On the last 2 blog entries, both the comments on miracles and on the Church as a consumer item relate to our 'God concept'. Our couples small group (not to be confused with the men's group that is reading the discipleship book) is reading a book by Bill Bright's son, Brad, entitled God is the Issue . We were discussing the first chapter last week and noted that quite often we Christians unwittingly communicating a concept of God that does not exactly match what the Bible teaches. For instance, when asked about why the World Trade Center was attacked we may say something such as its being a judgement of God, that God has removed His protection, or the like. Yet, we don't stop to think that there have been bad things that happened in America since the country was founded, including such calamities as slavery, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, the flu epidemic, the polio epidemic, etc, etc. It might seem to imply that God's protection comes and goes rather often. We unwittingly communicate with these comments that our concept of God is that He exists to protect us, to keep bad things from happening to us. In fact, if freedom is to exist, then it must be possible for bad things to happen. Freedom is very risky. If we are to be free, there is the option of choosing evil, choosing for the bad. Without that, there is no freedom. It may or may not be a sign of God removing His protection that the World Trade Center towers fell. When Jesus was asked about a tower falling and killing a number of people in Luke 13, His response was not that those people were such sinners that God had removed protection; instead, He responded that the question is not why did they die but rather why didn't you die? We all deserve to die because of our sin, and the fact that we don't is purely grace. Similarly, the Islamic terrorists hate Christianity just like they hate America, so they may still have attacked had we been a more holy nation. These are things we cannot know.
When we look at the 'God Concept' that we unwittingly communicate, the larger Christian community often communicates that God exists to serve us rather than our existing to serve Him. We communicate that we became believers so that God would protect us, or make us prosperous, or provide fulfillment, or give us a good marriage. While it is true that God loves us, He also warned that His enemies would hate us, would think they were serving their god when killing us, would persecute us however they could. We are Christians first and foremost because it is true, and that truth has set us free from this world. And that freedom is risky.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
MIracles and Easter
Two weeks ago the sermon at our church was about Mark 4 and the miracle that occurred when Jesus calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee. This was one of the miracles that was done with only the disciples present, and was one of the key miracles in building their faith that Jesus was in fact the Messiah, since He could rule over nature. Then last week the sermon was about the Transfiguration, where Jesus was transformed before Peter, James, and John into what may have been His resurrection body, talking with Moses and Elijah. As we move towards Easter, we will be coming to the greatest miracle of all, the Resurrection of Jesus.
Miracles are an interesting topic. On the one hand, God created nature and so it makes sense that He has power over nature. On the other hand, God is unchanging and consistent, and therefore He does not contradict Himself: to the extent that nature is made in God's image, as man is, God would not contradict Himself by doing something that is out of agreement with His own nature. That is to say, when God does a miracle, He does not do it in a way that contradicts Himself. He would not simply overrule nature and do something completely inconsistent with Reality. Of course, nature is only a small part of Truth, or Reality, since God is greater than nature. Reality includes nature, but also includes more than nature.
In light of this, C. S. Lewis has offered the idea that miracles simply do fast and up close what God is always doing slowly and out-of-sight. As an example he uses turning water into wine. God is always turning water into wine through the miracle of photosynthesis, taking water that carries minerals, sunlight and air and turning it into grapes. For Jesus to make water into wine was not inconsistent with nature, but did it much faster. God is always healing people through the miracle of our immune system, so when Jesus healed people He was not inconsistent with that. He did much faster what happens every day slowly.
But what about calming the storm? And the Transfiguration? Raising Lazarus? Does Jesus simply contradict nature here? I think not. Storms always end, so the fact that Jesus ended one very quickly is consistent with C. S. Lewis' proposal. And after the Resurrection, Jesus again appeared in a new and different body, so this was again consistent with the greater Reality mentioned above. Raising Lazarus is perhaps the most difficult case, since he did not return with a resurrection body; but if God will raise us all to a new body, then raising us to a 'used' body is not inconceivable.
The resurrection body of Jesus was apparently very different from our earthly body. In the garden, on the Emmaus road, and on the shore of Galilee were all instances of His going unrecognized by His own disciples. This greatest of miracles will apply to us as well, we are promised, and so we cannot ever 'walk away' from miracles as an inherent, fundamental part of our faith. Lewis points this out as well. Christianity is based on miracles and especially the miracle of Christ's resurrection, and with hope of a coming miracle for ourselves.
Miracles are an interesting topic. On the one hand, God created nature and so it makes sense that He has power over nature. On the other hand, God is unchanging and consistent, and therefore He does not contradict Himself: to the extent that nature is made in God's image, as man is, God would not contradict Himself by doing something that is out of agreement with His own nature. That is to say, when God does a miracle, He does not do it in a way that contradicts Himself. He would not simply overrule nature and do something completely inconsistent with Reality. Of course, nature is only a small part of Truth, or Reality, since God is greater than nature. Reality includes nature, but also includes more than nature.
In light of this, C. S. Lewis has offered the idea that miracles simply do fast and up close what God is always doing slowly and out-of-sight. As an example he uses turning water into wine. God is always turning water into wine through the miracle of photosynthesis, taking water that carries minerals, sunlight and air and turning it into grapes. For Jesus to make water into wine was not inconsistent with nature, but did it much faster. God is always healing people through the miracle of our immune system, so when Jesus healed people He was not inconsistent with that. He did much faster what happens every day slowly.
But what about calming the storm? And the Transfiguration? Raising Lazarus? Does Jesus simply contradict nature here? I think not. Storms always end, so the fact that Jesus ended one very quickly is consistent with C. S. Lewis' proposal. And after the Resurrection, Jesus again appeared in a new and different body, so this was again consistent with the greater Reality mentioned above. Raising Lazarus is perhaps the most difficult case, since he did not return with a resurrection body; but if God will raise us all to a new body, then raising us to a 'used' body is not inconceivable.
The resurrection body of Jesus was apparently very different from our earthly body. In the garden, on the Emmaus road, and on the shore of Galilee were all instances of His going unrecognized by His own disciples. This greatest of miracles will apply to us as well, we are promised, and so we cannot ever 'walk away' from miracles as an inherent, fundamental part of our faith. Lewis points this out as well. Christianity is based on miracles and especially the miracle of Christ's resurrection, and with hope of a coming miracle for ourselves.
This is one of the issues with faith and science. We are having an ongoing discussion about evolutionary theory and faith in our family, and there are a couple of things relevant to both Easter and scientific theory:
- Miracles are fundamental to our faith, especially the miracle of Christ's Resurrectoin. There is no escaping from miracles in Christianity. However, God does not act to contradict Himself or Reality in His miracles.
- God does not contradict natural law, but natural laws are only a portion of Truth, of Reality.
- To the extent that scientists insist that there are no miracles and that science somehow 'disproves' miracles, we must part ways; to the extent that Christians believe that God does miracles that are inconsistent with His own design of the universe and that Reality which is beyond this universe, we must question ourselves. God does not contradict Himself.
- In all things we must seek Truth.
Easter is all about the Truth. Again as Lewis points out, I am a Christian (as he also was) because it is true. I am not a Christian because it is socially acceptable, a convenient way to keep social behavior under control, or any other sociological hogwash along those lines. If Christianity is false, then it should be abandoned. And that is where the key conflict arises with the materialist scientists , which is by no means all of the scientific community, who argue that there are no miracles and promote evolutionary materialism. They ultimately are insisting that there is nothing but matter, energy and chance. Easter is the demonstration in history that there is more.
Monday, March 16, 2009
The Church as 'Consumer Goods'
We are reading and discussing Greg Ogden's book Transforming Discipleship in our Monday morning men's group at the moment. This morning we were discussing the author's thoughts on why there is not a clear focus on discipleship in most evangelical churches, even those that do some amount of talking about discipleship. We only got through the first of 8 potential reasons in the book today, but the discussion did help clarify some thoughts I have also wondered about in regards to why the megachurch has arisen in the past 25 years or so, and why more recently there have been changes to more of a 'worship' focus (I put 'worship' in quotes because the focus is mostly on music, and 'worship leaders' are music leaders; this strikes me as a very limited view of worship). In the book, one of the reasons for lack of discipleship in churches is that pastors have been diverted from their primary calling of' equipping the saints for the work of ministry. Rev. Ogden sees this issue as being that both pastors and members see pastoral care of the members as the top role of pastors. Our discussion this morning concluded that we in our small group felt this was true of an older generation (that fits with my observations of my parents generation); that my generation, though, has viewed preaching as the key role for pastors, and that my childern's generation sees worship as the key role for pastors. Not the only role, but the key role, for each of these.
It seems to me that the rise of preaching as the key role instead of pastoral care helps explain the rise of the mega-church. Smaller churches, such as my parents saw as the norm, were much better at pastoral care and were more accepting of mediocre preaching. My generation has been more demanding of excellent preaching, and then willing to accept the less personal pastoral care situation of a mega-church in return. My children seem much more interested in the worship experience.
None of this, however, makes discipleship the key role of the pastor and the local church. All of it, in all 3 of the generations mentioned, seems to be consumer oriented, though the targeted item for consumption has been changing.
One comment in the book hints at this when he observes that (p. 39 in my edition) 'in fact, the majority of participants in the (church) view their membership as optional, not a necessity for living by its principles'. That has also been striking to me in recent years; as churches become 'community churches', instead of specific denominations, membership is de-emphasized and viewed as optional. I see this 'church as optional' viewpoint more and more, first in my generation and more so in my children's generation, and this strikes me as another indication of our consumer mentality. The church is not a community of disciples depending on each other to be developing 'self-initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Christ' (his description of a 'disciple'), it is rather an optional consumer good. This has a lot of causes, from membership being devalued by accepting anyone who walks down the aisle as a 'member' to wanting to be 'seeker sensitive', but to me it also shows how very engrained the consumer mentality has become in all of us.
Of course, there are varying degrees of consumerism among people. Seeing Christianity as 'fire insurance' in which we seek to be 'covered' but only just enough to be be safe is a classic example. This often shows up as CEO Christians (Christmas and Easter Only). That is not my concern here. The concern is that most churches, even if they say that their mission is to make disciples, end up making preaching,worship, or pastoral care their focus. All of those miss the point of the Great Commission of Matt. 28:18-20.
It seems to me that the rise of preaching as the key role instead of pastoral care helps explain the rise of the mega-church. Smaller churches, such as my parents saw as the norm, were much better at pastoral care and were more accepting of mediocre preaching. My generation has been more demanding of excellent preaching, and then willing to accept the less personal pastoral care situation of a mega-church in return. My children seem much more interested in the worship experience.
None of this, however, makes discipleship the key role of the pastor and the local church. All of it, in all 3 of the generations mentioned, seems to be consumer oriented, though the targeted item for consumption has been changing.
One comment in the book hints at this when he observes that (p. 39 in my edition) 'in fact, the majority of participants in the (church) view their membership as optional, not a necessity for living by its principles'. That has also been striking to me in recent years; as churches become 'community churches', instead of specific denominations, membership is de-emphasized and viewed as optional. I see this 'church as optional' viewpoint more and more, first in my generation and more so in my children's generation, and this strikes me as another indication of our consumer mentality. The church is not a community of disciples depending on each other to be developing 'self-initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Christ' (his description of a 'disciple'), it is rather an optional consumer good. This has a lot of causes, from membership being devalued by accepting anyone who walks down the aisle as a 'member' to wanting to be 'seeker sensitive', but to me it also shows how very engrained the consumer mentality has become in all of us.
Of course, there are varying degrees of consumerism among people. Seeing Christianity as 'fire insurance' in which we seek to be 'covered' but only just enough to be be safe is a classic example. This often shows up as CEO Christians (Christmas and Easter Only). That is not my concern here. The concern is that most churches, even if they say that their mission is to make disciples, end up making preaching,worship, or pastoral care their focus. All of those miss the point of the Great Commission of Matt. 28:18-20.
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