Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christianity

  • Praying for Our Leaders

    Praying for Our Leaders

    There has been some fuss recently about praying for political leaders, in particularly, regarding an image of folks praying for President Trump. I think that many prayers for and against leaders mistake the value that prayer has. Further, complaining about what other people pray is largely a waste of time, and again reflects a misunderstanding of the value of prayer.

    I recall the quote that “most people want to serve God, but only in an advisory capacity.” (I looked it up and found this attribution to former SBC president Adrian Rogers.) When the majority of our prayers involve telling God what to do, what does that say about our believe in the omniscience, omnipotence, and indeed, the wisdom of God? Many of those who pray positively for President Trump, advising God to destroy his enemies and to prosper the president, also prayed quite negatively regarding President Obama. Just as happens in the broader American society, in Christianity we tend to exchange scripts when the party in power changes. About the same number of prayers get said, and the same number of complaints made. They are just made by different people.

    My prayers for our leaders have not changed with the change of presidents. No, I do not deny having opinions, even strong ones, regarding various political issues. I have just chosen to spend my time on other things. But I prayed regularly that God would bless President Obama, and I continue to pray that God bless President Trump, according to his will.

    How can I do this since I must disagree with substantial policy choices of one or the other? Very simply. I believe that God’s blessing is always a positive thing. Some people worry about prayers that they don’t like. I do not. I believe God can and does work, but I both believe that he doesn’t need advisors, and that he’s not going to let self-appointed advisors get in the way of his divine plan. Some are concerned about “prayers amiss,” but I think that idea is the result of a misapplication of James 4:3, which actually supports the idea that God is not going to respond to a prayer for evil.

    So I welcome prayer, even ones I don’t like. I suspect that if I seek God, I may somehow get closer to him than I was before. The same thing applies even to those who advise God to do things I would disapprove. Opening yourself to God is both dangerous and wonderful.

  • Who Is Saved

    I can believe someone else has a good relationship with God, is saved, or is going to heaven without also believing they are right in all their beliefs. I believe I’m in a good relationship with God and am doubtless wrong about many things.

  • Paul and the Law Tangle

    Paul and the Law Tangle

    I’m working through key elements of Galatians 3 & 4 tonight and drawing in some material from Romans and elsewhere. My main topic will be to look at Paul’s use of the word “law” in these passages. My main references other than the Bible text will be Galatians: A Participatory Study Guide pp. 43-47 and Meditations on the Letters of Paul, Chapter VIII, pp. 89-97

    Here’s a sample:

    No Jew would deny the wisdom of Torah, or disavow its validity. Neither did Paul. When arguing for the universality of God’s promise to Abraham, and that all those who like Abraham have faith in God are justified before God, Paul asks rhetorically, “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law” (Rom. 3:31). For that to be the case, Paul must have in mind more than one way of seeing the authority of the law, or the way it functions. (p. 92)

    The chapter in Herold Weiss’s book (Meditations) is one of the most helpful presentations I’ve found on this subject.

  • Elgin Hushbeck on Apologetics

    Elgin Hushbeck on Apologetics

    One of the blessings in my life is the number of friends I have found (and I don’t always make friends easily) who are willing to have great discussions. By “great” I mean ones in which we challenge one another’s ideas with vigor but without anger or condemnation. If you seek only friends and associates who agree with you, you’re missing out on a great blessing.

    Elgin Hushbeck is such a friend. I think I tend to emphasize the places where we don’t agree over those were we do simply because I find those discussions more useful and enjoyable. Elgin is a Christian apologist, which did not help me to warm up to him or his writing (this was before I was a publisher). Apologists often get a bad reputation for a number of reasons, including obsession that makes them narrow, a vigor in presentation that belies weakness of content, discourtesy, and some carelessness with factual accuracy in a good cause. And this is not to mention mistaking a catalog of facts for the good news of the gospel from time to time.

    Elgin doesn’t do this. I want to call attention to his post yesterday on the Energion Discussion Network.  If we could get the “gently and respectfully” part taken care of, the rest would work much better.

    I have found that the style is not a characteristic of one or another theological or political position. Whatever it is you’re advocating, gently and respectfully is going to accomplish more in terms of communicating your message, assuming that’s your goal. If you just want to stick it to the people who disagree with you, your strategy will obviously differ.

    But with regard to the gospel, if your goal is to stick it to an opponent, don’t imagine that you are actually proclaiming the good news. The good news isn’t that you’re right and the other guy is wrong. Rather, it has something to do with God loving both of you, no matter how wrong you are. It depends on God and the Holy Spirit to fix that wrongness.

    (Featured image credit: Openclipart.org.)

  • Are Sermons of Value?

    Are Sermons of Value?

    I have very frequently spoken disparagingly of sermons. I prefer more interactive activities in smaller groups as a way of learning and passing on information. It’s commonly said that a pastor is lucky if, on a Sunday, any congregants remember the topic of the previous week’s sermon, much less what was said about it.

    On the other hand I remember stunning Dr. James Londis, who was pastor of the Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church when I was an 18-year-old college student and a member. His first sermon there had to do with applying the Laodicean message to his new congregants. Accurately, I might add. I mentioned this memory to him about 40 years after he had preached that sermon. For some reason he was surprised!

    Nonetheless, I publish one book on how to preach (Overcoming Sermon Block), and a number of sermon collections (So Much Older Then … [Bob LaRochelle], The Character of Our Discontent [Allan R. Bevere], A Positive Word for Christian Lamenting, The Forgotten Beatitude, and Holidays, Holy Days, and Special Days. Most of these books are by Dr. William Powell Tuck, who has a few others as well. One of my criteria for publishing a sermon collection is that it is useful for reading as an essay collection as well.

    Bill Tuck, when I interviewed him on the topic, said very simply that a major reason that sermons are looked down on is that so many of them are so bad. They are often poorly prepared, poorly presented, lack evidence of thought and reflection, lack depth, and so forth. I’m going to put the video of my interview with him at the end of this post.

    A problem behind the problems is the lack of time spent in preparation. There is, of course, preparation of the sermon. But there is also preparation of the person. Bill Tuck says this in Overcoming Sermon Block:

    One of the most important disciplines a minister has to maintain is his spiritual or devotional life. If we are too busy for our own personal devotion, we are simply too busy. We have to keep our priorities right. Our personal spiritual nurture is absolutely essential. To fail here is not a  minor shortcoming but neglect in a critical point of our own relationship to God. How can we guide others to worship and serve Christ if we neglect our own spiritual development? Our spiritual development affects our preaching as well. As we “labor” at our spiritual nurture, the amazing thing is that we are not only fed spiritually, but often sermon ideas arise out of our own devotional study and reflection. That is not our main purpose but it happens nevertheless. (p. 18)

    That contains some excellent advice for everyone. I am only rarely called to preach, but I find that when I am called to share, my devotional life is most critical. Sunday School teachers take note.

    Here’s the interview:

  • No Paul Study Tonight

    No Paul Study Tonight

    Due to scheduling conflicts, or more precisely a wall-to-wall day, I will not be doing my video Bible study tonight. I’ll resume next week. In the meantime, you might enjoy my interview with Thomas Hudgins. You can read a text interview here (not a transcript, but a text version of the interview), or watch:

  • How Was Jesus Portrayed as Crucified to the Galatians?

    How Was Jesus Portrayed as Crucified to the Galatians?

     You foolish Galatians! Who put you under a spell? Was not Jesus the Messiah clearly portrayed before your very eyes as having been crucified? 2 I want to learn only one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the actions of the Law or by believing what you heard? (Galatians 3:1-2, ISV, from BibleGateway)

    I only managed to discuss about the first five verses of Galatians during my Thursday night Bible study. Next week I’ll look some at the Spirit and the Law in Romans as well as in the rest of this chapter.

    There are two key points I see in the two verses I quoted.

    1. Paul tells the Galatians that Jesus was “clearly portrayed” to them as crucified. How is that? They obviously didn’t all witness the actual crucifixion. The answer, I think, is that Paul, both in words and in life, portrayed a crucified savior. It’s worthwhile to think about how this might work and how we might each portray Christ crucified to others.
    2. The Galatians should know, according to Paul, by the fact that they received the Spirit. Now how do they know that they have received the Spirit? There are many ways in which people claim to be able to know. Pentecostals might pick speaking in tongues. Holiness Christians might look to the presence of holiness in the life. But I would suggest that this is primarily an internal experience. Yes, a genuine internal experience will bear fruit, but the question here is not whether someone else can tell, but what you know yourself. Paul had likely heard the testimonies of those impacted by his portrayal of Christ crucified, and having heard those, he was shocked that one could abandon such an experience for someone else.

    I suspect, in fact, that for many of the readers/hearers of this letter, the reminder of that experience did, in fact, have a serious impact on their thinking. Why indeed am I looking for another way to receive something I already have? What do I think will be better about my life in the Spirit following circumcision.

    Teachers and preachers might take a lesson here about trusting the experience of their hearers. Refresh their memory; remind them of their experience. Trust the Spirit.

    Here’s my video.

  • Marketing Jesus

    Marketing Jesus

    Shortly after I separated from the Air Force I was chatting with a gentleman while waiting in line for something or other. On realizing that I was a veteran, and in fact had been somewhere that would qualify me as a veteran of a foreign war, he started a pitch to get me to join that fine organization (VFW).

    His initial pitch was simply that I could. I asked him why I should. At this point he was somewhat at a loss and simply told me that they had a wonderful local VFW post where I could drink and swap war stories with other veterans. On short acquaintance he couldn’t possibly have know what a poor pitch that was for me.

    Now please don’t imagine that I’m writing against the VFW, any more than I will be writing against Jesus when I talk about marketing approaches. The VFW does some fine work, which is my point. You can give a poor sales pitch for a good cause and drive people away.

    Fast forward about 12 years to a time when I was looking at church congregations. I had not been a member of any church for those years and more, but as regular readers may know, I did have my MA in Religion (with that wonderful concentration in Biblical and Cognate Languages). This made life a bit difficult for pastors who discussed their churches with me.

    In the end, I was considering two United Methodist congregations. I had attended church and some excellent studies at both, and I liked both organizations in many ways. At one of the churches pastor said: “We don’t care what you believe. If you want to enjoy our fellowship, you’re welcome.” The other discussed my beliefs and how they fit with the congregation.

    Now I’m very interested in openness and acceptance, and I advocate the maximum freedom of belief, but I do think an organization requires some sort of center to make it functional and useful. And a mission. That too.

    Thus I joined the other congregation.

    Over the course of my life I have experienced a variety of sales pitches to get me to accept Jesus Christ as my savior, most of them after I already had. Many of these came from people who felt I hadn’t quite gotten it right. Others came from people who presented their pitch so quickly they hadn’t had time to realize I was already a Christian. One came from someone who saw me reading my Greek New Testament while waiting for tires to be installed on my car, and was convinced that my Christianity must just be a thing of the intellect. He was truly concerned that I might mistakenly think that reading Greek was a means of salvation.

    I’ll call it a means of grace. I didn’t think of saying that to him. It would doubtlessly have sent him ballistic. (Then I would have needed to repent, so perhaps it’s best I didn’t think of it.)

    I would categorize approaches to selling Christianity in a few broad camps:

    1. The desperate. These are the people who are afraid that if you don’t accept Christ while in conversation with them, you will doubtless go to hell. One short prayer, and you’ll at least avoid that. Flames are usually involved in the conversation (pun absolutely intended). Conservative and charismatic Christians are susceptible to the use of this approach. Liberals and other mainliners might be susceptible, but often they don’t believe in hell.
    2. The cultural. Christianity is a good society, sort of like Kiwanis or the Lions Clubs. Good people are Christians and attend church every so often. Come join our church and be socially acceptable to the good people. Mainline congregations are most susceptible to this, but conservatives may fall for it in the right cultural context.
    3. The upwardly mobile. This is the home of the prosperity gospel. The pitch goes that you’re in a lower economic and social class than you’d like to be, and Jesus wants you to have abundant life, so just follow Jesus to health, wealth, and satisfaction. (No, not the satisfaction theory of the atonement. Self-satisfaction.)
    4. The apologetic approach. By this I don’t mean a person who defends elements of the Christian faith, but rather the person who desires to batter down your defenses with his or her command of data.

    In fact, in all of these approaches there’s some truth. Being a part of a caring community can improve your standard of living, your sense of joy, your peace, and many other things. Not quite in the way the prosperity preachers tell it, but it can help. Being part of the church can be a good cultural and social move. Considering your eternal state is likely worthwhile, and studying the data behind your religious faith is constructive.

    There’s an effective temptation to attack every good intention or work. The desperate evangelist is driven by a desire to help. Believing that eternal hell fire is in your future if you don’t accept Jesus as your savior, he feels compelled to make you. This sense led to some theological support for the burning of heretics. What was a few moments of torment in this life compared to what God would do to them in the next? If the torturer could bring this eternal punishment to their minds forcefully enough, perhaps they’d repent and be saved. The temptation here is to take away from God the power of salvation and judgment. Most humans are susceptible to it in some way.

    Then there is the Jesus way. I was hit by it this morning as I was reading texts for next Sunday’s lesson.

    Jesus was saying to everyone: “If anyone wants to come after me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

    Now there’s an “ouch”! No promise of prosperity. No threat of hell. No social acceptability. In fact, if you read on through the end of the chapter, it gets even worse. The facts of the situation were present in the Person.

    I wonder how a church growth program would work that called for people to lose their respectability, give up their comfort, become socially unacceptable, experience pain, and ignore ridicule. I’ve never seen one of those.

    Other than in the gospels.

    Let me look at some other texts from this week’s reading list.

    9He said to me, “My grace is enough for you, because strength is made complete in weakness.” I now gladly boast in my weaknesses because Christ’s strength is all over me. 10So I am pleased in weaknesses, when insulted, when in need, when persecuted, when in hardship, for Christ. For when I am weak, he is strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

    I guess Paul wasn’t up on the latest pitches and methods of evangelism either. And just to add to our feeling of injury and annoyance:

    If we suffer together with him, we will be glorified with him. (Romans 8:17b)

    I was somewhat surprised after reading the scriptures to find that the lesson author managed to write the whole lesson without mentioning suffering. He had some good thoughts, but somehow avoided that one.

    So just what is it we’re proclaiming (or selling)? Are we doing it right?

    (Note: All translations are my own, and are sometimes intentionally loose. Featured image downloade from Pixabay.com, which doesn’t require attribution, but I’ll give it anyhow.)
  • Seeking a Bible Topic

    Seeking a Bible Topic

    Franklin Graham is quoted by the Huffington Post as saying that the President Trump’s refugee ban is not a Bible topic. He actually said a bit more, but “not a Bible topic” is going to be the quote that follows him all the (remaining) days of his life. And well it should, though I think most are missing what’s being said.

    My purpose is not to defend Franklin Graham on this; in fact, I am diametrically opposed to his position on these refugees. I believe that we should welcome Muslims in the same way as we would welcome anyone else in need. It’s relevant, in one way, to point out that many refugees from Syria and Iraq are Christians. But for a Christian that shouldn’t be the issue. If all were Muslims we should remain equally concerned for their welfare, and equally willing to put our own welfare at risk on their behalf.

    But I think the issue here is a bit different. Let me quote just a bit more from the article. (If you’re diligent, you’ll go and read my source, and perhaps some of its sources in turn.)

    “It’s not a biblical command for the country to let everyone in who wants to come, that’s not a Bible issue,” Graham told HuffPost. “We want to love people, we want to be kind to people, we want to be considerate, but we have a country and a country should have order and there are laws that relate to immigration and I think we should follow those laws. Because of the dangers we see today in this world, we need to be very careful.”

    The issue here is not directly that refugees are not a topic in the Bible. The specific question is whether the Bible provides a command that can be directed at the United States, that directs us to admit all refugees. This question is one of hermeneutics. How do you make such a determination?

    One passage that might be cited is this:

     The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19:34)

    That line “love the alien as yourself” might come up in a discussion of how a Christian should look at this. I would not want to be left in a refugee camp for years, and if I had gone through a series of checks in that camp, I would not be delighted to suddenly learn that I would be left there for another six months (or perhaps more). A person who loves an alien as himself probably wouldn’t do that.

    But does this law apply to us right now? I personally believe it applies to me (for reasons I won’t detail here), but does it apply to my country?

    At this point we might consider another passage from Leviticus:

    22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. (18:22)

    Now if Leviticus 19:34 is a command, is not this also a command? If the first applies to America does the second not apply also, and vice versa?

    But what we find is that those people who want Leviticus 18:22 to apply find a way to make it apply. I’m not discussing here whether their way works or not, but merely consistency. A certain number of those don’t want 19:34 to apply and they find a way to explain that it doesn’t. Again, the reverse is also true. No, not everyone is thus inconsistent. Some will apply both and others will not apply both, but there is a considerable amount of inconsistency.

    Is there a valid, consistent hermeneutic that can make one apply and not the other? Possibly. But we rarely hear about that.

    I was teaching the New Life Sunday School class at First United Methodist Church of Pensacola as a guest this Sunday and we discussed this topic a bit. One of the members quickly brought the conclusion: Most of us have our viewpoint first and then find scripture to support it. I pointed out that this was also the case when we reject or accept someone else’s viewpoint and biblical claim.

    From one point of view, I can’t help but agree with Franklin Graham. No, not about refugees. I agree with him that in the sense he describes (using the full quote) that there is no scriptural command that could be said to apply to the United States and that would require that we accept anyone who wants to come here.

    I also disagree, with some vigor. That is not the way to determine what is a biblical issue. I’ll be interviewing one of my undergraduate professors tomorrow evening for our Energion Tuesday Night Hangout. (Note: It appears this hangout never took place. – HN 02/06/2021) I’ll embed the YouTube viewer at the end of this post. He used to tell us to narrow the letter and broaden the spirit. That is, you find out who it applies to originally in the narrowest way possible, but then you find the principle or spirit that inspires that command, and you apply that much more broadly.

    One might say that this approach offers a great deal of leeway. Indeed it does. And so does every approach to interpreting the Bible. That’s because the Bible wasn’t created by a committee of lawyers and mathematicians. Rather, it is the result of the experience of (some of) God’s people with their God.

    As such, the Bible can enlighten, guide, inform, and help, but does remarkably little (if any) direction in the sense that Franklin Graham was apparently applying. If that approach is applied consistently, the Bible fades into insignificance.

    Except as a fig-leaf used to cover our pre-existing passions.

    This is one reason I advocate the process of letting the Bible change you and then that you, through your actions, influence others. Even better, let God use the pages and text of scripture as God wills to change your own life.

    In my case, this would mean adjusting my way of thinking about other people. It would mean making me feel empathy for those who suffer. As such, I would want to live in a nation with policies that reflect such a view. I don’t have to ask anyone to live according to one divine decree or another, always in dispute. Rather, I simply use what influence I have in favor of that position.

    If the Bible is used in the sense of the quote from Franklin Graham, then very little is a Bible issue, at least in terms of politics or society. But if we look at the Bible as one of the ways in which God changes our character, then everything is a Bible issue, because through it I let God change me and then I go forth to influence the world.

    I believe that Jesus would want me to welcome Muslims into my country, my neighborhood, and even my home. But I know people from many faiths, and indeed some atheists who would agree with my goal. So I can advocate this as a good policy from a secular or a religious viewpoint.

    A collection of books I publish and recommend on inspiration.

  • Not Just Money

    Not Just Money

    On New Year’s Day this year I was struck by two texts and decided to make them a kind of theme texts for living during the year. I didn’t really make a plan or a resolution. I was just impressed to keep these two texts available and look at them. I’ve found that I actually end up looking at them at random times. They are Philippians 1:27-30 and Ephesians 5:1-2. At some point I’ll talk about the phrase “be imitators of God” in Ephesians 5:1, which I find challenging, or perhaps intimidating would be more the word.

    Today, however, I read on after the end of chapter one into the first four verses of chapter 2. Here Paul challenges the Philippians to do nothing from selfish ambition or contentiousness (two  closely related ideas!) or from vanity (we could spend a day meditating on that word), but to count others as greater than oneself with humility. Again, we could talk about the latter. Have you ever experienced someone counting something else greater than himself with no humility at all? “Look how great I am! I count even this lowlife failure as more important than I am!”

    But then there’s verse 4: “Don’t look out for your own interests, but for the interests of others.”

    Now there’s the one. If the church should have a key verse, this would be it, I think. It contrasts to the world’s value, expressed to me once by someone advising me on my business: Ain’t nobody cares about your business like you do!

    Now you see how my thinking turns toward business and the making of money. I have nothing against those things, but it’s actually quite easy to be generous with your money and to be contentious and vain with everything else. Thousands of brass plates on church pews, stained-glass windows, and other objects designated for “spiritual” use testify to the fact that there are people quite generous with their money while satisfying their vanity. If you don’t believe me, try removing one of those labeled pews or swap out the stained glass window. Even worse, leave the pew or the window there but remove the name plate. Vanity will jump up and slap you in the face!

    Looking after our own interests crops up everywhere. Why is the color of the church carpet a very contentious thing? We all have colors that we’d like to look at, and colors that we don’t find pleasing. How many times have you heard people argue carpet color on the basis that it would serve someone else better?

    What about a misspelled name in the bulletin when someone serves on Sunday morning? Have you ever heard the complaints about that? The church secretary ought to be fired!

    I don’t mean to list all the ways we can be contentious, as they are so numerous, and so many of them do not have to do with money.

    “Look out for the interests of others,” says Paul.

    One of the great problems with our witness in the American church is that we are so much like all the people we’d like to witness to. We want to explain all the theology to them and get them all straightened out. But what we really need to do is look out for the interests of others.

    And to be a good witness, we need to extend that action outside the church community as well.

    On page 25 of his little book Stewardship: God’s Way of Recreating the World (Topical Line Drives), Steve Kindle quotes 2 Corinthians 8:3-5. I’m just going to highlight one clause: “they gave themselves first to the Lord.” That’s the foundation of stewardship. It’s also the foundation of living in Christian community, and it’s the foundation of being an actual witness (not just a nuisance) to those outside the community. Looking out for God’s interests, perhaps. God is very interested in God’s children, in God’s creation.

    Who is welcome in your church? How will they live with you? How will you live with them? Do you give yourself to God first and then look out for the interests of others instead of your own?

    If you’ve followed me this far, let me suggest a question to think about. If a man and a woman entered your church this Sunday and the woman was wearing a hijab, while both clearly looked middle eastern, what would your reaction be?

    (Featured image credit: Openclipart.org.)