State of the Church - Part II -

Many of us, in our battle to preserve the Judeo-Christian morality of our society have forgotten a crucial, indeed, the central truth of the gospel. As Ravi Zacharias says it, Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good, he came to bring dead people to life.

We have gotten to a place where we, for the most part, have focused so much on trying to make society good through political activism, and through moralistic teaching in the Church that we have forgotten that the real point is life. Life must precede morality and morality without life is pointless anyway. We have frequently lost sight of Jesus through our maze of moralisms.

This problem has not only doomed our socio/political activism to failure, it has severely hindered our own spiritual lives and left us impoverished, with a faith that is but a shadow of what was originally delivered.

Do not imagine for a moment that I bring a message of “easy believism”, or a teaching that morality doesn’t matter. It is impossible, IMPOSSIBLE, to really know God, while justifying sin or insisting on living in willful disobedience to Him. The destructive power of sin can not be exaggerated.

Yet the fact remains that we will never find life, nor peace in following a code of morals, we will find it only in the person of Jesus Christ. When you reduce Christianity to moralist teaching, you have essentially made it into Judaism, or Islam. The defining mark of all human religion is the idea that following the proper moral code will result in eternal reward. The profound defining difference that sets divine religion apart is that it consists not in following a code of morals, but in a reconciliation. It consists in being restored to a state in which we know, and are known by God, in which we love and are loved by God.

It must be understood, and would be obvious but for the corrupt state to which we have fallen, that such a reconciliation will always lead to living rightly. For as Jesus himself said “if you love me, you will keep my commandments.” The heart of the gospel is the declaration that Jesus Christ is Lord, absolute and without qualification. That means that we recognize him as our owner, and absolute master. The idea that you can have a Lord whom you love, and yet do not obey, or who’s words you twist to suit your own desires in contravention of his intent is a complete contradiction.

I have been a Christian almost as long as I can remember. I have no time in my life when I didn’t believe the Christian message. I do not doubt that I was saved, but I often find that I look back and regret the shallowness of my faith, and most of all, the fact that though my faith was shallow, I believed it to be deep.

I have always tried my best to live by the Christian moral teaching, and to have correct doctrine but the truth is that for most of my life, I have loved the ideas and the teachings, more than I did Jesus Christ. I have been devoted to the morality and the ideas involved in the Faith, but not to Jesus Christ. I thought that because I had good doctrine, and good morals, I was doing well, and I had the fullness of the faith. The truth was that all the while, I really knew little of God.
When I get to this point, it is hard to know what words can possibly express what I am seeing and feeling. I look at my life to this point and I feel sorrow at all the time I thought I was so good, and yet was so blind, and I feel gratitude and joy that God has given me grace to see myself in the light of truth.

When I get to this place, I’m always reminded of the parable Jesus told to one of the Pharisees, with whom he was dining. A woman of ill repute came in and washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and her hair. The Pharisee thought to himself “if he were truly a prophet, he would know what kind of woman this is, and not let her touch him.” Jesus knew what he was thinking and he told a parable of two people who were in debt to one man. One person had a great debt and the other had a little debt. The man forgave both debts… who will love him more? The Pharisee said, the one who owed more.

For years I missed the point of this parable. The Pharisee was right, he who is forgiven more will love more. However, I always tended to assume that Jesus was speaking in simple factual terms about the two debtors. The one had a great debt and the one had a little debt. In the example, obviously the Pharisee is the one with little debt, and the adulterous woman had great debt.
That, however, is not the point at all. Which truly had the greater debt to God? The Pharisee or the woman? In truth, we can’t really know. The point, however, is that the Pharisee thought his debt was small, while the woman realized that her debt was great.

I spent most of my life believing that my debt was small, and as a result, I had small love for God. I had never really been grossly immoral, I had never really done the really bad things, so I had little to be forgiven of. There was so much about myself that I couldn’t see and at the heart of it all was that I cared more about teachings than about the teacher. I didn’t know how much I had been forgiven so I loved little, and I was not conscious of his great love for me.

The common thread in all this is passion and devotion for the person of Jesus Christ, rather than just commitment to an idea, or adherence to a code. It is an emotional experience for me to look at myself and see how much I have lacked this. It is both frustrating, and sorrowing, to speak of this to my fellow Christians and get nothing but blank stares in return. Or just as bad, people who agree without really listening and then go on as before, apparently ignoring the whole conversation.

It may be that I am projecting my own experience on to the Church at large and really I’m the only one who faces this issue, and this condition. If that is the case I am sorry. I don’t think that is the case, though. As I look around, I don’t see many people who really appear to know God well. I don’t see many people bearing fruit in their lives. I don’t see the Church prevailing against the gates of hell.

I see a lot of comfortable evangelicals searching for meaning in life, trying to figure out what piece of the puzzle they are missing. I see we have forgotten the words, “if you seek to keep your life, you will lose it, but if you lose your life for my sake, you will surely find it”.
If you find yourself agreeing with what I have said here, but having trouble really finding passion within yourself for Jesus Christ. Don’t be afraid, you are not alone. It is not something that comes easily to us, especially when we are living according to our own will. Ask God to kindle this fire in your heart. Ask him to show you how to grow in knowledge of him and how to walk in his life.

Those are things that are always according to his will, and if we ask them, really desiring them, he will accomplish them in us.
If you fall along the way, don’t be afraid because God knows that the flesh is weak, and he knows we are going to fail, as long as you are willing to get back up, he will do the lifting.

State of the Church -part one-

I recently heard a couple of sermons by a man named Michael Boldea. Mr. Boldea is the grandson of Dumutru Duduman, a Romanian Christian who suffered great persecution under the former communist regime in Romania and eventually came to the U.S. with a prophetic warning for America.
Mr. Boldea carries on his grandfather’s ministry which focuses both on aiding widows and orphans in Romania and bringing a message of warning to the American Church.

It is not my intention here to speak about the prophecies of Mr. Duduman, or Mr. Boldea. I leave that consideration to each individual at their own interest. By far the more important and powerful message, in my opinion, is the simple truth of what Mr. Boldea has to say to American Christians. The few times I have heard Mr. Boldea speak he has shown himself to be intelligent, well educated, and passionate about his convictions. I believe his message is a crucial one for the American Church across the board, regardless of denomination.

Some of you may not be familiar with the prophetic community among Charismatic Christians. There is an entire community of sorts in which it is very popular to claim to be a prophet and to deliver dire messages of warning. Some of the prophets are more credible, many are less. The culture of this group is somewhat unique, however. In most situations people would expect that a person who delivers good news would be more popular and more accepted than a person who delivers bad news. In the prophetic subculture, however, this is usually reversed. Because the biblical and historical model of a prophet is usually seen as the sayer of doom who is rejected by the world around him, this subculture is generally not interested in hearing what a person has to say, unless they are preaching impending disaster and judgment. There are several points of conversation that would be worth pursuing regarding this phenomenon alone and how it affects the attitude of this Church community. Yet the point I’m trying to get at here is one of the major results of the numerous people running around for-telling doom is what might be called cry-wolf syndrome. Eventually most people get so tired of listening that they no longer take any of it seriously. Those who do still listen are mostly people who want the tingly feeling of being part of something dire, and feeling like they are in ‘the inner circle’ because they “know”.

This phenomenon is unfortunate when it comes to a person like Michael Boldea because all prophecy issues aside, his message is well worth listening to. In fact, in my opinion, it is one of the most important messages that the American Church needs to hear.

What Mr. Boldea speaks about is very simply the need for holiness in the Church and the need for obedience in the Church. He speaks about the need for Christians to truly live their lives as if Jesus really was their Lord. Mr. Boldea is popular among the prophetic community because of his prophecies and his grandfather. Yet in the instances where I have heard him speak to the “prophetic community” there seems to be a definite element of saying “its nice that your interested in prophecy and I’ll speak about it, but you guys, just as much as everyone else, need to get down to the business of really living like a true follower and servant of Jesus Christ, and that is the only message that really matters.”

I don’t want to put words in Mr. Boldea’s mouth, and it may be that this is just my perception of what he is saying. However, it underlies a critical truth which conservative evangelical Christians of all stripes MUST get a hold of.

This is important, so pay attention

It is very easy for us as conservative evangelicals to look at the gross sin and apostasy of liberal and humanistic churches. It is easy for us to sit back and bemoan the evils of a church that tolerates homosexuality, or abortion. All the while, we miss the glaring problems in our own lives and our own Churches.
There is NO QUESTION that what we see in some of the liberal denominations is wrong. A few of them at least are to the point where I’m not sure they can even be considered really “Christian” anymore. Yet as we sit decrying the abuses of apostate churches, we are completely blind to the fact that our own Churches are lukewarm and that WE are lukewarm. It does us little good to sit comfortable in the fact that we are not as bad as those other guys, when the truth is that we are not nearly as alive as we should be.

In looking at the black robes of others, we have become satisfied and complacent with our own robes of drab grey.

While the liberal humanist church is being consumed by heresy and apostasy, the conservative evangelical church is being consumed by the love of money and comfort, or the love of knowing secrets, or the love of power, or the pride of life.

I see hardly anyone, anywhere being consumed by the love of Jesus Christ.

There are probably several different things involved with this. One is that we, like the Church of Ephesus have lost our first love. There are many Churches that stand up for truth, and do good works, but they are not consumed with the love for Jesus Christ.
This is true of most of us on an individual level as well. We are living for our own goals and our own vision of what a nice life is. Its not that we are immoral or bad people, we just aren’t passionate about Jesus Christ, and truth be told, we don’t have a deep knowledge of God.

One other thing involved in this is an outgrowth of the first. Our focus when we confront problems like homosexuality and abortion, or any of the other numerous moral problems in our society, is wrong. We are focused on fighting the darkness, rather than simply being the light. There is a subtle but important difference there.

We have spent decades fighting against the evils of abortion, the slide towards homosexuality, the increasing level of immorality in almost every area. Yet we have accomplished nothing. In fact we have steadily lost ground. We think of ways to try and stem the tide of darkness which is washing over our nation, never realizing the simple truth that darkness does not overcome light. Neither does light struggle to overcome darkness… it just shines.
If the darkness is spreading, there is only one explanation. The Light is not shining

I'm back!

Seasons greetings!

After a long drought I intend to start posting more actively again. I had been tied up with school and work, but I will be making more time to write and post in the future. I have a few ideas rattling around in my head that'll make for good posts, but I'm always looking to help people out with questions, or things they are curious about. If you have anything you'd like to see addressed, please leave it in a comment.

Merry Christmas to all!
and peace on earth to men of goodwill!

ST