heart. Why not? People can change their minds and behaviour. Particularly when children 'convert.' It is easy to be a holy hermit if you are the only person in the world. It is easy to say that you would never commit adultery if Brad Pitt has never propositioned you (to use an example). No one can say they would never do something if they have never been in the position where it was a choice.
Layla
Somehow I managed to do just that today. I paid for everything on my list. I got everything on my list. Two items are not anywhere to be found and I've searched high and low so I for sure haven't misplaced them. So either the grocery store clerk didn't have my bags in one pile and I neglected to take one, or, I have lost my mind. I would vote for having lost my mind if I didn't have a receipt for the items that I don't have. Or is the receipt merely proof that I have lost my mind?
Please tell me I am not the only one this happens to. I remember thinking that the clerk must be new because she didn't know how to ring anything up so I am thinking (short of having lost my mind) that she might well have made a mistake since she just wasn't very efficient. Now what are my chances on a cash sale of getting either my money or the items tomorrow when I will ring up the store? The things I am missing are too large for me to have accidentally thrown them in the garbage. (Although I did go through the garbage just in case.) And why did I only notice this in the middle of the night?
ARGH!
Okay, enough of my griping. Regarding children and salvation: first of all I think we have to define what we see as salvation in Christian terms.
Some people believe that you have to ask Jesus to come into your heart. That is salvation, regardless of the age of the person. For most people that I have met that believe in that definition of salvation, they insist that those exact words have to be used and anything short of those words is not salvation, although the person may *think* they are saved. And I have also heard that if you don't know the exact date that you were 'saved' you aren't really saved because salvation is such an important thing that you would no more forget the exact date and time of your salvation then you would forget your own birthday. (God has a time card we all have to punch - who knew?!)
I do not at all dismiss that definition of salvation. For some people, knowledge and love of God can come like a bolt out of the blue Paul on the road to Damascus, that person somehow instantly becomes aware of the powerful presence of God.
For others though I think salvation - or the idea of God - is a something that happens gradually - one step forward, and two steps back. It is never formalized in words but expresses itself naturally in a growing awareness of the divine, and a growing desire to get closer to the divine much in the way that a child grows without being consciously aware of it, from babyhood to adulthood. A child never announces one day that from that day forward he or she wants to be 22 and presto! the child is 22. A child grows towards adulthood and all the longing in the world to be an independent adult is not going to make the child age any faster.
I understand what you are saying about the feelings that you had when you were born-again. My experience was not dissimilar, believe it or not. I don't recall ever being told specifically that I was a sinner and was going to go to Hell if I didn't accept Jesus as my personal Saviour. At that time, in the Mennonite church I grew up in, child evangelism was not something that was taught.
We were taught the stories in the Bible but without any sort of morality tale attached to the end of it. Many Mennonites of a certain generation didn't talk about God much in their every day lives. Their attitude was similar to that of many Jews, that to speak too openly of the divine was to cheapen it. Another thought was that if people couldn't see from how you lived what you believed, your words really didn't matter much. By their fruits you will know them, and all that.
However even though conversion wasn't a part of growing up Mennonite when I grew up Mennonite, around the age of 5 - which could have been 4 or it could have been 6 - since I don't know the date and time, I became aware of the presence of God in relation to me. Not as an abstract concept, not as a received faith - but me and God. I don't like to use the word 'saved' but I think that what I experienced then is what people who use the word 'saved' would call born-again.
It was bedtime and I've always been an insomniac. And it felt to me as if the entire room was filled with love - very suddenly - and that love was very specifically God. It had nothing to do with my parents or my community or my church or the bedtime Bible stories that my mother told me. It was so much more personal and real than that. It was God in the room with me. And He loved me and I was as sure of that as I was sure of my own being. And He was telling me I was His child. And I loved Him back so fiercely that I felt that I surely would see angels any second.
I immediately told my mother about my experience - for some reason I felt I had to but I was terribly embarrassed to do that. We didn't talk about God all that much. It was something you lived. We didn't go around saying, "Oh, praise the Lord for this" or "Praise the Lord for that." Obviously since I was a child in a Christian family, I had always believed in God because my parents believed in God. Everyone believed in God. It would never have occurred to me that anyone didn't believe in God. But it wasn't personal until then.
And my mother's reaction was - an embarrassed smile and a pat on the head. That made me even more embarrassed. And we never talked about it again.
When I hit my teens, I tried really hard not to believe in God. It didn't suit me to believe in Him. And how was I, or anyone else to know, that I was worshipping the 'right' God? People wouldn't worship the 'wrong' God on purpose. Everyone thought they were right. And since everyone thought they were right, what were the chances that I had been lucky enough to have been born into the real, 'right' faith?
Clearly there was nothing that I had done to choose my family or culture. So why should my Christian beliefs be right? Maybe the Buddhists had it right. Or the Muslims. Or pagans. Or the Catholics, a faith, that due to the history of persecution of Mennonites by Catholics in times past, caused greater angst among Mennonites than all of the other religions combined. Or maybe there wasn't any god anywhere at all.
So I read because that is how I cope, that is what I do. I try to understand. I read the Koran, and bits and pieces of other people's holy scriptures, but no matter how hard I tried, I still believed that the Jews were a people chosen by God, a holy people, and through them, and through Jesus, a light was given to the Gentiles and that that God, that I Am That I Am was the true and only God. My understanding of Him might be faulty but I have never been able to dismiss what I experienced when I was 4, or 5 or 6.
It really would have suited me much more to be a vaguely spiritual, artistic, animal rights type of person, who lived off the land. My inner me is a flower child :-) It just wasn't cool or intellectual to be a Christian, not to mention, even at the risk of being called judgemental, that there are so many public Christians who are an embarrassment to the intellect. I don't particularly care to be associated with anti-intellectual fanatics with a gleeful delight in telling others they are going to Hell.
It was hard to behave in a Christ-like way. Pacifism to me, meant on an everyday level, going the extra mile, if asked, and unasked, even by those you just knew did not wish you well. It meant not defending myself against bullies in school who assumed, that if you didn't defend yourself, even verbally, that you were a coward or some pushover who could be talked into anything and didn't have the brains to know you were being used.
You know how girls can be, particularly girls in junior and high school. They can be mean and never think twice about it. And when you are a teenager it matters terribly to be accepted. And I didn't defend myself because that was my understanding of Christ's life. I could have. I knew exactly how cruelly true I could have made my words - I had a 'gift' for seeing people's weak spots. I could have demolished these schoolyard bullies and I knew it. But I didn't. I couldn't. It wouldn't have been Christ-like.
Immigrants, from whatever country, are often a target of bullies. One incident I remember particularly well was a new girl in my class. One of the class bullies would do those girl things like telling all the other girls in the class not to speak to the new girl for the entire day. To give her the silent treatment. Or in the lunchroom, this bully would tell all the other girls at the table to lift their feet off of the floor because the new girl's feet were on the floor and she had 'germs.'
So all the girls would lift their feet and squeal, "Germs!"
But Christ would not have wanted me to behave like that, and although I wanted more than anything just to blend in, to be unnoticed, I couldn't let Christ down like that. That was my thinking. So I didn't do what all the other girls did, from the most popular to the least (it's a funny thing that people often don't speak out about injustice because they are afraid they might be the next one picked on).
So the ringleader reversed her tactics. She announced that I now had the germs and everyone was supposed to lift their feet off the floor due to my germs. Guess whose feet came off the floor? The new girl's feet. The girl I had stood up for. She did not have the courage to meet my eyes.
Now all of this reminiscing and such about salvation, does have a point to your post, believe it or not, besides recounting childhood wounds. I believe that salvation can be lost - that there is no such thing as once saved, always saved. That you can choose not to be a Christian and part of choosing is your choice of behaviour - your fruit.
Now first of all, I am not saying that such young children as we all were then were going to Hell, but with regards to your description generally, of how you were saved when you were very young and then later did things that you knew were wrong with the idea that you were always saved - would you have done some or any of those behaviours if you had believed that your very soul was in danger of Hell?
Teenagers do stupid stuff in spite of themselves and I have done more than my share as well. But if I had believed that my salvation could never be lost no matter what I did, I think that I would have done much worse things than I did do. But I did fear losing my salvation. That was what restrained me from a lot of things that I am fairly sure I would have done otherwise.
I think that this idea of 'once saved, always saved' is the core of the problem with the more public sins of well-known Christians like Jimmy Swaggart and Bakker and such.
In Hebrews 6, Paul says:
4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
To me this means that for anyone to claim a belief in God, and then to live deliberately or carelessly, and contrary to moral behaviour, not because of a mistake but because that person is counting on God to bail him out at the end anyway, even if minus a star or two in their crown, that person is shaming the holiness of the Most High, devaluing salvation, and metaphorically crucifying Christ over and over again, with each new, sincerely insincere repentance of sin.
I don't know how else the passage can be understood.
It is not the only passage that speaks about the possibility of the loss of salvation. The Spirit, speaking to the churches in Revelations. In the third chapter, for example, the church is told: I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God.
Why does the Spirit call them dead if they are saved? 'Death,' in much of what Jesus has to say, refers to spiritual death, which is Hell.
And: Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.
And: I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
If they are forever saved, no matter how they behaved, then why does Jesus say he will spue them out of his mouth? Why does He reference those few who have not defiled their garments and make a point of saying that they will 'walk with him in white? If everyone is walking in white, I don't see why there would be a need to mention it.
You've made reference before to how you believe that those verses refer to people who aren't 'really' Christians, who are cultural Christians by virtue of birth and family. I don't quite follow that argument because it seems like it works more like an excuse. Those who believe that once a person has accepted Jesus into their hearts have no possibility of going to Hell but at the same time leaving a place where if people who did accept Jesus into their hearts do end up going to Hell, then we can always say well, he didn't really accept Jesus into his heart.
Maybe that person really did accept Jesus into their heart. Why not? People can change their minds and behaviour. Particularly when children 'convert.' It is easy to be a holy hermit if you are the only person in the world. It is easy to say that you would never commit adultery if Brad Pitt has never propositioned you (to use an example). No one can say they would never do something if they have never been in the position where it was a choice.
Layla
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Baptism etc, scattered thoughts
I have always taken Matthew 7:21-22 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? to be about those who think they're Christians because their parents were Christian and because they go to a Christian church, but have no personal relationship with Christ. Those who rely on "religion" and leave out Jesus. I maintain that you can walk away from Christ and still be saved - but I know that it hurts. How to tell if someone is really a Christian or not? You have to look for fruit. If there isn't any... the best guess is "non-Christian", but only our Lord can judge hearts.
...
Following Christ is hard. There's nothing anywhere in the Bible that says it will be easy. The prosperity preachers have been and always will be popular... but are they going to show up in heaven smelling smoky? People *want* to hear that if you do x, y, z you'll not only go to Heaven but have a great life down here on earth. You can always make money selling people dreams... but "God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Jim Bakker did jail time, God didn't let him off with leading astray the faithful! We live in a fallen culture - and that culture is insidious. I really do see the value in living apart, as some Mennonites/Amish do. Being called to live in the land of shiny people and not incorporate those values is incredibly difficult. Why be surprised that not only do we have preachers preaching "shiny" but that they get lots of press and popularity?
....
I like your thoughts on baptism as hope, but as a properly raised Baptist I've always thought of it as a symbol of commitment to the faith, much like the Mennonites do it. (There are differences, we are encouraged to be baptised soon after we are saved, it's a public declaration, and there aren't really age-limits. Myself, I was baptised at 6 after strenuous examination by my pastor making sure I knew what I was about with salvation and all).
Samson and dedication of children... I've been interested in how the Bible claims the first born for God - not as a human sacrifice, but as a "belonging to". I think we can dedicate things to Him, and children (to some extent) although that is indeed a "hope". I don't think that's like baptism though... except maybe for infant baptism. I'd NEVER dis someone for baptising their baby, even if I don't think it serves as anything but a hope... I have children of my own that are too young yet to choose, though the elder has begun to love Jesus. (For the audience if any, they're 7 and 3 - and yes, I did say I was saved at 5, but I remember the day I "got it" - that light hasn't clicked on for him yet).
....
I had some thoughts related primarily to my personal experience that dovetailed the forgiveness expected of Mennonites (which, btw, I think shows some of the finest Christian example that there is) and the cheap grace that we discussed a day or so ago. I think we have to be willing to feel the pain of the slap on the face in order to have the turning of the other cheek mean much. (It still means something - it shows the will to follow). How do you balance that in your life? How do you feel the hurt, the anger, etc etc... and not *live* there?
Apologies for such a scattered post. I keep trying to get it to mesh, but it's not happening, and I wanted to get it out there for response.
...
Following Christ is hard. There's nothing anywhere in the Bible that says it will be easy. The prosperity preachers have been and always will be popular... but are they going to show up in heaven smelling smoky? People *want* to hear that if you do x, y, z you'll not only go to Heaven but have a great life down here on earth. You can always make money selling people dreams... but "God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Jim Bakker did jail time, God didn't let him off with leading astray the faithful! We live in a fallen culture - and that culture is insidious. I really do see the value in living apart, as some Mennonites/Amish do. Being called to live in the land of shiny people and not incorporate those values is incredibly difficult. Why be surprised that not only do we have preachers preaching "shiny" but that they get lots of press and popularity?
....
I like your thoughts on baptism as hope, but as a properly raised Baptist I've always thought of it as a symbol of commitment to the faith, much like the Mennonites do it. (There are differences, we are encouraged to be baptised soon after we are saved, it's a public declaration, and there aren't really age-limits. Myself, I was baptised at 6 after strenuous examination by my pastor making sure I knew what I was about with salvation and all).
Samson and dedication of children... I've been interested in how the Bible claims the first born for God - not as a human sacrifice, but as a "belonging to". I think we can dedicate things to Him, and children (to some extent) although that is indeed a "hope". I don't think that's like baptism though... except maybe for infant baptism. I'd NEVER dis someone for baptising their baby, even if I don't think it serves as anything but a hope... I have children of my own that are too young yet to choose, though the elder has begun to love Jesus. (For the audience if any, they're 7 and 3 - and yes, I did say I was saved at 5, but I remember the day I "got it" - that light hasn't clicked on for him yet).
....
I had some thoughts related primarily to my personal experience that dovetailed the forgiveness expected of Mennonites (which, btw, I think shows some of the finest Christian example that there is) and the cheap grace that we discussed a day or so ago. I think we have to be willing to feel the pain of the slap on the face in order to have the turning of the other cheek mean much. (It still means something - it shows the will to follow). How do you balance that in your life? How do you feel the hurt, the anger, etc etc... and not *live* there?
Apologies for such a scattered post. I keep trying to get it to mesh, but it's not happening, and I wanted to get it out there for response.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Mainstream Mennonite
What a great post, Hearth! I really enjoyed reading it. It is the different ways we see things that interest me almost more than the similarities.
First of all, with regards to 'mainstream' and whatever that means in its context, I am not saying that my beliefs are mainstream. At least they are not mainstream Mennonite. But then again, who knows? A lot of people think Mennonites dress in funny, old-fashioned clothes and have a horse and buggy parked beside the non-electrical house. There are as many varieties of Mennonite belief, so it seems to me, as there are 'mainstream' Christian denominations.
There are Mennonite churches with gay pastors and Mennonite churches who would excommunicate a gay member without hesitation. There are Mennonite churches who don't have a horse and buggy but think that it is prideful to drive a car with shiny chrome so they allow cars, but you have to paint the chrome black.
And there are sub-Mennonite branches such as the Amish, who are more like Reformation-era cousins of the Mennonites.
However, the Sermon on the Mount is from what Mennonites traditionally have taken the core of their beliefs, including a pacifism that includes, but is not limited to fighting in wars. Matthew 5 (KJV):
38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
So since there is no way to love your neighbour or your enemy and kill them, Mennonites do not traditionally participate in war, and are not supposed to support the death penalty. Only God has the right to take a life. That belief I have retained in spite of not being a baptised Mennonite. In war time, Mennonites have supported their country of residence with alternative service work. My great-grandfather, for instance, in Russia served in the medical corps. He died there of typhoid.
Such alternative service was often not enough for the rulers of this world, which meant, far too often, that Mennonites died for their refusal to take up arms. There is no tale of what it means to be a Mennonite that illustrates what is expected of Mennonites so well as the story of Dirk Willems, an early Anabaptist martyr.
Unfortunately, there are Mennonite congregations that are revisiting the pacifist part of their beliefs, so today, even the one thing most associated with the Mennonite practise of faith is not necessarily something to count on.
I used 'country of residence' purposefully. Mennonites live all over the world and traditionally, although that tends to wane the longer people are allowed to live in a country, Mennonites see themselves as 'visitors' wherever they live, rather than having any sort of great patriotism towards their country of residence. That at least, is how I was brought up - I am a citizen of the Kingdom of God before I am a citizen of Canada. The words 'proud Canadian' are not likely to ever be heard from my mouth. I just don't think in those terms. I don't even know how to think in those terms.
I am obligated to human beings everywhere in need, regardless of their nationality, and regardless of whether my country happens to be at war with them. The kingdoms of this world will pass away and with them their rulers, but it is the people, the children of God which will remain when there are no more man made borders to divide mankind.
I don't see myself as owing the state anything more than my taxes and obeying the law in all possible ways except in those things in which God's law supersedes man's laws, which would include that I would not take a side in any war that my country might be engaged in.
Where I disagree with what is 'traditional' Mennonite belief, is that Mennonites believe in adult baptism since a child cannot confess to any faith of his own free will. Usually Mennonites were baptised just before they married. This age could be anywhere from eighteen to the early twenties. I don't think it matters at all whether babies are baptised or adults. I see baptism as a symbol. Samuel's mother took him to the Temple when he was three, 'giving' him to God. He made no choice on his own. She prayed for a child, and promised to give him to the priests to be raised with a greater knowledge of the Lord then she felt she possessed. Baptism, in my mind, is the same way. It is a hope.
I do not believe that baptism can save you or unsave you. But I don't believe either that if a person is 'born-again' in the sense of the whole A, B, and C thing, and lives contrary to the faith he or she professes, not as a result of ignorance but as the result of a conscious thought or feeling or however one would put it, thinking that they said the magic words and therefore they can do as they will, that they are not in danger of hellfire. Otherwise the Lord would not have said, as he does in Matthew 7:21-22
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
To me it is clear that not everyone who is born-again by their words is accepted by God. Salvation is not a free thing, as it is so often portrayed. We are bought with a price and a condition. And that condition is our obedience and behaviour. We cannot sin and expect to get away with it, maybe a few stars short on our crown but nonetheless, by Jesus, saved! What is free, is that Christ offered Himself freely to God as a substitute for our sin and to us, that we can freely accept His conditional gift. When you accept the gift you accept the condition.
Well, would you believe that I wanted to write about head coverings? I don't know how I got on this track but until next time .....
Layla
First of all, with regards to 'mainstream' and whatever that means in its context, I am not saying that my beliefs are mainstream. At least they are not mainstream Mennonite. But then again, who knows? A lot of people think Mennonites dress in funny, old-fashioned clothes and have a horse and buggy parked beside the non-electrical house. There are as many varieties of Mennonite belief, so it seems to me, as there are 'mainstream' Christian denominations.
There are Mennonite churches with gay pastors and Mennonite churches who would excommunicate a gay member without hesitation. There are Mennonite churches who don't have a horse and buggy but think that it is prideful to drive a car with shiny chrome so they allow cars, but you have to paint the chrome black.
And there are sub-Mennonite branches such as the Amish, who are more like Reformation-era cousins of the Mennonites.
However, the Sermon on the Mount is from what Mennonites traditionally have taken the core of their beliefs, including a pacifism that includes, but is not limited to fighting in wars. Matthew 5 (KJV):
38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
So since there is no way to love your neighbour or your enemy and kill them, Mennonites do not traditionally participate in war, and are not supposed to support the death penalty. Only God has the right to take a life. That belief I have retained in spite of not being a baptised Mennonite. In war time, Mennonites have supported their country of residence with alternative service work. My great-grandfather, for instance, in Russia served in the medical corps. He died there of typhoid.
Such alternative service was often not enough for the rulers of this world, which meant, far too often, that Mennonites died for their refusal to take up arms. There is no tale of what it means to be a Mennonite that illustrates what is expected of Mennonites so well as the story of Dirk Willems, an early Anabaptist martyr.
Unfortunately, there are Mennonite congregations that are revisiting the pacifist part of their beliefs, so today, even the one thing most associated with the Mennonite practise of faith is not necessarily something to count on.
I used 'country of residence' purposefully. Mennonites live all over the world and traditionally, although that tends to wane the longer people are allowed to live in a country, Mennonites see themselves as 'visitors' wherever they live, rather than having any sort of great patriotism towards their country of residence. That at least, is how I was brought up - I am a citizen of the Kingdom of God before I am a citizen of Canada. The words 'proud Canadian' are not likely to ever be heard from my mouth. I just don't think in those terms. I don't even know how to think in those terms.
I am obligated to human beings everywhere in need, regardless of their nationality, and regardless of whether my country happens to be at war with them. The kingdoms of this world will pass away and with them their rulers, but it is the people, the children of God which will remain when there are no more man made borders to divide mankind.
I don't see myself as owing the state anything more than my taxes and obeying the law in all possible ways except in those things in which God's law supersedes man's laws, which would include that I would not take a side in any war that my country might be engaged in.
Where I disagree with what is 'traditional' Mennonite belief, is that Mennonites believe in adult baptism since a child cannot confess to any faith of his own free will. Usually Mennonites were baptised just before they married. This age could be anywhere from eighteen to the early twenties. I don't think it matters at all whether babies are baptised or adults. I see baptism as a symbol. Samuel's mother took him to the Temple when he was three, 'giving' him to God. He made no choice on his own. She prayed for a child, and promised to give him to the priests to be raised with a greater knowledge of the Lord then she felt she possessed. Baptism, in my mind, is the same way. It is a hope.
I do not believe that baptism can save you or unsave you. But I don't believe either that if a person is 'born-again' in the sense of the whole A, B, and C thing, and lives contrary to the faith he or she professes, not as a result of ignorance but as the result of a conscious thought or feeling or however one would put it, thinking that they said the magic words and therefore they can do as they will, that they are not in danger of hellfire. Otherwise the Lord would not have said, as he does in Matthew 7:21-22
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
To me it is clear that not everyone who is born-again by their words is accepted by God. Salvation is not a free thing, as it is so often portrayed. We are bought with a price and a condition. And that condition is our obedience and behaviour. We cannot sin and expect to get away with it, maybe a few stars short on our crown but nonetheless, by Jesus, saved! What is free, is that Christ offered Himself freely to God as a substitute for our sin and to us, that we can freely accept His conditional gift. When you accept the gift you accept the condition.
Well, would you believe that I wanted to write about head coverings? I don't know how I got on this track but until next time .....
Layla
A turn more serious
Well enough... I have been rightly corrected. It's true that I do consider my own brand of Christianity more "mainstream", but I ought to know better from our time on the public debate boards. Perhaps it might be said that my brand of Christianity is mainstream fundamentalism? (grin). At any rate, I think that A, B, C is a simple way to remember the road to salvation - but no, I'd never been specifically taught that. Yes, I do believe in salvation by faith, one acceptance, belief, and confession serving for all time... but I also believe that a true Christian is shown by the fruits of the spirit, "By their fruits shall ye know them". Mouthing the words, "I accept" is something entirely different from accepting with your whole heart and putting your entire hope of salvation on the blood of our Savior. That was all the thief on the cross did - put his entire hope on his belief that Jesus could and would save him from Hell. And should I be greeted at the gates of Heaven by the question, "By what right are you here?" my answer shall be, "Jesus died for me, I am here by His sacrifice, my name is written in the Lamb's book of life".
I am sadly aware (again, virtue of the old board) that the words "born-again" turn many people off. I wish it were otherwise. We cannot, however, control the actions of all our co-religionists, more's the pity. I would that all of us would shine out with Jesus' light... but such is not to be. We *are* fallen humans, and our Enemy is cheerfully willing to use every weapon to keep souls from grace. The seeds of self-righteousness live in most hearts - and I think that's why evangelicals spend a lot of time saying "Christians aren't perfect - just forgiven." If you've never had someone accuse you of thinking you're better than they are because of your faith, count yourself lucky. I have! And who wants to cut down their co-religionists? There are a few famous fundamentalists that *I* wish would keep their mouths shut, or shut their mouths on certain topics... but who am I to judge their hearts? And sometimes I agree with the core of their message, but NOT the delivery or any of the "outlying" bits. I was reading an article just the other day on the CWA site - great article, except for ONE sentence, but that one sentence would have turned anyone not totally "on their side" off. We are called to speak the truth with love - and that's hard.
Cheap grace - it sounds like an interesting book, and has gone on my Christmas list. :) As for the concept... yes. Our church today is RIFE with hypocrisy and apostasy. It is easy to be saved and then head right to the bar. Do I think it's possible... yes. But eh. A weak yes. Because your fruits show your faith. Can you fall and yet be Christian? Yes. But should you be expected to get back up... eventually? Also yes. 1 Corinthians 3: 11-15 For other foundation can no man lay than is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundsation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire. I do like what Dr. McGee says... there'll be some folk in Heaven who smell a bit of smoke from that fire, but they'll still BE there.
I say that partially from personal experience. There were many years when I know that I was a Christian and saved, but I was living in deliberate sin. Do I think that I would have gone to Heaven if I'd died then? Yes. But I'd have had precious little treasure come through the fire with me. Even now, having been surrendered for years, I have to occasionally pull myself back from things that I know are wrong... don't you? That is one of the things I am MOST looking forward to in Heaven - a body without an "old nature", a self that isn't constantly tempted to sin. That is a part of my journey - learning each day to leave my "self" at the altar and obey Christ Jesus. And I become more sensitive to sin the closer I get to Him, the less I am able to tolerate evil in myself. (There is still plenty to go around - icky ew).
As for who you listen to and believe - yes, I am young in this. What I do is very carefully vet who I listen to by first reading their statements of faith and looking carefully at the way they comport themselves (is it Biblical? Are they out for money for themselves or for missions or not really at all?), and then I give them my attention. But I am very well immersed in the Bible, so something that rings false, or doesn't bother to base itself on the Word? No, not going in my brain! My "list" currently is Dr. Stanley, Dr. McGee, and Pastor Mike (my local pastor, and yes he's on the web if you want to give him a listen). Also I am reading through the Bible - four chapters a day plus whatever calls out to me. This is the third? time I've done that, and I expect to continue so long as I'm here. What do you feed yourself with?
All the time I have for now... it's time to kick my slothful self off of my computer chair and off to clean something. :)
I am sadly aware (again, virtue of the old board) that the words "born-again" turn many people off. I wish it were otherwise. We cannot, however, control the actions of all our co-religionists, more's the pity. I would that all of us would shine out with Jesus' light... but such is not to be. We *are* fallen humans, and our Enemy is cheerfully willing to use every weapon to keep souls from grace. The seeds of self-righteousness live in most hearts - and I think that's why evangelicals spend a lot of time saying "Christians aren't perfect - just forgiven." If you've never had someone accuse you of thinking you're better than they are because of your faith, count yourself lucky. I have! And who wants to cut down their co-religionists? There are a few famous fundamentalists that *I* wish would keep their mouths shut, or shut their mouths on certain topics... but who am I to judge their hearts? And sometimes I agree with the core of their message, but NOT the delivery or any of the "outlying" bits. I was reading an article just the other day on the CWA site - great article, except for ONE sentence, but that one sentence would have turned anyone not totally "on their side" off. We are called to speak the truth with love - and that's hard.
Cheap grace - it sounds like an interesting book, and has gone on my Christmas list. :) As for the concept... yes. Our church today is RIFE with hypocrisy and apostasy. It is easy to be saved and then head right to the bar. Do I think it's possible... yes. But eh. A weak yes. Because your fruits show your faith. Can you fall and yet be Christian? Yes. But should you be expected to get back up... eventually? Also yes. 1 Corinthians 3: 11-15 For other foundation can no man lay than is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundsation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire. I do like what Dr. McGee says... there'll be some folk in Heaven who smell a bit of smoke from that fire, but they'll still BE there.
I say that partially from personal experience. There were many years when I know that I was a Christian and saved, but I was living in deliberate sin. Do I think that I would have gone to Heaven if I'd died then? Yes. But I'd have had precious little treasure come through the fire with me. Even now, having been surrendered for years, I have to occasionally pull myself back from things that I know are wrong... don't you? That is one of the things I am MOST looking forward to in Heaven - a body without an "old nature", a self that isn't constantly tempted to sin. That is a part of my journey - learning each day to leave my "self" at the altar and obey Christ Jesus. And I become more sensitive to sin the closer I get to Him, the less I am able to tolerate evil in myself. (There is still plenty to go around - icky ew).
As for who you listen to and believe - yes, I am young in this. What I do is very carefully vet who I listen to by first reading their statements of faith and looking carefully at the way they comport themselves (is it Biblical? Are they out for money for themselves or for missions or not really at all?), and then I give them my attention. But I am very well immersed in the Bible, so something that rings false, or doesn't bother to base itself on the Word? No, not going in my brain! My "list" currently is Dr. Stanley, Dr. McGee, and Pastor Mike (my local pastor, and yes he's on the web if you want to give him a listen). Also I am reading through the Bible - four chapters a day plus whatever calls out to me. This is the third? time I've done that, and I expect to continue so long as I'm here. What do you feed yourself with?
All the time I have for now... it's time to kick my slothful self off of my computer chair and off to clean something. :)
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Hair Coverings and Forms of Worship
With regards to hair coverings, I believe that people need rituals. It isn't so much what we do as the way that it orders and puts our emotions or beliefs and superstitions into a manageable place. God made us like that. Just as He says commands the ancient Israelites to rituals of Law, behaviour, cleanliness and sacrifice, but then goes on to completely contradict Himself in Micah, for just one example, when, via the prophet, He says in (NRSV) Chapter 6, v6-8:
With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for a transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?
If you feel that head covering does something for you on a spiritual level, that is okay. But it is not, as I know you know, the covered head that makes you more or less holy before the Lord. Sometimes humans need symbols, something concrete and visible to have faith in, or to follow. I haven't done this for quite a while now, but a few years ago when I was going through some painful personal experiences, although it is no part of a traditional Mennonite worship service, when I felt painfully in need to have some ritual, some visible manifestation of my reaching out for God, I would burn incense while I prayed, mimicking what we are told in Revelations 8, about incense containing the prayers of the saints.
Another angel with a golden censor came and stood at the altar; he was given a great quantity of incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that is before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel.
I do not believe that God would not have heard my prayer without incense. I don't believe that God needs any form of worship at all - neither church nor temple, nor the bowing of one's head or one's knees. Can a temple or a church contain all that is God, the way a fenced pasture contains sheep? Of course not. When the thief who died on the cross said, Jesus, remember me, when You come into Your kingdom, he had no official form of worship or sanction by any earthly religious authority.
But humans are built to look for and understand patterns. If none is given to us, we invent our own. In order to prevent spiritual damage to ourselves, I believe that God gave us a blueprint or a pattern to follow in terms of worship via the Bible.
As far as your quest for a personal relationship with God, I think that the journey is the relationship. Like children, we come to God at first with a certain understanding of His nature and what we are supposed to do that is passed on by our parents. We haven't thought it through by ourselves or developed any critical facilities to the point where we believe some of the things we are told, and see other things that our parents told us as perhaps unimportant to our personal understanding of God.
Most people never step outside of that comfort zone of belief or at least the appearance of belief in what their parents told them. For each of us, how we were raised is the mainstream Christian position - all others are a bit off the mark, in our unspoken opinions, even if we don't go as far as to consign all those who don't believe exactly as we do to Hell in a hand basket.
It was your remark in your post about how you take a more mainstream position than I do that made me think of this. Your background is evangelical Baptist, with the theology (feel free to correct anything I may have misunderstood) of A,B,C - to accept Christ as your personal Saviour; to believe that He died for your sins; to confess this belief to other people. To most Christians in the world, this evangelical formula is not a mainstream belief.
I believe that Christ is the promised Saviour and that He died and rose again and will come again, and that I will know, as I am known. I believe this unequivocally and with my whole heart. But I will never use the words born-again to describe my relationship with the Eternal. Not because I do not believe, not because I do not know that Jesus said you must be born again, but because of the connotation and the set of other beliefs are assumed by now to go along with those words. What I would mean by born-again is not what any born-again Christian would understand me to mean and for me to say that would be misleading that person into thinking I share in his or her belief - which is that everyone who isn't born again is headed straight for Hell.
And quite unfairly perhaps, as I have my own prejudices, when someone tells me they are are born-again Christians, I am completely turned off. I associate those words with cheap grace, and the same sort of curious anticipation of a crowd who goes to see bull-riding at a rodeo, of the possibility of someone getting hurt. There is this notion many born-again Christians have, that everyone who hasn't said those A, B, and Cs exactly - is not a real Christian and is wrong and is headed for Hell.
I do not believe in any ritualized prayer such as many evangelicals talk about as the Sinner's Prayer - capital letters. As though it is a formula and once you have said that formula, you may in fact do as you please - you have a Get-Out-of-Hell Free card.
I am not saying that you or that even most of those who believe in the A,B,C thing immediately go, "Great, wow. I'm saved. Where's the nearest bar now that I have the freedom to sin." I am speaking in general terms about perceptions and faith and how often what people think is faith is custom or cultural.
But this is the perception many people have of American Christianity, and it is not without validity. It is as though Christianity is a form, not a belief that requires a certain standard of conduct. As though a professing Christian can do anything at all as long as he as "accepted Christ as his personal Saviour" and then is entitled to sit in judgment of Christians of other denominations, with a different understanding, and if their (the born-again Christian's) behaviour, is called into question, responds pithily with, "Christians aren't perfect - just forgiven."
Well, duh.
There are Christians who believe that to follow Christ, means to be born again, each day, without ever once saying words to that effect. Who make that commitment, each day, to do as Christ did, to love one's neighbours, to turn the other cheek, to love those who despitefully use you - not to sue them in a court of law, not to impose their faith on others in the form of public monuments or prayer in secular schools, but to live it - to live in such a way as Christ would have lived, a light that cannot be hidden.
Christ compels no man to come to Him against his will. And yet many evangelicals in the US would do just that - impose the tenets of their beliefs and faith on unbelievers in public areas like schools. I don't see this as much different from the way the Catholic church behaved through much of its early history, in terms of forcibly 'converting' whole populations, and which is something that the underpinnings of Protestant faith is completely against, emphasizing, as they do, the whole notion of the personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Far too often Christian discipline and discipleship is not taught along with those A,B, Cs. Far too many born-again Christians profess a theology that is completely irresponsible and absolutely fails people who are genuine in their faith and want to grow in their faith, but have issues in their lives, like drugs or alcohol. I can't now quite remember all the things that being born-again is instantly supposed to cure, but essentially, far too many born-again preachers preach that the minute you are saved, you are delivered from your craving for alcohol and beating your wife and all is supposed to be wonderful.
That is not true. God is not a star to be wished on, or a Santa Claus to send a wish list to, that we are, by virtue of belief in Jesus as the Christ, delivered from human temptations or from the need to develop self control and wisdom. For those who have some sort of terrible issue they are trying to overcome, it is the equivalent of giving him or her a Bible verse when he or she needs bread.
I would highly recommend that you read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, The Cost of Discipleship. I honestly think you would really get something out of it, since you are a fan of C.S. Lewis. The book addresses many of the questions you are asking yourself these days, including what it means to love Christ for Himself, alone.
Bonhoeffer was a true martyr for Christ, who opposed Hitler, and even returned to Germany after having escaped it.
Quoting briefly from his famous writing on Billige Gnade, or cheap grace, he wrote in part, ....That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sins departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.
If I may put it so bluntly, this to my mind, is the pervading sin of the evangelical churches in North America today.
Just as God charges that the his ancient Israelites allowed the form of worship, the rituals of animal sacrifice and cleanliness to become the mark of the "good" Jew, forgetting that the whole sum of the Law was to love the Lord thy God and thy neighbour as thyself, so in that way, too many evangelicals have their own version of cleaning the outside of the cup (Matthew 23, KJV) "but within they are full of extortion and excess."
Layla
With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for a transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?
If you feel that head covering does something for you on a spiritual level, that is okay. But it is not, as I know you know, the covered head that makes you more or less holy before the Lord. Sometimes humans need symbols, something concrete and visible to have faith in, or to follow. I haven't done this for quite a while now, but a few years ago when I was going through some painful personal experiences, although it is no part of a traditional Mennonite worship service, when I felt painfully in need to have some ritual, some visible manifestation of my reaching out for God, I would burn incense while I prayed, mimicking what we are told in Revelations 8, about incense containing the prayers of the saints.
Another angel with a golden censor came and stood at the altar; he was given a great quantity of incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that is before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel.
I do not believe that God would not have heard my prayer without incense. I don't believe that God needs any form of worship at all - neither church nor temple, nor the bowing of one's head or one's knees. Can a temple or a church contain all that is God, the way a fenced pasture contains sheep? Of course not. When the thief who died on the cross said, Jesus, remember me, when You come into Your kingdom, he had no official form of worship or sanction by any earthly religious authority.
But humans are built to look for and understand patterns. If none is given to us, we invent our own. In order to prevent spiritual damage to ourselves, I believe that God gave us a blueprint or a pattern to follow in terms of worship via the Bible.
As far as your quest for a personal relationship with God, I think that the journey is the relationship. Like children, we come to God at first with a certain understanding of His nature and what we are supposed to do that is passed on by our parents. We haven't thought it through by ourselves or developed any critical facilities to the point where we believe some of the things we are told, and see other things that our parents told us as perhaps unimportant to our personal understanding of God.
Most people never step outside of that comfort zone of belief or at least the appearance of belief in what their parents told them. For each of us, how we were raised is the mainstream Christian position - all others are a bit off the mark, in our unspoken opinions, even if we don't go as far as to consign all those who don't believe exactly as we do to Hell in a hand basket.
It was your remark in your post about how you take a more mainstream position than I do that made me think of this. Your background is evangelical Baptist, with the theology (feel free to correct anything I may have misunderstood) of A,B,C - to accept Christ as your personal Saviour; to believe that He died for your sins; to confess this belief to other people. To most Christians in the world, this evangelical formula is not a mainstream belief.
I believe that Christ is the promised Saviour and that He died and rose again and will come again, and that I will know, as I am known. I believe this unequivocally and with my whole heart. But I will never use the words born-again to describe my relationship with the Eternal. Not because I do not believe, not because I do not know that Jesus said you must be born again, but because of the connotation and the set of other beliefs are assumed by now to go along with those words. What I would mean by born-again is not what any born-again Christian would understand me to mean and for me to say that would be misleading that person into thinking I share in his or her belief - which is that everyone who isn't born again is headed straight for Hell.
And quite unfairly perhaps, as I have my own prejudices, when someone tells me they are are born-again Christians, I am completely turned off. I associate those words with cheap grace, and the same sort of curious anticipation of a crowd who goes to see bull-riding at a rodeo, of the possibility of someone getting hurt. There is this notion many born-again Christians have, that everyone who hasn't said those A, B, and Cs exactly - is not a real Christian and is wrong and is headed for Hell.
I do not believe in any ritualized prayer such as many evangelicals talk about as the Sinner's Prayer - capital letters. As though it is a formula and once you have said that formula, you may in fact do as you please - you have a Get-Out-of-Hell Free card.
I am not saying that you or that even most of those who believe in the A,B,C thing immediately go, "Great, wow. I'm saved. Where's the nearest bar now that I have the freedom to sin." I am speaking in general terms about perceptions and faith and how often what people think is faith is custom or cultural.
But this is the perception many people have of American Christianity, and it is not without validity. It is as though Christianity is a form, not a belief that requires a certain standard of conduct. As though a professing Christian can do anything at all as long as he as "accepted Christ as his personal Saviour" and then is entitled to sit in judgment of Christians of other denominations, with a different understanding, and if their (the born-again Christian's) behaviour, is called into question, responds pithily with, "Christians aren't perfect - just forgiven."
Well, duh.
There are Christians who believe that to follow Christ, means to be born again, each day, without ever once saying words to that effect. Who make that commitment, each day, to do as Christ did, to love one's neighbours, to turn the other cheek, to love those who despitefully use you - not to sue them in a court of law, not to impose their faith on others in the form of public monuments or prayer in secular schools, but to live it - to live in such a way as Christ would have lived, a light that cannot be hidden.
Christ compels no man to come to Him against his will. And yet many evangelicals in the US would do just that - impose the tenets of their beliefs and faith on unbelievers in public areas like schools. I don't see this as much different from the way the Catholic church behaved through much of its early history, in terms of forcibly 'converting' whole populations, and which is something that the underpinnings of Protestant faith is completely against, emphasizing, as they do, the whole notion of the personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Far too often Christian discipline and discipleship is not taught along with those A,B, Cs. Far too many born-again Christians profess a theology that is completely irresponsible and absolutely fails people who are genuine in their faith and want to grow in their faith, but have issues in their lives, like drugs or alcohol. I can't now quite remember all the things that being born-again is instantly supposed to cure, but essentially, far too many born-again preachers preach that the minute you are saved, you are delivered from your craving for alcohol and beating your wife and all is supposed to be wonderful.
That is not true. God is not a star to be wished on, or a Santa Claus to send a wish list to, that we are, by virtue of belief in Jesus as the Christ, delivered from human temptations or from the need to develop self control and wisdom. For those who have some sort of terrible issue they are trying to overcome, it is the equivalent of giving him or her a Bible verse when he or she needs bread.
I would highly recommend that you read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, The Cost of Discipleship. I honestly think you would really get something out of it, since you are a fan of C.S. Lewis. The book addresses many of the questions you are asking yourself these days, including what it means to love Christ for Himself, alone.
Bonhoeffer was a true martyr for Christ, who opposed Hitler, and even returned to Germany after having escaped it.
Quoting briefly from his famous writing on Billige Gnade, or cheap grace, he wrote in part, ....That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sins departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.
If I may put it so bluntly, this to my mind, is the pervading sin of the evangelical churches in North America today.
Just as God charges that the his ancient Israelites allowed the form of worship, the rituals of animal sacrifice and cleanliness to become the mark of the "good" Jew, forgetting that the whole sum of the Law was to love the Lord thy God and thy neighbour as thyself, so in that way, too many evangelicals have their own version of cleaning the outside of the cup (Matthew 23, KJV) "but within they are full of extortion and excess."
Layla
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