Grace and truth

Years ago I heard a taped sermon by Monte Cox on John chapter one. The title, or at least the summary, was “Grace and Truth.” Recently I recalled a couple of the concepts or two from that sermon and asked Monte for an outline.

Monte called attention early on to having been raised in a “truth church.” Those of us from relatively narrow or fundamentalist backgrounds may identify with this epithet. Essentially, everything in a “truth church” gets boiled down to black-and-white, either-or “facts.” As Monte said, commitment was measured by one’s telling lost souls the “truth.” We were given to pursuing the truth about a theological notion or a biblical fact, and logical propositions were tools of the trade. The “truth” was rather simplistic at times, but I found those who sought and proliferated this kind of “truth” to be quite sincere, by and large.

On the other side of things would be the “grace church” — perhaps even labeled thus — that is much more about the business of gracious acceptance, ostensibly mirroring God’s grace, despite flaws. “Truth” is less significant in the life and teaching patterns of this type of church, possibly because truth churches have burned members of the grace church in the past, and they want no part of such a truth orientation anymore. A “grace church” would be one that knowingly permitted a worship leader to cohabit non-platonically with a fiance before marriage (not that I’ve ever heard of such an egregiously amoral decision . . . ahem) because, after all, “it’s God’s place to judge, not ours.”

With these admittedly sketchy descriptions, perhaps the point is made that “truth” is not always truth, and “grace” is not always grace.

Back now to Cox’s presentation.  He offered that

1. truth without grace isn’t truth (those who have experienced truth used as a billy-club know this well)
2. grace without truth isn’t true grace (if we fully accept the relativism of our time, “all we can do is smile at people in Jesus’ name”)

John 1 poetically presents a compelling verbal portrait of the Christ, and in the process, paints Him as the one in Whom was found grace and truth. What a combination!

Old phrases don’t die

Much of the time, tried-and-true old phrases bug me.  Christianese annoys.

One old expression comes to mind every so often, though, and although it is dated-sounding, it does not bug me:  “traveling mercies.”  As so many college students depart from their campuses, and as so many of the rest of us travel here & there during the next couple of weeks, God, smile on us all with traveling mercies.

And may those mercies be but a dim reflection of Your over-arching, utter mercy on all of us who are Yours.

This world shall pass away

When we are brought alive by faith, we know that our dying age—with its wars and exploitation and dehumanization, with its dictators and despots, with its popes and spiritual potentates–shall pass away; indeed, the judgment of God has already been passed upon it. – Franklin Littell, “The Power of the Restoration Vision,” in The Primitive Church in the Modern World, ed. Richard T. Hughes.

This rather apocalyptic worldview doesn’t mesh well with the comparatively premillennial view of the founder of the “Christian institution” (see post on “What Is Christian?”) that gives me a paycheck every two weeks. Ol’ Willard J. is known to have signed letters “Yours for fixing up this world”; and I think he believed, not unlike the earlier restorer Alexander Campbell, that contributing to a sort-of golden age of human improvement would eventually usher in a millennial reign of Jesus on this planet. As a more apocalyptic thinker, I’m not of that mentality. It’s not the halcyon days of the Enlightenment that energize me; it’s the Eden of Genesis. It’s not a questionable theology of the millennium that compels me; it’s the call of Revelation to an eternal spiritual existence in the presence of the Almighty.

Some of the eco-Nazis and liberal social scientists and other rebels-with-causes latch onto Willard’s words as though fixing up the world is what God wants us to do. No, no. It’s not that fixing things or saving things or taking care of things is bad–far from it.  But God wants us to play redemptive roles in people’s lives for the sake of the next world, not this one. That doesn’t mean we should play fast and loose with resources in this world; it just means that this world is not our home.

I’m not intending to disrespect the ostensibly good intentions of the reputedly pure-hearted Willard J. It’s just that I’m not interested in fixing up this one so we can say it’s good enough to live in forever. I’m interested in stewardship of all I’ve been entrusted with, so that God will say to me, “Well done, good and faith-filled servant. Enter into my rest.”

I’m persuaded that our age, our earth, our cosmos are dying entities. If my hermeneutical guess is correct (and I stand with a large number on this question) . . . if the world will indeed die, it is not a scriptural given that it must be resuscitated. Rather, the reality of the eventual death of this system and all its potentates urges us all the more to cry Marana tha!

(Dis)unity and Ephesians 4

A recent public reader recited the familiar “seven ones” passage from Ephesians 4 – one Lord, one faith, one baptism, etc. The sermonizer that followed referred in passing to the seven “ones,” appearing to suggest that they would be easy to unite around.  Surely these are part of the doctrinal core, and yet if we pick on one of those — baptism — we find a fairly large spectrum of opinion that surrounds it.  Despite the speaker’s rather glib unification of Roman and Protestant doctrines, it is clear that there is no appreciable unity among Christian believers around baptism.  Some think it’s a thing you do to babies, for crying out loud, and some don’t even understand that literal baptism of infants would be abuse, since the very word means “immersion.”

Leaving alone for now the obvious desirability of spiritual unity of purpose, can we admit that it’s a pie-in-the-sky notion that finds its hope in any doctrinal unity among humans?

And yet biblically based Christian faith continues to be my pursuit.  For me, there can be no other kind.  Restoring this kind of faith takes courage . . . which I’ll bet Thomas Campbell had a lot of when he penned the Declaration and Address.  I’ll write a bit on this document shortly, but for now, let me say that it is not a creed, by any stretch.  It is, rather, a clarion call to biblically based Christianity, quite apart from reliance on creeds.

Musings on creeds

As a sort of prelude to my plan to write an installment or two about the 200-year-old Declaration and Address of Thomas Campbell (before the nice, round anniversary-year-number expires), I thought I would speak briefly to a couple of Campbell’s son Alexander’s notions — namely,

1. that a spiritual “fact” is what God has said or done, whereas “doctrines” and “opinions” are theories about facts; and
2. that believers could expect to unite around the facts, but not around doctrines and opinions.

Begging Alex’s pardon, I don’t think it’s all that simple.  After more than 150 years of the American Restoration Movement, some would say it failed, and others would say it was hampered or corrupted, but I doubt anyone would claim grand success based on Campbell’s ideals.  Something could be wrong with the plea, or something could be wrong with the working-out of it, or both.

A large — and I do mean large — part of me craves attention to the Bible alone as the only rational basis for Christian unity.  Recently I came upon the Apostles’ Creed again, and I found it to be almost agreeable, but not quite.  (It must be the other well-known creed to which I take a couple more exceptions.)  The word “creed” is probably related to the Latin “credo,” which is simply a statement of belief.  On the surface, no problem with that.  Why not state, or sing, what we believe?  What bothers me about any creed is its superimposition on top of scripture and the resultant authority that the creeds take on, over the years.  While some of the creedalized beliefs are rather foundational, others seem a bit more suppositional — representing layers on top of the scriptural foundation.

So what happens if we say “I’ll take the scriptures as my ‘only rule of faith and practice’”?  It may not even be possible, although many of us try this, or at least claim to be trying it.

In my brief time on the planet, I suppose I’ve worshipped with two or three hundred churches and have been in the buildings of another 100.  (This relatively large number has to do with having travelled with a Christian college chorus, having lived in 8 states, and having been blessed with a good deal of travel.)  I would testify that no church in my experience has ever manifest success in having complete doctrinal or practical unity.  In fact, I would suggest that neither doctrinal nor practical unity is even possible, in this life.

Tomorrow:  (Dis)unity and Ephesians 4, with (dis)respect to infant baptism

Broken record

I’ve taken exception to prayer lists before, but perhaps never with such explicit examples.

The following is an actual list of “prayer requests,” published in a church bulletin under the heading “Remember in Prayer …,” with the names removed:

• ______ will have surgery on her legs on Monday.
• _______ request prayers for ______ who is recovering from a bone marrow transplant.
• Keep the family of _______ in your prayers. Her funeral service was yesterday.
• _______ is home with _______ recovering after surgery.
• _______ dad was hospitalized, and now going to a rehab clinic to undergo breathing therapy and learn to deal with his anxiety. He has fluid on the lungs and congestive heart failure. _______ asks that we pray for healing, patience and hope for his dad.
• _______ , _______’s mother-in-law, had surgery to remove the benign brain tumor. Pray for her healing as well as the family as they care for her.
• _______ is ill.
• Continue to pray for _______, the _______s’ son-in-law, as his cancer is getting worse and he cannot have any more chemo.
• _______ has a sinus infection.
  ————————————————————————
  Continue to Pray for:
• _______ as he is to begin radiation treatment for cancer.
• _______, _______ ’s girlfriend, has advance stages of Lyme disease.
• _______, _______’s niece, blood count is improving, but still needs our prayers.
• _______, ______’s granddaughter, is still waiting for the transplant surgery.
• Continue to pray for _______
• Prayers are requested for _______ who is not doing well.
• _______ is in St. Francis Hospital.
• Military overseas: _______ , _______ , _______ , _______ , _______
• Our mission efforts—_______ , _______ , _______ , etc.
• The leaders of our country, the men & women serving in the military and their families.
• Our elders, deacons, and minister

For me, a list such as the above has a few results or effects (not many of them intended):

1. It’s a convenient list to print or post to help me remember to pray for these people.
2. It produces guilt for not remembering so-and-so.
3. The appearance is solidified that this church is a nice, “conservative” church. (See last four bullets in particular.)
4. More than the above, I find myself feeling that some of these function more as announcements to humans than as matters for God. Can “prayer lists” be glorified gossip columns?
5. Perhaps foremost, I’m persuaded that prayer lists rarely touch the garment’s hem. We announce as “prayer requests” those items that are relatively easy to say in public, but we don’t pray about deeper matters.

Maybe it’s because I’ve experienced way too much of the catatonic nature than can typify churches. But I’d wager that only 5 or 10 souls used the above list as a simple reminder to pray in strong faith to the Lord of hosts, of healing, of comfort.

If you think I’m pessimistic, you’ve probably lived fewer years than I, and/or have been in fewer churches, or you’re simply optimistic. At their best, prayer requests are sincere urgings for believing siblings to ask God for something. At their worst, they can be rote announcement bits that put the very idea of prayer to sleep in some of us. God wants to hear prayer, but I doubt that He wants our “prayer lists” themselves to have the breath of life breathed into them, so that can live on their own as Christian entities in their own right.

Even when they’re used in proper perspective, I doubt that He wants prayer lists to be the extent of our praying.

Now, would someone pick up the needle and move it to the next groove? It’s really not my intent to annoy the “prayer warriors” out there. I’d rather sing a different song over here….

Just another Sunday

Today, we worshipped with gathered saints.  I led worship in song and through the spoken word.  My first focus was gathering; my second was loving and praising the Lord (that really did represent a specific intent, regardless of the careless uses of the phrase “praise the Lord”); a third focus was the open call of Jesus and the fact that, world over, believers in Him were worshipping throughout the day.  Besides two songs that begin with the words “We praise Thee, O God” and “I Love You, Lord” and praise words to the tune of “‘Tis So Sweet To Trust in Jesus,” we sang this song:

Again the Lord of light and life awakes the kindling ray,

Unseals the eyelids of the morn and pours increasing day.

Ten thousand diff’rent lips shall join to hail this welcome moren

Which scatters blessings from its wings to nations yet unborn.

I used four of my own stanzas to familiar songs and hope those words helped to perk the believers’ spirits up. New procedural protocols led me, at the last minute, to drop “Lord, Reign in Me” as the closing song.

Today in our small group, we discussed the first part of Matthew 20.  A reasonable discussion, if marred by a couple of inconsequential tangents.

Today, there were mild “downs,” and there were some nice “ups,” such as friends’ expressions of care about concerns of my past week.  And I did feel fairly good about my part in leading worship this morning.

I played for a Christmas ceremony this evening.  Seems like there’s never quite enough time to take care of household duties, catch up on things missed, etc.  But what I did today was pretty much worthwhile.  A good day.

Today is the First Day of the Week.  May our spirits remember what many of our calendars don’t seem to know anymore.

What is “Christian”?

A couple of years ago, a happenstance conversation involved the comparison of our Christian college community with another one. I quipped that I’d perceived the other college wasn’t as overtly Christian as ours. The other person begged to differ. I pushed the point a little (way beyond my first-hand knowledge of the other college). He said, “Well, OK, maybe,” and we moved on.

More years ago than that, though, I had come to the opinion that there can really be no such thing as a Christian institution. Inasmuch as the entity being considered is an institution, it is, after all, a business, or an organized establishment of some kind. The business elements, the organizednesses and protocols . . . these things may be necessary but are a-Christian aspects. People are, or are not, Christian; whereas institutions, at least in one sense, are neither Christian nor non-Christian.

But what is “Christian”? In my early years, I was conditioned to think that a “Christian” was “like the Christ.” (These days, I tend to use the definite article before the word “Christ,” since it is much more a divine title than a name, but that’s beside the point.)

A little later, I came to prefer “of the Christ” as the meaning of “Christian.” This may on first impression seem an awkward phrasing, but allow me to illustrate. If one is a Bostonian, he is not necessarily like Boston; rather, he is of Boston. He hails from there, lives there, and in a sense belongs there. He is a Bostonian. A Latvian is not like all of Latvia, but she is in some sense of or from Latvia.

A Christian, then, would not necessarily be like Jesus, although that would of course be the goal of any devoted disciple. Becoming like Him is a growth process that many of us choose, fail at, restart, and minimally succeed in.

A Christian’s being of Christ means that s/he belongs to Him, is of His family, is by association connected to His identity. If I’m even close to the right track here, then another question is soon begged: given that one might move to Boston and thereby become a Bostonian, how does one effect becoming a Christian? How does a human make a move, a choice, that leads to taking on Jesus’ identity?

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. – Col. 2:9-12, NIV

So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land! – Rom. 6:1-3a, The Message

It is not for the purpose of illustrating that immersion is significant in the conversion process that I chose the above two passages. That is rather a given. It is that the NC scriptures identify a time when one’s being Christian begins. There is a time, a way, to become Christ-ian. Although God has foreknowledge and has predestined that the group of those who accept His gift will be His people, being Christian is not chosen for a person; the person chooses it!

Aside: the reader may recognize a disconnect here with some “Christian systems” (see opening two paragraphs above) and with other religions into which one is assumed to be born. Isn’t it curious that both common Roman Catholic theology and Calvinistic theology assume, either philosophically or practically, that God does the primary choosing? Didn’t the latter arise in protest of the former? At any rate, it is not God’s sovereignty to which I take exception. It is the notion that He would force faith on an unwilling or even unwitting soul that chafes. God offers a beneficent, authoritative covenant, and the willing soul accepts it.

To accept the grace-offering of God, identifying with Jesus . . . to be one of His . . . to be of Christ . . . this is the crux. And then, once that identification is complete, the disciple will obviously want to be like Him in all possible respects. That’s what the process of discipleship entails — becoming more like the rabbi, (before and) after having been identified as His.

Do we really take it literally?

In an essay some years ago, Leroy Garrett dealt with the question “Is the Bible to be taken literally?”

It is an odd question, come to think about it. I am not sure that such question is asked about any other book. . . .

A suitable answer would seem to be, regardless of the nature of the book or document, I will take it for what it says. It may not always be easy to determine what is meant by what is said, but that remains the intent of the reader, to ascertain the meaning.

An amusing anecdote reveals how [Alexander] Campbell [a 19th-century reformer] considered this. Noting a theologian’s use of John 11:28 where Martha calls to her sister and says, “The teacher has come and is calling for you,” in which he found such weighty Calvinistic notions as the incarnation and the effectual call, Campbell called to him a child playing outside his study door and read the passage to her in context, asking her what it said. The child replied that it is saying that one sister (Martha) is telling the other sister (Mary) that Jesus had arrived and wanted to see her, simply that.

Campbell saw the theologian as muddying the water with “mystical” interpretation and sheer nonsense, while the child in her simplicity applied common sense and thus read aright.
- Leroy Garrett, PhD, “Is the Bible To Be Taken Literally? (Or ‘Common-Sense Hermeneutics’)”

God’s authority and scripture

The following are the words (which I like very much!) of Leroy Garrett.  Not unlike my unpopular feelings about the terms “prayer list” and “prayer request” and “keep her in your prayers” (I tend toward admittedly awkward expressions such as “matters to take to God” and “thing to ask God about” and “keep beseeching God to handle X for her”), Leroy’s thoughts here go to the source, encouraging recognition that God is primary, foundational.

While I definitely believe in the authority of the Bible, it is an authority that is derived from a higher authority and is always subject to that higher authority which is God himself (emphasis mine –bc).  The Bible always points to the authority of God rather than to its own authority. . . .  Moreover, there is an ambiguity about it, for some things in the Bible are more authoritative and other things, if by “authority” he referred to laws and principles to live by.

Paul had little to say about authority, but he gives us one pungent line in Romans 13:1, “There is no authority except from God.”  We can only conclude that if he thought of Scripture as authoritative (he did have what we call the “Old Testament”), it would only be in an indirect way. . . .

One way for us to see what was authoritative to the early Christians is to project ourselves into their time frame.  If you were a member of the Church in Antioch of Syria in 40 A.D., what would have been authoritative to you?  Your only Bible would be what we call the Old Testament . . .

The greatest fallacy of all . . . is to equate our theories and deductions with the authority of the Bible. . . .

- Leroy Garrett, PhD, “Fallacies Related to ‘The Authority of the Bible’”