Archive for the Theological Category

The false God of Jonathan Edwards

I read Jonathan Edwards’ sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” recently. I had read this quote in critiques, but having read the entire sermon, it aptly paints the picture Edwards paints of God throughout the sermon.

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.”  – Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

Edwards’ god looks nothing like Jesus and, hence, nothing like the Father.

Photo by Dan Edge on Unsplash

“God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.” Hebrews 1:1-3.

Edwards’ god does not look like the Peter’s or Ezekiel’s God.

“The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9

“‘As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure at all in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live.’” Ezekiel 33:11

Again, Edwards’ god looks nothing like God as revealed in Jesus.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” John 14:6-9 

Edwards’ god resembles pagan gods rather than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I’m by no means an expert on the Egyptian, Canaanite, Mesopotamian, or Greco/Roman gods, nor any other mythical gods of various regions and cultures, but I know enough to differentiate Yahweh from them because of Jesus.

As Brian Zhand says, “God has always been like Jesus.” God does not “abhor” us; he loves us.

“’For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’” John 3:16

“But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

A little respect

Topic 1 of This Series

This topic was at the bottom of my list. I was also what I was originally working up to with Love your neighbor but news of Ahmaud Arbery’s, Breonna Taylor’s, and George Floyd’s murders were more urgent to address loving our neighbors. Now that it’s Pride Month, it seems like the time for the topic of changing my mind about LGBTQIA.

It all began with Sodom and Gomorrah. All my life I was taught they were destroyed because of homosexuality. I just accepted that as fact because I didn’t believe the churches I attended would teach something false. After all, Landmarkism was developed precisely to refute wrong doctrine. (That’s a post that I’ve probably written at some point.) Hence, I believed the Procter and Gamble connection to Satanism when I heard it taught at church. (It was not true.) But the backward masking scare tripped my bullshit detector despite only being about 13 years old. (My intuition correctly detected it was bullshit.) That was the first crack in my “church is always right” (as long as it’s a Landmark Missionary Baptist) wall.

Still I believed what I had been taught about Sodom and Gomorrah because “the Bible is clear.” The story is clear, but it says something a bit different from the narrative I was taught. (Read the story, Genesis 18:16 – 19:29) Sodom wasn’t “full of gay men;” it was full of greedy rapists. Throughout the rest of the Old Testament when Sodom is mentioned with the reasons for its destruction it was not over sex. It was the wealth the city didn’t share with the poor and lack of hospitality. (Ezekiel 16:49)

All the teaching that LGBTQIA+ people in this country would cause our destruction is based on a false interpretation. “Teh gays” represent no threat to the nation. I felt duped even though part of the problem was that I didn’t read the passage myself for most of my life. The crack in the wall grew bigger.

I continued believing for a while that it was a major and damning sin because my indoctrination has deep roots. However, I was no longer “hostile” toward it. I had to many gay friends and family to ever wish harm to anyone. Eventually I reached a point where I was no longer confident that the Bible was “clear” about it.* As it turns out, there is missing context for what was likely being portrayed in the Law given to Israel after they were led out of Egypt.

God’s people, Israel, were set apart by God and were instructed in the Law how to look and act differently from the other nations who worshipped other gods. (Leviticus 18:3) Part of that had to do with sex. (Leviticus 18) The surrounding nations had fertility gods and were believed to have sexual rituals associated with the temples to and worship of those gods. As I wrote in Love your neighbor, “All of the laws about loving our neighbor either seek to prevent harming them, or provide justice to those who have been harmed. Even the commands to love God provide protection and justice to others because idol worship always leads to oppression.” Lesbian sex was not mentioned in the law though sex with animals was prohibited for men and women. The author of Diary of an Autodidact explains the meaning of the word translated “sexual immorality”:

First, the word translated “sexual immorality” is porneia, which has an…interesting history. The word is thrown around a LOT in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. Porneia is used primarily to describe idolatry or selling oneself to another god. (The root of the word combines “sex” and “transaction,” that is “prostitution.”) So the Israelites seemed to be continually committing “porneia” with other gods. Esau committed “porneia” when he sold his birthright. (How crazy is that?) Christianity, particularly starting with patriarchal church fathers like Augustine, decided that “porneia” really meant sex outside of marriage, which is…not its clear meaning. To the Greeks and Romans, porneia had become an idiomatic way to refer to “acceptable” extra-marital sex – namely, men sleeping with prostitutes or raping their slaves. (There was a different word, moicheia, to refer to adultery – that is, a man messing with another (free)man’s chattel.) This could be an entire rabbit hole here, but suffice it to say that the cultural baggage of the Greco-roman world combined with the cultural baggage of Second Temple Judaism to create a whole doctrine that is rather foreign to the Torah or to the culture the bible was written in.

It does not appear that consensual sex was what the Bible writers were portraying as sin. I’m not saying I think it’s okay for us to go out and sleep around with whoever we want. I just don’t see how consensual sex between 2 people in a romantic relationship with one another is the abomination God was referring to – gay or straight – and certainly not marriage. He is much more concerned with oppression.

*I’m not saying the Bible is not inerrant. I’m saying neither translation nor interpretation are inerrant.

Test and renew


Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

I have been planning a series of items of doctrine I was taught and indoctrinated (not meant as pejorative) with that I have changed my mind about. None of the changes were based on a whim or a “feeling” but from study after praying for discernment to see the truth. In every case I began with the Truth of God’s love for his creation as is shown to us through Jesus. No doctrine that is not rooted in the Truth of God’s love (though through a mirror dimly) can be correct. No doctrine applied in condemnation or oppression is valid because it does not come from a spirit of God’s love. Any doctrine applied out of self-interest to gain or maintain power and/or material comfort is not from a love either our neighbor or God. A good picture of how love for others looks (besides the Cross) is I Corinthians 13.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

This will serve as the foundation of each subsequent topic along with a previous post, Love your neighbor. I’m not claiming to be 100% correct. None of us can make that claim. My motivation for studying the doctrines has been part of my deconstruction and rebuilding upon a solid foundation of love rather than fear. It has been helpful in rooting out my bias and prejudices, but also from “unpure” motive of a desire to “win” debate/arguments. My motives aren’t pure and I want to share that because we all have biases and many, most, or all are rooted in the particular culture we grew up in and later chose as adults when choice is an option. For myself, given the career field in which I plan to work, it is imperative that I identify my bias and prejudice because we can’t care for and help someone we don’t believe deserves help. If we don’t believe someone (individual or group) deserves help then we are not loving them and therefore do not love God with our whole being. Without a foundation of love of our neighbor — neighbor or friend — all of our doctrine and works are useless.

Post #1

As the world burns


Photo by Koshu Kunii on Unsplash

I can remember once when I was either in my teens or early twenties talking with my mom about something related to the End Times. It was in a dispensational context, of course, because that’s what we knew because that’s what we were taught and everything outside of our Baptist sect was either false teaching or a “slippery slope” to falling away from the true faith. Our conversation turned to The Rapture at some point which is the only part of the conversation I remember. Mom said, “We probably won’t know the rapture happened because churches will still be full.” That shocked me at the time not only because she said it but the possibility it could be true.

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’” Matthew 13:24-30 NIV

These past few weeks have shown me that the tares are thick among the wheat. As we have moved into the worst pandemic in 100 years, I’ve seen Christians balking at having their rights violated by lockdowns and shutdowns. I’ve watched them grab onto outlandish and dangerous conspiracy theories with either no fact-checking or dismissing information refuting the conspiracies as “false news” and/or “liberal” attempts to destroy our freedom. I’ve seen pastors defiantly continue to hold in-person services and congregants attending with just as much defiance and cry about separation of church and state. I understand a lot of the behavior is denial. COVID-19 has destroyed what was normal life and it’s going to be a long time before we get that normal back – assuming we can.

Now we are in the midst of protests and rioting in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. The former officers might be innocent until proven guilty according to the way our judicial system works, but it is hard to watch those videos and see the photos and call that either accidental or justified even though it was not likely premeditated. I can’t help but wonder how many black citizens this happens to. It would still be happening unchecked if not for cell phones. Not that it brought justice for Philando Castile. I see a lot of denouncing of the looting and rioting from largely the same people who were offended by Colin Kaepernick. And I see a lot of silence.

I look at the way Conservative Christianity in the U.S. has morphed in the last *40 years and think of what my mom said all those years ago about the rapture. We spent so much effort focusing on the sins of others (those outside of our sects and non-Christians) that we failed to see the enemy turning us from the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:20) to follow the god of this world in seeking power and domination to hang on to our position of privilege. We drew a line and made ourselves watchkeepers of Western Christianity which we made the standard by our own self-righteousness. We have dehumanized, demonized, and criminalized those who are different whether it is a minor doctrinal issue that has no impact on the saving work of Jesus, or they look or speak differently than us. We labeled other sects, political ideologies, religions, and people groups as threats to our way of life thereby making them an enemy to be destroyed rather than follow Jesus’ command to love our enemies. We look nothing like Christ whom we are to follow into suffering or death.

I think a great many of us don’t know Jesus any deeper than as a get out of hell free token. We’ve turned salvation into a formula which builds our churches and makes us appear successful, but it is a façade. We oppress to maintain our supremacy and call it faithfulness to the Bible while few ever go any deeper than a prosperity gospel similar to Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now while condemning him as a false teacher. We focus on sexual immorality and abortion while ignoring the sexual abuse rampant among our churches including pastors and elders. We don’t look at our own greed and violence and divisiveness. We’ve said our Sinner’s Prayer and we go through life never growing beyond publicly avoiding vices like alcohol, drugs, and cussing and blame the other for anything that causes us discomfort let alone suffering. We blame all the troubles in our country on others while refusing to see how we created or contributed to the problems. Rather than lamenting we rage. Rather than repent we cling to our idols. We are Americans first and nominally Christians second provided our faith doesn’t interfere with how well we think of ourselves and our possessions.

We have just celebrated Pentecost while many of our cities are literally burning. Pentecost for the Christian is when the Spirit was poured out on all people. God spoke to His people through Isaiah and said:

Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed. (Or justice. / Correct the oppressor)
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.

Are we going to listen to the Spirit, or will we be like those whom Paul warned the Thessalonians, “The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.” We need to be on guard as to which voice we are listening to and whom we are following. Are we following Jesus and all he commands in loving our neighbors or are we following the world in seeking to serve ourselves? Jesus calls us to pick up our cross and follow Him, and he said this before he went to the cross. They knew what the cross meant. Do we?

*I chose 40 years because I remember next to nothing about Christianity other than going to church every time the doors opened for the first 9 years of my life. And most of my 10th year we went nowhere.

Love your neighbor


Photo by Nina Strehl on Unsplash

I’ve been trying to write on this topic for 2 or 3 weeks, but couldn’t find a starting point. The exposure of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder on video this past week – TWO MONTHS AFTER THE FACT – with his killers walking free and uncharged during that time has given me that place to start. I’ve heard several white pastors call racism a sin problem not a skin problem. I agree, but I don’t think it gets to the heart of the problem: what makes an action a sin?

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:24 NASB

But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:34-40 NASB

Humans have been sinning since the Garden of Eden. Much ink has been spent since that time over whose fault it was despite Adam consistently being named throughout the bible as the representative of humanity and from whom we all inherited our sin. Aside from the most extreme patriarchal Christian sects, this is orthodox across denominations. I find it curious that it was not until Adam ate the fruit that “the eyes of both of them were opened.” I once heard someone teaching on this passage who speculated that since Adam “was there with her” when the serpent was doing his thing on Eve, and did not attempt to stop either of them, that perhaps he was also thinking that maybe the serpent was right and let Eve eat to see if she died. When she didn’t, he saw that as proof that God had lied to him and so he ate. Genesis 3 contains no indication of why Adam ate, but God states that the cause of why He was about to curse all the earth was that Adam listened to his wife. It could have been that Eve handed him the fruit she might have said, “See, nothing happened.” Regardless, Adam took no responsibility for his part at all. Eve blame-shifted, but in the process of saying “the serpent deceived me” she confessed (albeit passively) that God had not lied. Of note, while God was handing out the curses, He did not say to Eve “because you have done this.” There were consequences, yes, but He didn’t attribute those to what she had done as he did with the serpent and Adam.

The next sin we see in Cain’s murder of his brother, Abel – which he avoided owning up to – earning him a curse, but also protection due to God’s mercy. Fast forward to the time of Noah. The corruption of mankind on the earth was specified by God as being full of violence. Fast forward to Abraham’s time and you have Sodom and Gomorrah. There were not even 10 righteous people in them, and all the men of Sodom descended on Lot’s house to rape his visitors (the angels of God). Fast forward to the Exodus, when God gave Moses His law for His people who are called by His name (Isra-el) to set them apart from the other nations. They were to be different from all the other nations and the nations be blessed through them. The essence of the law God gave to his people was to love God and love their neighbors without becoming like their neighbors who worshipped other gods. But, alas, they wanted to be like the other nations, and were scattered among the nations.

Now there is a lot of ceremonial law applicable only to Israel prior to Jesus’ crucifixion. The veil separating the Holy of Holies in the Temple was ripped from top to bottom indicating that the place where God dwells was now open to all. Jesus death, burial, and resurrection made the ceremonial laws unnecessary. “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.’ Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?” And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”

God loves us so much that he was willing to set aside deity to become one of us through Jesus, showing us what he meant for us to love others, and let us kill him in the most brutal and humiliating way after he had first been whipped and beaten until he was unrecognizable by us as we mocked him. He faced rejection, ridicule, betrayal, and torture without responding though he had the power to destroy us all. As he hung on the cross, he cried out to the Father not for vengeance, not to save him, but to forgive those who put him there and were mocking him. That is the ultimate demonstration of God’s love for us and his capacity for forgiveness. His resurrection showed his victory over death and provides the hope we have in him that he will raise us up after death as well.

In light of the sacrifice of Jesus, can we really love God if we don’t understand just how much he loves us? If we don’t just love him but also trust him completely (“Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”) can we really love our neighbors? If we don’t love our neighbors – including our enemies (real or imagined) – do we really love God?

The law gave Israel a guide for loving God and loving their neighbor. It wasn’t all-encompassing specific, but it was a strong enough framework to build upon how to love. If we get past the letter of the law to understand the spirit of it, we can still be guided somewhat to treat other people well. There are certainly problematic aspects of it especially with sexuality regarding women, but even those provide protection and care that would not otherwise be given. As Israel slid away prophets were sent to warn the people to repent and what was going to happen if they didn’t.

“He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God?” Micha 6:8 NASB

All of the laws about loving our neighbor either seek to prevent harming them, or provide justice to those who have been harmed. Even the commands to love God provide protection and justice to others because idol worship always leads to oppression. Hence, Jesus fulfilled the law’s intended purpose to show us who God really is, and how to live out paying forward God’s love to us to our neighbors whether they are friend or foe, family or stranger, without exception.

“In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” – Jesus, Matthew 7:12 NASB

Trauma and Jesus

I had a small mental crisis last week. I called it an existential crisis, but it wasn’t. Neither was it a crisis of faith though that would be closer to what it was. Experiential crisis would probably be a better term for what I was experiencing. I was listening to a podcast on the way home from work and they were talking about how your body stores trauma during fight or flight events in which you cannot fight nor escape and, therefore, freeze and shutdown. There’s no place for the energy of the adrenaline to discharge so it is absorbed. I’m probably taking a lot of license with that paraphrase. I may even be mixing in something I read this week as well that was related. Either way, that’s what I took away.

During the podcast, the guest said something that triggered a memory which led to me saying, “OH MY GOD!” out loud while beginning to question my salvation experience. I made a connection that a couldn’t see before. See, I was saved during a revival. Not at church, but at home if we are using the “sinner’s prayer” as “the moment.” I was 12, and the dude preaching the revival was an asshole. No, I will not tone that down. He was an asshole. He was so much of an asshole that I refused to go forward the next night of revival and give him the credit for my conversion (remember, I was 12). After all, when I said my prayer – WHICH I MEANT – the weight lifted, and I was at peace. You know, just like so many testimonials I’d heard growing up. What I can’t do is really explain why I didn’t do it after the revival was over. I loved our pastor, and still do. It had nothing to do with him or the church. I told one person within the next 2 ½ years, and it was one of the other kids who asked me point blank one evening before church.

Back to the asshole evangelist, 2 ½ years he was called back to preach another revival. Still an asshole, and I got that same feeling I got during the last one he preached and decided I wasn’t going feel that fear again (and it was absolutely fear) for any length of time and walked the aisle to make my profession of faith. I was baptized a couple months later, we moved a few months after that, and when I was 19, I walked away from the church and wouldn’t really go back until I was 38. And now I’m really digressing.

When my “OH MY GOD!” moment happened, I made a connection. See, I’ve always wondered why in the world God would choose that asshole to speak through to me. Because, of course, all preachers speak for God. I was well indoctrinated with that religious authoritarianism from birth being a deacon’s kid. What I didn’t connect for years is that my dad was also an asshole and that asshole evangelist used a lot of the same tactics of controlling through shaming that my dad did. Naturally, that would produce the same fear sensation but because it happened at church during a sermon, I assumed it was conviction of the Holy Spirit because I didn’t know diddly squat about trauma.

A few years ago, I went through a similar crisis though at that time it was absolutely a crisis of faith. I questioned where I had been emotionally manipulated into “getting saved” and that maybe I wasn’t really saved. There was certainly a good portion of my adult life that I was not following Jesus. I poured over scripture searching for assurance until I finally found the security I was seeking. In hindsight, the fact that I turned to prayer and bible study was a good indication that I was not deceived into a false conversion. But after my episode last week, while I did not question my salvation, as I said, I questioned my experience.

I only wrestled maybe for a day before I found peace with it. While I was hesitant initially at 12 and didn’t completely understand what I was feeling (fear) nor why, after some reasoning out based on other’s experience, I went to Jesus. And anyone I would have talked to at that age if I had talked to anyone about it (which I absolutely would NOT have done because “Don’t talk. Don’t trust. Don’t feel.”), they would have pointed me to Jesus. But the point is, I grew up in church and knew who Jesus was and what He did. At the risk of sounding like a Calvinist (which I’m not, nor am I Arminian), there’s never been a time in my life when I wasn’t a believer. This isn’t to say I haven’t questioned and doubted, but too many things have happened throughout my life that were absolutely supernatural – both external to me and internal.

What I have come to believe is that salvation doesn’t rest in saying an extrabiblical “sinner’s prayer” and “meaning it in your heart” when you say it. Salvation rests in following Jesus. Jesus didn’t tell the disciples to “ask Him into their hearts,” He said, “Follow me.”

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

So, my “sinner’s prayer” was not so much about being scared by a hellfire and brimstone (aka “turn or burn”) evangelist as it was believing that Jesus was going to give me the peace I needed. It wasn’t the prayer that saved me, it was Jesus. It isn’t saying a formulaic prayer that gives me the assurance I’m in Christ, it’s the daily dying to self even if it seems I can’t bear my cross and try to run away. The proof is in the fruit. The proof is in the resolve to keep following Jesus and turning back to Him when the Spirit tells me I’m straying. He knows what trauma does to a person and therefore I can trust that He protected then and protects me now from false assurance in His salvation.

Joy Beher and hearing God speak

I have not heard directly what Joy Beher said. I don’t watch The View, nor do I follow it because I don’t care. I don’t watch any talk shows nor do I listen to talk radio. They don’t entertain me. If what I keep reading about on Facebook is true, Joy Beher is wrong in her assessment that Mike Pence hearing God is mental illness. But I’m not about to go on a rant against Joy Beher in defense of Mike Pence.

While I think she is wrong, and not solely because of my belief in God and having heard from him myself, but because I have a little bit of knowledge about mental illness, I refuse to call for The View to be canceled because I’m offended that she is wrong. She has every right to say that. She is entitled to believe it and to say it. I will wholeheartedly support that right because I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That includes the 1st amendment that her opinions are fully protected under. Just as I will support the right to speak of the opinions of the outraged Christians who are too thin skinned to handle criticism of the world. But to them, as a follower of the risen Jesus the Messiah, I ask you this:

What do you think you signed up for when you decided to follow Jesus?

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” John 15:18-20

He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth. Isaiah 53:7

How are you going to stand firm in the face of true persecution when you can’t handle being offended? Is Jesus not enough? How do you expect to lead a nonbeliever to Jesus when you can’t quietly go about doing the works that you were called to do according to Ephesians 2:8-10?

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. James 3:13-16

For far too many generations we have been indoctrinated into a false christianity. We have been taught to look at the sin of the world around us and fear the consequences of the sins of the other without ever being taught to look at ourselves and whether or not we are following Jesus or following the world. This led us to following “bold Christian leaders” who stand against the world to save us from destruction, which was always to keep us “safe and comfortable.” And so we turned to political leaders to save us. But putting our faith in the world system (even a “good” one) instead of putting our faith in our only true hope which is in Jesus Christ is antichrist. Jesus says in Revelation, “I am making all things new.” This is the fruit of the Gospel. Not that we will be saved by the world’s system, but that only Jesus saves. Not that the world provides the “safety” and “security” to follow “religious conscious,” but that Jesus provides us the faith to follow Him against the wisdom of this world.

“I have told you this things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart. I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

Following Jesus is NEVER about fighting for our rights or security or safety or comfort. It has always been and always will be about loving God with everything we are, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. It’s not a fight against people, it’s a fight against the demonic whose mission has always been to turn us against God. And we are to accept being outsiders to the world with joy.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 1 Peter 1:3-9

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Romans 12:14

Anyone claiming that God is saying something different than that, isn’t hearing the voice of God as revealed in Jesus.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! Galatians 1:8-9

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 1 John 4:1

“The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air (Elvish translation). Much that once was is lost; for none now live who remember it. It began with the forging of the great rings: three were given to the Elves, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Seven to the Dwarf Lords; great miners and craftsman of the mountain halls. And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of men, who above all else desire power. For within these rings was bound the strength and will to govern each race. But they were all of them deceived, for another ring was made: in the land of Mordor, in the fires of Mount Doom, the dark lord Sauron forged, in secret, a master ring to control all others. And into this ring he poured his cruelty, his malice, and his will to dominate all life.

One Ring to Rule them All.”

Culture wars and agendas #NaBloPoMo

I was going to start this off by saying that I think fighting culture wars are a colossal waste for Christians. But I sat long enough to come up with some cultures that are worth the time and effort to fight against, such as racism, rape culture, patriarchy, fascism, and the like. You know, cultures whose primary aim is to control and harm others. I am wholeheartedly for fighting for justice for the oppressed and the marginalized. There’s a few commandments throughout the Bible to do just that.

So really, what I find the colossal waste is the agenda wars. These so-called “agendas” are touted all the time by the right. I’m using the right rather than the left because I was part of the right wing for so many years. I not only heard the rhetoric, I spoke it. I was all in with it, and looking back, it’s because I never really thought the ideas all the way through. After all, you don’t have to think it all the way through when you are in an echo chamber and your adversaries are largely abstract epithets.

I wish I could say that one day my eyes opened and I could see the propaganda for what it is, and it is propaganda, but it was a gradual awakening that took a few years. I also cannot take any credit for the change in thinking. Additionally, I still have a long way to go, because I go from 0 to 88 mph when I get outraged. Like Matt Walsh tweets popping up in my feed TWICE today. To be honest, I mostly agreed with one of them (which is rare!), but his smug tone eclipsed his moral stand.

Anyway, I was listening to a sermon the other day, and I could not finish because of the presentation. The use of a particular culture’s “agenda” killed the message, and not in a good way. Harping on a secular/any type of sexual/atheistic/liberal/conservative agenda in a way the presents it as a threat turns the members of the target group into an enemy, first by stoking fear, then by demonizing which dehumanizes an entire group. It caricaturizes people making them objects to be fought against rather than fought for. While this method of preaching gets a lot of amens, I’m sitting there wondering, where is Jesus in this? How would He have us engage these groups? How do these menacing portraits of others equip us to reach them with the Gospel, literally, the Good News of Jesus Christ? If we are presenting these people as abstract entities with agendas that threaten our comfortable way of life, how are we going to “Go, therefore, and teach all nations?”

Yes, we are to be counter-cultural, but we aren’t counter-cultural when we just want to preserve our way of life and/or we fear God’s wrath. That makes us just as worldly as the rest of the world. Instead, if we are going to truly follow Christ, if we are indeed his disciples, we will be counter-cultural because of our love and kindness to our fellow man – even those who hate us and want to kill us. Because we serve a risen King who has already won the battle. Satan isn’t just at work in the world, he is at work in the church as well. Jesus warned about tares among the wheat. He warned us about laying up treasure on earth rather than treasure in heaven. “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

Religion and politics make strange bedfellows

FieryGrill-WM

When I was a high school senior, I was pretty involved in the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) club in my high school. I didn’t necessarily care anything about being a business leader (I wanted to be a pharmacist at the time), but I absolutely adored the FBLA sponsor, Mrs. Alveretta Lynch. One day I remember asking her, “Are you a Democrat or a Republican?” I have no idea why I was even going there, except that it was 1987, and I was going to be turning 18 soon. Her answer to me was not at all expected, and made a huge impact on me. She told me she was neither. “I vote for candidates, not political parties.” She went on to explain her decision-making process for choosing a candidate, and I took it all in because I not only loved her, but I respected her. I still do.

I’ve dabbled in politics over the years, though if anyone were to dig up my political posts from my original blog instance, it would seem more than dabbling. I was full on pundit, and staunchly conservative. When I turned 18, I went as soon as possible and registered to vote. I registered as a Democrat because the county I grew up in was majority Democrat to the point that if you weren’t a registered Democrat, you didn’t vote for local officials because only Democrats were running. Therefore, the local elections were decided in the primary. A couple of years before, I had worked on a campaign for an Independent candidate. After I was registered, there was a shortage of primary poll workers in our ward, and one of my friends recruited me to work along with her. 2 just-turned 18-year-olds working as poll workers for the Democratic primary. We still had paper ballots back then. That made for a LONG night of counting ballots. But I loved it. I was part of the process, and not only did I work the primary for the Democrats, but I ended up working for the county in the general election for 2 or 3 years. And while I was a registered Democrat, I voted nearly exclusively Republican. It was the 80s, and I loved me some Reagan. I also disliked me some Clinton.

While in the Air Force, whenever I came across a voting rep, I would get an absentee ballot. I still largely voted Republican, but the Republicans’ treatment of Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky affair (pun intended) felt so over the top. Yes, he was a dog and flat out lied about it, but prosecution over a blow job is overkill. I’m sure many of the Republicans pushing that were just as guilty of infidelity. (I’m looking at you, Newt Gingrich.) It was just enough taint on the “party of values,” that when I became an NC resident, I left my voter registration as “Undeclared.” I haven’t voted in most of the primaries, but the ones I have, I’ve picked the Democrat primary ballot. Mainly because I live in a largely Democratic county, and local candidates have a much greater impact on me personally than state or national. And I must say, the Democrats who have stopped by our house campaigning for local commissioners have been much more reasonable and pleasant than the one Republican who came across as angry and paranoid.

And I was also an angry and paranoid conservative.

Something happened when I started going to church again a few years ago. What happened when I started back to church was that I had a fresh encounter with God. I can state with certainty, and I think the scriptures back this up, that once you have had an encounter with the risen Jesus, you are never the same. I was devouring the Bible, religious non-fiction, religious blogs, and podcasts. I started praying real prayers instead of my previous prayer life of largely “foxhole prayers.” I threw myself into service at church. Meanwhile, my life was slowly falling apart. Work was awful. My marriage was deteriorating. I covered all my issues up by becoming a self-righteous Pharisee (and drinking a lot). Or maybe I always was a self-righteous Pharisee, and was just letting it out. Perhaps I still am to some degree.

At some point I became a single-issue voter. Because I am pro-life, I picked pro-life candidates, and that left me with just the Republican candidates. But this former Tea Party conservative finally started hearing the right wing and beginning to see so much nastiness towards others. I increasingly saw a major disconnect between my faith the politics of the right wing. I had seen how the left wing demonized and dehumanized the right, but suddenly I could see that the right was doing the exact same thing to the left. I started seeing people as people instead of nameless, faceless groups who were a threat to my freedom, and by freedom I really mean comfort. Eventually I realized that being pro-life is much more than being merely anti-abortion.

When I started reading the Bible (and I’ve read the entire Bible, cover to cover, more than once and more than one translation), I began to see things I had never seen, and certainly never heard in the conservative/fundamentalist/patriarchal/complementarian churches I grew up in and later attended. For instance, I have heard my entire life that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah over homosexuality. But in actually reading the account, that is not the issue particularly when the Bible elsewhere largely refers to their self-centeredness as the reason for their destruction.(1) Sodom and Gomorrah were full of rapists, and that is central to the reason for destruction.

I also started noticing that individual verses have a greater context, and that the books in the Bible weren’t written with chapters and verses, and defintely without subject headers added by publishers. “The Bible clearly says” rarely follows with a clear-cut black and white statement. I learned nuance, and that most circumstances are not clearly black and white. The Apostle Paul spoke about liberty as Christians, and I started to see what that really meant. Finally, decades after memorizing the verses as a child, I started to grasp “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:21 NASB. So when I finally came to the end of myself, I was able to wholeheartedly surrender EVERYTHING: possessions, job, status, marriage, children, Mom, extended family. Even my freedom and my very life. Because either Jesus is enough, or the foundation of my faith is built on sand.

With my newfound enlightenment (I say that tongue-in-cheek), I discovered that there is a huge lack of discernment among American Christians. We place our pastors and elders on pedestals where they don’t belong because we have somehow gotten the notion that they are more spiritual than us. I think we have also decided that they have special insight into politics, and so we make our political decisions based on our pastors’ and other religious leaders’ opinions. We say our hearty “A-MEN”s when they decry the world’s sin, and thereby feed our own self-righteousness by comparing ourselves to the world. Then we set about to fight culture wars wherein we demonize and dehumanize the sinners while thanking God we are not like them. (Luke 18:9-14) We fret and stew that if we do not win, God is going to smite us with his terrible wrath. So we have to work harder and harder to win control – to rule.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Romans 8:1 KJV

But, Jesus did not die so we could rule over others. Jesus set aside his divinity, and his ruling authority with it, to set us free from the bondage of self-serving. If we are to follow Christ – to walk in His ways – we should be laying aside our privilege and desire to control in order to server others as salt and light in a dark and broken world. Since the 4th Century, we have plenty of evidence to show that whenever Christendom is ruling, oppression and tyranny soon follow – from the ruling Christians. Jesus didn’t command us to rule, and he certainly didn’t tell us to seek out personal comfort and pleasure.

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:24-25

Jesus did not die to set us free so we can live the American Dream. He died to set us free FROM the American Dream.

According to the American Dream, our individual success and happiness are dependent upon our individual effort. Hence our happiness is dependent upon our own hard work and opportunity. And when we don’t have the opportunity for our subjective happiness/prosperity, we run the risk at best for resenting whoever is blocking that. Therefore, without the perfect opportunity to match our hard work, we are going to be disappointed in other people/systems, then angry, then make them our enemy. We become self-absorbed and self-centered in our pursuit of happiness which we think we are going to find in something (or someone) external to us. That is what Jesus sets us free from by becoming the one who gives us our sense of worth and brings us into his family through His work alone.Then we are truly free to love and serve others – friends and enemies alike.

The flaw in the pursuit of the American Dream is in it’s individualism. “…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The pursuit of happiness by humans, by our very nature, becomes a self-centered pursuit. We end up with a class/culture conflict because those with less opportunity want more, while those with more don’t want to give up anything (and often want more). This brings us to an “us vs them” mentality by both sides wherein each has to resort to dehumanizing the other side in order to maintain the resentments/fear against the other. Our politicians then play on that resentment and fear, and we all dig in deeper in our trenches because we are laying up our treasure here on earth. Our materialistic pursuits never ever satisfy us and always become divisive. That’s what Jesus sets us free from. Endless pursuit of temporary treasure. He alone can satisfy our pursuit of happiness because he did all the work, and we who believe in Him reap the reward of true worth and contentment independent of our national heritage.

You cannot simultaneously say “America First” while saying that this country needs Jesus. The message of Jesus is always others first. This is why we are in danger when we follow the Franklin Grahams, Wayne Grudems, James Dobsons, Jerry Falwells (Sr & Jr), and Pat Robertsons. They have been deceived by their fear and the human desire for power that we all possess. This is the only reason I can see that at least 3 of them have endorsed a candidate for President of the United States that has such appallingly bad character as to make the Clintons look like saints in comparison. This is the only explanation for why so many Christians would resort to spiritual abuse to try to guilt other Christians into voting for Donald Trump.

Jesus already won, and he didn’t do it with swords or guns or ballots. He did it on the cross. When we believe this, we will be able to vote for character rather than charisma, and we can vote with a clear conscious for a candidate with little to no chance of winning because we will not fear whomever is elected, yet will not vote for someone with terrible character. And we can stand up to the bullies who peddle fear to coerce us into voting the way they want, and tell them that our vote is not being wasted when we vote our conscious with complete liberty. Just like Mrs. Lynch taught me to vote for candidates, not parties.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Mark 8:36 KJV

(1) “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. Samaria did not commit half the sins you did. You have done more detestable things than they, and have made your sisters seem righteous by all these things you have done.” Ezekiel 16:49-51 NIV. Only Jude 7 refers to the sexual immorality. All other references beyond the account of Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction are either references to the destruction, or comparison to how much worse the people of Israel became.

No magic formulas

When I have a problem, I want a simple, clear-cut solution. I want it fixed, and I want a simple plan to do so. I also want immediate results, but that’s another matter.

Being the self-sufficient perfectionist I am, I am all about some self-help. Ah, yes, give me a blog post with 3-10 steps on how to fix what’s wrong. Give me a book that explains the real reason that whatever it is is broken, along with the steps I need to take to fix them. Oh, it’s a Christian blog or book? Score! It’s gonna do the trick!

That is, as long as I believe that God moves according to the works I do or behaviors I do not do. Which is to say, I have to do certain things and avoid other things in order to earn God’s favor.

Book-WM

What I found from the vast majority of the Christian “self-help” books is that they are largely written as prescriptive when they are actually experiential. They also tend to be upper-middle class, suburbanites who have “traditional households” where the husband works as the breadwinner, and the wife is a stay-at-home mom. Sure, the wife might write and speak at conferences, but the entire family dynamic is still “traditional.” (And I’m not saying nor wish to imply that there is anything wrong with the “traditional” family model.)

I fully believed that if I did the things in those books, that things would get better. Our marriage would be better. Our finances would be better. Our kids would be model students. Yet, the harder I worked, the worse things got. “I’m doing all the right things! Why isn’t this working?!”

The number one reason following the directions/suggestions in those books and blogs doesn’t work is this:

All that crap falls apart when active alcoholism, drug addiction, and/or abuse are involved.

And that’s when you are left with “you reap what you sow.”

You made the choice to take that first drink.

You made the choice to marry an alcoholic/addict.

“Submit to your husband and pray for him.”

Guess what? That doesn’t necessarily work. Especially if you both came from dysfunctional families and neither of you have dealt with those issues. Though you absolutely should be praying for him, and he for you.

I want to make perfectly clear that I am not saying the typical Christian self-help book is not useful or helpful. Like any other type of non-fiction, some are great, some are fluff, and some just stink to high heaven. Often even the fluff has really good nuggets.

What I am saying is that there is no quick-fix, easy step-by-step method – Christian or otherwise – that is a magic formula for fixing a marriage or getting out of debt or beating an addiction. There is no “Do this and everything is going to turn out great just the way you want it” system that can guarantee you are going to get what you want (or more honestly, what you think you want).

A marriage doesn’t get fixed by one spouse doing all of (or even most of) the work.

You don’t get out of debt by subscribing to a get-rich-quick scheme, and this includes the “magic tithe.” (Malachi 3:10)

Repercussions from abuse do not go away by submitting to the abuse nor by forgiving (voluntarily and certainly not coercively) the abuser.

Children raised in a dysfunctional home are not necessarily going to be model students no matter how intelligent they are.

Life is hard and takes a lot of work. Don’t let anyone sell you an easy path to happiness. There isn’t one, and this is particularly true for followers of Jesus. Odd are, when things get particularly rough, you will find yourself screaming at God, “I did all the right things! Why am I the one being punished?!?!” And you know what? He won’t strike you down. But in that moment, you will be left with a choice.

“Do I really believe?”

My answer to that question became the guide to how I look at my circumstances. Because ultimately that determines whether I will be grateful for what I have, or bitter at what I don’t have.

It is always possible to be thankful for what is given rather than resentful over what is withheld–one attitude or the other becomes a way of life. – Elisabeth Elliot

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33 NIV