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Where should we be willing to go?

I was having a short discussion with someone this morning when I was warned that a group of people were not real Christians, but claimed to be; the assertion was that they were “wicked.”

Fair enough. I don’t have enough observation under my belt to determine if that’s true or not, but the statement made me think about where it was proper for us, as Christians, to go.

After all, one imagines good Christians to be unwilling to ride with Hell’s Angels; good Christians don’t listen to rock and roll, good Christians do this, good Christians don’t do that.

I find this view of Christian life to be limited and ineffective. It’s not as simple as “Christians act like…”

Paul said, in Philippians 1:27, that we are to live in such a way that those who do not know God can see Him in us.

Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel. (NASV)

How can those who don’t know Christ see us if we are not where they are? They’re not coming to church to observe us; they’re living their lives where they are.

We’re to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13-14, another set of verses I had to look up). How can we enrich those around us if we declare ourselves separate in all things?

To me, I see the following groups:

  • Those who do not believe and act accordingly.
  • Those who claim to be believers, yet are not and do not act like Christians.
  • Those who are believers, yet do not act accordingly.
  • Those who are believers, and act appropriately.

I definitely try to be in the last group, because I find those people inspirational to be around, but realistically, I think nearly all Christians are in the third group (those who believe yet do not always do right), and those who aren’t are probably in the second group (those who claim to believe but do not.)

We should never sin deliberately. Romans 6:15 says:

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! (NASV)

Yet 1 Corinthians 8 has a lot to say about what is and is not sin for those who are under grace. Paul is using the analogy of food … well, okay, he was talking about food, but it’s more broadly applicable as well, when looking at Hebrews and Romans as well.

The point he was trying to make was this: sin is not “obeying the rules.” Sin is “disobeying the Holy Spirit,” separating oneself from God. What is sin for you may not be sin for me. It probably is, but you don’t know that, nor do I know if what is sin for me is sin for you.

So, then. Where should we be willing to go?

Depending on the strength of our faith and our relationship with Christ: anywhere.

That means I can go to a skate park and hang – and be fully within the will of Christ, because there’s nothing there that separates me from God. I can obey Philippians 1:27 there, and act such that those who do not know Christ can see Him in me.

I can ride motorcycles with the Hell’s Angels, and be fully within the will of Christ. I can obey Philippians 1:27 there, and act such that those who do not know Christ can see Him in me.

I can listen to Tool, and be fully within the will of Christ (although Tool’s anti-religious stance makes it harder than it could be sometimes; I don’t listen to some of their music because I cannot edify Christ through it.)

I suppose some Christians could go to a strip club and be within the will of Christ, if their faith and will is strong enough to enter and not sin; I don’t think I’m that strong. (Plus, let’s be honest: those are some of the saddest places on the face of the earth.) If they were able to go and stand as witnesses for Christ – a very tall order, but within the realm of possibility – then yes, I’d say even a strip club might be appropriate for Christians. Not me – I have no idea how I would be able to act in such a way that those in a strip club would be able to see Christ in me there. But I can’t say it can’t be done – all things are possible in Christ.

So should I avoid people or situations because I think that the people there aren’t always edifying Christ? No. I should not. I should examine the circumstances and try to act in such a way that those who do not know Christ can see His effect on me, and maybe God through that can call them to Himself.

This isn’t to say that those who do avoid situations are wrong – remember, it’s about what they can and cannot endure. It’s not wrong for me to avoid strip clubs, because such places would strain my ability to not sin. (Plus, my wife would have a cow.)

But I should go where Christ leads me, wherever that may be. If that’s a bar, then so be it; I should try to follow Christ in all things. (He hasn’t asked me to go to any bars, thank you.) If that’s a foreign country to witness for Him as a missionary, so be it. (Again, I have not been so called.)

God is greater than everything in His creation, good and bad. I should always try to bring the good to everything around me, including those things that need His touch most.

Shalom.

Originally published on December 28, 2011.

savage
April 23, 2012
Lifestyle
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The Role of Forward Momentum

This morning, I caught myself thinking that if you traced the motion of a leaf on the wind, you’d end up with something approximating the face of God.

More rationally, you’d end up with a bunch of squiggly lines, but then again, who are we to say that’s not a valid representation of the Most High?

It’s not a traditional representation, after all, of anything that relates to God. We think of God in the abstract. Most Jews don’t think of God as a concrete image at all, because of the injunction against graven images, so even the squiggly line might be out of bounds, if it’s considered an image of the Holy One.

But tradition is a huge thing in today’s Christianity, more than it should be.

There’s a huge movement in the church today to “revert,” to do what the original Christian church did; meeting in houses, fellowshipping in small groups. Less formal services, more direct communication among believers; it’s a model that you follow when your church has no money and no space.

Now that churches do have money and space, it’s not as necessary; we also have a professional leadership (seminaries train pastors, and we see “lay pastors” as different than, well, “actual pastors.”) Pastors no longer always know everyone in their congregation; the congregations are too large for “successful churches.” Productions are elaborate; services are more like performances.

This is our forward momentum now, this is our tradition.

The move towards small groups in today’s church is an oddity – a welcome one, but an oddity. Small groups enable believers (or, well, anyone) to minister directly to others, to connect with them directly, in ways the larger church cannot.

For example, in my small group (“life group,” or “study group,” or – in our case – “Truth Project group,” which deserves to be mentioned on its own in another post), one member recently found that his employment situation was unstable, and I had a death in my family – but neither of these things have a place in the larger church environment.

But in the small group, it’s natural and proper for those things to be shared and prayed over, commiserated with and understood. The result is that everyone feels closer and connected, and the Spirit of God is closer to each of us.

Yet this is something that’s both very old (in that it’s how the church existed in its second phase) and very new (in that churches are just now starting to encourage this kind of connection again.)

(Why “second phase?” Because the really early church was a collection of Jews, who met in the synagogue, who happened to think that the Messiah had come. The more traditional, non-Messianic Jews kicked them out, and they ended up meeting in homes. Thus, “second phase.”)

Forward momentum has a huge role in our lives, not only cultural but religious momentum informs everything. It creates our assumptions and it informs everything we think and do; much of how you believe and what you believe has to do with a sort of “belief trajectory” that incorporates everything you’ve experienced.

Thus, for me I carry the cultural mores and traditions that say who Moses was, and who Elijah was, and who Jesus was, even though the histories and descriptions we have from the Bible draw much less information than we have. These traditions and mores affect very much what and how I believe.

You, also, do the same thing; chances are very strong that there is some common ground in the traditions (because the same seed cultures created all of our modern cultures) but the differences inform everything we do.

The main thing for me to remember in all this is that momentum is good because it exists; the willingness to revert or try new things is also good, but the measure of propriety is how much any change glorifies God.

Shalom.

Originally posted on December 27, 2011.

savage
April 20, 2012
Lifestyle
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I’m Thankful for My Church

My family and I attended church services on Christmas Eve, at 5:00 p.m., the first of three services our church put together. The next service was at 9:00 p.m., and the last service was Sunday morning, on Christmas day.

The services were fairly normal services for the church, although they did have some special features – a family played some instrumental Christmas music, and we had interpretive dance (rhythmic gymnastics, with ribbons, which is one of my favorite gymnastics sports for some reason. I really don’t know why. I like watching the ribbons hang in midair while the gymnast is off doing something different.)

The thing that struck me about the services, beyond the unusual aspect of the special features, was how normal it was. It was Christmas-themed, of course, and centered on Luke 2, but it was a normal service, with an invitation (a very unobtrusive one, like always), the standard format of the service, everything.

If you’d visited on Christmas Eve, and then showed up again in February, you’d see the same services. (Well, content would differ, of course…)

My church – at which I’m blessed to be – is very focused on the Christian mission, to be witnesses for Christ to all, without an overbearing approach.

Everything we do is Jesus-focused.

Our music is chosen to glorify God and not man – so some Christian music isn’t used, even though it might be good. A song that’s derived from Biblical sources might be excellent, but if it doesn’t point the listener to Jesus, it’s just not right for the church. There’s nothing the church has against something like that, but the church’s music itself is always focused on the One for whom the church exists.

Our messages, the sermons, are likewise focused. Our pastor is gifted in exhortation, but he doesn’t preach morals or social awareness without, again, focusing on Jesus. He does exhort us to act morally, but he does so in context of what the Holy Spirit wants us to do. At no point does he say we are to try to “be good,” a task which in Christianity is impossible without Christ anyway, but he tells us to follow Christ, which will lead us to do good things through Him.

Our church does things for the community, too; we put on a festival in late October, free to all, without burden of being forced into church – but many things at the festival were inviting nonetheless. Free food, of course, and the church band was playing for any and all to hear; the church invited attendees to take tours of the building to show them how geared we are for their benefit.

I know it sounds like it wasn’t all that low-key, but it was, from everything I’d heard. (I was on a business trip. I’d signed up to help, but the festival was delayed for rain and I had to fly out of town.)

That low-key yet consistent approach builds an undertone of service for the church that’s very effective for Christ, and effective for members as well. It makes me happy that God put us here, in this region, and in this church, that we could grow in Him and help others through that growth.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

Shalom.

Originally published on December 26, 2011.

savage
April 19, 2012
Lifestyle
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Alcohol

In another conversation with one of my kids – the typical way for me to think of things to write – alcohol came up somehow.

I’m trying to remember the course of conversation that led to that, but I don’t. When I’m taking them to school, I tend to just riff on about any subject that we happen to come across, and sometimes I actually say stuff that’s worth hearing.

So the subject of that particular conversation was, like I said, alcohol, and naturally I was putting it in context of the Christian life.

The short form is that I don’t think alcohol is a bad thing (although too much is), and the church has a tendency to say any alcohol is a bad thing. The Bible doesn’t quite back the church up on that.

I don’t drink alcohol, myself. It’s a taste I think you have to acquire, and living in the United States I am blessed to have clean water available at any time. (The poorest person in the United States has access to things that some other countries would consider unimaginable riches. James 4 has stuff that applies to every American, yet we handily assume that we’re poor and it doesn’t apply to us.)

That said, I don’t have a biblical reason to avoid alcohol. Nor does anyone else.

Consider: for one thing, the Bible never says not to drink. It says not to overconsume (“Be not drunk with wine,” Ephesians 5:18) but not to avoid, although there are some situations in which it was to be avoided.

What are those situations?

One was in the Tabernacle (Leviticus 10:9); pagan worship was ecstatic through the use of many things (sex, art, strong drink) and Hebrew worship was deliberate and solemn. You were supposed to approach God with a clear head, not one filled with… something else.

Another was if you were a Nazirite. The Nazirim (“Nazirians?” “Nazirish?”) were consecrated to God in everything; they were supposed to not cut their hair or touch anything ritually unclean, and they weren’t supposed to touch alcohol. Samson (“Shimshon” in Hebrew) was a Nazirite, although he clearly didn’t pay attention to a whole lot of the code, as I understand it.

I don’t know of any living Nazirim, and the Tabernacle and Temple no longer exist. There are other situations, I’d imagine, but I don’t know of any that wouldn’t be very limited in scope – and the ones I know of are cultural and not biblical.

Also consider: they didn’t have clean water. It was unhealthy to drink unpurified liquid, and purification wasn’t easy; fermentation was. Drinking only unfermented liquids would have been very odd, and unhealthy for the most part.

This is circumstantial, of course; there’s nothing saying that they could not get by with only nonalcoholic drinks. It just seems like a stretch to me.

Also consider: Jesus’ first recorded miracle was at a wedding – converting water to wine (John 2:10, and many others). If alcohol was to be avoided in all things, I doubt Jesus would have done this.

There’s some assertion that Jesus, too, was supposed to be a Nazirite (not just a Nazarene, one who was from the town of Natzaret). However, the reference in Isaiah (Is. 11:1) doesn’t necessarily use Nazirite – it uses “neser,” which means “branch,” not “nasir,” which means “consecrated.”

Of course, the text doesn’t actually say “neser” or “nazir” – it didn’t have any vowels, so you had a phonetic word written down. (וְנֵ֖צֶר is translated “branch,” where הַנָּזִיר֮ is “nazir” – and these have the vowels where the original did not.) Plus, the rest of Isaiah 11:1 uses context of a growing thing, a plant, which would make the Nazirite reference a little odd.

In any event, we have no assertion that I know of that says that Jesus abstained from wine – and considering that He provided it to others, it’d be highly unlikely that such an assertion would hold.

So as I understand it, the admonition should not be for the laity to avoid all wine. The admonition would be to be moderate in all such things; if you drink, you are to be wise about it and avoid drunkenness.

That seems simple; it’s unfortunate that so many see an opportunity for overzealousness and use it as a club to beat others with.

Shalom.

Originally published on Dec 23, 2011.

savage
April 17, 2012
Lifestyle
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