faith for faith

Take a deep breath, everyone. Contrary to Harold Camping’s reports, the Rapture and subsequent Judgment will not be happening this Saturday. This news broke when an anonymous tipper pointed authorities to a seemingly obscure passage in the Apostle Peter’s second letter. There the apostle wrote:

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed (2Pet. 3:10).

This passage seems to suggest, contrary to the hoopla surrounding Camping’s prediction, that the Day of the Lord (i.e. Judgment and the End) will come like a “thief in the night.” Through an intensive investigation of the practices of past nocturnal bandits, it has been determined that the typical night thief does not announce his intentions prior to his thievery, neither does he give clues encrypted in apocryphal literature. No, he simply comes unannounced and thus unexpectedly.

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A name is a loaded thing. It gives one description, a moniker, categories, and a sense of belonging. It also permits social interaction, structure, and order. Names are a fundamental element of human existence. But what does one do if a name no longer correctly describes him, or if the meaning the name portrays has changed over time, or if that name has become so broad that it encompasses those with whom one would never associate?

These are some of the questions I have been asking myself for years regarding the “Baptist” title. Baptist is one of those names that has become so broad and has developed so many connotations that it is hardly helpful as a name any more. Generally, the Baptist name encompasses almost anyone who professes Christ who does not hold to infant baptism. Apart from that, one can be Calvinistic or Arminian in his soteriology, covenantal, dispensational, etc., in his view of the New Covenant, charismatic or cessationist with regard to the gifts of the Spirit, congregational or elder-ruled with regard to ecclesiology, etc., etc., etc. In other words, the only thing that holds Baptists together is the dryness of their infants.

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For everyone who has wondered about life after death, wonder no longer. Stephen Hawking, astrophysicist and self-professed genius (of the Wile E. Coyote type), has formally declared that “Heaven is a fairy story.” While it is difficult to question the genius of such a man as Stephen Hawking (especially since his paraplegia gives him a certain sixth sense of knowing everything), just how did he come to such a conclusion? Usually when someone makes a claim about the afterlife they usually have discovered it in a religious book, in a near-death experience, or something. Hawking? Well, it just sort of naturally flows from his general repugnance of religion and the thought of God.

Enough of Hawking, but this view seems to be the view of the majority of astrophysicists apart from him. I enjoy watching the History Channel’s show, “The Universe,” but sometimes I just get disgusted by the presumption that holds the whole “science” together. These men and women talk with such certainly about cosmic events that happened millions and billions of years ago as though they found the journal of someone or something that live at that time. Amazing how there is such certainly about unrecorded history and so much skepticism about recorded history two-thousand years ago, but I digress.

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I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your rational service (Rm. 12:1).

Seemingly, we are instructed from our births that the only way by which we will find true fulfillment in our lives is by becoming someone who is great and laudable—someone who is esteem-able. Implanted in our young minds are the society’s virtues of self-esteem and self-aggrandizement, wherein countless sources from parents to teachers, preachers to presidents, cheer us on to be anything that we desire to be, as long as we put our minds and our energies into it. We are inspired to dream dreams, to reach for the pinnacles of human existence, and to loathe whatever evil thoughts might step in our way that tell us, “You’re not good enough, you’re not smart enough, and dag-gone-it, people don’t like you.”

We are taught to become our own cheerleaders and our own advocates to society, and the only thing that holds us back from making our dreams realities is our own lack of positive thinking. And granting the short span of our lives and our preoccupation with them, our dreams nearly all consist of becoming well-to-do, staying healthy, and securing our future by investments so that we will not have the spend the entirety of our days toiling under the sun.

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Well, it was presumptuous of me to think that the whole Ergun Caner debacle would have come to a halt after the overwhelming influx of data concerning his imaginary childhood that was used to elevate his name after 9/11 and the consequent damning demotion of him from the president of Liberty University’s seminary to whatever he is now.
Well, against all odds, he’s back, and from what I can tell, he’s the same man that he was prior to his demotion minus the title of seminary president. My latest glimpse of that other lying Southern Baptist (other than Bill Clinton, that is) came in his address to the “Voter’s Value Summit,” which was broadcasted nationally on C-SPAN, which you can imagine, consisted of a group of conservative, political types who would have made the late Jerry Falwell proud.

And this is to say nothing of conservative politics, because if you were to prick me, you would likely find that my tendency is toward the more conservative of the political scale. What it is to say is that a politician is a politician, a Christian politician is a politician, and the political battle, insofar as this country is concerned, has always been an “ends justify the means” battle. The battle has always been to win the hearts of the voters, and if that means contradicting one’s self, letting moral ambiguity slide, attacking opponents on matters that they fall short on themselves, well, the more the merrier.

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In writing this, I find myself standing in the middle of a conflict that has been raging for decades that has found perhaps its most covered expression in recent history in Glenn Beck’s call to “revival” this past weekend in Washington. And from what I have gathered, those who have participated in this call to some sort of spiritual revival in our country claim not to have done so for the sake of politics, but they have done so in order to recover our country’s supposed Christian / godly roots.

On the one hand, it is hard not to sympathize with such a call, for the generation in which we live is quite arguably the most overtly godless one our country has ever had. And while it can certainly be argued that this country has been filled with ungodly people throughout its short history, never have we seen such a commitment by its citizens to delight in that which is so contrary to the law of God, be it social injustice, the parading of homosexuality, idolatry, etc. It seems as though something must be done, and there are obviously people who are attempting to do “something” about it.

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If I have ever been on the verge of a faith crisis, I am there now. The Big Move, or as I self-righteously call it, The Journey to Unindebtedness, has taken its toll on me, and I feel that I could snap at any minute. Financially we are a wreck, and the list of expenses that is involved in selling our house and moving to Wendell seems to be mounding exponentially.

And just when things seem that they could not get worse, they do. And it seems to get worse daily. Whether it is the heat pump that needs to be fixed or replaced ($1600-$5000), the new carpet that must be installed ($800), Uncle Sam demanding his due by April 15th ($1100), or the seemingly daily emails that report that our home value estimate has dropped yet again when we were already set to lose money six months ago, etc., etc., the bombardment of negative information has me groping for answers. “Are we not on the path that is honoring to God?” “Will God provide so that we can honor him by honoring our debts?” “Is God really in this at all?” All these questions and more continually pop into my mind and heart, and with each passing day they seem harder and harder to answer.

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The Southern Baptist Convention, began, a most Baptist affiliations do, as a gathering together Baptist churches for the purpose of centralizing resources for the propagation of the Gospel around the world. Fast forward over a hundred years later, you will find a corporate conglomerate that dictates doctrine, that owns the largest publisher of Christian literature in world (viz. LifeWay Christian Resources), that operates its own Willow Tree figurine, VeggieTales, and The Shack distribution stores (viz. LifeWay Christian Stores), that possesses its own insurance agency (viz. Guidestone Financial Resources), that has created and owns its own translation of the Bible (viz. the Holman Christian Standard version), that owns and operates six American seminaries, and that does missions through the International and North American Mission Boards. This transformation is indicative of the shift in the SBC from its former role as the mere centralization of resources for the sake of the Gospel to its present role as a massive, bureaucratic entity that makes preaching the Gospel to the nations a great ordeal.

To understand the great difficulty that the SBC causes with regards to missions, one simply has to look at a decently sized Southern Baptist church. In those churches you might find missionaries who go through the International Mission Board into the nations, but you are likely to find a greater number being sent out directly by those churches thereby by-passing the IMB. The purpose is not that those churches desire to establish their own international identity apart from the IMB, but it is because the IMB has made the process of sending out missionaries so difficult that many who would desire to be missionaries have looked upon the IMB as a great barrier rather than as a great help. They look at the mandatory education requirements and the strict doctrinal conformities and then turn their backs on the IMB and its numerous hoops and look for other options.

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1. Thou shalt have no other gods before thyself or thy Mother, the Earth.
2. Thou shalt worship thy god(s) in the way that seems best to thee.
3. Thou shalt use the name “Jesus” and any of its variations (e.g. geez, Christ, Jesus H. Christ, etc.) to comment upon the most fleeting of things, but thou shalt not profane the name of any other religious figure for that is intolerant and disrepectful and therefore forbidden.
4. Thou shalt work as little as thou possibly canst and demand compensation that is more than thou deservest, or thou shalt work too much for the sake of living “well.”
5. Thou shalt despise thy parents and blame them for all thy deficiencies … that is when thou actually ownest up to thy deficiencies. Thou shalt also place thy parents in a nursing home when they are unable to care for themselves since thou art too occupied with commandment number four.
6. Thou shalt respect a mother’s right to butcher her own child if she so desireth, and thou shalt be horrified at the brutality and injustice of capital punishment and at the mistreatment of animals.
7. Thou shalt divorce thy spouse if thou so desirest for any reason.
8. Thou shalt not smoke.
9. Thou shalt recycle and reduce thy carbon footprint.
10. Thou shalt desire all things that thy neighbor owneth and strive to outdo them.