Category: General Christian Teachings

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! We’ve spent a lot of time lately looking at atheist sound bites and now, I’d like to turn my attention to Christian sound bites. Why? Because I’m against bad argumentation no matter where it comes from and that includes Christians giving bad arguments. God is not glorified by bad actions. Neither is he glorified by bad arguments.

I know this one will be highly controversial, but I’d like to write about the idea of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. To begin with, let us consider the position from the point of God. I will begin by asking this question.

Is God Lord of all creation by nature?

If you answered “No”, move to the head of the class.

“That’s ridiculous!” some of you say. “Isn’t it true that he is Lord of all?!”

“Yes. Yes it is.”

“Then isn’t He that by nature?”

No. The reason is that what God is, He has to be naturally, but He did not necessarily have to create. God could have willed to not create ever. It could have just been for all eternity the fellowship of the Trinity. No angels. No men. No animals. Nothing else. God would still be all that He is by nature.

Now once He does however create, he establishes a relation by creation to his creatures. Because of His position to them, He is their Lord. This position however does not change anything in the nature of God. God does not gain anything by being your Lord and if you never existed God would not be at a loss. However, by being the servant of God, you gain greatly and by not being the servant of God, you lose greatly.

Our relation to God does not change Him in the least. It changes us. We need to restore a divine holiness to the relationship and realize that no relationship we have on Earth can truly compare to it. Consider the four loves. Your relationship with your marriage partner cannot compare to it. Your relationship with your family cannot compare to it. Your relationship with your friends cannot compare to it.

Instead, we’ve treated the position we have with God practically casually. Hebrews tells us that we can boldly approach the throne of grace to be sure, but that does not mean that we necessarily march in like we own the place. We are still coming to one far greater than us by nature and we come with reverent submission.

The danger is that our relationship with Jesus is so different and we treat it as if it was similar. Just today, I read of an ex-Christian who left the fold saying he didn’t feel that personal relationship that everyone else in the church claimed to feel. Don’t tell me then that this kind of thinking focusing on our subjective experiences does not have an effect. It does!

Jesus never promised us a feeling. In fact, he promised us suffering more than anything else. How often do you hear that spoken of? Jesus did not command us to feel love or joy. In fact, that would be difficult. Suppose you were sad and I came up to you and said “I order you to feel happy!” I could even stick a gun to your head and say “If you don’t feel happy, I will blow your brains out!”

You couldn’t do it. Now I could do some things for you that might be able to bring about a feeling related to the state of happiness in you, but I could not make you feel happy. I am of course not against feeling happy. I also do not believe we can perpetually feel happy. There are times we should feel negative emotions and allow them to speak.

Jesus did command us to be holy however. We don’t hear that worked on. Holiness is something very much objective. You have a clear goal. Christlikeness. You are either getting closer to it or moving away from it. What about how you feel? Act first and let the feelings come later.

You wouldn’t want to base your relationship with other people on how you felt would you? As one who recently had surgery, I am sure there were times people did not really feel eager to help me in my time of need, but did so anyway. I do think my wife could be a great exception. Somehow, it wouldn’t surprise me that when I had to wake her up in the night to help me walk to the bathroom or to give me medication that she felt a joy in helping her husband.

Let’s suppose for the sake of argument however that she didn’t one time. What does she do? She does the right thing anyway. She gets up and helps her husband out. If the feeling comes, great! If not, oh well. Doing the right thing is more important than getting the feeling of doing the right thing.

Another way this relationship is different is communication. If I don’t understand something about my wife or she doesn’t about me, then we can openly ask each other. It could be we don’t even know the reasons for why the other is asking, but we can still ask.

Many Christians treat prayer as a two-way street. The Bible never does. Am I saying God can’t talk to us? No. However, I’m also not saying it’d be normative. God could raise your loved one from the dead, but somehow, I don’t suspect many of you are going to the burial site with that news and just waiting.

If you believe God has spoken to you and you have not fallen down proclaiming your unworthiness, I doubt it was God. I plan to write more on this in the future with the use of punting to God in another blog.

The Bible defines our relationship as being at peace with God now. He’s not turned against us. We have united ourselves to Him. We have become a part of the covenant with YHWH and this is a sacred position to hold. We are not to treat it casually. We ought to be able to spend all of our days in wonder and amazement that we are pronounced forgiven, and I am just as guilty of not doing this.

It’s my hope that we will drop this term as it tends to lower God down to our level instead of realizing He is the high and mighty Lord. I am not saying Christians who use this term don’t believe that. I’m saying the terminology however can easily lend itself to that thinking.

We shall look at another sound bite tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! I’m going to take a brief respite from atheist sound bites to give a brief case for Christian environmentalism. Why? Readers of last night’s blog will know I presented a link to my wife’s blog that she has started. It is called Evergreen Glades and it is the blog for Christian nature lovers, which should be all of us.

My wife is quite saddened that it seems like the new age movement is doing more to take care of the Earth than Christians do. Now I’m not one who believes in global warming and neither one of us are supporters of PETA. My wife loves animals, but she also knows that if it comes between an animal or a human, the human has to come first. We are different by kind and not just degree.

However, the Bible tells us we were put on the Earth to be in charge of it. We are also told in Proverbs 12:10 that a good man cares for his beast. When Noah entered the ark, he had a number of animals with him. When the Israelites were to lay siege to an enemy town, they were given specific instructions on how to tend to the trees in the area.

All of creation is good and we should celebrate that. The Bible uses animals as examples to us as well. We are told if we are sluggards to go to the ant and watch. Jesus tells us that we need not worry if we observe the birds in the sky and the flowers in the field. God takes care of both of them. Numerous Psalms look to the creation and view it as a cause to praise God.

My wife is the strong one in this area. I’m not. I don’t like being away from the wonders of modern technology. She wants to see each of the dogs that our neighbors have. (That is also another difference. She’s a dog-lover primarily. I’m a cat-lover.) I realize when this happens that this is a deficiency in me however rather than a deficiency in nature.

Taking care of the world around us doesn’t mean being a tree-hugger or buying into environmental disaster scenarios. God is in charge of this Earth. However, knowing he’s in charge doesn’t mean we don’t fulfill the Great Commission in evangelism. It also shouldn’t meant that we just ignore the planet and say “God will clean it all up.”

I don’t consider myself an environmentalist, but I am willing to recycle and we take our bottles every Sunday to a place near our church to recycle them. I am quite cautious to make sure I don’t litter. Is there really any excuse for throwing trash out the window as you drive rather than just waiting until you get to a trash can?

None of us also want to be caught in the New Age and worshiping nature. The secret to escape this however is not to love nature less. It’s to love God more. The problem with the New Agers is that they don’t look beyond nature. They take nature to be God. They should celebrate the wonder of nature and realize the awesomeness of the God that it points to.

We Christians on any ethical duty should be putting to shame the rest of the world. We should have the new agers wanting to do as good a job preserving nature as we do. Those of you who are scientists and such should celebrate every day that you get to explore the wonders of creation somehow and get to know the God behind it, who He is, and why He did it this way.

If you’re a fan of my blog, and I hope you are, then I ask you to become a fan of my wife’s as well. She will not be blogging every day, but your support of her in what she’s doing will be a great encouragement to her. Keep praying for us as well. We’re still in a tight situation as neither of us have a job due to no one hiring me yet. God has provided thus far, but we would like to see a job come up. I would love to work for my money.

Thank you for your support thus far of Deeper Waters and again, please be a fan of Evergreen Glades.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters, where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Last night as I was checking up on some things online for the last time, I saw a comment on TheologyWeb where I debate that burned me in a thread on Halloween telling someone to go ahead and celebrate the night of Samhain. God had made his opinion clear on the matter however.

Now to me, Halloween is nothing wicked to celebrate, though some people can celebrate it in wicked means. This is the case for any holiday. On Thanksgiving, we can be tempted to gluttony. On Christmas, we can be tempted with materialism. On New Year’s Day, we can be tempted to get drunk. In any holiday, we need to watch why we are observing it.

That’s not what got me on this here however. To me, Halloween is a secondary matter. There’s nothing in Scripture that’s yea or nay, particularly since Halloween hadn’t been invented yet, but I believe we have some guidelines in 1 Cor. 8-10 and Romans 14 indicating that this is a secondary matter.

However, it is easy to say that God has spoken on something and leave it at that and then think the rest of us are living in sin if we acknowledge the day. This gives us a chance to look at ourselves with pride and look down on our neighbor and think that we are doing better than they are or are more holy than they are. Now it could be we’re leading a better Christian life, but it is not our place to say that.

If we want to go with matters that the Lord has clearly stated his view on, let’s go with those.

We are commanded to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength. How are we doing?

In Romans 12, Paul tells us to be devoted to prayer. I know this is something that I wrestle with. How about the rest of you? Are you doing much better?

We are told to love our neighbor as ourselves. Are we doing that, or are we treating our neighbor totally different from ourselves and looking for any excuse to not love him?

We are commanded if we are married men to love our wives as Christ loved the church and women are called to submit to their husbands as the church to Christ. Fellow marrieds? How are you doing? Husbands? Do you love your wives that way? Wives? Are you respecting your husbands?

Jesus told us to not worry about tomorrow for today has enough difficulties of its own. How’s that going? Are you getting good at not staying up at night and wondering about the future?

We are told to not look at women with lust and not hate our brother in our hearts. How’s that going?

Forgive one another as I have forgiven you. That’s an easy one surely isn’t it? Are you doing the work that needs to be done in forgiving your neighbor and actually letting it go? Surely no one ever carries around a grudge.

How about money? How are we doing? Are we giving to the poor and helping them or are we more greedy?

But in each of these, God has made his view clear.

We can argue about secondary issues and we should respect one another’s opinions on secondary issues even when we disagree, but before we start playing the pride card, let’s look and see how we’re doing on these other issues.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we seek to dive into the ocean of truth! I’m back from my trip with my wife and would like to write about an experience that has been particularly troubling for us. I will not be mentioning names in this, for I fear the problem I am seeing is a problem with many churches.

While we were in my town with my parents, we decided to go to my old church to see if we could drum up financial support. As readers could know, as of this writing, I have been nearly unemployed for five months and unable to find work despite sending out numerous resumes. I lost my job just a few months before my scheduled wedding and donations from my church in my town here as well as numerous friends, some on the internet, helped keep us going.

Our goal is to start our own ministry and we need good finances to do that. We would like it to where enough could come in someday that we can devote ourselves full-time to writing, speaking, teaching, and debating. Right now, tax-deductible donations can be made for us through www.Tektonics.org. (And if you wish to do so, make sure it is stated that this donation is for us. That’s the only way it will reach us)

We talked to my old associate pastor and he said he just didn’t think they could find the time. There was too much going on. Now I have talked to him before and asked for help numerous times, but there hasn’t been any. It has been as if we were wasting our breath. We were told we would be acknowledged during the service.

So we figure we’ll go to the service and see what happens.

What happened was the whole service was celebrating how the church had raised so much money to build up a “ministry center” and how that included raising up $2.1 million that did not even include the offerings every Sunday. Now there is no debt and the church can go out and celebrate what has been done!

Getting out of debt? Good thing I’ll grant, but my wife and I were wondering where the support was for one of their own, particularly one of their own who went off to ministry (Even though another Seminary student was mentioned and how a band was going to where he was to support him).

Also, there was special music with someone singing “Everything’s fine! I just talked to Jesus! Help is on its way!” While some might find some statements to be biblical, there is a time that people need to see love demonstrated instead of merely just spoken. My marriage would not be good if I just told my wife “I love you” and never did anything to show it.

Did we get acknowledged? Yes we did. At one point, it was announced that we were visiting and it was the first time we had been there since the wedding. Absent however was any mention of our financial situation and how we would appreciate the people to be praying for us at least.

Instead, every aspect of the service, including the sermon, was about how great it was that this building was finally here. Then the minister ended the sermon with a prayer and gave thanks to God that the building was finally there so that they could continue the ministry of basketball.

Yes. The ministry of basketball.

That was not a slip-up. It was said twice.

Meanwhile, here’s a hurting member of the church in a tough bind and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

So we went later to speak to the associate pastor. He asked my wife how she liked living in a new city to which she said she liked it but wasn’t sure how much longer we’d be living there since we could be homeless soon. No response given. It was more of an “Oh.” No empathy was shown at all. Instead a question was asked to me.

“Do you have your semester paid off yet?”

“Not even close.”

I got a similar response.

The associate pastor said we could talk to him in about fifteen minutes after we said we wanted to talk. My wife went outside and I went with her and she told me it would probably be best for us to just leave. I agreed. If this situation involved just me, I’d be concerned, but since it involved my wife as well and my desire to provide for her, I was fuming. Lunch with my family consisted of us discussing the event.

The contrast was incredible. Their pastor has a son who had a birthday that day. It was ironic that my birthday was that same day (A fact the church I attended also failed to acknowledge). My Dad raised his hand as the pastor was gathering prayer requests to which he was told “I believe your son also has a birthday today doesn’t he?” The pastor then asked us to please keep praying for my wife and I in our job situation. Some members of this church attended our wedding even and brought gifts.

And this is a church I hadn’t attended in over a decade.

Lest you wonder, it’s because I’m a different denomination from my folks and I wanted to join a church that matched my doctrinal beliefs more. I have nothing against this church on essential matters. They are a fine group and I would gladly worship with them despite minor differences, but I wanted to find a home in the faith tradition I chose to align myself with.

My wife and I discussed the event which led to a number of thoughts on my part.

First, churches are talking about growing in ministry and basing that on conversions. Jesus did not once tell us to go out and make converts. He told us to go and make disciples. Church is not meant to be a numbers game. My current church is a small church with no more than thirty people usually on a Sunday, but this church has surrounded my wife and I with their love and support. We have serious discipling going on with an educational hour instead of Sunday School where we play videos of speakers like Ravi Zacharias and speak on apologetics-related topics.

Instead, the church often believes that if you get someone in the door and get them to walk down the aisle, say a prayer, and then be baptized, that you have them for life. There is no growth that is going on. Instead, messages are often given with the goal of making people feel good about themselves. Frankly, we need some messages that will show us how bad we really are and get our lives right.

While the church I attended this Sunday said they were growing in ministry, a number of questions came to my mind.

“Are your members more aware of the importance of holiness in their lives?”

“Do they understand better the doctrine of the Trinity?”

“Can they make a defense for the physical resurrection of Jesus?”

“Can they answer a cultist?”

“Are they prepared for when the new atheists come who want to destroy religion?”

“Do they know the problem with homosexual marriage and why traditional marriage is so important?”

“Do they know how to demonstrate the Bible is the Word of God and to rightly interpret it?”

If they don’t, then they may be growing in something, but it is not ministry.

Sermons today in churches tend to skip past the doctrine and go straight to application. The sermon we heard was from Joshua 3-4 and about the children of Israel leaving stones as milestones and how this building was to be the church’s milestone. Gone was any mention of why the Israelites were passing over. Absent was the historical context of Joshua. Without mention were who people like the Jebusites were. Absent was any mention of the role family tradition played in a society like that of the ancient Israelites.

Instead, there was just application. The text in this case becomes not “What does it mean?” but “What does it mean for me?” I’m not against application of all. We should eventually get to “What does it mean for me?” However, the first place to start is with “What does it mean?”

Also, churches are going into building plans for buildings that frankly, I think are a waste. I have yet to see real ministry going on in these buildings. Instead, these are places for social gatherings that are simply creating a feel-good mentality. It is the idea that we are all right and we just need to huddle up together. You want to talk about doing ministry? Go toe to toe with an atheist or go into prisons or actually dialogue with those Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses that come to your door. Go out on the streets and work with the homeless. Go to a foreign country sometime. Do something that will get you out of your comfort zone.

In the past, buildings were made that were expensive, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but the buildings were made in the context of worship. When you entered a medieval cathedral, you were to know you were entering into the presence of the holy. Today, churches are designed often to look like hotel lobbies where you can go and have social gatherings. Any appearance of the holy is absent. Now some churches I know are like this through no fault of their own. That would include my own. We are a small body and had to rent out the only building we could, a building that used to be a bank. If this is your church, that’s understandable.

However, we cannot go on building projects that aren’t worth what’s put in them while there’s ministry to do. Instead of building a family life center, which will be nothing but a gym usually, go out and start talking about donating that money to a Seminary or Bible College that upholds the Bible as the Word of God. Better yet, start your own Bible College or Seminary. For too many Christians, Seminary is a dirty word and their idea of Bible Study is reading a Beth Moore book.

As I think about the basketball situation, I do admit that I have no problem with pleasure to an extent. Pleasure is God’s gift. However, I recall in the past that all I needed for a good game of basketball was a parking lot and a basketball net and just a bunch of guys together. Now if you want to play more, you need to build more. That’s fine, but is $2.1 million really needed for that? You can imply set up an asphalt area and have two basketball hoops.

The idea is that family life centers will draw people to the church and when they come in eventually, they will get hooked and then they will be Christians for life and that will be a victory. This despite the fact that most kids leaving the church leave and never come back as a professor in the college is happy to kill their faith, as a Sunday school faith is not enough to deal with a professor who has twenty-five years of atheism.

Could we try another technique to get people into the church? I don’t know. Maybe we could try something truly innovative like talking to them. When we talk, we need more than just tracts also. Personally, I have never cared much for the medium of tracts. I prefer real dialogue and I suspect I’m not alone.

While there’s nothing wrong with creating gateways that are entertaining, we have this idea that we must make the gospel entertaining. We must make our presentation entertaining to an extent I believe, but we must not make the gospel that way. The gospel should be joy enough as it is. It should provide its own listeners if we present it rightly.

I do believe Jesus used humor when he spoke, but he did not make that the focus. The gospel is interesting enough as it is and we do not need to make it interesting. We do not need to make God exciting for people. God is already exciting. The reason we do not often see God that way is not because of a problem with God but a problem with ourselves in a culture that thrives on the notion that we have to be constantly entertained, a problem even I still contend with in my own life to this day.

The end result will be a generation that only responds to something if they find it amusing to them, instead of realizing that they need to change their way of thinking for God. God does not need to make Himself interesting for our culture. We need to find out why he’s not interesting to our culture. The problem is certainly not with Him but with us and whatever it is, we need to change it.

Hearing about the ministry of basketball was particularly insulting as one who is on the front lines of the battle and taking the bullets from the opposition so that most Christians can go to bed at night and rest with ease. I realize not everyone is to be an intellectual, and that’s fine. My wife is an artist for instance. She does know the importance of ministry however and supports me in it. Those who aren’t in this field can support those who are. These ministries are the ones keeping the new atheists and other idealogical forces at bay.

Instead, apologetics is being made more and more irrelevant as well as those who do apologetics.

Not only that, there are people like myself who are hurting, and the church is too busy celebrating themselves often instead of getting out in the trenches and helping those who are hurting. I am sure I was not the only one that day hurting and for a hurting person who is wondering how the next bill will be paid, it is no help to see others celebrating like that, especially when you’ve asked for help numerous times.

There is a reason people don’t often go to the church for help and this Sunday was a prime example.

I am one who believes that if the American church does not renew its intellectual battleground soon, it will die. Playing basketball will not compete with the new atheists. Now I do not believe for a second that the church will die. The church will live. It will just live and thrive somewhere else, maybe even China. The gospel does not need America to survive, but America needs the gospel.

I pray that we will be what we were meant to be again soon. We cannot be playing games while the world dies.

As I was leaving Sunday School at my old church back in my hometown, the teacher made a remark that sometimes we treat Christianity like it’s a game. It’s one of those statements that I’d heard before but there’s a part of me that when I hear such a statement, I want to say “If only we did so.”

Ironically as I was looking last night through C.S. Lewis’s “The Four Loves.” Not for anything for the blog, but just because I wanted to glance through. I had a number of parts highlighted and maybe you’re like me that when you go through a book and see highlighted parts, you want to find out why they were highlighted. (It’s also interesting when you get a used book from somewhere else and you see what the reader highlighted and wonder why he highlighted that.)

On page 90, this is what I found:

It is one of the most difficult and delightful subtleties of life that we must deeply acknowledge certain things to be serious and yet retain the power and will to treat them often as lightly as a game.

I believe Lewis is on to something. I do see Christianity as serious of course, but I often think it would be good if we treated it as a game. I know many people who love to play a game and when they play that game, they take it very seriously, and this includes myself. They want to do the best that they can and they practice. Most people don’t have the same sort of enthusiasm for their jobs.

Would it do us good if we saw Christianity as a game? We often speak of Lewis and Tolkien and how they wrote stories that were meant to point to the greatest story of all. It’s a shame that we love those stories so much, yet so often we fail to enjoy the story that we’re in.

Go out and find the average person on the street. Make a movie out of their life story. If you make it true to their life and know how to write, direct, produce, etc. you will have a blockbuster film no matter who it is. Real life is interesting.

Do we play our lives as if we want to win the game? Do we even see it that way? If you’re playing a game, you do the best you can do at what you do. You don’t want to lose. You don’t want to be defeated. If there comes a challenge in the game, well that makes the game all the more enjoyable. In fact, you go out there and you expect that there will be challenges.

Peter Kreeft once said that apologetics is as close as you get to saving the world. Of course, someone already did that 2,000 years ago, but imagine seeing yourself in your Christian life as playing some role in the plan of God. Now I’m not talking about finding God’s will for your life. I believe there are many possible roles you could play. You have great freedom to ad-lib. However, you are to play a role. 

If only we could really grasp that and I would love to see the church do that. To realize that we are on a mission and maybe we’d fulfill the role of the church better. Now not everyone is in the apologetics field extensively. I realize that. I think everyone should have some skill, but not everyone is going to make this study the basis of their lives. That’s fine. It doesn’t mean my work is completely independent of yours.

I am thankful for the counselors and encouragers of the church and the role they play. I once had someone who regularly told me at my church when he saw me “Be encouraged!” He stopped doing it and that’s too bad because it was always good to hear. There’s something nice about getting a message out of the blue and knowing that someone appreciates you. We’ve all got that (I hope!) at some time in our lives.

What would that mean if we played the game right? If we realized we’re all in this together? There really are things out there that are evil and we really are called to stop them. We are told to be salt and light. We are serving the most awesome and glorious being that there is and he has sent us out there to redeem this world for good.

Stop and think about that. If you’re a gamer like me, consider your favorite RPG for instance. (As I type this, I just finished up awhile ago Final Fantasy IV, The After Years.) You do enjoy playing it and the focus of good conquering evil and maybe you’d like to be the hero of the story. (If you can rename the hero in the story and put in your own, this works even better.) In some ways, you are. This story has multiple heroes however all playing different parts and when we get to eternity, we’ll find out what we did and what rewards we had and they will be based on how well we played the game.

Prayer is not something just nebulous then. It’s talking to the one who is in charge and the one who has the power to help you complete your task. The Bible is not just a lifeless book. It’s a book that can essentially unlock the secrets of ultimate reality to you and by studying it and learning, you can be better equipped. Gaining knowledge is the quest to uncover more of the divine truths the creator has placed in the universe be it in the area of science, philosophy, history, literature, mathematics, etc.

Christianity is not a game. No. It’s serious. Yet maybe we should follow the advice of Lewis and treat this serious object lightly. Maybe we should actually enjoy what we do and realize that serving God is not meant to be a misery as we can often paint it out to be, but a great joy.

Go play!

We’re going to take a little break from our study to consider a topic a friend of mine was talking about with me last night. First, I’d like to think Smithers for his comment. The article I read from him seems quite excellent and I have since added a link to his blog right here. Now on to the topic!

We were talking about skeptics we’ve encountered and there are some that to be blunt, I am stunned they do not see the contradictions. Most notably is the complaint that God is evil in the Old Testament while at the same time they defend moral relativism. I remarked that sometimes I think part of the aspect of judgment day for all is that God honors us in the face of those who have shamed us and shames those who have mocked those who proclaimed the truth in his name.

At this my friend started wondering about our sins. Do I think that they will be made known on judgment day? Will everyone there know what it is that I did all my life? I answered yes. My friend was very concerned about this saying that he didn’t want everyone to know what he had done and still does nor does he want to know what all I’ve done and still do. 

I think we can all relate to that. There’s a joke I heard a long time ago about in London that a telegram was sent one evening to 12 leading officials in the town from someone anonymous who said “All is revealed! Leave immediately!” By morning, half of them were gone.

Many of us can understand that. We don’t want the world to know what we’ve done and what we do and yet this is what I believe will happen on Judgment Day? If I am correct, then how is it that I can take joy and peace on the thought of that day?

I don’t believe there are any secrets in Heaven. No one has to hide anything. The Bible speaks of all being laid bare to account. However, when our sins are presented, God does not condone them. They are inexcusable. We must be absolutely clear on that. For someone interested in further information on this point, I recommend a sermon on excuses and forgiveness in C.S. Lewis’s “The Weight of Glory.” 

He also doesn’t just overlook our sin. There can be none of that here. It’s the final day of reckoning and he can’t treat it like it’s not there. He also doesn’t just forget our sin. He doesn’t somehow wipe his memory clean of any sin we have. He does something far better.

He forgives it.

It’s the imputed righteousness of Christ. He places upon Christ the guilt that we deserve. All that was to our shame will be taken from us and replaced with honor. There won’t be any extra baggage or hidden baggage. We won’t have to hide anything in eternity.

But will people look down on us in Heaven? No way. That’s not an activity of Heaven. Throughout eternity, we will be reminders of the glory of God in that his plan to overcome evil worked. While personal testimonies are not my favorite kind of evangelism, we will be personal testimonies forever in Heaven. 

As for those in Hell, there will be no honor. All that they thought good will instead be a testament to their shame as they did not use it for the glory of God. There is no honor in Hell. There is only eternal shame at what one has lost.

Going back to us, we are there forever. We are forgiven. We are loved and we are loving one another. There is nothing to hide. All is forgiven.

Welcome home.

I’ve been doing a study on the Trinity in Scripture, but I decided to give a brief interruption tonight. Besides, I love John 1:14 and my time is limited tonight and I want to be sure I can give that verse a lot of attention. 

Tonight’s blog is based on a conversation I had with a friend from Bible College that I spoke to online last night. I read something he wrote about how his church did not want to preach good conservative values because it would drive people away. He told of a pastor who had a stripper come forward to receive Christ, but he didn’t tell her to stop what she was doing. After all, that’s how she feeds her family.

Some of us might think that is noble. The pastor’s intentions are good, but good intentions are not enough. When we are judging an action, we cannot look at an intention alone. Now there does have to be a good intention for a good act, but we must ask if this act is helping this woman to become more like Christ.

Now I will say that when we call something a sin, there is a loving way to do it and unloving way to do it and the way to do it will depend on the situation. Sometimes, you will have to be point-blank blunt. Sometimes you won’t. I’d guess that this time a kinder approach would have worked best. If someone has just given their life to Christ though, they should have some idea of how seriously Christ takes sin.

Now some of you are thinking, “Yeah. But that’s her job and she does have to feed her family. What’s she going to do?” Did anyone stop to think that maybe the church could help out actually? Maybe someone from the church could offer to look after the kids. Someone else could help train this woman in how to go out and get a job or else teach her some skill so that she can get a job. In the long-term, someone could find a decent man she can marry who will help provide for her and raise her children.

Wouldn’t any of these be better answers?

I know some of us could say that there are government programs, but you know what? I’m sick of having the state do the work the church should be doing. We offer to help the downtrodden when they want salvation, but when it comes to their physical needs, we pass them off to the state. Didn’t James say something in chapter 2 about addressing someone’s spiritual needs but not addressing their physical needs? Of course, I’m not against getting people to come to Christ, but that’s just the beginning of a long journey. (One that should continue into discipleship and not just having them be converted and that’s the end of it. That’d be like getting the lady to say “I do,” kissing the bride, and then going off on your way.

Also, this kind of idea leads to an entitlement society I fear that thinks the world owes everything to them. Note that I’m specific. I think we should help this woman, but it should not be a hand-out. It should be a hand-up. We want her to achieve so much that when someone else comes in in the same situation, she’s able to be the helper this time. 

We do this with our children after all. Why do parents help their children? So they can keep helping them? No. They help them so they will reach a point where they are no longer dependent on the parents for help.

What this pastor did was not showing love. To not help someone out of doing what is immoral is not love. Sin keeps us from being who we were meant to be in Christ. If something is keeping me from being who I was meant to be in Christ, how is it love to allow me to continue in that?

If we treat sin lightly in the church, we are treating the cross lightly as well. If we treat that lightly, then we are treating the whole of Christianity. We are lowering the sacrifice of Christ and by implication, we are lowering him. Sin is serious business. Sometimes we think we feel too guilty today. If we compared to a preacher like Jonathan Edwards, he said the problem was we don’t feel guilty enough. We don’t treat the holiness of God seriously and we end up making our sin a trifle.

I’m not saying we should walk around in guilt constantly, but we should come to realize the gravity of sin and see it for what it is. Divine treason against the one who is goodness and love in his very nature. Every time we sin, we are claiming that our way is better than his and by implication, we are claiming that he is not who he says he is and that frankly, we ought to be in his place.

Maybe someday pastors will wake up. I don’t think that would just change the church, but it’d change America. I do believe that we have produced a generation that doesn’t know how to think, but frankly, they stopped thinking because the church stopped thinking first. Of course, I’m not saying there are no thinkers in the church. I’m in the church and I’d consider myself a thinker. I’m saying that by and large, the church has become shallow and does not take the search for truth seriously any more. Why should we be surprised when the world follows suit?

What do we need? We need the gospel. We need to realize sin is sin, Christ is Christ, the cross is the cross, and God is God. We need to return to true Christianity. I’m convinced this could change our country. If we don’t, I am quite sure our society in America will fall. That won’t mean the end of the gospel of course. It’ll keep going. The gospel doesn’t need America. America needs the gospel.

In giving the gospel and helping sinners both spiritually and financially, we are showing true love. Let us not lower down the principles of the gospel and call it love. It is anything but love.

I’m going to take a break again from the Trinity series to write about something based on recent events in my life.

I received a pleasant surprised Friday night as a friend who I respect very much in apologetics wrote to me to tell me he was sending me a book. It’s always encouraging to have someone who you see as a hero write to you to let you know that they’re thinking of you and better yet, to send you a gift like that.

This gets me to thinking about being in my position and the question I got asked last night at the house of some friends with their parents. Their parents always enjoy talking to me and at one point in the discussion asked, “How do you stay humble?”

This is something I really wrestle with. I try to not be egotistical and most people would probably tell you I’m not, but there are times I see that inside of myself. Of course, I also realize part of this could be a super-sensitive conscience that makes too much out of things that I shouldn’t. For those who want more of the back story on me, it can be found in a blog I did here:

http://deeperwaters.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/obama-socialism-and-my-story/

I also want to be sure I’m not confusing this with ambition. I think ambition is important. We don’t want to be mediocre for God. When I’m at an apologetics conference and see my heroes speaking on a topic, it gives me something to shoot for. When I see people around me writing books, it gives me the dream of one day having my own book (Which is being written now) being on the shelves someday. I look forward to having a reputation someday and doing the debates.

I will also say plainly I like compliments. However,  it would be odd to meet someone who didn’t. I share those compliments with the people I trust. I will call my family and tell them what is said and tell my roommate and tell other people in my life who I trust and who I’m sure can keep me humble.

I remember being in Florida with an apologist friend of mine at his old church. He would introduce me to people and every time, he would give a huge compliment about me. I at one point told him he’d better stop or I’ll get a big head. He smiled and laughed and said it wasn’t going to happen because I know who I am.

I didn’t understand him then, but I think I do now. My friend knew that with my personality, I’d try to give myself an honest appraisal. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to praise myself and say good things about myself for fear that I will be boasting, but I think stark honesty is needed. If I truly am good at something, I need to be able to say it. What good does it do to deny truth?

I live in a world where it seems people are always saying good things about me and I’m some sort of hero in the field that I’m in. When I look at myself many times, I don’t see it. That’s often dependent on my mood. If I’m in a down mood, I certainly won’t, but sometimes what lifts me up is that unexpected kind word from someone that makes me think “maybe they’re right” and I get a glimmer of hope. I do have strong perfectionistic tendencies as I think many in this field do.

Yet in all of this, I haven’t really answered the question. Is there something else that keeps me humble?

And I do hope I’m humble.

And there is something that does it. There are nights I’ll be alone in my room at night and see all the books that I have. I have five bookshelves full, and it’s not enough. Books are on the floor now. I have a few more out here in our living room. I also have numerous video game systems in our living room. I come from a small town and was an outcast who most people were ready to cast aside and was told to not go into this field of ministry because I couldn’t handle it.

And yet I look at all the stuff I have. I live in a great town. I live with my best friend. I have a good job now. I have been given a mind. I have several other friends here. That doesn’t mean all is perfect. I still seek a loving lady and I still seek to get past some of my own phobias and fears in my life. I pray for my parents also as they can’t really help me financially and I ask others to pray for them. My Dad makes just $7 an hour.

But I look at all those blessings in my life and I think “Who am I Lord that you should bless me in this way?”

I realize it all comes from him.

That keeps me humble.

He has blessed me more than I deserve and I pray it is something I remember more often.

I was going to continue our series some tonight, but something I saw made me think otherwise. There are times a person is moved to write something because they know it will benefit another specifically. I’ll also admit right off that some of this is my own concern for my own self as well in that it is a boat I am usually in and so I can imagine what it’s like for others. Telling my story could benefit me, but I think it could also benefit others.

I’m a perfectionist.

I also think that if you’re a perfectionist, you never really get over being a perfectionist.

I also think everyone in ministry has some degree of perfectionism in them. I’m no exception.

I’ve told my story before as well. This is for those who need a refresher: http://deeperwaters.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/obama-socialism-and-my-story/

I’ll also add that since then, I have got a position in ministry, but I choose to not say where as that would disclose my location. 

Growing up like that, I often saw myself as weak and incapable. It’s probably one reason I never really applied myself to much. I look at where I am now in philosophy and often think “Why weren’t you thinking like that back then?”

And part of me sometimes thinks, “Why aren’t you thinking good today?”

One of my worst fears is that one day I will be seen as some charade. What if I am merely playing the part of the apologist and in the end it isn’t so? What if I don’t possess skill?

In my brighter moments, I know that this isn’t so, but sometimes the bullet from Jezebel can come and it can knock a guy out for a bit. Circumstances come in and your emotions get blown for a loop and they take your rationality with them.

But then some other things happen that pick you up. I just had a friend email me and said he wanted to send me a book. I have no idea what, but this is a highly respectable friend in the apologetics world. Some of you might know him and I think, “Wow. You were thinking about me?” 

Someone will compliment you or maybe it’ll be something else. You’ll have something really good happen at the job. If you’re a guy like me, you might develop an interest in a beautiful lady and suddenly life seems different. The last time the realization came to me, I was actually in the locker room at the Y after my weekly dip in the pool.

Now here’s something I realize. While I would say I am constantly learning, it’s not learning some new apologetics argument that brings me out. It’s simply recognizing something. My friends and family are likely telling me the truth. Some of my opponents might not recognize that, but so what?

Am I going to tell all my friends and family they’re liars?

Am I also not going to recognize who I am in Christ?

Christ didn’t make me to be William Lane Craig or Norman Geisler or Gary Habermas or Ravi Zacharias or Greg Koukl or anyone else you can think of in the field.

He made me to be me. 

Maybe I don’t think like others. Okay. That means something else as well.

They don’t think like me.

Maybe they’ll see things I won’t. 

But maybe I’ll see things they won’t.

I also have to realize I’ll make mistakes.

Who doesn’t?

I won’t always know the perfect thing to say and maybe there isn’t a perfect thing to say sometimes.

I won’t always give a stellar performance.

That’s okay.

I’m still a work in progress.

I now think to my friend who is battling with this also.

Take heart.

You’re not alone.

I’m being quite transparent here, but I’m betting if you spoke to your heroes in the faith, they’d tell you the same thing.

And you know what? I’m going to show a side that could be self-serving some, but there are going to be times that I’ll be down also.

I’ll need you to smack me upside the head then and remind me of the truth.

Just as I hope I’ve done for you.