Sunday, March 30, 2008

I have to tolerate and even get along with others who I may not like

Where don't we have to do this? Why would we expect it to be different at church? Perhaps you think that everyone else in church must tolerate you and your cynicism, but that you don't have to put up with anyone's quirks. Give me a break! Grow up!

Whenever you get more than a hundred people together for one purpose you'll have conflicting perspectives, desires, drives and attitudes and differing expressions of all of these. The trick is to measure how humble you are and how serious you are about the purpose for being there. Of course, this implies that you know what the true purpose of being at church is in the first place.

I once asked a history professor of mine why he had a Bible on his shelf in his office, since I hadn't known that he was a Christian. He said that he wasn't a Christian in the way that I was (I was a high-profile leader among the college Christians), but that he took his little son to church regularly because he wanted him to learn morals and he said he thought the church was the best place for him to learn this.

Is that the reason to go to church? It's certainly not a bad reason, except that there are many people in church who may or may not know what morality is and there are as many who do not practice morals very well. So church is not really about morality.

Morality has so very little to do with church, contrary to what many think. In fact, the Protestant Reformation repositioned this issue, originally (see Luther and Calvin). They said that church is where the sinners (those who fail in morality) come to be forgiven and to worship God in the light of their thankfulness for this forgiveness. Obviously, their lives should also be redirected through the worship of God so that the outcome is an increasingly moral life. They did not say that any Christian must or even can achieve a morally perfect life, but that each Christian should be wrestling against the immorality. This includes transparency with Christ about your failures, confidence in His forgiveness and dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit given to us to fight the good fight.

Conflicting personalities and expectations at church should be patiently tolerated. Your focus must remain on your worship of God.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Easter is time for sorrows turning to joy

I hope everyone's going to church for Easter. Probably most everyone here in Poland will. Try to set aside any irritations or complaints you might have about how things are done or what people say and do this weekend. This is a time to focus on the one who raised from the dead and is seated at the right hand of God.

Not everyone will be able to focus on the joy of Christ, due to tragedies in life. I hope that those of you who are blessed with a good path in life at this time, might comfort those who are suffering around you. Sometimes the social barriers against reaching out to our fellow human being seem tremendous! Remember that one of the major points of Christ's ministry on Earth, which we as His body are to continue, was to reach out to those who are suffering and in need, physically or spiritually. Let us do the ministry of the Lord Jesus as long as we have breath and life in us!

In Christ,
R. Craig

Monday, March 17, 2008

I am judged based on the reputation that others have amassed

As a member of any group I am judged based on the reputation the previous members have gained in the eyes of the outside world. It is no less true of membership in any church. As soon as someone outside that church knows that I am attending it they will cast me in light of what they think about members in general in that church.

Consider, for example, a cult group which is considered not to be Christian, though it originated from a member of a Christian church. Consider the Jehowah's Witnesses. There is a general reputation about their members that they are overly assertive, to the point of being pushy at times. They are thought of as either dangerous or deceptive and at least out of touch with the world around them. This is not my judgment, but only what I have surmised from conversations with people regarding that group.


If I were to become a Jehowah's Witness, as soon as anyone in the outside world found out they would recast their opinion of me based on what they think of Jehowah's Witnesses. This is true likewise of denominations within Christianity. Being Catholic carries with it a reputation, for better and for worse, as does also being Baptist or Orthodox.

Is this a good reason to not choose and attend a church? What is the alternative? If someone were to ask you whether or not you were a Christian and you said you were, then they were to proceed to the next natural question of where you attend church, you would place yourself under the reputations amassed by other Christians before you who did not go to any specific church. You are caught in the same trap!

As you can see, it is inevitable that you will be judged based on the reputations of those who have preceeded you in choosing the same course in life as yours. So this is not an adequate reason for refusing to attend a particular church, is it?

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

It requires I mold my thinking to someone else's

"It requires I mold my thinking to someone else's" is a pretty interesting excuse. Wherever we work we must do this to a greater or lesser extent. All throughout our academic lives we have had to do this to a greater or lesser extent. Within our own family circle our thinking is molded to others', whether we like it or not. Because of these other arenas where it happens and is even forced on us by either sociological phenomena or by practical necessity, we claim our right to freedom from this same apparent tyrrany when it comes to so-called voluntary associations such as religious gatherings.

There certainly are spiritual values that weigh in when seriously considering these dynamics. One measuring stick we should use is that of pride-humility. Could our desire to be fiercly intellectually independent be an expression of pride? What is pride, afterall? Maybe we have only a vague emotional feeling about it as if it were the mask of some villain.

Pride is best seen in the spiritual story that is passed over when John 3:16 is so famously quoted,
"For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever shall believe in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life." But what happened to the words of Christ? For this quote is from the mouth of our Lord. Yet, he immediately preceeded it with a choice reference from the Old Testament, that without which the quote is left rather hollow.

Read John 3:12-15 and then Numbers 21:4-9. In Numbers, it says that the Isrealites spoke against God and Moses when they complained about earthly matters of bread and water. Jesus said in John 3:12 that the Jewish leaders have not understood earthly matters that He had spoken to them of and therefore would not understand heavenly matters. Yet He emphasizes that He has come down from heaven. Moses was able to pray to God on behalf of the people, but Christ is able to actually go into heaven on our behalf!

According to Numbers, Moses was commanded by God to fashion a bronze serpent and lift it on a pole in the middle of the camp. Anyone who had been bitten by a poisonous snake could look at it and live. Jesus referred to this by saying in John 3:14-15, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life."

What does this mean for us? We who know that we have been bitten by poisonous snakes (sin) need only to look on Christ as the anti-venom, as an act of belief, and we will live. This is why he was lifted up.

What does all this have to do with pride? Christ tells us in John 3:18, "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." Some Isrealites must not have looked at the snake. They must have refused to and died. How difficult was it to look at the snake? God did not ask them to crawl over to the pole, climb it and kiss the snake! He simply asked them to look at it as an act of belief in His authority, but in His authority both to heal and to guide their lives through correcting their actions. Some of them were fiercely independent. They refused to prove God's power to heal and kept their head turned away from the snake. Likewise, many of us refuse to prove God's healing power in our lives by refusing to go to church to look on Christ. God lifted Him up in the desert so we all might be healed and live. Yet it is pride that drives us to refuse even the simplest and most powerful healing in our lives.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

It takes effort

The most important things in life deserve our effort even when we are drained of energy. After all, we would never dream of calling in to work and telling them that we will not be in today because we are drained of energy, would we? One could argue that while our job demands this, God does not. A similar argument might state that we need our job to earn a living, but we do not need to go to church to earn our salvation. While it is true that we cannot earn our salvation by our attendance at church, it does not mean that God does not require we attend. There is more in the faith than salvation. Salvation is the beginning to the vast adventure of faith in Christ. Going to church is one of the products of a fellowship with the Holy Spirit, who speaks the power of God into our hearts during both good and bad times.

Should we go to church out of gratitude to the Holy Spirit? Why not? If we can see what the Holy Spirit has been doing in our lives lately then we will feel gratitude toward Him. This may inspire us to muster up enough energy to get to church.

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