Monday Morning Music Ministry

3-18-19

I am not sure whether the American trait of consumerism has metastasized on the body of our character. Or, as a prime suspect, post-modernism has infected religion. Or, in the latest of history’s inexorable pendulum-swings, heresy rears its ugly head once again.

Of course it is a combination of all three tendencies (and more sociopathologies), the main debate being what factors predominate. A movable feast… or infestation, I reckon.

To me, the causes are easy to spot. And the effects are hard to confront; harder still to ameliorate; virtually impossible to reverse. Regarding the reversal of the crisis in contemporary religion, I look not to the Bible (which assures me that God can bring revival) but to history books (which reminds me that His apostate people seldom seek it).

Christianity in the West largely has become a business of spiritual specialties, no longer a smorgasbord of nuanced beliefs but, virtually, a food fight. Denominations, hundreds of them, are not in themselves the problem. When the church split in two – Roman and Eastern Orthodox – that largely was political and geographic, hardly a schism. When the Roman church grew corrupt, it fostered Reform, thank God, resulting in denominations. Eventually, denominationalism. Sometimes good (Solo Scriptorum) and sometimes bad (self-styled junior popes and contorted creeds).

I think the root of all these evils – of all evil – is the Sin of Pride. Going back to the Garden, it undergirds every other sin we routinely decry: hating, lying, lusting, unforgiveness, the rest. It is why God rebuked and chastised those whom He loved. It is why He codified the Ten Commandments. It is why He sent prophets. It is why Jesus taught. It is the reason that the Holy Ghost was sent. It is why the early Church formulated Creeds.

Pride. The belief that we know better than God; that His rules might be right for others, bit not us; that – frankly – we know better than God.

The human mind has an infinite capacity to fool itself. This dangerous attribute becomes deadly when combined with a society that is encouraging, indifferent, or enabling of these self-destructive impulses, as now.

Churches no longer squabble over whether Christ’s blood is present or symbolic in the Lord’s Supper. Or whether we have free will or are predestinated. Or if the Gifts of the Spirit are for today.

Just see what many, many churches and denominations are advocating in North America and Europe these days; or countenancing under their watch –

Toleration of homosexuality, abortion, adultery, divorce. “Hating the sin, loving the sinner” often has yielded to acceptance, and even enablement.

Doctrinal views of heaven, hell, forgiveness, and sin have been abandoned or have been stretched beyond traditional recognition.

Personal – that is, spiritual – crises seldom are addressed with spiritual answers in today’s churches. Sociological solutions of “acceptance,” and the New Morality (which is no morality at all), are offered instead. One’s problems originate with society or tradition or intolerance or faulty upbringing… never one’s own sinning.

The secular ingredients of these poisonous formulas always include an appeal to Pride, and seldom an acknowledgment of God. It is almost axiomatic, isn’t it, that flouting God’s clearly presented Will is self-destructive? God has sent Commandments and prophets and teachers and inspired scribes and councils, and His Son – out of love, and for our well-being.

Why do we scramble and scratch, confuse and contort, when He has laid out beautiful paths for us?

Christianity is shrinking in North America and Europe. Thank God it is expanding – sometimes by the proverbial leaps abounds – south of the Equator, in Africa and South America, in Southeast Asia, and even in China despite persecution and killings.

And the reaction of the contemporary churches in our countries that are dotted with cathedrals and church spires?

If you don’t like a spiritual belief, ignore it. If rules regarding certain sins are unpleasant, regard 2000 years of Christianity as “backwards” and “mistaken.” If Bible passages and sermons make you uneasy… move on; elsewhere, or to nowhere at all.

In that last option, people choose to move on, but it very possibly is to hell. To those who pick and choose what they should believe, that destination is not theirs to decide. The truth does not depend on your opinion of it.

+ + +

Click: Satan’s Jewel Crown – Bruce Springsteen

8-13-18

Years ago our family worshiped at a neighborhood church in Connecticut. By “neighborhood” I don’t imply small; it was where a lot of our friends spent their Sunday mornings… and Wednesday nights, and Saturday mornings for Bible studies, and many weekend evenings for fellowship and book review groups. A thriving church.

The pastor had been converted to a fervent Christianity in his youth by Billy Graham; and, ironically, when he “graduated” from the church he joined the staff of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in North Carolina. He was a wonder pastor; more, a great teacher.

One of the adult Sunday School classes was in his office. Changing topics and lessons, but my wife and I were in the sessions about some of the Pauline letters – the Epistles of Paul on his fascinating and varied missionary journeys.

My wife and I had recently, in a different church and under different teaching, become Pentecostals, believing in – accepting – the Gifts of the Spirit as described in the Book of Acts; listed in I Corinthians 13; and elsewhere in the New Testament. We had traveled to crusades held by Jimmy Swaggart, the great R W Schambach, Kenneth Copeland, and others; and some couples in this new fellowship had, with us; and were intrigued by ministries of tongues, healing, wisdom, prophecy, and such.

There are 12 such “Gifts of the Spirit” listed carefully in the first letter to the church at Corinth. Now, this new church of which I speak, was not a Pentecostal church; it was Evangelical Free. And the good pastor was not Pentecostal, evidenced by his answer to the question posed by one of the couples, “What do you think of the 12 Gifts of the Spirit?”

He answered, “Well, they are in the Bible, yes; but I have a problem with several of them.” Wise-guy Rick immediately asked, “Howe many of the 10 Commandments do you have a problem with?”

My timing might have been that of a wise guy, but my point was, and is, serious. I know (believe me; from hundreds of discussions and debates) I know the arguments of the anti-Pentecostals – that the Gifts of the Spirit were specific “ministry gifts” for the First-Century Church; that such miracles were withdrawn by the Giver of the Gifts after the Apostolic Age, after the Apostles were all martyred. And so forth. Of course the Gospels say no such thing; the Books of Acts recorded miracle-gifts throughout; there is no hint of expiration-dates in the Epistles of Paul and other writers; no warnings in the Book of Revelation. In fact John wrote there of the End of Times, not the End of Gifts.

Beyond my spiritual snarkiness just concluded, I do not, here, want to litigate the question that will be solved to our satisfaction when we arrive in Glory.

But I do want us all to consider the manner of Christian religiosity that my tale represents. All of us, me too, and conservative and liberal Christians; Catholics and Protestants; evangelical and Pentecostal and fundamentalist and “seeker” and post-modern and Orthodox; in other words, all human beings… practice at the altar of a Pick-and-Choose belief system.

In a way, of course, that is another way to describe hypocrisy; but few of us intend to be hypocrites, especially in matters of core beliefs. These days, it is explained away as “relativism” in many places, in the way (it seems to me) that skin cancer could be called an itch. Now, I recognize that this dilemma is not restricted to religious beliefs, but political affiliations or even patriotic fervor do not have rules that are strict.

“Strict”? Yes. We – in the 21st-century West – scarcely regard our spiritual affiliations as requiring strict adherence. As recently as a century ago, this would have been regarded as anathema by most of those spiritual affiliations – denominations.

My daughter, a youth pastor, has been hired by churches where she was not required to know denominations’ doctrines, yet was obliged to teach children. Not Luther’s Catechism in a Lutheran church, not Calvin’s Institutes in a Presbyterian. Sort of like joining the Boy Scouts without having to be a boy… oh, wait.

To take to its logical extension, what is the point of systematic theology? God gave humankind the Ten Commandments, not the Ten Suggestions. Jesus taught; He did not propose debates. When He healed and forgave, He said “Go thou and sin no more,” not “Hey, whatever; go for it.” When talked about the necessity to be Born Again, He did not say, “No one gets to Father except through Me… and Buddha and Tuesday Meditation classes and Oprah.”

The culture seduces us; and the double-edged swords of modernism and intellectual vanity, and secularist education. And the mistaken trust that everything in life is either settled democratically… or according to whatever the heck feels right to us.

Think of every challenge that might confront you, or disaster that might threaten you. You might pick a certain reaction, or choose a way to respond… but the serious things in life are not defined – cannot be defined – by a pick-and-choose acceptance or rejection. Life is real; life is earnest, as Longfellow tellingly wrote.

And nothing is more real than the disposition of your soul for eternity, and your respect for the word of God.

+ + +

For Nancy

Click: The Church’s One Foundation

I have had the privilege recently of reviewing the manuscript of a novel that might be (ought to be) published in the near future. I won’t give away the ending (or the beginning) (or the middle) (or the title) (or the characters) (or the message)…

… but I’d love to give away one of the subtexts, which is to beware of organized religion.

Speaking for myself, I tend to distrust anything organized, but that’s another matter. Now the world, which looks for any stick with which to beat Christianity, invariably points to religious wars as pro forma warning-labels against spirituality. In truth, however, most “religious” wars have probably been waged using religion only as an excuse.

Moreover, the serious attacks, excesses and atrocities committed in the name of Jesus… do not mean that Jesus would commit them. The world too often forgets that Jesus is the standard, True and Holy. When people scurry around, constructing and construing, blaming and naming, if they fall short of that Standard they dishonor themselves more than they dishonor the Savior.

Before the “amens” roll, it is good to recognize that Christians, also, forget this fact too often. The sad truth — the more important deal than wars and doctrinal arguments (although doctrine is important) — is that the church often fails its mission in direct proportion to the extent it is “organized” religion. Youth pastors who serve (Barna Research says) an average of only 1.5 years — what heartache must that represent? Churches that don’t preach the whole Word. Children abused by priests. Pastors involved in sexual scandals. Judgmentalism. “Open-Mindedness” so open that theologians’ brains fall out. Politics, bureaucracy, and pride on church boards and committees. Is this the church Jesus wanted? — the Bride of Christ awaiting His return?

“What sort of music accompanies this heavy message?” Well, it’s the same message, but a more light-hearted delivery. Hilarious, in fact. But the chorus that Buddy Greene returns to in this living-room get-together is the message for this week, and has been for 2000 years: “Jesus — That’s All!”

You can beware — that is, be wary — of organized religion’s pitfalls by keeping this song in your mental iPod!

Click:  Denomination Blues