Archive | July 2011

Remedies for What Ails the Church: Christ’s Proactive Love (Part Three)

Jul29
St Augustine's Commentary on THE SERMON ON THE...

Image by Fergal of Claddagh (Gone to Poland till August!) via Flickr

Mick Turner

(continued from Part Two)

I find it fascinating that the churches that seem to be most negligent in educating congregants in the realities of what it means to be “in Christ” are those at opposite ends of the theological spectrum. Our liberal churches often ignore the phrase altogether or describe it as a quasi-mystical state resulting from long-term arduous spiritual training. It is described more often as a state of consciousness rather than a gift of grace through the Holy Spirit’s empowerment. At the other end of the stick, many of our fundamentalist brothers and sisters are so absolutely obsessed with sin and the “blood of the Lamb” that they never get beyond the theme of atonement and justification. Themes like empowerment and sanctification rarely cross their lips.

Once we come to an understanding of who and what we are “in Christ,” we need to have a thorough education in God’s great mission of restoration, renewal, and the primacy of the Kingdom agenda. We need to know what God is up to and discover how we fit into that agenda both as a church and as individuals. This entails education regarding the kingdom, God’s “Great Story” of restoration, and our equipping in terms of spiritual gifts. Understanding the “kingdom” purpose is especially important as this was the central focus of Christ’s teaching.

Underlying all of our efforts as the Body of Christ is the notion of working along with God to establish the “Kingdom.” I can’t stress this notion of Kingdom enough and, if you take a close look at the gospels, neither could Christ. His first public statement was “Repent for the Kingdomof Heavenis at hand.” After beginning this way, Christ repeatedly stressed that his mission was to inaugurate the Kingdom. As ongoing agents of incarnation, it is now our mission to pick up where Christ left off. This is the foundational mission of the church. Even the great commission is aimed at this and this only: Bringing God’s Kingdom to Earth.

The coming of the Kingdom is really the heart of the gospel. The forgiveness of sins and the work on the cross, although of central significance, is not the heart of the gospel. It is not that which brings life to the body. No, it is the coming of the Kingdom that constitutes the life of the gospel. Unfortunately, the church, especially since the reformation in general and Calvinist theology in particular, has primarily defined the gospel in terms of the remission of sins by the work of Christ. Again, I am not downplaying the importance of this. All I am saying is that it is not the core of the gospel. Jesus repeatedly stressed the coming of the Kingdom.  The remission of sins is part of this, but it is far from the whole enchilada.

Dr. Myles Munroe, author of several books dealing with God’s kingdom, echoes the centrality of the kingdom agenda for today’s Church:

“How important to the Body of Christ is the message of the Kingdom of God? Frankly, we have nothing else to teach. The message of the Kingdom is good news, and the Church exists to proclaim it. If we are doing our job, everything we are about will be Kingdom focused: every sermon we preach, every Bible study we teach, every ministry we perform, every activity we accomplish, and every worship service we celebrate…The Kingdom of God must be our highest priority; Jesus gave us no other commission.”

As individual members of the Body of Christ, it is our duty to share the kingdom message at every opportunity. In doing so, however, we must take care to present Jesus’ kingdom manifesto is ways that are relative to today’s world. Howard Snyder also points out the contrast between kingdom people and non-kingdom people. His words paint a clear portrait of why the church must educate its members in depth regarding Jesus’ concept of “Kingdom”:

The church gets in trouble whenever it thinks it is in the church business rather than the kingdom business. In the church business, people are concerned with church activities, religious behavior and spiritual things. In the Kingdom business, people are concerned with Kingdom activities, all human behavior and everything God has made, visible and invisible. Kingdom people see human affairs as saturated with spiritual meaning and Kingdom significance. Kingdom people seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice; church people often put church work above the concerns of justice, mercy and truth. Church people think about how to get people into the church; kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world. Church people worry that the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see the church change the world…If the church has one great need, it is this: to be set free for the Kingdom of God, to be liberated from itself as it has become in order to be itself as God intends. The church must be freed to participate fully in the economy of God.

 I find the Church’s lack of focus on establishing the kingdom even more remarkable when considering other popular pulpit themes. A few years back I was conducting research on the growth of several denominations in the county where I live. This research necessitated my visiting eight different congregations over an extended period of time and provided an opportunity to hear firsthand the kind of topics preachers from a variety of denominations were expounding upon. Frankly, I was amazed. I heard at least four sermons on prosperity, four more on the reality of sin, three on the importance of speaking in tongues, two on how speaking in tongues was the work of Satan, at least two sermons detailing the importance of voting Republican in the upcoming 2008 election, and one meandering, 40-minute bombast without a discernable core.

In short, the church is supposed to be in the business of turning out “kingdom people” rather than church people. So, along with the other themes discussed in this article, I feel it is imperative that the church also include as a part of its educational agenda information on just what the kingdom is all about.

I should say at this point that I rocked along as a Christian for many years before, by the grace of God and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, I began to at last encounter Christ in a more profound way. In spite of my personal beliefs and biases, misinformation gleaned from myriad sources, including the church, and perhaps most subtle of all, my own intellectual arrogance and theological snobbery, a sliver of divine light managed to break through. Augmented by much prayer and meditation, this thin beam of illumination expanded into an unexpected eruption of insight and wonder. It was as if some sort of spiritual dawn had exploded across the horizon and standing at the center of this sublime awakening was Jesus Christ – Jesus as I had never seen him before; Jesus as I had never understood him before; Jesus, as he had never impacted me before.

My reaction to this encounter was one of reverence, awe, and wonder. I think the phrase coined by Hebrew writer and scholar Abraham Heschel sums up my feelings quite accurately. When the dust settled and I began to embody the new revelation of who and what Christ was and is, I was literally overwhelmed with a sense of radical amazement.

This sense of wonder, awe, and amazement created in me a desire to obey Christ in things both great and small. I was (and I remain) far from perfect in terms of my obedience, but with divine assistance each day I get a little bit better it seems. More significantly, this revelation of Christ’s nature, his accomplishments, and his ongoing mission created in me a desire to create and maintain a level of excellence in my life that greatly exceeded the  level at which I had been operating. Cutting straight to the chase, my personal mission statement became:

To become the optimal version of myself for the glory of God and the benefit of others.

The way I saw it, and still see it, is anything less than my best shortchanges Christ. I am not talking about perfection, nor am I employing any sort of legalistic program of puritanical holiness. Those flavors of teaching prove time and time again to create more problems than they solve. What I am driving at here is the importance and the necessity of making a consecrated commitment to excellence.

I am convinced that the vast majority of us are living far beneath the level we are capable of, whether in terms of our personal relationships, our professions, our level of knowledge and wisdom, and our moral values. All I am saying here is that in light of the great gift Christ has given us, we can and should do better than half-measures.

Christ gave us his best and our response should be nothing less than our best.

Think about it.

© L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

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Wise Words for Today

Jul28
Church

Image by fakoman via Flickr

We may have tried to make people “nice” – quiet citizens of their earthly kingdoms and energetic consumers of their earthly economies – but we didn’t fire them up and inspire them to invest and sacrifice their time, intelligence, money, and energy in the revolutionary cause of the kingdom of God. No, too often, Karl Marx was right: we used religion as a drug so we could tolerate the abysmal conditions of a world that was not the kingdom of God. Religion became our tranquilizer so we wouldn’t be so upset about injustice. Our religiosity thus aided and abetted people in power who wanted nothing more than to conserve and preserve the unjust status quo that was so profitable and comfortable for them.

 What would happen…………if we again tasted the good news of Jesus – not as a tranquilizer but as vibrant, potent new wine that filled us with joy and hope that a better world is possible? What if, intoxicated by this new wine, we threw off our inhibitions and actually begin acting as if the hidden but real kingdom of God was at hand?

Brian McLaren

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Wise Words for Today

Jul26
Joseph asked for the body of Christ from Pilate

Image via Wikipedia

We are created for community, fashioned for fellowship, and formed for family, and none of us can fulfill God’s purposes by ourselves…..For Paul, being a “member” of the church meant being a vital organ of a living body, an indispensable, interconnected part of the Body of Christ. We need to recover and practice the biblical meaning of membership. The church is a body, not a building, an organism, not an organization……If an organ is somehow severed from its body, it will shrivel and die. It cannot exist on its own, and neither can you. Disconnected and cut off from the lifeblood of a local body, your spiritual life will wither and eventually cease to exist.

Rick Warren

(The Purpose Driven Life)

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Remedies for What Ails the Church: Christ’s Proactive Love (Part Two)

Jul25
Disciple at Ichthus Festival - 2006

Mick Turner

(Continued from Part One)

Whatever a particular church’s situation might be, it shares with all churches the essential task of educating its congregants about Christ, his identity, his life, his teachings, and his mission on this planet. Ideally, this education will be of a sufficient enough nature to inculcate in those who participate a sincere desire to become a genuine Christ-follower. Hopefully, the church will also give detailed instruction in what it means to be a Christian in this particular age and how to “count the costs” as per Jesus’ teaching.

After accomplishing these goals, the educational focus should shift from Christ to the individual. Hopefully, after being educated about Christ, his identity, mission, and accomplishments and also after counting the costs of true discipleship, the individual is ready to make an informed decision about whether or not he or she wants to take on the yoke of Christian discipleship. I believe this is an area where the church has failed mightily in the past and right on down to the present. I think this is especially true in Evangelical traditions where the primary concern is to get the person to “make a decision for Christ,” or “accept Jesus as your personal savior.” Focusing primarily on getting the person on their knees and repeating the “sinner’s prayer,” these “workers in the vineyard” pay little attention to the importance of educating the individual in exactly what it means to take on the yoke of Christ.

This tendency to reduce the gospel to a focus on the salvation of individual souls and on getting a ticket to heaven has not only cheapened the “good news” of Jesus; it has resulted in the creation of a cadre of confused and lukewarm Christians. The concomitant lack of spiritual fever and passion for the kingdom has contributed greatly to the marginalization of the church as described at the beginning of this article. Richard Stearns, President of World Vision U.S. paints a very clear but distressing portrait of the situation under discussion:

More and more our gospel has been narrowed to a simple transaction, marked by checking a box on a bingo card at some prayer breakfast, registering a decision for Christ, or coming forward during an altar call………..It was about saving as many people from hell as possible – for the next life. It minimized any concern for those same people in this life. It wasn’t as important that they were poor or hungry or persecuted, or perhaps rich, greedy, and arrogant; we just had to get them to pray the “sinner’s prayer” and then move on to the next potential convert. In our evangelistic efforts to make the good news accessible and simple to understand, we seem to have boiled it down to a kind of “fire insurance” that one can buy. Then, once the policy is in effect, the sinner can go back to whatever life he was living – of wealth and success or poverty and suffering. As long as the policy was in the drawer, the other things don’t matter as much. We’ve got our “ticket” to the next life.

There is a real problem with this limited view of the kingdom of God; it is not the whole gospel. Instead, it is a gospel with a gaping hole. First, focusing almost exclusively on the afterlife reduces the importance of what God expects of us in this life. The kingdom of God, which Christ said is “within you” (Luke 17:21 NKJV), was intended to change and challenge everything in our fallen world in the here and now. It was not meant to be a way to leave the world but rather the means to actually redeem it.

Right from the beginning, I firmly believe that it is imperative that new believers be educated in exactly what discipleship means. Christ certainly gave us this example. In his words, those who set their hand to the plow and looked back were not fit to be his followers. In addition, he did not sugar coat what following him entailed. Scripture relates that on occasion those hearing Christ speak would say, “These are hard teachings,” and often walk away.

After educating its members on what true discipleship consists of, I think it is next essential that churches design programs that deeply educate its congregants in what it truly means to be “in Christ.” I am convinced that the majority of Christians have little understanding and even less personal application of their status and privileges as “children of the Light.” I think this is an area where the church has been highly negligent in the past and it is high time this problem was addressed and rectified. I can say without reservation that this might be the single-most significant causative factor in the church’s impotence today. Popular Bible teacher, pastor, and author Chip Ingram shares the following cogent remarks in his book Living on the Edge:

Chip Ingram speaks cogently to this issue in his book Living on the Edge:

I can’t overemphasize this point because I think it is one of the most glaring omissions in the Body of Christ today. I meet Christians who love God and who long to follow Him with all their heart, but it is apparent that they have no real understanding of who they are in Christ. Their relationship is based solely on their experiences with God, but often not deeply rooted in the foundational truths of who they are and what they actually possess as a child of God. This lack of understanding destines sincere believers to defeat and frustration as t hey seek to live out the new life in their own power.

In like fashion, most new Christians are encouraged to get involved in Christian activities and begin the disciplines of the Christian life in order to grow spiritually. Church attendance, praying, reading God’s Word, serving, and getting involved are the messages young Christians hear – and for good reason. It is critical that we talk to God from the heart, learn to hear His voice, have our mind renewed through His Word, and enjoy the fellowship of His people; but what is missing in all these valuable Christian “activities” is specific teaching on what it means to be “in Christ.” We need to clearly understand how God sees us before we become inundated in activities for God.

To be continued……..

(C) L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

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Discovering Watchman Nee: God’s Mysterious Ways

Jul23
Photo of Watchman Nee

Image via Wikipedia

Mick Turner

A worn out, trite, and, at least in some circles, humorous phrase is as follows:

“God works in mysterious ways.”

This old saying outlived its usefulness several centuries ago, but it doesn’t stop Christians from pulling it out of the dust bin and springing it on unsuspecting listeners, especially when confronted with some event that can’t be explained seems at odds with the faith.

I mention all this at the beginning of this article because it bears at least a marginal relation to the topic at hand. Perhaps I best explain myself.

Since my elementary school days, I have been a voracious reader. As an adult, I have spent a small fortune on books over the years and, as anyone who has purchased books in recent years, the prices keep rising at a rate almost equal to the cost of healthcare. I am far from a wealthy man, so the money I have spent on books over the years might seem even more staggering. Most of the books I buy are new and of course that makes them even more expensive.

I tell you about this because there is a certain irony in my relationship with my books in general and my books on spirituality in particular. I find it most fascinating that in spite of the mother lode I have spent on books over the years, one of the most impactful books I ever purchased I bought some twenty years ago at a garage sale in South Miami, Florida for the outrageous sum of seven cents. The lady wanted a dime but I talked her down three cents, just on principle.

I can say without reservation that this little ragged paperback was not on my high priority reading list and I am not sure why I was moved to buy it in the first place. On the way home from the garage sale I stopped to get a coffee and, while drinking it, I chanced to pick up the book and read a few pages.

I couldn’t put it down. I ended up reading the entire book that very afternoon and evening. This little tome spoke to me in a way few books ever had. I can say that it was, in a number of significant ways, life-changing. Why I even picked that book up and bought it I’ll never know. All I can say is:

God works in mysterious ways.

The name of the book was The Normal Christian Life by Chinese author Watchman Nee. I have since learned that this book has been impactful on many Christian lives over the years and was highly popular with the old Jesus People movement, of which I had some contact in the late 60s.

With that little story out of the way, I want to share just a few things Nee talks about in the book and hopefully, if you haven’t read it, you will find yourself a copy and do so at your earliest opportunity.

In terms of the completeness of the gospel, the following lengthy passage from The Normal Christian Life spells out with clarity the scope of Christ’s accomplishments in regards to the forgiveness of sin and the empowerment for living. Specifically, Nee describes what the New Testament refers to as “the last Adam” and “the second man. Nee relates:

In 1 Corinthians 15:45-47, two remarkable names or titles are used of the Lord Jesus. He is spoken of there as “the last Adam” and he is spoken of too as “the second man.” Scripture does not refer to him as the second Adam, but as the “last Adam”; nor does it refer to him as the last Man, but as “the second man.” The distinction is to be noted, for it enshrines a truth of great value.

As the last Adam, Christ is the sum total of humanity; as the second Man, he is the Head of a new race. So we have here two unions, the one relating to his death and the other to his resurrection. In the first place his union with the race as “the last Adam” began historically at Bethlehem and ended at the cross and the tomb. In it he gathered up into himself all that was in Adam and took it to judgment and death. In the second place our union with him as “the second man” began in resurrection and ends in eternity – which is to say, it never ends – for, having in his death done away with the first man in whom God’s purpose was frustrated, he rose again as Head of a new race of men, in whom that purpose shall be fully realized.

When therefore the Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, he was crucified as the last Adam. All that was in the first Adam was gathered up and done away in him. We were included there. As the last Adam he wiped out the old race; as the second Man he brings in the new race. It is in his resurrection that he stands forth as the second Man, and there too we are included. “For if we have become united with him by the likeness of his death, we shall be also by the likeness of his resurrection.” (Romans 6:5). We died in him as the last Adam; we live in him as the second Man. The cross is thus the mighty act of God which translates us from Adam to Christ.

I have long been convinced that a principle reason for the church’s seeming impotence flows out of the fact that far too much attention has been given to the last Adam, and far too little to the second Man.

Christ clearly told us that his kingdom was not of this world. And in uttering those words, the Master touched on a reality that his disciples, both then and now, must come to understand. God originally intended for this world to be his world, but Satan managed to sabotage his efforts. As a result, Satan eventually became “the prince  of this world. “

Nee explains:

Thus, in Satan’s hand, the first creation has become the old creation, and God’s primary concern is now no longer with that, but with a second and new creation. He is bringing in a new creation, a new kingdom and a new world, and nothing of the old creation, the old kingdom or the old world can be transferred to the new. It is a question now of these two rival realms, and of which realm we belong.

Nee then goes on to describe what he calls “The Divide of the Cross.”

The Cross was the means God used to bring to an end “the old things” by setting aside altogether our “old man,” and the resurrection was the means he employed to impart to us all that was necessary for our life in that new world.

We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4).

The greatest negative in the universe is the Cross, for with it God wiped out everything that was not of himself: the greatest positive in the universe is the resurrection, for through it God brought into being all the he will have in the new sphere. So the resurrection stands at the threshold of the new creation. It is a blessed thing to see that the Cross ends all that belongs to the first regime, and that the resurrection introduces all the pertains to the second.

In essence, Nee is saying that the resurrection is significant not only in the sense that Christ defeated death, which was a result of humanity’s disobedience and Satan’s manipulations in the Garden. He rightly sees that with the resurrection God is instituting a brand new creation. In a sense, it is both symbolic and ironic that we restarted the calendar “after the Lord (A.D.).” It was in every sense, a new beginning. I have long believed that Easter is perhaps far more important on the Church Calendar than Christmas and this is but one of the reasons why. Returning to Nee’s discussion of these themes, he states:

We have two worlds before us, the old and the new. In the old, Satan has absolute dominion. You may be a good man in the old creation, but as long as you belong to the old, you are under sentence of death, because nothing of the old can be carried over into the new.

In light of the perspective being described by Nee, I am reminded of the passages of scripture where Paul talks about Christ as the “last Adam” and the “second man.” All that went before, our old nature, our “pre-in-Christ” status, must necessarily be crucified with Christ. It cannot be carried forward into the new life of the kingdom. Nee continues:

The cross is God’s declaration that all that is off the old creation must die. Nothing of the first Adam can pass beyond the Cross; it all ends there. The sooner we see that, the better, for it is by the Cross that God has made a way of escape for us from that old creation.

This theme of old and new, juxtaposed at the Cross, forms the foundation of Nee’s perspective of the unfolding of God’s great story. I can also say that I am in agreement with much of what Nee says regarding these matters. His perspective is cogent and reasonable and, when viewed in its totality, is transformational. In fact, for those who have really studied it in depth, The Normal Christian Life, has been one of the most life-changing books of the 20th Century.

Indeed, one can safely say that God does work in mysterious ways. After spending a king’s ransom on my spiritual library, a seven cent, dog-eared paperback brought me insights I would have never imagined. I have long since purchased a nice hardback copy of the book, but I still have that old paperback, which I have taped together on several occasions. I have also read Nee’s Spiritual Man, which is much longer and a bit more tedious. Still, I garnered much from that book as well.

© L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

Wise Words for Today

Jul21
The Earth flag is not an official flag, since ...

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In the hurried and technological society in which we live, we may have to be more intentional about practices that help us recognize the goodness of God revealed in creation. Many of us live and work in contexts that are divorced from the rhythms of the natural world. We have lost our connection to the soil, our food sources, and the skill of making things with our hands. We rarely notice the rising or the setting of the sun. We gulp food without tasting. We rarely pause to look at the flowers or into the eyes of a child. Our pace of life affects our capacity to appreciate the goodness of the bounty that surrounds us. The demands of a hurried life and the dominance of technology cloud our awareness. Slowing down and learning to pay attention to the moment may be a path to affirming God’s essential goodness and presence.

Mark Scandrette

(from Soul Graffiti)

Remedies for What Ails the Church: Christ’s Proactive Love (Part One)

Jul19
Worship BG - We Are The Body of Christ

Image by bemky via Flickr

Mick Turner

For quite some time now I have pondered and prayed over the various reasons the contemporary church is in such a state of crisis. In addition to people leaving the sanctuaries in drove, the church itself is rapidly becoming marginalized in its impact on American culture and this, coupled with dwindling numbers and a chronic affinity for internal bickering, has left the Body of Christ in a general state of paralytic impotence.

There are many reasons for this state of affairs – far too many to catalogue in this brief article. I would like, however, to focus in particular on one specific causational factor that I think contributes greatly to the church’s current woes.  Before delving into that issue, however, I want to spend a few moments discussing the issue of “lost faith” or, as some describe it, “weak faith.”

I mention this because I think that these faith problems are related to our overall lack of understanding and acceptance of Jesus Christ, his mission, and the impact of that mission on life as we know it. As we will discuss below, one of the primary factors contributing to the exodus from the church is that it has lost its most vital, life-giving focus. A side-effect of this is that many people have what those – in – the – supposed – know call a “crisis of faith.” This crisis can take many forms, but each tends to share a few common elements. The following description by Brian McLaren provides a cogent summation of what I am talking about:

One way or the other, we outgrew the faith of our childhood or youth. Now we are seeking for a faith that we can hold with adult integrity, clear intelligence, and open-eyed honesty. So, many of us need in this way to renew or replace the faith we lost – to fill the old vacancy in a new way, to see faith with fresh eyes, or better – to let a mature, refreshed faith become the new eyes through which we see life.

Others of us have faith, but it is weak or damaged. We feel that we are walking on a sprained ankle or trying to enjoy a delicious meal with a bad tooth. Perhaps we have been spiritually undernourished, malnourished, or mistreated and injured by a church or religious family member. We don’t have confidence in our faith, and it brings us more pain than comfort. Or we have a faith that is little more than a set of concepts to us. This kind of faith is often called nominal, meaning “in name only.” It doesn’t affect our behavior, at least, not positively. Perhaps for some of us, faith is like a vaccination – we have just enough in our system to keep us from getting “infected” with a full-blown “case” of vibrant faith. There’s faith there, but it needs to be “set on fire”; it needs to come alive; we need to really “catch” it. In these ways some of us need to invigorate the faith we already have.

I don’t know about you, but I can see myself and many others in this description of those in a “faith crisis.” I especially recognize McLaren’s description of those whose faith is like a vaccination, giving them just enough Jesus to prevent them from catching the real thing.

As I stated earlier, the reasons for the dwindling numbers and declining social impact of the church in our culture are many and multi-faceted. And, I might add, the responsibility for more than a few of these problems lies with the church itself. Overall, I think it is safe to say that as a body, we have done a generally poor job of carrying out the mandate given us by the Master before he departed for the heavenly realms.

One major reason for this situation flows from the fact that the church has lost focus on Christ, who and what he was and is, what he accomplished, and what he expects of us. Without this knowledge, a Christian lacks a functional compass with which he or she may navigate through the shoals of daily living. Further, when the focus on the biblical Christ is either weak or lost, an individual lacks the basic information needed to truly make a decision as to whether or not to follow Christ. I dare say that there are untold numbers of self-proclaimed Christians out there who, other than the standard “he died for my sins” teachings, have no clue as to the true magnificence of Christ’s being.

Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola, in their excellent book Jesus Manifesto, speak directly to this situation and how it impacts the most fundamental question each person who faces Christ must answer:

Can our problems really be caused by something so basic and simple as losing sight of Christ? We believe the answer is a resounding Yes. Answers other than Christ to the problems of the church today mean we are more into solvents than solutions. For that reason, this global, Google world needs a meta-narrative more than ever, and the Jesus Story is the interpreting system of all other systems in this hour…

Sweet and Viola then state that each of us needs to answer one specific question and if you think about it, every other thing that follows hinges upon how we answer that question. It is the same question Jesus put to his disciples:

“Who do you say that I am?”

I have come to the conclusion that the church has, as a whole, done a poor job of educating its members on the importance of answering this question and furthermore, our efforts at educating new believers on the incredible nature of this being we call “the Christ.” We have played the “personal savior” and “Son of God” tapes until they have lost much of their meaning. Although the importance of Christ’s role in the process of restoration of right standing with God and the remission of sins is a key element in his mission, but it is only an element. And his status as the Son of the Living God, as evidenced by Jesus’ response to Peter’s answer, is also highly significant, but this, too, is only one aspect of Christ’s identity and his agenda for coming to earth.

I am of the strong belief that until we educate new Christians (and reeducate established ones) on the truly magnificent nature of Jesus Christ, who and what he is, all that he accomplished, and his agenda for the restoration of God’s plan on earth, we cannot hope to fulfill the mandate we have been given as the Body of Christ.

I am hesitant to give a highly specific prescription for how churches might go about this educational mission, primarily because each church is a unique entity in terms of its congregational demographics, its denominational affiliation (or lack thereof), its theological orientation, and its particular mission. However, several areas of commonality may be mentioned.

To be continued…..

©L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

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Restored Dignity Trumps Total Depravity

Jul17
Natures

Image by joselito.jb33 via Flickr

Mick Turner

Although I am far from a biblical scholar, I can say without reservation that I have spent considerable time over the years studying the scriptures, researching their subtleties, attempting to discern their different layers of meaning, and, above all, trying to apply these principles to my daily life. I mention this at the outset because I am about to say a few things that are likely to sit sideways in the throats of fundamentalists in general and those of a Calvinist persuasion in particular.

Getting right to it, let me say right out of the gate that one of the things that both galls and baffles me is how seemingly intelligent people can read the Bible and come away with the ill-conceived notion that we humans are forever tainted, stained by “original sin” and worse still, “totally depraved” sinner worms that deserve nothing more than to be roasted in Hell on the end of Satan’s skewer. Personally, I think this notion has caused more harm to both the church and Western culture than the invasions of the Magyars, Huns, and various other barbarian hordes.

This whole notion of “total depravity” is often cited as having its origin with John Calvin, and to be sure he held this view and elaborated on it. However, this teaching goes back much farther in the Catholic Church and in the fifth century, was kick-started once again by Augustine.

This teaching, in addition to being erroneous, unbiblical, and near-heresy, has also done much to rob sincere Christian seekers of their dignity as human beings. I am convinced, after pouring through the scriptures, that this was never the Creator’s intention and, as we shall see, it was never the intention of Jesus.

As humans, we were created in God’s image. This doesn’t mean we were created in his physical image as much as it means that we were created in his essential image – that our character and our capabilities were modeled on his. Does this mean that we are “little gods” as some claim? I don’t think so. But what it does mean is that when we humans were created, we bore God’s perfect image within us and, equipped with that image, that character, and our inherent capabilities, we were charged with ruling earth in God’s stead.

Granted, when sin entered the picture things changed. However, what many otherwise sincere Christians apparently fail to realize is the fact that Christ restored us not only to our former status, he brought us up to an even greater station. Whereas before Christ we bore the image of God, now we have that image within us and much more. Now, the Holy Spirit resides in each and every one of us, empowering us to do all the things we could not do on our own. Further, Christ has promised to be with us until the end of the age. Even more amazing, Christ is now in heaven interceding in our behalf and in an act that further boggles the mind, the Master had infused all creation with himself. (See Ephesians 4:10)

Our dignity as human beings has been fully restored. I find it shameful that, in spite of all that Christ endured to bring about this blessed state of affairs, elements within the church have, throughout its history, denied his accomplishments, ignored his teachings, and refused to teach the truths of scripture related to all that he accomplished on our behalf. Choosing instead to remain riveted on humanity’s sinful nature to the point of obsession, these supposed stalwart defenders of the faith have instead foisted a gospel on the church that is both incomplete and inaccurate. The result has been, as stated earlier, to erode our God-given dignity as human beings and to create false divisions within the church, thereby reducing its effectiveness and its power. If one listens very carefully, he or she can hear the gales of laughter flowing out of the gates of hell.

Rubel Shelly, in his excellent book entitled, I Knew Jesus Before He Was a Christian and I Liked Him Better Then, speaks candidly regarding the true intent of the gospel:

The gospel of Jesus Christ affirms, defends, and enhances human dignity. The message of salvation is about restoring the relationship not only between God and humankind but also among divided and alienated human beings. The wedge that 1700 years of institutional Christianity has driven between insiders  and outsiders, males and females, one racial or ethnic group and another, wealthy and poor, one social class and another, prostitutes and preachers is contrary to the explicit will of God on the pages of Holy Scripture. All of us know that. But we haven’t lived into it very well.

Given the details of the history of Christianity, particularly in the West, it is safe to say that the last line of the above quotation from Shelly’s book qualifies as massive understatement. Instead of the dissolution of socio-economic barriers envisioned by Jesus, the church quickly devolved into just another arm of those in power, operating by the principle of “divide and conquer.”

This was a far cry from the way Jesus operated, as well as the early church. Instead of fostering divisions among people, races, and cultures, the early Christians, taking their cue from the Master, went about breaking down barriers between people. Jesus was their trend setter for unity. Charles Tabor remarks:

Jesus alone among all religious founders and leaders rejected all forms of discrimination and insisted that all human beings ought to be treated in exactly the same way. His own dealings with women, with children, with lepers and other ritually polluted people, and with foreigners radically undermined all the distinctions that human societies of his day unanimously institutionalized. He extended the category “neighbor” to all humankind and insisted that the two Great Commandments applied to all; and he taught his disciples to love even their enemies. These surely were among the reasons why Jesus’ peers found him troublingly subversive and therefore condemned him.

Sometimes I find myself wishing that our advancing technology had finally solved the mysteries of time travel, thus allowing us to go back to the days of the early church and witness the agape love they shared for one another. Time travel is still not a reality, yet God blessed me with the opportunity to witness this sort of barrier-breaking love and acceptance first hand. When I lived and worked in China my wife and I had the great fortune to meet with and develop friendships with many Christian brothers and sisters.

The churches in China are packed to overflowing, whether you are talking about the established Three Self Patriotic Church or the non-registered, underground house churches. What we witnessed, in addition to the fervor and the passion with which these Christians pursued their faith, was the fact that they came from all walks of life. Doctors, teachers, cooks, waitresses, painters, brick-layers, construction workers, professors, musicians – all came together in a spirit of unity, mutual respect, and singleness of purpose. As Christian brothers and sisters, these believers lived a truth that many of us in the West have long since abandoned – they recognized each other’s worth and dignity as children of the Light. For a foreigner like myself, to witness such a spectacle over a period of five years was a rare and wonderful blessing.

It was in this context of mutual respect and caring fellowship that the early church celebrated the restoration of human dignity. These first brothers and sisters clearly understood what Christ had wrought on the cross, through his resurrection, his ascension into heaven, and his infusion into all things (Eph. 4:10). Popular biblical writer and teacher N.T. Wright gives us a clear picture when he writes:

The life of believers, individually and collectively, is intended to incarnate the biblical reality of human dignity. The church is called to be an alternative society, living in a contrasting style in the midst of the world. Its members are, in God’s design, not self-promoting, as the world is; they are not competitive, as the world is; they do not advance at the expense of others, as the world does; they do not take advantage of the weakness of others, as the world does. They love one another and do good to and for one another. Failing that, there is no compelling reason for the world to pay attention. Which is to say that the only means by which Christians can commend a truly godly vision of human rights is to incarnate them in their individual and collective lives, to announce God’s actions and intentions that constitute the Gospel, and to act justly in the name of God.

As I reflect on the words of Dr. Wright, I am immediately aware of how far short of the mark many of us who accept the mantle of “Christian” come when it comes to treating people with respect and honoring their dignity. Further, we remain as a church a far cry from the unified body envisioned by Christ and advocated by Paul.  Quite frankly, I am often appalled at the manner in which professing Christians treat other people, even those of the same faith. Increasingly, and I say this with great sadness and more than a little shame, it is becoming difficult to find examples of the agape love the Master instructed us to incarnate into the world.

In his epistles, John clearly states that the defining characteristic of God is love and that the same holds true for his children. John’s point is clear – if love is not in us and if we do not manifest that love, particularly toward one another, then perhaps we are not truly children of the light. Unfortunately, this absence of love is increasingly becoming the norm among those who call themselves “Christian.” Just a few days before writing this article, the Faith and Values editor of a major area newspaper stated on her Facebook page that in her office she often received angry phone calls. Given the nature of her work and the fact that it involves writing about a very sensitive subject – religion – this was not surprising. A bit more unexpected, however, was her statement that the majority of these angry phone calls were from Christians.

 Clearly the evidence indicates that we, as alleged followers of Jesus Christ, have forgotten how to treat each other with care and respect. Perhaps, just perhaps, one factor contributing to this state of affairs is that many of us have been raised with the misguided notion that, as humans, we are depraved sinners unworthy of even a modicum of respect. Why treat a sinner worm as if they possessed dignity? Wouldn’t it be more realistic to treat them as the belly crawlers that they are?

Granted, I am engaging in a bit of hyperbole here. Still, the point remains the same. Many of us in the church have lost sight of the realities inherent in Christ’s mission to this planet. His was a mission of renewal and restoration and one of the primary things that he restored was our dignity as human beings, created in the image of the One True God. No, we are not perfect and many of us consistently fall short of the mark when it comes to “living by the Book.” Yet the work of Christ, in ways far too profound for me to even begin to fathom, has wiped the slate clean. In spite of our imperfections, we are still worthy before God with our heads held high, possessing and demonstrating the dignity that he placed in each and every one of us. To do less would be to deny the miraculous grace that Christ brought into this world.

 Yes, my friend, you are worthy of being treated with that kind of respect and dignity. And please keep in mind, so is your neighbor.

 Think about it.

 © L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

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Wise Words for Today

Jul15
Christus Pantocrator in the apsis of the cathe...

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Whether due to poverty, ignorance, oppression, illness, spiritual blindness, procrastination, or just plain disobedience, multitudes of people either fail or never have the opportunity to fully become everything God meant for them to be. They take all their hopes and dreams to the grave and their glory dies with them……..As long as we are alive the possibility exists for us to reach our full potential. God has endowed us with gifts, talents, and abilities and He wants us to use them for His glory and for mankind’s good. We should strive to freely pour out all that is in us in unselfish service to the world. If we fully express ourselves in this life as God desires, we will not take any unfulfilled potential to the grave. Our goal should be to “die empty.”

Dr. Myles Munroe

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