faith for faith

I do not know about you, but one of the scariest things for me is to sit through a Sunday school class where an Old Testament narrative is being studied. It is not because I do not esteem biblical narrative as I do the rest of the Scriptures or that I do not believe that its lessons are any less applicable to Christians today, but it is because there seem to be few teachers who understand how to read and how to teach biblical narrative. For instead of reading the text and searching for the intent of a particular author, many who teach biblical narrative treat them as nice little stories about a particular aspect of morality and apply Western moral concepts to its application.

For this reason, we have erected unbiblical conclusions and teachings about biblical stories and characters. Thus we teach that Abraham wavered in faith when he took Hagar as his wife and through her bore a son, though Moses does not make that judgment of him, and though Paul writes later of Abraham, “No distrust made him waver concerning the Promise of God, but he grew strong in faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised” (Rm. 4:20,21), and though Paul teaches that the birth of Ishmael happened to demonstrate God’s sovereign choice in election (cf. Rm. 9:7-13). From the misinterpretation of biblical narrative we also have created other false teachings as “listening to small, still voice of God” from the narrative of Elijah in the storm (cf. 1Kngs. 19:12), and have falsely judged other characters such as Rahab and the Hebrew midwives who, out of fear of God, told untruths to save the lives of God’s people, who were then not condemned but commended by God for their actions (cf. Josh. 2; Ex. 1:15-22).

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For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me” (Rm. 15:3).

When it comes to those to whom Christians are to look for guidance and inspiration to live their lives, their focus should be Singular. For there is only one Man who lived perfectly for the sake of God and his glory, and that man is Jesus Christ. And though there are others to whom we can look to as a godly examples, their example is only good insofar as it accords with the example of Jesus Christ. For while there have always been, by God’s grace, godly men on this earth, those men, at the end of day, were still men and being such were still sinners till the day they died.

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Contrary to what you may think, Calvinism is not the most explosive issue in the American church. Neither is it the drinking of alcohol, the acceptance of homosexual clergy, the Emergent church, or building funds. All of these issues pale in comparison to what I believe is the most explosive and controversial issue in the American church, namely the use of American wealth. For of all the issues that face the American church, the improper use of American wealth is the most ubiquitous, for it is an issue that transcends all doctrinal lines, plagues every denomination, and will anger the soul of ninety-nine percent of those to whom you address it.

And as such, it is the least addressed of all the issues that plague the American church. For few are convicted of the improper use of American wealth (since we have been about explaining it away in our religion for decades), and even fewer are willing to suffer the lashes that come with its address. Yet, now is time, as the apostle Paul writes, to “awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:14b,15).

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We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up (Rm. 15:1,2).

As God has ordained it, his church is comprised of many people of many varying strengths and degrees of faith (cf. Rm. 12:3). And in spite of these variances, God has ordained that his church be one Body, united for the sake of his glory. And as such, the attainment of unity in the church for the sake of God’s glory must come through love and longsuffering, for the church at present remains in a fallen world and will, because of the variance within it, contain those who fail.

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Oftentimes when we think of serving the Lord in ministry and with our lives, we divide our lives into two categories–into those things which concern the Lord and those things which do not concern the Lord. In this, we effectively set ourselves as judges over our lives, and we divide our lives into that which we believe is sacred and that which we believe is not. This division of our lives into the sacred and the unsacred stems from a view of God that esteems him as lofty and transcendent and who only concerns himself with the “big” matters of our lives. For this reason, we prepare ourselves spiritually when we do such things as go to church services, aide the needy, and share the Gospel, but we often neglect our spirituality when we cut the grass, watch television, and eat food. For we believe and think that we know the God we serve, and we believe that he is too busy running the Universe and saving souls to be concerned about the manner in which we cut our grass.

This estimation of God that produces such a division in our lives, rather than being a lofty estimation, is in fact low estimation. For we view God as one who is constantly running about, tirelessly fighting the Adversary and strenuously beckoning men to himself, rather than he who is seated on high and who controls the world by the Word of his mouth. And as such, our God is not merely the God of Good and of Salvation, but he is the God of the birds and the hairs upon our head, and neither the bird nor the hairs upon our head live or grow or die or fall apart from his Word (cf. Mt. 10:29, 30). And our God does not merely ordain the beginnings and ends of all things, but he holds all things together so that nothing can claim a moment of existence apart from him (cf. Col. 1:17).

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What is speaking the truth in love? It is a question that I seem to ask to myself incessantly, for there are many who take offense to many of the things that I write and speak, and there are many who claim that I do not write and speak in love. It is a question that judges me whenever I hear of the offenses and the hostilities that some of my writings raise, and it is one that causes to me to examine every topic that I address and every word that I use to address them. It is a question that haunts my soul and my very purpose for existence, and one that causes me to question the very path that I have walked thus far. And being such a reoccurring question, I have addressed it before in my soul and in my writings and will likely address it for the rest of my life.

What then is speaking the truth in love? If you were to take a random survey of people in our country, you would likely receive a host of different answers. If you were to ask the question of a person of a postmodern persuasion, you would likely get an answer similar to, “Speaking the truth in love is not speaking at all, for truth is relative to the individual, and to force one’s opinion of truth upon another is offensive and intolerant and therefore unloving.” If you were to ask it of another, you might get the answer, “Speaking the truth in love is sharing what is true in such a way that it presents one’s view of truth as an opinion thereby making compliance to it optional and thus making it inoffensive.” If you were to ask it of one who professes to be a Christian, you might get an answer like, “Speaking the truth in love is sharing the truth of God’s Word in a way that is not judgmental and that withholds matters that might offend a person and turn them away from a church or the Faith.”

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I do not encounter this often in real life, but in the advent of “fake life,” of the world of blogs and Facebook, I seem to encounter this often, namely the use of strong and despicable rhetoric to propagate or tear down everything from politicians to the saving of some squirrel in the hills of eastern Mongolia. All people believe in and fight for something, and, for some reason, the internet brings out the worst of it. And this is not to say that people should not have strong convictions or that there are not causes to fight for, however, many people will say things on the internet that they would never say in real life. And for some odd reason, many of us feel as though the internet is a safe haven for us to express our passions and thoughts and that when things are said on the internet, those words somehow “do not count” or affect people. This, of course, is not true and is ridiculous, for things said anywhere, whether in person or on the internet, truly do count and truly do affect people.

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For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings (1Cor. 9:19-23).

It can be said of Christian history that one generation’s cultural adaptation is the following generation’s tradition-entrapped religion. It was true of the Jews who were in previous generations faithful to Yahweh in their cultural adaptation, but who were in a subsequent generation in Christ’s day so ensnared by the cultural adaptation of previous generations that they were unable to recognize Yahweh incarnate and crucified him. And the same it is true of American Christianity where previous generations adapted to the culture of their time, and subsequent generations were then ensnared by the cultural adaptations of the previous generation.

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Dear Reader,

It has been almost a year since I began writing at faithforfaith.org, and this post is the 200th in that time that began on October 1, 2008. I have written much in that time and have shared much that has been on my heart, and yet I have not been as transparent as I ought to have been in my writings. The fact is that though I have been saved by grace and have been made holy by Christ, my life is far from a picture of holiness. And while few would likely expect me to use this medium as a display of my shortcomings, I feel that it is my duty to be open about who I am so that, one, I might not boast in the façade of holiness that is erected by my writings, and, two, so that I might be humbled at the revelation of my failures. Therefore, this post is one of my failures and weaknesses, so that in all things I might be reckoned truthful and that Christ alone might receive the glory. Soli Deo gloria.

Confession 1: I am an Prideful Man
Though a casual reading of the Scriptures would reveal that God has accomplished all things so that no man might boast (cf. Rm. 3:27; Eph. 2:8), my heart is often inclined to boasting in myself. In spite of what I know to be true, namely that God ordains and controls all things so that he might get the glory in all things, I have at times fallen and wallowed in my self-centeredness and have boasted in that which I have no right to boast. And though I believe that I have come far in this regard from that time when God first called me to himself, I am often reminded by my own desire to be known and heard that I have far to go in humility. I confess that even at the times when my heart’s desire is to honor Christ, I have slipped into hoarding a slice of that glory for myself, and in that I am ashamed.

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It is settled. The first step on our journey to unindebtedness is complete, namely we, with the help of relatives, have closed on a piece of property for a great price just a couple miles from where our church gathers, our family lives, and closer to both our places of employment. God is indeed gracious and good. And thus it has been proven that land can be purchased through Craigslist.:)

The seemingly ironic part of this is that we are actually more in debt now than we were before. Therefore the next step is to figure out how we are going to sell our home in Raleigh so that we can free up our credit to settle onto our newly acquired property. And this step is possibly more complicated than the first, though that did not seem to be the case before we closed on the land.

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