I never promised you are rose garden

 This verse stuck out to me today:

“Agree with God, and be at peace; thereby good will come to you.”

At first reading, this seems like a very good promise to hold onto. That is until you look at the context. This is Job 22:21 and is said by Eliphaz, one of Job’s friends who was trying to give Job godly advice but missed the mark. Eliphaz’s thought was that Job was being punished because of his sin. Thus, the remedy was to turn back to God so that God will life the suffering from Job’s life. One can see a hint of this thinking after the Israelites returned from exile in Ezra and Nehemiah and fully on display in the Pharisees of the New Testament.

This was contradicted by the first two chapters of the book of Job when it is revealed that Job’s suffering came because he was righteous (not perfect but a God-fearer). Continuing to the end of the book, God rebukes Job’s friends for this bad advice and sets them straight. In regards to the Pharisees, Jesus was very explicit with His frustration with them on this topic.

Looking back at these accounts, we may be tempted to scoff at the friends of Job and the Pharisees and their foolishness but fail to see this same thinking in our own lives. How many times do we get mad at God for not handling things the way we want or letting bad things happen to us? How many times do we pray and not get the answers we want and walk away grumbling? Who of us has not said that a good God would not allow this or that to happen?

This reminded me of a song I remember growing up by Lynn Anderson. The chorus is:

I beg your pardon,

I never promised you are rose garden.

Along with the sunshine

There’s got to be a little rain sometime.

While this is a song about human relationships, this same idea holds try about our relationship with God. One of the brothers in my small group said today, as he often quotes John 16:33:  

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.

Let’s be clear: God did promise us a life without pain, tears and sadness. However, that is in the new Heavens and the new Earth, not this one. That does not mean we are without hope for this life. He has provided the Holy Spirit to be with us in the midst of the storm that life is throwing our way.

Reading John 6, one sees that Jesus addressed this when his followers were seeking another miracle as they did with the feeding of the crowd. They were so enamored about the gifts that they received, they did not pay attention to the person giving the gifts. So, when the gifts stopped, they rejected the giver. This is true of us many times as well.

When things do not go the way we expect or want, we start grumbling and complaining. We question God and we throw a pity party for ourselves because of all the bad that God has given us. I say this from experience and I know others close to me that have experienced it more than I have. I am not saying that acknowledging the hardship we face is wrong. Nor is feeling exhausted in having to deal with it, especially if it have been a long battle. I am encouraging us to remember the good gifts that God has given us which should point us to the God who is good no matter what we are going through.

In these rough times, often, there are two responses. One is to point to the idea from Job’s friend and argue that God is not holding up His end of the bargain. We could complain and may even leave God behind. The other option is to recognize the idea in the song and John’s verse that we will have struggles but God is with us. Acknowledging our weakness and need of his strength is necessary and God understands when we are honest with Him about why we are struggling. David does this often in the Psalms but most of the time, he returns to praise God and look to Him for shelter and refuge.

May God be our fortress, which provides strength and comfort, in the midst of the circumstances we face in this life while we wait the glorious promised hope of a beautiful life to come for those who believe (John 6:47).

Comments on He Gets Us ads

 

There are two main objections I have seen to the He Gets Us ads that aired during the Super Bowl from the conservative side.

1. They tell a distorted picture of who Jesus is. Often, the complaint is that the ads leave out important parts of Jesus message because nobody gets the full gospel.

2. There is a lot better way to spend those millions of dollars to spread the Gospel.

These are both valid concerns and critiques of this campaign. That being said, from what I have researched, they are trying to reach a different audience than what most of us are used to. They see a vast number of people that are “post-Christian”. This means they have seen what the Christian faith has brought onto society and are having a hard time believing that it is good. Fairly or not, they have plenty of choose from. They can point to the scandals, abuse, power struggles, politics, hate, etc and they see that the people in the church are just as messed up and they are. So, why bother with the church at all. On their website, it asks two questions: “How did the story of Jesus, the worlds greatest love story, get twisted into a tool to judge, harm, and divide?  How do we remind people the story of Jesus belongs to everyone?”

In light of those two questions, the goal of the ads is not to tell the Gospel per se because many will tune it out. The goal is to show that Jesus values all people. He does not value you because of what you stand for or against. He does not value you because of what you can do for the church. HE VALUES YOU BECAUSE HE MADE YOU!!!

With that in mind, the goal of the first critique is not the initial goal of this ad campaign. Yes, eventually, the goal is to lead them to Christ but there is lots of work to be done before some people are ready for that. So, this is a step to give a different perspective of Jesus than they are seeing through the mainstream or social media.

As far as better ways to spend the money, if and when we are entrusted with how to spend that kind of money or if we are asked by a friend for advice on spending the money, then we can tell and show how we would spend it. I am sure there are about as many ways to spend money as there are people being asked. The reason I bring this up is that complaining on how someone spends their money yields little fruit. The fact is that it is their money and these ads are shown during the Super Bowl and other times during the year no matter how loud we complain about them. Is there another way to view them?

Let’s look at this from someone who those ads are reaching. If you are complaining about the ads and how they are awful because of this or that, would someone who has a bad impression of Christians to begin with consider talking with you about anything in the ad that resonated with them or would they see that you are reaffirming all of the negative stereotypes they have about Christians in the first place?

For me, like them or not and agree with them or have convictions against them, they are “conversation starters” that we can use to engage with people about who Christ is. However, our reaction to them can either open doors to communication or they can close them real quick. Christians need to be ready to use them to show that everyone has value and Jesus welcomes everyone. Unfortunately, the church has had a long history of being very judgmental, harmful and divisive, which is the reason for this ad campaign. Our reaction can either reinforce those impressions or help to tear them down and show them a different view of the love of Jesus then they see elsewhere. Which of those would you rather see?

Is God narcissistic? Does God need us?

 

Acts 17:24-25 tells us that God does not need us. He is self-sufficient. He is not needy and waiting for us to praise him to help his self-esteem. He is fine.

If this is true, why is God so adamant with the commands that he gives us in the fact we are to worship and in the manner he wants us to worship him?

What if God made us to be in proper relationship with him? What if instead of God needing us, we were made and designed to need him and God is directing us to love, worship and honor him in the right manner so that we can live our lives the way God intended?

What about God being jealous? The Bible says that our God is a jealous God (Ex 34:14;20:5), and since God cannot sin, this is not a wrong emotion. I just listened to a podcast of Think Biblically where they talked to Erik Thoennes about Godly Jealousy. That conversation was very helpful in forming some of these thoughts on jealousy.

There is a difference between being jealous “for someone” and being jealous “of someone else”. Godly jealousy is the former where God is jealous for us in that he wants that relationship with us to such an extent that He pursues us and show us his love for us. This is the pure form of jealousy that is referred to in the Bible. However, in our human nature, we often distort things to serve our own purposes and the same is true about jealousy. Often, we are jealous “of someone else”. This is when one is jealous of someone else that their significant other is paying more attention to then them. Often this is because we do not think we are good enough in and of ourselves for the attention/love of our significant other. So, we deflect our insecurities onto someone else and become bitter at them. While we cannot remove the fact that we have needs and in a relationship, those needs include a closeness and bond with our significant other, we also can see that a relationship would be in danger if something got in the way of that closeness and the jealousy “for” our significant other can be a good thing. Jealousy in this sense is the desire to return the relationship between the two to that closeness.

That is the way Godly jealousy shows itself. He is not mad at what pulls us away from him but he does see what is getting in the way of our relationship with him. And if the relationship with God was the reason humans were created, that roadblock is hindering us. In his love for us, he wants that to be removed so that we can return to Him, not for himself but for us. That is how we can flourish.

God’s commands for our praise and love is not because God is narcissistic and needy. It is because he knows what is best for us because he made us with the need to have a relationship with him. And a proper relationship with God has us honor, praise, and love him in this way.

I am also reading Dalla Willard’s book, The Spirit of the Disciplines where he lays out the biblical foundation for the spiritual disciplines and their practice in our lives. Early in the book, he explains that God made us unique and that what he has commanded us is for our benefit to fulfil the calling he gave to us, as humans in general and as individuals. Looking at the spiritual disciplines in this way helps us see that they are not ways God gets his needs met but they are the tools that God has provided for us to grow in our relationship with him and “live worthy of the calling” (Eph 4:1). God made us to have that desire and then provided the ways for that desire to be met (Psalm 37:4).

Enemies Within The Church: A Movie Review

 

A pastor from Sioux City, IA has released a new movie called Enemies Within the Church. When I lived in Sioux City, I knew of the church but do not remember ever meeting the pastor. If we ever did meet and if the movie is any indication, we would agree on some things like the true definition of the Gospel and we would disagree on some things like their claim that Marxist ideology is taking over the church, which is the main premise of the movie. 

Cary Gordon is the pastor of Cornerstone World Outreach Church and is a third generation preacher. In the movie, he describes his family’s ministries and it is clear he has a passion for the Gospel of Christ. At the end of the movie, they include an extended clip of Gordon preaching on how pastors need to preach the Gospel and how Christians need to live by the teachings of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. He rightly criticizes Pastor Andy Stanley for his comment that we should be “unhitched” from the Old Testament. The OT is where God gives humans his law and as Paul points out, the law is what makes us realize how sinful we are and how we cannot do anything about our sin problems on our own. This then points us to the Savior Jesus Christ and the work he did on the cross to pay for our sins. This is the Gospel and it includes both the OT and the NT. I applaud his passion and see that this movie is based on this message.

There are, though, a number of places where I struggle with the ultimate goal that this movie has and feel it is presenting a myoptic view of how the Gospel is applied to different cultural issues. As an example, the movie shows a clip of Pastor David Platt saying that he does not want to preach parts of the Bible that he, as a white pastor, prefers and neglect the parts that the black community prefers. They present this as a negative preaching of the Bible and point to it as he is bowing down to the “leftist” agenda. This could not be further from the truth. Platt’s comment is admitting that there are passages that people read differently and we should preach the whole Bible and not just the portions we like. This is one of the ideas behind the push to go through whole books of the Bible and not just preach topical sermons. There are hard passages and they need to be taught to our congregations.

The movie makes a lot of claims about what different leaders and pastors are doing and they all boil down to a Marxist agenda is taking over the church and thus, water-down the message of Christianity to the point where it is ineffective. What America needs is the Church to get back to preaching the Law of God. This will show people how lost they are, have them turn back to God, then they will follow the rules of God, and we can then get back to our conservative Christian principles, which is the basis of America’s prosperity and status in the world. Anything that does not align with their view of what should be is deemed as part of this Marxist shift in the church and needs to be called out and rejected.

While I understand the push and love the call to get back to following God with our whole heart, the makers of the movie fail to see that much of what they are “calling out” is actually people trying to live out the Gospel with their whole heart, just in different ways than Gordon, et.al. Thinking hard about racial reconciliation and religious freedom do not come from Marxist ideals and are not “woke”, as they use the term pejoratively in the movie, but by looking at the Gospel and seeing that God made each person in His image. This gives them value and should be treated as such. Christians showing people they have value helps them see that God gave them value and has a purpose for their life. In order for that plan to be realized, they need to be reconciled to God because of their sin, as the Gospel says.

There are many examples but this one portion stuck out as a microcosm of the movie and illustrates the struggles I have with it. After spending the majority of the movie pointing out what they feel is a leftist shift in the church and calling out many different organizations and leaders for pushing this evil agenda, they stop and ask why would anyone teach this when it is so obviously against the Bible message. Michael O’Fallon is the founder and CEO of Sovereign Alliance and gives the answer to this question. He says that the reason that people are spreading this message is because these leaders are in search of power.

This answer comes across as lazy and arrogant. It is lazy because if one spends anytime reading Russell Moore, Tim Keller, and David Platt, their thinking about the Gospel is deep, rich, and fundamentally Biblical.  To assign this motivation to them is not being honest to their writing and their ministries. They may apply the Gospel differently than the makers of the film, but to say they are anti-Gospel because of how they apply the Gospel to current events is meant to be a “gottcha” argument because to the makers of the film, there is only one correct understanding and application of the Gospel.

This leads to my second point of the answer being arrogant.  Instead of trying to understand where these leaders are coming from and their definition of the Gospel, which is very similar to Gordon’s, they assume that anyone that does not agree with them is unbiblical and wrong. They gloss over any idea or stance that they disagree with as harmful because they cannot understand that they themselves may have an incorrect view of that issue and their approach may not be Christ-like.

For example. in the movie, it is presented that Russell Moore and the ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention) worked to overturn zoning laws so that Muslims could build a mosque and used as evidence that Moore is working against the Gospel by supporting this false and dangerous religion. What they failed to present is that Moore was acting in complete agreement with the belief in the Baptist Faith and Message (the Southern Baptist Statement of Faith) on Religious Liberty in fighting against unfair zoning laws that discriminated against any religion. This statement is deeply rooted in how the country was founded and is based on the power of the Gospel that is only present in Christianity. Thus, if there is a level playing field with regards to religion, Christianity has the power of God and will ultimately win. So, the government should not be “stacking the deck” in the favor of one religion over another. Besides, like political power, this only works for the party in control. As soon as the other side takes over, they will be crying foul.

Please remember, the Pilgrims did not come over to America so that they could be Christians. They were able to be Christians in England. They came over to America because they did not want to be told which type of Christian they needed to be. They wanted the government to stop favoring one brand of Christianity over another or one religion over another.

Unfortunately, the makers of Enemies Within the Church see their perspective as the only one and everything else as “Marxist” and “leftist”. They throw many accusations up on the screen. Some are valid and some are not. Some are supported well and others are supported inadequately and even use distortions and spin instead of honestly presenting the facts. In the end, this movie is about making Christians into people that support conservative values on social values as indicators of a changed heart. The end goal is not holiness to God through a changed heart but that changed heart as a means to a society that holds conservative views. This is why I think this falls flat. They are accusing others of using the Gospel message as a means to change society when they are doing the same thing only in the opposite direction. The Gospel is not to be used in this manner.

The Gospel should lead us to Christ so that the Holy Spirit can change our lives so we can bring others to Christ, all stop.

Date of Christmas

 

This was started during the Christmas season but took awhile to assemble this.

What is the truth?

During the holiday season, people look forward to celebrating with their family traditions. Whether it is gingerbread houses, singing Christmas carols, or even lutefisk, traditions have a way to bring people into the Christmas spirit like nothing else can. Besides baking, my mother loved watching White Christmas each year and I would watch it with her. With her gone, Wanda and I have kept that tradition as one of the ways we enjoy Christmas because it reminds me of her.

Another tradition that appears this time of year is the argument about the beginnings of Christmas. Many people argue that the celebration of Christmas is really an adoption of pagan celebrations and some go as far as saying that what is really being celebrated is the sun god regardless of what people say they are doing. Many Christians don’t really care and just celebrate the date as the day to celebrate the birth of Jesus but there are some Christians who argue that the date of Christmas was determined independent of any pagan holidays but was based on the date of the death of Jesus.

When these arguments are investigated, it is clear why the issue is so cloudy. It is hard to determine what is fact and what is conjecture. Different arguments give conflicting evidence about what happened when. While I have done some research, it is not extensive nor complete. That being said, I wanted to try to separate facts and opinions. This is a work in progress and will be updated as new research is done and new arguments and evidence are found.

At this point, it is clear that there is nothing that has been proven. There is circumstantial evidence that Christians used an existing pagan holiday to celebrate Christ’s birth. On the other hand, the contrasting theory that the Christians used the idea that Jesus was conceived on the same date on which he died as was a belief for prophets has little mention let alone proof in the historical record. It is simply not true that either of these ideas has been proven.

Since we are not dealing with a Deductive proof, as in a mathematics/Geometry proof where the conclusion is a direct result from the premises provided, we are in the realm of Inductive proof, which is more of a weighing of the evidence at hand. Because of the limited evidence, it is hard to be definitive either way. While opinions can and are formed, they should be called as such and not proof.

Christmas Facts:

The first century Christians were more concerned with the date of Jesus’ death than they were his birth. While Christians celebrate communion to remember what He did, Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians links the Passover celebration and the death of Jesus directly by telling his readers to “keep the Festival” because Jesus was our Passover Lamb that was sacrificed (1 Cor 5:7-8). The Epistle to the Apostles, written in the middle of the second century, has a similar plea to celebrate the Passover because of Jesus death.

Saturnalia was a celebration of Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and time. By 133-31 B.C., it was a weeklong celebration starting on Dec 17^th. Using the Julian calendar, the festival ended on Dec 24^th and the Winter Solstice was on Dec 25^th.

Around the year 200, early Church father Clement tried to put dates on the birth and death of Jesus. For His birth, Clement said it was in the 28^th year of Augustus on the 25^th of Pachon (Egyptian month) which translates to May 20^th. His death was dated in the 16^th year of Tiberius on the 25^th of either Phamenoth (March 21) or Pharmuthi (April 15).

About that time, another early Church father, Tertullian, applied to Jesus the Jewish tradition that prophets would die on the same day that they were conceived. This is a strange idea but talks to the idea of completeness of their message.

In 274 CE, the Roman emperor, Aurelian, officially made Sol Invictus the religion of the Roman empire. To celebrate the sun god, they held chariot races every 4 years about October 19-22. This is a separate celebration from the one they held in December.

The fact that Aurelian was able to make this declaration is evidence that this is not a new cult. In fact, the earliest mention of them is 158 and Aurelian himself was born into a community of this religion. The image associated with Sol Invictus was included in the Roman coins until 387.

By the 4^th century, the Christian church was divided between two dates for the birth of Christ. The Church in the east was using January 6^th while the Church in the west was using December 25^th.

In the Middle of the 4^th Century (336?), a Roman Almanac has a list of various Christian bishops and myrters. The first entry is for Dec 25^th: Natus Christus in Betleem Judeae”, or Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea.

Historian of paganism Ronald Hutton quotes a Christian writer “the Scriptor Syrus” who in the 4^th century said that both pagans and Christians celebrated on December 25^th. “Accordingly, when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians has a leaning to this festival, they took council and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnized on that day.”

The no evidence that Sol Invictus was on Dec 25 before 354/362.

Church father Ambrose wrote in the 4^th century that Jesus was better than the other gods using imagery of the sun.

In 400, Augustine wrote against the Donatists and how they were keeping the celebration of December 25^th but not January 6^th. The Donatists started in 312.

The first mention that the date of Christmas was deliberately set at the time of pagan feasts is found on a margin note by Syriac commentatot Dionysius in the 12^th century. His note was that the date was moved from Jan 6 to Dec 25^th to correlate with Sol Invictus.

In 1687, The Reverand Increase Mather of Boston said that Christmas was set at December 25^th to correlate with Saturnalia.

 

 

 

While the Biblical accounts do not give many clues about the timing of the birth of Christ, the Bible is quite clear that Jesus was crucified around the Feast of Passover. Using this as the starting point, they tried to figure out when Jesus was born. Because the calendars that those in the east and those the west used were different, this starting point was different. The east said he died on April 6^th and the west said March 25^th. However, both used the idea that Jesus died on the same day he was conceived and so added 9 months to arrive at January 6^th in the east and December 25^th in the west.

 

 

Calculating Christmas by William Tighe. http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-10-012-v

How December 25 became Christmas by Andres McGowan. https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/jesus-historical-jesus/how-december-25-became-christmas/

You Call it Christmas, We Call it Yule… Pagans, Celebrate! By Peg Aloi https://www.patheos.com/blogs/themediawitches/2015/12/you-call-it-christmas-we-call-it-yule/

Saturnalia by History.com editors https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-rome/saturnalia

Why is Christmas Celebrated on December 25? By Sarah Pruitt https://www.history.com/news/why-is-christmas-celebrated-on-december-25

 

 

 

Difficult topic in this election cycle

 

Abortion is a topic that brings out strong emotions with many people. It is a significant factor that many Christians consider when going to the polls. With the election 2 weeks away, it is helpful to understand the issues and since this is such a major issue, it should be discussed.

The Holy Post Podcast (Phil Visher from Veggie Tales and Skye Jethani) posted an informational video about abortion (see link below). Jethani correctly describes the history of abortion in the US, the downward trend in abortions in the US regardless of the party of the sitting president, and what the results would be if the unlikely, Roe vs Wade being overturned, would occur (spoiler alert: abortion would not be illegal in the US but become a state issue). Since most pro-life voters point to using fighting abortion, pro-life judges, and ultimately overturning RvW as their motivation in voting, Visher and Jethani’s video was created to show how that does not help in reducing abortions in America and thus, should not be the primary criteria for voting. In fact, some of the Democratic policies (universal health care and support for the poor) have shown a greater impact in reducing the number of abortions than the president.

As a response to this video, Andrew Walker, a professor that came to SBTS after my time there, wrote an article taking issue with some of the conclusions that were implied through the video (See link below). In pushing back, Walker sees abortion as a moral evil much like slavery is. Substituted the slavery into the logic used in the video, we would not be co willing to say that reducing slavery is acceptable when it is a moral evil. He goes on to say that Christians should fight with all we have to rid America of this morally repugnant practice. Fighting to reduce the number is great but making it illegal should be the ultimate goal.

Both of these posts help further the discussion on this contentious issue and I appreciate their civil discourse. These two perspectives also show the divide in our country’s believers and most fall into one or the other camp. To me, neither side is fully compelling. I agree with Visher and Jethani that using abortion as the only criteria is short-sighted and ignores many other important issues of the day. However, I reject that the sole goal in voting pro-life is to overturn RvW and even so, many would welcome the issue becoming a state by state fight instead of a national one. On the other side, I agree that abortion is a moral evil and should be fought but I find it troublesome to treat it as a “win at all costs” issue. This leads us to compromise on other principles just to possibly win eventually on this one. For example, voting third party is considered wrong because that takes votes away from the main candidate, which may cause a pro-choice candidate to win and that is unacceptable. I reject this approach as well.

So how do we fight abortion without compromising other biblical principles? I join others and take a middle ground approach. It rests on the idea that being pro-life is necessary but not sufficient to earn my vote. Abortion is a moral evil that needs to be made illegal as well as reducing the numbers. So being pro-life is required for me to support a candidate. However, it is not the only issue out there. There are many other issues that need to be discussed including character, racism, immigration, et al. Thus, a candidate must have other qualities for me to support them other than just being pro-life and if the main candidates do not have the qualities I am looking for in a candidate, voting for a third party is a viable solution, one that I have used and will use in the future.

Video by Holy Post

Andrew Walker's Response

Are we Prepared?

The other day, I was reminded of the story when Jesus cast a demon from a child as told in Mark’s Gospel. One of my favorite quotes that I have used as a prayer many times is the child’s father saying, “I believe. Help my unbelief.” That part that stuck in my head this time was Jesus’ answer to why his disciples could not drive it out, “This kind can come out only by prayer” and the fact that Mark does not record Jesus praying. The obvious conclusion is that Jesus had already spent time in prayer and because of that, was ready for what the day had in store.

A friend of mine wrote an article about taking time to “observe” and that we do not do that enough. I am not sure why that article reminded me of this statement from Jesus. Maybe because football has started and to be prepared, players need to watch game film and observe their opponents tendencies.

What struck me hard was that this is not my natural way of living. My whole life, I struggled with creating things on my own. I played sports growing up and I was always better at defense where you would react to what the offence did rather than create a play yourself. Even as a project manager, I was reacting to the task I was assigned. Since the possibilities of what could happen are endless, it is easier and more practical to react than to prepare for multiple situations.

With that in mind, one would think that if praying is all we need to do to prepare for what God will bring our way, that I would jump at the chance. Sadly, I have struggled with my prayer life my entire Christian life. When things are going well, I would forget to pray. When things were going bad, I would feel guilty for only praying when things are bad. Even when I did pray, it seemed like I spent more time with my checklist of prayer requests than on anything else. I saw very few answers to prayer and I had to convince myself of those.

What if we combined these two ideas: observe and pray?

What if our time with God each day was spent with “observing” God in the Bible, “observing” God’s face in praise, and then praying to God with thanksgiving and our requests?

Lord, help me to see you better in the Bible, in the world around me, and in my life so that I can praise you and pray to you more. Prepare me for what you have in store for me.