Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Prayer

  • Familiarity with God’s Voice

    Laura has another good post on Pursuing Holiness on hearing the voice of God. She says:

    It’s very convicting to realize how easily I recognize voices – even of people I’ve never met – from the world, and how I struggle to discern God’s will in my life. So what’s the difference? Exposure.

    Just so! If you ask my wife in the evening she will be able to tell you whether I spent the necessary amount of time on my devotional reading, meditation, and prayer that day. And she’ll be right. I’m not talking about how much time I spend reading the Bible academically, as in research for my writing, but devotional reading, but how much time I spend listening to what God has to say to me.

    Go and be convicted by Laura’s post. 🙂

  • Mission and Prosperity

    In God’s economy, there is never prosperity without mission.

    I’ve been thinking about this in the last few days in connection with a number of issues, and I think it is a scriptural principle. I think you can replace “prosperity” with other terms of blessing, such as peace, joy, and fulfilment. This is where, in my opinion, modern prosperity preachers are missing the point. It’s not that they don’t mention mission, it’s that they put prosperity in the first place, and then mission follows after. I believe God puts mission first.

    Is this Biblical? Let’s look at a few examples.

    Many of my friends frequently remind me to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6). Now I don’t want to diminish in any way the need to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. But there is some baggage that comes along here. Read the rest of Psalm 122. You will find there a call for worship, a call for obedience, a call to carry out justice, and the call for prayer itself is aimed directly at the house of God and the presence of God. Mission is implicit throughout the passage. This is not an either/or situation. The peace of Jerusalem does not occur in scripture without justice and righteousness in Jerusalem.

    But as gentile Christians, we need to look just a little further out. This Psalm calls upon us to preserve centers of worship, to be glad to go into the presence of God, and to aim our prayers in that direction. Don’t miss the physical Jerusalem over in Israel, but don’t miss the presence of God here and now either.

    A friend once told me that praying for Jerusalem was a way to get a cheap blessing. But I don’t think there is such a thing as cheap blessing. The blessing has to go with commitment. A friend of mine passed a way a couple of years ago. She was a friend of Israel, and definitely prayed for the peace of Jerusalem. One time when she returned from Israel she came back with a new understanding and sympathy for the Palestinians as well. Her love of Israel was undiminished, but God had made a place in her heart for someone more. I could sense the blessing and the anointing that resulted from that growth. Her prayers were not cheap prayers, nor were they a means to an end. She not only prayed for the peace of Jerusalem, she invested heart and soul, time and money in it.

    Some may think the mission in Psalm 122, as clearly as I see it, is not so clear. Let’s look at a couple more passages from the time of the exile. Isaiah announced:

    ?6? I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
    I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
    I have given you as a covenant to the people,?a?
    a light to the nations,
    ?7? to open the eyes that are blind,
    to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
    from the prison those who sit in darkness.
    ?8? I am the Lord, that is my name;
    my glory I give to no other,
    nor my praise to idols.
    ?9? See, the former things have come to pass,
    and new things I now declare;
    before they spring forth,
    I tell you of them.

    Isaiah 42:6 (NRSV)

    Note the call and the covenant are brought in a context of mission. God affirmed the same thing through Ezekiel when he said:

    Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. — Ezekiel 36:22

    I commend all of Ezekiel 36 to you to read.

    But why should this be at all surprising? The concept goes back to Abraham who is told that God will bless him and that he will be a blessing. From that first call, blessing came with mission, and mission was the focus of blessing.

    Jesus expressed the same concept when he said:

    First look for God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. — Matthew 6:33

    Notice the focus! Mission is at the center, and “all these things” follow from mission.

    If you are praying for peace, prosperity, joy, or any blessing, and feel that you are not receiving it, perhaps you need to consider two possibilities. First, God may be working on you, preparing you for mission. With him, the kingdom comes first. But second, it may be possible that you haven’t gotten the mission, you haven’t gotten the vision, and thus the blessings can’t follow. God isn’t going to give you the blessings of a great and powerful mission for you to hoard.

    Get the mission, catch the vision, the blessings follow.

  • Praying to be Seen

    A few years ago a number of my students in an introductory Bible study class arrived very excited. There was a town coucil here in Florida (I forget precisely where), that had invited a Wiccan–a witch!–to offer a prayer opening a public ceremony. My students were discussing what they would have done about this obviously heathen prayer, and were cheering folks who had turned their backs on the person offering it.

    “I bet you would have done something good!” said one of them to me.

    “I would have stood silently and respectfully as she prayed,” was my response.

    Why is it so difficult to respect someone else’s spirituality, their prayers, or any other religious activity they pursue? Now we have a story of a school at which one student did not want to sit through a Christian prayer at the commencement, and the ACLU filed suit on his behalf and got an injunction to prevent it. I understand the student’s position. It can be very uncomfortable to be in the minority, especially a minority of one. At the same time, I must say that I have a problem with the ACLU position on this one. I think student initiated, student led prayer, even in a public ceremony should be regarded to some extent as free expression, though at the High School level there would be some limits to this. (See the story at Judge Blocks Prayer at High School Graduation, thanks to Ed Brayton, Religion and the Majoritarian Impulse for calling my attention to this.)

    I think that there are much better ways to deal with a situation like that, including finding ways during the year and at various school ceremonies to acknowledge the beliefs of students who are in the minority. I’ve been in the minority religiously, growing up as a Seventh-day Adventist. “Do you go to church on Sunday?” asks someone. “No,” I reply, intending to continue with “we go to church on Saturday. But I see the “you heathen” look, and I know this is not a person who is interested in hearing about alternatives to the expected Sunday spent in church. That, of course, is very minor, but Seventh-day Adventist businessmen often had considerable problems with Sunday blue laws. Their faith required them to stay closed on Saturday, and the law required them to stay closed on Sunday. The majority felt it had the right to enforce its brand of spiritual life.

    So back to this high school. What do the students do? About 200 of them stood up during the principals opening remarks and recited the Lord’s prayer. Now I have a serious problem with this. Whether the judge was right or wrong about the law, his injunction was the law. Those students said that they didn’t really care about that, they were going to make their prayer demonstration anyhow, disrupting the ceremony. They announced loud and clear that they were the majority and they didn’t much care what the minority thought, or what a federal judge ordered. Others at a rehearsal booed the student involved in the suit.

    Now how does a prayer demonstration fit in with Matthew 6:5: “But when you pray don’t be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray in synagogues and standing on street corners so people can see them. I tell you truly, they have their reward.” How does the attitude of rebellion stand up against Romans 13:1-7? I do believe there is a proper time to protest, but is the use of prayer as a mode of protest really something we want to do?

    But I have a better idea for us as Christians. Consider Philippians 2:4: “Let each person not look after his own interests, but after the interests of others.” What would the Christ-like attitude be in this situation. I’m not talking about the law here. What would our Christian standard be? I would suggest that Christian students–or better Christ-like students would seek to find a way to make the one in the minority feel more comfortable. Perhaps they could acknowledge his faith in some way during the ceremony. Such an approach might prevent a case like this from going to court in the first place.

    The Christian majority in this country is whining about persecution quite a bit these days. We’re dealing with words, folks, and as Christians we’re in the majority. No, your own little sect, or big sect, whatever that may be, and my sect, are not all by ourselves in the majority, but Christians are. We are mostly putting up with one another, and most of the claimed persecution seems to be cases in which we don’t get to do precisely what we want, or what we’ve always done, because there is someone pesky outsider to object.

    It’s not that we’re not free to pray; we are. Our children can pray in public school right now! They can do it legally. What is not permitted is having the state sponsor it. So the real problem is not that your child can’t pray. It’s that you can’t have the teacher force him, and other people’s children, to pray in some specified way.

    But prayer as a demonstration is just noise. I suspect, based on the words of Jesus, that God is not particularly pleased with that sort of noise.

  • Evolution, Theology, and Respect

    In my book Not Ashamed of the Gospel, I comment that God respects us:

    • God Respects You
      Some of my more theologically inclined friends may be questioning this one, but God created humanity a little bit less than God (Psalm 8:4), and he allows human beings to make their own choices and plot their own course. He tries to communicate, but he doesn’t force communication.

    What I mean here by respect is that God allows us choices, but God also respects those choices. We often assume that God can do anything, and in His infinity, that is likely close to true. But when operating in finite space and time, God has to meet priorities. So the question is, what is God’s highest priority? Is it our safety and comfort? If it is, he should make the world “child-safe” so that we cannot injure ourselves or one another. On the other hand, suppose God valued our intelligence and independent decision making more than our comfort. In that case, he would have to allow our decisions to be independent, to leave us to live with the results of our decisions. Every act taken to make us safer involves a constraint on our decision making or on respecting the consequences of those decisions.

    It’s interesting that in responses to my book, two things have predominated. First, many have told me that they appreciate the book, but that they question (or are disturbed by) my support of evolution. Second, folks are interested in an expansion of my views on salvation and what it means, and this is a key element of that second point. The two points are related. In the process of salvation, God respects human choices, and in the process of biological evolution, God respects the freedom of his creation.

    This principle is expressed in Galatians 6:7, “. . . you reap whatever you sow” (NRSV). A great deal more theology is built on the earlier chapters of Galatians, but it is instructive to note that Paul ends his epistles generally by discussing the life of the Spirit–the change in life that is to take place in a follower of Jesus. When he does this, he makes it very clear that our choices and our actions are critical. I believe this principle of sowing and reaping applies on a much wider basis than we usually assume, and in fact applies even in issues of salvation.

    For those who track “Henry’s heresies” I go past Arminian in my view of salvation and am at least semi-pelagian, if not fully pelagian in my theology. Since that’s a certified heresy, so to speak, you now have a clear case over which to make such an accusation. 🙂 Specifically, I believe that salvation is dependent on a free choice to put one’s trust in God, and that the resulting salvation includes, as something that is essential and not optional, a change or spiritual restoration in the individual. Thus people can make good choices and bad choices and that God respects those choices by allowing the results of such choice.

    Would freedom truly be freedom if there were no consequences of actions, either positive or negative? I’m honestly not sure of the answer to that question. I am certain that freedom would be quite meaningless. Yet frequently the Christian theology of prayer seems to imply that God should alleviate or eliminate the results of our own choices. This can go even further when people pray that a hurricane be turned aside from them, or that it simply be completely dispersed. But such dangerous weather patterns are actually a positive part of the environment, though they are terribly inconvenient for us. (For more of my views on prayer see The Hand of God, The Hand of God: Miracles, and The Hand of God: Prayer.)

    So what does all of this have to do with evolution? It is very common for Christian advocates of evolution to indicate that evolutionary thinking does not make any difference to theology, that a Christian can accept evolutionary theory without it having any impact on faith. Depending on one’s starting point, that may or may not be true. Young earth creationists, for example, assume an early “good” state, that they believe is described in Genesis, in which there was no death and sin. They assume that all death entered the world with sin. In order to accept evolutionary theory, they would have to change that view. One might decide that spiritual death entered the world along with sin, but that physical death happened all along.

    This is one issue on which old earth creationists face the same problem as do theistic evolutionists, with one difference. Old earth creationists would have to explain why God would use a progressive form of special creation in which so much death was required, when death is not actually part of the creation process. What is the purpose of life, death, and major extinction events, if repeated interventions on God’s part are nonetheless required to produce new categories of creatures.

    But there are two issues that stand out. Inefficiency in creation via evolution and the extreme violence of the process, as animal eats animal. I’m obviously not the first to notice this.

    There, indeed, those who flatter themselves with the notion of reading the purposes of the Creator in his works ought in consistency to have seen grounds for inferences from which they have shrunk. If there are any marks at all of special design in creation, one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and devouring other animals. They have been lavishly fitted out with the instruments necessary for that purpose; their strongest instincts impel them to it and many of them seem to have been constructed incapable of supporting themselves by any other food. — John Stuart Mill, On Nature

    In addition, I have heard this particular objection in many private conversations. What does it say about God if he used such a violent method to produce diversity? Well, in my view, the evidence is in, and biological evolution, variation + natural selection, is the means by which he chose to diversify life. From the point of view of theology, the question is simply to ask what this reality means.

    Young earth creationists can defend against this charge of violence by saying that God created things good, but that they have been messed up by sin. Thus they hope to avoid the problem. God does things well, but they have been corrupted. I would like young earth creationists to construct a model of an “ecology” in which nothing dies and no creature eats another one. They could follow that up by constructing a world in which there actually was choice, but nobody every made a less than optimal one. (I think the latter is possible, but suspect the world would be pretty boring.)

    Even if we don’t find it troubling that animals devour one another, what about people? When human beings are involved we call it the “problem of evil.” The focus of this question is often the holocaust, though human history provides plenty of examples of human beings oppressing, torturing, and killing one another. I find it interesting that it is difficult for some people to stomach the notion of myriads of animals killing one another over millions of years, yet somehow manage to deal with the number of people who have killed one another in the world’s history. One explanation is that God is doing this for a demonstration to the universe (presumably people on other worlds) about the nastiness of sin, but one would have to wonder just how dense the “universe” is if it takes this long to figure out that there’s a problem. I think there actually is some light in the “demonstration to the universe” view, but I think we need to go a bit further.

    As I suggested before, while we may call God “good,” we need to reexamine our understanding of God’s priorities. It seems pretty clear to me that God’s priority on the preservation of physical life is a bit lower than ours. If God chose to diversify life by having creatures compete for limited resources, then he made it necessary that the results of various actions of the creatures, and numerous random factors, be negative and even fatal. The freedom of creation is more important than its comfort. Now in this latter case “freedom” doesn’t mean the same thing as in conscious choices, but the same principle is involved. Action produces reaction. Choices, conscious or not, have consequences.

    Thus to me the fact that God chose natural selection as the guiding force in diversifying life suggests that God puts a high priority on freedom, and that he does not choose to alter reality for our comfort or to protect us from the results of our own choices, or from more or less random factors such as destructive weather or earthquakes.

    This adds a division to miracles, as I discuss in my Hand of God essays (see links above). God likes the natural laws by which he manages the universe. We should not expect miracles to alter that reality for our convenience, nor should we expect them to be necessary to alter the processes of nature or the production of life. The key miracle, apart from existence itself, is that God reaches out to communicate with us. I would also expect that such communication would not be forceful; that God would not intervene to directly alter our minds and understanding.

    Let me add a note here. In any basic course in the Philosophy of Religion, students are presented with the problem of evil. God is omnipotent, God is good, yet there is evil. If God is good, one would assume that he would want to eliminate evil. If he omnipotent, he should be able to eliminate it. So what’s the solution? The professor will tell you that there is no way to deal with the problem without dealing with at least one of the legs of the triad. You can say God is not omnipotent, and so is unable to eliminate evil. You can say “good” means something other than what we commonly mean by it. Finally, we could decide that evil is not really so bad after all. In a sense, I have done all three here. First, I’ve suggested that God must have an order of priorities when acting in a finite realm; that limits omnipotence. He can’t create a world in which the results of creatures’ decisions are respected, and yet also make certain that everyone is comfortable. Second, “God is good” does not necessarily mean that God wants every small animal, or even every person to live a comfortable life. Third, by looking at the positive effects of hurricanes (and I’ve experienced a number of these lately!) I’ve questioned whether evil is really evil.

    In this system the answer to the question of why the holocaust took place is that evil people made evil choices and took evil actions, and that apathetic people made ineffective choices and did not prevent those evil actions. There were either an insufficient number of good people, or they also made choices that did not effectively stop the evil actions. The solution, therefore, is for people to learn to make better choices. If God solves this problem, he will do so by communication, but the choices and the actions will remain with people. Taking the “reaping what you sow” principle seriously means that we can’t assume that God will come and solve our problems for us. God is expecting us to take responsible action ourselves.

    Thus evolution shows to us a God who allows freedom in his creation. It’s not a safe universe, but it is an interesting one.

  • Witness without being a Pest

    Over on Philosoraptor, Carol Roper has an open letter to theists entitled Sick and Tired of God Talk. Carol talks about how tired she is of various standard questions from theists, general theists who want to convert her, and in this country one would assume mostly Christian theists. Carol is an adamant atheist, and she finds these people and their words and behavior annoying.

    I’ve been planning to write a response to this essay for more than a year, if I remember correctly, but I haven’t gotten around to it. My response is not directed at Carol. After all, she knows what annoys her and what doesn’t, and I’m not about to try to tell her what’s what. But reading her article suggested some things that Christians do that I think are quite annoying and also counterproductive.

    There seems to be a divide between some Christians who want to push themselves on everyone in a frantic race to convert and bring into church membership as many people as possible. “Jesus is coming back,” they think, “and he’s going to accidentally fry a bunch of people if I don’t get busy.” The answer, they seem to think, is to work on the statistics as fast as possible. Going door to door or randomly down the street and confronting people with what they think is the gospel is the only way they can see to really get into action and catch all those people before they go to hell. Their level of panic is matched on the other side by people who are quite apathetic. To hear them, Christianity is a dirty secret that one ought to keep as quiet as possible. Jesus may be returning, but he’ll have to deal personally with the people, because these folks aren’t going to do anything.

    The first group supports their behavior by claiming that the gospel does offend people, and if they share the Good News with someone and they become offended, it’s not their problem. They gave the warning! But the question is, is it the gospel message that’s offending people, or is it you and your behavior? Studies have shown that people who are persuaded to accept Jesus as their savior by means of manipulative monologue generally do not stay in the church, while those who enter the church through a relationship with an individual Christian normally do stay. (My copy is loaned out right now, but you can find extensive discussion of this issue in Faith-Sharing, by Fox & Morris.)

    I mention this because I think it shows that the frantic, manipulative method of witnessing is ineffective, even when measured by numbers. I don’t think measuring by numbers is the appropriate way for a Christian to measure witnessing. A witness is about being obedient to God. The fruit of that may show in your challenge to others to behave better, to help others more, or to think more seriously about spiritual issues. You may never see any fruit that you can hang on your church wall, so to speak. Fruit is God’s measuring stick, not yours. If we remembered this as Christians, we would cause far fewer problems.

    The usual excuse is simply that we are commanded to be witnesses and to make disciples, so how can we stop? I am absolutely not telling anyone to stop witnessing. In fact, I don’t think you can stop. If you are a Christian, you are a witness. The question is what kind of witness you are going to be.

    I’m also not saying that everyone on the street or knocking on a door is a pest. There are many legitimate reasons to do this sort of thing. If you are truly there to help, that’s one thing. If you are there to teach them your theology, that’s another.

    A person who is so apathetic that most people don’t know of they are a Christian at all sends the message that Christianity is a sort of sideline that has a very low priority in their life. Christians are, to borrow the words of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “mostly harmless,” but they also aren’t much good for antything.

    A person who is frantic, and portrays panic, while bumbiling ineffectually from person to person sends the message that Christianity is a group of people in a panic, afraid that the world will end. Not only that, they have a God who is not really prepared for the end. These Christians portray their faith as something that is actually dangerous to the world, as they live their lives contrary to the command of Jesus, as though the world would end at any moment. Ecology? Who cares? Jesus is coming. Social Security headed for bankruptcy? Don’t worry! Jesus will come before I need it!

    So how does one manage to witness without being a pest?

    Start by living your faith. Christianity worships God as creator and upholder of all that is (Hebrews 1:1-3), and also as a God who offers unearned favor to humanity, so much so as to cross the gap between infinity and the finite in Jesus Christ, who showed to us what God was like. We needn’t be in a panic.

    Love your neighbor. This does not mean to sneak your way into your neighbor’s heart so you can convert him. It means that you build relationships because you love and value people. People will know if you are insincere. If you live up to your Christian principles and don’t make your Christianity either a secret or a wall between you and your friend, you are being a witness.

    Learn to speak other spiritual languages. By this I mean to learn to talk about topics of interest in terms that the other person understands. Even as a Christian I am offended when a politician uses his or her faith as lever to get my support. I don’t know the sincerity of those faith claims. But if a candidate, of any faith or none at all, has lived according to certain principles, that is something I can understand and test. In communicating with a non-Christian, for example, WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) is probably not the best question to ask. But if you think that your Christian principles are also good principles, perhaps you can find a way to express those good ideas other than by claiming they are divine commands. You are not denying Jesus just because you argue for his moral principles based on something other than the fact that he gave them as commands.

    Learn the basis for your faith. This may not be the same as the basis for my faith. What brought you to your position of faith? Are you confident of that? Your personal testimony is more important than any amount of logical argument. If you are not an apologist by nature or training, you don’t have to behave like one. (An apologist is one who answers questions about the Christian faith professionally.) When people ask, answer for yourself. That’s not waffling. That’s just talking about what you know.

    Wait for questions. If you live a life that is a good witness, inevitably people will ask something about your beliefs. That is your opportunity to answer. But remember it is not your opportunity to manipulate them. You believe that your Christian experience is a good thing, and it’s natural for you to want to share. When someone asks that means they want you to share. Then is when it’s fine.

    Don’t resort to force. Many Christians today are trying to get the government to do their job for them. By this I mean by advocating state-sponsored, teacher led prayer in public schools, public displays of religious documents such as the Ten Commandments, introduction of intelligent design into the schools, and radical action against abortion and abortion clinics. I think all of those things demonstrate that we don’t really believe in the power of the gospel shared with the power of the Holy Spirit to change lives. We think we need to use force in society just as we sometimes use manipulative language and behavior in our personal witness. Be a witness. Then let God do his part.

    Think about it this way. You might be a pest, rather than a witness if:

    • You knock on doors belonging to people you don’t know, but can’t name your own next door neighbors
    • You know all the details of soteriology*, but don’t know where to get help for a homeless person
    • You think salvation is equivalent to joining your church congregation
    • You talk to people you despise so you can “save” them, and yet continue to despise them
    • You’re sure your relationship with Jesus makes you more special than everybody else
    • The only language you know how to speak is “church-ese”
    • You set a mental timer counting down until you will break off a friendship if the stubborn jerk doesn’t accept Jesus
    • You can’t carry on any conversation that isn’t about your religion
    • You try to befriend someone only because you think you can get him to attend church

    *If you have to ask what that is, you’re probably a pretty reasonable person to talk to!

  • Home and Church Education

    As intelligent design (ID) propnents complain about censorship and freedom of speech, one thing is being ignored: They are getting their message out to the public, and any scientist who wishes to examine their data, should they care to provide some, can acquire the material should they desire to do so. In addition, high school students do not get all of their information in the classroom, nor should they. There are many other opportunities for us, as parents, to educate our children in things that are not part of the high school curriculum.

    I think that claims that ID materials are being censored are particularly empty. In this time in which internet publication is incredibly easy, it is practically impossible to keep an idea quiet. Acceptance is another matter. What the ID proponents crave is the opportunity to say, “See, we’ve been published in a peer reviewed journal.” It is unlikely that if the reviewers for a particular journal determine that an article is not sound enough to be published, the readers of that journal are going to be interested in it. After all, the journal has its customers as well, and if they are not presented with material that interests them, they will read something else. Thus creationists of various stripes create their own “peer reviewed” journals, that are read by those who are interested in such things. But the information is available to any scientist who finds it interesting.

    So it’s not that there is no way to make the information public that is the problem. The issue is really simply whether the high school students of the nation should be made a captive audience for ID. ID proponents are going to say, at this point, that right now these same students are a captive audience for Darwinism, but that is not accurate. They are a captive audience for science, whatever is the current consensus body of knowledge that represents. What every other new idea has had to do in order to get into the textbooks is to demonstrate through the scientific process that it is truly science, and to become the consensus view, it has to convince the key thinkers in the appropriate field that it (a proposed theory) represents the best explanation. ID propoents want to dodge this part of the process.

    But then there are those who, for religious reasons, believe that evolutionary theory is wrong, and they want it replaced with something. For the moment they are kind of united on the plan of getting their collective foot in the door, but be assured that once that is accomplished, there will be plenty of differences of opinion over just what variety of creationism should be taught. But I believe that these parents have a right, to a certain extent, to raise their children as they see fit. The limits of that right, in my view, involve avoiding abuse, and failing to prepare their children to live in the real world. I’d even go very far in allowing parents to determine to educate their children in ways I might find very counterproductive, though I do see a state interest in setting some standard of education. Within those limits, however, parents have many options, including home schooling, private schools, and supplementary materials provided at home or at church.

    The fact is that these ideas are not suppressed at all. They simply fall outside of certain boundaries for discussion at certain places and times. We don’t expect the psychology teacher to discuss horticulture in class (except, of course, as therapy!), and we don’t expect the science teacher to discuss religion. This is very similar to the frequent arguments about prayer in school. I hear parents complain regularly that their children can’t pray in school. But that’s not really the problem. The problem is that their children are not directed in prayer by teachers or staff, or that prayer is not officially mandated or provided for. The children can, and do pray. What the parents need to do is teach their own children how to pray, and how to lead prayers, and the young folks can meet as much as they want. I think that’s a much better idea than asking the school to teach children.

    The same thing applies to things that are not taught in science class, but we think our children ought to hear. I have some suggestions:

    1. Turn the TV off one night and spend some time talking to your children about your faith and how it relates to science. If you think the earth was created in one literal week, tell them. Explain your reasons. If you don’t know much about the subject, get one of the many books on your particular view of creation and learn.
    2. Provide your child with books that support your viewpoint. (I recommend having someone read materials on all sides, and then critically examine them. That will probably require you to get involved again.)
    3. Ask your church education department, to offer a seminar, Sunday School series, Wednesday night program, or series of sermons on origins. It’s your church, and you and your fellow believers will get to decide what the content should be. As you might have guessed, I think such teaching should talk about all views that Christians hold on origins, but that’s just my view. (I offer just such a seminar for churches.) Now we’re talking about your church.
    4. Regularly communicate with your children about your faith and theirs, and let them express themselves on what they have heard at school and elsewhere. Get involved with their education, whether they are in public, private, or home school.
    5. Encourage your church to have a substantive Sunday School program for various ages, so that children can learn about their faith and how it relates to the world. There’s no reason for young people to be shocked when they get to college because they find out the world is so different from what they are used to at church. I have frequently encountered young adults who feel that their pastors and Sunday School teachers lied to them. (It is more likely that those individuals simply didn’t know, although I have heard pastors justify withholding facts from their congregation.)
    6. Make your home a place where learning is an expected part of life. Books, computers, and opportunities to learn about the physical world should be plentiful. Let them know that questions are good.

    You will do much more to build your children’s faith by these means than by any amount of political activity to include religious materials in public school.

  • Prayer Training

    Over on the Pacesetters Bible School News blog I have posted an entry on prayer teams and prayer training.

    Prayer training seems to be quite rare in churches. It’s possible that we generally feel that prayer isn’t something that should be taught, but rather is something that just happens. Many pastors that I’ve talked to over the last few years tell me that they had no training in prayer prior to taking up their first parish, and that it is one thing they really wish they could have known more about.

    Basic prayer training, in my view, is largely a matter of clearing the ground. We have so many ideas about what we can or cannot say to God that it interferes with our ability just to commune with our heavenly Father. (Pacesetters offers programs on prayer, which I teach with my wife.)

    But when it comes to prayer ministry, there is a great deal more that can be said. . . .
    Read more at Prayer Team Training.

  • Praying Now

    I’ve been working on a new pamphlet for the Participatory Study Series entitled 7 Barriers to Prayer in Your Church. I came up with these seven barriers while leading a prayer conference at my home church (Gonzalez United Methodist). The following expands on just one of these points.

    1Now Peter and John went up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour (3 PM). 2And there was a man who was lame from birth. There were some people who carried him there each day to the gate of the temple that is called “Beautiful” so he could beg from charity from those who went into the temple. 3When he saw Peter and John about to enter the temple he asked them for some charity. 4But Peter looked at him, as did John, and Peter said, “Look at us!” 5So he expected to get something from them. 6But Peter said, “I don’t have any siler or gold, but what I have I’m giving you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazereth, Rise and walk!” 7And Peter took him by the right hand and raised him up. And immediately his feet and ankles were strengthened. 8And he jumped up and stood, and walked around and entered the temple with them, walking and jumping and praising God. 9And all the people saw him walking and praising God. 10But they recognized him as the one who has been sitting in the Beautiful gate of the temple, so they were totally amazed and astonished at what had happened to him (Acts 3:1-10).

    I have always found it interesting how many parents will complain about the government not permitting official prayer in public school (though student led prayer as appropriate times is legal), while at the same time they will confess that they don’t find time to pray with their own children in their own home. There seems to be a strong desire to talk about prayer, but when it comes right down to it, we’re not all that anxious to just do it!

    And this leads me to the second of my seven barriers. (Yes, I’m aware I haven’t written about the first.) This is the “we’ll pray for you” barrier. You can see this in action in just about any church when someone tells another member about a problem, and the response is, “We’ll pray for you.” The idea is that at home in their personal devotional time, or in the next scheduled prayer meeting or prayer group, they will mention that person’s need in prayer. The problem is that frequently we forget to pray, and only rarely is the person prayed for present to receive the personal support of his or her church family praying.

    This has led me to think about this experience of Peter and John. What would have happened if the story went like this, instead of the way it’s recorded.

    Peter and John are entering the temple, and they see a man who has been lame from birth. They get his attention and then say to him, “We don’t have any money, but we’ll pray for you at our next prayer meeting.” Then they continued into the temple.

    What would have happened? Very little! I’m not here primarily concerned with the issue of the miracle. Many times, the result of the request for prayer doesn’t need to be some identifiable miracle. The need may simply be for people to get involved and get active in answering their own prayers. And that’s another problem with the “we’ll pray for you” barrier. We save our prayers for a time when we can easily feel somewhat detached from the problems of the person we’re praying for.

    Let’s look at some characteristics of Peter and John’s behavior in this situation (some of these go beyond my major theme):

    • They were paying attention to the problems of other people while on the way to worship
      Often we are so busy on Sunday morning or Wednesday night that we would have to “pass by on the other side” if we saw someone injured or in need. We might simply never notice.
    • They acted together, but in unity
      Peter is the spokesman, but John works right along with him. We’d be amazed at what could be accomplished if we worked more like a team in the church.
    • They admitted their own limitations
      There’s no point in pretending we have resources we don’t. If we can’t help someone, we need to pass them on to someone who can.
    • They acted in God’s power, not just their own
      Let’s expand this to accomplishing what we can as a team, as the entire body of Christ with our various gifts, and not just based on our own limitations.
    • They (and the man who was healed) provided an open testimony to what had happened
      Don’t be afraid to let other people know when things go well. Don’t be afraid to share.

    Not surprisingly, I think we can learn a great deal from the apostles. 🙂

    For more information on prayer, see I Want to Pray!.