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I checked my calendar yesterday and realized that Wednesday (tomorrow) is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. I had not noticed the days slipping by so quickly; and so, where we are, at the start of the first time of waiting, watching and preparation in the Church’s calendar. READ MORE »
Posts tagged Christianity
Faithful Fridays – Three Links for the Thoughtful, Thrifty and Thorough Christian
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth, take care of it, harness its potential and use its resources for your benefit.”
Genesis 1.28 paraphrased
Things like commerce and economics, art and science, technology and agriculture are all expressions of human creativity and resourcefulness. Traits like these in us that reflect God and who He is. When those who bear God’s Image get together with other Image Bearers, the result is civilization, ingenuity and a variety of ideas. It’s because we have dominion over Creation that we can do this. In fact, it’s pretty much expected that people do this.
Of course, fallenness and sin come in and contaminate everything and all we’re left with are poor, distorted reflections even in the best of human achievement. I fully expect that in the New Earth, without the obstacles that sin and death present to advancement, we’ll fully see the fullest and eternal fruits of all human civilizations in ever expanding and ever deepening ways all centered on the glory of Jesus Christ.
Faithful Fridays – Intro to Calvinism
I’m in a very small minority.
Not only am I, Arthur Vinson, an African American, I am very much a Calvinist – though I suppose the nuances of my person theology and belief are more Reformed than strictly Calvinist. Then again, one of the charges that I’ve heard pitted against Reformed thought is that it and its practicioners are “too logical,” so I suppose I should work against the stereotype by not over thinking every little detail.
Of course, why does this put me in a minority? Christians with a heritage resulting from the African slave trade tend toward more Charismatic and Pentecostal branches of Christian tradition, branches that grew out of the theologies of John Wesley and the Methodist church. These systems of theology are the polar opposite of Calvinist thought. Now, let me go on record for saying that love Wesley very much, but I’ve never seen his objections answered in a way that makes much sense to me in the context of Scripture. The South is also somewhat sparse in its offerings of explicitly Reformed churches (though I’m happy to say that I have found that there are plenty of Christian bodies that implicitly Calvinistic.) READ MORE »
On Spiritual Education
I live in a small town, and of course I go to a small church, attendence being about 50 or 60 every Sunday. It’s a good church, the gospel taught and the people friendly. However my current pastor has an opinion, rather widespread in the congregation, that education and formal classes are not needed for the spiritual leaders of a church, that the pastor who is called by God with very little education can do a better job than one who’s been in seminary and Bible college by virtue of his lack of training.
As much as I respect that sort of opinion, it has a kernel of merit if you look hard enough, I feel that it’s the wrong way to approach something as important and critical as the spiritual health and wellbeing of a community.
Can a doctor practice without the proper credentials? No.
Would you trust a lawyer who hadn’t passed his bar exam? Probably not.
So why can anyone with a charismatic bravado, an emotional calling to preach but with a very weak foundation in the Scriptures and Christian history and theology be allowed to watch over the spiritual lives of a church?
In Bible study this past week, we had this one person (he’s in his 80s) who brought up the notion that there are two races of “humanity”: the ones from Genesis 1 (they have no souls but have dominion over the earth), and Adam and Eve from Genesis 2 (who do have souls but are spiritual people with no real physical connection).
Basically he gave the classical “reasoning” used to justify the ideas that black people don’t have souls and are meant to be slaves. Now while this had been large belief in the past, it’s not an orthodox belief: in other words, you cannot arrive at that conclusion through a consistent, Bible-based, community-tempered way of looking at God’s Word.
While I was disappointed that someone who could be so mature and wise in the Lord could just plainly not be, I was more disappointed that no one else at the Bible study picked up on the slavery connection or even bothered to question the conclusions he was reaching.
My fellow parishioner’s ideas were instead the result of years of what I’ve heard called the “School of the Holy Spirit.” Essentially, and this is evident from attempts to correct him, all he needs is his Bible, his brain and he can discover truth, no matter how off the wall it seems. This is how cults are started: no accountability, no humility, no respect for the Christian community at large.
Even though Jesus did promise us that the Holy Spirit would be another Helper, it’s clear in the New Testament that the Father uses the community of Believers; the history, culture and yes, even the traditions that spring up in the context of a Jesus-centered, Bible-honoring community, to communicate truth. That’s why we can’t carte blanche reject the church fathers, like Augustine or Polycarp, the Reformers (including Calvin!) and even the Catholic theologians of the past. If we do so we cut ourselves from a good dose of God’s provision for true Holy Spirit learning.
If all your spiritual and religious learning comes from individuals who’ve lived during your lifetime generation alone, then you’re really putting a stranglehold on your growth and maturity.
Faithful Fridays – A Project Idea
I did not really come from a confessional background. Despite making commitments of faith and being baptized in a Methodist setting, apart from the Apostles’ Creed, I most of my Christian training ashewed the documents and codices of the faith. Instead, I was brought up stressing the importance of individual study, the iconoclastic nature of faithful living and fed a diet of subtle denegration toward those branches in the family of Christ that put a lot of importance in writing things down, categorizing and codifying of beliefs.
I’m not exactly sure how, but I ended up with the sort of personality and wit that embraced the confessional aspects of Christianity. As I’ll be happily discussing in in future posts, I’ve settled down in the irenic towns in the lands of the Reformed Tradition. Despite the unfair and yet somewhat justified poor press we in the Reformed camp have gotten, within this understanding of Christian faith and doctrinal structures, I see both beauty and critical thinking, a form of religious thought that isn’t so rooted in what is palatable but in what has been revealed as true.
Just consider the elegance and beauty that mark how the Heidelberg Catechism (the principle document that sets forth the doctrinal distinctives of the Reformed Traditions) begins.
Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death?
Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.
The modern generations know very little about the giants whose shoulders we now stand on. Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Luther, Bunyan and many other holy men and women who the Father blessed us to learn from are simply glossed over, spoken little of, or worst still, completely ignored as irrelevant.
So right now, I’m considering a modern English approach to some of the classics in Christian literature to make them more accessible to the generations of this day and age. As is the case for everything that people build up or make, language in particular shifts and drifts, moving and alive; what were once clear statements of doctrine, prose or creativity can get muddled and buried under constructions and syntax that no longer have the same emotional or informational significance.
It would do everyone some good if they could digest Francis Bacon’s essays, examine Augustine’s Confessions, or enjoy John Bunyans Holy War, and in doing so be built up in the Faith and in wisdom. I want to do my part to make those available to everyone.
Faithful Friday – The Proverbs
I’ve been reading through the book of Proverbs lately. For those who are not familiar, the Bible isn’t merely a single book, but more like a library of books written by a collection of authors over an incredible span of time. The book of Proverbs is part of the section that’s dedicated to helping people pursue wisdom and understanding.
To quote TVTropes, this book is exactly what it says on the tin. Proverbs is, very literally, a book of proverbs: axioms and bits and pieces of general life wisdom and “common sense.” Because the book itself has 31 chapters, many people read a chapter of proverbs a day and have the book complete in a month. I’m not quite doing that this time around, if only because I’m following a different reading plan that has me going through two or three chapters a day in addition to other reading.
But enough background. Why even bring it up? What’s so good about the Proverbs today?
You want to have a long life, prosperous and healthy? Do you want to avoid the pitfalls and traps that seem to keep people in a rut? Well, the Proverbs speak to answering those questions by urging us not just to think properly but to act properly as well.
There are several ways of putting it: Common sense. Understanding. Wisdom. Insight.
My child, listen to what I say, and treasure my commands.
Tune your ears to wisdom, and concentrate on understanding.
Cry out for insight, and ask for understanding.
Search for them as you would for silver; seek them like hidden treasures.
Then you will understand what it means to fear the Lord, and you will gain knowledge of God.
Proverbs 2.1-5
How many people today are truly “wise” or who really “understand” life? The stakes are more than just being smart. You see, foolishness (or folly) and simplicity, have a moral component that the Proverbs almost exclusively focus on. That’s why you’ll see many extremes in the Proverbs, from the lurking, stalking gleefully wicked men mentioned in Proverbs 1 to the exceptional, hardworking and perfectly poised woman of Proverbs 31. Rarely in actual practice do you find people who perfectly dovetail into the categories that the Bible gives us here; but most importantly, it also tells us to pursue Wisdom even if we aren’t completely wise ourselves.
And of course, the Bible does frame this pursuit of wisdom, as it does the entirety of life, in the bounds of knowing, loving and serving God. Wisdom isn’t merely being polite, knowing social graces and knowing how to take advantage of the stock market: it’s fearing God and loving people like He does. Put in that context, sometimes Wisdom has you graduate with a 3.0 instead of a 4.0 (by not cheating), or has you lose your job (because your employer is being unethical).
I’ve only just started rereading the book of Proverbs again and I’ve already been confronted with things I need to examine and change in myself, attitudes that don’t reflect a love of understanding, thoughts that aren’t been followed through with discernment, behavior that just isn’t Wise. But that’s a good thing, I think. It demonstrates a listening heart and a willingness to grow and change. I suppose that’s all the Proverbs ask of us anyway: Listen to, don’t ignore, Wisdom, obey her summons and enjoy her benefits.
Faithful Fridays
One of the things that does not become incredible obvious until one gets to know me in a meaningful way is that I’m on the track to being a pastor-theologian. Finishing the required coursework I need to get into Bible college and seminary are the first on my list. To provide for less compartmentalization, whereby a person breaks up their life into “manageable” chunks that never interact with each other, every Friday I will talk openly and perhaps candidly about something spiritual, theological or religious.
To me the Hallelujah Chorus always sounded and felt like an army amassing for an assault, a focused action of aggression against the forces of evil and wickedness that have the audacity to claim this world as their own. But yet, when one steps back and considers the scenario, it’s a rather strange “armed force” that sings, not of its own exploits and adventures, but of its King, of his power and wisdom and glory. A King who is literally, semper fidelis, Always Faithful. I can only assume that in our modern times, because we have no expectation of our governmental officials directly leading the offensive to protect their charges, that the imagery of a conquering King is lost on us.
Handel’s Messiah always sparks an Advent season, of sorts, inside my own heart. I honestly look forward to Jesus coming and setting things right, even if all he did was set things right inside me.
If it’s one thing that I’ve been trying to demonstrate to my friends is that God doesn’t just look at actions but looks out our thoughts and motivations too. Since our actions come from out of our hearts (the center of who we are, where we make our decisions and choices), right thoughts and beliefs are more important to God than merely the right actions. Though having a full set is what He wants us to strive for.
And even so, the Lord in his wisdom does not even make it so that people automagically know what are the right things to do with 100% accuracy in every single situation. Apparently, the he’s always had the idea for different people with different ideas to come together, learn from each other in notable ways, and grow together towards maturity.
I shared a powerful image with my friends recently: Jesus on the Cross with the Father pointing to Him and telling me “This is what you deserve.” I keep picturing myself nodding and answering back rather soberly, “Yes, I know.” It’s odd (but sorta not) that I’d be thinking about Christmas (with Handel’s Messiah) and Easter (with the Crucifixion) but it’s a scene that’s been haunting me. In essence, it’s the Gospel: agreeing with the Father that I am messed up, not who I am supposed to be and a rebel against the long-term goals, happiness and the long term thriving of the Community that the Father Himself has established.
God only accepts us into his life and family when we accept and admit that we are his enemies. It seems more than anything, that remains the most difficult hurdle to cross. People nowadays see Jesus as just another venue to happiness and self-worth, always there to affirm our own joys and thrills, never demanding anything of us and always accepting of whatever we do.
I guess what we don’t really understand in our culture anymore is that love doesn’t just leave a person as they are. Love transforms into something more beautiful, more proper, more…Good. (Of course then there are those who ask “Good according to whom?” but I’ve decided to just allow post-modern thinking to run its course without interfering too much.)
There’s a difference between demanding one be cleaned up enough before they become worthy of love – something I tend to believe about myself at times – and having such a right understanding of love that a person is cleaned up out of gratitude and affection.
I really wonder how Love really thinks of us when He sees us playing happily in the midst of dirty needles, spent condoms and a broken sewer line. (I especially wonder how he feels when all that crap is on the inside rather than on the outside.) He calls out to us, wades into the filth with us and offers us something not just different but better. We angrily retort and spit the words right back into His face, “I’m good enough just where I am. Nothing is wrong with me. You can’t love me if you want to change me.”
It honestly reminds me so much of when I had pet rats. They would get into something gross or just plain dirty and they couldn’t clean themselves without making themselves sick, getting hurt or dirtier in the process. Though rats can swim and can take to water very easily, the typical pet rat dislikes getting wet. Getting a rat, much less 3 or 4 (or 10), cleaned up is a harrowing experience, and I still have visible scars to this day on my arms that testify to the stubborn insistence of “I’m well and good. Nothing is wrong.”
It’s a wonder of grace that God hasn’t completely lost patience with us.