faith for faith

As long as there have been men on the earth, there have been fools who have believed in a simple god who acts more like a vending machine than he does a Great and Benevolent Judge. We find these scattered throughout the Scriptures in those like the friends of the afflicted, yet righteous Job who sought to discover Job’s sin so that they could validate his plight by their theology, and likewise in the question of the foolish disciples concerning the blind man at Siloam, asking, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (Jn. 9:2). And these men with simple theologies have not ceased since that time, seen more recently in the “elucidating” commentaries of the Jerry Falwells and the Pat Robertsons concerning 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and, most recently, the great earthquake in Haiti. These view God as a cosmic vending machine who dispenses wrath when evil is put in and dispenses blessing when righteousness is put in.

Yet despite such claims, these fools have no answers as to why the righteous must suffer in this age (cf. Rm. 8:17-39) and why the wicked prosper. They have no answers for the affliction of the martyrs (chief of whom being Jesus Christ), and they have no answers for the prosperity of the Las Vegases and the San Franciscos. Nevertheless, these idiots come out like clockwork after every great disaster giving “inspired” commentary upon those disasters.

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When I had begun writing this post the day prior, I began by poking at it jeeringingly as I am often sinfully predisposed to do. Many of us must admit that we have joked around the matter of the Most Holy Building Fund and its ubiquity in American churches (especially in Baptist churches), but if we were to step back take the rein of our humor, we would realize that this present matter is not one to be joked about. For, the insistence of leaders in the church to build bigger and bigger barns is not some benign pimple on forehead of the American church, but it is a branch of the deadly cancer that has wrapped itself around the throat of the church from its overexposure to prosperity and Capitalism. The church has become thoroughly American and Western in her practices, and her leaders have whole-heartedly embraced the methods and ideologies that brought this country to its present wealthy state. And while men can debate till they are blue in the face over political and economic theories for the state, this is not a matter for debate in Christ’s church. For the cry of Christ through two millennia has ever been, “I will build my church” (Mt. 16:18), and it is not for men to think up new strategies and to test new models of church growth.

And if we were to step back and survey how we in the church have strayed so far from the biblical teachings concerning Christ’s church and its practices and growth, we would surely have a daunting task before us. We could certainly step back to the Medieval church and see the remnants of its thoughts and practices in our own thoughts and practices, and we could follow it through the Reformation and through the Enlightenment and cap it with the business models of the twentieth century, yet in doing thus we would see nothing but from where we have come. In order to understand where we need to be we must become like the Wise Man who holds the seams of the Scriptures together who meditates on God’s Word day and night so that he might not be conformed to the world but transformed by the renewal of his mind (cf. Josh. 1:8; Ps. 1; Rm. 12:2). We need to come back to the Source of our faith, and we must not wander from it, for in it lies what the Lord our God deems as prosperous.

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Upon the post on Why I am a Reformed Baptist and not a Presbyterian, the question was raised, viz. “If we as Reformed Baptists, because of our understanding of the covenants and Covenant Theology, do not baptize infants, when then is the covenant sign of baptism rightly administered?” An excellent question, I might add, and I promise you that if you were to gather together a group of Baptists and ask them that same question, the result could be likened to that of UFC fight. Believe me, I have seen it before.

To appreciate the differences of opinion within Baptist circles on the proper time to administer the sign of baptism, you would have to understand the diversity within those who are labeled Baptists. To put it succinctly, imagine it this way: If you were to throw all of the Methodist denominations and all of the Presbyterian denominations into a single denomination and labeled it Paedobaptists and were to force them to work together and to throw money into a single pot, you would begin to see a bit of the diversity that exists among those who call themselves Baptists. Anyone who believes in believer’s baptism is a Baptist, be he a Calvinist or an Arminian, Reformed or Dispensational, an advocate of an elder-ruled church government or of congregation-ruled, alcohol connoisseur or teetotaler, etc., and it is for this reason that nobody cares to go to the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention unless it is known beforehand that something like Calvinism or alcohol is going to be discussed, and then members flock to it by the droves. It is sort of like looking at a wreck; you know that you shouldn’t, but you just can’t help yourself.

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Why is a new year so alluring? Is it because some miraculous event takes place when the clock strikes midnight and January 1st chimes in? Is it because there is some fundamental shift in our thoughts and actions that characterize the change from the previous year to the next? Does nature subject itself to man’s calendar and thereby spring from one season to the next? The answer to all of these questions is an obvious “no,” and if it were not for the dropping of light-colored balls and the ticking of second-hands on clocks, we would scarcely know that anything had happened from one moment to the next.

Why then is a new year so alluring? It is so, I believe, because of the desire ingrained in every human being for renewal, for a second chance, for a do-over. For the end of every year is a natural call for retrospection on that year, and everyone of us, being the imperfect creatures that we are, are filled with happiness for the good things accomplished and, more significantly, regret for the things that we did not accomplish and the things at which we failed. And since all of us fall short far more than we succeed, the end of the year marks the end of a failed chapter in our lives, and the new year marks the beginning of a new chapter filled with possibility for change.

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