Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christianity

  • Selling Christianity

    Laura has an excellent post on this. She links back to an earlier post I wrote, but that’s not why I’m calling it excellent. She also makes a number of good points, and links to a number of good posts.

    Some Christians make the assumption that if you’re not “in your face” about your faith, you’re not serious about your faith. After all, how can you be quiet when people are going to hell? That’s one reason a number of people complain when I call myself a moderate Christian. How can one be moderate about Christianity? You’ve got to be on fire!

    But regarding your faith as important does not mean you need to embrace ineffective or unethical methods of witnessing. Under unethical I would include any means of witnessing that doesn’t recognize the person to whom you witness as a child of God, endowed with the ability to make his or her own choices. Thus a Christian witness should try to look at God’s children the way God does, and God not only cares about us, but respects our choices.

    Any approach to witnessing that drives people away is ineffective. I recall one teacher saying once that we should make sure that when we are done conversing with someone that it will be easier, not harder, for the next Christian to talk to that person. Sometimes that will mean that I have to shut up completely, because anything I say will make things worse.

    The most important thing to remember, I think, is that God is responsible for conversions. You are not. I am not. God is responsible for heaven and hell. You and I don’t get to make those calls. God is also sovereign, and he doesn’t need our help running the universe. What does that leave us? Well, we simply are called to give witness.

    There’s always the “gospel offends” excuse. Now I do believe that the gospel offends. Grace is unfair. God’s grace is going to let people into heaven that I don’t really like all that much. But much of the actual offense people have against Christians is not due to the gospel. Often it is something precisely the opposite of God’s grace that offends them. When Christians are unforgiving and judgmental, when they arrogate to themselves God’s prerogatives of judgment, when they treat non-Christians with disrespect, those people are offended. Even though Christians have done the offending, the gospel was not at issue.

    There are two elements to a Christian witness. First is a Christian life. Not a perfect life, mind you, but a life aimed at discipleship. Second is the confession. The reason I put the confession second is that a transformed life will draw questions. The confession comes in answer.

  • Enthusiastic for Everything

    Adrian Warnock has written an interesting and challenging post titled I DON’T WANT BALANCE, I WANT IT ALL!. There is a great deal in that post with which I not only sympathize, I empathize–I’ve been there.

    For me one place I want both is in the intensity of much charismatic worship. I have experienced that in many places, including the Brownsville Revival here in Pensacola. It’s an interesting feeling, however, to realize that many of the people with whom you are worshiping would regard you as questionable at best for your theological views.

    I also have enjoyed the theological footwork of the reformed. Since I mentioned a charismatic place by name, let me just mention McIlwain Memorial Presbyterian Church (PCA) here in Pensacola. At a conference they hosted I enjoyed listening to folks like James Boice and John Blanchard, and even sang Charles Wesley’s “Oh for a Thousand Tongues” with that reformed congregation. It was both intellectually and spiritually stimulating. Their pastoral staff has been friendly over the years, and I’ve enjoyed working with them. Yet at the same time I knew I would be questionable as a church member and would certainly never teach there because of their doctrinal standards.

    That’s why when an opponent dubbed me a “liberal charismatic” I adopted the term, at least partially. I prefer “passionate moderate,” but “liberal charismatic” has always seemed to catch something of that which drives me.

    I was thinking of one of my normal long posts in response, when I encountered this post by Dave Warnock, which says what I wanted to say, and does it better. Check it out.

    I’ll add just a note to commenter GlennSP, who accuses Dave of bring in a subject that has no reference in the post. To me, however, it does. I want all those things Adrian wants, and I also want them for my wife, my daughter, and for all the women I’ve encountered in the church, many of whom are struggling to find a place they can use the gifts God has given them. I want it for a newly ordained United Methodist pastor whom I’ll leave nameless, who only entered ministerial candidacy when she was into middle age because when, as a young child, she heard God’s call to be a pastor, and was told by a respected elder, “Girls can’t be pastors.” It does have reference, because when I say I want it all, I mean that I want it all for everybody.

  • St. John Chrysostom Quote

    I’m reading the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament, Volume X, Hebrews, and I found this interesting quote from St. John Chrysostom:


    St. John Chrysostom

    We ought to receive all things with faith and reverence, and, when our discourse fails through weakness and is not able to set forth accurately the things that are spoken, then we ought especially to glorify God, in that we have such a God, surpassing both our thought and our conception. For many of our conceptions about God we are unable to express, and many things we express but do not have the strength to conceive. For instance, that God is everywhere we know, but how we do not understand. There there is a certain incorporeal power, the cause of all our good things, we know, but how it is or what it is, we know not. We speak and do not understand! I said that he is everywhere, but I do not understand it. I staid that he is without beginning, but I do not understand it. I said that he begot from himself, and again I know not how I shall understand it. And some things there are that we may not even speak–as, for instance, that thought conceives but cannot utter. [p. 13]

    Perhaps we could all (me especially) do with a bit of humility regarding our knowledge of God and divine things.

  • Churches other than Roman Catholic are not True Churches

    I always knew I was a heretic:

    Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches. (From MSNBC.com)

    Well, actually, I never regarded the Catholic church and the pope as having any authority over me in any case, but I expected this kind of nonsense when this pope was elected, and here it is.

  • Congratulations David Warnock

    . . . who is now ordained and received into full connexion by the Methodist Church of Great Britain. I very much enjoy David’s blog, and truly could link to it much more frequently than I do. He will be a great asset to the Methodist church and to the church universal.

    Rejoice with and for him!

  • A Visit to the St. Gregory Palamas Monastery

    Kevin at Everyday Liturgy is beginning some reflections on his visit to St. Gregory Palama monastery. This caught my attention, since my recent discussions of the atonement led to some discussion of the Eastern Orthodox view of the atonement, and thence to some articles on St. Gregory Palamas, and I now have a plan to acquire a copy of a book about him.

    Here’s a taste:

    I went to the monastery partly expecting to see a different world of great and explicit spiritual feats – what I found was a community of simple men, living simply, working out their salvation by simple means. I think I might have been able to deal with the realization of my former misconcieved expectations, for if their world was so incredibly different from my own, I might have been better able to excuse my personal entanglements in wordly concerns. But, since their lives were made up of all the elements as mine, I found myself without excuse and felt somewhat exposed by the light the monastery shone on my life. Since returning, I have been wondering how I can better live the life of the Gospel in my own place, how my desk job can be an obedience, how I can pray more, how I can respect and serve others, keep silence when necessary and speak words of love when possible.

    Check it out!

  • Update on Muslim-Christian Episcopal Priest

    Thanks to Hot Air with hat tip to Pursuing Holiness, I found an update on the episcopal priest who wants to be a practicing Muslim at the same time she is an Episcopal priest.

    I blogged on this previously, noting at the time that I was a big tent person, but that too large a tent would lead to a crash. I thought this represented way too large a tent. Redding can pursue some interfaith path if she wants, but it should not be as ordained clergy in a Christian denomination.

    It seems now that the bishop with disciplinary authority, the one who ordained her, has determined that the combination doesn’t work. According to the Seattle Times,

    The Rev. Ann Holmes Redding, a local Episcopal priest who announced she is both Muslim and Christian, will not be able to serve as a priest for a year, according to her bishop.

    During that year, Redding is expected to “reflect on the doctrines of the Christian faith, her vocation as a priest, and what I see as the conflicts inherent in professing both Christianity and Islam,” the Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf, bishop of the Diocese of Rhode Island, wrote in an e-mail to Episcopal Church leaders.

    Redding was ordained more than 20 years ago by the then-bishop of Rhode Island, and it is that diocese that has disciplinary authority over her.

    This sounds appropriate to me.

  • New Philophronos Blogroll Member

    I join with Laura in welcoming Discovering the Heart of God as a new Philophronos Blogroll member. Go check out his blog.

    I’m going to link to a specific post from the Pacesetters Bible School Newsletter to which I’m the primary contributor.

  • Being Other Worldly or Being Christian

    The Evangelical Ecologist has an excellent post titled Closing Credibility Gaps. I think that I’m in a good position to underline his post, as a member of a congregation of the United Methodist Church, one of those declining mainline denominations. Just so the error seekers know that I saw it, I will quibble slightly over the use of an example statement from the Anglican Church (UK) followed by an example of decline from the Episcopal Church (USA). The Anglican church does indeed have its share of problems, but it is a beast of a different color from the Episcopal Church. They fall under a larger umbrella together in the Anglican communion, but that doesn’t make them of the same denomination. Nonetheless, I don’t think that vitiates the overall point of the essay.

    I commented tangentially on this issue, though not in direct relation to ecology, in my post Christian Essentials: Incarnation at the Center:

    Christianity can’t retreat into being simply a system of ethics. It involves ethics, but it also involves redemption and empowering, the means of creating ethical people by redemption, but even more the means of bringing people into touch with God.

    I could rephrase that as Christianity cannot retreat into being a system of politics, or of science, or of any similar thing. Whatever positions we may take as Christians on anything at all, it has to start with being Christian. Why is this so?

    Christianity takes a good deal of work. Even if you drop most of the doctrines, take away the servant leadership and the discipleship, and make it essentially a social club, you still have to maintain the club house (the church), pay the leadership and staff, and people have to go to meetings. Now if the church is merely a social club, why wouldn’t one find a cheaper way to accomplish those goals. I guarantee you that church architecture is not the most economical way out there to construct a clubhouse.

    Now if you’ve been a member of the club all your life, you may feel inclined to remain a member. But what about new people? If your selling points on your church are entirely made up of political and social goals, why should somebody join the church? What you’re telling the potential new member, or the person you are trying to keep as a member is this: “Come join our social and political movement. We cost more, we’re less effective, but we have the traditional label ‘Christian’.”

    I believe this has been the major failing of Christian liberals. We (I’m called liberal often enough to use an inclusive “we”) have kept all the social goals, but in order not to put anyone off, we have been afraid to pursue any sort of spiritual or doctrinal standard whatsoever. I commented in an earlier post that when I first decided to join a United Methodist congregation I checked out two different ones. In the first one the pastor kind of chuckled at my interest in the church’s doctrinal positions and said, “We don’t really worry that much about what you believe. If you enjoy fellowship with us, you can join.” The other pastor asked me about my experience and relationship with Jesus. I joined the second.

    Being inclusive can eliminate the barriers to people entering the congregation but at the same time it can remove all identity from that congregation and thus any positive reason to join.

    The Evangelical Ecologist is absolutely right. We can talk and talk about this as churches, but why is it that anyone should listen? Are our councils of clergy more knowledgeable about climate change than various scientific groups? Do we have some extraordinary expertise in administration so as to help implement all this legislation? If you’ve participated in church councils, I suspect you already know we have neither of those elements. What the church could have, and should have is the moral impetus to challenge and empower people to implement change. But that moral impetus can only come from conviction that is part of an active spiritual life.

    Though I believe there are particular doctrines that are better than others, I don’t think the primary problem of mainline denominations is that we believe the wrong things on specific doctrines. It is that we don’t, as denominations, believe anything at all enough to care about it. As Christians I believe the incarnation should be at the center of all we do, but that doctrine has to be a living thing in our lives so that we cannot imagine being without it. It has implications in our lives (“Christ in you, the hope of glory” – Colossians 1:27), and those implications must be important.

    If we don’t have Christ at the center, then we are simply another social service organization, with a bunch of excess religious baggage to make us less efficient. Why should people get on board?

    The place of Christianity in this kind of social activity is redemptive, empowering, life-giving, and motivating, a body filled with the breath of the Holy Spirit, ready to act. That must be the case for Christianity to have a great impact. Personally I haven’t tried to take a position on global warming as such, because I don’t know the science well enough to defend any position I take. But I do know that there are good things that I can do, things that make sense whether global warming or global cooling is correct.

    In doing those things, “the love of Christ urges me on” because I am called to live a life empowered by the incarnation, guided by the two laws, one of which is love for my neighbor.

  • Links on Biblical Inspiration

    A discussion of my book When People Speak for God is taking place on the Compuserve Religion Forum. At the same time, Amazon.com has dropped the price to $12.23 ($17.99 suggested retail).

    I have also just written some notes on Justin Holcomb’s book Christian Theologies of Scripture over on my Participatory Bible Study blog. While this book didn’t have an impact on mine, as I received my copy too late, I consider it an excellent resource for those interested in studying the inspiration of scripture.