STEVEN CURTIS CHAPMAN SONG FOR THIS BLOG ENTRY
Art by John Westfall
It took me a long time to finally get a handle on how to communicate everything I need to say here. I tried several different approaches and angles, only to scrap all of it and start over. Eventually, I decided that the best way to get all this across is to share my personal story, and take you step by step through all the things that I experienced that led to the conclusions that I came to. For that, we need to go way back, to when I first became Christian. For many Christians, their early Christian years are a time of joy and passion, the revelation of having found a purpose in life alighting an excitement that sets them “on fire for the Lord.” For me, my early Christian years were a time of confusion and doubt.
Often when someone talks of it being a struggle to be a Christian, it is a reference to the numerous temptations and vices in the world that were often a part of their pre-Christian lives that they are having trouble giving up or various external forces that are in danger of crushing their spirits and siphoning away whatever joy they may find in their Christian lives. For me, the struggle of Christianity manifested ideologically. When it comes down to it, the existence of god, any god, doesn’t really make sense to me. Every shred of logic and capacity to reason that I have says that the scientific skeptics and atheists who say that the most logical conclusion given the available evidence is that none of the interpretations of god of any known religion really fit into the modern understanding of our cosmology are right. Furthermore, I have little argument against the idea that deciding what is the “best” religion is likely a matter of perspective, and that I may not be Christian, and possibly may be a different religion altogether, had I been born under different circumstances.
I think a part of why I became Christian in the first place was because I was hoping that making such a commitment would somehow magically remove all doubts from my mind. Clearly it didn’t work, and in retrospect I do wonder why I had thought that resigning myself to believing something that made little sense to me would ultimately lead to my being able to accept it. I can still recall a particular conversation I had with my Sunday school teacher when I was 12 or 13 years old which really exemplifies the frustrations I was struggling with. During this particular Sunday school class, we were looking at Genesis 22, where Abraham was called to sacrifice Isaac to prove his faith and loyalty to God. We got to the part where an angel of the Lord stopped the sacrifice and spoke to Abraham, found in verses 9-14 (NRSV):
⁹When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. ¹⁰Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. ¹¹But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” ¹²He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” ¹³And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. ¹⁴So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide” as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”
This passage always really bothered me. I had always been told that God was all-knowing, including the inner thoughts and desires of our hearts, which made me wonder why it is God felt the need to test Abraham to learn something about him. Offhandedly, that sounds like something that would be well within the parameters of “all-knowing” the “inner thoughts and desires of our hearts.” My Sunday school teacher tried to pass off some idea about how the test was really for Abraham rather than for God, but I thought the verbiage of verse 12 seemed to clearly indicate a receipt of new information on God’s part. I began to see more and more of these little cracks in what I had been taught, especially as it related to the almost romantically pristine characterization of God. Creating life only to regret what it has become and destroying it all with a flood, indecisiveness over whether to tell Abraham about His plans for Sodom and Gomorrah, throwing what comes off in the text as a temper tantrum and needing Moses to mollify Him but nonetheless blotting out names from the Book of Life, and other such behavior are not consistent with my understanding of “all-knowing” and “unchanging.”
"I totally know everything including the inner workings of everyone's hearts... except whether you fear me or not. That I needed you to be willing to kill your baby to prove to me." Thus saith the Lord, according to fundamentalists.
So, when I became Christian on August 11, 1994 at the age of 14, I had essentially agreed to believe in something that made no sense to me. Given that it occurred during the always emotional “campfire” session on the last night of the annual combined summer retreat held by multiple Korean church youth groups in the San Francisco Bay Area, really I think I was just riding the emotion of the evening without really thinking too much about it. But I was still a kid, and I assumed that such doubts and questions would be addressed and answered as my “walk with God” progressed. But I was an outcast in my church and would be for most of my high school years, so it was unlikely any of them even knew I had made such a decision. With no one to “take me in” and disciple me and explain to me all of what exactly this decision I had made encompasses, I was on my own, stewing in my doubts and watching them fester.
In an effort to try to push these doubts and questions out of my mind, I tried to fill my life with activities that would set me “on fire for the Lord,” a very popular phrase during that time. I joined the Christian club at my high school (“Club Jesus”) and by my senior year was its leader (still not entirely sure how that one happened), volunteered for various events held by my church, began serving on the praise team of my high school group at my church as my musical abilities had begun to really manifest during this time, attended every praise night, Christian concert, evangelical event, etc. that was held in my area, threw my hands into the air as I sang and even teared up a few times, went forward and recommitted my life to Christ at altar calls more times than I can count, etc. It was also during this time that I had decided to become a Christian musician and attend a Bible college, if I went to college at all. I had been in and out of various garage bands and writing music for a long time, but had never written Christian music, other than the occasional song that reflected my spiritual frustration of that time. In fact, for a long time I thought the idea of pop/rock music entirely dedicated to Christianity was kind of silly… specifically using Steven Curtis Chapman as an example. Life is full of hilarious ironies ain’t it? But I digress. Suffice to say, none of this really worked. Though I found a lot of joy in finally having a fulfilling direction in which to direct my previously unfocused musical yearnings, not to mention having discovered Steven Curtis Chapman’s music during this time, in everything I got involved with, I never “heard the voice of God,” “felt the Holy Spirit moving in me,” experienced being “called by the Lord,” or any of those other metaphysical spiritual claims in a way that did not have a perfectly plausible practical explanation. Not once. Ever.
As heartbreaking as this was, especially considering the very emotional experience I had when I became a Christian that I was desperately hoping to recreate, it resulted in something that, in retrospect, I am very thankful for, and the rest of this story likely wouldn't have happened if it hadn't. Because I was so confused about what I had experienced in contrast to what I felt like I should have experienced, the questions I had about fundamentalist theology were never answered satisfactorily, and because I had no mentor who pushed me in a particular direction, I was not devoted to any particular theological leaning as I entered my college years. There was an imperative in the back of my mind that I should be accepting the fundamentalist take on everything, but in reality my theology was very flexible and not fully defined, with no loyalties to a particular theology that I felt the need to defend or hold onto, and I was very open to finding new ideas, perspectives, and interpretations with which to hopefully fill out my skeletal faith.
After I graduated from high school, I was asked to serve as a counselor for the high school group of the Chinese church I had been attending. I began leading worship for the Friday night youth meetings as well as leading Bible studies, training new musicians, having the occasional one-on-one talk with the kids, etc. As part of the requirements for this new appointment, I had to meet every other week with the pastor of the English congregation who was, by extension, also in charge of the high school group. For purposes of this blog, we will call this pastor Oggbi. In Oggbi, I found a very refreshing voice. But then, Oggbi is the first pastor that I had spent a lot of time talking one-on-one with, so I wonder if it was Oggbi specifically, or would my mind would have similarly opened by regularly talking with anyone with a similar/comparable formal Biblical education? Who knows. But anyways, whenever I had brought up my doubts and confusions in the past, the responses seemed intent on making me feel stupid or incomplete for not understanding what was apparently perfectly obvious to everyone else, even though they were never able to actually provide satisfactory answers. But Oggbi was the first person to really encourage me to bring those questions out into the open. Instead of insisting that I just don’t get it while covering his lack of actual substantive answers with the blanket platitude of “trust in the Lord,” Oggbi acknowledged that there are things in the Bible that are problematic, the first person in a position of Biblical authority in my life to do so, and encouraged me to express and explore my questions.
Oggbi, the quest starter for Monk-related quests in Final Fantasy XI. A roundabout inside joke, as many of us thought Pastor Oggbi bore an uncanny resemblance to Bruce Lee.
I remember one topic of discussion that came up a few times was the book of Job. The story of Job always bothered me for a few reasons. Its reference to Job as having been a “blameless and upright” man when none like that should have existed since the fall of Adam, large chunks of its text including most of the dialog between its characters being entirely poetic, the idea that God would be making deals about the fate of His followers with Satan, God’s archnemesis according to modern understandings of Scripture, and a few other issues that came up led me to believe Job was likely not a true story, or at the very least that the account we have in the Bible is not, and was never meant to be understood as, a historical, factual telling of the story. This idea bore me the title of “heretic” in more than a few settings. But Oggbi agreed and expressed his own doubt that Job is even based on a true story. But the real floodgate moment came when he explained that many scholars believe Job is a play. Suddenly, the story made sense. All the things I found strange about it in terms of its plot, composition, structure, etc., all made perfect sense in the context of it being a dramatic work. It opened my mind to a whole new dimension of Biblical interpretation.
With this revelation in mind, I began attending Hope International University (HIU), a Bible college in southern California. My major was music, but Bible classes were a requirement for all students there. All the classes were interesting in their own way, but there were two in particular that in many ways became pivotal events in my life. They were called Early Christian History and Literature (ECHL) and Hebrew History and Literature (HHL), and they covered the New and Old Testaments, respectively. The professor, who we will call Zeid for purposes of this blog, exuded a passion and palpable love for the Word which made him one of the most charismatic, inspiring, and by extension, popular professors at HIU. As a historian in addition to a Biblical scholar and former pastor, he took us through the Bible from the perspective of the historical-critical method, which critiques the content of the Bible according to secular historical records. I want to emphasize that Dr. Zeid did not teach this historical perspective as the correct perspective; indeed, one of the things I really appreciated about his approach to teaching the Bible was that he never told us what was right or what to believe. Instead, “in the interest of full disclosure” as he used to always say, he gave us an overview of many of the different perspectives, ranging from the fundamentalist perspective that took everything in the Bible as literal facts to the extreme opposite historical-critical perspective which stripped away all the miraculous aspects of the narratives, and left it to us to decide what made the most sense to us.
I can still recall another floodgate moment during the first class session for HHL. Dr. Zeid mentioned that something dated to around the 900s B.C., “around the time of the reign of King Solomon,” and it was like a bomb went off inside my head. This was the first time I had heard an Old Testament story referenced in a historical context. No longer was this some fairy tale I was told as a kid to keep my behavior in check; it was a part of the extended history of this world that I was a part of. Dr. Zeid explained all the different interpretations of the stories in the Bible, showing us how these events fit, and sometimes didn’t quite fit, into recorded history. And despite his expertise and extensive education on the subject, he made no pretense of having everything figured out, and in fact gave us full explanations of how some things didn’t work out, with no complex, labyrinthine manipulations of scripture to make them make sense nor exhortations to simply “trust in the Lord” as many teachers from my past were wont to do. As he took us through the Old Testament narrative and unraveled the fundamentalist assumptions with recorded history based on archaeological findings, the Bible paradoxically began to make more and more sense. All those things I had trouble believing and making sense of in the past, I realized I didn’t have to. It was okay for it to not make sense. The Bible didn’t have to be perfect to be perfect. That is to say, its failure to meet the human perception and standards of literary perfection does not mean it’s not perfectly what God intended for us to have. Taking the Bible seriously did not necessitate taking it literally. Just as God is perfectly capable of working through imperfect pastors delivering imperfect messages, so is the Bible's literary and historical imperfection not even the slightest hindrance in God's capacity to do His work through it.
Zeid, quest-starter for Dark Knight-related quests in Final Fantasy XI, and Matthias's mentor. Dark Knights were outcasts of the FFXI mythos, and historical-criticism is often viewed as a "liberal" path to heresy. Well it made sense to me at the time I thought of it.
So then, how does one balance and/or reconcile a respect for and a general faith in science and archaeology as I have with the stories of the Bible that said science and archaeology contradicts, while still being able to believe in the faith that those stories attest to? An imperfect but working solution came to me through an unexpected path. Around the time of those classes, I had also begun to rekindle my love of ancient mythology. As I had stated in my inaugural blog entry, I had always loved reading mythology, which in my youth was limited to Greek and Norse mythology (Thor is absolutely nothing like Chris Hemsworth, fyi). Whereas as a kid I read it for the entertainment value, I began studying mythology on a more academic level by reading books by people like Joseph Campbell and Robert Graves and began seeing parallels between their analyses and the stories in the Bible. Ancient mythology (modern mythology having a different dynamic and idiosyncrasies) are not stories that were pulled out of thin air for their amusement, but were records of what were understood to be the significant aspects of the events that were going on around them. For example, Zeus, the top god for much of Greek mythology’s narrative chronology, hooked up with a lot of women. Like a lot. A lot. I discovered during my later studies as an adult that he actually raped many, if not most, of them, something that was definitely left out in the more child-friendly versions I read as a kid. But this was not an aspect of Zeus that was ascribed to him in order to make their top god all macho and manly. Actually, it’s theorized that whenever Zeus rapes a woman, it’s a reference to the Hellenic conquest of a particular region, represented by the woman. Another example, it is believed that many ancient societies experienced a shift from a matriarchal society to a patriarchal society, often reflective of changing sexual paradigms or a transition from an agricultural society to a hunting and gathering society, and that this is reflected in many ancient mythologies in the deposing of the female top god of their pantheon by the younger, upstart male god who takes her place, like the defeat of Tiamat at the hands of Marduk in Babylonian mythology. So, even if a mythological story is not a factual retelling of what was going on, there is still history embedded in it, if one knows how to exegete it.
Similarly, it made sense to me that the Bible is filled with Hebraic mythology which, even if they are not factual records, are nonetheless embedded with and were written on the basis of true history, and that this likely would have been understood and recognized by the original target audiences of those books, even if the lines became blurred over subsequent generations. I believe that is the balance between accepting the Biblical stories as the communicator truth, while respecting archaeology and science as the providers of facts. This will likely be covered in far greater detail in a future blog entry. Let’s also note that I’m not necessarily saying that I specifically believe that the denial of the supernatural events described in the Bible is the invariably correct understanding of Scripture and that those events absolutely did not happen, merely that having a real Christian faith does not necessitate the belief that they did.
This idea had greater theological ramifications beyond how to read the Bible. This also impacted my understanding of church ministry and the maintenance of a relationship with God. If the miraculous stories of the Bible often have perfectly practical explanations that nonetheless honor the intent of retelling the stories in that way, what is the implication of that on how God works in our lives? Just as the people in the Bible might have been scrambling to provide supernatural explanations for the chaos that raged around them in an attempt to maintain the belief that there is sense in that chaos when actually there were practical explanations for all of it, is it possible that modern Christians are developing relationships with God that are dependent on the expectation of God performing miracles for them when the actually perfectly practical path to becoming closer to God is waiting right under their noses, waiting for them to take the initiative and start walking on their own? Like let’s say… a confused kid who was waiting and waiting to hear the “voice of God,” when he already had access to the voice of God anytime he wanted in the form of the Bible, which he had not bothered to read?
A kinder, gentler, less misogynistic Zeus, as portrayed by Liam Neeson. Completely inaccurate portrayal but hey it's Liam Neeson. We'll let it slide. The books I read as a kid had Zeus pursuing some woman and her being pregnant in the next line, completely skipping the details of consummation. Though to be fair, I think at that point I didn't even understand that sex was how conception occurred in the first place. I was a stupid kid.
Taking those two classes was the first time in my life that I was able to say I’ve read the whole Bible, something I have done over a dozen times since. In reading the Bible, I realized something was happening that all the songs I sang and activities I was involved with never did and never could do – I was getting to know God. I was beginning to understand better and better what He is like, what He has done, and by extension, what He was expecting of me. I began developing an understanding of my place in God’s cosmology that all the warmest of fuzzies resulting from the most emotional of worship nights could never have conveyed. I spent my youth begging God for personal revelation, when what was really needed was that I put in the time and work myself to read the revelations that God had already provided for all of us.
As we progressed through the Biblical narrative in this class and the realization of what kind of impact knowing all this can have on a person’s spiritual life began to set in, the question that kept running through my head was why I never learned any of this during the prior 25 or so years I had been attending church? After I made the decision to become a pastor and began talking to professors and pastors about my decision, that was a question I often brought up. The answer was fairly uniform from all of them: the modern church doesn’t really care. Your average modern churchgoer could care less about really digging into the Bible. Like me before, they put more value in personal revelation, and are content just singing songs, getting the warm fuzzies, hearing a nice, packaged sermon that lets them know everything is okay, and getting their spiritual fix for the week.
I’d like to see this change, and this will be the central foundation of my goals as a pastor. I think if people really realized how awesome the Bible is, how much depth it can add to an individual relationship with God, and how maintaining that relationship is a far more practical, simple process rather than the reliance on miracles and revelations as modern churches like to romanticize it as, they would fall in love with Scripture as I did during the course of those two classes. My goal as a pastor will be to inspire my congregation to develop a relationship with God that is not dependent on the “fire” that is set inside them because of events and activities, but is self-sustaining on the foundation of a love for Scripture, the sole objective source of communication from God and his true “voice,” fueled by a desire to get to know Him better, rather than finding contentment in being thanked by Him. I want to see church return to a passion for Scripture itself, and not the feeling that some interpretations of it give us.
Beyond that, I'd also like to see the maintenance of Christian life based less on abstract ideas like meditation and prayer with the expectation of God’s miraculous responses, and more on living our day-to-day lives in a manner that reflects our commitment to following Christ’s example. Christianity is a practical religion. It is not about signs and wonders and the warm fuzzies, it’s about going out into the world and making sure every decision we make in that day is one that reflects the integrity God has called us to live. Our salvation may be dependent on faith and not works, but if our faith is real, it will be reflected in what we are willing and unwilling to do in every aspect of our lives, and I believe that this is far more reflective of the condition of our Christian lives than how much we pray, sing, or “get into it” during religious events. As the late, great Rich Mullins once said:
"A lot of times we think something spiritual is happening and it is merely aesthetics. That is why it always bugs me at the end of a concert someone will say, 'Wow the Spirit really worked' and I kind of go, 'How would you even be able to know that? It was so noisy in here tonight. How would you know if the Spirit was working?' 'Well, I was really moved.' Well, that is an emotional thing. That's not a spiritual thing. A spiritual thing is folding your clothes at the end of the day. A spiritual thing is making your bed. A spiritual thing is taking cookies to your neighbor that is shut in or raking their front lawn because they are too old to do it. That's spirituality. Getting a warm, oozy feeling about God is an emotional thing. There is nothing wrong with it. I think there is nothing more practical than real spirituality. But nothing more fun than just a good heartfelt emotional experience of God because I think emotions are good. They are only dangerous when we come away from an experience where we were emotionally manipulated and we confuse that with being convicted. I think conviction - there is an emotion that accompanies that but it certainly goes deeper than just coming away going, 'Oh isn't God neat? Two different worlds.'"
The Dungeons & Dragons take on Tiamat.
It’s time that we as Christians stopped selfishly asking for more miracles and wonders of a God who had already extravagantly blessed us beyond what we ever deserved. It’s time that we as Christians stopped basing our faith on the expectation of Him constantly reaffirming it when He has already given us more than enough reason to love Him through eternity and beyond. It’s time that we as Christians stop waiting around for “the voice of God” when we already have it readily available anytime we want. It’s time that we as Christians refocus our faiths around the sole objective source of communication we have from Him – the Bible.
Okay Nam, you might be saying to yourself. That all sounds nice and inspiring in theory, but how would all this play out practically? The details of this is a large part of what I will be developing during my years in seminary, but here are some ideas I’ve had so far. Note that in order for me to enact all these changes, I would have to be completely in charge of a church, likely one I had a hand in starting from the ground up. So, it’s highly doubtful I’d be able to implement all, if any of these ideas if I join the staff of a long-running mainstream church. So, these are utopian, ideal-world ideas that I would love to push for. Much of this will be covered in greater detail in future blogs, so this is just an overview of some of these ideas:
- Never ascribe any holy power or authority to church institutions such services, sermons, singing praises, etc.
This is key. If we begin to ascribe some holy power to the Sunday services that are somehow absent in every other aspect of our lives and creating a sense of getting a holy, spiritual “fix” each Sunday to last until the next week, then we are emphasizing the importance of them above that of the daily maintenance of our relationships with God. This is one of the two issues that will likely be the subject of my next blog entry.
- Always look to scripture for answers, and never rely on personal revelation.
The Bible is our standard. It is our measuring stick. Nothing is valid unless Scripture also signs off on it. We need to come to an understanding of this and always look to it first and foremost. This is the other issue that may be the topic of my next blog entry. Stay tuned.
- Never portray Christian life as an idyllic, utopian experience where all their problems will fade “in the light of His glory and grace.”
I love that hymn “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,” but I’m not too fond of its message. Being Christian will not necessarily make a person’s problems go away, and condoning such a thought is potentially very dangerous. For many, being Christian requires sacrifice, focus, and hard work, and we need to make sure their expectations are reasonable. Honestly, if I had my way, I would make Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard required reading for anyone who ever becomes Christian ever. Well maybe I’m being hyperbolic, but I think it would be healthy for them to understand what an insane decision they just made by putting their faith in God.
- Stop calling the musical parts of service “worship” and call them “praise.”
This may be a matter of semantics, but calling the singing of songs “worship” undermines the full extent of what worship is. Worship is really a lifestyle in which everything we do gives God his due. By calling the musical aspect of “worship,” it imparts an idea that worship somehow begins and ends, when really it should be continuing well into the week. “Worship” is merely the continuation of the worship of our lives in a congregational, musical sense, and it’s important to make it clear that there is, or at least should be, nothing special or particularly “spiritual” about it as compared to the worship we give God with anything else in our lives. Speaking of music…
One of the books that changed my life, Fear and Trembling, by my favorite philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. An examination of the concept of faith, its very challenging and inspiring ideas had a huge influence on my own understanding of faith, and, ironically, were based largely on his analysis of the story of Abraham and Isaac.
- If I’m serving in a big church, alternate between full-band praise and stripped down acoustic sets.
They will be alternated randomly and the congregation will not be told ahead of time which style it will be that week; only the praise team will know. One thought I had is that perhaps some weeks we may not even have music. The purpose of this will be twofold. First, it will make it clear that the music or particular style thereof should never be the motivation for coming to church. Secondly, this would challenge them to evaluate their own worship of God. I keep hearing that the energetic and emotional experiences people have while singing praise songs is the result of being “filled with the Holy Spirit,” “the Spirit moving through them,” or some other such thing because they are singing God’s praises, and has nothing to do with the emotional manipulation that all music is capable of. If that’s the case, there’s no reason they shouldn’t experience the same power during a stripped down acoustic set as they do during a full-band setting. If the sincerity of their praises remain consistent between different types of settings yet they experience things in one that they don’t experience in the other, they really need to consider what is causing that.
The part of this idea that makes me a little uncomfortable is that it might be considered tricking the congregation a bit. I am a firm believer in transparency with the congregation, and I wonder if this may violate that, or can it just be considered a surprise, as a surprise birthday party would not really be considered dishonesty or tricking the person whose birthday is being celebrated, right? Still considering this one. In the meanwhile, feel perfectly free to steal this idea and apply it to your own church.
- Strip away vague “spiritual” language, especially when it comes to giving advice.
“If you lift your eyes to His glory and allow His love into your heart, your eyes will be opened to the path of righteousness before you, and His holiness will be the light that shines your way.” This. Helps. No one. Yes, I’m aware that there is language like that in the Bible, but there’s a reason why people learn 2-3 entirely new languages and exegete the crap out of those passages to work out the interpretation and understand what in the hell they were talking about.
- Never identify prayer as the solution to an external problem.
Internal problems, sure. Need to calm down? Refocus? Release guilt? Prayer is great for that. But for your mom with cancer, take her to a doctor. For that test you have coming up, pull a few all-nighters and study. For your praise band’s performance this Sunday, practice practice practice. For the salvation of the country about which a burden has been laid on your heart, support the missionary efforts there. If the thousands of children who are in sexual slavery and are being prayed for by millions of people around the world daily are not a priority for God, I don’t see why any comparably petty issue in my life would be. As one of my seminary professors recently said, if a building is on fire and you can pray and help put out the fire at the same time, great. But if you have trouble multitasking, stop praying and help put out the fire first. After all, “If prayer has that much power, why do anything? Why not just pray for everything instead (paraphrased)?”
Now let’s be clear that this would not necessarily discourage any prayers in terms of volume or subject matter. But any volume and subject of prayer must be balanced with the proper understanding of the expectation of what it will accomplish.
- Make sermons focus more on Biblical content rather than interpretation and exposition.
During my high school years, I took a biology class that had very difficult assignments. I remember once, I was trying to answer one of the questions without having done the reading. I kept skimming through the relevant chapter of the book, looking for the right combination of words that would signify discussion of the topic the question asked about. After about an hour of frustration, my sister, who was older than me and had taken the same class at the same school, explained that actually this is a question that requires a long answer, and that I really had to do the reading before trying to answer it, as elements of the answer were dispersed throughout its length.
Similarly, because of the lack of interest in the Bible in the modern church, I feel like there is a lot of context being missed. Hearing sermons or doing topical Bible studies on one or two issues may give you the ability to provide a satisfactory answer to those one or two issues, but to be able to fully appreciate how that affects the world and why those issues are being dealt with in the first place, we have to understand the whole context around it. Read the book first, find the answers to the questions later.
Actually, what I'd really love to do is lead a small church that meets in one of our homes and facilitate discussions, rather than give sermons, much like the early churches of apostolic times. But anyways.
- Stress the importance of personal, individual responsibility.
We exist as a church. As Christians, we no longer have lives separate from the church. We will all share in each individual member's triumphs, defeats, and tragedies, and we will be responsible and accountable to each other for our spiritual well-beings. That does not mean that our mistakes are anyone else's faults but our own. An individual decision affecting the whole body does not mean that that whole body is also held responsible for it. We each have our own responsibility to make our own decision to contribute to the body of Christ rather than do something to harm it, and this needs to be understood by everyone who attends the church.
- The church would be separated from politics and never endorse any politicians.
Support certain causes sure, but not get involved in the politics. Which ties in with my next point…
- Focus on our social responsibility and practical ways to serve the community.
Let’s note that this is not a matter of earning salvation. I fully subscribe to the idea of salvation through faith alone, but that does not absolve us of a responsibility to serve the local community in everything we do. That being said, some of the social issues which I believe we should fight for as a church have political implications, or may best be served by supporting the political forces behind them, which means this could potentially clash with the previous point. Still thinking about this one.
Again, how much of all this I’ll actually be able to implement is highly questionable, and undoubtedly much of this may evolve as my years in seminary pass. Any thoughts, questions, concerns? If you see any problems, inconsistencies, or anything else that you feel I should or need to clarify, leave them in the comments, send me a private message, or just tell me in person if you're in contact with me, and I will try to address the issue in a relevant future blog entry.