Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-7-13

The man was an “average believer,” or maybe an average non-believer. A lot of people find themselves in spiritual comfort-zones in Post-Christian societies. When we are told that we are born as basically good beings; that sin is a matter of contemporary, and changing, points of view; that “doing good” should guarantee our place in Heaven (if there is a Heaven); that a loving God (if there is a God) would never send one of His children to hell (if there is a hell); and so forth – when people are told such things, they easily can resist appeals to repentance. To deal with their problems.

When churches themselves, over and above the secular media and the community of counselors, hold such ideas, that people can barely navigate the turbulent seas of morality and spirituality is a certainty. And a certainty – as with this man we visit today – to be insecure. More: frequently, if privately, terrified.

He was having a heart-to-heart talk with God. He was not convinced that God existed – through the years he went back and forth on that issue – but it seemed to be a good way to organize his thoughts.

“God, I read Rob Bell’s book ‘Love Wins,’ and I liked it. I know it is criticized for being ‘Universalist,’ arguing that You will keep everyone from hell in the end. Can I confess? I liked it because I thought I found a book that will support my desire to avoid the Hard Questions that You ask. In other words, a loophole.

He thought he heard God answer, “It IS My desire that none should perish. But My Son the Messiah said that no one shall come to Me except through Him.”

The man said, “I know these things; anyway, I have heard them. But this Heaven thing… I don’t know if it exists. Or if it so important. And hell? Sometimes it’s like I’ve already been through hell here on earth. Why is this so important?” He grew agitated. “I once heard Rob Bell speak and he criticized that old hymn I used to love, ‘I’ll Fly Away,’ and he said he wishes he could rip it out of every songbook.”

He continued; “Rob Bell said that we shouldn’t wish for Heaven – we have work to do here on earth. That people who desire Heaven so much are missing the point of being Christ-followers.”

He thought he heard God say, “It is good to hope. Some people cannot identify with the meek and the suffering who seek release. It is well that my Children keep their eyes on Heaven; seek first the Kingdom of God.”

The man felt confused. Does desiring Heaven imply that we should be eager to die? And how much do we do to earn Heaven? “By grace you are saved, not by works,” he heard God say.

He sensed God challenging him, even as he doubled down on his skepticism.

God said: “I have sent a Perfect example to guide you through life, to Heaven.”

The man said: “Perfect? Jesus was arrested, thrown in prison, and executed like a criminal.”

God said: “Look, I have made it such that a strong, loving hand will take yours.”

The man said: “That hand? It is bloody, and has a hole in it.”

God said: “The fullness of the Godhead is in this Guide I have sent you.”

The man said: “I know all the verses, God, but, still, if Jesus ‘died for me,’ why am I still unhappy? Why is there still injustice in the world? Why the sickness, cruelty, hunger? Why should I think about some far-away Heaven?”

For a while he didn’t hear the voice he thought was God’s. Had it all been a dream? Surely He hadn’t stumped the Creator of the Universe!

Presently he thought he heard the same, warm voice as before: “There are already multitudes of angels who know not sin nor sorrow; but neither do they know the joy of overcoming… of salvation. You are not an angel; you are more precious to Me. My children, like you, will be touched by pain and sorrow – that “vale of tears” – because there IS sin in the world. But, accepting My salvation, you can know joy unspeakable in this life. And thereby know that there is a mansion in Heaven, awaiting you.”

And, “This world’s people once knew Me as so holy as to be unapproachable. Works, sacrifice, rituals – humankind tried it all. I wanted My children to know Me through a humbler manifestation. A poor baby, born to despised parents, living as a man, then as a servant and teacher; a healer; a Savior; finally a resurrected and risen Incarnation. If you cannot understand My holy will through this, if you cannot reconcile your duty on earth and your hope of Heaven…”

The man thought the voice trailed off. But he understood things differently. He would walk, and work, and believe, and serve, and be obedient, because he sensed the presence of Guide who would assure him that one day he might “fly away,” but in the meantime – through this “vale of tears” – that Guide would be saying, “Home: Come on home!”

“Home, come on home. Ye who are weary, come home.”
Softly and tenderly calling, “Home, come on home.”

“Home, come on home. Ye who are weary, come home.”
Softly and tenderly calling, “Home, come on home.”

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Today’s musical clip is not “I’ll Fly Away,” nor even the familiar “Softly and Tenderly, Jesus Is calling,” but the beautiful contemporary song “Tenderly Calling,” quoted in the blog essay. It was a song from John Denver’s next-to-last album. The graphics are by the eternally amazing Beanscot.

Click: Tenderly Calling

4-4-11

Another Lenten contemplation.

A recently released book is raising dust in Christian circles. Frankly, the controversy probably is bigger than the book itself, but so it goes. Love Wins by Rob Bell presents the argument that most people, or all people, will eventually be redeemed from hell, if there is a hell, because Jesus’s death was an atonement for all of creation. Eventually, in this life or sometime in Eternity, souls will be persuaded to accept Him.

I believe I have summarized the book properly. One of the author’s tenets is that God is so loving, it seems impossible that He would let people go to hell.

If I have not properly summarized the book, then I have properly summarized dozens of very similar heresies and distortions of scripture from the past 2000 years. In brief, there is a theological proposition called Universalism, generally meaning that everyone since Calvary has been or will be “saved” from punishment – from the penalty of sin and rebellion against God. And maybe even retroactively, before Calvary. Some call it Universalism. I call it Wishful Thinking.

The Lenten season is useful to believers as we contemplate the implications of our sins, our need for salvation, the concept of Jesus’ substitutionary death, the triumph of His overcoming the grave, and the meaning of His ascension to Heaven. The truth of it all.

Another new book attracts attention: Megashift. Author James Rutz presents data to claim that the fastest-growing religion on earth is… Christianity. Counterintuitive to some of us. We sense that Christianity is declining in America and Europe. It is. We are aware that Christians are being persecuted with increasing ferocity in other parts of the world. They are. (This is partly a reaction to Christianity’s growth; and it partly inspires Christianity’s spread) We observe that “mainstream” denominations are shrinking. They are. (The rising tide of believers is mostly independent, Bible-believing, First-Century types; “New Apostolics” is Rutz’s label.)

I believe I have accurately summarized that book’s documentation. These two books illustrate the irony, or at least the evolution, of Christianity today. Many people from predominantly Muslim and Buddhist and Hindu and animist lands, and even from demonic traditions… are now on-fire Christians. These new believers send more missionaries, year after year, to the “Christian West” because of perceived spiritual needs! And traditional white-bread, culturally elite, and intellectually pretentious “Christ-followers” and “communitarians” and “emergents” (they can’t seem to say “Christian” for some reason)… no longer “get it.”

“It” is the way of the cross, the plan of salvation. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Our self-inflicted unrighteousness, which denies us entry to the presence of a holy God, has a provision. We cannot earn it, but Christ offered it: believe in Him and accept His loving assumption of our sins and guilt; and we will be reconciled to God.

Is that hard? It depends upon our response. Are there details about it that we don’t understand? Of course; we are not God. Do we deserve this crazy, illogical, outrageous, unspeakable “pass” against a lifetime of spiritual shortcomings and rebellion?

Of course not. That’s called Love.

That is the love that wins. By God’s grace, He provided a way. If there is no need for repentance, the Bible lies; no element of forgiveness, then Jesus suffered foolishly; no salvation decision, the cross is ridiculed. If mankind will go to Heaven en masse just because we all have pulses, the Easter story is a joke. There would be no reason ever again to sing Amazing Grace.

I will advance a theory of my own, and I hope I properly am consistent with scripture: Jesus was a man who suffered like no other; but as God incarnate, He had the ability to focus His thoughts as He was on the cross. And with all the torments and betrayals, all the billions of people who did live and will live in history, when He was on the cross, I was on His mind. And so were you.

When He looked down, He looked – through eyes encrusted with blood, but also through the years and through many generations in many places – into the individual faces of you and me.

Why in world (literally) would the Son of God endure all this, and offer all this? So that we might accept – believe, confess, and be transformed. Salvation is free, but not cheap, as many have said. Neither should it intentionally be cheapened, not in this Lenten season, or ever.

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Click: You Were On His Mind

3-7-11

The assassination this week of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister of Minorities in Pakistan, is a story that garnered some attention in the news, but for the most part was subsumed by other reports on related issues from the Islamic world.

Shahbaz was the only Christian in the national cabinet, a brave advocate of religious freedom before world forums and in his own land. The news that crowded his murder from the headlines included other assassinations; street protests; Christians being arrested; Muslim factional hatred; Christians fleeing their homelands; government crackdowns; Christian churches being invaded; piracy, kidnappings and murder; and Christian martyrdom, from lowly believers and pastors to prominent officials in several countries.

According to the BBC, “Mr Bhatti, 42, a leader of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), had just left his mother’s home in a suburb of the capital when several gunmen surrounded his vehicle and riddled it with bullets, say witnesses.” He routinely had been receiving death threats for urging reform of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. “Pamphlets by al-Qaeda and Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab, a branch of the Taliban in Pakistan’s most populous province, were found at the scene.” Tehrik-i-Taliban told BBC Urdu they carried out the attack.

Four months ago, Shahbaz said in a video, “I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ who has given His own life for us. I know what is the meaning of [the] cross. And I am following… the cross.” He continued, “I am ready to die for the cross,” speaking these words calmly and with confidence. He knew he was reciting his own epitaph. Shahbaz was not a supernatural prophet – he surely knew the dangers to his life – rather he was a humble servant, an obedient follower.

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross (Matthew 16:24).

Shahbaz correctly pinpointed the center of our world’s coming crisis – not economies nor resources nor pollution; not even religion – but the cross of Jesus Christ. And the persecuted church, in so many of the world’s fiery corners, understands this. Despite the horrible treatment of uncountable Christian martyrs, now approaching one a minute, every day, around the world, that persecuted church is being purified, like gold in a fire.

Some Christians in the West concern themselves with the “Prosperity Gospel,” and debate universalist theories that everyone is going to Heaven, “if there is a Heaven.” But Christ-followers and missionaries and martyrs elsewhere in the world work to “know Christ and make Him known.”

The “crown” is the exclusive focus of too many Christians. Christ promised an abundant life, certainly; but He offered, and warned, and promised, the burden (mysteriously, a glorious burden!) of the “cross.” Plausible Christianity is that the Crown awaits us in Heaven; and the Cross is our lot here.

“It is one thing to kneel at the foot of the cross for forgiveness; it is quite another thing to get on that cross to follow Jesus in His death. But it is the only way to live the resurrected life. This is what it means to be His disciple. When we live the crucified life, nothing can truly harm us. You can’t hurt a dead person.” So wrote a friend, singer/songwriter Becky Spencer, this week. “Our churches are filled with bored, dissatisfied Christians. Not because our God isn’t enough, but because most of them have only visited the cross once for salvation. It is meant to be embraced every day.”

I did not know Shahbaz Bhatti. Three of my close friends did, but I cannot say that I would speak his mind here. However, his murder this week has me thinking more than ever about the persecution of Christians, and our proper response as believers ourselves – response not alone to the situation of martyrs, but response to Christ’s commission. And it all has to do with the Cross, the Cross.

Jesus came to save us from our sins, but not necessarily from the effects of our sins; nor the world’s persecution; nor evil, punishment, or sickness; all because there is sin in the world. And as He offers forgiveness from sin, it might be said that He did not come to grab us from hell or push us into Heaven. His ministry was to keep hell out of people, and put Heaven into us, so to speak. We are to do His work while we are here.

Christians often think we have to “close the deal” and assure that people have eternal life. But all we can do is quote the Promise. To presume that we can do any more might be to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, whose work this really is. Believers, by responding to the invitation to believe on Jesus, have a say in that; and God, of course, is the Judge.

So what is left? To servants like Shabaz Bhatti, and to missionaries in heathen areas (including – think about it – you and me, right in our neighborhoods), our work is to do Christ’s work. Here. And now. Working to keep hell out of people and planting a little Heaven – by sharing belief in Jesus Christ who has given His own life for us, as Shahbaz testified; that He is not just one way, but the way to God – this must be our mission. And our privilege. And our Cross.

Jesus frankly said that the world will hate that message. It hated that message when He spoke it, and He was crucified on the cross. It hates that message when we speak it, and the world will likewise and therefore hate us. To take up the Cross and follow Him is not an option. It is as much of being a Christian as confessing Jesus as Savior.

The Book of Revelation tells us that to add or subtract a word from scripture is anathema, yet I would venture to say that in Heaven another verse has been added this week to Hebrews, Chapter 11. That book is “the Hall of Fame of Faith,” listing great heroes and martyrs of the faith – many of whom did not live to see the fruits of their service and sacrifice. “By faith, Shahbaz…”

God bless you, brother. None of your countrymen will come closer to the Truth through the motives of a dozen cowardly murderers. But I pray that millions will see the Truth through your martyrdom, your purity of faith, your service to the cross of Christ. And He will be glorified. Amen.

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In honor of Shabaz Bhatti and persecuted Christians worldwide:

Click: Anthem of the Persecuted

I want to acknowledge the words and wisdom of three friends who were privileged to know Shahbaz — Hope Flinchbaugh, Marlene Bagnull, and Dan Wooding, for whom this week has been trying; Becky Spencer (“sure you can quote me – the Holy Spirit doesn’t copyright inspiration!”); and insights I gained this week while researching a book, from messages by Lyman Abbott.