Monday, 16 February 2009
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Til We See the Shore
By Seabird
see relatedThe Tenacity of Grace
“Although I am less than the least of all God’s people…” (Eph. 3:8)
Considering that Paul has shaped the history of Christianity unlike any other person other than Jesus Christ, it seems rather insincere that he would deprecate the importance of his wisdom, leadership, and overall Godliness in his epistle to the church of Ephesus while being locked up in Rome. After being bitten by a viper, beaten, pelted by stones, imprisoned, shipwrecked, whipped, and martyred, surely Paul was superior in terms of importance and morality in relation to homeless Jane who, although loved Jesus Christ, struggled with mental illness and addiction until the day that she died alone on a street within a city of churches.
Of course, Paul was not deprecating his self worth in order to glorify his humility or Godliness like that of the religious Pharisee, but as usual; he was trying to drill the reality of grace into the church of Christ. Throughout his letters, he is constantly trying to cut the rope than hangs so many Christians who are caught playing around in the gallows of self identity. In my mind, I hear Paul saying,
“My fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, stop bragging about your spiritual output, career, good works, compassion, intelligence, good looks, resume, wealth, etc. and stop crying over your weaknesses, past sin, regrets, etc. Because apart from Christ, you are all evil and subject to the wrath of an angry God.”
Many see this message and reject it because it gets in their face and tells them what they don’t want to hear.
“For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. Because what can be known of God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Since the beginning of creation, God’s invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been mad. So they are without excuse.” (Rom. 1:18-20)
Rather than this wrathful God who hates sin and allows sinners no second chances after they die, they turn to their god of their own making on their own time when it is most convenient. Such an imagined deity loves everybody, forgives as if sin had no consequences, demands little if anything from its believers, and is ultimately, a crutch for those who fear the afterlife and are so engrossed in defining their identity according to some worldly standard that they either become prideful to the bone or addicted to hopelessness as they substitute false feel goods in order to numb themselves from the constant kick in the face by the prideful that revel in the fact they meet or exceed the standards of this world.
Nonetheless, the dreadful notion that this god might be the Christian God of revelation rather than the loving god of their imagination, occasionally creeps into the forefront of their minds and convicts them of their transgressions. At this most uncomfortable moment, if they cannot find some way to ignore its bite, they must search for some weapon in their arsenal of reason and logic to kill this wrathful deity that Bible-believing Christians worship and remind themselves that they confidently know that a god of love could never be so selfish, intolerant, and judgmental.
Thus, to appease the fear of the afterlife and omit themselves from moral accountability, many cling to a god of their own mindful abstraction who, based on my observations of Western society, is usually treated as a whipping boy. When he is doing his job – dishing out blessings right and left, he will either be ignored or at the most, viewed as a faithful servant. But when he screws up – by not preventing some obstacle to hinder the pursuit of happiness, he becomes the scapegoat of their misfortunes and the excuse for their sin, whether it manifests in the form of bitterness, rejection, legalism, or indifference. Sadly, this false idol exists within many Christian churches.
Furthermore, as Timothy Keller argues in the The Reason for God,
"The belief in a God of pure love -- who accepts everyone and judges no one -- is a powerful act of faith. Not only is there no evidence for it in the natural order, but there is almost no historical religious textual support for it outside of Christianity. The more one looks at it, the less justified it appears."
Keller goes on to argue that the idea of a loving God comes from the Bible. No other religious text outside the Bible says that God has created the world out of love and delight. Most ancient pagan religions believe the world was the result of divine warfare between opposing gods, and Buddhism does not believe in a personal God at all. Although Islam says that God is merciful and kind, Christianity speaks of God as "our spouse, of knowing God intimately and personally, and of having powerful effusions of his love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit!" Such intimate terms are considered absurd by most Muslims.
Regardless of how seeker sensitive that I've tried to become, no one wants to hear that they deserve an eternity of suffering because of their sins. A Biblical conception of Hell cannot be repackaged in a manner that comes off as being ‘not so bad’ because the reality begs to differ – a place without hope is horrific and the wrath of God deserves to be feared. Recently, out of boredom, I randomly picked out some ugly looking book in the library that was written by Dostoyevsky and opened it to a passage concerning Hell. Dostoyevsky wrote that although he disagrees with a literal interpretation of hell, people who experience the wrath of God through conscious, eternal suffering will wish for the physical sensation of burning flames so that the burn may distract them from their hopelessness.
But for those who see the truth and fear God, Paul speaks of the freedom of the Gospel. You are not saved because of anything of your own doing. You are not saved by the accuracy of your doctrines. You are not saved by your career, accomplishments, or moral lifestyle. You are not saved because you have it all together, vote Republican, attend church weekly, give food to the poor, love your children, remain faithful to your spouse, work hard for your money, serve your country…
You are saved by the grace of God.
Thus, Christians have ABSOLUTELY nothing else to brag about other than our Lord, Jesus Christ. With Jesus, our sufferings are always undergirded by rejoicings, worldly standards of value are devoid of meaning, and anxieties and oversensitivities should no longer be worthy of our attention because "the Christian's identity is not based on the need to be perceived as a good person, but on God's valuing of [us] in Christ" (Keller).
The Apostle Paul and sad, forgettable Jane are equally valued in the eyes of God because they have been justified by their faith in Jesus alone. When they stand before their Maker on judgment day, He will be faithful to his promise – “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Is. 1:18). When you realize that you obey God because he loved you first as opposed to obeying God in order to earn his love, your view of superstar Paul and sad, forgettable Jane will place no importance on labels such as “superstar” or “sad” or “forgettable” for these terms only find meaning when people of this world evaluate the worth of humans based on worldly criteria. But rather you will see them through the eyes of Christ, not as being moral or less moral, but as family members. As a brother and sister saved by amazing grace.
That is why we love those who hate us by boasting Christ, even at the cost of our lives. We deny our flesh and boast of our weaknesses so that Christ may be more. We call sinners to repent of sin and refuse to return evil for evil because of Jesus – the motivation of our living, the cornerstone of our being. Anything less is a waste of our existence.
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Comments (19)
Amen, amen! These are truths that God has been trying to beat into my head for years. Sometimes I'm so slow to learn.
Have you ever read Philip Yancey's book "What's So Amazing About Grace?" ? It's another awe-inspiring look at just how incredible God's grace really is.
@BizarroRandy - No, I have not read that book, but I'll definitely keep it in mind. I heard through the grapevine that The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller is another awesome book about grace in your face.
Awesome post.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting on my post at ReveLife.
"Rather than ranting against your fellow workers, how about you offer solutions or intelligent critcisms undergirded by humility and respect..."
Firstly my "fellow workers" are all too often running through the field I'm working in with torches. They're set to destroy the chaff before the wheat is harvested, which is ridiculous bc we all know you can't destroy the chaff without destroying the wheat.
Secondly, I did offer solutions. Just because you didn't look up the Bible verses isn't my problem, I'm pretty sure you own a Bible and you obviously have access to the internet and therefore Google.
Forgive me, my respect starts to run a little thin when dealing with people continually cutting nonChristians down for their own amusement (not meaning you necessarily, but meaning the people the original post was directed at)
@princess1505angel - I do not deny that there are 'false teachers' or 'pretenders,' but such people usually do not have the Holy Spirit operating in their lives. These religious types are going to hell, so they are not Christians. Nonetheless, people like to label them Christians, when it would be more accurate to call them 'religious moralists.'
Of course, Christians will continue to struggle with hypocrisy for our entire lives, but people who desire nothing but God will admit their wrongdoings and repent from such sin. When someone is truly saved by grace, they realize that they have nothing else to boast about other than Jesus Christ.
To this end, I felt that you created a 'strawman argument' in the sense that you were attacking something of your own making. You thought you were attacking Christians, but you really were attacking Pharisees (religious moralists), not Christians. Thus, I think I would have appreciated your post more if you distinguished between saving grace and religion. True Christians vs. Religious Moralists. Something like that.
@TheSilenceHeals - I wasn't using strawman because my argument wasn't that Christians are evil or that all Christians act that way. My argument was two fold.
1. That the stereotype existed because there were people who did those things. They may not be true Christians, they may not be the majority. It doesn't matter. The claim to be Chritians, nonChristians believe them, and other Christians let it continue.
And 2. That that way of behaving is ineffective at best and detrimental at worst.
I knew I was attacking the Pharisees, but if I weren't a Christian (which was the hypothetical context of the post) I wouldn't know that they were Pharisees. I would assume that they were representative of Christianity as a whole.
See?
@TheSilenceHeals - What you say is true.. However, "how can they believe in 90the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" (Romans 10:14)
If they shut us out the moment we begin speaking because our tone is laced with contempt, then they will not listen and they will not hear and they will not believe.
I understand grace: the only thing we contribute to our salvation is our sin.
And in the end, obeying God means following His commands and there are plenty about treating others with kindness, love and respect.
@princess1505angel - I see what you are saying. Nonetheless, I think that you have a misunderstanding of grace. The salvation of these nonbelievers is not determined by how we act morally, but rather it is determined by God himself. There is nothing we can do in order to earn our salvation, but rather it is a gift from God. God saves people. We do not save ourselves. Thus, nonbelievers will remain blinded and will constantly accuse Christians of being hypocritical, until the Holy Spirit changes their hearts. Thus, I don't obey God in order to earn Salvation, but I obey God because He loved me first.
@princess1505angel - Well said. I suppose my biggest problem with your post is that I felt like you were attacking the 'rule rather than the exception.' I think that we have a lot of hypocrites in the church because our devotion to discipleship is superficial and weak. Thus, we have a lot of Christians who don't know what they believe and why. I would love to see an intellectual movement rise up within the church before I die.
Furthermore, the ultimate reason why people reject God is because they are so wicked that they suppress the truth (Romans 1:18). You probably agree with this, but once again, you didn't say this in your post. Thus, you made it seem as if the hypocritical Christian was the reason that caused nonbelievers to suppress the truth, rather than their own wickedness.
@princess1505angel - Thank you for taking time to clarify these issues. I'm not doubting your love for Christ, but only the content of your post. And you explain yourself well. If those explanations could have been more apparent in the your article, I think it would have helped in terms of how it was perceived as offensive by some Christians, but at the same time, it would probably lose popularity with nonbelievers who tend to enjoy talking about hypocritical Christianity.
Just my opinion. I apologize if I was overbearing.
@TheSilenceHeals - "If those explanations could have been more apparent in the your article..." Well the thing was, my point wasn't to list reasons nonChristians reject the Truth, but give some reasons why they stereotype Christians.
"I felt like you were attacking the 'rule rather than the exception.'" That was because I was attacking the exception that appears to many people to be the rule. The post was written from the hypothetical position of someone who is stereotyping because the only Christians they interact with are the rude ones typically found on the internet.
The main point was simply to explain why Christians get stereotyped and try and get Christians to change their approach if they didn't want to be stereotyped. Nothing more. (More can be built off of it of course, but very few people want to read a doctorate thesis on Xanga)
I think you might be trying to read too much into it. Because the issues you find with the post weren't even things I was addressing. I agree they're missing and that's because they weren't relevant to my very specific theme.
@princess1505angel - It does not take a doctorate thesis, but rather correcting the seeker-sensitive implications of your post. I think it is important for a Christian to affirm the fact that nonbelievers do not seek God due to the fact that Christians continue to wrestle with sin, but rather because their hearts are hardened.
Thus, a Christian can try to be as non-hypocritical and as moral as possible to those who are running away from God, but in the end, it will do nothing to change their hearts unless God intervenes. And who can resist the effusions of love poured out by the Holy Spirit? No one. So I would argue that it was not helpful, if not misleading, for your words to implicate the fact that the lack of morality displayed by Christian lifestyles is the reason why we are hated.
Nonbelievers are blinded because of their hearts, not because of their minds. So it would have been better for you to preach the Gospel, then attack the way Christians interact with nonbelievers. We are a family. And the comments of your post are full of praises from people who reject the very claims of the One we love most, while mocking those who follow Him - your brothers and sisters.
So I agree to disagree.
@TheSilenceHeals - "I would argue that it was not helpful, if not misleading, for your words to implicate the fact that the lack of morality displayed by Christian lifestyles is the reason why we are hated."..."Nonbelievers are blinded because of their hearts, not because of their minds."
There's a difference between hating Christians and not accepting Christ. Therefore it is entirely feasible that the reason someone hates Christians is entirely different than the reason they are not accepting Christ.
When my biological sister is "breaking the rules" or otherwise acting incorrectly, I tell her. Why should spiritual brothers and sisters be any different?
If you can't see these things I suppose we will have to agree to disagree.
@princess1505angel - If you are telling me that your post was targeted towards sharpening the faith of your brothers and sisters as iron sharpens iron, I certainly did not get that impression when I read your post. Based on my interpretation, it was targeted towards nonbelievers as a witty satire/ banter that derides Christians who walk around with a persecution complex, tell nonbelievers that God hates them (never met one in real life), and tell homosexuals to repent from their sexual sin.
Furthermore, you compared a Christian to a "scary man waving a stick around screaming about hell and what sinners [nonbelievers are]" and that there are Christians who single people out in public forums in order to make them discuss their private sin (???). No, Christians are not like the Westboro Cultists ("God Hates Fags" nutballs), and if that was the point of your article, I think you overestimated the ignorance of nonbelievers.
One more thing, John the Baptist was a scary dude that might have waved a stick (or perhaps not) screaming about repentance in the wilderness and what sinners nonbelievers are. And God loved John the Baptist.
@TheSilenceHeals - Just because you've never met a person like that in real life doesn't mean they're not out there. There are several pastors who like to come stand in the middle of my campus shouting at students nearly every day.
I comparing Christians to anything, I was giving spcific examples of the types of unacceptable behavior. And in case you've never ever read the commentsat ReveLife before: there are multiple people who regularly single people out to talk out their sins in what I consider to be a very public forum (as I also consider my college campus to be).
And as you said, John was out in the desert, people had to come to see him. He didn't go charging through town screaming in people's faces. And guess what? He still had a huge impact because people actually came to listen (Well some of them came to heckle).
@princess1505angel - lol... you have worn me down. I suppose my campus is very different from yours because I don't experience such heckling. When you say that they single people out to talk about their sins, are you talking about the "Are you a good person?" style of evangelism that goes through the ten commandments and convicts the nonbeliever of their sins?
Good insight on John the Baptist.
@TheSilenceHeals - No I'm talking about them either visiting the person's personal site and figuring out what sins the person is committing (living with their boyfriend, being gay, following Buddhism, whatever) and then bringing it up on the comments of another blog.
Or when the pastors come they yell at anyone who looks like they may possibly be someone who is not a WASP (eg boys wearing jewelry, gothic makeup, "innapropriate" tshirts, "slutty" skirts etc.).
Though I would maintain that if you're attempting to go through the ten commandments and the person is becoming visibly angry at you, you should probably stop and let someone else talk to them at a later date because the two of you are clearly incompatible. After all, if they were to come to hate you or physically attack you, would you not have caused them to stumble? (Which in itself is reprimanded in the Bible.)
Heh. I was going to comment on the post, but after reading through the comments here I almost feel like picking up where that discussion left off. :P
I recognize a particular strand of theology, here, that I've been wrestling with for the last few months. Without rehashing the last 400 years of Protestant theology, let me just bring up that perfect synthesis in James 2:14-26 - faith without works is dead.
The danger is that we will take this truth in isolation and try to prove to God and to ourselves that our faith is alive, by pushing ourselves to greater acts of holiness. That said, sometimes it's God doing the pushing - when you consider the Trinity, it becomes practically impossible to disentangle what it is that we do and what it is that God does in us.
There is, or ought to be, a difference between being seeker-sensitive - that is, speaking the truth in love - and lying about who God is, and what love is. Love is as relentless as judgment - it will not be finished with us before we are perfected. (God loves us as we are, and too much to leave us as we are.) It is possible, and it is necessary if we are to do justice to the Good News, to speak of the hostility of God to all that is evil, in a way that attracts rather than repels.
Thanks to the influence of psychoanalysis and other institutions, we (in the West) live in a world that denies the existence of personal evil and condemns systemic evil perhaps more strongly than any other period in history. If we are to shine a light into this darkness, it must be the light that reminds people that systems are composed of and perpetuated by individuals - that we are all implicated in the evils we would like to condemn. Awareness of personal sin will come later with the illumination of the Spirit - the first step is the awareness that you are soaked in sin not of your will, but which you have inherited and which you choose each day to own anew - that the bed you sleep on and the clothes you wear are drenched with the blood of those whose lives are extinguished for want of the simple food, water, and shelter that we could give them. How could it be any clearer that we need a Savior? How could it be any clearer that we are incapable of our own salvation?
I think of that moment in Schindler's List, when he stands before the hundreds he has saved and realizes what he could have done... what more he could have done: "I could have got one more person... and I didn't." Whatever we do, whatever we give, that is the truth that we must come to terms with. What is our excuse for not selling all we have and giving to the poor? And when the day of judgment comes, will we be able to stand, not for the things we have done, but for the things we have left undone? I pray to God to have mercy upon us...not for committing evil, but for failing to commit good.
I like the way you write. Very talented. Very knowledgable.
I think it only makes sense that if the Holy Spirit is truly at work in your life, Jesus will be the Lord of your life. At the same time, one must be careful to realize that their deeds should not stem from their own moral efforts, but rather it should spill over from the the outpourings of grace and mercy that are derived from an all powerful and sovereign God. Or else legalism emerges as Christians begin to see themselves as being superior to others because they have found a way to resist the flesh apart from the love and grace of God. For a Christian who resists the flesh for the sake of pleasing God reflects upon himself, but a Christian who resists the flesh by pleading for His new mercies daily and receives the ability to resist temptation and serve God out of the love that flows from the Holy Spirit reflects upon God. The former is sinning, and the latter is nothing apart from grace.
I agree that Christians should be seeker sensitive in the sense that we graciously and respectfully share the truth. Although, at the same time, I do not think Christians should let nonbelievers walk all over us because Jesus and the Apostles certainly did not. The passive attitudes that I see extolled by many good-intentioned Christians seems to be motivated by a desire to be accepted and avoid conflict, which usually means being ignored. And I know this all too well. Moreover, I certainly agree that it is impossible to speak of grace without shining a light upon the nature of sin and how "we are all fallen creatures and all very hard to live with." ~ C.S. Lewis
I appreciate the depth of your comment and I think it is pretty cool that you are gifted with such a powerful mind.
@TheSilenceHeals - "For a Christian who resists the flesh for the sake of pleasing God reflects upon himself, but a Christian who resists the flesh by pleading for His new mercies daily and receives the ability to resist temptation and serve God out of the love that flows from the Holy Spirit reflects upon God. The former is sinning, and the latter is nothing apart from grace."
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I wouldn't go so far as to say that it is a sin to do good for the sake of pleasing God. It is right to wish to please our Maker - to wish to hear Him say, "Well done." The problem, as C.S. Lewis says, comes when we turn from thinking "I have pleased Him; all is well" to thinking "What a great person I must be to have done it."
I love Lewis's analogy of the child who asks her father to give her sixpence so that she can buy him a present - "Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction." That seems, to me, the plain truth about the relationship of our good deeds to our heavenly Father. It is when we move from such a parable to the theology of causation that we find ourselves in deep water.
As for the depth of my comment - just returning the favor as a way of saying thank you. :)