Ivory soap and purity

Many lunar cycles back into TV commercial history, Ivory soap was billed as being 99 & 44/100 percent pure.  If the ads did nothing else, they succeeded in implanting that particular fraction in an entire population’s heads.

The interest in “pure and natural” products appeared to plateau for a while but seems to have surged in recent years.  For instance, in my conference hotel this past weekend, the brand for toiletry items was not “Herbalessence” or “Garnier” or “Clairol Scentsation,” but simply “Pure”–a good management/marketing choice that is sure, these days, to make no one frown.  I mean, who would look at “Pure” shampoo or soap and say, “Bah.  I wanted artificial!”?

Frankly, though, I tire of my own compulsion, now pretty well ingrained, to check ingredients lists and to purchase products based on their relative naturalness, regardless of function.  Yet I cannot escape this compulsion, and my ever-watchful spouse eggs it on.  (Oh, yes, we buy fresh, natural eggs from a local farmer, and these eggs are both better and cheaper; this combination of higher quality and lower cost is unfortunately rare.)  Pure and natural is usually a good thing, and I’ll take even three-quarters natural, let alone 99 & 44/100 percent.

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How pure is our Christianity?  Or what may be infused into it, causing it to be less than 100% pure?  What influences must we acknowledge beyond those of the Lord Jesus and his apostles?

In the wake of the tornadic disasters across our country, I mean no disrespect to the Michigan couple who appeared on a TV news show last weekend.  They were interviewed briefly because they had decided to drive (or maybe ride a motorcycle) to Marysville, IN, to help clean up.  This seemingly pure-minded, genuinely helpful couple were given precisely two sentences (one for each of them) on national TV.  They seemed 100% sincere to me — no fronts, no immediately identifiable agendas or axes to grind.  They were not particularly appealing to behold, but not disgustingly unappealing, either.  I did detect some artificial sweetener, though.  Here’s a facsimile of what I heard.

Reporter with mic:  Why did you come here?

Lady:  The Lord told us to.

[Intervening blah-blah, not engaging the comment just made in the slightest.]

Reporter:  So you have a lot of compassion for these people.

Man:  That’s the way Christians are supposed to be.

Now, let’s put their words into the Sincerity Centrifuge.  My “purity” rating of the man’s response:  94%.  (No one’s much better than that.)  The woman’s words, though, seem tainted by something less than genuine.  Note that I said her words are tainted, not her heart or intentions.  Again, from what I could detect based on a total of 30 or 45 seconds of TV spotlight, they seemed like genuine, decent people.  But the words of the woman are doubtless influenced by what I’ll call false charismatism.  Whether it was a live preacher/pastor or a book or a televangelist, or a combination, something or someone with a lot of charisma, and probably a belief in continuing charismatic gifts to boot, has influenced this woman to think and say something false about God.  And the saccharin left a false aftertaste in my mouth.

It’s not that I don’t believe God could have said to her, “Linda, you and Larry need to get on your Harley and get on down there to Marysville.  Go on Saturday.  If you leave in the late morning, you’ll avoid a traffic jam around Indianapolis and still be there to help before sundown.”  No, the question is not whether He could tell them such a thing.  It’s that I don’t believe he did tell them anything.  I want to be utterly clear on this distinction–both for the sake of my credibility and “hearing” in the world, and for the sake of my eternal soul, because I would be on shaky spiritual ground if I were to suggest that God doesn’t have such power.  However, if I’m right that no inter-spiritual-plane communication occurred between God and Linda, please entertain with me the suggestion that her words (although not the intent, or the heart, necessarily) are less than pure.

Now, all this armchair judging may seem purely cynical or artificially concocted.  Maybe so.  So I’ll leave my half-cocked assessments and move to analysis of effects.  It is my feeling that if the man’s words alone had been aired, at least a bit of credit would have accrued to our Lord’s account in the minds of non-Christians who heard and saw.  In other words, this small deposit to the account would have been nice, especially given all the liquidation that occurs on an almost-daily basis because of the bias of most journalists.

On the other hand, I think the woman’s words had the net effect of debiting the “Christianity account.”  Anyone with an anti-Christian bias (or even some with a pro-Christian bias, e.g., yours truly) would have been turned off by that unattested¹ assertion that God had spoken to her directly.  The effect on the world’s perception of Christianity was a negative one, and all because of something less than pure.  It is my opinion that the assertion that “God told me X,” no matter how sincere and well intended, does more to harm pure Christianity than it does to build it up.

Again:  what superimposed influences must we acknowledge within Christianity?  What false sweeteners or other flavorings or preservatives have been added?  How pure and natural is our current concept of our faith?

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¹ I just decided to refrain from adding the modifier “rather silly” here.  (The reader will kindly disregard the preceding note.  But maybe not the next sentence.)  The notion that God speaks words to humans today brings the careful listener a little too close to the lunacy of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, the silliness of people who falsely predict the end of the world, etc.

² For those with some additional reading time on their hands (I don’t know many such people, but maybe they exist somewhere), I commend to you many of the writings of Roger Thoman on “simple Christianity.”

http://www.rogerthoman.com/

http://simplechurchjournal.com/

‘Tis no monster

Today’s post is #666 on this blog.  I want to state clearly that I have no superstitions about this number, do not adhere to numerology, and believe the number 666 has been given far too much attention in Christian teaching and in non-Christian treatment of Christian teaching.  666.  666!  Six-hundred sixty-six. See?  I’m not afraid of it.

This #666 gives me a fine opportunity to state a bit of what I believe about the book of Revelation!

• I think Revelation was written to comfort, to instruct, and to bolster, not to alarm.
• I think some of Revelation’s symbolisms will probably always elude us.
• I am somewhat interested in pursuing exactly what is meant by the “four living creatures” or by the “seventh bowl of wrath,” but not as interested as in understanding more about Jesus.
• I suspect that there is no impending doom related to a terrible monster or “beast.”  I suspect that the personification inherent in the word “beast” has misled millions.

If I had to guess, I would suggest that most of the events described prophetically in Revelation have already happened.  I draw this primarily from the teaching of one man, which is usually a dangerous thing, but it just makes so much sense that I don’t feel that bad about it.  Essentially, Jim McGuiggan convinced me, through his repeated emphasis on two passages, that Revelation is primarily a revelation about the first century, not about some still-impending events:

1.  “The time is at hand.” (1:3)

Letting alone the actual happenings of the last two millennia for a moment, if John believed he was writing about 2,000 or more years later, I simply don’t think he would have written this.

2.  “The beast you saw was, and is not, but is about to come up from the abyss and then go to destruction.” (17:8)

McGuiggan has stated that this verse refers to certain Roman emperors of the first century—namely,

• • Nero—the “beast” that was and is not (he ruled and persecuted Christians in the 60s)
  • Domitian—the soon-coming manifestation, as it were, of the same “beast” that was about to come up from the abyss (in other words, the next persecuting emperor was still to come, and the period in which the book was written was between the two)

Revelation, then, according to McGuiggan, was written in 78-80 AD, during the reign of Vespasian, and not in 64-65 (Nero’s time) or in 96 (Domitian’s time).

Whenever Revelation was written … I firmly believe there was/is no Satanic, dragon-like monster.  The “beast” of Rev. 13:1-8f appears to be representational–like so many other symbols in Revelation.  Compare the wording of 13:7b to that of 5:9b, too:  those over whom the beast supposedly had authority are said, FIRST, to have been purchased for God with the blood of the Christ.  How can 5:9b square with a fear-monger’s (or money-grubber’s) notion that the beast is still to come and has power?  To think that “beast” refers to the past, but then-future, fiercely persecuting emperors of the first century makes as much sense as any other idea I’ve heard on this.  However, I offer this caution:  I know more about most other books in the New Covenant collection than Revelation, and what I know about the others is pathetic, so don’t take my word for it.  And whatever God wants to do as part of “last things” and “end times” is fine by me.

Whatever you think–whether you fear that the number 666 represents a yet-to-come man (you might think this if you aren’t  yet aware that there’s no definite article before “man” in the original language in Rev. 13:18) or a future, more pressing, spiritual persecution . . . you need not fear the beast if you belong to Christ, because you will stand.

Some things never change

The name “Jim Bakker” was once a household byword, representing all that was repulsive with televangelism.  I had 15 minutes of busywork recently and saw that his new show (post-scandal, post-prison, new iteration of the Kingdom of Bakker) was airing, so I turned it on for accompaniment.

Some things never change.  He spent seven solid minutes discussing and hawking a statue of Jesus that he was trying to push on unsuspecting followers.  The fact that his new headquarters is near Branson, MO, where a lot of money finds its home, along with a lot of retirees, doesn’t plead a case for purity of intent.   Nothing Jim said in this seven minutes had any substance to it.  The singer’s subsequent suggestion to “fall in love with Jesus” fell on deaf ears in my room.

Christians need to extract themselves completely from anything that has anything to do with, or remotely resembles, commercial enterprise.  Commercialism distracts us and turns off the rest of the world.