Category: Christianity

My wife asked me to write a devotion for her devotional list and I thought it would make an excellent entry for this blog as well.

²⁶Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee named Nazereth, ²⁷to a virgin who was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸And when he had arrived he said, “Greetings, favored woman! God is with you!” ²⁹At this word she was troubled and wondered about this sort of greeting. ³⁰And the angel said to her, “Don’t be afraid, Mary. For you have found favor with God. ³¹Now look! You will become pregnant and will give birth to a son, and will call his name Jesus. ³²He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father. ³³And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom won’t have an end.” ³⁴But Mary said to the angel, “How will this happen, since I have never had sexual relations with a man?” ³⁵And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the highest will overshadow you. That’s why the son to whom you will give birth will be called Son of God. ³⁶And Elizabeth your kinswoman, who was called barren, is also six months pregnant with a boy in her old age, ³⁷because nothing is impossible for God.” ³⁸Then Mary said, “Alright! I’m the Lord’s servant! Let what you have said happen to me.” And the angel left her. — Luke 1:26-38 (Totally Free Bible Version Project)

Now what one usually expects a Christian writer to do at this point is to talk about the virgin birth and what that means in Christian doctrine. But what I want to do instead is talk about people and how they react to new revelations of God’s will and his word. Let’s just think about the process here.

1. An angel comes with a revelation. Matthew doesn’t mention an angel’s name, nor a specific appearance to Mary. I believe that Luke does so to try to emphasize the importance of the message and the shock that Mary must have felt at his appearance. Sometimes we can get a much better idea of what a gospel author is trying to emphasize by comparing details like this between the stories in each gospel.

2. Mary is surprised when she is greeted as an important person. This is a common reaction to a divine messenger in the Bible. Mary can’t imagine that she is that important. This is a good thing to consider as you face the day and your work. You may not receive your work from an angel. You may not receive it from somebody important. But you may see a challenge that requires your response. Will the challenge trouble you, or will you be ready to face it?

3. The angel tells Mary not to be afraid. No matter what the challenge or where it comes from, fear isn’t going to help. Fear isn’t going to do anything for you. The first thing to do is to overcome your fear. “Fear not!” is a good message for life.

4. Mary is told that she is more important than she thinks. You too, may be more important than you think. No, I’m not talking to the arrogant folks and those with big heads. I’m talking to the people who are slogging through their days doing the things that are set before you. You’re more important than you think. There are no unimportant jobs; there are just people who insist on doing them as though they are unimportant.

5. Mary finds out that she is not really going to be the central character. Sometimes we think that the only way we can be important is to be front and center, to be the person that everyone is talking about. But Mary finds out that she will be important because of her son. Sometimes our important work is simply to make it possible for someone else to do something. Perhaps others will get most of the credit. But just because you’re not in public getting the praise doesn’t mean that you’re not an important person.

6. Mary wonders how it’s all possible. The answer to this is simple. God’s power is going to come over her. Now we often think of God’s power as earthshaking or always miraculous. But God’s power is at work in your body and in your mind as long as you can breathe and you can think. It’s all possible because the power of God is on you–not in causing daily virgin births, but in making it possible for you to fulfill your calls and tasks.

7. Mary comes to acceptance. Let it happen! When you have realized who you are, when you have heard the task, when you realize what a wonderful creation you are and that God’s power works in you, you can say, “Bring it on! I’m ready for the call!”

How about facing this Monday with the words of Mary: “Alright! I’m the Lord’s servant! Let what you have said happen to me.”

There’s a church I drive by pretty regularly. They have a quite prominent sign, and on the front of their building they have a list of doctrinal positions held by their church. I used to think it was a singularly unwelcoming sort of thing to put on the front of a church. During Hurricane Ivan, all the signs were apparently damaged by the wind and removed.

Just today, I drove by and saw that the signs have been put up again. Here’s how they read:

Fundamental	Evangelistic
Missionary	Pre-Millenial
Independent	Traditional
KJV 1611	KJV 1611

Yes, KJV 1611 is there twice.

Now this church, which I will not name, has every right to believe what they want and to put whatever they want on the front of their church. But by putting on the front of the church, they are projecting a message, and I got to thinking about just what that message was.

Most Christians would notice a few missing items, I think. The word Jesus doesn’t occur. There’s nothing about God’s love, reconciliation, salvation, forgiveness, or service. I don’t imagine that’s for lack of space. They could, for example, have replaced one of the “KJV 1611” entries with “We love you” or “Grace is wonderful” or perhaps just “Forgiven!” But even so, I would have to wonder about their priorities. Somehow, the essence of that church has been boiled down to these eight entries, one of them repeated twice, and there’s really nothing very positive about those entries.

Some of them seem quite contradictory. For example, we have “fundamental.” Now I am far from a fundamentalist, and I won’t speak for fundamentalism, but most fundamentalists I’ve encountered are interested in getting back to the basics of Christianity. In fact, I’ve rarely had a conversation with a fundamentalist that didn’t center around something about Jesus. I might well have disagreed with what they thought about Jesus and what he was really about, but they were definitely interested in trying.

But how does “fundamental” fit with “KJV 1611?” The “1611” part should tell us pretty quickly that these people are not interested in any Christian fundamentals. They’re not particularly interested in finding out what Jesus said and did if they rely on a fairly ordinary translation of the Bible made nearly 1600 years after Jesus lived. What is fundamental about a translation anyhow?

On the other side we have “Pre-millenial.” If I remember rightly, before the hurricane it included pre-tribulationist as well. If that is the case, I congratulate them on moving that little gem of doctrine down their priority list. But pre-millenial isn’t exactly all that fundamental or traditional either. It’s just one of many ways of interpreting Revelation, something people with very fundamentalist views can easily disagree on, and fundamentalists in my experience often agree to do just that.

Then we have “missionary” and “evangelistic.” But again, this goes with KJV 1611. What’s missionary about forcing people to use a Bible that is in a language they barely understand if they do at all. Evangelism is the spreading of the good news. But what good news is contained in the eight items emphasized on this church’s front wall?

In fact, these two words, “missionary” and “evangelistic” strike me as the least appropriate entries in the list. This list is inward looking. It’s self-congratulatory. It’s designed to bring in people who agree with the congregation on complex doctrinal details. There is nothing particularly missionary about it. There is no good news here. There is only an invitation for the “in” crowd to come join the club.

There is indeed very little independent about this. There may be no external denominational control, but that may well be for the worse, because there is no way to correct a self-destructive tendency of doctrine.

Now I do spend some time attacking the teachings of the KJV Only crowd. I think the KJVO movement is pretty silly. I’ve talked about it a good bit before. (See my Bible Translations FAQ for more information or my book What’s in a Version?.)

What I want to point out here is that it is very easy for us, as Christians, to put our doctrines on our sleeves, and let our doctrines determine who we will fellowship with. We let our doctrines replace our discernment. We let the “stuff” we believe replace the need to serve other people. We need to not only proclaim good news, but we need to be good news. One can get doctrines get in the way whether one is liberal, moderate, conservative, charismatic, pentecostal, evangelical, or fundamentalist.

The real question is not what your doctrines acutally are. It is whether your doctrines allow you to put people first.

I believe it is quite possible for people to be “saved” or “in right with God” or “in good spiritual health” with a wide variety of doctrinal positions.

Doctrines can be good. They can keep us pointed in the right direction. But as soon as you find your doctrines getting between you and other people, perhaps you need to check them out. After all, Jesus said of people, “You will know them by their fruit” (Matthew 7:16). He said it of people. I would suggest it’s one test you must apply to doctrines as well.

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Does the command of Jesus to love one another mean that I have to give up my life?

I’ve been involved in debating that issue over the last couple of weeks on the Compuserve Religion Forum.. It seems to me that the issue is not very debatable, that it’s clear that a faith that was founded by someone who gave up everything, including his life, and underwent the greatest possible humiliation in doing so, would regard giving up one’s life as the highest ideal.

But is it a command? Is it something we’re expected to do? Is it a sin if I don’t?

First let me make some distinctions. I don’t think Jesus is telling his disciples they need to run into every burning building. Nor is he telling his disciples they need to abandon all wisdom. Sometimes no life can be saved, and the risk is not appropriate. Sometimes you will just die without accomplishing anything. But when the you get to that final case, the one where you are quite certain your life will be lost, but you can save someone else, Jesus is giving you an example.

I’m not saying that Jesus expected us to be perfect. He knew we weren’t. Paul said that he had not attained (Philippians 3:12-16). The author of Hebrews said we should go forward toward perfection (Hebrews 6:1). That doesn’t mean we’re always going to live up to it. But it does mean that providing excuses for doing less is not an option. We need to hope and pray that we can live in that manner. Probably you, like me, are not 100% certain of what you would do. Unless you’ve faced that situation, I’m not sure you can be. But the example has been given, the ideal portrayed.

Most particularly, I think, this applies to situations in which one is faced with the necessity of compromising with evil in order to save one’s own life. The standard scenario for discussing this is the holocaust. To put it simply, most of Poland’s Jews died; most of Denmark’s were saved. Why? Because in Denmark people stood up to the Nazis as a nation, together. Each person contributed what little they could. In Poland, there were many, many individuals who made an effort, but for the most part, people chose to save their own lives.

Their position is easy to understand. Each one might have felt that they would only lose their lives if they took action. But each action in standing up to evil can help generate actions by others. Good can grow and multiply, just like evil.

Thank God for those who do stand up, who live up to the ideal.

Before you start reading this, let me warn you that I sometimes make weird connections between one event or word and another.

Last night I attended a portion of a 24 hour praise and worship marathon. Since I like my comfort pretty well, I took along a nice, comfortable, folding, cloth chair. As I sat there listening to and participating in the music, I told a few of my friends who stopped by to greet me that I was conducting spiritual warfare from a “comfy chair.” This was good for a number of laughs.

When I got home I remembered another connection. In one of the Monty Python episodes several characters, representing the Spanish inquisition, keep on appearing in the scenes. This is the episode that uses the phrase, “Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!”

In one of those incidents the inquisitors are preparing to torture someone, and they call for the “comfy chair.” The victim has to sit in the comfy chair, presumably being pressured into confessing. It makes for a good laugh. Those who have seen it will know that it views much better than it tells.

But this weird chain of connections got me back to thinking about spiritual warfare and what it is; more importantly, what it is not.

Spiritual warfare is one metaphor used in scripture for the struggles of the Christian life. It’s a bit ironic, though many people who teach and claim to practice spiritual warfare miss the irony and tend to take this literally. Even though Paul tells us that our struggle is not against “flesh and blood,” that is people, many people use spiritual warfare against people. Often this is covered up by saying that one is just going after the spirit, not the person. But many times this distinction is not upheld in practice, and a person can be just as much despised for being troubled by the spirit of something as if they are blamed for all their behavior themselves. “A spirit made me do it” doesn’t work any better than “the devil made me do it.” In addition, it is easy to equate spiritual warfare only with battling “spirits” (however one conceives of them), rather than with all the broader struggles of life.

The first response to this is to read carefully the way in which the metaphor is used in scripture. Clearly, the broad difficulties of one’s own Christian life are intended as the primary topic. Spiritual warfare involves battling against those things that keep one from moving forward spiritually. Applying this metaphor to one’s own spiritual life avoids the difficulties that result from trying to fight other people through spiritual means, such as negative prayers, accusations, and spiritual or emotional pressure.

The irony, of course, is that our weapons of warfare are supposed to be contradictory to the normal nature of war, and thus there is the irony of the whole metaphor. Let me illustrate from the gospels. Jesus suggested a procedure for dealing with someone who had offended you in Matthew 18:15-17. One was to go to the person alone first, then with two or three witnesses, and then in front of the whole congregation. If this process of successive efforts to resolve the issue didn’t work, you were then permitted to treat that person as a gentile and a tax collector. But how was it that Jesus treated the tax collectors? Well, he went and ate with them. One of the accusations against him was that he associated with the wrong people.

That’s why I think that the comfy chair is the perfect adjunct to spiritual warfare, just as it was a very humorous torture implement in the Monty Python episode. What does the comfy chair represent?

• Love for one’s neighbor
• Hospitality, even for those we don’t like
• Non-judgmental attitudes
• Listening to people with respect
• Treating people with respect
• Recognizing that just because our neighbors are different doesn’t mean they’re bad

Ultimately “comfy chair” spiritual warfare is the kind of spiritual warfare where we refuse to get frustrated, where we treat people with respect, and where no matter what the form of attack may be, our response is one of love–not smothering, manipulative love, but rather the kind of love that results in treating other people as they would like to be treated.

In a number of worship services that I’ve attended lately, I have been looking for a word to describe what I experience. Unfortunately, I think I have found that word–pale. (I’ll get to the “horse” thing later!) I don’t intend this as a criticism of any particular church or worship service, nor of any particular style of worship. This “pale” feeling has come over me in a variety of situations and in worship services of just about any style over the last few years.

I believe that a worship service can be full-blooded no matter what form the service takes. I have been in services that were intensely traditional, high church, contemporary, blended, charismatic, or largely philosophical in style and hardly recongizable as worship at all, and I have found examples of all of these that seemed full blooded–not pale at all. I have personally experienced times of worship that were not in a church building. These include time alone or with a few friends out in nature, times when I was engaged in helping people, or simply moments of meditation. All of these seemed to be full-blooded.

What do I mean by full-blooded?

I simply mean a spiritual experience that has integrity and that is directed toward taking the worshipper toward the intended goal. “Pale” worship seems to me to be worship engaged in because we just know we’re supposed to be in church at that particular moment. We attend a worship service because we always do. The church puts on a worship service because that is what churches do. The form of the worship service is determined by what people expect.

Individual worship experiences, such as time on the beach or in the mountains, or time spent seeking God in your own home are not done just because they are “the thing to do.” But even one’s devotional or meditation time can come to be simply a form or an empty ritual. Please don’t misunderstand me. Ritual can be a good and important thing in a person’s life. Ritual is not bad. The problem is when one goes through the ritual without looking at the meaning.

Sometimes people use individual experiences as an excuse to leave regular worship and go off on their own. If a person is finding time to be with God, getting social contact, and has some sort of accountability, I have no particular problem with alternatives to the traditional weekly church service. But this can be an excuse to leave a worship service that is not satisfying, and replace it with nothing at all.

And here is another point. I have been told that calling a worship service “satisfying” or complaining that one has not been “fed” is not valid. Worship, after all, is about God, about presenting worship to God. At one time I agreed with this, at least in part. But even then I had to suggest that one cannot serve God without being refreshed, filled, and yes, satisfied. Jesus himself suggested that worship had to go beyond the expressions pointed Godwards.

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord! Lord!” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. –Matthew 7:21

Worship here is not the expression of one’s praise for God, but rather one’s actions, and I believe I am on solid ground in saying that the primary thing that Jesus commanded was to treat one’s fellow human beings appropriately and lovingly. So when I go out and take actions to make the world a better place, to make life better for other people, I am, in fact, carrying out worship. Pointing my worship toward God results in, and is even equivalent to, pointing my actions toward people. If I correctly read Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus even further suggests that someone who never knew the “stuff” and never spoke the words would be acceptable in his kingdom, whereas those who knew the stuff, and spoke the right words, but did not do the deeds will not be acceptable.

I still think corporate worship, getting a group of people with common mind and heart together in a service of worship, is an important thing. And it’s not just about God. It’s not just about Jesus. Or rather, it is, but not in the way we have thought. Christians often talk about having a relationship and not a religion. If it’s a relationship, communication needs to go both ways. Both sides have needs, both need to hear, both need to speak. And so it’s all about Jesus, but I’m part of his body here on earth, and so it is, in fact about me. It’s not just that I need to get refreshed and fed so I can serve, as important as that is, but the worship is for everyone who is there.

We need to take seriously being Christ’s body. We need to take seriously being the temple of the Holy Spirit. The worship service is for us, and we need to start to ask that it accomplishes something for us and in us. As believers, as part of the purpose of the worship in the first place we shouldn’t need to force ourselves to attend. We shouldn’t need to force ourselves to get into an attitude of worship. We should be able to lose ourselves in the worship.

It’s all about Jesus, and that’s why it’s all about me too!

Is this accomplished by a particular format, or a particular set of elements? I don’t think so. I would suggest that we should have worship services that occur around tables where we eat pizza and chat openly. No, I don’t mean that as a supplement to the regular worship service, so we can eat pizza on Saturday night, but we all need to get to a more traditional form of worship on Sunday morning. What I mean is that worship service might occur at the pizza parlor on Tuesday night, and might not involve singing, Bible reading, or preaching. It might just involve sharing of people’s stories (we use the theological term “testimonies” but that just tends to scare people) about what happened during the week.

Worship might occur in a very traditional setting. I really like a good high church style service. I feel that I need one every so often. It might occur totally in music. Teaching and learning can occur entirely in the context of music. It might occur in a session of simple Bible reading. We really are afraid of reading the Bible and allowing people to hear it for themselves without the aid of professionals in the church.

I expect this little essay will annoy more people than just about anything I have written. Messing with worship tends to mess with people’s lives. Many pastors get annoyed at the thought that people may no longer focus on the Sunday morning service. But I don’t think the Sunday morning service is serving many people’s needs. We complain that people are no longer attending church, and we moan and groan about their spiritual and moral commitment. They just don’t value church any more! But what if they are simply leaving the church because they, either as a part of the body of Jesus, or trying to become part of the body, found that the worship was all about somebody else, somebody else who was not in heaven?

This is where I thought of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Please understand that I don’t think that Revelation 6 is referring to worship. I’m simply using the four horses as an illustration.

I see the first horse, the white one that goes out to conquer as our approach to worship after a new experience. We try new things, we find new life. Since we’re human, we also make mistakes and sometimes annoy people. One of the great problems with the “spiritual warfare” metaphor in Christianity, is that we mistake making war on the barriers and obstacles in our own spiritual life and experience for making war on others. Conquering results in angry reaction. I’m not blaming this on one group or another. What I’m asking is that we recognize that conflict results from moving onto new ground in any field of endeavor, and even more than average when it is in church activities that are so rooted in tradition.

The red horse follows which is the conflict. The danger here is that the conflict will replace the desire to worship. At this point we begin to defend “our” worship activities from “those other people.” At this point, the worship is about us, and not about us as part of the body, but about us in our selfish aloneness. It’s “my way or the highway” worship.

The red horse is followed by the black one. Famine strikes as we will never be satisfied when we make worship about our lonely self. At this point the conflict is what the church is about. Note that this conflict need not be obvious or on the surface. People can be simply avoiding the issue because they are tired of fighting. There is peace when armies are resting between battles, but it is not real peace.

The pale horse is death, in my use of the metaphor, spiritual death because people are not fed, and cannot see any reason to attend or be part of a spiritual community. The grave follows after.

It is this worship riding on a pale horse that I sense in some services. There is no effort to make worship relevant or to see that it is fulfilling the needs of all the members. The intention is that worship be “right” more than that it be useful and practical.

My contention is that Christian worship is now riding out on a pale horse. There are certainly exceptions. There are plenty of opportunities. But in most churches we are afraid to move to completely new modes and methods of worship. The grave is following behind. We guard the monuments to worship in our buildings, our furniture, our forms, and our schedules, keeping them looking good. But good people are leaving because they are not spiritually fulfilled by worship. They see nothing that comes out of worship and pours forth in their daily lives that makes them better, or helps them help others.

And so they move to others means. Again, don’t get me wrong. Churches do wonderful things. Church goers do wonderful things. But we have lost many people because the worship services no longer seem to mean anything. We need to get these two elements together.

I heard an outstanding sermon yesterday at Gonzalez United Methodist Church. I really enjoy the opportunity to report positive things from churches that I visit. This one is only about five minutes from my home.

The key quote that I wrote down in my bulletin was this: The heart of any church is seen in its response to hurting humanity. The pastor used Mark 2:1-12, the story of the paralytic let down through the roof, to illustrate how we need to be diligent in helping others, and not to let the nay-sayers stop us. He was able to point to specific projects that had been started, and the effort that was required, including teamwork.

If more of our churches would judge themselves in this way, rather than by doctrinal purity, what an amazing impact we could have on our communities, our nation, and the world!

The hard part comes when we have to respond to some example of hurting humanity that we don’t like. Jesus had a few words to say about that too.