Friday, June 27

Doubting Thomases; hating yourself for what YOU cannot do.......

"Your life will always be hanging by a thread. You will live in terror day and night. You will never feel sure of your life." Deuteronomy 28:66 GWT

Doubt, this is the core to what ails you, according to Dr. Larry Crabb. At the root of any diagnosis, illness, or dependency is a basic, simple, and generational doubt that God is good, or good enough to deliver His promises and take care of us.

Our lives become reflective of what we believe at the core, deep within the quiet accesses of our heart. Black or White, Good or Evil, self-protective or selflessness. One way or the other, there is no middle ground (unless we include the deception that is the Enemy's tool)

That is something we cannot change, this core belief, because of the sinful, broken self that we are. We cannot save ourselves; no matter the advances in medicine, no matter how tolerant we are of others, and we cannot cop a plea to the dysfunctions and wounds of our past as reasoning behind why Sin should not carry the death sentence.

Yet, that is what we spend the most time doing. We realize in the course of our living this life on this planet full of millions and millions of people; different in social, economic, and cultural ways, that "No one is fully sensitive to our hurts and fears.......cares for us with a love that allows us to relax fully....no one ever will." Dr. Larry Crabb, author of Finding God, describes what we call a "lurking despair" or as the Germans say, our "angst".

Satan will give us a push then, playing to our angst, with thoughts like; "You will always be alone", "You will never find anywhere where you can belong, find love, be part of a community, or meaning to your life." Cast adrift in this sea of despair and hopelessness, we grab on to whatever is within our reach or find some means to be self-sufficient. Anything; from addictions to co-dependency, self-improvement books, or withdraw from society, "are all efforts to avoid the despair that sets in when we realize that no earthly relationship will give us what we need," Dr. Crabb points out.

We come to a standstill, without the energy to deny the probability that we will never find anything that will bear fruit, and we face the dismal fact that apparently we were right and God is as impotent to do anything good, or even participate in our lives. We have been abandoned, left to our own devices to solve our problems by any means necessary. Others can't do it for us, or won't. We enter into a place where we realize it is our fault for the way things are and we gather our considerable emotional strength together to begin bashing ourselves to death.

In response to the growing insight that we, as a people, hate ourselves and spend our time loathing the person we have become, the Church teaches us the 'gospel of self-value' by telling us that all we need to do is overcome this self-hatred and realize God's unconditional, agape, love because once we realize this love the Father has for us, we will stop beating ourselves up over the inability to 'improve ourselves' and will realize the happy, productive, and meaning-filled life that was the original intention for our lives. The Church, in trying to address the angst of generations who move away from its walls, has cause us to fall......

Right into Satan's hands.

And, ironically to our way of thinking, right into the hands of God also.

Its when we face the fact that we cannot overcome this pressure we've created through the teachings of the Church to just overcome self-hatred and 'relax' in God's agape love, when we find that our 'works' done to capture a momentary feeling of 'salvational assurance', and are brought to that place where we cannot deny the certainty of our sinful presence before a Holy and Just God, we face a crossroad. A choice.

We can listen to Satan's whispers; to 'focus on the self-hatred' that binds our souls to a life of torment and pain....."Surely you will not die!" We can believe that such whispers are the truth and the sole remaining reason behind our dysfunction.

Or we can find God there in that darkness of our deepest parts of our soul. "If we saw our wicked, stubborn violation of God's design, then we would value the Cross as the place where God, through His Son, took on our sins and forgave us," Dr. Crabb says, "And we would see that He continues to forgive us every day of our lives until the day when there will be nothing left to forgive." God has the capability to help us overcome our rotten core of sin, and He has provided the means by which we can do so; by the sacrifice of His Son and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. If only we find Him.

It is then that we are free, as Paul speaks of often in his epistles, from the Law of Moses and freed by grace. Once this freedom is gained, we judge ourselves by the eagerness that consumes us to be like Christ despite the whisperings of the enemy instead of judging ourselves by our own understanding.

I spent most of my life under shadows; the shadow of bearing my father's image, the shadow of my eldest brother's brain, the shadow of my younger brother's mechanical abilities, and so many more that I won't mention here. And, as I pursued a doctrine of life that sought to justify my needs being fulfilled in the approval of my father, the admiration of my eldest brother, or even the simple mirroring of ability that my youngest brother displayed, I found myself growing into a doctrine of self-hatred. "Well, I must be the one that broke the mold, since I cannot do anything right."

It is not the sole function of the love that God gives freely to us to redeem ourselves through the sacrifice of His Son's death upon the Cross. It is not solely because of His Holiness that such an event had to take place. But that love, unconditional, that is given is the lifeblood of the movements of our Father God and Jesus Christ in the quest of the Kingdom agenda. That Holiness, perfected, set the course by which it takes place.

So, should it not also be our sole function, to reach that point where the love of the Father is felt, known, and realized. But, it should be the lifeblood that flows throughout our actions, thoughts, and understanding for our movement into relationships that are going to be breeding grounds for our angst, where no one will be sensitive enough to our hurts and fears, or care with a perfect enough love to let us know peace, or where pain is as common as the stars in the skies overhead. It is this desire to know God, to conform our lives as closely as we can without the realization of achievement in this world that should drive our interactions to each other, our direction in fulfilling our purpose for the Kingdom, and our desire to overcome our doubt.

It is there, in that place where we can accept that life will not give us what we need and is bent on our destruction coupled with the fact that we ourselves are incapable of adapting ourselves to the world in such a degree as to find peace and grace within its walls, it is in that place that we feel God's gentle tap upon our shoulders. It is there that God reveals Himself to us. And, if we only turn around, we would see His arms stretched wide in welcoming grace.

"Either we live under pressure to grow, or we celebrate grace." Dr. Crabb concludes his chapter 12: Third Floor; I hate Me "It comes more naturally to hate ourselves and be driven by pressure to improve, than to judge ourselves in a way that leads to a celebration of grace."

We can spend our lives trying to use social justice to justify our lives, by changing the social 'hot points' of the changing cultural awareness or we can spend our lives knowing that we are incapable of fixing a world that has no life to give us and seeking to be set free of our inherited doubt of God.

It is not within our ability to overcome our own, or the world's problems. We are not that capable of such authorial and universal power. We are our own worst enemy.

But God is capable.

And it is within our capability to seek out God in the midst of the chaotic and broken landscape of our life. And, once we've dedicated ourselves to that pursuit, to die to ourselves so that we may live in His grace, then we will know our God and Creator..............

and change the world!

Thursday, June 26

Wearing our new clothes.....

"What your corrupt nature wants is contrary to what your spiritual nature wants, and what your spiritual nature wants is contrary to what your corrupt nature wants. They are opposed to each other. As a result, you don't always do what you intend to do. If your spiritual nature is your guide, you are not subject to Moses' laws. Now, the effects of the corrupt nature are obvious: illicit sex, perversion, promiscuity, idolatry, drug use, hatred, rivalry, jealousy, angry outbursts, selfish ambition, conflict, factions, envy, drunkenness, wild partying, and similar things. I've told you in the past and I'm telling you again that people who do these kinds of things will not inherit the kingdom of God." Galatians 5:17-21 GWT

The power to love, above the sinful nature of the flesh to hate, is what we are called to reflect to the world because in doing so, we reflect the Christ. "Making that shift in thinking....[to give to rather than get from]....requires that the more basic elements in the [fallen personality] structure be disrupted and shattered." Dr. Larry Crabb states in his book Finding God in Chapter 11. The danger is not realizing the core root of this fallen structure is that we don't trust God to care for us, because then we gloss over our anger towards the unfilled needs that are not filled by others into a self-loathing of ourselves. Which is more destructive than the co-dependency of needing others for our fulfillment.

You were taught, with regard to Your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:22-24

Paul laid out for us the effects of our corrupted nature and we all can point to someone we know or sometimes even ourselves as imitators of such effects. This nature doesn't absolve itself into a gelatinous goo that we can then just wash off the walls of our heart when we accept in our soul the salvation gift, contrary to the popular notion of death/re-birth that the church tells us to believe happens instaneously when we whisper the words of acceptance.....our old self, blinded by our own selfishness and sin, does indeed get killed (unless we ourselves resurrect it). We no longer are bound by the acts of the pre-salvation nature. But, like an apendage that is cut off, we still feel the effects and reactions that comprised the corrupted nature. It is what the Devil uses in his attempt to decieve many a new Christian into becoming disenchanted by the seemingly lack of improvement in their immediate surroundings or within their mindset. Which supports our basic distrust of God's goodness and His ability to effectively care for our needs. Our new self was created to be righteous and holy, in accordance to the standards set and shown by God.

And, just like the 'new self' is to be put on, each day and with intentional living, so it is just as easy to put on that old set of clothes, the old corruptive nature, and follow the old, familiar paths. Each morning I start out my day with the intention to trust God's ability to fashion my day in a way that glorifies His Kingdom, and I struggle, sometimes, to keep on course with that. My spiritual mindset knows that God is real, good, holy, righteous, and just (to name a few) and that if that is all so, that He will fulfill through faithful execution of His love the promise of 'nothing but the best'. But, my physical mindset, corrupted by the reality of the world's brokenness and my own sinful nature, looks around me at the bills stacking on the desk, the car dented and bruised, squeaking me through yet another day, and the increasing stress of the future that is burdened by fog and uncertainity. My sinful nature cries out that God won't care, while my spiritual nature says God already has. When we allow ourselves to be overcome by our corrupt nature, then the laws of Moses apply and we fail. But, with faithful diligence, each time sin loses more and more that ability to be worn as an old set of clothes, because we grow stronger and more righteous, through the working of the Holy Spirit and in time, that sinful set of clothes no longer fits or is 'trendy'.

Josh Graves made a comment on one of his blog entries that if you don't like the spirituality of the Church, you should look to the spirituality of the Leadership. If you want to change it, then you have to change it within the leadership first. The Christian church seems to be in terminal stages of a cancer that is destroying the body from within. Ineffective leadership, false doctrine, universalism that is labeled "postmodernism", and a lure away from the Gospel have riddled the church body with division, mistruth, and a malady that has effectively curtailed many a ministry. Too often, though, we just change churches or just fade into the backdrop of the mega-church where we can hide just as effectively and be just as ineffective. After all, we don't want to preach absolute truth and the adherence to such doctrine.

That would be wrong.

Pastors who speak out against homosexuality fall, themselves victims of a corrupt structure that has them not relying on God but on their ability to deliver what they feel the congregation wants from them; be it a shining spiritual outer core, or an beautiufl and carefully balanced (so as not to offend) sermon to please the masses. Ministers live in expensive and fancy homes while many of their congregational members live below or at the poverty level and the world cries out for help in areas where devastation has reeked havoc in already extreme hard lives.

Size becomes a common topic on the table at the council meetings, leadership meetings, and directional meetings with scarce a willing ear to listen for God's purpose. Other minister's fall prey to the wonderful and large salary that comes their way as the congregation grows; not in spirit but in numbers. The Age of the Mega-church has blunted the powerful force of the Gospel. If you don't belong to the "Church of the latest thing", you're missing out. If you don't feel the emotion from the lofty voice of the melodic pastor, well then.....you must not be truly saved.

All in the name of saving the generation coming, where 3 out of 5 college aged young adults are leaving the church. The gospel accounts have been revamped, restyled, and reduced to try and be culturally sensitive to those who are leaving instead of remaining firm in the retelling and thereby providing an consistency that defies the ages.

We should always remember:

"I will remember the deeds of the LORD. I will remember your ancient miracles. I will reflect on all your actions and think about what you have done. O God, your ways are holy! What god is as great as our God?" Psalms 77:11-20

God's ability to take care of His will and His plan are legendary and unwavering. Instead of changing the gospel to meet society, we should be changing society to meet the gospel. And live it. And, by standing on the time-honored and absolute truths of the scriptures, we will save through the power of the Holy Spirit, the generations to come.

Look back at history and see what man changed, what was the result?

Look upon the Scripture accounts of the past, see what God said, and see what happened when man changed to follow the lessons taught, what was the result?

We have put on new, gaudy clothes that aren't what our new self should be wearing and called it 'christianity'.

Wednesday, June 25

An exercise in FALLING!

"This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: 'In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it." Isaiah 30:15

The true way to salvation and security, not through a specifically formatted prayer or in service to the Lord and Savior. Our security doesn't come from a belief in the end times, whether Christ has come again, will come again, or even if the Kingdom started by His ministry upon this broken, sinful world is beating behind a thinly veiled curtain that we only have to reach across to walk in. There is nothing beyond the simplistic in regards to the salvation gift and security in whatever this world does to the faithful; peace regardless of the stormy waves.

It's all about Trust.

I remember an exercise that the Company Commander of my "ricky-rick" company, Company 901, in boot camp had all of us 'rickies' do. We had to stand with our back to someone in the company that we had no prior experience with, arms crossed and tucked, and fall backwards into their arms....which hopefully were waiting there to catch us. My 'partner' in this exercise was my counterpart in the company leadership (I was the Bosun Mate of the Watch/Starboard Section Watch Leader ---based not on any skillset, but my height) was Recruit Petty Officer White, the Port Watch Section Leader. My nemisis in the Company, some two weeks into training. Talk about a setup, I thought, as I stood there trying to will my body into the surety of pain that would come from collasping on the hard ground. White wouldn't catch me, I knew, because White was my first experience at the hatred that some African Americans hold for their Caucasian fellow citizens. While the experience taught me alot about discrimination and racism that I had not thought of prior, it also taught me how generational hatred and anger can blind us to the opportunities of relational friendships.

My body tensed as I finally pushed it over the edge between knowing I would hit the ground in spectacular fashion and wanting to trust RPO White to catch me regardless of our differences that were truly only skin deep.

This is reflective of my walk in this journey through this life to know, experience, and be in relationship with God. And it is the cornerstone of our movement in faith towards that goal. Salvation comes from trust, trust in a God to deliver His promise that was made upon that Cross so long in Jerusalem by Jewish Pharisees and Roman soliders (in person) and each one of us through the sinful nature of our births. Regardless of what our humanity says is true, to believe beyond ourselves in a God who's ways are not our ways and who's thoughts are not our thoughts. In knowing that our trust in Him might not change the trials we face, and may not manifest itself in spetacular fashion in our daily walk, but that no matter where we find ourselves, there God is also.

"Confidence in God and hope in His provision do not, in this life, always reflect themselves in a breezy joy." Dr. Larry Crabb concludes his chapter 10 in his book Finding God. "Confident, hopeful people are marked by perseverance and a refusal to seek illegitimate relief in the midst of their ongoing struggles."

When we are no longer bound by the need to protect ourselves, draw our confidence and worth from another, and we can truly serve another by the thought, "What do I have to give you?", it is then that our trust is manfiested in our daily living. These are the people that shrug their shoulders and say a prayer of thanks; thanks to God for giving them one more day, another trial to face in strength and mercy that flows from His hands. These are the people that fly planes into the wilderness, ignoring all warnings and evidence, to face what seems certain death to reach a people that are isolated from the rest of the world. They know that this world, in its brokenness and sinful ways, cannot hurt them in the spirit any more.

The pain they face is a temporary, minor thing because of the trust in the comforting peace of their Abba God.

I face alot of things in my future that aren't pleasant or even rewarding. I don't have the confidence in the world's ability to give me a decent hand and take care of the things that need to be taken care of. I know that the road is long, the journey fraught with danger and loss, and yet.......

like that moment when I stepped beyond the barrier between trusting someone who was 'untrustable' and doing what I knew I had to, desptie the guarantee of a painful conclusion, I fell backwards; anticipating the welcoming arms of a rescuer from that painful conclusion.

Recruit Petty Officer White allowed me a brief 'hope' when I felt his arms on my falling back, and then he 'slipped' and I fell crashing to the floor.

But I am confident, despite any assurance the world may give that God will not catch me when I fall backwards, that there is a purpose in the exercise of falling backwards.

My Father may not catch me when I fall.....................

As I fall backwards, though, my confidence that He WILL do so will not fail............

I trust God to do what He wants to do.

Tuesday, June 24

Agape Service; our Tower of Babel.

"Although they shout in My ears, I will not listen to them," (Ezekiel 8:18 NIV)

refers to people who speak with their lips, but their motivation is for self-preservation and gain. "If God will, then I will." Or, "Since I have, God should fulfill His end of the bargain." We are a people, not that far removed from the sins of Adam and Eve in the Garden, who distrust the God of Isaac, Jacob, and Abraham to do what He wills in His way in a duration of His time. We want, and don't get even though we've asked because we are trying to coerce God to listen to us and give us what we feel we need.

"God cannot be trusted with the things that matter most," Dr. Larry Crabb states in his discussion of Chapter 8 of his book, Finding God. We are willing to jump through the hoops that God sets up for us to go through, with an expectation of reward when it's done. We attend church on Sunday, trusting God with the basic task of providing us with someone who is intelligent, well-dressed, and verbally pleasing to the ear to instruct us on the way of Christ. Then we throw our bibles in the backseat of the car and tool on off into the week that rapidly becomes stressful, complex, and uncooperative. Our prayers of supplication go unanswered, as if God only comes into contact with the world on Sunday mornings.

Preachers will tell us, you must've not asked right or you don't have the faith to realize His blessings. Or, the biggie you don't hear anymore (in voiced opinion, anyway), you've must be sinning. They speak their opinions and call it God's word.

Funny, you dig a bit deeper and face those places you fear to go; you find a tendency to distrust God, handed down through the generations.

God can be really frustrating, seeming to not notice our offerings, prayers, and tithing to Him. Isn't He supposed to at least give us an "atta-boy?" I heard the call to ministry, went directly to my Lead/Founding Pastor of the church I was attending, and was shoved off on someone else with a list of 'mentoring' books to read. Promises made to follow up were never fulfilled. And I struggled with the opinion of others in regards to whether I was suitable for ministry in the first place; after all, ministers are supposed to be 'on-top-of-their-game', right? Here was a mid-aged man who struggled to remember bible verses, has financial messes, and was working on being a godly husband, father, and man.....all without theological training. I am surprised that I didn't hear the laughter following me down the hall each time (twice)I met with the Pastor to discuss the Call. And I wasn't the only one bending the Pastor's ear, my mentor (who served as Associate Pastor), would always bring me or the topic of discipleship of leaders, at the meetings.

I struggle with this; obedience with expectation. I found a way into the ministry, working as a Senior Chaplain in the Meadowbrook Chapel. I've sat down with a financial advisor and struggled with a budget. I've dedicated myself to writing, studying, and stretching myself into avenues of thinking that are hard for me; I'm not an intellectual giant of a person. I have given myself fully to the Call, and faced constant rejection and rebuffing from those I am told to respect and to admire. And, there is nothing to show, at least in my limited view, for the 'work' I've done for the Lord.

I pastor no church, am on the staff of no evangelical movement or ministry, and have nothing to point to that I could say with certainty that those things are happening.....just around the next corner, over the next mountain top, or on the horizon barely in view. And, while my life has dramatically changed from where I was four years ago when I renewed my faith in many areas; theology, my view of God, my desire to see God glorified in all I do, and biblical study, so much more has happened that seems to be deliberately happening NOT to make me ministerial material in any one's eyes.

No longer do I go along to 'get along'. I hold the church to a higher standard than I hold anyone else, because the church is the major issue in the disintegration of the faithful largely because it has stepped away from a biblical doctrine and adopted a humanistic one draped in Christianized words.

My marriage, which I thought was God-ordained, is broken and is not going to be 'magically' restored. I am not seeking it, don't think that my wife is truly seeking it either, and I have already gone through the mourning process even before I had departed. I own what I own of the responsibility of the breakup and destruction, but I am not the sole reason. Not too many churches want divorced pastors, and especially don't want ones who are going through one.

My financial picture is bleak and continues to be a source of stress for me, especially now that I am surviving on one income...if you can say it is survival what I am doing. One blip on the radar and I'm in trouble. I cannot meet the bills I have with the income I bring in, the cost of living it seems is set against me. And the help that is there is not accessible. I need a second job, but that doesn't fit into the schedule I work, having kids, and keeping even this blog going. I am too overburdened with living. The last time I took a second job, I nearly killed myself falling asleep on the road between them.

The writing, while it seems to be growing in terms of ability, it isn't growing as a possible source of income or even an indicator of whether or not I am to be doing this for God at all. On faithwriters, where I post articles, people are reading them....anywhere from 50 to 800, are the counts on the articles. Even on this blog, over two thousand have visited since I posted the ticker on the bottom, but the four comments I've received are not pleasant indicators I'm doing something good, if you look at the opinions stated. I haven't found a publisher for my book; in fact I've been rejected by several. No one has 'picked me' up as a guest writer, etc. I continue to struggle with the time it takes.

Even in the journey through the darkest valley of my past; the wounds, the cuts, and the lies that I have believed from those, hasn't been as 'fruitful' as I would have requested it. There is more of this valley to journey through, more to realize painfully how I've lied to myself even and reacted from my past. I am definitely not the man I once was, but I am far from the man God intends me to be.

In this place; where my vehicle needs work on to run but there's no money to fix it up, I face the coming possibility of eviction because I can't pay my rent or other bills, where people who said they'd do the honorable thing sudden renege on giving me a deposit back, and the growing unease of being stagnant in the ministry call, here I cannot hide. My faith is forced to the fore, and it is either strong enough to pull a kicking and screaming man through these things or it isn't. I can either acknowledge God's blessings that exist daily or I can deny that God is more than worthy of praise from this broken, sinful man and declared Him not capable of being totally good given the amount of miracles that would have to happen to make everything work in my favor.

The fallen structure that is in place to stop me from finding God is creaking under the strain of opposing forces. And I want it to come down.

My Tower of Babel is offensive; standing in the way of my desire to know My God.

Not so that God will move in a way that I want, but that God can reveal His glory anew to me in such a way that I know Him. So I drop to my knees, I pray without ceasing, and I immerse myself in the Word, God's written words that speak to me in the troubling times.

God reveals Himself to those who seek Him earnestly and humbly. I trust Him to know what He is doing, that He knows far beyond my capability what is good for me to get me where He would have me go, because I don't have that talent. I am not that good, I am not that faithful, and by far, I am not that holy.

God is.

I'll trust Him with the steering wheel of the ship as I listen for His commands above the raging seas and harsh winds. I will do the work He asks, not for personal gain, but to honor Him, bless Him, and give Him His most heartfelt desire.

To be known by me.

So I believe in what I'm told within His word, not for gain (for I consider it loss for His glory), but to understand, know, and find my Father God:

When I feel its impossible, God tells me everything is possible through Him (Luke 18:27). When I'm afraid of what might happen, what is happening, and what may never happen, He tells me not to fear (2 Timothy 1:7).

When I feel lost in the midst of the storm, off course and certain to go to the watery depths, He quiets me and tells me that He, the Lord of the Storm and Creator of my being, will guide my steps (Proverbs 3:5-6). When the worry and the frustrations mount to a degree that's painful, He tells me to give them to Him (1 Peter 5:7).

Total reliance on Him, without expectation and demand. Thankful for the storms as well as the safe harbor.

Rain or shine.

I will follow Him, seeking to know and find the Father God.

Rather than looking to only heal my wounds, to restore my peace, and find my happiness I will lean on Him. I will heal through this journey; have the peace that defies the world's chaos, and a happiness that comes from a restored relationship with the Abba Father. Not as a reward for my service, my faith, my love, or even my death.

But because God has blessed me with the knowledge of the Son; I need not ask, or expect, more. My service to the King is not for sale.

I give it without expectation, because of the example set by His Son.

Will you seek without reward? Or is your faith more of the proverbial "cart before the horse" variety?

Monday, June 23

Realized reality

Acts 12:6-10 (GWT) "The night before Herod was going to bring Peter to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers. His hands were bound with two chains, and guards were in front of the door. They were watching the prison. Suddenly, an angel from the Lord stood near Peter, and his cell was filled with light. The angel nudged Peter's side, woke him up, and said, "Hurry! Get up!" At that moment the chains fell from Peter's hands. The angel told him, "Put your shoes on, and get ready to go!" Peter did this. Then the angel told him, "Put your coat on, and follow me." Peter followed the angel out of the cell. He didn't realize that what the angel was doing was actually happening. He thought he was seeing a vision. They passed the first and second guardposts and came to the iron gate that led into the city. This gate opened by itself for them, so they went outside and up the street. The angel suddenly left Peter."

Dr. Larry Crabb, in Finding God, the follow-up or addition to his original book INSIDE OUT, speaks of 'the sinful nature' of man that was embedded in ourselves through the doubt of Eve and Adam. One who believed that God wasn't being 'good' by withholding the Tree of Good and Evil and the other, not believing God was 'good enough' to handle the introduction of sin through grace. We have spent the rest of human history doubting God could be good enough to do what He said, what He promises. So we turn to ourselves to deal with the reliance upon an unreliable world.

"The foundation of the fallen structure is our doubt in God's goodness, which creates the terror of aloneness in an unreliable world," Crabb states in Chapter Seven of Finding God, "which leads to rage against God for doing so little to protect us from suffering."

We don't believe perfectly in the love of the Father God to be 'good enough' for our struggles and therefore, seek to rely on our own abilities to see us through. Look at our 'recovery' and 'improvement' books that line the shelves of any bookstore in the American landscape; "Self" is the key word. Even in our recovery ministries at Church, we seek an understanding of our tendencies and motivations so that we can construct tripwires and flares to warn us when we are straying towards those destructive things. Recovery has become less about believing in the 'goodness' of God and more about our ability to deal with the addictions.

Pastor Dave, of Soul Quest Ministries, my new home church expressed this over and over in his sermon on Sunday (which you can hear, I believe, on the website www.soulquestministries.com). He pointed to the verse found in 1 John 4:17-18 (NIV) "In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like Him. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love."

We worry about our ability to take care of ourselves in a world that we feel should take care of us, should validate us, and should make life livable for us. It often takes one situation, one loss, or one trial in which the world opposes such notions and we are terrified, fearful of what the future is going to be like. I know, I face it each day.

The separation from my wife, a decision that was harder than she'll ever believe, has set me into turmoil regarding my ability to take care of myself and my children. Mounting bills, limited income, car repairs, and just the situational aspects of single parenting have caused sleepless nights, worry, and doubt to cascade into every other aspect of my life. Regarding the ministerial call, regarding my ability to be a good, CHRISTIAN father, and where the future of my participation in the Awakened Hearts Ministry, which is going 'full-time' (not my participation, but the ministry leadership). Financial stress, complicated by the rising fuel prices and the failing automotive industry (which my job is in), doesn't lend support to the vision that God is good, or at least good ENOUGH, to deal in these things for me. So I try myself, and I am failing.

Fray Juan de la Cruz, Friar John of the Cross, believed that struggle and suffering were necessary for spiritual growth. "Turn not to the easiest, but to the most difficult… not to the more, but to the less; not towards what is high and precious, but to what is low and despised; not towards desiring anything, but to desiring nothing." His life was a struggle, sometimes deliberately brought upon himself and other times by others. His two famous writings, "Cantico Espiritual" (Spiritual Canticle) and "Noche Oscura del Alma" (Dark Night of the Soul), were written in jail by the very Church he served as a friar in.

It is what we do in the situations we face that cause us to grow. We either turn towards God, believing and moving as Peter did when the angel appeared before him, entering the reality of God's goodness and provision as it happens, or we question the ability of God to even hear our cries for help and develop a spirit of fear and anger towards our own Creator.

"There are many believers who know they SHOULD be free in Jesus. They have a head knowledge of freedom ---but somehow they haven't grasped the reality of the freedom that is promised! They walk with the vision without living the reality!" George, author and minister of Worthy New Ministry, writes in his devotional regarding Peter's belief (www.worthynewministry.com). What would it be like for us to believe that God is good enough to be good to us? How many prescriptions for the things that ail us would go unfilled if that knowledge of freedom from fear, terror, and sin would implant itself within our hearts instead of being only residing in our minds?

Watchman Nee, in The Spiritual Man, gives us a glimpse of what that could look like, if we had the faith to believe in our hearts of the goodness that is inherently God. "We should inquire once again as to what the life of faith is. It is one lived by believing in God under any circumstance: "If He slay me," says Job, "yet would I trust in Him." That is faith. Because I once believed, loved and trusted God I shall believe, love and trust Him wherever He may put me and however my heart and body may suffer…..Emotion begins to doubt when it senses blackness, whereas faith holds on to God even in the face of death."

Do you have that kind of faith? Realizing that the key to overcoming our innate deception in believing in the goodness of God and collapsing what Dr. Crabb calls the 'fallen structure' that hampers our ability to find God.

"I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see."

What is the present you see? One with God in the details, or one with Him sitting on the throne impatient to finish you off?

If we are to know Him in the way He wants us to know Him; with joy, purpose, and self-control, then we must face the sin we carry from our birth and realize we are not worthy of His love, but given His grace.

We must turn from self-valued principles and rely on principles of God's value. Perfect love.....no fear.

That seems to be the theme of my many devotionals today, that God wants me to not fear the coming of the dawn, but face it with an eagerness of a child.

Carolyn Baker of All about God.com, chose this for her devotional today and I think it is fitting to close with it for mine:

God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall. God will help her at break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; He lifts His voice, the earth melts. - Psalm 46:1–6

Tuesday, June 17

Code of Conduct

"He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?" Micah 6:8 NAS

What is man called to do in performance of his service to God? Is it the transaction, that payment for the service rendered by Jesus Christ as He hung on a cross of wood and paid the debt for Sin? All sin for all of mankind.

Or is it something more? A REACTION to the mercy and grace given, though not deserved, and the actions of a God who loves His children so much that the ultimate sacrifice wasn't an afterthought, but a course to be taken to rescue the lost children He loves so much? No justification for our salvation, no repayment for the debt paid. A duty, honestly given and actively pursued, for the honor and glory of a God who served us without conditional response required.

To be like our Messiah; that is our motivation, our desire, and our purpose. Even though we fail as sinful, broken human beings, we continue to strive to that goal. Through the ministring of the Holy Spirit's counsel.

A code of conduct.

Yet, many people find that unsettling. We emulate our sports heroes; bringing our bodies into a healthy condition so that we can be like those million-dollar stars. We emulate our movie heroes; seeking the portrayed emotional connection that is scripted on the screen for our enjoyment.

We seek to be that simple person on the street that runs into a burning building at a child's cry with no thought of their own welfare. We glorify athletes who personalify the sport they play and spend millions in replications of their lifestyles, so that we might feel like them for a time.

And yet, we wonder why we should try and be like Christ. A haughty and difficult thing for us to do, we wonder why we should even try. After all, salvation is not conditional upon the good which we do. We are told that the price was paid so no one could boast that they had something to do with it. And, yet, we continue to try to meet some shadowy and indistinct level of performance to feel we deserve the sacrifice given. We put on the lifestyle of Christ, without any weight or value. We tithe out of obligation, not glad giving.


We are afraid to stand upon the Word and defend the distortion of it because we are told that we are called to love, and nothing more. After all, God is big enough to take care of Himself. We are afraid to declare the absolute certainity of the gospel, because Jesus wasn't pushy and neither is God. We decide that the expression of loving one another cannot include accountability, correction, or 'tough' love because......?

We cannot speak for ourselves, for we are flawed from sin's embrace and the broken relationship that we inherited. We cannot declare what is right, what is just, what is sinful, and what is good. For our views become tainted by our own upbringing, prejudices, and cultural inheritance. We cannot define something we ourselves desire equally for all.

But God can. And He has.

Homosexuality is a sin. Pre-martial sex is a sin. Pride is a sin. Covetedness is a sin. To name a few.

Each condemnable to Sin's only punishment: death.

I don't suppose to know the struggles that a homosexual person goes through as they struggle to deal with a tendency that is sinful, because I don't have that desire to be in a sexually intimate relationship with my own gender. I don't supposed to know what a transgender who believes they were 'born wrong', because I don't think that I was meant to be a woman.

I am equally condemnable in the Law for those things I struggle with, as do the homosexual, transgender, or even a thief. The adulterer, the immoral business person, and the liar all have equal footing with me before the throne of God. We are condemned by the sinful nature we are born with because of Adam's inaction and Eve's choice.

Do I hate the homosexual? I don't, despite what some may believe because I point to the scriptural reference that declares homosexuality wrong. Or because I oppose the immoral declaration that same sex 'marriages' are legal. I am called, through the grace of God and the declaration of scripture to love that sinful person as much as God loved this sinful person. To hold them accountable as God holds me accountable.
To put myself in their place, to the same standards.

Do I believe the bank robber is condemned to the death sentence of Hell? Yes, through the sinful actions that they have taken. Does that mean they cannot know God's love? No, because God has offered the sacrifice payment for sin to them just as much as He has me, a man no less sinful and no less deserving of the penalty of Hell.

"Everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" the scriptures declare. Everyone. Not just those who are actively living in Sin's embrace. Not those who struggle to take up their cross. No one. None of us have the right to feel that we've earned, deserve, or are justified to be redeemed, righteous, or restored. NO ONE.

How do we know what is right? God taught, teaches, and brings us to understanding and knowledge of what is right, what is good, and what is just. God, not the laws of man or the desires of a few, or even the many. Morality absolutely defined.

God is the sole author of goodness, righteousness, and morality.

We are called, just like we do when we obey the laws of our society, to follow and adhere to God's declaration of Law; to serve our fellow man justly in all aspects.

In as much as an earthly father instructs his children on proper good and moral values, just as the child makes a choice to violate those boundaries, those rules, so we too must live through the consequences of our actions. For our own mercy, justice is "served".

We do justly to our fellow humans; rendering to each one their due whether they are spiritually superior, equal, or inferior. We cannot hold over any one of them with the express desire to oppress due to Sin, rather we should hold them accountable to a higher standard we ourselves are accounted to. There, we have the basis for the structure of morality, secure from the whims of man and the winds of cultural shifts.

We are called to two duties before man, according to Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown's commentary. "...justice, or strict equity, and mercy, or a kindly abatement of what we might justly demand, and a hearty desire to do good to others."

"We must, in the whole course of our conversation, conform ourselves to the will of God, keep up our communion with God, and study to approve ourselves to him in our integrity; and this we must do humbly," Matthew Henry's commentary states, by submitting our own understanding of truth, justice, and mercy to God's declarations, and conform our will to His precepts, not our own.

Without it, we become a immoral society that are governed by the whims of the slick of voice, the logic of the illogical, the laziness of the complacent, and the contempt of the contemptible. We find ourselves locked into culturally-defined morality that changes with the gusts of the wind, or the strongest force.

We must have justice above reproach of the whims of man, to have a higher moral authority recognized, and follow it with mercy, grace, and love.

That is what we, as Christians, should be striving for. Humble accountability, Merciful justice, and truthful restoration.

If we don't, as a society, we will fall from within as our corrupted moral center feeds upon itself.

Just look back into the annuals of history for its silent witness.

Monday, June 16

Father's Day

"I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go. I will counsel you with my eye on you." Psalm 32:8 WEB

Father's Day is over, passing into the annuals of time with the ticking of the clock from 11:59pm to begin Monday morning at 12:00am. My kids had already left to start their summer 'schedule' with their mother, a shift from daily living with dear old Dad everyday but alternate weekends to spending about six weekends with Dad. This is a major leap for me, trusting in the Heavenly Father to take care of my two little ones who aren't so little anymore while they are away from me. Plus, the simple fact that they are away from me. But, God put it on my heart that this summer the kids should spend max time with their mother ---not so He can work on me (there's never a time He doesn't stop working on this mess) but so that He can work on them and through them, their mother.

She already started attending our church, SoulQuest, after years and years of asking. And she continues on a semi-regular basis to do so.

Dorothy Sayers, the mystery writer and apologist featured in the Christianity Today newsletter this Monday morning said, "Man is never truly himself except when he is actively creating something." And then, I came upon this verse as I was looking for the "instruct your children in the way" verse that is so often quoted on Father's Day. It seemed to me that the two had so much in common, a theme that escapes us in the hurried pace of life.

Our heavenly Father always teaches us, with adjustments to our style and choices, creating within us a work that defies evolutionary theory that we came from goo.
And we, fathers of the blessings that God gave us in the form of our children, create the people who stand firm in their faith or run away at the first disagreement. We only seem to recall that verse I stopped looking for, that we only have to 'instruct them on the way to go and they'll never stray.' Then, with dumbfounded amazement, we wonder why they are either running away from the church or laying claim to a 'new' method of 'Christian' thought.

We forget to create within our children the ability and the reasoning to examine what they themselves take in to their world and their faith. We teach them some milky food and expect that our job is done. We disciple, as fathers, in love but forget that the disciplines of the past can harm when they develop beyond those 'punishments' and start claiming their authority as men and daughters of the Most High God.

But isn't that the way of our Father, to instruct us and keep an eye on what we do with what was taught? To see if we understand, if we grow beyond a constant prodding to do our Father's will? And, as we come into the authority as children of God, doesn't He become more and more visible to us, more complex? But, He never takes His eyes off of us even though we may have mastered the ability to walk a long time ago.

My son made me a copy of his footprints, now so big compared to that copy that was imprinted upon the birth certificate when he came into this world some eleven years ago. In between the two colorfully scribbled crayon filled footprints was a poem that I was hardpressed to not tear up over. I don't know who wrote it, but they've captured the responsibility and the joy:

Walk a little slower, Daddy
said a child so small.
I'm following in your footsteps,
and I don't want to fall.
Sometimes your steps are very fast
Sometimes they're hard to see,
So walk a little slower, Daddy.
For you are leading me.

Someday when I'm all grown up,
You're what I want to be.
Then I will have a little child,
who will want to follow me.
And I would want to lead just right,
and know that I was true.
So walk a little slower Daddy,
For I must follow you.


It is the words that haunt a father throughout the childhood of a young child, that awesome and awe-inspiring responsibility; this responsibility to the future....not only to the child, but that child's child. And each person that they come into contact with, that they love and cherish, and they mold. And it is something that men have failed in a big way to do; mentor, shape, and grow a generation of god-led men.

We get caught up in life, we fail to realize the design plan God has for men, we are shaped by the men before us, and we pass the generational failure onto our own children to repeat. We need to slow down, realizing that the path we have set with our footprints is a trail blazing for our children to follow. And we need to make sure that those footprints, even if they take us in a wrong direction, are highly visible....if for nothing else, to warn our children away from that path.

My daughter, such a scary mirror-image of my personality, also gave me her hand-made gift for Father's Day. As I told someone later at church, the best gifts were the handmade ones, so much more than the 'greatest dad' shirt that I wore all weekend. (It said right on the t-shirt....weekend t-shirt! Honest!). They are the treasures I cherish, especially in these latter days of their childhood experience.

"These are my fingerprints, tiny and small.
To place in your Books
Winter, Spring, Summer,
and Fall.
They are here to remind you
the whole year through
that, you're the Best Dad,
And....
I love you!


"Man is never truly himself except when he is actively creating something." That is what we are doing with our children, creating a future today.

Let this be a constant reminder of the life-changing and molding of a young life entrusted into our care and a reminder of the joy that remains

in the hugs and kisses of a young child who loves the man God made.......

Another day as a father, another blessing as their Dad...........

That is what I truly hope I'll never lose the ability to be............

Sunday, June 15

Battle Cry! Graceful obedience....

My thoughts have been captive the last few days over the reply that I received from a dear friend and brother regarding my original post about McLaren’s new book. Not only those things which I replied to in my posting yesterday, but the P.S. statement that was made at the end of the comment;

“Let's all manifest some more of that blood-bought grace, even to those we don't understand and don't agree with.”


Tolerance, that often misused and misunderstood word, is something that I’ve myself have struggled with as I stand for what I believe in, face ridicule and scorn for such beliefs, and when I speak out about the false doctrines and religions and morals, that I don’t receive. Tolerance is the endurance of the presence or actions of objectionable persons, or of the expression of offensive opinions.

And yet, it is Christians who face the most intolerance, or the inability or desire to endure the presence of an objectionable person or opinion. It is not the evangelicals that are facing comments of “They can burn our house down,” etc. which the emergent church declares is the feeling behind the objections of their movement.
I am intolerant, of not being able to speak my beliefs.

On any subject.

That is the constitutional right of any American, whether you have been born here or came from another land. It is your right, under the flag of the US and the Constitution that allegedly governs it. It is how the country was founded and created. It is the call of every Christian, given through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

I speak, not to hear my own words or to gain some kind of notarity as a ‘fanatic’. I don’t speak to enable someone to ‘annoint’ me with the office of Pastor, teacher, or prophet. I speak what my heart says is the words of the Father, and I speak them without (as much as is humanly possible) embellishment.

During my devotional today, I felt led to spend time in Romans, specifically Romans 10. This is what I read.

“Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they do not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the end of the Law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. Moses describes in this way the righteousness that is by the Law: ‘The man who does these things will live by them.’ But the righteousness that is by faith says: ‘Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down) or ‘Who will descend into the deep? (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile ---the same Lord is Lord of All and richly blesses all who call on Him, for, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Romans 10:1-13 (NIV)

Christians are no longer under the Law and its fulfillment, because Christ perfectly brought every part of it to completion, obeying its demands and fulfilling its requirements. A blood debt, owed by each of us, whether Jew or Gentile, free or slave, rich or poor, was not purchased for us, but paid for us. It is freely available for us, if only we believe in faith that it is so.

Righteousness is not gain by mystical means, by contemplative prayer, or by even believing in such prophecies as ‘end times’ or the interpretation of Revelations. Whether you are pre-Trib, mid-Trib, post-Trib or believe the Tribulation happened already, that doesn’t free you from Sin’s debt. You have been freed; you just have to believe that the debt has been paid.

Salvation involves a inward belief (the heart) and outward confession (the mouth), It is by those things that you know that you have realized the gift given. That is the Christian’s generic purpose: to confess Jesus to those we meet, saved and unsaved.

“Those who oppose him (the Lord’s servant) he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.” 2 Timothy 2:25-26 (NIV)

Jesus didn't have to 'be right' or prove the Pharisees wrong. He gave instruction to correct them so that the work of His Father could begin within their hearts to escape through the confession of their lips. To help them realize their errors so that they could be FREE!

And so, every Christian has the battle cry;

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion ---to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.” Isaiah 61:1-4 (NIV)

That is the purpose of each and every believer in the body of Christ. And, still, it is not by our fulfillment of this call to arms, this cry as we face the enemy and his minions that still more will be saved. We are but a broken and sinful people.

It is God in which the power remains and keeps us, not men.

“May God Himself, the God of Peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The One who calls you is faithful and He will do it.” 1 Thessalonians 5:23 (NIV)

Anything that glorifies man, that is done by man, prevents God from doing what He would do for each of us. We can discover that in the history of Adam and the Fall. We discover that in the story of the Tower of Babel. We discover that in the story of the Passion of the Christ.

When we stop looking to justify our salvation, we become warriors for the King. We become those who stand in the world and are identifiable as not part of the world.

We endure great trials, tribulations, and persecutions and LIVE.

That is the grace I’ve given and the grace I give, not through my own strength, but through the strength that is God, perfected in my weakness.

Saturday, June 14

Absolute Truth, part II

Absolute Truth, which my friend considers an arrogant presumption on an evangelical Christian’s part, is “the concept of an absolute, unconditional reality which transcends limited, conditional, everyday existence.” Which automatically rejects my friend’s statement that an evangelical or any other believer cannot discover such a truth, for it stands against any individual attempt to define it in terms favorable to the speaker. What I believe was being referred to was subjective truth (a concept of truth that is based on a person’s perspective; i.e. feelings, beliefs, and desires) which can be impacted by humans and alters according to the introduction of new perspectives by voices that are more vocal than others.

Subjective truth is unique to the person who experiences it and is the core of what I believe the emerging church subscribes to. This is an logical explanation of why each ‘village’ subscribes to varying ‘truths’. Of course, this can be considered to be subjective to me and my perspective. So, we must apply it to something, some understanding of Truth, which lies beyond my or their perspective. The emerging theology claims that this cannot happen, which is applying their subjective truth to a concept that –by its definition, cannot be contained within the limited walls of such truth.

Historically, even before the apparent 'rebirth' of a monotheistic belief system under Abraham (according to the Christian tradition, and even the Islamic tradition), the sudden birth of Zoroastrianism, Orphism, Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, the "new" Hinduism, and post-exilic Judaism in the span of a hundred year, early cultures shared a ‘high gods’ belief system despite animism, totemic, and naturist practices. High gods, who were all-knowing, eternal, and all-powerful, who controlled the moral order and interacted with the affairs of men. There is too much historical evidence to support that these ‘pagan’ cultures simply ‘went along to get along’ with the ‘new’ religions that came upon the cultural landscape.

As if it is in our societal memory, Socialogist David Stark points out in his book Discovering God, "Humans will tend to adopt and retain those elements of culture that appear to produce 'better' results, while those that appear less rewarding will be discarded." Is this a memory that is imprinted in our genetic makeup, reminders of a better life and place that we once resided in?

If Absolute Truth could be modified by such human beings, to shape and mold a god that was totally rational, loving and limitless in abilities and authority that is servant to our whims, what would it look like? As Stark asks in his book, “Did we discover God or have we just invented him?”

I find it hard to believe that a god who we invented would look like the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and would send His only begotten Son to die for a people who wouldn’t receive Him. But, how would we know that we have the Absolute Truth concerning this ‘invention’ of this God? How do we know that He is who we believe He is?

Religious traditions that swerve from a consistent core “can be relegated to human origin”, according to Stark’s criteria for this question of what faith is true. “According to the principle of divine accommodation, revelation should become increasingly sophisticated, telling us more, not less, about God over time..” is the second compelling criteria.

Regis Nicoll, an Centurion for the Wilberforce Foundation, points out in his article God and the evolution of belief, that only the monotheistic belief systems of Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity can claim adherence to this criteria.
Each share the fundamental core regarding the nature of man, creation, and God in addition to a “progressive growth” of faith infancy that develops into an increasingly complex and comprehensive belief in “the doctrines of the Trinity, substitutionary atonement and other-centered love embedded in a historical, rather than mythical, context,” Nicoll points out.
The other ‘sudden’ developing traditions of Taoism, Confucianism, Jainism, Buddhism and a revamped Hinduism address man’s irrepressible need to now, “Now what?” The latter three have additional doctrines regarding a meritable ‘afterlife’. Nicoll points out that these movements define, “doctrines of good, evil, and the importance of right moral actions in one's destiny."

But none of these have an important part of the criteria Stark sets. None express a growing understanding of and regarding the complexity of God.

Understanding Salvation has become for some, as my friend stated, a purely transactional belief (i.e. the Roman Road). Others believe that it is inherently bulit into the original design and is a inheritance that we automatically claim upon the realization of our first breath. The truth is that the only transaction that takes place is the covering of our sins by the sacrificed blood of an innocent, who took the sins of our broken, sinful nature upon Himself to pay the price of Sin's existence. This was a debt we couldn't pay, even in our best efforts, for sin begets sin. The only thing that takes place is a 'replacement' for the payment of sin by God who became Man.

We only have to believe that He stood in our place. No transaction, an exchange for services or goods, takes place.

So that we couldn't boast that we were more righteous, more Christian, or even more understanding of the Truth than another.

Doctrinal differences exists even within the Christian community, but every one has this as their base, their foundation, and an unalterable truth. Otherwise, they aren't Christ-ian.

We have to believe in Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection to understand the rest.

An absolute. Something that defies change. You can either accept that or reject it.

It stands alone.

What bothers me about McLaren and other emergent authors is the selectiveness of their biblical expression, and the exclusion of the absolute truth of Christ. What sounds good isn't necessarily good.

And they want us to regress rather than progress to a ‘new age’ thinking system using those practices in the past that glorified man, not God.

As my friend remarked, Jesus taught us who would be first has to become last, who is rich to become poor, and those who are wronged, to forgive and not retaliate. Jesus also told us, as he pointed out, to pick up our cross and follow Him. The cross, where we have to submit to the absolute authority of Christ, who is God, and who indwells within us through the Holy Spirit.

It was also Christ who cleared the temple area twice, tossing out those who would tarnish His Father’s house with their greed, corrected not only His disciples but also the Pharisees in the distortion of the Scriptures. It was Christ who said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light. None can come to the Father but through Me.”

What truth will you believe? The truth told through the translation, personal experiences, and opinions of another.

Or the provable, historical, and authoritarian Truth that defies our understanding, logic, or desires?

I believe in the absolute Truth that is Jesus Christ. Not by my own authority, but as established by the authority of God. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Not by any action of my own.

If I am intolerant, so be it. I am intolerant of distorts of any truth; be it the gospel, the 'global warming', or the effects of the destruction of the family upon the cultural and societal landscape of this world.

Why?

"I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me."

I speak what I believe for the sake of those who question, wonder, and seek that Truth.

As do those who don’t believe as I do.

Absolute Truth, arrogance or fact beyond ourselves?

"We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty…For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." (2 Peter 1:16, 21)

I spent most of the day thinking about what my friend, who was to have been a mentor for me in the pursuit of the Calling, had to say about my blog on the "emergent" movement, its leadership, and authors. Within his reply, I found both admonishment and thoughtful reflection. Although I’ve posted his comment to stand alone, I do want to speak my peace about some of what he said.

I continue to be somewhat troubled by statements made of "How arrogant of any of us to presume that we have “perfect truth” in spite of our personal prejudices, our upbringing, our cultural context, and information passed down through the generations. If we have Perfect Truth, then we are right and everyone else is wrong" and "Jesus didn’t have to be “right” nor did he have to prove anyone “wrong”."

Seems to me that I am hearing often lately the words intolerant and arrogant, just because I believe what I believe, live what I believe is the faithful pursuit of God and take offense at such terms as ‘hijacking’ and a statement that leads me to believe that my belief in the end times is nothing more than flights of fancy for a mind that has to be deceived into doing things my beliefs call me to do.

It all comes down to Truth.

Because I believe the Truth, that absolute truth that defies any attempt of man to change it, is something beyond my complete ability to defy it, alter it, and claim it as something I've created. I cannot create truth, in that way that defies someone else from coming along and changing it. I can define truth in relation to me, but then again I run into the wall of 'cultural community' bringing overwhelming weight in changing it to reflect the community's opinion as a whole.

I agree with my friend's argument that the emerging movement has taught evangelical born-agains some of the things that we have neglected, just as the Mormons have taught us about the passion of evangelism. Or the service they perform as part of their faith. Neither does the awakening of the emergents to social justice, etc. Some of everything is based on good, just as vampires are based on a disease that made people act like the myths. Does that make their definition of God correct? There are a multitude of papers, historical documentation, errors, and logical thought that show an overwhelming preponderance that they aren't correct. Just as the vagularities of the emerging church in reaching into pagan, or as my friend called them, pre-nicean beliefs. To what standard to we, as Christians, hold them? The emergent movement would have us include them, Hindu, Tao, occultism, and other religious traditions in our definition of truth.

Does that mean that we should believe in the Dracula we’ve seen in the horror films?

Who chooses what is included and what is rejected? Are we going to stand upon the mistruth of the Nicean Council as stated in the DaVinci Code by Dan Brown and follow the scholarly book of the Holy Blood, Holy Grail?

Are we going to define God according to our understanding of Him?

Or the Mormons?

Or the Islamics?

I don't believe that the entire journey of a evangelical Christian is only to revolve around the thought of 'end times', where Christ will come back to reclaim His own; from the Creation that groans to the faithful who remain on the earth upon His ride on that white horse. I never said that was the offense to which I took the statement by Brian McLaren. I took offense because he decided to ridicule my beliefs as an excuse to fool myself into reaching beyond my sinful nature to a higher standard to which God calls all Christians.
I don't know, though I tend to think along the pre-trib lines, whether the Faithful will be raised up before, during, or after. Therefore, McLaren's statement of ridicule to those who believe like I do that the end times prophecies are only that bedtime story that we tell ourselves to help fool ourselves into doing the other things that believers in Christ are called to do is insulting, at best, and arrogant at its worse.

I didn't say that the 'end times' were to be the focus of the Christian. Yet, that is what I'm admonished about. I didn't say that the emergents weren't doing some good things. Yet, that is where I am called to account.

I said the core was rotten.

And, if the branches are bearing what looks like good fruit, one should be able to look to the core of the tree to see the same health displayed. As Christ said, if the core is healthy, then the tree will bear good fruit. If the core is rotten, isn't it part of the logical deduction that the fruit would be rotten also?

Truth stands beyond an ability to modify it to our culture, our morals, and our wishes.

And, then increasing desire to understand truth takes us beyond our humanity of self-preservation, self-motivation, and self-edification. Even though we may believe that our house will burn down tomorrow, we continue to struggle to conform to this Truth...in effect, cleaning our room despite our depressed outlook on the future of its existence.

We become increasingly aware that we are not in control. The house may burn down tommorrow or it may not. We may not even have the right to live in that house come the morning and so set fire to it ourselves out of spite.

The Truth, realized, means that we aren't right, can never be 'righteous', and are beyond the ability to force our own views upon another. The views we subscribe to stand beyond our personal prejudices, upbringing, cultural context, and even information that is taught from generation to generation. It is something that stands above our own sinful nature and understanding and stays the same in the changing cultural landscape.

Only the Truth can force itself upon an unwilling subject. Then, in accordance with our 'Free Will', we can either deny it for what it is or accept it unaltered. But, whatever choice we make, it still exists. It still remains.

If we reject the Truth, then we spend our time rejecting those who believe in it and spend an increasingly verbal violent means to force them to reject that belief. Yet the Truth continues to exist, continues to operate and run things according to its own definition. It remains, even if we try and reject its premise.

For those who accept the Truth, adopting its validity into the core of their lives, an awakening and understanding starts to grow. It becomes more and more evident in the experiences of those who reach into its core. It remains unaltered, and its believers become altered as they grow more and more understanding of its viability and solidity as something they cannot claim as their own but can only value, emulate, and seek its underpinnings in the unexplainable.

How do we know it is not 'our truth' that is that which we believe is the "Truth"?

Does it stand beyond any inconsistencies? If it doesn't, if the 'truth' changes with the cultural demands of the society that subscribes to it, how can it be anything other than human origin?

Once slavery was believed to be okay, since the black man was considered inferior, only a small step beyond the monkey in intelligence, and incapable of having a soul. Today, we only have to look back into the annals of human history to discover the un-truth of a premise on which slavery was claimed to be 'okay'. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, George Washington Carver, and the Tecumseh Airmen, among others stand as greats within our human culture. And society as a whole has abolished this practice of slavery of Africans and other races as inhuman and morally wrong. The truth of slavery changed as the culture changed. Yet, the unaltered Truth of the value of the African remains the same, in accordance with the standard of consistency. "All Men are created equal" and "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."

Once, a man stood before others who belonged to the same ethnic background to which he was born, grew up in the same culture that he, himself, had been raised, and had the same societal values written into his psyche. He declared his race to be the 'master race' and in full authority to rule the world, and destroy those inferior to that ethnicity. He began an ethnic cleansing that he believed, along with his fellow countrymen, to be correct as his truth defined it. The world opposed this man and his 'axis of evil', offering the blood of their youths upon the field of battle in defiance to his truth. To this day, ethnic cleansing is an abomination to the world and is opposed wherever it rears its ugly head; Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur. The Truth remains unchanged, only the truth as defined by another was changed.

So, how can we discover this Truth?

“There are differing claims on such questions as what constitutes truth; how to define and identify truth; the roles that revealed and acquired knowledge play; and whether truth is subjective, relative, objective, or absolute,” the online free encyclopedia Wikipedia states. And the subject is hotly debate by more intellectual minds than mine.

Friday, June 13

Another view.........

A brother in the Lord, whom I respect and value his input, sent me a comment regarding my post on the "emerging church movement." Some things I agree with totally with him, some things I don't, and some portions of the comment made me want to ensure that I clarified that while I do not 'trust' the emergent movement insofar as doctrinal truth, there is a benefit of that forcing me more and more into examining my weaknesses, strengthening my faith, and solidifying my beliefs. Do I hate the emergents? No, but I caution the hook-line-sink approach many christians are taking.

I disagree that we do not have an avenue to the perfect Truth. Perfect truth stands beyond our ability to alter it and Christ gave it to us.

Salvation is key. Faith is given as a choice for us to use wherever we do. But there is several absolutes given that God will not back down on.

Christ is the Truth, the Way, and the Light and none shall come to the Father but through Him. By the blood.

I have published my friend's comments below, as well as on the blog comment section, so that you can verify, if need be, to show I've altered nothing.



Those “emergent” authors you mentioned, NT Wright, Brian McLaren, Dallas Willard, Scot McKnight, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, comprise much of my reading list. But also in that list are Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther, Luke Timothy Johnson, C. S. Lewis, Charles Swindoll, and Billy Graham who are as “orthodox” in their Christianity as anyone.

It is true that the “emergents” cover a wide swath that overlaps non-orthodox (non-Nicean) views of Christianity. Be that as it may, it is also true that the Emergents have also helped us by illuminating our blind spots. A big blind spot has been ignoring the Beatitudes. While I don’t agree with everything that McLaren says, he is correct when he states, "If you thought your house was going to burn down tomorrow, there's no incentive to clean up your room." Jesus taught about an imminent Kingdom, breaking in on the groaning Earth of Romans 8. If all that matters is “the End Times”, then why did Jesus ask his disciples to pick up the left-overs of the miraculous feeding so that “nothing would be wasted”?

How arrogant of any of us to presume that we have “perfect truth” in spite of our personal predjudices, our upbringing, our cultural context, and information passed down through the generations. If we have Perfect Truth, then we are right and everyone else is wrong. Jesus, who was perfect truth incarnate, became sin for us by allowing himself to be judged “wrong”. Jesus didn’t have to be “right” nor did he have to prove anyone “wrong”. His opponents proved themselves wrong the moment they opened their mouths “seeking to justify themselves”.

Many of us see Salvation as purely transactional, i.e. the “Roman Road”. Indeed the transaction of Jesus’ blood paid for our sins is essential to our salvation. Unfortunately we see Salvation as only a contract where we must have an exact understanding of the terms to receive it. But if that’s all there is, what do you do with Luke 15:11? Where the father embraces the wayward son who spent half the father’s wealth on wild living and harlots. Where is the transaction when the father embraces his son and weeps over him? What theology explains the hug? It seems to me that the transactional emphasis was manifest by the elder brother. How could the father pour out lavish grace on the prodigal brother when he himself had fulfilled requirements of righteousness.

Jesus taught us who would be first to become last, who are rich to become poor, who are wronged to endure it, forgive, and not lift a hand in response. To be a light. To restore the sin-marred imago dei in the most broken of us. Most importantly, Jesus taught us to pick up our cross and follow him. The cross is where our will is broken. It is where we have totally given up control of our lives to the Father. If we have not reckoned ourselves dead so that Christ can live through us, I don’t think any cognitively correct understanding of Salvation can save us. The Emergents are the least of our worries.


P.S. Let's all manifest some more of that blood-bought grace, even to those we don't understand and don't agree with.

Thursday, June 12

Part two, Emergent danger.....

It isn't through ancient pagan practices of mystics that the believer draws strength and power but through Jesus Christ and the very foundation of salvation or goodness isn't an ability to be drawn from outside influences. "Not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:9).

Unfortunately and fortunately (dependent on your view), emergents share many things with other Christian groups such as a belief in contextualization, caring for the needy, friendship evangelism, and fellowship. Terms and catch-phrases can be interchanged between these opposing movements, which further smudge the demarcation lines between Christianity and Emergent theology. By claiming these as their own, the emergent church believes that they can sway 'resistors' and their children by claiming these are distinctive essences of the true follower. Regardless of the fact these have been a part of the evangelical movement for hundreds of years, supported by the biblical principles found in Scripture and the teachings of Jesus Christ, they have been poorly taught to the generations through the congregation and family. Cultural Christianity, which is the poor cousin of the emergent Christian, has said one thing and done another. Emergent is from the same family.

David Kowalski expresses in his article Appropriate Response to the Emerging Church Movement, a clear analogy of the Emergent movement,

"If we think of this distinctive essence of emergent as a lake, we can observe that some people, such as Brian McLaren, are swimming in its deepest spot, while others, such as Scott McKnight, are wading in the lake at a shallower depth. Still others (perhaps John Ortberg and Rick Warren fit this description), seem to enjoy boating on the lake and occasionally drinking its water, enjoying friendship with the movement while maintaining a distinctly Evangelical identity."

Which brings me full circle to McLaren's statement in his book, "If you thought your house was going to burn down tomorrow, there would be no incentive to clean your room?"

My incentive, as McLaren puts it, to clean my room ---that is, to conform my life and my goals to the model presented in the life, ministry, and salvation gift of Jesus Christ is rather really simple. I would put it in the format of a father's teaching responsibility to his young son (because I have experience there),

"If you clean your room, and keep it clean, you will have time to enjoy yourself with the time you save and be content in the fact that anyone who comes over to spend time with you will see a well-kept and inviting room in which to play. Let tomorrow worry about itself."

When God places His righteous and holy fire to the tinder of our room, will it ignite into a firestorm that claims everything and reduces it all to a charred mess or will we find that all that is truly valuable has already been safely removed before the flame consumed it all?

I agree with McLaren on one thing that is the focus of his book: the past holds the answers for our future. What I disagree with is what he chooses to call good.

Once again the serpent is whispering half-truths and outright lies within our ears so that we can be cut off from the hope and love of our Creator. All we have to do is taste the fruit.

"Stop quarreling with God! If you agree with Him, you will have peace at last, and things will go well for you. Listen to His instructions, and store them in your heart. If you return to the Almighty and clean up your life, you will be restored. Give up your lust for money, and throw your precious gold into the river. Then the Almighty Himself will be your treasure. He will be your precious silver." Job 22:21-25

Some research sites I used:

www.lighthouse.com
www.carm.org
Jones, Alan., Reimagining Christianity, (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons), 2005.
Pagitt, Doug and Jones, Tony, eds., An Emergent Manifesto of Hope (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books)
Kowalski, David., Appropriate Response to the Emerging Church Movement, (www.lighthouse.com)

As promised, my thoughts on the emerging church part one

"But the narrow gate and the road that lead to life are full of trouble. Only a few people find the narrow gate." Matthew 7:14 GWT

I find it difficult, when pressed, to explain why I feel the Emergent Church movement is such a danger to those who walk in faith with the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm not an intellectual giant, as much of the emergent leadership is, nor do I have much time to research, correlate and decipher what the various 'sects' of emergents believe. Many Christians today don't worry about the emergent movement, even if it has infested their congregation and swayed their leadership. Numbers are numbers and community service is community service. Beyond that, so long as the teaching sounds sound, what's to worry about?

After all, the seeker movement—started to try and stave off the bleeding of our college aged youngsters that were departing from the church proper, was simply a response to carry the Gospel message in more impactful and meaningful ways. Gone were the 'hell and damnation' speeches, accountability, and stale reiterations of the Scriptures. The leadership of the Evangelical church only responded to the need to address this problem, right? Even Willow Creek, a major force in the 'seeker' movement came to realize that program-based teaching failed because of the lack of personal responsibility. But by that time, Postmodernism had smeared itself across the Christian landscape, and thus the emergent movement was birthed.

Postmodernism meets Scriptural authority. Insomuch as the Seeker friendly movement tried to reach the culture through adaptive methods, the emergents took this further by trying to shape theology to suit the culture. All this has done is removed the theological foundation of an objective basis for faith to be replaced by borders for orthodoxy, rejection of 'absolute-set' theology. This is one of the reasons there is no clear definition of emergent theology.

Absolute authority of one community's truth and morals vary from emergent village to emergent village. Exclusive claims to reveled truth and morals are declared arrogant and philosophical quicksand. The declaration of absolutes within these villages are considered to be nothing more than an illegimate power play; to manipulate others under a immoral authority. There is no room for proclamation of an historical, objective, and universal absolute declaration of scriptural text. This rejection of the quest for certain, objective, and universal knowledge that unites the postmodern thinkers that created the emergent movement.

Dualism and assumption of goodness are the knowledge they preach. No constructive paradigm to replace the modern vision of the cultural relativity of the Gospel exists.

Too much of what is central, definable (individually), and evident in the sweet, smooth whisperings of the subscribers and creators of the Emergent or Emerging church; NT Wright, Brian McLaren, Dallas Willard, Scot McKnight, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, Ryan Bolger, Wilbert Shenk, Elizabeth O’Connor, and Nancey Murphy, is sweetened by the humanistic and New Age distortion of postmodernism in alleged defiance of traditional doctrine to reach the straying generations of the 'evangelical' church.

The seeker movement of the Willow Creeks and Saddlebacks of the Mega Church phenomena has warped themselves into a shadowy mirror of Christianity. The Millennials, trained in the seeker program format, have birthed leaders seeking a 'redirection' of the faith that has been hijacked by the evangelical 'old guard'. This is the draw of the emergents and the goal. Of course, the entire Emergent movement makes me feel like Joseph Smith's religion, the Mormons, have been reincarnated and revamped for the modern culture. Everybody is a god, everybody is good, and everybody lives in the heaven within. The words of the emergents are just as sweet as the serpent in the Garden, enticing and inviting.......and just as empty of truth and life.


"Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made....... "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden '?" The woman said to the serpent, "...God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'" The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Just like the serpent, who actually sweetened the words that would've warned Adam to the usurping of his authority within the Garden, McLaren entices defection from God's family through sweet, seemingly generous statements such as;

"Perhaps our ‘inward-turned, individual-salvation-oriented, un-adapted Christianity’ is a colossal and tragic misunderstanding, and perhaps we need to listen again for the true song of salvation, which is ‘good news to all creation.’ So perhaps it’s best to suspend what, if anything, you ‘know’ about what it means to call Jesus ‘Savior’ and to give the matter of salvation some fresh attention. Let’s start simply." McLaren, Brian, A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 93.

Like God, but never God Himself. Never with the ability to stand for the Truth, something that defines Him and yet IS Him.

We failed in the Garden to learn the lesson of sweet talking serpents and have been trying to find that promised 'blessing' of eating that forbidden fruit...........the ability to be like God and know good from evil. The closer we seem to be at being able to define, detect, and disassemble what we call God, the further we get away from the core reality: God cannot be defined by our standards, because our standards have been corrupted by the fall of our father Adam.

The closer we come to defining god, the further we go from the Truth that lies in our path.

John Gill points out that the way to eternal salvation is a gate, 'difficult to enter' and the way 'is unpleasant to the flesh to walk in, being hedged up on each side with afflictions and tribulations. Much of the emergent movement is too readily seen in Gill's comment, "Men choose large gates, broad ways, and much company. The flesh loves to walk at liberty, unconfined, and uncontrolled."

John Calvin relates this, ” For whence does it arise, that each of them knowingly and willfully rushes headlong, but because, while they are ruined in the midst of a vast crowd, they do not believe that they are ruined? The small number of believers, on the other hand, renders many persons careless. It is with difficulty that we are brought to renounce the world and to regulate ourselves and our life by the manners of a few."

The emergent church grows stronger and larger by the day. Mega churches are the norm, not the exception in this community of intellectual conversationalists. Is it any wonder that we are told "few there will be that find it"? This narrow way through the straight gate......

Author and Pastor Brian McLaren, one of the 'influential thinkers' of the emergent movement believes that a literal, global, and pre-Christ return kingdom of God exists now and the world's preparation for Christ's return is simply a matter of incorporation of the world's religions in a 'world yet to be born' that protects, practices, and melds together all the 'spiritual practices' from the 'three Abrahamic faiths' and the other religious movements that scatter the face of the planet like small pox.

In his latest book, Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices, McLaren tells us that we shouldn't oppose these spiritual disciplines; they cleanse, enlighten, and bring us closer to God helping us surpass the unsatisfying alternatives of secularism, fundamentalism, and 'mushy spirituality.' McLaren states: "[W]e need to move beyond our deadlock, our polarization, our binary, either/or thinking regarding faith and reason, religion and science, matter and spirit ... We need a fusion of the sacred and the secular" (pp. 4-5).

Sounds like soundbites from the LEFT BEHIND series of books, the book of Revelation, and a host of other movies, commentaries, and sermons which have touched upon the Deceiver and his 'reign' on this world. The alleged "end times". Only in this case, it is an alleged 'follower of Christ' that is saying there is nothing more desirous than such a world religion rather than the Anti-Christ character of Nicolas Carpathia.

The solution, believed by many of the emergent movement leaders, is to turn to mystical practices, contemplative prayer, and 'conversations' with the unsaved, as an avenue to being closer to God. By identifying and preserving the classical experiences of enlightenment as given through Buddhist monks, Hindu gurus, Aboriginal shamans, Sufi sheiks, Hebrew kabalists, and even such 'bold' Christians that describe themselves as 'spiritual guides' or mystics, we can gain the necessary impus to have Christ return and tells us we've realized the kingdom...which is already here and waiting for expressions of unified peace and human spirituality.

These human-defined religious experiences have commonality; radiant light and an experience of 'oneness' with creation. Without a mystical connection, there is no oneness. And without oneness, there can be no mystical connection. The perfect Catch-22.

This was once misidentified; the emergent leaders apparently want us to believe, with the heart of occultism.

Now it is called, "Emergent theology". A religion of the young.

Lighthouse.com has this to say about McLaren's book, "McLaren spends page after page trying to prove his points. He condemns traditional Christianity to dangerous and fearful, he applauds efforts to reconcile all religions together, he rejects any thoughts that Christ's kingdom is only for the born-again, and he upholds a New Age kingdom in which man is in union with God (regardless of beliefs). He embraces mysticism wholeheartedly and in fact believes the world cannot be healed without it.”

This is nothing new for McLaren. The focus of his latest book is the emphasis on HOW to attain an awakened state of 'reconciliation with God, one another, and all creation in a global community' (p42.) through the mystical practices, such as contemplative exercise, of the world's religions.

Josh Graves, a minister and prolific author himself, interviewed him about. I took offense to one of the 'greatest moments' of the interview, in which Graves asked McLaren about a statement made in his new book; Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices, regarding eschatology, the belief of the end times.
Graves asked McLaren what he meant by "Eschatology always wins."
McLaren seems to look down his nose at us poor souls, who believe in the prophecies of the Bible in regards to the end times with the reply,
"If you thought your house was going to burn down tomorrow, there's no incentive to clean up your room."
Of course, that is only the tip of the iceberg for McLaren. In the PBS special about the Emerging (aka Emergent) Church, he expanded upon the eschatology comment further. "The church has been preoccupied with the question, 'What happens to your soul after you die?' As if the reason for Jesus coming can be summed up in, 'Jesus is trying to help get more souls into heaven, as opposed to hell, after they die.' I just think a fair reading of the Gospels blows that out of the water. I don't think that the entire message and life of Jesus can be boiled down to that bottom line."

Fellow emergent, Alan Jones, the dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, in his book Reimagining Christianity, looks at it this way. "The church's fixation on the death of Jesus as a universal saving act must end, and the place of the cross must be reimagined in Christian faith. Why? Because of the cult of suffering and the vindictive God behind it." Page 132

This is nothing new for the emergent movement, this rejection of the evangelical 'resistors' that have stood the line between the Gospel accounting and the postmodern attempts to rewrite it. Rick Warren, the famous pastor of Saddleback Church, who wrote the Purpose Driven Life and variations of it, recognized this resistance to the emergent eschatology early on;

"Moses had to wander around the desert for 40 years while God killed off a million people before he let them go into the Promised Land. That may be brutally blunt, but it's true. There may be people in your church who love God sincerely, but who will never, ever change."

Missed is the fact that it was the people themselves, who refused to listen to God's absolutes that required them to journey through the desert for 40 years. It was their sinful ways that caused God to make them stay out of the Promised Land until the generation that committed the abominations against God all died. And it was Moses' own disobedience of God's command that caused him to be prevented from entering the Promised Land. The punishment for sin was death, and the generation passed before God would bring His people home.

Dan Southerland, another Emergent, gives embattled pastors a method of labeling such 'resistors' in his book Transitioning: Leading Your Church Through Change, written to support Warren's Purpose Driven agenda. "If you have read Nehemiah recently, you will remember that Sanballat is Nehemiah's greatest critic and number one enemy. Let me put it plainer than that. Sanballat is a leader from hell. We all have some Sanballats in our churches. This is the guy who opposes whatever you propose.... You cannot call this guy a leader from hell to his face - but you could call him Sanballat (p. 115)."

Religious profiling at its finest. But often times, it is the emergents that say the evangelical born-agains are the 'hate-mongers' and 'name callers'.

This may seem innocuous on the surface, but the 'get with the program, change, or die' is a common trait of the New Age movement, of which the emergent is only a new twig. Those who don't get onboard, or ride the wave, of the emergent movement will simply be washed away or die, in the opinion of the emergent leadership. The focus of the emergent isn't on the 'old guard' evangelicals in the church, though. History has taught them its lesson well. They are targeting the youth. Emergents Doug Pagitt and Tony clarify this agenda in their An Emergent Manifesto of Hope:

"Since the church has been one of the main perpetrators of parental fear-mongering, it's only fair we take up the cause of creating a culture of parenting that is less about what we don't want for our children and more about what we do want." p52

The new thinkers of this so-called hijacked Christianity, like McLaren, preach that emergents must infiltrate "institutions that reject it" –which they consider to be conservative Protestants who have managed nothing more than to repeat the Roman Catholic mistakes, like the rejection of Galileo, with this refreshing and spiritual emergent movement. McLaren encourages his followers to wait for the evangelicals eventual death with "…..over time, what they reject will find or create safe space outside their borders and become a resource so that many –if not most—of the grandchildren of today's fundamentalists will learn and grow and move on from the misguided battles of their forebears (biblical believers)" p133. These forbearers are considered 'pushy religious fundamentalists' by the emergent leaders.

Gone within the emergent movement are the absolutes that evangelical born-again Christians have declared for generations and Jesus Himself declared:

1. We can properly proclaim the truth of who God is.
2. We can properly proclaim what God requires for salvation.
3. We can recognize errors that that would jeopardize salvation.
4. We can allow for a diversity of worship practices as long as the essentials are not violated.

All McLaren claims to offer, as do many of the emergent leaders dotting the landscape today, is a creative and fresh alterative to the seeker-friendly and 'hell-and-damnation' models of Christianity, that gains its strength from the old worldly religious traditions to bring fresh life to an emerging worldwide postmodern unified spirituality that brings a global community of dysfunctional and opposing religions under a "Love, Love, Love" banner of distorted truth. This reawakening of mysticism will bring about interspirituality to awaken man's own understanding of his divinity. Open to people of all faiths, this will narrow the gap to "becoming awake and staying awake to God." P18. The admonishments of the Bible and the scriptural support opposing this 'reawakening' is strangely missing from McLaren's 'improved' Christian model.

Not all emergents are so opposed to the evangelical born-again belief system. There are teachers who hold to the essentials and just graft the emergent postmodernism to its structure and keep their heads down. The danger is there are also emerging church teachers who not only deny them, but consider them to be somewhat irrelevant to their view of the "Christian conversation", which is the eschatology that McLaren preaches to the converting masses.
There is silence with the comparisons to occultism and new age thinking within the emergent villages, no matter how little or how much they subscribe to the essentials of the Christian faith.

In the book entitled, Metaphysical Primer: A Guide to Understanding Metaphysics, which outlines the basic laws and principles of the New Age movement there is an echo of the emergent movement's philosophy, "You are one with the Deity, as is all of humanity. Everything is one with everything else. All that is on Earth is an expression of the One Deity and is permeated with Its energies." Doesn't this also sound like Oprah's religion?

Oprah's promotion of New Age thinking alarms Christians in the evangelical movement and the musings of the like of Eckhart Tolle send shivers down the spine, but no one is alarmed by the emergent message. Live and let live is the common thread of Christian thought. 'Emergent isn't New Age' is the claim to keep the evangelical born-agains silent.

Gone within the postmodern eschatology of the emergent movement are the absolutes of the Trinity, the virgin birth, authority of Christ to be the only way to salvation, monotheism, the Gospel, the resurrection of Christ in bodily form, the grace of Salvation free of human works, and even the deity of Christ as unique and unattainable by human means.

Even those who would offer praise and accolades to the emergent leadership have inadvertently shown its ties to the New Age and postmodern philosophies. George Mair, attempting to offer a candid accounting of Warren's life as a testament of praise, reveals a connection to New Age prophet Norman Vincent Peale and an obscure teacher of occult science, Florence Scovel Shinn. Mair praises Warren's Saddleback with the statement, "Saddleback distinctly bears the stamp of Reverend Norman Vincent Peale" with the teachings of unification of psychology and religion.

In offering his own take on what he believes is his calling, McLaren mirrors such New Age thinking. In the via illuminativa, McLaren defines his calling:

"The purpose of the via purgativa [the practices] is to prepare us for the via illuminativa [the awakening], and the purpose of the via illuminativa is to prepare us for the via unitiva [all is one], the union of our nature with the nature of God" (pp. 171-172). "We join God in being fire ... Before the beginning ... God was All, and All was God"

McLaren declares that this isn't something that is new, but a 'return' to the true path set forth by the greatest man of faith that Christians acknowledge, Abraham. Somehow McLaren has deciphered that the Old Testament priest Melchizedek was from a different religious movement and Abraham himself used a mystical practice to relate with this priest. McLaren believes that this shows us that we can discover commonality in another's faith that mirror our own. So did Occultist Aldous Huxley. Mysticism, Huxley declared in his book As Above, So Below, is the highest common factor in every one of the world's religious movements that leads man to recognize the divinity of everything, including himself.

Fellow emergent Tony Campolo, in Speaking My Mind, offers that mysticism unites the two largest religious movements; Christianity and Islam. Of course, the New Ager Barbara Marx Hubbard echoes the emergent thought with "Christ-consciousness and Christ-abilities are the natural inheritance of every human being on Earth."

The difference between Christians and these 'followers of Christ' are large and looming. Whereas the 'follower' believes that there is a method in which he can call God unto himself and become divine, that inherent and natural right of humanity. A Christian knows that Christ dwells within and it is His life that gives the power to become progressively more like Him (sanctification). This is shown in the Scriptures:

"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (II Corinthians 3:18).