John Hobbins is off to a promising start discussing what the Bible says about abortion. I’ll be interested in seeing his take on Exodus 21:22-25, and may post some thoughts of my own when the time comes.
Category: Religion
All posts relating to religion, including those on the relationship of religion to other fields, such as science and politics
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Seeking Sinless Perfection
- Image via Wikipedia
Because I have some online watches for names of Energion Publications authors, I found the post In Search of Sinless Perfection, which quotes Alden Thompson. This comes from a Seventh-day Adventist background, but I must mention that I have been surprised by how much from my own SDA background simply translates into Methodism. One may easily underestimate the impact of the fact that Ellen White, early SDA leader viewed as having the prophetic gift, was a Methodist before she joined the Adventist movement.
In any case, Ellen White quotes aside, Loren Seibold, author of the article gives a number of the reasons I have for questioning the idea of sinless perfection. Certainly the Wesleyan doctrine as actually taught by Wesley (try here
for more, though you may find the account less plain than you imagined) seems less problematic than its various descendants.
I love the introductory story, which ends:
Then the perfect man hung up on me.
Perhaps not the ending one imagined for a conversation with a perfect man!
I too am a believer in sanctification. Where I must get off this particular train, however, is where one gets a personal knowledge that one is perfect. I just can’t see how that would work.
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A Test to Determine if One is a Christian
- Image via Wikipedia
I’m pretty annoyed to have judges trying to make a determination of whether one is a Christian based on their knowledge. That reflects a very poor understanding of Christianity that probably comes from someone who has grown up Christian and doesn’t really understand someone who is a recent convert.
The story is here. At least the appeals court has sent the case back for review.
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View on Justification
Andy Johnson of Nazarene Seminary has a nice overview. (HT: Cross Talk and Chrisendom)
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Almost Thou Persuadest Me
Image via Wikipedia RJS at Jesus Creed has a post titled simply “belief” after the book by the same name edited by Dr. Francis Collins. In discussing the relationship between faith and reason, or perhaps faith and science, he poses the following questions:
If someone approached you in a coffee shop and asked you what argument for faith you found most persuasive, what would it be? Why?
Who has had the greatest impact on your thinking?
I meet these questions with mixed emotions. I can certainly tell you who influenced my thinking the most. It’s easier to do this regarding my return to the church, which had a great deal more to do with reasoning and thinking than my conversion at age 9.
The most influential writer in my decision to return to the church was C. S. Lewis, and the most influential book was Mere Christianity. I find a certain satisfaction in the argument that common morals points back to God the creator. Given some of the reading that I’ve done in theological works, this may be somewhat surprising. My own theological thinking has been influenced by many writers, but Lewis was there at the start.
But when I’m asked to state what argument for faith that I find most persuasive, I can’t give the same answer. The very argument that was most present in my own return to the church is not one that I find ultimately persuasive. In fact, while I find many arguments informative and helpful, there are not that I find ultimately persuasive. I must confess that, while I’m Arminian in theology, the spiritual feel of my own conversion–as well as return–may sound somewhat Calvinistic. I was dragged kicking and screaming on God’s timing, not mine.
Two years ago, in a post called On Being a Liberal Charismatic Believer, I wrote:
But when I read Jack Burden’s post, I realized something else. The label “believer” has never bothered me. In fact, I have insisted on it. I even occasionally use “true believer” of myself. Why? I confess that, unlike some Christian apologists, I cannot prove that God exists, that Jesus rose from the dead, or that God communicates to us through scripture. I can’t even match the gentler (and better, in my view) form of apologetics that claims that the evidence is sufficient to make this the best option.
I’ve made the leap of faith. While I am quite unadventurous physically, in the spiritual sense I looked out over the chasm as did Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, closed my eyes and put my foot down on empty space. I think my foot landed on that hidden bridge; others think they hear the echoes of my screams as I fall. Ah well, it’s my leap of faith, after all.
So like Agrippa, I am almost persuaded, but unlike Agrippa, I am a Christian.
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More on Spiritual Fitness for Soldiers
I wrote earlier on this topic. Here’s another letter on the topic. I will only add that in my view there is simply no excuse for a Christian chaplain using the power of Caesar to attempt to get converts. I am strongly opposed to force and manipulation. This isn’t the gospel message and it misrepresents Christ.
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What Makes a Person Great?
Image via Wikipedia Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great man.
Said today, that is a rather unremarkable statement. Back in 1968, when Martin Luther King was assassinated, it would have sparked intense, even violent, debate. To some he was a troublemaker. To others, evil. To yet others, he was a danger to society. And to certain parts of our society, to many broader structures that many felt were essential, he was a danger.
In 1968, when I first heard of him, what I heard was not generally favorable. Nobody told me he was a great man. Our family had just returned from Mexico, where we had been for four years. I was just old enough to start thinking a bit about politics. What I first heard wasn’t good.
Time has changed all that. Death and time makes people reevaluate their viewpoints. Time has seen the opinions of many shift so that many things for which Dr. King hoped do not seem so remarkable. We are still far from “free at last” but we have made some progress. I’ve read quite a number of favorable blog posts regarding this man today.
I have to wonder whether he would be so well received if he were alive today. In fact, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be. And that troubles me.
The cause of integration was right back in the 50s and 60s, yet many didn’t recognize it. How can we recognize something that is right now, rather than waiting for people to die for it.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about as I can today. How can I get on board for the right movement today?
I want to add one quote and link, because I hear so many Christians claim that just because something is the law, it must necessarily be obeyed. The following is from Dr. King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail:
You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
So the argument here is that a law that fosters injustice must be resisted.
(HT: The Agitator)
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What is Cutting Edge?
From Pensapedia.com / Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License v. 2.5 The description of the ICON service at my home church, First United Methodist Church in Pensacola, FL, states that the service is:
- Cutting Edge
- Tradition Rich
- Art Embracing
- Christ Centered
This worship service just celebrated its second anniversary, and I was happy today to see that the sanctuary was largely filled. It has been both amazing and gratifying to me to watch the success of this particular worship service as it has been the entry point to church fellowship for a large number of people, especially young couples. I must confess that I often feel a bit old attending.
Today associate minister at First UMC, Geoffrey Lentz, preached on cutting edge. He noted the things that make people think the service is cutting edge–large, high-definition screens, state of the art sound, and the embrace of social media. But he said that wasn’t what makes it really cutting edge. The one genuinely new thing under the sun, with due apologies to Qoheleth, is Jesus Christ. He told us that the most cutting edge thing we could possibly do is to follow Jesus Christ.
Now I like many of the elements of worship in ICON. I think many of those elements, and the way they are blended, has helped make the service successful. But if you had asked me before this service why I think First UMC is growing, I would tell you it is because the pastors are preaching the gospel and making every effort to put it in practice. If you attend First UMC, you’re going to hear a gospel message.
I don’t say this to belittle any other accomplishments. I just don’t think those are the key things. Large, high-definition screens showing well-produced videos can help bring people into the room. Well-done contemporary music can catch their attention. But if the message behind those things is not Jesus Christ and him crucified, there will be nothing to keep people in church. And if you don’t get there, you also don’t get them into ministry, and I would say that if one doesn’t get into ministry (or more directly stated mission), then one hasn’t really brought that person to Christ.
I was glad to hear Geoffrey make that point. While I have just argued that the worship service is worship, even though everything we do is to be worship, I also believe that a major test of the success of a worship service is whether or not it gets us engaged in those acts of service–and worship–that are to go on all week.
Related articles
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On Evolutionary Christians
The Christian Post has an article on a series of teleconferences that are available via evolutionarychristianity.com. The post uses scare quotes to set off the word “evolutionary” and in some ways I find the title troubling, just as I do the term theistic evolution.
While I believe acceptance of the theory of evolution will have an impact on some beliefs, and while I do believe religion and science do have overlapping areas of study, the theory of evolution is a scientific theory, and qualifying it with a theological position sounds odd to me. Even so, what’s the alternative.
Evolutionary Christianity seems troubling to me in the reverse sense. Here we have a theology qualified by a scientific theory. That also seems unjustified with me. Non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) is not entirely accurate in my view, yet one needs to keep one’s categories in some order. Science tells us about the physical world and what happens in it. To the extent that creation tells of its creator, this does impact theology, yet placing a single theory as the qualifier for a view of Christianity … seems odd.
Just some musings …
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The Worship Service is Worship Too
Some time ago I read a post by Arthur Sido on The Voice of One Crying Out in Suburbia titled What is Worship? and I’ve been intending to respond ever since. The problem is that the topic brings up so many different issues that it threatens to become an incredibly long blog post. Those of you who have read this blog before know that wordiness is my besetting sin!
So I’m going to try to give a few thoughts and I’ll write about details later if it seems the thing to do. I will obviously fail to cover all my ground. I’d suggest you read Arthur Sido’s post first. I’m not going to respond point by point. In fact, I consider most of his suggestions excellent, even though I take a different approach to the texts. Instead I’m going to just put forward a few ideas about worship, and particularly about the relationship of the Old Testament to the New on this topic.
Before I get to the question of how much of what the Old Testament says about worship applies to the church let me comment on the definition of the word “worship.” One problem is that worship can mean different things in different places. I first encountered this problem talking to people who thought only part of the church service was worship. They would refer to the musical portion as “worship” and would complain that they had not been allowed enough time to worship at a particular service because too many other things took place. Worship would generally be defined in those conversations as the portions of the service that particularly engaged the emotions.
We might see this as something similar to the biblical phrase “bow down and worship.” It’s a particular act of worship. I don’t have a problem with this special definition, so long as we realize what’s happening. You can define one piece of the worship service as “worship” and the rest as, well, something else, and lose the the broader meaning of worship. I recall some people who started to make a large distinction between “praise music” and “worship music” and had particular times for these things. Again, one can appropriately make a distinction between the word “praise” and the word “worship” in particular contexts, but that doesn’t mean that’s all of worship.
On the other side, we have those who see the worship service strictly in terms of conveying certain facts. There is no expectation of poetry and emotional engagement in the service. The preference is for a few songs to kind of set off the time of preaching, the proclamation of the word. For these people the point of a church gathering is to get educated.
Most people, of course, fall somewhere between these points. I think all fall short of the best concept of a service of worship. And no, I don’t have a problem using a term that is not explicitly used in the New Testament. In fact, I find the argument that something was not mentioned in the New Testament and thus must not be something we should do or believe to be one of the worst arguments. But that is another subject.
Yet it is important to understand that worship can be broadened to cover everything that we do in life. I have learned a great deal of this while studying the book of Leviticus (read some of my notes on Leviticus), and also the rest of the Pentateuch. The overarching theme, I would suggest, is that God wants to bring everything into the realm of the sacred. We make some things sacred; God wants to sanctify everything. We make some places holy; God wants a holy world. We set aside sacred time; God claims rule of all time.
The scriptural bookends for this view are found in Exodus 19:6 “You will be a kingdom of priests to me, a holy nation …” and then in 1 Peter 2:9, which alludes back to Exodus. What happened in between? Well, things didn’t happen that well at Sinai. God couldn’t make Israel a nation of priests and chose instead a priestly family, and the tribe of Levi to serve the temple. Instead of a holy nation we had a holy shrine.
But the rituals of Leviticus see God moving into our profane spaces and trying to make them holy. The direction in which God is leading people is away from the scattered bits and pieces of “holy” and to a holy, consecrated life. I call this one of the trajectories of scripture that helps us understand how various texts apply, in this case texts related to worship.
There are two commonly accepted ideas about how we apply Old Testament texts to the church. On the one hand there are those who think that if it isn’t restated in the New Testament, it doesn’t apply. There are others who believe it applies unless it was explicitly changed in the New Testament. As usual, these extremes don’t happen that often in practice, and there are certainly other views, but those provide the general outline.
I would suggest instead that the Old Testament applies to the church wherever it does so based on the principles espoused in the text. We do not offer animal sacrifices in the church, but it is not simply because the New Testament says that was to end. Rather, the New Testament says that was to end because it’s function was completed. We can discover whether the function was completed by asking whether the situation that called for a particular activity, ritual, or law still applies in the time of the church. I would suggest that this question often needs to be answered differently for different people or groups.
What does this mean for worship? I think it will suggest that it means that worship services are worship too. Those who think we worship only in the worship service should come to realize that obeying is better than sacrifice (1 Sam. 15:22), while those who think the worship service is unimportant should spend some time with those Old Testament passages that speak to the importance of ritual in engaging us with God.
I think there is a great difference between individual needs. While worship is about God, it is about people worshiping God, and that worship experience means different things to different people. But there is that corporate need to worship together. Leave off either the acts specifically directed to God, or acts of service to others (which should be directed to God as well), and one’s spiritual life will be unbalanced. (One can learn a great deal about worship from 1 Corinthians 12-14, especially 14.)
Thus my title: It’s not “The Worship Service is Worship,” but “The Worship Service is Worship Too.”
I can certainly see a number of lines of discussion I haven’t followed and perhaps should have, but I think I’ll wait to respond to comments–or until I again feel it’s a good idea to follow up.
