The Radical Reformission, pt. 2

Two things I like about Mark: 1. his theology, and 2. his communication style. I don't agree with everything I read, but who does? Let me mention a couple nuggets and comment on them.

"The Bible clearly teaches that we do what we are. It also repeatedly teaches . . . that our sin comes from our hearts, the center of who we are. Our heart is a rock band, and culture is a loudspeaker, and if we don't like the music, spending lots of money to fund organizations to "fix" the speakers won't change the tune."

Right on. He goes on to say we can't just look at culture, but focus on the cause which is the sin in our hearts. Culture is the outward manifestation of what is in our hearts, but it also has an effect on our hearts. My son is 9 and the culture he lives in (outside of home) will influence him differently than his grandpa's culture influenced his grandpa.

So I can understand why so many want to reverse gears and take the culture back to the time when our grandfather's lived. It's just not possible. Parker will grow up today, and God calls me to guard his heart and prepare him for today. Fortunately, God's Word is capable in any culture.

Mark on "keeping it real . . .":
"One of the most popular mantras . . . is that God's people need to be more real and authentic. In general, this is wise. A disingenuous faith is repugnant to believers and non-believers alike. But because we are sinners, simply encouraging people to be who they are in the name of authenticity is dangerous because it can easily be taken as a license to sin without repentance. In the opening chapter of Romans, Paul says that people are prone to be real rather than repentant because they love to sin, which explains why Jesus told us to deny ourselves rather than be ourselves."

May God make us really, humbly holy without losing our love for people, and may people be attracted to the Jesus in us.

Phil

Animals and Suffering

Like you, there are a lot of questions I will ask God when I get to heaven, because, though I trust God, there are so many things I don't understand. I don't have any problems admitting that even though I am a pastor. And I find myself drawn to others who also admit freely that they don't have all the answers.

It still doesn't mean I don't try to find the answers on this side of heaven, so when this question came to me from one of our high-schoolers at The Mill, I thought I would do my best to answer, and then pass it on to you, dear blog-readers wherever you are.

“I understand why a sacrifice is required, but why must it be in such a cruel and painful way? An animal can't understand what's happening to them; they can't defend themselves. I know the short time of pain is nothing in comparison to eternity but it still exists. God, how can you be a good and compassionate God who cares for all your creations yet require so many animals to be tortured slowly? Why isn't their life enough? Why must they suffer also? I can never make peace with that. However hard I try, I can't get rid of the anger I have towards you for that.” --Name Withheld

Dear ______,
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you regarding this whole suffering thing. As I said before, I really appreciate your honesty about this stuff. That will really serve you well because you’ll get to the truth faster. God doesn’t always explain Himself, but I do think He is pleased when we seek to understand Him and His ways. This is akin to worship. If we didn’t love Him we might ignore Him as irrelevant, which would be bad for us. Instead, we painfully seek to understand His ways so we can order our life to please Him, and find perfect joy doing it

But our joy does not depend on our understanding of all His ways. Our joy depends upon our conviction about who God is.

The sum of your concern starts and ends with the question, “Is God just?” Whether or not animals suffer, or whether we understand the nature of suffering from God’s perspective, our anger toward God stems from this question of whether God is just or not. Once we come to the place where we believe God is just no matter how we understand Him, then we can begin to understand! That is what Proverbs means when it says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” (Proverbs 1:7) And elsewhere, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Proverbs 9:10) (and you can throw in the whole of Proverbs 2 in there for good measure)

So in approaching the answer to your question, I don’t want to begin with whether animals suffer or whether their suffering is right or wrong, I want to start with the mutual understanding that God is just. Beginning there affects where I end up. God doesn’t mind our questions, as He gave us questioning minds, but our questions should center on finding greater understanding, and not whether God is unjust

The question of whether God is just is the very beginning of sin. It was the underlying notion the snake implied to Eve in the Garden.

"The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die!
For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:4-5

The snake implied that God was not just in withholding this knowledge from Eve. Eve took it because her assumption that God is always just was shaken, and it gave her just enough room for her natural desires to overcome her faith in God.I’m not assuming you are questioning God’s just-ness, but rather addressing the anger you expressed toward God for requiring pain.So let’s talk about the pain issue, and I want to make some observations of things we know and don’t know.

1. We know that God not only gave us plant life for food, but He also gave us animals for food. (Gen 9:2,3) Logic tells us that we must kill them to eat them and the most common way to kill animals is to slit the throat and bleed them to death. We know that this is the least stressful, painful way to end the animal’s life because it leaves the meat the most tender. (So I guess to cattle ranchers, the motivation isn’t out of kindness to animals, but out of a desire for better tasting food.) The more stress (from pain or fear, presumably) the animal endures in death, the tougher the meat because of some kind of chemical the brain produces during stress. (adrenaline?)

2. We don’t know that God requires pain from sacrificed animals. Every indication from the books of the Law which spell out in detail the process for animal sacrifices leads us to believe that the animals die in much the same way as they would if we were to eat them. In fact, evidence suggests that God is pleased with sacrifices which cause the best meat to be offered. Perhaps this is in keeping with His understanding of the measure of pain that is avoided when done correctly. (See notes from the Tyndale Bible Dictionary regarding sacrifices I have placed at the end of this document.) Since it was necessary to collect the blood it was also necessary for slow death to occur, giving the heart time to pump the blood out of the body. Medical evidence, as well as testimonies from people who have nearly bled to death suggest that the body provides the right amount of shock to remedy the pain of the incision and that the loss of blood merely causes the animal to go to sleep.

3. Having said all that, we do know that Christ’s sacrifice was painful, and that Christ’s pain pleased God.

" But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings." Hebrews 2:9-10, NASB

The term “fitting” has to do with both the just-ness of the act, and it’s part in pleasing God. It was just the right thing at just the right time.

4. And we also know that the suffering that Christ endured was an example for us, and that it is connected with our own sanctification. After all, sinful people love their sin, and the pain we suffer has more to do with our love for sin than anything else. (almost exactly like a Heroin addict trying to break free) (Phil 1:29; 3:8, Col. 1:24, 1 Peter 2:21; 4:1, 13; 5:1, 10)

So while the Old Testament sacrifices were a picture of Jesus crucifixion, there was a part of Christ's passion that was unlike the rituals, namely the violent painful manner in which He died. Perhaps this was because the sacrifices of the animals did nothing to take away our sin, but simply roll back judgment. Yet it was the sufferings of Christ which give us an example for following strong.

Phil

P.S. If you want more notes on this topic, e-mail me at global@rheasmill.org and I will forward them to you.

The Radical Reformission, pt. 1

It is probably not the wisest thing to review a book before you have read it completely, but I wanted to put my thoughts on paper mid-stream about this book before I lost them. And if I was going to do that, why not do it on a blog and share it?

The book, written by Mark Driscoll, has become for me an example of what is hopeful in Christian consciousness today. I have struggled for so long between the legalism and folk-encrusted Christianity of fundamentalists, and the barely hidden liberal agenda of the emergent church. I have found much with which to resonate with both extremes and yet haven't found a "home" among many writers and speakers philosophically and theologically.

I'm not sure I've found one with Mark, either, but what he is writing about in "Radical Reformission" resonates with my own experience and outlook. Maybe it's because he didn't come from a Christian background, or maybe it's because he too, despises both extremes I alluded to in the previous paragraph. In this middle ground, (although I am not comfortable with THAT term "middle" either) one is forced to look at people for who they are, not from their stereotypes. What they present when you first meet them and what are your first impressions may not be who they really are and you have to get to know them in order to understand that. And doesn't everyone deserve that in the first place? From the book:

All of these ingredients (thinking, values, and experiences) combine to create the cultures in which people live. From the outside, these cultrues can easily be misunderstood. For example, some people at our church dress in a gothic fashion, complete with faces painted whie, hair dyed black, and dark clothing. I was speaking with a visiting pastor once before a church service when a woman dressed in this style walked by, and the pastor commented that it was good for the woman to be in church because she obviously needed to meet Jesus and overcome her depression. But the woman he spoke of was a leader in our church and a godly woman who dressed that way because of her sense of personal style. She was in no way depressed.

I like that quote because I could have easily been the pastor Mark was talking about. Perhaps when the gothic trends first started it was from a spirit of depression, but as time goes by, it's amazing how people will adopt styles independent of how they got started. People dress because they like the look, and not always because of some inner conflict. And though many still do express their struggles on the outside in such a way, you must get to know them personally in order to know that.

Perhaps I resonate with that because I felt that way when I was a teenager participating in a fundamental Baptist church. I looked a certain way in the beginning because of the culture I came from, which was NOT churched. The more involved I got with the church, and the more God began to change my heart, the more I wanted to please Him. The best way I knew to please God was to look and act and talk like the people I knew who I thought best pleased Him, so I cut my hair and quit cussing.

I still didn't cut it, and I never quite made it to the inner circle occupied by those who grew up in church. And perhaps this is why I see more of what Mark is talking about.

So while I am steeped in orthodox theology, one of the things I am most thankful for from that fundamentalist experience and subsequent schooling, I find myself rebelling from some of the cultural mud attached to it. To be transparent, sometimes I find myself wanting to say, do and wear things just to shock my old buddies and those still deep in the fundamentalist mindset. (though others would still say I shock no one.)

May God continue to raise up a remnant within the church who can look beyond the simple stereotypes and begin to love their neighbor as much as they love themselves.

Phil

Outraged?

I have been receiving tons of e-mail regarding "The Golden Compass." which is evidently a movie coming out this December based on the first in a series of children's books written by a British author who is purported to be an atheist.

In the movie, which is mostly fantasy, supposedly God dies accidentally. According to some, criticism regarding the movie ranges from:

The movie is atheism for kids.
The movie is anti-religion, particularly anti-catholic.
The author despises C.S. Lewis and the Narnia series.
The watered down movie will be an enticement to buy the much more pointed books.
(http://zealfortruth.org/2007/11/boycott-the-golden-compass-movie/)

In a letter to the editor of the Hutchinson Leader, Hutchinson, Minnesota a reader said she was "totally outraged" by the movie. It struck me when I read her comment. Outraged? I have a lot of things cross my mind when I read about this movie, but I'm not sure outraged would be one of them. Actually, this becomes a case in point for where I think many Christians are on the wrong track.

To be clear, nothing I have read about the movie leads me to believe I will agree with any of it. More than that, I think it could have a negative effect on children who are impressionable by definition. But what should be our response?

First, I would be outraged if someone broke into my house, tied up my family and forced us to watch the movie. In America we don't have to vote on what we allow on our TV. There is the shutoff button. But I wouldn't be outraged regarding the movie. I would expect such a thing.

I think the big problem is how we approach the problem. I would be outraged because I am entitled to decide what gets shown at my house. I am not entitled to decide what gets shown at theaters. This is America, and I can have a voice, but my voice gets added to yours and so on. Sometimes I think we Christians get confused and think that since our views have been the majority for so long that we don't have to keep working hard in the marketplace of ideas promoting solid values. Our attitude is more one of entitlement--thus the outrage.

In America, we are free to put forth our views and opinions. Fortunately for us, we have the truth, even though how we put it forth may be more or less accurate. Our message is also very winsome in it's purest form. This is why more Muslims are coming to faith in Jesus today than ever in history. (more on that in another blog)

Our goal then is to be done with sitting on our royal entitlements and engage the culture. First, do it by training your kids. Don't send them to movies, take them. Then talk to them about the ideas the movie presented. Don't just give them a library card, look at the books they are reading and talk to them about them. In doing so with our children, we will create a bunch of kids who know what they believe, and why they believe it. Then when the do get to college, they will be much better prepared to weather the storm of so many crazy agendas.

In other words, let's face this with passionate dialogue. Acknowledge their right to make that kind of movie and use it as a teaching tool for your kids. It can serve to strengthen them.

Merely being outraged isn't enough.

Welcome to Principles and Purpose

I took a rather unscientific poll of my church once and found that one of the greatest areas of interest is the subject of purpose. I suppose that makes sense since we live in a wealthy country where our physical needs and safety aren't our greatest priority. (not that they aren't priorities at all)

Since I am a believer that a life best lived is a life lived by the right principles I thought I would create a blog that would share my musings on the subjects of principles and purpose. Even if it doesn't interest anyone else, at least it will be a way for me to coalesce my thoughts and since I do it anyway in a journal, why not make it public?

If you are reading this and think I am crazy, or you want to know more about me or my church, please visit www.rheasmill.org; or if you like, you can e-mail me at phil@rheasmill.org. First, I will be surprised that anyone actually wanted to read this stuff, and second, I would be happy to reply.

Godspeed on your journey in life. Let me sum up this post with one of my favorite verses in the Bible:

"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, for good works, which God prepared beforerhand that we should walk in them." Ephesians 2:10

Blessings,
Phil