free speech in Christ

Loyalty and Possession

2008-05-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

To what degree should we as Christians hold exclusive loyalty toward the church family, congregation, or institution of which we are a part or member?
To what degree should church leaders or institutions expect exclusive loyalty and exercise possessiveness over their members?
What should we do when our loyalty toward a church body or institution comes into conflict with what we believe the Spirit is leading us to do or where He is leading us to go?
As church leaders, how should we respond when one of our flock feels directed by God to withdraw from our church family or congregation?
These are some tough questions that have been running through my mind lately. And as the issues of loyalty and possessiveness are a big source of hurt, hard feelings, and division floating around in Christian culture these days, I think it's important that we consider these questions and seek God-breathed answers.
When it comes to loyalty and possession, the prevailing reality in church culture is that loyalty to the church entity is expected (even demanded), and church entities harbor a distinctive brand of jealous possessiveness when it comes to their members.
Anyone who has ever left one church body for another has more than likely encountered this reality. In the best case scenarios, you get treated like a long-time employee who has just announced that you've accepted a position with a competing company. You might get some pats on the back and a few "good lucks," but the atmosphere will be a little chilly. In the worst cases, you get completely ostracized and treated as if you have just denounced Christ in public.
While many of the reasons for this reality can be explained as simple, sinful human nature, a lot of this stuff has been passed down to us from the church of the Middle Ages. For around a thousand years, the Roman Catholic Church exercised a very real and brutally-enforced form of possessiveness over its members, and a lack of loyalty toward Mother Church could get you burned at the stake. Unfortunately, the Reformers did not part with this mind set, and, for the most part, the Protestant groups and institutions that emerged adopted the same policy of possessiveness and exclusivity.
With the advent of freedom of religion, the physical threats by which church institutions once held their members in place have ceased, but the psychological and emotional deterrents are still there.
So what does the Bible say about these issues? While I can't think of any scriptures that directly address these things, I think the book of Acts is a good place to look if you want to see how early Christians were treating and responding to each other. As far as I can see, it seems like there was a lot of free-flowing exchange going on in the early church when it came to people. And it seems that most of this relocating of people from one location and church body to another was directed by the Holy Spirit. Basically, God was seeing to it that the right people with the right giftings were in the right place at the right time. And while there were some difficult partings (such as when Paul left Ephesus for Jerusalem), they just didn't seem to be uptight about trading people with other church bodies in other places.
That kind of uptightness didn't start until the second century, when the new focus on doctrinal differences led to some church bodies not acknowledging other church bodies as legitimate expressions of Christ.
As far as how we should deal with matters of loyalty and possession, I think we should deal with it as families (rather than as exclusive clubs), and we should deal with it in love (rather than in hurt and jealousy).
Family is family no matter where you go, and that should be the case between brothers and sisters in Christ. And when God calls people out of the nest to pursue His path for their lives, we should rejoice, pray them up, and send them out with our blessings.

Seeing the Kingdom

2008-03-23T13:06:00.000-07:00

If there's any one thing that Jesus spoke and taught about most during his public ministry, it was the kingdom of God/Heaven. Through numerous parables, comparisons, stories, and word-pictures, Jesus was constantly trying to hammer the reality and truth of the kingdom into people's heads and hearts.
So what is this kingdom Jesus was talking about? Is it a religious institution? Is it a collection of religious laws? Is it the church? Is it the whole of Christendom - all of our organizations, buildings, programs, activities, doctrines, record companies, magazines, and TV networks rolled up into one big lump? Is the kingdom merely those people who know and follow Christ? Is it something we as Christians are supposed to be building, a centuries-long construction project, or is it something that already exists, finished and complete?
In the Gospel of John's famous chapter three, Jesus had an interesting late night conversation with a man named Nicodemus, one of the religious leaders of the day. After Nicodemus tells Jesus that he believes He has come from God, Jesus replies that "unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." When Nicodemus makes it clear that he doesn't understand what "born again" means, Jesus adds that "unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God."
Until recently, I always took that passage to mean that you don't get to go to heaven unless you get "saved" as modern evangelical Christianity defines it. While that may be essentially true, it doesn't seem to be the point that Jesus is trying to get across. Quite simply, He's saying that there is this thing called the kingdom of God that no-one can see or enter without first being born again - which implies that once someone has been born again, he or she can both see and enter this kingdom.
It's important to note that the verbs used for both "see" and "enter" are used in the present tense and do not refer to some future sweet by-and-by. Even more interesting, the verb used for "see" - the Greek work Eido - carries more meaning than just physically seeing something with the eyes. It also means to have knowledge of something gained through experience or to "see with the mind."
So then, is Jesus saying that by being born again of water and the Spirit - obeying Christ in baptism and actually receiving the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us - we become capable of perceiving this kingdom (which was apparently already in existence when Jesus and Nicodemus were conversing), entering this kingdom, and gaining experiential knowledge of this kingdom? I'd say yes, that's what Jesus was saying.
So where is this kingdom, what does it look like, and what is it made of? Jesus states plainly when speaking to Pontius Pilate that His kingdom is not of (part of, located in, or originating from) this world or Kosmos, which denotes the sum total of the material universe and everyone living in it. Essentially, Jesus is saying that His kingdom exists beyond not only the political or religious systems of humankind, but outside (or other than) the entire physical universe as well. Scripture tells us that God is a spirit, and it would stand to reason that His kingdom exists in this spiritual dimension.
But what does it mean for us to perceive this spiritual kingdom, and how should that bear on what we do and say? I think Christ explained this in describing His own relationship to the Father? In several places in John's Gospel, Jesus indicates that He is not speaking or acting by His own initiative, but rather according to what He hears and sees the Father speaking and doing. Jesus was obviously able to perceive what was going on in the spiritual dimension - a capacity and a relational connection which the Father passed on to His followers through the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Could that be what the kingdom of God is all about - God doing, speaking, and moving in the spiritual realm, which is then mirrored in the physical realm by people perceiving this spiritual activity and following suit in their own lives?
Consider Christ's model prayer to the Father: "Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Does the kingdom really need to be any more complicated than this simple agreement between heaven and earth, God and man?
Here we come to what I believe to be the primary blunder of Christian history. Through gradual increments, we stopped seeing the kingdom as something God is doing and something which we need to perceive, enter, and submit our lives to, and we started viewing it as something we're supposed to build in God's honor through our own efforts. We started building temples for God to dwell in, we established organizational structures patterned on human government, and we started measuring the success of our endeavors by material, worldly standards. Eventually, most Christians came to view their own institutional creations as the kingdom of God on earth, and that way of thinking still persists in a big way today.
Unfortunately, we have largely lost the essential element of spiritual perception and the essential truth that the kingdom is something we can never build on our own steam and wisdom; we're just not qualified for that task.
Truth be told, we're not even qualified to assist God in building His kingdom. We're not called to be kingdom builders; we're called to be building materials (living stones) in God's building project - just check out II Corinthians, 2:18-22 and I Peter, 2:4-5. Another way of saying it is that we - our lives and our relationships - are being built together by God into a new kind of kingdom.
At best, we can only build earthly imitations of God's kingdom through human efforts, in the same way that the tabernacle built by Mosses was merely a physical symbol of something that already existed in the spiritual realm. But while the physical tabernacle served its purpose in that time frame, the need for it vanished when Christ opened the door for us to enter as priests under His high priesthood into the spiritual original (see Hebrews, chapters 9 & 10).
With all that said, I think we as the modern church need to look for ways to disengage from our own efforts to build earthly imitations of God's kingdom and rediscover how to perceive, live in and submit ourselves to what He is building and doing.

Shedding Our Religious Skin

2008-03-03T17:30:00.000-08:00

Throughout human history, religion has consistently remained one of the most powerful, influential forces on planet earth. More wars have been fought in the name of religion than any other single cause. Entire nations and empires have been founded and sustained on religious foundations. And, by and large, religion has spawned more institutions, organizations, building projects, and scholarly endeavors than other aspect of human culture and society.
So, what then is true religion? What is the difference between true religion and false religion? Are religious pursuits and institutions ordained by God? Did Christ come to start a new religion or was He doing something else? Is it possible to follow Christ while rejecting organized religion? Is religion necessary or is it a hindrance in pursuing a relationship with God?
To begin my attempt at answering these questions, I'll go right back to the place and time in which I believe religion has its genesis - that being the book of Genesis itself. I think the first roots of religion were planted with the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden and the introduction of sin into this world. I would even go so far as to say that religion in all of its forms (excepting none) is the direct result and product of sin and has become a primary element of a fallen world system, right alongside politics and economics.
To say that religion is the product of sin might sound strange, irrational or even heretical, but I challenge you to consider the possibility.
The most tragic result of Adam and Eve's fall was the loss of direct relationship with their Creator. And that was not all - they also lost the purity of their relationship with each other. The fact that they sought to cover their nakedness with plant life gives evidence of this. At that point, they weren't hiding from God; He had not yet shown up on the scene. No, they were hiding from each other. Those same fangs that still poison our relationships today - insecurity, selfishness, fear, and the twisted desire to control one another - had entered that first marriage.
And when God came calling, they hid themselves altogether, initiating a rift in their relationship with God - a rift that would be widened into a great gulf by their descendants.
Still, the sense of loss and the deep-rooted need to restore these relationships has never left humankind, and over time humans developed a systematized way of trying to fill that hole - namely, religion. You see, while religion reflects man's desire to reconnect with God, it all too often serves as a substitute for actual relationship. Basically, it allows us to feel good about ourselves and imagine that God is pleased with us while, at the same time, we get to keep a measured distance from God.
And that, of course, goes back to the sin issue. The taint and shame of sin drives us to hide and run from the Lord, and, what's worse, sin makes it impossible for we fallen humans to close that distance and fix what was broken through our own power or wisdom.
I find it interesting that, after booting Adam and Eve out of the garden, God took the time to make clothes for them out of the skins of animals, apparently animals He slaughtered with His own hand. Beyond providing some much-needed protection against the elements, this also spoke symbolically to their spiritual state. Sin has to be covered before the eyes of a Holy God, and Adam and Eve's attempt to cover themselves and their own sin was not adequate to the task. Covering sin requires blood and sacrifice - a reality that gave rise to the animal sacrifices that were central in all the ancient religious systems, both pagan and Jewish. It also pointed forward prophetically to Christ, whose blood would eventually cover sin once and for all.
In the case of pagan religions, this reality was twisted to the point that their objects of worship became either blood-thirsty monsters or mere supernatural projections of fallen humanity.
But what about the ancient religion of the Jews? Wasn't that given to them by God?
Sure, but, if you examine Scripture closely, you'll find that He did not do this as His first choice. The history of the Jews began when God initiated a personal relationship with a guy named Abram (later called Abraham). A few centuries later, God entered a relationship with Mosses and, through Mosses, tried to establish relationship with the entire nation of Israel. The Israelites, however, made it very clear during their sojourn in the wilderness that they did not want to talk to God directly and they were still attached to the systematized religion of the Egyptians. Following God's direction day to day was just not enough for them.
At this point, God gave them the Ten Commandments, the civic laws of Mosses, and the Levitical rules and rituals by which to conduct this new religion. In essence, God gave them a more elaborate, detailed set of animal skins with which to cover themselves. But this was not meant to be a permanent state of affairs.
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul makes it clear that the law cannot restore the relationship between God and man. The law was given as a curse for disobedience, and it was also given as a tutor to prepare the children of Israel for faith in Christ. Besides, practically every aspect, object, and ritual involved in the ancient Jewish religion pointed symbolically forward to Christ. God gave the Jews a religion specifically designed to serve as a temporary standby until He could reveal the fullness of His plans and purposes in Christ.
But when their Messiah finally showed up on the scene, offering restored relationship with God through Himself, many (particularly, the religious leaders of the day) were just not ready to give up their training pants for spiritual clothes. Sadly, they had come to love their religion and their position within that religion more than they loved God - though they would never consciously admit that (even to themselves). Christ offered them the opportunity to know God in a personal, intimate way, but they preferred their post as experts on the subjects of God and religion.
Christ also opened the door to restored, loving relationships between people. And that, as far as I see it, is why Christ established His church. Quite simply, the church is Christ infusing His supernatural brand of love into human relationships and presenting this collection of love-centered relationships as a picture of Himself for all the world to see.
Religion, at best, was only a prep school for real, loving, Spirit-led relationships, and, as far as I'm concerned, the need for religion, religious institutions, and religious structures all ended with Christ. He is our high priest, our king, and our bridegroom, and we are His temple, His people, and His blushing bride. Jesus is all in all, and no religious embellishments are needed.
The reality, however, is that this religion called Christianity has come into being in the centuries between us and the early church, and, unfortunately, this religious entity has arisen largely at the expense of love-centered relationships. Gradually, step by fateful step, the relational was replaced by ritual, intellectual constructs, and organizational structures. Belief systems were substituted for personally knowing God, and liturgies and programs were substituted in place of relating to each other in Christlike love. Even the absolute essential of salvation through faith was replaced by the ritualistic administration of sacraments within the Roman Catholic Church. Practically every real and living spiritual gift that Christ gave to His church was replaced by dead, man-manufactured imitations. In essence, the Body of Christ crawled right back under the same kind of religious oppression and legalistic curse that Jesus came to free us from.
Maybe, that's because (in some pathetic way) we're more comfortable there. As I stated earlier, a religious context (rather than a relational context) allows people to keep a measured distance from God while giving the appearance of serving God. It's a perverted preference that goes right back to the fall of man. There's just something about fallen human nature that prefers jumping though some religious hoops and following a set of rules and rituals to actually dealing with our fallenness one-on-one with the One who made us. Religion also makes room for what I call the separation of church and life - basically compartmentalizing your responsibilities to God as something separate from how you conduct yourself and relate to others outside a designated religious structure or meeting.
More than anything, I think religion is an instrument of control - or rather, it gives us the illusion of control over that which rightfully holds authority over us. A well-trained pet deity on a leash is much safer than a living God who just might move in ways that we're not used to or comfortable with. And subscribing to a set list of religious doctrines and dogmas is much easier than being a perpetual student of both Scripture and the Holy Spirit. Religion grants human beings the imaginary authority to determine what God will or will not do, and it endows some humans (namely those with religious titles and job descriptions) with the power to place limits on how others can relate to God and their fellow man.
Christ paid the price of our sin with His own blood, He opened the door wide for us to have restored relationship with God, and He went through a lot of trouble to teach us how to live in right relationship with each other. I think it's high time to shed the dead snakeskin of religion and get back to the simple life of love and fellowship that He intends for us.

Dumbing It Down

2008-02-18T17:10:00.000-08:00

The public education system in this country has been frequently accused of "dumbing down" the quality of education provided for the children of our society. Typically, what is meant by "dumbing down" is the process of lowering educational standards and content to the lowest common denominator - basically to a level at which the vast majority of students can easily meet expectations and testing standards - for the purpose of creating the appearance of success when, in fact, educational ground is being lost.

As someone who has served a brief tour of duty on the front lines of the public education struggle as a classroom teacher, I have to admit that this is something that is happening. It has been going on for a long time, and, unless there are dramatic changes made in both public education and society as a whole, it will continue for many years to come.

While I could probably write a lengthy book on everything I think is wrong with public education and what I think needs to be done to fix it, I'm not going to go into great detail on all that now. However, I would like to point out that as someone who has also done a tour of duty in leadership within the institutional church, both public education and modern institutional church suffer from many of the same ailments, particularly in the trend toward dumbing down (or watering down) the content and quality of what is taught and what is done.

In defense of both public educators and church leaders, I have to say that they both function under some serious limitations - limitations imposed on them by the systems and institutions of which they are a part and by those placed under their teaching and leadership.

In the case of public educators, they face the task of successfully teaching state-mandated content with very limited resources within a set time frame to a very mixed group of students. The primary difficulty comes in trying to initiate genuine learning while, at the same time, exercising functional control over the social dynamics within the classroom. The average public school classroom consists of basically three kinds of students: those who are willing and eager to learn, those who are in active opposition toward having to do or learn anything, and those who are somewhere in the middle of these two extremes and can be influenced in either direction on any given school day. A teacher may start out shooting high, trying to get students to engage in higher order thinking discussions or activities but soon finds that those opposed to their own education will do just about anything to keep you from taking the class there. These students have figured out that if they can keep the teacher occupied with disruptions and disciplinary problems, then they can avoid the terrible pain of having to use or expand their minds. As I've witnessed firsthand, these students will often take turns being the central source of disruption, so that the school administration is not justified in extreme disciplinary measures against any individual student while the group goal of monkey-wrenching the system is still achieved.

But state requirements and expectations on teachers remain the same, no matter how much opposition they might face from their own students. They have to teach all of the required content within the semester or school year to all of their students, they have to keep all of their students occupied from bell to bell with relevant educational activities, they have to keep classroom behavior within school rules and administrative expectations, and (most importantly these days) they have to somehow get most of their students to meet state and federal benchmarks on achievement tests.

With the exception of a few exemplary teachers, most end up taking the low road of teaching to these tests by rote and keeping students occupied with unchallenging though time-consuming busy work. And it's not because these teachers are lazy or fans of mediocrity. For many, it really is the only way they can keep both their jobs and their sanity.

Leaders and teachers in the church deal with very similar problems and frustrations. They also have certain performance expectations, set time frames, limited resources, and they have to deal with the same three kinds of people when it comes to the church body: those who genuinely desire spiritual growth and a closer relationship with Christ, those who have no intention of growing and will do just about anything to keep things shallow and superficial, and those (usually the majority) who fluxuate between these two poles.

Unlike problem children in public schools, people in this country aren't required by law to attend church services or to be a part of a church body. So why would anyone opposed to their own spiritual growth and education even bother with church at all? To answer that question is to pick at a tick that has been sucking the life out of the Body of Christ for centuries.

Believe it or not, there are quite a few people within the ranks of Christianity that love the church as an institution - it's liturgies, rituals and beautiful buildings - but they have absolutely no interest in really opening their hearts and lives to either the Living God or their fellow Christians. They love religion and the sense of security and self-satisfaction that it brings, but they use religion as a substitute for genuine relationship with their Creator and Savior. They fear hell, yet they also fear what actually following Christ might cost them - so they work to foster a church environment in which salvation is just a matter of jumping through the right religious hoops and believing the correct doctrines, and the door is firmly shut on anything beyond that.

And when anyone tries to take things deeper or raise the spiritual temperature, these people act a whole lot like problem students. Arguments and in-fighting and rumours and petty squabbles over the silliest things seem to rise up from nowhere, and those who were promoting deeper commitment and fellowship find themselves swamped just trying to keep the whole thing from falling apart.

Repeat that nerve-racking process several times, and the spiritually hungry find themselves either searching for food elsewhere or learning to like two-percent milk while calling it meat. And it's though the efforts of these guardians of mediocrity that countless church leaders have been conditioned to keep things inside the comfort zone and entire Christian institutions and denominations have been molded into big, warm beds of spiritual slumber.

Both public education and Christian institutions are trying to function on the same mistaken premise - that those dead set against learning and growing can be prompted to do so through better orgainized programs or inovative teaching methods. The government may be mandating that no child be left behind, but the brutal truth is that some have to be left behind if anyone is going to get anywhere.

The same goes for the church. The Body of Christ will never become what God wants it to be as long as so many of its parts refuse to submit to His transforming hand. The willing and unwilling will never arrive at the same destination in the same boat. Either the unwilling will have to be thrown overboard or the willing will have to abandon ship and take to the life boats.

The latter is what seems to be happening with many of us who have been or are being called out of the realm of institutional church. There are just too many barriers to change and too many people willing to fight to the death against change for substancial change to ever take place inside most institutional environments.

When God calls you to go on a journey of change into new frontiers, you have a very simple choice: to go or to stay. And if you choose to go, you can only trust in God to provide you with traveling companions. So far, He certainly seems to be doing that - miraculously connecting people with like visions but from very different religious backgrounds.

As far as those we've left back in the institutional ships, we can only continue to pray for them, love them, and trust God to do things in His own time.

The Grace To Be Wrong

2008-02-07T18:35:00.000-08:00

The quest for and the defense of correct doctrine has been the primary rallying flag of argument, division, and in-fighting within the ranks of Christendom for almost two thousand years. Even in the first decades of the church, New Testament writers were attacking and seeking to protect the church from what they described as false and divisive teachings.
And, to state it bluntly, there is just too much doctrinal disagreement and contradiction from institution to institution, denomination to denomination for everyone to be right at the same time. Simple logic dictates that a lot of the popular, widely held doctrinal beliefs floating around out there are just plain wrong.
So how do we determine who is right and who is wrong? Exactly what doctrines are we supposed to have in place? Does Scripture make these necessary doctrines perfectly clear without any room for differing interpretations, or do we have some room to manuever when it comes to the beliefs we embrace and promote? When establishing doctrine, are we completely free to interpret, add to, or subract from Scripture in any way we find convenient? Should doctrinal constructs originating from outside Scripture - personal visions or revelations, for example - be considered legitimate? How important is it to have all your doctrinal ducks in a perfect row? Is it even possible for fallible humans (even fallible humans of the divinely inspired variety) to attain absolute doctrinal perfection?
Now, I know I have a bad habit of throwing out more questions than answers, but, to be perfectly honest, I don't even pretend to have the definitive answers to all these questions.
I do believe that Scripture is very clear on many central, foundational points, but I have to admit that there are quite a few mysteries in Scripture that I'm just not sure about. And, even after extensive study, I find Scriptural evidence that appears to support opposing sides of many long-standing doctrinal disputes. I'm talking about age-old interChristian conflicts such as free will versus predestination, the exact nature of the Trinity, the precise prerequisites for salvation, and the question of whether or not salvation can be lost once attained.
Of course, I have my opinions on these and many other doctrinal issues, but in all honesty, there are passages of Scripture that make it hard for me to be fully confident in my own opinions. I don't think this is a matter of real contradiction within Scripture, but, rather, I suspect the problem lies primarily with the limitations of human logic and reason. I think the Bible contains many truths which appear to be self-contradicting or incomprehensible to human beings - a conundrum caused by the fact that created beings just aren't capable of fully wrapping their minds around an infinite, uncreated God. In addition, I think that the vast gulf of time and cultural change between us and the Bible's contributing writers makes it hard for us to catch their intended meaning in some places.
With so much room for error and misunderstanding, I find it interesting that we Christians tend to grant ourselves and each other so little room for imperfection when it comes to doctrinal matters. The general rule in modern Churchianity is to choose your doctrinal answers and stick by those answers as infallible no matter what. And if you disagree with any of the official doctrines of your church or institution, you'd better either keep your mouth shut or start looking for a church or institution that lines up more with the way you see things.
I don't know if it's just theological vanity or the simple weight of tradition and expectation, but it's a rare occassion when Christians leaders and institutional bodies allow themselves the simple, liberating grace of not being 100 percent right 100 percent of the time.
What this carved-in-stone approach to doctrinal matters has created is a static, starkly divided state of affairs in which birds of like doctrinal feathers have all flocked together in seperate camps. Inside these religious camps, diversity of belief is scarcely tolerated, and free and open discussion of doctrinal issues is practically nonexistent.
While I don't think this is a healthy state of affairs for the Body of Christ, I do understand some of the reasons and dynamics behind it. For one, people generally don't enjoy having their beliefs and habits of thought challenged. Expanding your mind can be painful and difficult, and it's just easier to create an environment where those who agree on doctrine can do so without any interference from those who don't. In addition, institutions, by their essential nature, are self-preserving and self-perpetuating, and something as unstable as doctrinal uncertainty threatens the stability and future survival of the institution.
So what is the correct approach to matters of doctrine? Heck, I don't know, and only the Good Lord does, I suspect. But if you want my admittedly fallible opinions, here they are.
I think we're called to be disciples, which literally means students or learners. And I don't think we ever reach a place where we can say that we've learned it all - or even that we're completely correct about everything we think we've already learned - and then sit back comfortably on our laurels.
On top of that, I don't think that we're only called to be students of Scripture but to be students of life, as well. What I mean by that is that Christ has called us into a real relationship with Him - a relationship with literal interaction and communication going both ways - and it's through this day-to-day relationship that we learn a lot of the things we need to know as disciples. Don't get me wrong, I'm not downplaying Bible study. In fact, I think that if we focus on a real, Spirit-led relationship with Christ, we'll find Scripture and life experience confirming each other in amazing ways.
I also believe we can learn a lot from each other as believers. That's one of the main reasons we've been instructed to come together as body - for mutual support, growth, and education. With that said, I think we severely hinder the collective quest for sound doctrine by limiting free and open discussion about doctrinal matters and insisting that we've already figured it all out. By doing this we're pretty much telling the average pew-warmer that their questions and possible contributions regarding doctrine are beneath consideration.
As far as establishing an A-to-Z list of doctrines on everything under the sun, we're just not there yet, and I doubt we're ever going to get there. And by insisting on inflexible doctrinal stances, I fear that contemporary Christianity is stunting its own growth and education.
Maybe someday God will get it through our thick skulls that knowing Him personally is much more profitable than just believing all the right things about Him.

Wine and Wineskins

2008-01-31T12:56:00.000-08:00

What should church look like?
How should it be structured?
In what ways and to what extent should it be organized?
Of course, those are questions that Christians and Christian institutions have been wrestling with for centuries. But what are the answers, and where can they be found?
I dare say that Scripture is the first place we should look. But as someone who has searched Scripture on this topic, I've found the New Testament curiously lacking when it comes to an exact, detailed blueprint on how church should be structured.
Now, I know that last comment would raise some furor among those who believe their particular way of doing church comes straight out of God's Word. Nevertheless, I challenge anyone to show me where this clear blueprint is found.
Admittedly, the New Testament does contain some structural tidbits here and there - the appointment of deacons in Acts to deal with a food distribution problem, Paul's mention of various offices or functions in his letters - but if you're wanting a clear-cut, complete, and fully functional set of instructions on how to set up, run, and maintenance a church institution or organization, the New Testament leaves more blank spaces than answered questions.
And if there is a precise, God-appointed way of doing and structuring church, then I have to say that the New Testament writers failed miserably in passing that information along. Jesus Himself, the head and founding father of the church, was practically silent regarding matters of form and structure, at least as far as the Gospel writers recorded.
So, what is the reason for this obvious lack of Scriptural information on how to order church?
Could it be that the New Testament writers didn't regard this issue of organization as all that important? If that's the case, then how can modern institutional church justify its obsession with matters of organization and proper order?
Could it be that the early church founders were pretty much playing it by ear, organizing and structuring as stuctural needs arose? There seems to be some evidence for that in Scripture, particularly in the book of Acts. And if that's the case, should the structural solutions they came up with be regarded as sacred law 2,000 years later? Should organizational and institutional constructs established in the centuries since the time of the early church be viewed as sacred? Or to state it another way, does the fact that people do something in a certain way for a long period of time make that practice or organizational structure sacred?
For me, the question boils down to whether or not God regards our sacred cows as sacred? If so, then fine - but, out of the thousands of different governmental structures and liturgies out there in the Christian world, whose particular arrangement of cows is in line with God's will and how can we know that way of doing things is right? But if our sacred cows are just ordinary cows to God, then a whole lot of people have been tortured, burned at the stake, excommunicated, ostricized, or given the left foot of fellowship for no good reason.
While I believe there is no single Scripturally-ordained way of structuring the church, Scripture is abundant and very detailed when it comes to how we are to relate to each other and to God. The vast majority of Christ's teachings center on those two kinds of relationship. And, maybe, Jesus didn't give a detailed, structural blueprint for church because these ties of relationship between man and man and man and God are the sum total of what His church is - whether it's happening in a cathedral, a living room, or up on a hillside.
I think Jesus gave a big clue to this structural question in His parable of the wineskins. I believe the wine represents our relationships with each other and Him, and the wineskins represent the structural forms within which these relationships exist. The problem throughout history has been that when wineskins have been in place too long, they become unable to take on new wine without bursting. And Christian history has demonstrated this problem a thousand times over. New revelation and fresh spiritual infusion almost always meet with resistance from the old forms and institutions, and, inevitably, new forms and institutions have to be established in order to hold the new wine.
But wineskins always get old eventually, and the wine of relationships they contain begin to stagnate or go sour. In such cases the wineskins themselves often become the central focus, and the matter of relationship is downplayed as a mere component of the bigger institutional machine.
With all that said, I think that one of the challenges that Christ has set before His bride is to learn how to have structure and form without turning those forms into idols of worship. Our Bridegroom wants us to learn to love Him and each other more than whatever house we happen to be living in. And if we can learn to employ organizations and institutions without becoming slaves to our own creations, we might be able to break this centuries old cycle and move forward with advancing Christ's kingdom on this planet.

Free speech in Christ

2008-01-24T13:40:00.000-08:00

The Constitutional freedom of speech remains one of the major perks of living here in the fair US of A, and, apart from occasional attempts to curb that freedom by extreme right or leftwing political elements, people in this country are still pretty much at liberty to say anything they please – at least more so than any other part of the planet.
And I would dare say that the freedom of speech and almost all our other Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms are owed in large part (though not entirely) to our nation’s Christian foundations and freedom-spawning Biblical precepts that have been passed down through the centuries by both Christian and Jewish cultures.
With that said, however, I find it both ironic and sad that one of the areas of American culture in which freedom of speech is most stringently muzzled happens to be within the confines of institutional Christianity. You may disagree with me, but I challenge you to give this point some serious scrutiny. How much freedom does the typical, tithing pew-warmer really have when it comes to matters of established church doctrine, theology, liturgy, and practice? To what degree do church institutions and leaders tolerate the open questioning of these things by the lowly laity?
From my own experience in church culture, I’d have to give the answer “very little” to both questions.
Admittedly, average American church members do enjoy some freedoms. They’re free to sing hymns or worship songs, so long as they do it on cue from the choir director or worship leader. They’re free to sit still and listen (or, at least, pretend to listen) to numerous sermons and public prayers. They’re free to participate in church programs and activities. They’re free to volunteer for various duties and responsibilities regarding the church facility. In a more open church environment, they might even be free to give a public testimony now and again. And, of course, they’re always free to put their money in the offering plate.
But, by and large in today’s church culture, the scriptural promise of freedom in Christ has been thrown out the window by know-it-all control freaks in clerical vestments, whose idea of a good Christian is someone who does what they’re told to do and believes what they’re told to believe without clogging up the fine-tuned religious machine with any bothersome questions.
As far as Paul’s promotion of a church environment in which everyone is invited (and even expected) to bring their individual gifts to the communal table (just check I Corinthians 14:26), that has been replaced with a weekly spectacle in which the chosen and talented few perform on an exalted stage while the second-class citizens of Christ’s kingdom observe and listen in quiet conformity (or even loud conformity, as is the case in some church settings).
It is my belief that a wind of change from the Holy Spirit is presently blowing over Western Christianity. I believe that God is seeking to restore Christ’s position as head over His church – and not as a mere historical figurehead from whom religious institutions derive their legitimacy, but as a living and active commander who literally speaks to and directs His people in the present tense. And once Christ has ousted institutions, man-made traditions, vain theologies, and religious superstars with bloated egos from His rightful seat, He can once again resume the work of creating close-knit spiritual families, both centered around Him and free in Him.
And it’s in the hope that real freedom in Christ will begin to blossom (in spite of current Western church culture) that I have set up this blog site. Apart from just spouting off my own thoroughly fallible views and opinions, I would like to invite anyone who wants to freely express their own feelings and opinions regarding spiritual matters and church-related issues. You can feel free to disagree with me or with anyone else who contributes to this blog site. All I ask is that you try to keep it Christ-centered and try to keep it civil.