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.