So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)
I'm going to take a quick break from the narrative, and fast-forward briefly to present circumstances. This blog is not merely intended to be a confession of the past, but also to serve as a confessional of the present. The main purpose is to be honest and upfront about the struggles that I face living a new life in Christ and sharing those struggles with whomever desires to keep reading.
On many occasions, I have witnessed a group mentality where everyone recognizes a problem but no one speaks about it, and therefore everyone in the group is hurt silently together. One example of this problem that comes to mind is when a group of Christian friends go to see a movie together. They go to the movie blindly opening night, not knowing what to expect, but the movie is the highly anticipated blockbuster of the year. They all buy popcorn and soda, sit together in the best seats, and buckle down for a great movie experience. Within the first twenty minutes of the movie, every single individual in the row of Christian friends is troubled by the movie. Whether it is the language, the violence, the suggestive material, or the nudity. Each individual Christian, if they were watching the movie alone, would have turned the movie off and found a better use of their time. However, as a group, they collectively continue to sit through the terrible movie, and no one person is willing to get up and walk out, so they all continue to sit and feel miserable.
It is a brief and small example of a bigger problem. The problem, I believe, is much larger than a group of Christian friends watching a terrible movie together. What if everyone in the church is secretly miserable about something, each individual has their own problem that they're dealing with, and each Christian feels like they have to put on a show around others because nobody is brave enough to go out on a limb and be honest with everyone?
Consider another example. It is your tenth high school reunion, and all of your high school friends are attending. Everyone is married, has kids, graduated college, and have successful jobs. You cannot wait to catch up with everyone, and introduce everyone to your wife. As you interact with everyone at the reunion, you act like you're having a great time, but in your head, you just wish you were as happy as all these people around you seem to be. They seem to love their jobs, love the direction their lives are going, and they don't seem to have a care in the world. You're mostly happy about where your future seems to be headed, but you act more satisfied with current circumstances than you really are. You go home that night feeling like you put on a performance for your high school friends because you didn't want to seem like the only person that wasn't entirely comfortable about life, but in reality, everyone goes home feeling the exact same way you do, most likely.
Transparency is something we laud in non-profit organizations and politics, but we avoid it like the plague sometimes within our closest circles, especially at church. I don't know how many times I have gone to church on a Sunday morning feeling miserable, but everyone at church is none the wiser that I am really, honestly struggling. Throughout the three years of our marriage, I have been amazed at some of the performances my wife and I have put on in public gatherings. I am sure many married couples can attest to their moonlighting as great actors when conflict is ill-timed before a social gathering. You drive to the event without speaking, you arrive to the host's home and you both take a deep breath, you act chipper and happy as you interact with fellow guests, and you get home late at night and pick up where you left off, miserable.
Christians are happy people. Is that statement accurate? Undoubtedly, we can find joy in the worst of circumstances because of the comfort of the Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ and the love of our Heavenly Father, but to say that we are always happy is a farce. Perhaps a better statement is Christians act like happy people. Christians are not always happy, but I fear we can act happy almost all of the time. So, why do we act happy when we're really not?
I immensely love everyone that I worship with on a weekly basis. I love to see their bright and exuberant smiles Sunday morning as they arrive one by one to make a joyful noise before the Lord and listen to the Gospel preached. I have no doubt that almost all of them are genuinely happy to worship God and fellowship with the saints. However, the fellowship does not always seem as genuine as it should, and I am one to admit that I am as guilty as anyone else for having perpetuated the problem.
Everyone had a rough and tough week. You could see it in people's eyes and you could hear it on the undercurrent of their laughs. You almost get the sense that every time they laugh they truly want to cry. They are happy to be amongst friends, and even happier to be with like-minded brothers and sisters in Christ. They are happy to be rejuvenated by the means of grace and the preaching of the Word. They are in the midst of friends, family, and people that they can truly trust and turn to for comfort.
How are you doing?
Fine, and how are you?
Doing well, thank you. Did you have a good week?
It was a bit hectic and difficult at times, but it was good. How about you?
Yeah, for the most part...
We all know the conversation. We're not ashamed to admit that we struggled, but somehow the week always seems to end just fine.
As a group, Christians are known for being a happy people, and I don't see anything wrong with that. Of all peoples, we truly have something to rejoice and be happy about. We are a redeemed people. We are a people being sanctified by the Holy Spirit, united to Christ Jesus, and adopted as children of the Almighty God. What is there not to be happy about? But every Christian should not hesitate to admit that we struggle with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. This sinful world rocks our boat as much as it does everybody else's. But for some reason, we're ashamed to admit our weaknesses as a group and we're suffering as individuals for doing so.
Imagine this conversation Sunday morning:
Hello! So good to see you! How did your week go?
Quite honestly, it was miserable. I'm really struggling, right now. The bills continue to pile up, my wife is fearing the worst, I search and search and search, but I can't seem to find work. It took all the strength I could muster to get dressed and come to church today because I'm really struggling with some doubts right now, and I fear no one is going to be sympathetic but they're going to just keep telling me, "Keep trusting in the Lord." I know God is in control of my unemployment situation, but everything seems to be completely out of control, right now. I know God is trying to teach me to trust in Him through this trial, but I fear my faith is waning rather than growing. I'd love counseling, but I don't want to bother the pastor because his plate is full already. I don't want to be a bother to anybody. I feel like I just need to read Matthew 6:31-34 more and pray pray pray. I'm sorry to unload on you like this, but I can't pretend to be happy any more. I really need some help.
Oh, I am so sorry to hear about that. It looks like the service is about to begin, so I better get seated. I hope that you find the sermon uplifting. I'll certainly keep you in my prayers.
Imagine greeting everyone on Sunday morning and someone replying, "Good morning? I wish." We'd be shocked. Would we follow up? As a group (or maybe I should say as a church), we don't expect people at church to be honest about how they're feeling or doing. Sure, we ask each other all the time, but do we really expect to hear the truth? Do we really want to hear the truth? Quite honestly, at my church, I have no doubts that everyone would react very appropriately if someone were to be blatantly honest with feeling overwhelmed with hardships in their life. I can't foresee anyone shying away from having the difficult conversation with me when I am feeling overwhelmed, but I'm still unwilling to have the conversation with anyone. Are you too?
We've all had conversations at church where we can tell our conversation partner is not being forward and honest about their situation. Every husband sees through the "fine" answer when we ask our wives how they are doing and they are everything but fine. As Christians, we're more in-tune with the struggles each of us faces on a week to week basis because we're all struggling with many of the same things. If you're unemployed for a month, we know you're stressing out and finding it difficult to believe the Lord will provide. If you're due date has come and gone two weeks ago, we know that you're sick and tired of being pregnant and beginning to doubt how much of a blessing this child truly is. If you've been evacuated from your home for a week due to a large fire and have had no word on the status of your home, we know that you're struggling to find complete rest in the Lord and placing your treasure in Heaven. Honestly, I believe we are prepared for the worst when we ask you how your week went. We don't want to hear "fine." We want you to be honest. We don't want you to act like nothing is wrong. We don't want you to put a smile on and laugh when you really want to break down and sob. We want to comfort you, but, you never give us the chance.
We've all been in the position where we want someone to tell us how they truly feel and we've all been in the position where we want to tell someone how we truly feel. In both positions, we cop out. We accept the false response, and we make the false response. We don't want to be transparent and we don't want to advocate transparency. We're all a little more comfortable not knowing about some of the heartbreak surrounding us in the pews at church, and we're all a little more comfortable putting a smile on and acting like everything is zip-a-de-do-da okay.
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. The Lord's power is made perfect in weakness. As Christians, we are subject to weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for Christ's sake. When we are weak, we are strong. At your weakest point, everything is out of your control and completely in God's hands. When you reach that breaking point you fall to your knees, your will crumbles, you burst into tears, and you cry out, "God, I have done all I can to no avail. You, and you alone, are in control of this situation. Help me, Father, because if you do not then there truly is no hope!"
On 2 Cor. 12:10, John Calvin eloquently writes:
"'The more deficiency there is in me, so much the more liberally does the Lord, from his strength, supply me with whatever he sees to be needful for me.' For the fortitude of philosophers is nothing else than contumacy, or rather a mad enthusiasm, such as fanatics are accustomed to have. 'If a man is desirous to be truly strong, let him not refuse to be at the same time weak. Let him,' I say, 'be weak in himself that he may be strong in the Lord' (Eph. 6:10)."
After all of Paul's boasting, he does not hesitate to relate to us that he too struggles. He too must struggle with a thorn in his flesh so that he too might fully rely upon the perfect power of Christ made evident through his weaknesses. Even as an Apostle, Paul is not immune to weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. Even Paul pleaded with the Lord to be rid of the thorn in his flesh, but yet the thorn remained. Once. Twice. Three times Paul prayed, but the only response he received was, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
Perhaps my observations of the church today are misguided, but I fear weakness is not applauded in Christian circles. We want spiritual leadership, prayer warriors, and members who stand steadily upon the Rock. When the going gets tough, Christians are expected to keep going. The world can throw whatever wrench they want into our cogs, but we're a well-oiled machine, and it will take more than that to depress our spirits. That's the image we want to publish on the poster, at least. In reality, we all come home after church and we feel miserable still. We want to let our brothers and sisters in Christ know that we are truly struggling, but we don't want to be an exception to the rule. We don't want to be that one Christian who sees the rest of the troops marching while we're left crawling amidst the ranks. We act like Jesus words were, "My grace is sufficient for you, so my power is made evident through a perfect lack of weakness." Those, however, are not Jesus' words.
I'm going out on a limb, here. In no way do I want to act as if I am not a perpetrator of the problems I have herein outlined. I am as guilty as everyone else. I have acted like I am unfazed by life's struggles while surrounded by God's people who are anxiously awaiting an opportunity to comfort me. I have copped out of digging further when I notice that my brothers and sisters in Christ are struggling but I don't want to invade their privacy. I am a perpetrator of making Christianity the "happy" religion rather than taking Christ's words to heart and realizing that He is telling us it is okay to be weak, it is okay to struggle, it is okay to feel overwhelmed with hardships because His power is made perfect in our weakness.
In conclusion, I fear that Christians are not being honest about themselves and we're not being honest with the world about the power of Jesus Christ. Our weakness demonstrates the power of Jesus Christ in our lives. Our faith in Christ does not make us immune to suffering. Our faith in Jesus does not allow us to be happy 24/7, living carefree lives. Our Lord and Savior does not place a bubble around His people so that we can remain unfazed while the world and the people in it struggle with the destructive effects of sin.
Our faith, rather, enables us to see that Jesus is God, but that He is also man. Our faith allows us to see that Jesus struggled with every hardship we ever will, and therefore, know that God does not look down upon weakness but personally experienced it Himself. Our Lord and Savior is no stranger to pain, suffering, grief, and weakness. It is not outside of Him, but He became man so that He could know our weaknesses intimately. Bearing our ultimate weakness, He died upon the cross. By His own power, He resurrected from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God the Father. It is there that He mediates on our behalf, having bore our transgressions, having bore our weaknesses, and having made atonement for them. His power is made perfect in our weakness! If He did not become man, if He did not bear our weaknesses, if He did not die our death, then we would surely have no hope for salvation. He did become man, He did bear our weaknesses, He did die our death, and, therefore, He can comfort us in our weakness, strengthen us in our weakness, and save us from our weakness.
Like Christ, the Christian church, as His witnesses, is to be marked by weak men and women who desperately rely upon God and His grace. Like Christ, Christians should expect to feel frail. We shouldn't be ashamed to feel like bruised reeds, ready to break at any moment. We shouldn't be ashamed to be honest with each other, and be forthcoming about the trials we are going through. If the smile is merely a façade, then are we not bearing false witness to our dear brothers and sisters? We are not willing to admit our weaknesses amongst each other, and we are not willing to believe other Christians will come beside us if we do admit our struggles.
The Christian faith is not about our perfection, but about Jesus'. The Christian faith is not an enabling of men to overcome every obstacle without faltering in their faith, but it is about Christ's life and death of perfect obedience and the Holy Spirit's work of sanctification in the lives of sinful men, conforming their lives into the image of Christ. The Christian walk is not one of ease, but one that completely relies upon the sufficiency of the suffering servant who bore our transgressions and perfectly comforts us in our weaknesses.
Instead of being a weak people who find hope in Christ, we act like a hopeful people who have no weaknesses. There's a world that surrounds us, struggling with real problems and issues. They don't observe Christians as people who are right there with them in the daily trenches, struggling with sin, hardships, calamities, and evil. They observe Christians who act like nothing can faze them, when in reality, they're just as frail, just as scared, and desperately searching for any hope and solace they can find. You don't want to tell someone who just had an awesome week how terrible your week has been. Think about that and how the world might perceive happy-go-lucky Christianity. They think, "I don't know what they're drinking, but I'll try some." They have a sip, it does not seem to have the same effect, and the move onto the next medicine.
As Christians, we are not immune to the hardships of life, and shame on us if we ever give the world the impression that we are or, worse yet, if we give our brothers and sisters the impression that they must walk as if nothing fazes them. The Apostle Paul says that he became weak so that he might win the weak. Surely, we should follow Paul's example, and become weak for Christ's sake.
Paul writes:
Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one--I am talking like a madman--with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.
Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me, but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands. (2 Corinthians 11:23-33)
Imagine asking Paul how his week went, and then getting this as a response. How would you respond? Would you think less of him as a Christian, or more of him?
I challenge myself and you to be more honest with those around you about the hardships you are facing in life. Do not be afraid or ashamed to tell me how your week really went when I ask you at church next week. Do not feel like you have to maintain a happy-go-lucky façade around me, because I know how difficult the Christian walk is. I know the hardships entailed with proclaiming Christ as your Lord and Savior. I know how hard it can be to admit that you're struggling to see God's loving grace in many facets of your life. But as weak as you and I ever are, the Lord's grace is sufficient. The weaker we are the more readily our eyes our opened to gaze upon His perfect power! Let us not seek to place a veil over Christ's power, but let us make it known to everyone around us. Yes, we'll have to act as weak as we truly are, but for Christ's sake, we must learn to grow content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."
(1 Corinthians 1:27-31)
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Hebrews 2:14-18)
Monday, June 17, 2013
Friday, June 7, 2013
What makes me a Christian?
After returning from a trip to China to visit a missionary family from our church, something was different about my perception of the world. Rather than living life in my own conceited, carefree, lazy, and lost bubble-view, I felt compelled to re-visit how I viewed the world and thought about the Christian faith. After visiting a country where Christians are persecuted for their faith was an eye-opener for me as a young man who had called himself a Christian throughout his life and never really took the time to think about what that meant. It was time for me to figure out what I believed and why I believed it. I had nefariously labeled myself a Christian my entire life, but my lifestyle, my attitude towards life, my love of self and contempt for my neighbor, my worship of sex and my addiction to pornography demonstrated that I was not even a good self-righteous legalist. Coming home after China, no longer did I feel comfortable wearing my self-righteous leafy covering, and I felt completely exposed to a holy God who opened my eyes to my wickedness, the filthiness of my sins, and awakened me to the coming judgment for sinners like myself.
Having attended a Reformed Presbyterian church for about five years at this point, I had heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ faithfully preached every Sunday by my pastor, David Reese. Pastor Dave had just started preaching from the Gospel of Luke when we returned from China. Honestly, I could not tell you what books of scripture Pastor Dave had preached through before July 2006. However, I remember vividly many of the sermons that Dave preached through Luke. My attention was not all of a sudden piqued by the story of Jesus that I had heard hundreds of times before. I knew the story about Jesus. I knew the beginning of his life very well, and I knew how the story ended very well. But that's about it; it had always been a story.
When the story becomes gospel, you cannot help but notice. When you go from loathing the sermon on Sunday mornings to deeply desiring it and being gripped by every word, then you cannot help but notice that something is radically different. When you no longer shelve your Bible quickly every Sunday not to touch it again until the next Sunday but open it up daily, search it, meditate upon it as God's very Word, then you cannot help but wonder, What is happening to me?
The transformation from deaf ears to ears that hear was the first sign that God was at work in my heart. Perhaps it sounds cliché when a Christian cannot explain their feelings and desires to say that the Holy Spirit is at work, but if the truth sounds cliché so be it. I did not return home from China and make a conscious effort to pay more attention to the sermons at church. I did not come back from China and decide that I needed to start reading the Bible and meditating upon it. The decision was not mine, but another quickened me.
There had been several times in my life where I had picked up my Bible and conscientiously tried to read through a book and study it. I had deeply desired once before to study the Bible as a child. I would read, but nothing seemed to make sense. I often read Old Testament passages, and did not understand what connection there was from Old Testament stories to the teachings of Christ and the apostles in the New Testament. I tried several study Bibles, but nothing seemed to help. The Bible's consistent message was always mysterious to me, and it always seemed like a hodgepodge of stories (Jesus' being the most popular).
As Pastor Dave continued to preach through the book of Luke, it quickly became apparent why the Bible had been enigma to me for my whole life: it wasn't about me. How can a person who has rejected any need of a savior find any comfort in the Scriptures? How can a man who seeks to justify himself before a Holy God find any hope in the Holy Word of God? How can a man that believes that his filthy rags are enough to gain himself access to a heaven that revolves around the man's wicked and twisted views of self-gratification find the Bible remotely interesting? He cannot, because the Word of God has nothing to offer him but a history of mankind that exactly resembles him that is repeatedly judged by God for their sins. The deceitfulness of our hearts blinds our eyes and deafens our ears to the message of Jesus Christ which is only illuminated in the hearts of men by the Holy Spirit.
Those who are not dying from an incurable disease have no need for a physician. Those who are not wicked sinners have no need for a savior. Those who are justified by their own good works do not require a sacrifice to take away their sins. Those who desire to enter heaven to be a god of their own have no desire to know Him who sits on the Heavenly throne and rejects all those who do not kiss His Son, their Lord and Savior.
For my whole life, despite the teaching of my parents and the persistent preaching of the gospel, I believed that I always had something to contribute to my salvation. Whether salvation was about asking Jesus into my heart, being a good person who cared about the well-being of others, or knowing the right doctrines, I always had to contribute something. Forgiveness was never unconditional. Forgiveness was never gracious. I had to do something. For once in my life, I finally found out what I really had to contribute to my salvation. You know what makes me a Christian? You know what I finally figured out about what I had to contribute to my salvation? My answer will probably surprise you.
First of all, I am not a Christian because I was raised in the church by parents who fear God and cling to Christ as their Lord and Savior by faith. Yes, my parent's faith influenced me, but it didn't make me a Christian. Yes, my parent's prayers that their sons would rest upon the finished work of Jesus Christ for their salvation played a role in my conversion, but that is not what makes me a Christian. My façade of faith in Christ was certainly a product of my upbringing; seeking to avoid deeply troubling and disappointing my parents with the knowledge that I was not resting in Christ for my salvation. The argument that Christians are merely a product of their parent's religious beliefs is not consistent with the fact that over 70% of professing teens leave the church after their first couple of years in college. Yes, for a time, a façade of their parent's faith is present, but once they leave their parents' home they are often quick to shed their hypocrisy and stop living the lie. Godly parents do not always beget godly children.
Secondly, I am not a Christian based upon reasoning and logical argument. There is nothing logical about faith. In fact, faith is completely illogical. That is what makes it faith. Against reasoning and logic, we hold fast to a truth of which we have no tangible evidence to suggest that the hope that we rest in even exists. No man can reason himself into the Christian faith. Reaching the conclusion that Jesus died on behalf of sinners and reconciles them to God the Father through His substitutionary atonement on the cross is not a result of reasoning. I never studied every religion known to man, weighed the evidence, and decided that I was going to settle on Christianity. Many renowned scholars and philosophers have attested that Christianity is a religion for losers, idiots, and the intellectually destitute. Their argument assumes that faith is reached by reason and that Christians choose to believe that Jesus is the Christ that mankind needs from their sins. I made no choice, but rather, the choice was made for me.
So, then, what makes me a Christian? What, if anything, did I contribute to my decision to rest in Christ Jesus for my salvation?
I contributed a lot to my salvation. It all started the day I was conceived. Before my first breath, I was already contributing to my salvation. As a newborn infant, without saying any words or articulating any thoughts I had started a new life full of contributions that I was going to pile up that would greatly influence my salvation later in life.
My childhood is full of contributions to my salvation. I was not always the most obedient child. Many times, I was only obedient because I did not want to get punished. My parents repeatedly had to spank me and send me to my room and ground me because I contributed to my salvation so much. I remember praying to God several times as a child that God would take my parents away so that I could live an unimpeded life of rebellion. All these rules, lessons, and discipline were impending my ability to continuously contribute to my salvation.
In middle school, I decided that it was better to cheat than to work hard and study. Every morning of school, I would wake up early so that I could contribute to my salvation. I would sit in the study and copy down answer after answer from the teacher's guide onto my test, making sure that my dad did not suspect that I was contributing to my salvation.
In high school, my contributions became more sinister. Cheating for a good grade was small potatoes compared to my new contributions. I no longer cheated. I hunkered down, studied, and worked hard for every grade. However, my flesh began to fester with new desires that I could not seem to muster the strength or desire to combat. Surrounded by young, flirtatious, and beautiful girls, my desire was to know them and to know them intimately. Restricted by my parent's strict Christian principles, my interactions with these girls would have to remain honorable, much to my chagrin. However, I discovered a treasure trove of girls that allowed me to interact with them in the most dishonorable of ways on the internet. Best of all, these girls never knew I was enjoying the crudest and most immodest intimacy with them and nobody else knew that I was either. I found a way to greatly contribute towards my salvation by enjoying and finding myself addicted to pornography.
In college, my contributions from high school continued, but I added laziness and contempt of opportunity to the pile. With an open-ended future before me, I despised opportunity and praised vanity. I found great comfort in wasting time, enjoying shallow relationships that fed my ego when I wanted them to, and I loathed my parents who encouraged me to pursue a college education and a worth-while profession.
Throughout high school and college, I made great contributions to my salvation. I enjoyed pornography. I enjoyed explicit music and violent movies. I enjoyed spending time with friends that would not challenge me to remain faithful to my Christian profession. I enjoyed spending time with friends that lived to get drunk at large parties and bragged about their promiscuity afterwards. I foolishly grabbed ahold of the elements of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and devoured them without faith and in an unworthy manner. I contributed to my salvation every second of every day of my life before day one.
I worshiped myself and I hated God. I became my own god. I was obsessed with gratifying my own desires, and when I could not get instant gratification for my wants and desires then I would curse my rival, God. I was working recklessly to make myself happy, but God was always getting in the way and making things difficult. God clearly did not love me, he clearly did not have my best interests at heart, and I was beginning to think that I was tired of being a Christian.
I am a Christian because I was a cheater in middle school. I am a Christian because I spent hours each day seeking after and enjoying pornography. I am a Christian because I desired to rid myself of God's sovereignty in my life. I am a Christian because I joined the ranks of the rebellion against God, seeking to usurp His kingship and placing the crown upon my own head. I am a Christian because I bore Christ's name in vain, because I hypocritically put on a show for those around me, and led the world to believe that Christianity was nothing but a self-righteous façade. I am a Christian because I spit upon Christ's blood and body upon the cross, partook of a holy meal without faith, and mocked and ridiculed my Lord and Savior.
My greatest and only contribution to my salvation was sin. I contributed my sin by the second throughout my life, and I continue to contribute to it this very day. I am a Christian because I am a sinner desperately in need of a savior. Without sin there is no need for a messiah (Christ).
Sadly, the message proudly and erroneously proclaimed louder than the gospel of grace by today's Christians is that if we did it, then you can do it too. The message isn't God's gracious gift of His only begotten Son to a world saturated with sin desperately requiring a divine and human sacrifice to cure the disease. No, the message is you can do it! The message is you're living a life of sin, do something about it! Cure yourself! What are you waiting for? Contribute something, already, would ya. Christians don't preach the gospel, but they proclaim false hope louder than anything else. They say, "All you have to do is ask Jesus into your heart. All you have to do is desire a personal relationship with God. All you have to do is stop fighting against God and join His ranks against Satan." However, this was not Jesus' message.
The modern mantra of the Christian church today is John 3:16, but most Christians could not tell you any of the verses before and after that beautiful proclamation of the grace and love of God. The whole passage begins with Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, telling Jesus that he believes that Jesus is a great teacher who speaks on God's behalf. Jesus answers Nicodemus by saying, "Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." Modern Christians, interpreting this text from a modern vocabulary, claim that Jesus is here speaking of the activity that many evangelicals call "asking Jesus into your hearts" (aka being born again). Nicodemus' response to Jesus' words, however, demonstrate that he was appalled by what Jesus was claiming he had to do. Nicodemus asks, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?"
Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Consider, how much did you contribute to your first birth? How much did you contribute to your conception? Ironically, the weight of Jesus' words here demonstrating that man cannot contribute to his own salvation is not only lost on many Christians today but is used to argue that people need to ask Jesus into their hearts in order to be born-again Christians.
Jesus answers Nicodemus' questions:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
How is a man reborn so that he can see the kingdom of God? Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Jesus does not say that unless one asks me into his heart and believes in me, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Jesus says that salvation is a result of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Salvation is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit in a man's life, replacing a heart of stone with a heart of flesh, replacing deaf ears and blind eyes with ears that hear and eyes that see, removing the sinful snares and chains encircled around the man's wrists and ankles, and re-creating the man through union with Jesus Christ. Man can save himself no more than he can catch the wind. Man has no ability to be born again just like he has no ability to direct the wind as to where it may or may not go. You do not see the wind coming, but you know when it is present and you know when it is not.
Nicodemus is still puzzled, however. He is a great Jewish leader who knows the Old Testament Scriptures throughout, but this teaching of Jesus is perplexing. He asks, "How can these things be?"
Jesus responds:
"Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."
On this passage, Calvin says:
"He again exhorts Nicodemus not to trust to himself and his own sagacity, because no mortal man can, by his own unaided powers, enter into heaven, but only he who goes thither under the guidance of the Son of God. For to ascend to heaven means here, 'to have a pure knowledge of the mysteries of God, and the light of spiritual understanding.' For Christ gives here the same instruction which is given by Paul, when he declares that the sensual man does not comprehend the things which are of God (1 Cor. 2:16), and, therefore, he excludes from divine things all the acuteness of the human understanding, for it is far below God."
The very next verse is John 3:16:
"For God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life."
It is clear in its proper context that belief in Jesus is not an ascension of man's heart or mind to heavenly things, clinging upon Christ as his accepted (or acceptable) Lord and Savior. Rather, it is clear within the context that whoever believes in Jesus has been born again and quickened by the power of the Holy Spirit. Belief is a result of salvation and not a cause.
I know that I had nothing to contribute to my salvation apart from an exacerbating list of heinous and wicked sins against God, requiring my need for salvation from God's just wrath. I did not invite Jesus into my heart. I did not seek or desire a personal relationship with God. I did not weigh the evidence of Christianity against the evidence in favor of other religions and decide that Christianity is the most plausible. Much like my first birth, I had nothing to do with my second birth. The wind blew upon me, and I never saw it coming.
I was a sinner, and a very good one at that. I sinned as often as I could get away with it. I was a liar. I was a cheat. I was a man of immoral thoughts. I was a man full of lust for women. I objectified women and only desired them to fulfill my own sinful pleasures. I worshiped my own sexual desires and gratified them as often and as soon as I could. I loved myself more than anyone else. I despised God because he didn't want me to be happy with who I was. In rebellion against him, I was happy with my sinfulness and I could care less about what He felt. I thought,"If He is so powerful, mighty, and holy, then why doesn't He come down out of heaven and stop me?!!"
Well, He did, and for that I am eternally grateful and thankful.
I am a Christian because I was living a life of sin, living a life of disobedience to God's Law, and living a life with unabated contempt for God in my heart. While I was still a sinner, God sent His Spirit upon me to release me from sin and unite me to Jesus Christ. I am a Christian because Jesus died for sinners like me, God calls sinners like me to be adopted sons and heirs with His only begotten Son, and gives sinners like me His Holy Spirit, that renews a dead heart with life through union with a resurrected Christ who has bore the wrath of God on my account and places His perfection upon me as if it were my own. I didn't choose to be a Christian any more than I choose when the wind shall blow upon me and where it shall go.
My conversion, however, was no breeze. It was a hurricane of Biblical proportions. Like a newborn infant, you are not cognizant of what is happening to you or your newfound existence. I was a re-born infant, and I noticed a newfound existence in Christ but I did not grow cognizant of the transformation for a time. I was getting used to my new eyes, my new ears, and my new life. The storm was about to hit, but I had no idea.
I did not choose God, but rather God chose me. I would never call myself a Calvinist, because Calvin wasn't a Calvinist. John Calvin was an Augustinian. Augustine was a Paulinian. The Apostle Paul was a Christian. However, despite my protestation against the label of "Calvinist", there are those who cannot stand the thought of making "Calvinist" and "Christian" synonymous. I'm not a Calvinist because I became a Christian in a Reformed Presbyterian church. Primarily, I am a Calvinist because it is biblical. The reformed doctrines of grace that stem from the Reformation and are outlined by John Calvin, Martin Luther, and the Puritans are thoroughly and unequivocally based upon the Word of God. Secondly, I am a Calvinist because of my own experience of conversion and salvation. I must have been saved completely by grace because I know that I was not working my way towards God when I was born again. I was working harder to rebel against God and flee from His influence in my life more than I was ever running towards Him. He was my enemy. He was my judge. He was my sure destruction. God revealed Himself as a gracious and merciful Father before I ran into His loving embrace.
Sadly, the most destructive lie of ancient, medieval, and modern Christianity is that man can work his way to God, and the trend, despite being challenged throughout history, continues to spread. Christians are not saved by works, but by the grace of God. Christians contribute nothing but their stinking, rotten, wicked, disgusting sins to their salvation. God provides the Spirit and the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. It's not of works, but completely of grace.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die--but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(Romans 5:6-8)
Having attended a Reformed Presbyterian church for about five years at this point, I had heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ faithfully preached every Sunday by my pastor, David Reese. Pastor Dave had just started preaching from the Gospel of Luke when we returned from China. Honestly, I could not tell you what books of scripture Pastor Dave had preached through before July 2006. However, I remember vividly many of the sermons that Dave preached through Luke. My attention was not all of a sudden piqued by the story of Jesus that I had heard hundreds of times before. I knew the story about Jesus. I knew the beginning of his life very well, and I knew how the story ended very well. But that's about it; it had always been a story.
When the story becomes gospel, you cannot help but notice. When you go from loathing the sermon on Sunday mornings to deeply desiring it and being gripped by every word, then you cannot help but notice that something is radically different. When you no longer shelve your Bible quickly every Sunday not to touch it again until the next Sunday but open it up daily, search it, meditate upon it as God's very Word, then you cannot help but wonder, What is happening to me?
The transformation from deaf ears to ears that hear was the first sign that God was at work in my heart. Perhaps it sounds cliché when a Christian cannot explain their feelings and desires to say that the Holy Spirit is at work, but if the truth sounds cliché so be it. I did not return home from China and make a conscious effort to pay more attention to the sermons at church. I did not come back from China and decide that I needed to start reading the Bible and meditating upon it. The decision was not mine, but another quickened me.
There had been several times in my life where I had picked up my Bible and conscientiously tried to read through a book and study it. I had deeply desired once before to study the Bible as a child. I would read, but nothing seemed to make sense. I often read Old Testament passages, and did not understand what connection there was from Old Testament stories to the teachings of Christ and the apostles in the New Testament. I tried several study Bibles, but nothing seemed to help. The Bible's consistent message was always mysterious to me, and it always seemed like a hodgepodge of stories (Jesus' being the most popular).
As Pastor Dave continued to preach through the book of Luke, it quickly became apparent why the Bible had been enigma to me for my whole life: it wasn't about me. How can a person who has rejected any need of a savior find any comfort in the Scriptures? How can a man who seeks to justify himself before a Holy God find any hope in the Holy Word of God? How can a man that believes that his filthy rags are enough to gain himself access to a heaven that revolves around the man's wicked and twisted views of self-gratification find the Bible remotely interesting? He cannot, because the Word of God has nothing to offer him but a history of mankind that exactly resembles him that is repeatedly judged by God for their sins. The deceitfulness of our hearts blinds our eyes and deafens our ears to the message of Jesus Christ which is only illuminated in the hearts of men by the Holy Spirit.
Those who are not dying from an incurable disease have no need for a physician. Those who are not wicked sinners have no need for a savior. Those who are justified by their own good works do not require a sacrifice to take away their sins. Those who desire to enter heaven to be a god of their own have no desire to know Him who sits on the Heavenly throne and rejects all those who do not kiss His Son, their Lord and Savior.
For my whole life, despite the teaching of my parents and the persistent preaching of the gospel, I believed that I always had something to contribute to my salvation. Whether salvation was about asking Jesus into my heart, being a good person who cared about the well-being of others, or knowing the right doctrines, I always had to contribute something. Forgiveness was never unconditional. Forgiveness was never gracious. I had to do something. For once in my life, I finally found out what I really had to contribute to my salvation. You know what makes me a Christian? You know what I finally figured out about what I had to contribute to my salvation? My answer will probably surprise you.
First of all, I am not a Christian because I was raised in the church by parents who fear God and cling to Christ as their Lord and Savior by faith. Yes, my parent's faith influenced me, but it didn't make me a Christian. Yes, my parent's prayers that their sons would rest upon the finished work of Jesus Christ for their salvation played a role in my conversion, but that is not what makes me a Christian. My façade of faith in Christ was certainly a product of my upbringing; seeking to avoid deeply troubling and disappointing my parents with the knowledge that I was not resting in Christ for my salvation. The argument that Christians are merely a product of their parent's religious beliefs is not consistent with the fact that over 70% of professing teens leave the church after their first couple of years in college. Yes, for a time, a façade of their parent's faith is present, but once they leave their parents' home they are often quick to shed their hypocrisy and stop living the lie. Godly parents do not always beget godly children.
Secondly, I am not a Christian based upon reasoning and logical argument. There is nothing logical about faith. In fact, faith is completely illogical. That is what makes it faith. Against reasoning and logic, we hold fast to a truth of which we have no tangible evidence to suggest that the hope that we rest in even exists. No man can reason himself into the Christian faith. Reaching the conclusion that Jesus died on behalf of sinners and reconciles them to God the Father through His substitutionary atonement on the cross is not a result of reasoning. I never studied every religion known to man, weighed the evidence, and decided that I was going to settle on Christianity. Many renowned scholars and philosophers have attested that Christianity is a religion for losers, idiots, and the intellectually destitute. Their argument assumes that faith is reached by reason and that Christians choose to believe that Jesus is the Christ that mankind needs from their sins. I made no choice, but rather, the choice was made for me.
So, then, what makes me a Christian? What, if anything, did I contribute to my decision to rest in Christ Jesus for my salvation?
I contributed a lot to my salvation. It all started the day I was conceived. Before my first breath, I was already contributing to my salvation. As a newborn infant, without saying any words or articulating any thoughts I had started a new life full of contributions that I was going to pile up that would greatly influence my salvation later in life.
My childhood is full of contributions to my salvation. I was not always the most obedient child. Many times, I was only obedient because I did not want to get punished. My parents repeatedly had to spank me and send me to my room and ground me because I contributed to my salvation so much. I remember praying to God several times as a child that God would take my parents away so that I could live an unimpeded life of rebellion. All these rules, lessons, and discipline were impending my ability to continuously contribute to my salvation.
In middle school, I decided that it was better to cheat than to work hard and study. Every morning of school, I would wake up early so that I could contribute to my salvation. I would sit in the study and copy down answer after answer from the teacher's guide onto my test, making sure that my dad did not suspect that I was contributing to my salvation.
In high school, my contributions became more sinister. Cheating for a good grade was small potatoes compared to my new contributions. I no longer cheated. I hunkered down, studied, and worked hard for every grade. However, my flesh began to fester with new desires that I could not seem to muster the strength or desire to combat. Surrounded by young, flirtatious, and beautiful girls, my desire was to know them and to know them intimately. Restricted by my parent's strict Christian principles, my interactions with these girls would have to remain honorable, much to my chagrin. However, I discovered a treasure trove of girls that allowed me to interact with them in the most dishonorable of ways on the internet. Best of all, these girls never knew I was enjoying the crudest and most immodest intimacy with them and nobody else knew that I was either. I found a way to greatly contribute towards my salvation by enjoying and finding myself addicted to pornography.
In college, my contributions from high school continued, but I added laziness and contempt of opportunity to the pile. With an open-ended future before me, I despised opportunity and praised vanity. I found great comfort in wasting time, enjoying shallow relationships that fed my ego when I wanted them to, and I loathed my parents who encouraged me to pursue a college education and a worth-while profession.
Throughout high school and college, I made great contributions to my salvation. I enjoyed pornography. I enjoyed explicit music and violent movies. I enjoyed spending time with friends that would not challenge me to remain faithful to my Christian profession. I enjoyed spending time with friends that lived to get drunk at large parties and bragged about their promiscuity afterwards. I foolishly grabbed ahold of the elements of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and devoured them without faith and in an unworthy manner. I contributed to my salvation every second of every day of my life before day one.
I worshiped myself and I hated God. I became my own god. I was obsessed with gratifying my own desires, and when I could not get instant gratification for my wants and desires then I would curse my rival, God. I was working recklessly to make myself happy, but God was always getting in the way and making things difficult. God clearly did not love me, he clearly did not have my best interests at heart, and I was beginning to think that I was tired of being a Christian.
I am a Christian because I was a cheater in middle school. I am a Christian because I spent hours each day seeking after and enjoying pornography. I am a Christian because I desired to rid myself of God's sovereignty in my life. I am a Christian because I joined the ranks of the rebellion against God, seeking to usurp His kingship and placing the crown upon my own head. I am a Christian because I bore Christ's name in vain, because I hypocritically put on a show for those around me, and led the world to believe that Christianity was nothing but a self-righteous façade. I am a Christian because I spit upon Christ's blood and body upon the cross, partook of a holy meal without faith, and mocked and ridiculed my Lord and Savior.
My greatest and only contribution to my salvation was sin. I contributed my sin by the second throughout my life, and I continue to contribute to it this very day. I am a Christian because I am a sinner desperately in need of a savior. Without sin there is no need for a messiah (Christ).
Sadly, the message proudly and erroneously proclaimed louder than the gospel of grace by today's Christians is that if we did it, then you can do it too. The message isn't God's gracious gift of His only begotten Son to a world saturated with sin desperately requiring a divine and human sacrifice to cure the disease. No, the message is you can do it! The message is you're living a life of sin, do something about it! Cure yourself! What are you waiting for? Contribute something, already, would ya. Christians don't preach the gospel, but they proclaim false hope louder than anything else. They say, "All you have to do is ask Jesus into your heart. All you have to do is desire a personal relationship with God. All you have to do is stop fighting against God and join His ranks against Satan." However, this was not Jesus' message.
The modern mantra of the Christian church today is John 3:16, but most Christians could not tell you any of the verses before and after that beautiful proclamation of the grace and love of God. The whole passage begins with Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, telling Jesus that he believes that Jesus is a great teacher who speaks on God's behalf. Jesus answers Nicodemus by saying, "Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." Modern Christians, interpreting this text from a modern vocabulary, claim that Jesus is here speaking of the activity that many evangelicals call "asking Jesus into your hearts" (aka being born again). Nicodemus' response to Jesus' words, however, demonstrate that he was appalled by what Jesus was claiming he had to do. Nicodemus asks, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?"
Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Consider, how much did you contribute to your first birth? How much did you contribute to your conception? Ironically, the weight of Jesus' words here demonstrating that man cannot contribute to his own salvation is not only lost on many Christians today but is used to argue that people need to ask Jesus into their hearts in order to be born-again Christians.
Jesus answers Nicodemus' questions:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
How is a man reborn so that he can see the kingdom of God? Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Jesus does not say that unless one asks me into his heart and believes in me, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Jesus says that salvation is a result of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Salvation is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit in a man's life, replacing a heart of stone with a heart of flesh, replacing deaf ears and blind eyes with ears that hear and eyes that see, removing the sinful snares and chains encircled around the man's wrists and ankles, and re-creating the man through union with Jesus Christ. Man can save himself no more than he can catch the wind. Man has no ability to be born again just like he has no ability to direct the wind as to where it may or may not go. You do not see the wind coming, but you know when it is present and you know when it is not.
Nicodemus is still puzzled, however. He is a great Jewish leader who knows the Old Testament Scriptures throughout, but this teaching of Jesus is perplexing. He asks, "How can these things be?"
Jesus responds:
"Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."
On this passage, Calvin says:
"He again exhorts Nicodemus not to trust to himself and his own sagacity, because no mortal man can, by his own unaided powers, enter into heaven, but only he who goes thither under the guidance of the Son of God. For to ascend to heaven means here, 'to have a pure knowledge of the mysteries of God, and the light of spiritual understanding.' For Christ gives here the same instruction which is given by Paul, when he declares that the sensual man does not comprehend the things which are of God (1 Cor. 2:16), and, therefore, he excludes from divine things all the acuteness of the human understanding, for it is far below God."
The very next verse is John 3:16:
"For God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life."
It is clear in its proper context that belief in Jesus is not an ascension of man's heart or mind to heavenly things, clinging upon Christ as his accepted (or acceptable) Lord and Savior. Rather, it is clear within the context that whoever believes in Jesus has been born again and quickened by the power of the Holy Spirit. Belief is a result of salvation and not a cause.
I know that I had nothing to contribute to my salvation apart from an exacerbating list of heinous and wicked sins against God, requiring my need for salvation from God's just wrath. I did not invite Jesus into my heart. I did not seek or desire a personal relationship with God. I did not weigh the evidence of Christianity against the evidence in favor of other religions and decide that Christianity is the most plausible. Much like my first birth, I had nothing to do with my second birth. The wind blew upon me, and I never saw it coming.
I was a sinner, and a very good one at that. I sinned as often as I could get away with it. I was a liar. I was a cheat. I was a man of immoral thoughts. I was a man full of lust for women. I objectified women and only desired them to fulfill my own sinful pleasures. I worshiped my own sexual desires and gratified them as often and as soon as I could. I loved myself more than anyone else. I despised God because he didn't want me to be happy with who I was. In rebellion against him, I was happy with my sinfulness and I could care less about what He felt. I thought,"If He is so powerful, mighty, and holy, then why doesn't He come down out of heaven and stop me?!!"
Well, He did, and for that I am eternally grateful and thankful.
I am a Christian because I was living a life of sin, living a life of disobedience to God's Law, and living a life with unabated contempt for God in my heart. While I was still a sinner, God sent His Spirit upon me to release me from sin and unite me to Jesus Christ. I am a Christian because Jesus died for sinners like me, God calls sinners like me to be adopted sons and heirs with His only begotten Son, and gives sinners like me His Holy Spirit, that renews a dead heart with life through union with a resurrected Christ who has bore the wrath of God on my account and places His perfection upon me as if it were my own. I didn't choose to be a Christian any more than I choose when the wind shall blow upon me and where it shall go.
My conversion, however, was no breeze. It was a hurricane of Biblical proportions. Like a newborn infant, you are not cognizant of what is happening to you or your newfound existence. I was a re-born infant, and I noticed a newfound existence in Christ but I did not grow cognizant of the transformation for a time. I was getting used to my new eyes, my new ears, and my new life. The storm was about to hit, but I had no idea.
I did not choose God, but rather God chose me. I would never call myself a Calvinist, because Calvin wasn't a Calvinist. John Calvin was an Augustinian. Augustine was a Paulinian. The Apostle Paul was a Christian. However, despite my protestation against the label of "Calvinist", there are those who cannot stand the thought of making "Calvinist" and "Christian" synonymous. I'm not a Calvinist because I became a Christian in a Reformed Presbyterian church. Primarily, I am a Calvinist because it is biblical. The reformed doctrines of grace that stem from the Reformation and are outlined by John Calvin, Martin Luther, and the Puritans are thoroughly and unequivocally based upon the Word of God. Secondly, I am a Calvinist because of my own experience of conversion and salvation. I must have been saved completely by grace because I know that I was not working my way towards God when I was born again. I was working harder to rebel against God and flee from His influence in my life more than I was ever running towards Him. He was my enemy. He was my judge. He was my sure destruction. God revealed Himself as a gracious and merciful Father before I ran into His loving embrace.
Sadly, the most destructive lie of ancient, medieval, and modern Christianity is that man can work his way to God, and the trend, despite being challenged throughout history, continues to spread. Christians are not saved by works, but by the grace of God. Christians contribute nothing but their stinking, rotten, wicked, disgusting sins to their salvation. God provides the Spirit and the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. It's not of works, but completely of grace.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die--but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(Romans 5:6-8)
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Worldview
Fifty one countries. At this very moment Christianity is illegal in fifty one countries. One year after graduating from high school, my church sent my parents and me on a trip to China to visit a family from our church that lived in China and was doing some missionary work there. At the time, I was very excited to travel around the world, take my first ride on an airplane, and see sights and hear sounds that many people only hear and see on the TV. God, however, had a much greater reason for me to visit China. To this day, I wonder if two Christians went to China and three Christians came back to America. I cannot point my finger at a specific date and time when I can definitively say, "That's the moment God graciously saved me by faith in Jesus Christ." There is a specific experience that I often remember in my conversion (which I will share later), but I believe that I was once-for-all justified by faith in Christ while in China.
I did not even consider the thought at the time, but now the question hits me like a ton bricks: What is so terrible about Christianity that fifty one countries around the world actively persecute Christians worshiping illegally in their countries?
Before going over to China, one of the last thoughts on my mind about my upcoming trip was about my Christian faith, or lack thereof. I was still very interested in film and I had quickly acquired a passion for photography after buying a DSLR that was so technologically advanced that I actually had to try to take a bad picture. I couldn't wait to film a foreign culture and share pictures with everyone back home from my experiences. I felt like my duty for the trip was to be the videographer and to collect footage and edit it for everyone in the church to see. I was excited about shooting my first "documentary" and the last thing on my mind was the chance that this trip might actually change my life forever.
My first flight was from Denver to Vancouver, Canada. My first flight was international. To this day, my wife jokes with me because I stress out about airports because I can tend to forget that customs is a step that you only have to worry about during international flights. Customs, of course, is only stressful when you are trying to smuggle something into or out of a country. We had nothing to smuggle into Canada, but we were chewed out by the customs officer for throwing away unauthorized apple cores in a Canadian airliner's waste-basket. If Canadian customs were wigging out about apple cores, how much more were Chinese customs agents going to wig out about the Christian paraphernalia we were smuggling into China?
Ironically, the Chinese customs agents waved western foreigners through and only scrutinized oriental passengers on international flights. We didn't have a suitcase full of Bibles or anything, but we did bring some Christian literature and our own Bibles. If anything, they might have confiscated the sugary cereal we were bringing for the family we were visiting and eaten it behind closed doors.
My expectations for China were grossly exaggerated based upon information from others in our church who had visited the family in China. I was expecting a third-world lifestyle without running water, electricity, working toilets, refrigeration, and internet service. I was surprised that all of these comforts were available, but they were definitely a comfort. There was running water, but it needed to filtered so that we westerners could drink it. The family had installed working toilets in their home, but not all of their neighbors necessarily had toilets. There was electricity and the internet was available. A censored form of the internet, that is.
Certain websites were banned by the Chinese government. When the government owns and runs all of the internet service providers, they have an ability to black-list certain websites and URLs. For instance, when I was in China, Google was unavailable but Myspace was available. I also had to be very careful about what I wrote on my Myspace blog and what I included in private emails because the Chinese government had their nose in everybody's business.
I got my first taste of Christian persecution. You don't know how much you take your ability to publically proclaim your faith through oral and written speech for granted until you feel impaired to do so. At the time, I didn't have a faith to be silenced. I was not really outspoken about what I believed, and maybe that is because at the time, I didn't really know what I believed. From the last blog, you can easily tell that I had taken the "Christian" puzzle and tried to put it together without knowing what picture was supposed to result. I jammed and crammed pieces together so that they somewhat fit together, but stepping back, the puzzle wasn't square and it definitely did not resemble what Christianity ought to look like. It was a mish-mash of Christian vocab words, concepts, and doctrines that only seemed to be somewhat plausible in my mind, but every sermon every Sunday only further contributed to my doubts about labeling my confused beliefs "Christian."
I wrote a couple of blogs while I was in China; mostly just cultural pieces. I wanted to write about my experiences every night while they were fresh in my head. I was completely enamored with experiencing a different culture. My parents were uncomfortable the whole time they were in China. People were always starring at us as if they had never seen a white person before (which, believe it or not, many of them had not). When we went to public restaurants, the waitresses and all of the local patrons did not find it impolite to stare and laugh at us while we tried to manage eating rice with chopsticks. I don't know why, but it was a breath of fresh air to be the minority for once in my life, and to experience another culture outside of America.
Everywhere we went, our host would provide Christian and cultural commentary that further fascinated me. He explained what regions and what peoples were unreached by the Christian church and what languages were being studied so that Bible could be published to reach people who did not know who Jesus was.
China will claim that they do not persecute Christians because there are Christian churches in every large city where Christians are free to worship every Sunday. The catch is that these "Christian" churches are run by the state, and the message given in their services are remarkably similar to the message provided in America's mega Christian churches. In the Three-Self churches that are officially sanctioned by the Chinese Communist government the Christian faith is watered down, Jesus Christ is seldom mentioned as a redeemer of sinners, and many hold that it is merely a government façade that seeks to stifle the Christian church in China while appearing to promote its growth.
It was apparent to me, despite my twisted views of Christianity, that, although China professes to encourage Christians to assemble and worship God every Sunday, Christianity is still persecuted and illegal in China. Those that attend the state sanctioned churches are not persecuted, but those who wish to meet in houses "off-the-grid" are aggressively pursued, arrested, sent to labor camps, detained for lengthy periods of time, raped, tortured, beat, fined, and lose business licenses and have their property confiscated regularly.
Such treatment of Christians begs the question: Why? What is so dangerous about Christianity that warrants fifty one countries around the world to make it illegal? In hundreds of other countries, Christians are not outlaws but they are severely persecuted for their faith. More than anything else, this part of my trip to China really opened my eyes to what Christianity was and what it was not.
It had to be much more than a do-good, feel-good religion that emphasized morality, fellowship, charity, and brotherly love. It had to be about more than keeping ten rules and knowing that God sent His Son so that we could have a little slack in doing so. If this were the case, then governments ought to love and applaud Christianity, because it emphasizes morality throughout the population.
Furthermore, half way around the world, in a completely foreign culture, I experienced kindness, generosity, morality, and charity. One only has to watch Chinese traffic for one minute to quickly discern that the Chinese are far more kind, generous, and charitable than any fish-symbol touting mini-van in America. The cars are in complete disarray, the lines on the road seem to mean nothing, and horns are blaring every second. The horns are blaring to warn pedestrians and communicate with other vehicles rather than being used as an audible, censored expletive to someone that cut them off. You let someone in your lane and someone will let you into their lane. You cut someone off and someone will cut you off. Over there it's give and take. What comes around goes around. You reap what you sow. Yin and yang.
A country does not need to be Bible-thumping Christian in order to have kind, generous, charitable, loving, and moral citizens. Many religions and worldviews emphasize the benefits of charity and morality. Many religions lay claim to the golden rule. In fact, every religion known to mankind emphasizes God-given rules and regulations and man's duty to follow, keep, and embody them in everything he does in order to honor, please, and glorify God. In America, Christians everywhere are emphasizing keeping the rules as a distinguishing mark of Christianity, but it's not. Modern Christian church services emphasize defending the truth about what is morally right and wrong and overcoming the immorality that seems pervasive in modern American culture. The focus, anymore, is on the rules rather than the God who revealed His holy character through them.
In 2007, the Barna Group conducted a study of 16-29 year olds who were not Christians to find out how they perceived Christianity. Only 16% of those polled said that they have a "good impression" of Christianity. Only 3% of those polled express favorable views of evangelicals specifically. The study also found that 91% of the nation's evangelicals believe that, "Americans are becoming more hostile and negative toward Christianity" (source).
One, however, cannot help but wonder why the constant barrage of moralism in the American Christian church is met with such hostility while it is encouraged but avoided by persecuted Christians in China. In America, where Christianity is legal, the church has almost completely destroyed any relevance with the culture by emphasizing morality and good-doing in a culture that is smart enough to recognize that every religion emphasizes morality and that a belief in God is not required to be a moral person. In China, where Christianity is illegal, the government hopes to destroy Christianity's relevance by emphasizing morality and good-doing in a culture that is saturated with Buddhism and Taoism (both highly emphasize morality), but Christians are organizing under-ground churches in order to spread the Gospel.
Emphasizing self righteousness in my own misconception of Christianity, pondering about the persecution of Christians in China boggled me. What is so dangerous about Christianity that fifty one countries outlawed it? If Christianity is all about good people who do good things to help other people, then what is so dangerous about that? If the message of Christianity is unconditional love, then why imprison, torture, and execute those who believe in it?
Persecution required me to know what I believed and why I believed it. I could not help but think, If Christianity was outlawed in America tomorrow, would I still consider myself a Christian? If I did, what makes me a Christian? And if it came down to it, would I defend my faith in the midst of persecution or would I fold my hand?
About a month after returning from my trip to China, I wrote this "prayer" and posted it on my blog. I had put off reading the Bible long enough. I had procrastinated with my faith for almost twenty years, now. I fooled myself into believing that theology and religion was an old-man's study, but traveling around the world opened my eyes. Seeing a persecuted church in China trying to avoid the teaching that was so prevalent in American churches was astonishing to me. I recognized that I was blessed to be out of the evangelical free church and in a Reformed Presbyterian church, but I did not recognize just how blessed I was. As you can see from the prayer, I understood that I was taking a long life and a personal choice to accept or reject Christianity for granted. After my trip to China, I became a theologian. I wanted to know who God was, how He revealed Himself throughout history, who Jesus is, and why it is illegal to follow Him in 51 countries around the world. I wrote:
I did not even consider the thought at the time, but now the question hits me like a ton bricks: What is so terrible about Christianity that fifty one countries around the world actively persecute Christians worshiping illegally in their countries?
Before going over to China, one of the last thoughts on my mind about my upcoming trip was about my Christian faith, or lack thereof. I was still very interested in film and I had quickly acquired a passion for photography after buying a DSLR that was so technologically advanced that I actually had to try to take a bad picture. I couldn't wait to film a foreign culture and share pictures with everyone back home from my experiences. I felt like my duty for the trip was to be the videographer and to collect footage and edit it for everyone in the church to see. I was excited about shooting my first "documentary" and the last thing on my mind was the chance that this trip might actually change my life forever.
My first flight was from Denver to Vancouver, Canada. My first flight was international. To this day, my wife jokes with me because I stress out about airports because I can tend to forget that customs is a step that you only have to worry about during international flights. Customs, of course, is only stressful when you are trying to smuggle something into or out of a country. We had nothing to smuggle into Canada, but we were chewed out by the customs officer for throwing away unauthorized apple cores in a Canadian airliner's waste-basket. If Canadian customs were wigging out about apple cores, how much more were Chinese customs agents going to wig out about the Christian paraphernalia we were smuggling into China?
Ironically, the Chinese customs agents waved western foreigners through and only scrutinized oriental passengers on international flights. We didn't have a suitcase full of Bibles or anything, but we did bring some Christian literature and our own Bibles. If anything, they might have confiscated the sugary cereal we were bringing for the family we were visiting and eaten it behind closed doors.
My expectations for China were grossly exaggerated based upon information from others in our church who had visited the family in China. I was expecting a third-world lifestyle without running water, electricity, working toilets, refrigeration, and internet service. I was surprised that all of these comforts were available, but they were definitely a comfort. There was running water, but it needed to filtered so that we westerners could drink it. The family had installed working toilets in their home, but not all of their neighbors necessarily had toilets. There was electricity and the internet was available. A censored form of the internet, that is.
Certain websites were banned by the Chinese government. When the government owns and runs all of the internet service providers, they have an ability to black-list certain websites and URLs. For instance, when I was in China, Google was unavailable but Myspace was available. I also had to be very careful about what I wrote on my Myspace blog and what I included in private emails because the Chinese government had their nose in everybody's business.
I got my first taste of Christian persecution. You don't know how much you take your ability to publically proclaim your faith through oral and written speech for granted until you feel impaired to do so. At the time, I didn't have a faith to be silenced. I was not really outspoken about what I believed, and maybe that is because at the time, I didn't really know what I believed. From the last blog, you can easily tell that I had taken the "Christian" puzzle and tried to put it together without knowing what picture was supposed to result. I jammed and crammed pieces together so that they somewhat fit together, but stepping back, the puzzle wasn't square and it definitely did not resemble what Christianity ought to look like. It was a mish-mash of Christian vocab words, concepts, and doctrines that only seemed to be somewhat plausible in my mind, but every sermon every Sunday only further contributed to my doubts about labeling my confused beliefs "Christian."
I wrote a couple of blogs while I was in China; mostly just cultural pieces. I wanted to write about my experiences every night while they were fresh in my head. I was completely enamored with experiencing a different culture. My parents were uncomfortable the whole time they were in China. People were always starring at us as if they had never seen a white person before (which, believe it or not, many of them had not). When we went to public restaurants, the waitresses and all of the local patrons did not find it impolite to stare and laugh at us while we tried to manage eating rice with chopsticks. I don't know why, but it was a breath of fresh air to be the minority for once in my life, and to experience another culture outside of America.
Everywhere we went, our host would provide Christian and cultural commentary that further fascinated me. He explained what regions and what peoples were unreached by the Christian church and what languages were being studied so that Bible could be published to reach people who did not know who Jesus was.
China will claim that they do not persecute Christians because there are Christian churches in every large city where Christians are free to worship every Sunday. The catch is that these "Christian" churches are run by the state, and the message given in their services are remarkably similar to the message provided in America's mega Christian churches. In the Three-Self churches that are officially sanctioned by the Chinese Communist government the Christian faith is watered down, Jesus Christ is seldom mentioned as a redeemer of sinners, and many hold that it is merely a government façade that seeks to stifle the Christian church in China while appearing to promote its growth.
It was apparent to me, despite my twisted views of Christianity, that, although China professes to encourage Christians to assemble and worship God every Sunday, Christianity is still persecuted and illegal in China. Those that attend the state sanctioned churches are not persecuted, but those who wish to meet in houses "off-the-grid" are aggressively pursued, arrested, sent to labor camps, detained for lengthy periods of time, raped, tortured, beat, fined, and lose business licenses and have their property confiscated regularly.
Such treatment of Christians begs the question: Why? What is so dangerous about Christianity that warrants fifty one countries around the world to make it illegal? In hundreds of other countries, Christians are not outlaws but they are severely persecuted for their faith. More than anything else, this part of my trip to China really opened my eyes to what Christianity was and what it was not.
It had to be much more than a do-good, feel-good religion that emphasized morality, fellowship, charity, and brotherly love. It had to be about more than keeping ten rules and knowing that God sent His Son so that we could have a little slack in doing so. If this were the case, then governments ought to love and applaud Christianity, because it emphasizes morality throughout the population.
Furthermore, half way around the world, in a completely foreign culture, I experienced kindness, generosity, morality, and charity. One only has to watch Chinese traffic for one minute to quickly discern that the Chinese are far more kind, generous, and charitable than any fish-symbol touting mini-van in America. The cars are in complete disarray, the lines on the road seem to mean nothing, and horns are blaring every second. The horns are blaring to warn pedestrians and communicate with other vehicles rather than being used as an audible, censored expletive to someone that cut them off. You let someone in your lane and someone will let you into their lane. You cut someone off and someone will cut you off. Over there it's give and take. What comes around goes around. You reap what you sow. Yin and yang.
A country does not need to be Bible-thumping Christian in order to have kind, generous, charitable, loving, and moral citizens. Many religions and worldviews emphasize the benefits of charity and morality. Many religions lay claim to the golden rule. In fact, every religion known to mankind emphasizes God-given rules and regulations and man's duty to follow, keep, and embody them in everything he does in order to honor, please, and glorify God. In America, Christians everywhere are emphasizing keeping the rules as a distinguishing mark of Christianity, but it's not. Modern Christian church services emphasize defending the truth about what is morally right and wrong and overcoming the immorality that seems pervasive in modern American culture. The focus, anymore, is on the rules rather than the God who revealed His holy character through them.
In 2007, the Barna Group conducted a study of 16-29 year olds who were not Christians to find out how they perceived Christianity. Only 16% of those polled said that they have a "good impression" of Christianity. Only 3% of those polled express favorable views of evangelicals specifically. The study also found that 91% of the nation's evangelicals believe that, "Americans are becoming more hostile and negative toward Christianity" (source).
One, however, cannot help but wonder why the constant barrage of moralism in the American Christian church is met with such hostility while it is encouraged but avoided by persecuted Christians in China. In America, where Christianity is legal, the church has almost completely destroyed any relevance with the culture by emphasizing morality and good-doing in a culture that is smart enough to recognize that every religion emphasizes morality and that a belief in God is not required to be a moral person. In China, where Christianity is illegal, the government hopes to destroy Christianity's relevance by emphasizing morality and good-doing in a culture that is saturated with Buddhism and Taoism (both highly emphasize morality), but Christians are organizing under-ground churches in order to spread the Gospel.
Emphasizing self righteousness in my own misconception of Christianity, pondering about the persecution of Christians in China boggled me. What is so dangerous about Christianity that fifty one countries outlawed it? If Christianity is all about good people who do good things to help other people, then what is so dangerous about that? If the message of Christianity is unconditional love, then why imprison, torture, and execute those who believe in it?
Persecution required me to know what I believed and why I believed it. I could not help but think, If Christianity was outlawed in America tomorrow, would I still consider myself a Christian? If I did, what makes me a Christian? And if it came down to it, would I defend my faith in the midst of persecution or would I fold my hand?
About a month after returning from my trip to China, I wrote this "prayer" and posted it on my blog. I had put off reading the Bible long enough. I had procrastinated with my faith for almost twenty years, now. I fooled myself into believing that theology and religion was an old-man's study, but traveling around the world opened my eyes. Seeing a persecuted church in China trying to avoid the teaching that was so prevalent in American churches was astonishing to me. I recognized that I was blessed to be out of the evangelical free church and in a Reformed Presbyterian church, but I did not recognize just how blessed I was. As you can see from the prayer, I understood that I was taking a long life and a personal choice to accept or reject Christianity for granted. After my trip to China, I became a theologian. I wanted to know who God was, how He revealed Himself throughout history, who Jesus is, and why it is illegal to follow Him in 51 countries around the world. I wrote:
I can't believe how ignorant I've been. Setting things aside
to do tomorrow, planning on it like it's a guarantee, but it's not. It's a
gift.
My Prayer For Tomorrow
I set my head down,
Another day done,
I can't wait for tomorrow,
To see what's to come.
I close my eyes,
And take a deep breath,
I begin to dream,
And witness my death.
The road was familiar,
The weather was nice,
My whole life changed,
At the toss of a dice.
Out of nowhere I was hit,
No time to think,
I couldn't even panic,
It all occurred in a blink.
The car drifted towards me,
Our two cars collided,
I was gone in an instant,
My last day decided.
I awoke quickly,
A cold sweat on my brow,
What had just happened?
Who, where, and how?
Why did I see this?
Witness my own demise?
Are you teaching me a lesson?
What am I to surmise?
"Live your life one day,
One day at a time,
One day you're here,
The next you're mine.
"There's no guarantee,
No promise or pact,
I gave you your life,
I can always take it back.
"Moment by moment,
Day by day,
Life or death.
Come what may.
"You take it for granted,
The day after this,
But the blink of an eye,
May be all that there is.
"Tomorrow's no guarantee,
But a special gift from Me.
So, remember that fact,
When the sunrise you see.
"This is your warning,
Forget not this dream,
Remember to say a prayer,
That tomorrow will I bring."
Now before I fall asleep,
I bow my head and pray,
"God please show me mercy,
Let me live another day."
I set my head down,
Another day done,
I can't wait for tomorrow,
To see what's to come.
I close my eyes,
And take a deep breath,
I begin to dream,
And witness my death.
The road was familiar,
The weather was nice,
My whole life changed,
At the toss of a dice.
Out of nowhere I was hit,
No time to think,
I couldn't even panic,
It all occurred in a blink.
The car drifted towards me,
Our two cars collided,
I was gone in an instant,
My last day decided.
I awoke quickly,
A cold sweat on my brow,
What had just happened?
Who, where, and how?
Why did I see this?
Witness my own demise?
Are you teaching me a lesson?
What am I to surmise?
"Live your life one day,
One day at a time,
One day you're here,
The next you're mine.
"There's no guarantee,
No promise or pact,
I gave you your life,
I can always take it back.
"Moment by moment,
Day by day,
Life or death.
Come what may.
"You take it for granted,
The day after this,
But the blink of an eye,
May be all that there is.
"Tomorrow's no guarantee,
But a special gift from Me.
So, remember that fact,
When the sunrise you see.
"This is your warning,
Forget not this dream,
Remember to say a prayer,
That tomorrow will I bring."
Now before I fall asleep,
I bow my head and pray,
"God please show me mercy,
Let me live another day."
A cheesy poem marks the beginning of a remarkable change in my life. I cannot remember if I really had a dream where I died in a car crash (the theme was referred to repeatedly in my blogs), but this is the first time in any of my writing that I refer to having a relationship with God. For the next few months, however, I returned once again to idolizing romantic relationships while I hopped back into my comfortable bubble-view. Although I began to idolize romantic relationships, there was an obvious shift in my ideal relationship. Rather than emphasizing dating and kissing, I began to emphasize love and companionship. It is almost as if I was experiencing a kind of love I had never known before, and I didn't really know how to react to it. My confusion is quite evident in this post:
Part of me is ready, while the other
half is not quite there yet. My mind is more cluttered now than it's ever been
before. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I think it's finally settling in.
I want a relationship. I want a girlfriend. I am absolutely over the past, and
I've been overcome with a feeling that I haven't had since high school. Why all
of a sudden? Not sure. I completely want to try dating again but at the same
time I'm really hesitant to. I don't know why, but I have this feeling that I should
still wait. I don't know if it's lack of confidence in myself, whether deep
down I still think I'm not ready, or if I don't want to feel "tied
down" at this point in my life. It feels like my brain is in giant knots.
There's a huge tangled mess in my brain that just needs to be untied. I have to
make sense of all of this. Am I really ready for work, school, and a
relationship? Is it possible I'm just in some sort of needy phase? Whatever is
is, it's got me very confused.
(All questions are rhetorical...)
In September, I had my first real experience of persecution. One of my best friends from college, Laura, renounced her friendship with me because I joined a group on Facebook called "Abortion is Murder." At this point, I had began to read the Bible and I had began to think about what I truly believed about certain things, and I quickly reached the conclusion that abortion is murder. All I did, however, was join the group on Facebook so that people knew where I stood on the issue. This was a profound experience in my life, because I was completely willing to lose one of my best friends for what I believed in. More than that, for the first time in years (and arguably the first genuine time ever) I was an outspoken Christian and I made a public profession of faith (even if it was only on Myspace). I was deeply saddened by the way my friend completely turned her back on me after I took a Christian stance on abortion. More than anything, I was surprised by her reaction because I had professed to be a Christian for as long as I knew her. I will close with a copy of my blog in reference to that incident, and maybe you too will see the hand of God in this situation in light of my experiences and thoughts while in China:
"I am seriously disappointed.
That is all I can say. I hope that some day you open up your eyes and can see
beyond what people do and who they worship. People don't always have to believe
in your God to be good. On the same note women who have abortions are not murderers.
An abortion is only allowed up to three months in the pregnancy, when the fetus
has not developed any human charactoristics and definatly not a heart or brain.
Imagine for one minute what you would do if you could not provide for a child.
It is because of close- minded Christians that people have such a hard time
just trying to live their lives. I wish you knew all of the HELL I have gone
through dealing with this type of people. That is why I left Colorado Springs.
I never thought that someone I would call my friend would think or voice these
kind of opinions. So, now I won't. Sorry, but open up your mind a little! I am
so sick and disappointed I just want to cry."
This is a message I received from one of my friends on my facebook profile after I had joined a group titled "Abortion is Murder." Being a firm believer that the smallest human fetus is a precious child that God created, I am pro life. I received this message after I joined the group. Mind you, that is the only action I made. I never messaged anyone else to also join this group, I never wrote anyone anything pertaining to it, I just joined a group that I support. The only reason this person found out that I'd joined was because of Facebook's mini news reel feature.
This person has known me since sophomore year of high school. We knew eachother in high school, but didn't truely become friends until we had a class together in college. We'd often ditch the class, do homework together, be study buddies, and after the final the two of us went out to celebrate. Over the summer we kept in touch, and we'd go out and see movies with our other friends, and have a really good time. When I returned from China I went to her going away party before she moved to Boulder to go to CU. After she'd left we all missed her, and I haven't really seen her since the middle of August.
She's known from the beginning that I am a devote Christian. I've known from the beginning that she really doesn't like how too many "Christians" are judgemental. Although many things she did bugged me, not once did I judge her. It's not my place. I am no better than her and have much deeper and larger problems than her, I'm sure. Despite our differences, we've been really good friends. She'd often call and we'd talk for hours about her life, her ordeals, and her struggles. I'd often try to help her laugh through the situations because I knew in the big picture these problems were small. What she didn't know was that every night after she'd call I'd say a prayer for her before I went to sleep. I prayed that the Lord would protect her, fix the situation, and bring her peace of mind.
I was going to see her at the CU vs CSU game, but first my financial situation didn't allow for it and then my grandpa's memorial service was that day. I haven't seen her in about a month, and she hasn't called for about that long as well. I was really worried about her when she never showed up for a day at Elitch's we planned. She didn't call, but said the night before she would come. I didn't hear back from her for about a week or two, and I was worried sick that something terrible may have happened to her and once again I prayed for her.
Needless to say I was very surprised by this message she'd sent me. Even more surprising she deleted me as a friend on Facebook as well as Myspace, giving me a subtle hint that she didn't value our friendship anymore. I looked at her myspace and these are a few quotes that I found...
Her profile name now is: I need an open-minded stick to hit people with
Her quote now is: "Then I would return to Colorado Springs and start wacking!"
Her about me section reads:
"About me:
This is (her name). She is so upset that the whole world just might blow up. Listen to her rant: Everyone has an opinion, but you should make sure yours is an educated one before you go forcing it in everyone's face and down their throats! Read up on your facts or else you just sound like an idiot. (her name) is pondering why she even cares about this, but she does!!! Ahh! (her name) is going mad!"
I guess most people would be pretty upset if one of their friends had this to say about them. But not me. I am human, so I am quite hurt, but not mad. She doesn't hate me as much as she hates who I am. I am a Christian. I believe Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that He died on the cross for my sins. I believe that the only way I, a wretched sinner, could every stand before a perfectly soveriegn and righteous God is through the blood of Christ. This is who I am. This is what I believe through God's grace.
I joined a group called "Abortion is Murder", I inadvertantly forced my opinion in my friend's face and down her throat, and betrayed the very person I've kept in my prayers this whole past year. I've asked for forgiveness, but all I've received is, "I'll think about it." I guess I can only continue to pray for her safety and well being. Pray that she has a good week, classes will go well for her, and that she'll get the rest she needs. I also pray that God will protect her from the deciet and lies that permeate this world. If He will shine his light on her life or not is also in my prayers, but no matter what, His Will will be done in this situation.
John 15:18-27
"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also.
"If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: 'They hated me without a cause.'
"But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning."
This is a message I received from one of my friends on my facebook profile after I had joined a group titled "Abortion is Murder." Being a firm believer that the smallest human fetus is a precious child that God created, I am pro life. I received this message after I joined the group. Mind you, that is the only action I made. I never messaged anyone else to also join this group, I never wrote anyone anything pertaining to it, I just joined a group that I support. The only reason this person found out that I'd joined was because of Facebook's mini news reel feature.
This person has known me since sophomore year of high school. We knew eachother in high school, but didn't truely become friends until we had a class together in college. We'd often ditch the class, do homework together, be study buddies, and after the final the two of us went out to celebrate. Over the summer we kept in touch, and we'd go out and see movies with our other friends, and have a really good time. When I returned from China I went to her going away party before she moved to Boulder to go to CU. After she'd left we all missed her, and I haven't really seen her since the middle of August.
She's known from the beginning that I am a devote Christian. I've known from the beginning that she really doesn't like how too many "Christians" are judgemental. Although many things she did bugged me, not once did I judge her. It's not my place. I am no better than her and have much deeper and larger problems than her, I'm sure. Despite our differences, we've been really good friends. She'd often call and we'd talk for hours about her life, her ordeals, and her struggles. I'd often try to help her laugh through the situations because I knew in the big picture these problems were small. What she didn't know was that every night after she'd call I'd say a prayer for her before I went to sleep. I prayed that the Lord would protect her, fix the situation, and bring her peace of mind.
I was going to see her at the CU vs CSU game, but first my financial situation didn't allow for it and then my grandpa's memorial service was that day. I haven't seen her in about a month, and she hasn't called for about that long as well. I was really worried about her when she never showed up for a day at Elitch's we planned. She didn't call, but said the night before she would come. I didn't hear back from her for about a week or two, and I was worried sick that something terrible may have happened to her and once again I prayed for her.
Needless to say I was very surprised by this message she'd sent me. Even more surprising she deleted me as a friend on Facebook as well as Myspace, giving me a subtle hint that she didn't value our friendship anymore. I looked at her myspace and these are a few quotes that I found...
Her profile name now is: I need an open-minded stick to hit people with
Her quote now is: "Then I would return to Colorado Springs and start wacking!"
Her about me section reads:
"About me:
This is (her name). She is so upset that the whole world just might blow up. Listen to her rant: Everyone has an opinion, but you should make sure yours is an educated one before you go forcing it in everyone's face and down their throats! Read up on your facts or else you just sound like an idiot. (her name) is pondering why she even cares about this, but she does!!! Ahh! (her name) is going mad!"
I guess most people would be pretty upset if one of their friends had this to say about them. But not me. I am human, so I am quite hurt, but not mad. She doesn't hate me as much as she hates who I am. I am a Christian. I believe Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that He died on the cross for my sins. I believe that the only way I, a wretched sinner, could every stand before a perfectly soveriegn and righteous God is through the blood of Christ. This is who I am. This is what I believe through God's grace.
I joined a group called "Abortion is Murder", I inadvertantly forced my opinion in my friend's face and down her throat, and betrayed the very person I've kept in my prayers this whole past year. I've asked for forgiveness, but all I've received is, "I'll think about it." I guess I can only continue to pray for her safety and well being. Pray that she has a good week, classes will go well for her, and that she'll get the rest she needs. I also pray that God will protect her from the deciet and lies that permeate this world. If He will shine his light on her life or not is also in my prayers, but no matter what, His Will will be done in this situation.
John 15:18-27
"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also.
"If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: 'They hated me without a cause.'
"But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning."
Bubble-view
After finishing my first semester of college, I decided that I needed some time off from school to make some important decisions, like what I wanted to do with a blank slate (aka, my life). Up to this point, I had spent almost my entire life in a world where decisions were constantly made for me. What I ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner was completely dependent upon what mom and dad bought at the grocery store or prepared for meals. What school I attended was never within my ability to decide. I was rushed out of public school one moment, and pushed back in another. What clothes I wore, what books I read, what songs I listened to, what shows I watched on the television, what I did with my free-time were all decisions I got to make but with limited choices due to the environment that surrounded me.
I became, in many ways, a product of my upbringing. At least my public persona, that is. Wipe away the façade, and I was a product of original sin. In public, I was interested in being the person my parents molded me to be: an upright, honest, kind, and generous soul that is obedient to the authorities that be, seeks after the Lord, and seeks to serve and love others. In private, I was interested in stretching out my sinful legs, cracking my fallen knuckles, and seeing what wicked things I could get myself into without tainting my public image.
When my parents essentially told me, "Matthew, the ball's in your court, son," it was like a new awakening. I was free to make my own choices. I am sure every child has a similar experience growing up, and probably reaches that point much sooner than I did. In a way, I felt like my parents were telling me that they had assembled all the parts and pieces that made up my moral compass and it was time to see where it would lead me. That's how it felt at the time. In retrospect, I think my parents were not placing my fate in my own hands as much as they were placing it in the hands of God. They had guided and protected me for eighteen years, and it was time to take the training wheels off.
Life isn't like riding a little bicycle without training wheels, though. It's more like driving a motorcycle at speeds well above one hundred miles an hour, dodging traffic left and right, and trying to stay on a bike racing out of control on an obstacle course determined to fling you from your seat to your death. In that way, you don't need mom and dad to dust you off if you fall off, but rather, you need God to pick up your lifeless, limp body, mangled by the asphalt and debris of the wreckage, skin and bone torn to pieces to the point where you are unrecognizable, and tell you, "It's okay, I have you now. Don't worry about a thing. I can fix you."
Without college, my life became simpler. I had a job working as a bar-back at a local restaurant, and if I wasn't working than I was watching TV, playing video games, going to the movies with my friends, or locking myself in my room and indulging in my sinful vices. My worldview shrunk. In fact, I don't think I can hardly even call it a worldview. It was more like a bubbleview. I lived in a bubble, not a world. My bubble circulated around my routine and self-satisfaction.
I stopped going to college because I could. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and I was too lazy to spend some time thinking about it and applying myself to seeking a future. That could wait. I was not a procrastinator when it came to homework and yearbook deadlines, but when it came to the small things like planning my future, it could wait until I was ready.
I surrounded myself with people that were just as laid-back, lackadaisical, care-free, and wasteful as I was. A restaurant is a good place to find like-minded people when you don't want to think about the future but you only want to live in the moment. There was a constant cycle of new recruits coming from high schools to replace those in the industry who finally decided to move on with their life and do something with it. From my experience, it seemed like the party only ended when someone got pregnant, and then the parent(s) had to get serious. Otherwise, it was live and let live.
Philosophically, I was disinclined to acquiesce to the path set before me. Nevertheless, I kept trudging down the same track I was on because I was not ready to disappoint my godly parents who had worked so hard to protect me from the kinds of things that I then completely surrounded myself with. I still attended church, but only to keep up my image. I still refrained from using foul language, but only to keep up the hypocritical façade. I had one foot in the saintly life and one in the life of debauchery. To my Christian friends, I was a Christian. To my non-Christian friends, I was a Christian, but an unusually open-minded one.
I had my moral code figured out, to a certain degree. I liked the Ten Commandments. They made sense. I liked what Jesus said about treating others the way you wanted to be treated. It was all good moral advice, in my mind. I believed in God, but I was more deistic than anything else. God was more like pie in the sky to me than my Holy Creator and Redeemer. I never thought about God much, but I always felt like He had a ready ear whenever I was ready to talk to Him. If I needed something, then He would listen. If I didn't need anything, then He was fine with just sitting in the backseat, not saying a word.
Righteousness to me was about doing the right things at the right times. It was about being charitable, kind, and understanding. It was about being nice to the clerk at the grocery store that seemed to be having a bad day. It was about mowing the lawn for my grandma (which I hardly ever did with a good attitude). It was about treating other people with respect. Overall, my righteousness only depended on how I treated other people. If I was nice, then I was righteous. If I was mean, then I was being sinful. Righteousness and sinfulness were never personal for me growing up. The Ten Commandments were about what you do to people. Overall, my view of righteousness left a holy God completely out of the picture, and only focused on the well-being and emotions of the people that interacted with me.
In my mind, sin was only a problem when I left my room and went out into the world. If I was sitting in my room, all by myself, I was safe and sound. Pornography was not a sin because I was only watching other people interact. I wasn't having pre-marital sex. I was just watching. Watching violent movies and listening to explicit music wasn't sin because I was passively taking in sights and sounds. I wasn't killing people uncontrollably, I was just watching. I wasn't using profane language and talking about vulgar subjects, I was just listening. Playing violent video games wasn't sin because although I was hurting people, the people were just 1s and 0s. It was all virtual. Is virtual murder a sin?
I was justified. I wasn't justified in Christ by faith, but I was justified in myself by myself. I made the rules and I made sure that I made rules that I could abide by. I enjoyed all of my self-righteous rules. I was particularly proud of my ability to refrain from cussing. I patted myself on the back for having a bridled tongue. I never used the Lord's name in vain. After all, to me, taking the Lord's name in vain was only about what came out of my mouth and it was never about actually bearing the Lord's name upon myself as a professing, baptized believer.
When rules got hard to follow, then I simply started to bend them. Along with the rest of the church in America, I decided to detest homosexuality as an abomination to God's created order. Honestly, it was more unnatural to me than sinful against God. I decided it was wrong because creatures do not naturally have sexual relations with the same sex, and I believed that God created the world, so therefore, it was wrong for creatures to have sexual relations with the same sex. My morality was based more upon God's natural revelation than His special revelation (i.e. the natural world rather than the supernatural Word of God). Ironically, along with many in the church who hold an adamant stance against homosexuality, my pornographic tastes were lesbian. I don't mean to be crude, but blatantly honest so that it might hit other hypocrites square between the eyes.
I never needed to bend any other rules more than my rules pertaining to sexual purity. My morality was based upon natural revelation rather than special revelation. That is to say, I based right and wrong off of what I perceived in the world rather than in the Word. My ethics were more socially determined than theologically. If people were hurt either physically or emotionally, then the action was wrong. However, if no one got hurt, then all was well.
I would tell everyone that I followed the Ten Commandments, but it was more like seven out of ten. I didn't own a voodoo doll or a Buddha statue. I never cussed and used the Lord's name in vain. I tried really hard to honor my parents and make them proud. I would never murder anyone. I wasn't married, but if I was, I wouldn't commit adultery. I wouldn't steal from anyone. And finally, I tried my best not to lie, but if it protected someone else, then lying was okay.
The tell-tale sign that you have become a legalist is that the Ten Commandments seem doable all of the time. If you are like the young, rich man in Matthew 19 asking how to gain eternal life, and you find yourself thinking, "All these (the Commandments) I have kept. What do I still lack?" then you are headed down a destructive path. If you somehow look at the Law and allow yourself to pat your own back, then you have no idea how deceitful your heart truly is.
I've said before that I was a legalist and an antinomian put into one, and that can sound rather contradictory. However, let me try to explain. Look at the portion of the Law that Jesus outlines to the rich, young ruler in Matthew 19. Jesus lists out the entire second table of the Law; all the laws pertaining to loving our neighbor. That is, all of it except for one: you shall not covet. Jesus told the young man that if he wanted to be perfect then he would have to sell all of his worldly possessions and follow Him. The rich, young ruler left sorrowful because he loved earthly possessions more than he loved God who had given him everything he owned. Perhaps he was sorrowful because Jesus asked him to sell his stuff, or perhaps he was sorrowful because he realized that he had allowed himself to be deceived all these years into thinking that he was a righteous man.
You see, Jesus didn't even have to put the rich, young ruler to the test concerning the first table of the Law in order to disqualify the man's self-righteous and legalistic ideas of grandeur. Jesus demonstrated that even those who would like to think they are saved by their ability to keep half of the Law cannot even keep the "easy" half of the Law. Even the part of the Law that we think is doable is impossible to keep. And that's why you have to throw a little antinomianism into the pot so that grace may abound all the more where our sins disqualify us!
Looking at the Ten Commandments in two tables, there's antinomianism for the first table and there's legalism for the second table. Nobody can look at the first four commandments and honestly think that they have kept the Law. Modern Christians have tried to make the first table of the Law doable so we can be full-fledged legalists, but we always get bogged down on that one commandment. We can minimize the second commandment to pertain only to making wooden or stone idols and bowing down to them. As suggested before, the third commandment becomes nothing more than using God's name as a swear word. The fourth commandment is a little bit tricky, but modern Christians have opted out of the commandment entirely by arguing that Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, that He completely fulfills the Sabbath rest in His death and resurrection, and the commandment is practically null and void because Jesus is our eternal rest. Ironically, many Christians still refer to the Ten Commandments rather than the Nine Commandments that they truly believe are still binding. Finally, there is that one commandment that you cannot seem to get around. Sadly, I truly believe that if modern Christians could somehow find a way to minimize and rationalize the first commandment then legalism would be far more prevalent today.
In Mark 12:29-30, Jesus summarizes the entire first table of the Law:
'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'
Jesus is quoting Deut. 6:4-5 in this passage. I know I said that Jesus is summarizing the first table of the Law, but in fact, He is summarizing the whole entire Law. The Lord our God, the Lord is one, therefore, you shall have no other gods before Him, you shall not bow down to idols or make graven images, you shall not use His name in vain, you shall obey Him and rest as He rested because He commands you to rest, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
If you do not love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength, then you must have another god before Him. Try to think of a day in your life when you completely devoted all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength completely and unreservedly to the Lord our God. You're right, a day is a little long. How about an hour? Have you ever kept the first commandment for an hour? Still a little long, huh? A minute? Has your heart, soul, mind, and strength been completely, unequivocally, and perfectly enamored with God for a mere second? As self-righteous as I was, I could not get around the blatant truth that I could never keep the first commandment all of the time.
Legalism had to go, but what if there was an abundance of grace for the first table of the law and we, as Christians, were only required to keep the second table of the law? Antinomianism for table one and legalism for table two. Therefore Jesus died on the cross so that I did not have to worry about my legal obligation to love God, but I was completely on my own when it came to the second table of the Law, and it was all tremendously and easily doable. Grace covered the first four, difficult commandments, and works were enough to justify me for the remaining six easy commandments.
What a warped and strange view of the Christian faith, you might be thinking. Sadly, I believe that this summary in some form or another helps define the beliefs of many young, college-aged people today who consider themselves Christians. Sadly, if you ask many young professing Christians today what it means to be Christian, they'll mention everything except for Christ. It's about believing in God, about loving God and loving others, and about keeping some rules. We cannot keep all of the rules all of the time, so God gave us His only begotten Son so that whosoevers believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. So, in essence, we need to obey the rules as if we were legalists, but when we fail miserably, then we need to rest in Jesus as if we were antinomians.
In 2003-2005, Christian Smith and Melinda Denton conducted the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) which, "reveals a theological fault line running underneath American churches: an adherence to a do-good, feel-good spirituality that has little to do with the Triune God of Christian tradition and even less to do with loving Jesus Christ enough to follow him into the world" (Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian, 2010). The religion, according to Christian Smith, that is replacing Christianity as the dominant religion in the United States is moralistic therapeutic deism. It's a feel-good, do-good religion that worships a god that only wants people to be happy and is happy to help whenever or if you ever need him. In her book, Almost Christian, Kendra Creasy Dean provides five guiding beliefs of moralistic therapeutic deism:
1. A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.
The problem being that those who believe in moralist therapeutic deism, much like myself straight out of high school, label themselves Christians. You might have noticed that I seem to contradict myself a lot about my feelings toward Christianity. At several points I have admitted that I had decided to give up on Christianity and try new things out, but at the same time I keep explaining how I rationalized my beliefs to be Christian. You might be thinking, "Did you think you were a Christian or not? Make up your mind!"
As a Christian now (and I will explain later what makes me a Christian now), I can see that I was high-tailing it out of the Christian faith. I was a moralistic therapeutic deist more than anything else, and if it wasn't for the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, then I would not have realized that what I believed Christianity entailed wasn't Christian at all. At work, at school, and while hanging out with friends, I felt comfortable calling myself a Christian. The only place I didn't feel like a Christian was at the Reformed Presbyterian church where I was a member. I not only felt like I did not belong, but I knew that I did not belong. There was an obvious disconnect between my Christianity and that which was preached from behind the pulpit at my church. Every Sunday, I would sit and listen about my need for Christ, messiah, savior, redeemer while Jesus the Christ and His sufficiency as the Savior for sinners was preached. I really didn't need Jesus for my beliefs. I really didn't need a Christ because the god I worshipped just wanted me to try my best and would forgive the rest.
Somehow, I always knew that Christianity was about Jesus making atonement for the sins of mankind, but I never believed that God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost would require complete and perfect obedience. Somehow, I had gotten fooled into believing that Jesus died on the cross so that god did not have to be the mean, vengeful, and spiteful god he was in the Old Testament. Somehow, I had been deceived into believing that god got so mad at Israel because they just wouldn't keep the simple rules he gave them, and because he was tired of being mad all the time, he poured out his wrath on his son, Jesus, so that he could give men a little bit more slack. I was a product of dispensationalism, Pharisaic Sunday school classes, and a complete lack of Biblical literacy.
Sitting under the preaching of the Word, hearing the gospel of Jesus the Christ preached in every sermon, and hearing about something called faith all the time, I began to feel like I did not have the whole picture of what it means to be Christian.
I had called myself a Christian for as long as I could remember, but I found myself wondering, What does it mean to be a Christian? In order to open my eyes, God popped my bubble-view and replaced it with a worldview. For the first time in my life, I was going to take a trip on a plane. I was going to China.
I became, in many ways, a product of my upbringing. At least my public persona, that is. Wipe away the façade, and I was a product of original sin. In public, I was interested in being the person my parents molded me to be: an upright, honest, kind, and generous soul that is obedient to the authorities that be, seeks after the Lord, and seeks to serve and love others. In private, I was interested in stretching out my sinful legs, cracking my fallen knuckles, and seeing what wicked things I could get myself into without tainting my public image.
When my parents essentially told me, "Matthew, the ball's in your court, son," it was like a new awakening. I was free to make my own choices. I am sure every child has a similar experience growing up, and probably reaches that point much sooner than I did. In a way, I felt like my parents were telling me that they had assembled all the parts and pieces that made up my moral compass and it was time to see where it would lead me. That's how it felt at the time. In retrospect, I think my parents were not placing my fate in my own hands as much as they were placing it in the hands of God. They had guided and protected me for eighteen years, and it was time to take the training wheels off.
Life isn't like riding a little bicycle without training wheels, though. It's more like driving a motorcycle at speeds well above one hundred miles an hour, dodging traffic left and right, and trying to stay on a bike racing out of control on an obstacle course determined to fling you from your seat to your death. In that way, you don't need mom and dad to dust you off if you fall off, but rather, you need God to pick up your lifeless, limp body, mangled by the asphalt and debris of the wreckage, skin and bone torn to pieces to the point where you are unrecognizable, and tell you, "It's okay, I have you now. Don't worry about a thing. I can fix you."
Without college, my life became simpler. I had a job working as a bar-back at a local restaurant, and if I wasn't working than I was watching TV, playing video games, going to the movies with my friends, or locking myself in my room and indulging in my sinful vices. My worldview shrunk. In fact, I don't think I can hardly even call it a worldview. It was more like a bubbleview. I lived in a bubble, not a world. My bubble circulated around my routine and self-satisfaction.
I stopped going to college because I could. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and I was too lazy to spend some time thinking about it and applying myself to seeking a future. That could wait. I was not a procrastinator when it came to homework and yearbook deadlines, but when it came to the small things like planning my future, it could wait until I was ready.
I surrounded myself with people that were just as laid-back, lackadaisical, care-free, and wasteful as I was. A restaurant is a good place to find like-minded people when you don't want to think about the future but you only want to live in the moment. There was a constant cycle of new recruits coming from high schools to replace those in the industry who finally decided to move on with their life and do something with it. From my experience, it seemed like the party only ended when someone got pregnant, and then the parent(s) had to get serious. Otherwise, it was live and let live.
Philosophically, I was disinclined to acquiesce to the path set before me. Nevertheless, I kept trudging down the same track I was on because I was not ready to disappoint my godly parents who had worked so hard to protect me from the kinds of things that I then completely surrounded myself with. I still attended church, but only to keep up my image. I still refrained from using foul language, but only to keep up the hypocritical façade. I had one foot in the saintly life and one in the life of debauchery. To my Christian friends, I was a Christian. To my non-Christian friends, I was a Christian, but an unusually open-minded one.
I had my moral code figured out, to a certain degree. I liked the Ten Commandments. They made sense. I liked what Jesus said about treating others the way you wanted to be treated. It was all good moral advice, in my mind. I believed in God, but I was more deistic than anything else. God was more like pie in the sky to me than my Holy Creator and Redeemer. I never thought about God much, but I always felt like He had a ready ear whenever I was ready to talk to Him. If I needed something, then He would listen. If I didn't need anything, then He was fine with just sitting in the backseat, not saying a word.
Righteousness to me was about doing the right things at the right times. It was about being charitable, kind, and understanding. It was about being nice to the clerk at the grocery store that seemed to be having a bad day. It was about mowing the lawn for my grandma (which I hardly ever did with a good attitude). It was about treating other people with respect. Overall, my righteousness only depended on how I treated other people. If I was nice, then I was righteous. If I was mean, then I was being sinful. Righteousness and sinfulness were never personal for me growing up. The Ten Commandments were about what you do to people. Overall, my view of righteousness left a holy God completely out of the picture, and only focused on the well-being and emotions of the people that interacted with me.
In my mind, sin was only a problem when I left my room and went out into the world. If I was sitting in my room, all by myself, I was safe and sound. Pornography was not a sin because I was only watching other people interact. I wasn't having pre-marital sex. I was just watching. Watching violent movies and listening to explicit music wasn't sin because I was passively taking in sights and sounds. I wasn't killing people uncontrollably, I was just watching. I wasn't using profane language and talking about vulgar subjects, I was just listening. Playing violent video games wasn't sin because although I was hurting people, the people were just 1s and 0s. It was all virtual. Is virtual murder a sin?
I was justified. I wasn't justified in Christ by faith, but I was justified in myself by myself. I made the rules and I made sure that I made rules that I could abide by. I enjoyed all of my self-righteous rules. I was particularly proud of my ability to refrain from cussing. I patted myself on the back for having a bridled tongue. I never used the Lord's name in vain. After all, to me, taking the Lord's name in vain was only about what came out of my mouth and it was never about actually bearing the Lord's name upon myself as a professing, baptized believer.
When rules got hard to follow, then I simply started to bend them. Along with the rest of the church in America, I decided to detest homosexuality as an abomination to God's created order. Honestly, it was more unnatural to me than sinful against God. I decided it was wrong because creatures do not naturally have sexual relations with the same sex, and I believed that God created the world, so therefore, it was wrong for creatures to have sexual relations with the same sex. My morality was based more upon God's natural revelation than His special revelation (i.e. the natural world rather than the supernatural Word of God). Ironically, along with many in the church who hold an adamant stance against homosexuality, my pornographic tastes were lesbian. I don't mean to be crude, but blatantly honest so that it might hit other hypocrites square between the eyes.
I never needed to bend any other rules more than my rules pertaining to sexual purity. My morality was based upon natural revelation rather than special revelation. That is to say, I based right and wrong off of what I perceived in the world rather than in the Word. My ethics were more socially determined than theologically. If people were hurt either physically or emotionally, then the action was wrong. However, if no one got hurt, then all was well.
I would tell everyone that I followed the Ten Commandments, but it was more like seven out of ten. I didn't own a voodoo doll or a Buddha statue. I never cussed and used the Lord's name in vain. I tried really hard to honor my parents and make them proud. I would never murder anyone. I wasn't married, but if I was, I wouldn't commit adultery. I wouldn't steal from anyone. And finally, I tried my best not to lie, but if it protected someone else, then lying was okay.
The tell-tale sign that you have become a legalist is that the Ten Commandments seem doable all of the time. If you are like the young, rich man in Matthew 19 asking how to gain eternal life, and you find yourself thinking, "All these (the Commandments) I have kept. What do I still lack?" then you are headed down a destructive path. If you somehow look at the Law and allow yourself to pat your own back, then you have no idea how deceitful your heart truly is.
I've said before that I was a legalist and an antinomian put into one, and that can sound rather contradictory. However, let me try to explain. Look at the portion of the Law that Jesus outlines to the rich, young ruler in Matthew 19. Jesus lists out the entire second table of the Law; all the laws pertaining to loving our neighbor. That is, all of it except for one: you shall not covet. Jesus told the young man that if he wanted to be perfect then he would have to sell all of his worldly possessions and follow Him. The rich, young ruler left sorrowful because he loved earthly possessions more than he loved God who had given him everything he owned. Perhaps he was sorrowful because Jesus asked him to sell his stuff, or perhaps he was sorrowful because he realized that he had allowed himself to be deceived all these years into thinking that he was a righteous man.
You see, Jesus didn't even have to put the rich, young ruler to the test concerning the first table of the Law in order to disqualify the man's self-righteous and legalistic ideas of grandeur. Jesus demonstrated that even those who would like to think they are saved by their ability to keep half of the Law cannot even keep the "easy" half of the Law. Even the part of the Law that we think is doable is impossible to keep. And that's why you have to throw a little antinomianism into the pot so that grace may abound all the more where our sins disqualify us!
Looking at the Ten Commandments in two tables, there's antinomianism for the first table and there's legalism for the second table. Nobody can look at the first four commandments and honestly think that they have kept the Law. Modern Christians have tried to make the first table of the Law doable so we can be full-fledged legalists, but we always get bogged down on that one commandment. We can minimize the second commandment to pertain only to making wooden or stone idols and bowing down to them. As suggested before, the third commandment becomes nothing more than using God's name as a swear word. The fourth commandment is a little bit tricky, but modern Christians have opted out of the commandment entirely by arguing that Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, that He completely fulfills the Sabbath rest in His death and resurrection, and the commandment is practically null and void because Jesus is our eternal rest. Ironically, many Christians still refer to the Ten Commandments rather than the Nine Commandments that they truly believe are still binding. Finally, there is that one commandment that you cannot seem to get around. Sadly, I truly believe that if modern Christians could somehow find a way to minimize and rationalize the first commandment then legalism would be far more prevalent today.
In Mark 12:29-30, Jesus summarizes the entire first table of the Law:
'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'
Jesus is quoting Deut. 6:4-5 in this passage. I know I said that Jesus is summarizing the first table of the Law, but in fact, He is summarizing the whole entire Law. The Lord our God, the Lord is one, therefore, you shall have no other gods before Him, you shall not bow down to idols or make graven images, you shall not use His name in vain, you shall obey Him and rest as He rested because He commands you to rest, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
If you do not love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength, then you must have another god before Him. Try to think of a day in your life when you completely devoted all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength completely and unreservedly to the Lord our God. You're right, a day is a little long. How about an hour? Have you ever kept the first commandment for an hour? Still a little long, huh? A minute? Has your heart, soul, mind, and strength been completely, unequivocally, and perfectly enamored with God for a mere second? As self-righteous as I was, I could not get around the blatant truth that I could never keep the first commandment all of the time.
Legalism had to go, but what if there was an abundance of grace for the first table of the law and we, as Christians, were only required to keep the second table of the law? Antinomianism for table one and legalism for table two. Therefore Jesus died on the cross so that I did not have to worry about my legal obligation to love God, but I was completely on my own when it came to the second table of the Law, and it was all tremendously and easily doable. Grace covered the first four, difficult commandments, and works were enough to justify me for the remaining six easy commandments.
What a warped and strange view of the Christian faith, you might be thinking. Sadly, I believe that this summary in some form or another helps define the beliefs of many young, college-aged people today who consider themselves Christians. Sadly, if you ask many young professing Christians today what it means to be Christian, they'll mention everything except for Christ. It's about believing in God, about loving God and loving others, and about keeping some rules. We cannot keep all of the rules all of the time, so God gave us His only begotten Son so that whosoevers believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. So, in essence, we need to obey the rules as if we were legalists, but when we fail miserably, then we need to rest in Jesus as if we were antinomians.
In 2003-2005, Christian Smith and Melinda Denton conducted the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) which, "reveals a theological fault line running underneath American churches: an adherence to a do-good, feel-good spirituality that has little to do with the Triune God of Christian tradition and even less to do with loving Jesus Christ enough to follow him into the world" (Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian, 2010). The religion, according to Christian Smith, that is replacing Christianity as the dominant religion in the United States is moralistic therapeutic deism. It's a feel-good, do-good religion that worships a god that only wants people to be happy and is happy to help whenever or if you ever need him. In her book, Almost Christian, Kendra Creasy Dean provides five guiding beliefs of moralistic therapeutic deism:
1. A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.
The problem being that those who believe in moralist therapeutic deism, much like myself straight out of high school, label themselves Christians. You might have noticed that I seem to contradict myself a lot about my feelings toward Christianity. At several points I have admitted that I had decided to give up on Christianity and try new things out, but at the same time I keep explaining how I rationalized my beliefs to be Christian. You might be thinking, "Did you think you were a Christian or not? Make up your mind!"
As a Christian now (and I will explain later what makes me a Christian now), I can see that I was high-tailing it out of the Christian faith. I was a moralistic therapeutic deist more than anything else, and if it wasn't for the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, then I would not have realized that what I believed Christianity entailed wasn't Christian at all. At work, at school, and while hanging out with friends, I felt comfortable calling myself a Christian. The only place I didn't feel like a Christian was at the Reformed Presbyterian church where I was a member. I not only felt like I did not belong, but I knew that I did not belong. There was an obvious disconnect between my Christianity and that which was preached from behind the pulpit at my church. Every Sunday, I would sit and listen about my need for Christ, messiah, savior, redeemer while Jesus the Christ and His sufficiency as the Savior for sinners was preached. I really didn't need Jesus for my beliefs. I really didn't need a Christ because the god I worshipped just wanted me to try my best and would forgive the rest.
Somehow, I always knew that Christianity was about Jesus making atonement for the sins of mankind, but I never believed that God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost would require complete and perfect obedience. Somehow, I had gotten fooled into believing that Jesus died on the cross so that god did not have to be the mean, vengeful, and spiteful god he was in the Old Testament. Somehow, I had been deceived into believing that god got so mad at Israel because they just wouldn't keep the simple rules he gave them, and because he was tired of being mad all the time, he poured out his wrath on his son, Jesus, so that he could give men a little bit more slack. I was a product of dispensationalism, Pharisaic Sunday school classes, and a complete lack of Biblical literacy.
Sitting under the preaching of the Word, hearing the gospel of Jesus the Christ preached in every sermon, and hearing about something called faith all the time, I began to feel like I did not have the whole picture of what it means to be Christian.
I had called myself a Christian for as long as I could remember, but I found myself wondering, What does it mean to be a Christian? In order to open my eyes, God popped my bubble-view and replaced it with a worldview. For the first time in my life, I was going to take a trip on a plane. I was going to China.
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