Category Archives: Bible

Heresy

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“Jesus reveals God to us; God does not reveal Jesus to us…We cannot deduce anything about Jesus from what we think we know about God; we must deduce everything about God from what we do know about Jesus…”

As a Christian Jesus is my ideal starting point. If I want to better understand the mystery of God I should seek to better understand Jesus. If I want to better understand the whole of Scripture I should seek to better understand Jesus. What does God feel and think about suffering? Look at Jesus. What does God feel or think about rejects and freaks? Look at Jesus. What does God think about money, materialism, and consumption? Look at Jesus.

Let me quickly add one caveat before I move on. Things are not simple! Just looking at Jesus is not simple. The reality is that I don’t have a clear picture of Jesus. I only see him through my own world view, through my own baggage. So while it is an incredible and difficult task in a sense to look at Jesus, I do believe that it is a forgiving task full of mercy and grace along the way. One of the beauties of following Him is that he knows my baggage, he knows my (in)ability to comprehend and understand who he is and what he is about. And most importantly he is able to meet me where I am at and create transformation and a new creation despite my ignorance or brokenness!

My purpose in this blog is to talk about church. If we are honest about ourselves we must accept the reality that most of what we practice and believe about church is solely taught or read about in the book of Acts and the letters in the latter half of the Bible. Very little of how we define and practice being the church is founded in our reading and understanding of Jesus. While I do not believe that Paul (who wrote many of those aforementioned letters) and Jesus would disagree with each other or throw down in fisticuffs if given the opportunity, I do think that we have improperly done our theology about church (in biblical theology circles this is called ecclesiology). Similar to how we try to fit Jesus into our understanding of God instead of the other way around, with church we have spent more time trying to fit Jesus into our understanding of Paul. Would things be different if we started with Jesus? Would things be different if we attempted to define what a movement of Jesus followers (church) would look like based on the life and ministry of Jesus himself and then look into Paul and the other New Testament writings to see what they came up with in doing the same process?

Take a step back and think about the early church. What did they have? They had the stories about Jesus. They had the Old Testament. They had their own context. And they had the working of the Holy Spirit. WE, on the other hand, get all that PLUS the stories of what those early faith communities did, what they struggled with, the questions they asked, and the dysfunctions they developed. If I created a formula to better describe how the early followers of Jesus came up with what church looked like, it might look like this:

  • Jesus + History (including the Old Testament) + Context + Spirit = first century church

Couldn’t you look at our churches, our ways of defining how to do church and suggest that our formula looks more like this:

  • Paul + your grandpa’s context + Spirit = western church

What if we tried to craft a different formula? Would church today look different if we made an authentic effort to live and practice out of this formula:

  • Jesus + Church History (including rest of Scripture) + OUR context + Spirit = ?

I’m no scholar, but I know that much of the early churches structures, practices, and disciplines were not new. They were things that they borrowed from out of their own context, history, and surrounding culture. They borrowed things that were of value in following Jesus. We, in turn, have made those things concrete. Have we made the wrong things concrete? Have we inadvertently practiced idolatry by elevating that which is not holy (the practices and structures) to a place of holiness? In Paul’s writings we see a community of people struggling with the equation, with the formula. In those writings we see the churches journey, their story, their “becoming”.

Have we I ignorantly tried to adopt their culture, their context, their problems, and their journey without following their lead? Would it not be more true to their journey, to Scripture, if I was to follow the early churches lead by looking at my Lord, looking at my context, looking at my story (history), and listening/looking for God’s untamed Spirit? I wonder what type of church I would end up with?

Sorry for the heresy. I’m an out loud processor, I grow most through dialog, through putting things out there that I may not even agree with…though, to be perfectly honest, I’m kind of liking what I’ve come up with.

Salvation?

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Christians often explain how Jesus dying for our sins works by saying that God is perfect and cannot be with corrupt humanity (because of our sin). So because of this chasm he sent his son (who is God himself) to pay the price for sin (which is death) and thus fulfill the necessary requirements needed for us and him to exist peacefully in heaven. More or less that’s the idea. I could draw diagrams except that I’m too lazy.

One author questions that formula by retelling the Prodigal Son story like this:

…when the son returns from his partying and recognizes the error of his ways, his father responds by saying “I cannot simply forgive you…it would be against the moral order of the entire universe…Such is the severity of my justice that reconciliation will not be made unless the penalty is utterly paid. My wrath-my avenging justice-must be placated.” The prodigal sons older brother then offers to do extra work in teh fields and pay his brother’s penalty. And finally when the elder brother died of exhaustion, the father’s wrath was placated against his younger son and they lived happily for teh remainder of their days.

Do you buy that retelling? Do you buy our current definition? Are you unsettled? Are you comfy? Speaking personally, I’ve got some questions that I’m pursuing.

Enough said.

Are you God?

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I won’t deceive you and say that this blog has not been grown through my current book addiction in some ways, but if we were honest how many of our thoughts are completely original anyways!

The Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faith are unique in that they believe in one God. Monotheism. Pretty exciting stuff right? Well in our western world (though times are changing) anything but monotheism was considered foreign, strange, and maybe even foolish. It was all those “other” places in the world that had many different gods, we are Christians and follow one God, THE God.

But here’s the reality, while we may have said that we follow one God our actions speak otherwise. You see when there are many gods you end up with a god of the river and a god of wine and a god of food and a god of sex and a god of the underworld, etc. Much time, then, is spent pleasing all the gods of the pantheon or at the very least trying not to piss them off. Whereas when there is just one God, wine and food and sex and…all belong under the same roof. They don’t all submit to different lords but rather are all submissive to the one Lord of the universe. Right? Are you drooling with excitement yet? ‘Cause here’s the part that I think is exciting…

I think many people who call themselves Christians actually do not believe in one God. Here’s the thing, if there is just one God and he is God over everything then when we call ourselves followers of this one God we must believe that we are called to submit all of our life to him. While I do believe that there is much room for our sinfulness and all that crap that comes along with being human, a dissociation has grown between much of what we call ourselves and what we consider our spiritual selves. It’s for this reason that Christians justify racial hatred, grotesque materialism, apathy toward social injustices, and greed. It has become two different worlds. It’s this odd dissociation that makes it possible for someone to proudly say “Yes I am a Christian and yes I hate colored people” (though they often find more offensive terms to use). In other words it has become normal and acceptable to believe in a god that has nothing to say about how you operate outside of church walls. This is not monotheism. “God” actually becomes some sort of pluralistic view in which there is the God of the Bible and then there is the god of my own preference.

What would it look like if we began to submit ourselves more consistently, more holistically to a God that is truly supreme, lord over everything, and creator of all? I wonder if this would change our preference concerning individuality over community, spending over giving, sex over relationship, drunkeness over honesty (often I think that peoples reasons for getting drunk is that it allows them a sort of freedom that their sober self won’t allow), busyness over simplicity, preference over sacrifice…