God is complex

The more I know about Christianity the harder it becomes to write about it. Simply saying one believes in the atonement of sin carries with it so much more meaning than it once did. If one makes this statement in passing it could mean a variety of things to a variety of people, it would probably affect whatever bigger point one is trying to communicate or possibly destroy all smaller points already made.

Christianity is complex. It has many scholars and laymen, all of them with a different church upbringing, a different interpretation of their education and many different ideas about how their education should be used in their worldview. Most of them are publishing their views daily online or in books. And there’s many more ways to complicate the example.

When I can I like to keep things simple and orderly. I have a tendency to be a bit obsessive, not to the point of needing medication, but I like order. Reading theology is driving me crazy. It’s not simple. The more I read the harder Christianity becomes. On one hand I’m learning, things are making sense that never have before. When I read doctrine I understand more about what it’s saying. But on the other hand it complicates my life in ways I’ve never dreamed. I can no longer live the way I did before. In fact, I have a responsibility not to because of my belief in the Bible.

I know of several people off the top of my head that would encourage me not to think so much and that by doing so I’m making things more complicated than they need to be. They’d be hesitant to discuss any theological subject in depth because they’re close-minded, not because they are somehow inferior, but because they either believe they have attained all the knowledge they need or that they simply need no knowledge. This is the cry of naivety. The truth exists known or unknown. What then can we say of unbelievers, the same thing? If we’re not willing to give an extensive biblical account for exactly what it is we believe, pertaining to all aspects of Christianity, why should we expect an unbeliever to listen to anything we have to say?

I’m afraid our culture has brought God down from a place of being Holy, sacred and complex to a place of personal paradigm where the Bible is explained or interpreted in the context of primarily human or emotional facets. For example, if one is prone to depression then they may seek for God to be primarily encouraging; all things pertaining to God ultimately lead to their encouragement. If the idea of a God is more spiritual to someone they may be found chasing an emotional experience or encounter with God; that he’ll be most revealed in experience. If someone is a pacifist then maybe they tend to ignore the wrath and anger of a jealous God that is also part of the person and work of Jesus; they’ll refuse to believe in a violent God. This all makes for a very simple view of God. Are we that naive as a culture to believe that the creator of all life, in which we have no exact scientific idea of how came to be, can be answered and explained so simply by one facet in particular that has been born of human paradigm? We seem to have a sort of tunnel vision that’s prohibiting us from seeing God as an ornate whole of all these facets and many more.

God is to be met with great awe and reverance of his holiness. When one holds their Bible they are holding text that has been God-breathed. Man was not merely inspired by God to write, but God used man to write himself into text. Take nothing for granted, not even the most inconspicuous word in any given verse. I’m not suggesting that we worship Scripture but instead the mysterious and complex God who authored it! We should be constantly challenging our paradigm, our intelligence, each other and God himself. Let nothing hold us back.

Filed under: Christian Life , bible, change, christianity, education, knowledge

Habakkuk quietly waits

The book of Habakkuk is 3 short chapters. In it we see the transformation of a prophet from a suffering man questioning God’s idleness, to a man who while never receiving an answer to his prayer has completely submitted to the greatness of God’s will in order that God may be glorified in his suffering. How incredibly profound this message is packed into one of the smallest books of the Bible.

Suffering is a mystery. We’re born with imputed sin and we’re not promised anything. God is not some sort of genie, that if we believe long enough and pray hard enough that we’re owed our heart’s desires. Some call this “name it and claim it” theology. The book of Habakkuk shows us that doctrine is simply untrue. God forgive us for selfishly thinking that an answer to prayer is the only time for him to be glorified.

Habakkuk illustrates the unique opportunity to rejoice in the greatness of God when hardship falls upon us. How can we find ways to submit ourselves to God so that he may be glorified in our suffering? For him, he recognizes who he was actually praying to; the God of the Bible. And he humbly submits in saying this:

I hear, and my body trembles; my lips quiver at the sound; rottenness enters into my bones; my legs tremble beneath me. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us.

This is so powerful! He is literally buckling under the greatness of God. And in that he’s submitting his suffering to the Lord. Oh, how I want to be like Habakkuk. I want God to be glorified in my suffering.

Filed under: Suffering , christianity, god, habakkuk, Suffering

Building up the Church

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of discovering in my Christian life, visiting old ideals and updating my files on what exactly it is that I believe. This has given me much inspiration to write. But when I stand back at a distance it can all be so negative. So, what then? I must pursue change. Sometimes righteous anger is appropriate and sometimes we need to question, to be critical to challenge one another. But not always.

John Piper suggests that we should always be doing more to build up the Church than to correct it.

My prayer today is, “God, how can I find ways to promote the good of you? How can I find ways to encourage instead of harping on opposing viewpoints? I want to build up the Church.”

Filed under: Church , change, christianity, Church

I am not a Neo-Calvinist

TIME magazine recently recognized New Calvinism as one of the 10 ideas changing the world right now. How incredible is it that Christianity made its way on that list? Amazing and to God’s glory! And to think there are Christians out there upset by this because their camp didn’t get the recognition. Shame, but I digress.

The author does a good job of outlining exactly what they mean by “New Calvinism” but I would have rather they used only Calvinism apart from the word “New”. By using that prefix they meant that the world is seeing a resurgence or coming back of what is known as classic Calvinism and not that there is a new form of Calvinism now called New Calvinism. Hopefully readers understand this because there are a lot of people out there using terms like “New Calvinism” and “Neo-Calvinist” primarily to shed a bad light on Calvinism. These people believe that the resurgence the world is seeing is somehow not classic Calvinism to which I say horse shit.

People, typically those who oppose Calvinism altogether, abuse these terms because a couple of idiots who call themselves Calvinists are embracing a few ideals contradictory to the writings of John Calvin and more importantly the Bible itself. What these idiots need is a good Calvinist elder to set them straight on their backwards theology but that’s not a reason to dream up new terminology for them. If an author in the opposing camp catches a whiff of this they write up a book and stamp the pseudo-name in history forevermore. Is this not working against unity in the Church? Of course the infamous Wikipedia has been updated with every flavor of Calvinism that one could dream up (and to aid in the battle against its credit in my opinion).

It was hinted at recently that I myself am a Neo-Calvinist which is ridiculous at best. I don’t believe in the terms “New Calvinism” or “Neo-Calvinism” – it’s all hot air. But if I’m not any of these new hybrid terms then what am I? I’m a Christian and that’s what I prefer to be called but there are times especially in the midst of all the false doctrine floating around where defining exactly what one’s doctrine consists of becomes important. And if we’re doing that then call me a classic Calvinist.

Filed under: Calvinism , Calvinism, christianity

My wife, full of grace

One of my wife’s biggest gifts is hospitality. She can cook a meal, decorate and entertain like nobody’s business. She makes our home a home. This is one of the things she does that I’m absolutely in love with.

Late one night this past week we were discussing what to make for dinner. And we were hungry so it needed to be fast. It took us about thirty-seconds to decide on breakfast; one of our quick and easy favorites.

Now, usually the one thing I do in the kitchen is cook breakfast. And since my wife cooks so well I kinda feel like it’s my way of contributing and she welcomes that. I kind of get a little chip on my shoulder like I can cook an egg just right and stuff like that. Well, this particular night she decided to fill in for me.

When she presented the picture-perfect meal I couldn’t help but noticed the picture-perfect bacon. It was flat and kept its shape yet was crisped to perfection. How did she do that? She said the secret was cooking it slow on low heat. All the bacon I’ve ever made paled in comparison; I always cook it fast on high heat, shriveling it to a crisp.

And this is just like her in our marriage. Often times she doesn’t approach anything fast on high heat, her way is slow on low heat and countless are the ways in which it accomplishes so much more than me. God has placed her in our marriage for a reason. I have a lot to learn from her. This is one of the things she does that I’m absolutely in love with.

Filed under: Marriage , bacon, cooking, grace, love, Marriage, wife

The New Puritans

I’ve recently joined The New Puritans as a contributing writer. It’s a blog primarily ran by my good friend, Andy Styer. It has a few contributing writers and seems to be growing very fast which is exciting. I’ll continue to blog in both places, here are there. Even though these blogs are closely related I see Sin, Religion or Jesus as more of a personal experience and reflection. I’ll be blogging with more of a community-mindset over at The New Puritans.

Right now we have some discussion going on over there about Creeds and Confessions, Heidelberg Catechism, music, church history resources and the like. Please stop by, take a look and join in the discussion if you’d like. Thanks.

Filed under: News

Teaching in the Church

When I was around twelve years old I was frightened into knowing the Lord. A friend had invited me to a popular evangelical charismatic production of Heaven’s Gates, Hell’s Flames at the local high school. That did the trick alright.

It was an awkward day. My friend was a little girl that had caught my eye. I remember I was staying with my Grandmother that night. I didn’t have the shirt I wanted to wear so she put me in one of my Grandfather’s white t-shirts. I was insecure before I ever stepped out the front door. My Grandmother dropped me off in front of the school. There I stood alone, nervous, in my white t-shirt. I was already in pre-teen hell.

My experience at the play was one of complete terror as I watched what seemed like countless people scream for their lives as they were dragged away by demons. This led me to the Assemblies of God church that had sponsored the event. I continued there by joining their youth group, later becoming a member of the church, eventually making my way into a youth leadership position and then found myself turning away from it altogether around eighteen years old.

About six short years is all it took for me to become frustrated with the church. But I continued my walk with God. It took me until the age of twenty-eight to realize what a crippled stagger that actually was.

All that to say not once in six years did my church ever teach me about the protestant reformation. In fact, their teaching was non-existent to say the least – nothing on the opposing viewpoints of election, apologetics, baptism, early church history, eschatology, covenant theology, dispensationalism all the way down to their own doctrine. Absolutely nothing.

Emotion! It was all run on emotion. For years I watched as the leaders chased revival by bringing in special speakers week after week who cried, yelled and thrashed about from the pulpit hoping for the Holy Spirit to fill us and bring revival!

What has happened to the church teaching history, viewpoints, knowledge and a scriptural account for their practices? Does this not add anything to our context? Did the evangelical charismatic movement of the 1960’s make the ideas and writings of Martin Luther null and void? Does this not give us context for how the very Bible they are preaching made its way into their hands so that they could interpret and come up with their Fundamental Truths? If you know nothing of your government will citizens in your country not laugh at your patriotism?

Lack of knowledge is an epidemic in the 21st century church, a lot have exchanged it in pursuit of emotion and it has made for very weak Christians. I find it increasingly disconcerting to see Christians running around proclaiming the name of Jesus but buckling under their lack of knowledge to give an account for anything scriptural that led them to believe in the name that saves them.

I realize the tone of this is strong so I think it’s important to note what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that anyone who doesn’t understand the protestant reformation can’t be saved or is any less Christian than the professor who teaches it. I believe when I gave my life to the Lord at twelve I was saved. But I also believe I knew nothing of the matter, I could not give an account for it. Some Christians are right there in their understanding, they have moved no further than the day they accepted the Lord.

My point is simple and crucial to the further spreading of the gospel. Christians should be able to give a scriptural account for the controversial subjects that pertain to their Christianity. If they don’t have this they’ve limited their reach of the lost and the understanding of their own salvation.

Filed under: Church , christianity, Church, education

A return to my writings

Well, here I am again. Some will welcome my return, some will despise it and to be honest I’ll probably do a little of both.

In late 2008 I closed my blog due to a few things. It had been a very rough year spiritually and my passion for writing had subsided. So, instead of being another dead blog I decided to shut things down for awhile. I always knew I would return I just didn’t think it would be this soon.

Like any creative subject to their inspiration so goes my writing. I’ll do my best to stay inspired but I make no promises this time around.

For a long time Christians have been metaphorically limping around with wounds that have never been healed – fractures have been treated with bandaids, limbs have been amputated over minor scratches and some people aren’t even aware they’re bleeding all over the people they love the most. I believe if we explore the scriptures of the Bible we will find the truths that will heal the multitudes. I’m hoping to explore those scriptures here and now.

Filed under: News