To Shut Up Or Speak Up? That Is The Question.

There is a believer I know who is divorcing her husband. She is walking in rebellion, no longer wanting to walk with Christ but still recieve all the benefits of doing so. Her husband is powerless to change her mind/ heart and devestated by her course of action. He has been getting counseling from the church. The elders and counselor all agree that she has no biblical grounds for divorce. While, at first, they were going to confront her in her sin they are no longer going to do so for fear this may drive her further away from God. Had she maintained her volunteer status with the church they would have stepped in but since she has stepped down from the ministries she was serving in they are not going to approach her about her sin and treat her as an unbeliever.

The husband asked me what I thought about all this and below was my reply (with the names removed to protect both the innocent and the guilty).

"Well, it seems to me that they are referring to Matt. 18. This is a three step process where after the third step, if the person will not repent, then you treat them as an unbeliever (which in bible times dealt with the excommunication of the person from the fellowship of the believers). The reason for this was because they would not have fellowship with people who claimed to be in Christ yet refused to live as Christ.

While I think this is a biblically valid means of discipline I would also contend (based solely upon what you have told us) that they are bypassing all three steps and skipping right to the end; except in this case they are still willing to have her fellowship with them. This is not the biblically identified way of addressing sin in the life of a believer; especially one who is still claiming to be a Christ follower
(as she is doing). By skipping to the end they are cowardly avoiding the difficult task of confrontation and restoring a fallen brother. In doing so they are neglecting to love her as Christ calls the church to love one another."

As someone who is going into the ministry fulltime let me say that I in no way look forward to having to do this in the life of someone I have fellowship with. Still, the process is clear and it is for the sake of restoration that it must be done. As scripture tells us, "Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins" James 5:20. This must also be done with gentleness and respect and after a period of self-examination lest we be found guilt of 'plank-eye' syndrome.

Restoration is the goal of Matthew 18. When we think that our efforts in this area will be ingnored or possibly make the situation worse we are allowing fear and not hope to dictate our response. What if the opposite happens? What if the person actually says, 'hey you know what? You are right. Forgive me! I have been living in sin and need to turn back to living in righteousness.' This is a rosey and over-simplified picture I have just painted I know but... would not a response of repentance be worth the risk?

To be sure the heart and tone of the confrontation need to be saturated with love, truth and grace but confrontation must happen if we are going to love one another well.

Just some thoughts on whether to shut up or speak up.

Earth: Young or Old

You know there is a great deal of debate on how old the earth really is. The issue at hand for Christians and skeptics alike seems to be the "tension" between what science says the age of the Earth is and what the Bible says it is.

Let me throw my two cents into the pot just to keep things stirred up!

My first thought is this - We read in Gen. 1:1-2 the following:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

Now my first question is raise because of verse 2. Namely, how long was the earth in this condition before verse three?

Answer: We do not know. It could be billions of years for all we know. The point is the time that lapses durring verses 1 & 2 does not effect verses 3-31. Also we do not know how much time went by before the fall.

So there is one biblical explanation for an old earth/universe. But let me throw out another explanation that I am finding to be more probable.

What if God made the earth and, in fact, the whole universe fully mature? Here is what I mean.

For example, when God made man He made them fully grown people. He did not take an egg in one hand and a sperm in another and mash them together, holding them in His hands until 40 weeks had gone by, nurtured a child, help him grow from baby to boy and from boy to man. No, He created Adam (and Eve) already fully mature creatures, past puberty and capable of producing offspring right from the start. So, even though they had the appearance of, say, a 30 year old man and woman, they in fact were actually only 1 day old as far as actual time is concerned. The same is true of the vegetation, the birds of the air, beasts of the land and the creatures of the sea.

Does it not stand to reason that when God created everything else that he did so as a fully mature Earth ready and capable of handling what God was about to put on it? That the sun was made fully mature and ready to provide the life sustaining energy the Earth would need to sustain what God was going to put on it? That the Universe itself was made fully mature and ready to handle the earth that God made and put in it?

Here is my point: While science may in fact accurately observe an old Earth, it does so based upon appearance not actual time. Meaning - while the Earth may seem old given it's mature state, in fact only about 10,000 years of actual time has elapsed. Thus, when we do carbon dating and measure the universe in light years or whatever, what we are measuring is actually the 'maturity' of the universe and not the actual amount of 'time' that has lapsed.

If we think that time and maturity are the same then we are making a huge assumtion and run the possibility of misleading our selves into thinking that the earth and the universe took billions of years to get to the point it is at now. If your view is that the two are the same, I can understand the difficulty in reconciling science with scripture.

Just some food for thought when considering Earth: young or old.

Getting Inside My Head

To the right are the results of two tests that I took. They are to determine which theologian I most line up with. I was surprised by the results of this one. The second one shows the theological worldview I look at life from. The results for this did not surprise me.

Here are the links to these two sites if you too would like to take this test.

Theologian : http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=7092N

Theological worldview: http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=7095N

It looks like the percentages for my worldview got cut off when they posted in my blog.

They should read as follows 89% - 75% - 64% - 57% - 57% - 57% - 46% - 39% - 32%

Enjoy!

The View From Back To Front

I am taking a church history class for my masters. We are getting into some events that have shaped the church into what it is today; namely Luther and the Reformation. I sit and read with awe at the Popes response to Luther's claims (his 95 points). Luther was labeled a heretic by the church simply because he went against the established church tradition. when asked to recant his statements, salvation by faith alone being one of them, Luther replied simply by asking the pope and church authorities to show him his error biblically. If there was no biblical proof for his error then he was not going to recant.

I understand where the church was coming from though...and it is a warning to us all. The church had become an elite group with power over the masses. There influence and power was something they held on to tightly. It was also absolute. In this the church became corrupt selling indulgences; a practice Luther adamantly opposed. Luther challenged not only the power of the church but the relevance of the established hierarchy itself. Like the Pharisees before them, the bishops and the Pope resisted with all their might. They refused to return to the scriptures to refute Luther's claims and consequently split the church in two.

What a lesson for us today. It is important to know why we believe what we believe, why we do what we do. It is also important that these beliefs and practices are supported by Scripture. Above all else, the lesson I take away from this is that it is better to admit error and walk away having embraced the truth than to win an argument in stubborn denial of truth.

These are just a few lessons I have learned looking at the view from back to front.

Discover the Meaning of Worship

I wanted to share some thoughts I had regarding worship, our ministry context and the issues we need to be addressing as the church in western culture.

For what it is worth here are some thoughts:

Given the whole…I think our understanding of worship is wrong when we come together on a Sunday morning. I am so guilty of this myself but, I am finding that when I come on Sunday I am ready to receive from God a word or encouragement or something that will carry me through from one week to the next. I find myself saying things like "Wow the singing really blessed me this morning" or "I got a lot out of the sermon this week" or "I was really challenged/ encouraged by this or that". It is all about what I get out of our corporate time.

This is the complete opposite of what worshiping God is. Worship is what we give to God to celebrate Him. It is what we offer to Him for His glory and purpose; to declare His greatness and goodness. What I get out of it is inconsequential and entirely irrelevant. What matters is whether or not I have made an offering to the Lord that attributes His worth and that He finds pleasing and acceptable.

What would happen if, one Sunday morning, we told people that they had to come to church prepared to give something to God and the focus of that offering was the glory of God Himself. Not how much better off I am and how good my life is or what I get out of being in a relationship with God but rather a praise, declaration and celebration of who God is what He has done, how He is mighty and good, etc. What would happen if we said there was going to be no “planned” singing, sermon or church program at all but rather each person had to come Sunday morning to present to God an “offering” of some kind where He was the sole focus; i.e. a song, poem, praise/ testimony, prayer, tithe… you get the idea. As I read in God’s Word that He inhabits the praises of his people, I can not help but think this is more of what He has in mind rather than the “church” we do/ have each Sunday. I know this sounds radical but I think there is something to all this.

I am going to stop now before I run the risk of ranting.

I would absolutely love to get your reaction to this perspective and how it would change not only our worship but our relationship with the living God Himself as we discover the meaning of worship!!

Logan, The Sky Angel Cowboy

What a great reminder of how God reminds even the youngest among us of the sacrificial Gift he gave us on Christmas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCdZwitrNoY&feature=related

The Evidence No Atheist Can Deny

It took me by surprise at first. In the Faith section of our local newspaper was an article on the new book “The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings For The Nonbeliever”. This book is being edited by Christopher Hitchens; arguably one of the worlds leading atheistic thinkers today. I say I was taken by surprise because the atheist’s position is one of non-belief. Many would reason that if you hold to a position of non-belief then you do not have faith; something that would logically be required in order to make the faith section. After further reflection, however, I found the article to be appropriately placed. Here is why.

The atheist position holds to the idea that since the scientific evidence cannot irrefutably point to the existence of God, why believe in Him. Faith is a difficult concept for the atheist. They see it as something believers hide behind when there are no answers to tough questions. Faith is seen as a road block to rationality. What they are missing however, is the view from the other direction. The scientific evidence also cannot irrefutably disprove the existence of God, something that the noted Oxford biology professor and atheist Richard Dawkins admits to. Therefore, any position on God’s existence one way or the other requires (dare I say demands) faith. So I agree that religious people believe what they do based on faith… but so does the atheist.

Atheist’s claim their position is based on logic, evidence, rationality and reason. To them any claim to faith (Christian faith in particular) is lacking in these qualities. Yet there are those who are exceptionally brilliant that use these qualities in full measure and still hold a position of faith; G.K. Chesterton, Dinesh D’Souza, Ravi Zacharias, John Lennox and C.S. Lewis to name a few. However, these men are great because of their rarity in the faith not their common place. Most of us are too busy to do what is required to love God mightily with our minds. We are saved ourselves and that is satisfactory for us.

Consequently, a lack of evidence continues to be the main thrust for the atheistic argument. If the evidence was there they would believe God is real. As I think about that, I have to admit there is little evidence to prove God’s existence. I say this with the words of Jesus in mind when he said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” If the faith community is honest with itself this is something we do not excel at given the whole. We look too much like the world to stand out as light shining in the darkness. The first century church grew solely because of how they loved each other. This was the evidence for the existence of God and the truth of the gospel back then, it is the only true evidence for the skeptic today. We so often demand the pastor practice what he preaches while at the same time ignore the fact that we ourselves are not living what we believe in the way we know we should.

Thus, we find Hitchens words to be true when he says, in spite of their claims “people are not as religious as many think.” As a Christian, I find the truth of this comment disheartening. The outsider looks in only to find so little of the life of the church being devoted to living for the glory of God. It may say so in the mission statement of each particular church, but it is not being lived out well enough to make a noticeable, measurable difference in our culture today.

Friends, this should not be so. Living our faith is the evidence for the truth of the gospel that the world needs. Doctrine and creed alone leave the skeptic bereft of divine satisfaction. They may deny the infallibility of the Scriptures, doubt its claims, point out our imperfections and call us irrational, illogical, unthinking and unreasonable, but the one piece of evidence they will never be able to deny is the contagious, abundant, overflowing, uncontainable, irresistible, eternally full, transformed life of a Christ follower.

So shine your light brightly. Live like God has made a difference in your life. Let us together, as the church community of Jesus Christ, give the skeptic the one piece of evidence they cannot deny - a transformed life!