The Church in Biblical Images: Kingdom Colony (Phil. 1:27-30)

Posted on September 16, 2020 by salooper57

(This sermon was preached on 9/13/20. It may be viewed on YouTube. Sermon starts at 21:06. Listening time: 24:31.)

I am sitting in the TV lounge in the dorm during my freshman or sophomore year. There is a cluster of couches in there, all facing the television, with a dozen or more guys scattered around the room. The couch I’m on is full and my friend George Ashok Kumar Das is sitting next to me.

At some point during the movie we are watching, Taupu (that was his nickname) takes my left hand in his right. I recoil. I have no idea that in his culture, as in much of Africa and the Middle East, men hold hands as a sign of friendship and trust.

Every culture has its own customs. In Thailand, if you drop a coin and, to stop it from rolling under your car, you step on it, you might cause great offense. The image of the king’s head is on that coin, and to step on his face is a dreadful insult.

In Vietnam, if you signal to a restaurant server to come to your table, she may pour the soup in your lap because you’ve just treated her as if she were a dog. If you are caught selling chewing gum in Singapore, you could do up to two years in prison and be fined $100,000.[1] Kingdoms and countries have their own codes regarding what it means to be a good citizen.

Those codes are sometimes exported. For example, if you were in the Bangladeshi embassy in Washington D.C. and saw two men holding hands, it might mean something quite different from what it would mean if you stepped outside onto International Drive and saw the same thing. The culture inside the embassy has been imported.

The letter we are looking at today was written to people who lived, worked, and played in an exported culture. They lived in Philippi, a Grecian city named for Alexander the Great’s father but made a Roman colony by Octavian and Marc Antony 90 years earlier. By the commonest land/sea route, Philippi was about 800 miles from Rome, yet Philippi operated according to Roman law, followed Roman customs, and was home to Roman people.

America once knew all about colonial life. If you had come to Manhattan in 1640, you would have found people living by Dutch laws, following Dutch customs, and eating Dutch foods, even though Amsterdam was almost 4,000 miles away. Had you traveled east to the St. Lawrence, you would have found people speaking French, following French customs, and flying the French flag. Twenty years later, the English defeated the Dutch, New Amsterdam was renamed New York, and the Union Jack floated over the city. Dutch culture faded and was gradually replaced by English culture.

What does any of this have to do with the church? The image of the church we are looking at today is that of a colony, a pocket within mainstream society where a different culture flourishes. The church is a kingdom of God colony that operates by different rules (the commands of Jesus), speaks a different language (the language of love), and honors different things (faith, hope, and love).

To enter the church from the majority culture is like walking into the Bangladeshi Embassy from International Drive in D.C. Here people speak differently, have different customs, hold different values, and engage in different practices. The church may feel strange to people coming in from the outside, but it is (or should be) an exciting and inviting strangeness.

It is strange because people show respect to each other. It is strange because people are interested in others, not just in what others can do for them. Strange because people go out of their way to help each other and expect nothing in return. Strange because the usual markers of status – clothing, cars, education, income – are less important than faith, hope, and love.

It is also (and chiefly) strange because people love their leader and are fiercely loyal to him. They talk about him, talk to him, and regularly praise him. Their leader is Jesus. He is at the center of everything these people do and care about. That is bound to feel strange to outsiders but, when they see the quality of lives and relationships in the church, they might conclude that preoccupation with Jesus is a good thing.

Nevertheless, being different can be awkward. It can produce anxiety. It can also bring conflict. That is clear in our text, Philippians 1:27-30. Let’s read it: “Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel 28 without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God. 29 For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, 30 since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.”

Usually, when Paul instructs people to live a certain way (as he does here), he employs a particular metaphor. He tells people, for example, to “walk” – by which he means “go about daily life” – in “love” or to “walk in the Spirit,” or to “walk in wisdom,” and so on. Walking is his go-to metaphor for Christian conduct, which makes his choice not to use it in this passage striking.

Here he uses a word that appears nowhere else in his letters (though once in a recorded conversation), a word he chose (I believe) because Philippi was a Roman colony and people born there were Roman citizens. He uses a word that means “to conduct oneself as a citizen.” Paul expected the church to be to heaven what Philippi was to Rome: a colony.

He emphasizes two aspects of colonial living. The first is the responsibility of the colonists to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the gospel they proclaim. So, what would it mean for the Philippians – or, for that matter, for us – to act in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ?

Well, think about the gospel. In it, we learn that Christ died for our sins. How do we live in a way that is worthy of that? For one thing, we to refuse to take sin lightly, which is something the prevailing culture is always doing. People magazine once published a Sindex – a decidedly lighthearted index of sins. At the time, people ranked child abuse, murder and spying against one’s country as the worst sins. Parking in a handicap spot also ranked way up there, but many others (sexual sins are an example) were ranked as trivial.[2]

But when sin is taken lightly, it comes back to haunt us. Consider sexual sin. Hollywood sexualizes everyone, even children. Now, sexual sin is Hollywood’s open wound. Or racism, which was in many circles a matter of jest, but now threatens to divide our nation. Greed is a sin we easily overlook, as long as it doesn’t hurt our bottom line. But we will not overlook it when it ruins our economy, which it threatens to do. Citizens of the kingdom take sin seriously. They don’t make excuses. They make changes.

But Christ not only died for sins, he died for people. So, another way we live consistently with the gospel of Christ is by treating people as important. No one in the colony is disposable. I recall reading what a Colombian paramilitary squad member once said about the street kids in Bogota: “Killing these kids is like killing lice. We call them ‘the disposables.’” In the colony, there are no disposables.

Living in a way that is consistent with the gospel means we treat people with respect. We listen to them. In the predominant culture, people may treat the poor, the intellectually disabled, the incarcerated, and the “other” like lice, but we treat others like Jesus treats us: as people made and loved by God.

When it comes to living the gospel, there is much more to unpack, but because of time I’ll mention just one thing. The gospel, according to Paul’s summary in 1 Corinthians 15, reports that Christ died for our sins, was buried and was, on the third day raised from the dead. Raised from the dead. How do we balance our lives with the truth of resurrection?

Negatively stated, we absolutely refuse to give death the last word. We won’t let the fear of death control us. When the doctor says, “Cancer” (or something equally frightening), we know that dying is not the worst thing that can happen to us. We won’t hand death, nor those who wield it, that kind of power.

Positively stated, we dare to trust God because we believe Jesus rose on the third day. We believe in the resurrection. Since every wrong will be righted and every right will be rewarded, we can do the hard thing. As Carlo Carretto put it: We forgive our enemy, feed the hungry, and defend the weak because we believe in the resurrection. We have the courage to marry, to have children, and to build a home because we believe in the resurrection.[3] We let go of revenge because we believe in the resurrection. We spend money for the ages, not just for the moment, because we believe in the resurrection.

If we conduct ourselves in a way worthy of the gospel, we will find ourselves out of step with the predominate culture, where power, not love, is thought to be supreme; where pleasure, not purpose, is the thing to seek; where personal safety, not the salvation of others, is the received wisdom. We live differently.

But people who are different are disparaged. When we renounce the selfish, sexualized, pleasure-seeking lifestyle that is contrary to the gospel; when we insist that God’s kingdom is more important than the economy; when we announce that King Jesus is more powerful than any president or prime minister, we call down on ourselves the contempt of the society around us.

There is a reason the Bible warns that following Jesus, like going off to war, is dangerous. St. Paul echoes Jesus here and elsewhere when he tells Christians to expect antagonism. St. Peter does the same. These warnings make sense when we grasp the bigger picture. The bigger picture is that Jesus is the Lord and king who is reclaiming his kingdom from the powers of evil – some human but others that predate humanity and transcend it. There is a war going on. We enlisted when we joined King Jesus, so we need to be brave. The second aspect of colony life Paul emphasizes is the responsibility to fight for king and kingdom.

A few years ago we had a man from the community, a man I like and appreciate, join us for a Sunday service. During the worship time, we sang a song with the lyrics: “It is time for battle, it’s time for war, as we sing Hosanna, as we praise the Lord. He will still the accuser, crush the enemy, as we celebrate God’s victory,” and he was offended. It sounded to him like we were espousing violence. He has never come back.

I’m sad about that. But this is war. The stakes are incredibly high. But my friend misunderstood. We do not espouse violence. “Though we live in the world” – as a kingdom of heaven colony on earth (this is St. Paul from 2 Corinthians 10) – “we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.”

The world uses violence. We use love. The world is armed with lies. We are armed with truth. The world issues threats. We offer God’s promises. The world wields scorn. We present praise. The world sacrifices others. We sacrifice ourselves. We don’t wage war as the world does.

Now don’t miss the fact that it is “for the faith of the gospel” that we strive together (verse 27). This is not waging war with non-Christians over political issues or with Christians over church practices. The real fight is always for the lordship of Jesus.

Politics is not a hill I’m willing to die on. But Calvary is. The real fight is always for the lordship of Jesus. Forget that and we will be outflanked and overrun. We fight and, if necessary, we die for the faith of the gospel of Jesus Christ, who died for us.

We will not, however (and this is something my offended friend did not comprehend), kill for the faith of the gospel. That is not how this war is waged. Jesus won the war not by killing his enemies but by sacrificing himself. He died to save them, not to destroy them.

Paul’s words in verse 28, (“stand firm in one spirit, striving together as one man for the faith of the gospel”) picture a Roman phalanx, a battle formation in which the outside rows of soldiers locked shields and every soldier protected those around him. They were invulnerable as long as they remained in formation. The danger was that they would lose their nerve and go “every man for himself.” That is our danger too.

That’s why Paul (verse 29) writes, “without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you.” This passage teaches that Christians not only rely on God but on each other. Christians who break formation – who are not rightly related to the church – are not only vulnerable, they have placed their brothers and sisters at risk.

We mustn’t let ourselves be intimidated. When people who don’t love Jesus call us bigots, we mustn’t worry. We just prove them wrong. When they say we are naïve and unscientific, we mustn’t let them intimidate us. We just earn advanced degrees. When they tell us our faith is a fantasy, we mustn’t fear. Attacks like these will come, and many more beside. And, when they do, we must stand close and protect each other.

We can afford to be gentle. We can afford to be kind. We can afford to love our enemies. We are people of the gospel: we know that God will not forsake us. But we must be brave.

I like the story of the Christian who was taken captive by the forces of Julian the Apostate. It was during the middle years of the fourth century. Christians were being hounded, captured, and tormented. This man was caught by Julian’s troops and tortured. When the soldiers got tired of beating and brutalizing him, they tried to humiliate him. One of them, dripping with malice, asked him: “Where now is your carpenter God?”

To which the man, dripping with blood, replied: “Where now is my carpenter God? He is building a coffin for your emperor.”[4]

We must be brave. Our bravery does two things. First, it helps our comrades. When we stand steady, it helps them stand with us. So, Paul says that our fearlessness is a sign – a sign other Christians can read, a banner unfurled before them – that God will not abandon us but will come to our rescue.

But that banner is also unfurled before those who stand against us. When we remain undaunted before threats, before insults, and accusations, we send a clear signal to those who hate Jesus that their side is going to lose and they would be wise to come over to Jesus.  

Now all this talk of war, of being insulted and mocked, may be a little much for you. I understand that. Perhaps when you signed up, someone gave you the impression that it is all smooth sailing until you dock in that heavenly port. Maybe you are not sure you are willing to suffer for Jesus’s sake.

Look at verse 29: “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him…” I was on a prayer retreat a few years ago and had gone off into the woods with my Greek New Testament, where I was reading Philippians 1. When I came to this verse, the fact that the word the NIV translates “granted” carries the idea of a gift really struck me. Suffering for Jesus is a gift.

It may not seem like a gift at the time. I have a friend whose high school basketball team played Larry Bird’s high school team. They got killed. But now he can say, “I played against Larry Bird,” and he feels honored by the opportunity.

But think of the honor afforded to the men, women, and children who suffer humiliation, pain, unbelievable loss, and death for Jesus. They got killed. But in heaven they will say, “Suffering for Jesus has been the greatest gift of my life.” And when they say that, Jesus, their hero, their savior, their friend, will be standing with them.

We are heaven’s colony. We are the people of Jesus. We are different. Don’t be afraid to let the world know it.

[1] Illustrations from https://www.adventureinyou.com/travel-tips/cultural-differences/

[2] Adapted from Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion (Eerdmans, 2016), pages 193-194; original source: People (2-10-86)

[3] Carlo Carretto in “Blessed Are You Who Believed.” Christianity Today, Vol. 40, no. 4.

[4] R. Geoffrey Brown, “Look! A Great White Horse!” Preaching Today, Tape No. 111.

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Humility: The Path Along Which All Spiritual Growth Proceeds

Posted on September 12, 2020 by salooper57

Jeremy Taylor was one of the most influential teachers and theologians of the 17th century. His influence reaches our day through writers like Geroge Macdonald andC. S. Lewis. His two most famous works are The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying. My son Kevin recently showed me some of his instructions from Holy Living on the subject of humility.

Since humility is the path along which all spiritual growth proceeds, and since “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble,” true humility is of greater worth than gold. Taylor makes the following suggestions for anyone who would live in the “grace of humility.”

To begin with, we need to understand that “Humility consists in a realistic opinion of yourself, namely that you are an unworthy person.” For the self-esteem generation, this assertion cannot help but seem misguided and even harmful. It is perhaps the most difficult advice Jeremy Taylor gives on the subject – and the most important.

When Taylor says we are “unworthy,” he does not mean we are worthless. Far from it: our worth is incalculable. When he says we are unworthy, he means that we have done nothing and can do nothing to merit the value God has placed on us. Until I see this is so, I will always be trying to prove myself worthy by my strength, my intelligence, my kindness or even my spirituality. I cannot “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18) while at the same time trying to prove myself. It is impossible.

The sincerely-held belief that I am unworthy is foundational to true humility. But Taylor warns us that we must be content for other people to consider us unworthy as well. “You would be a hypocrite to think lowly of yourself, but then expect others to think highly of you.”

Another helpful instruction is this: “Nurture a love to do good things in secret … Be content to go without praise … Remember, no one can undervalue you if you know that you are unworthy.”

Then this gem: “Never be ashamed of your birth, of your parents, of your occupation, or your present employment…” When I was young and had only followed the Master for a short time, I think I had, at what time or another, been ashamed of all these things. Such shame is the companion of pride and the enemy of humility.

Along with this: “Never say anything, directly or indirectly, that will provoke praise or elicit complements from others. Do not let your praise be the intended end of what you say.” And when you are praised, “take it indifferently and return it to God. Always give God thanks for making you an instrument of his glory for the benefit of others.”

The old Anglican divine knew how devious pride is (or rather, how devious we are in nursing our pride), and so he warns: “Do not ask others your faults with the intent or purpose being to have others tell you of your good qualities.” He calls this “fishing for compliments” and condemns it outright, warning those who do so will end up “drinking the waters of vanity” until they burst.

Taylor goes on to warn his readers against entertaining “the devil’s whispers of pride … Some people spend their time dreaming of greatness, envisioning theaters full of people applauding them, imagining themselves giving engaging speeches, fantasizing great wealth.” This is “nothing but the fumes of pride, exposing their heart’s true wishes.”

Another very helpful piece of advice: “Take an active part in the praising of others, entertaining their good with delight. In no way should you give in to the desire to disparage them, or lessen their praise, or make any objection. You should never think that hearing the good report of another in any way lessens your worth.”

“The truly humble person,” Taylor points out, “will not only look admirably at the strengths of others, but will also look with great forgiveness upon the weaknesses of others.”

A further help to humility is this: Instead of hiding our weaknesses and pretending that we have none, Taylor counsels, “Give God thanks for every weakness, fault, and imperfection you have. Accept it as a favor of God, and instrument to resist pride and nurture humility.” In line with this, he warns his reader “not to expose others’ weaknesses in order to make them feel less able than you.”

There are many other helpful instructions from this wise teacher of another era, but I will share but one more: “Humility begins as a gift from God, but it is increased as a habit we develop. That is, humility is increased by exercising it.”

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The Role of Desire in the Religious Life

Posted on September 5, 2020 by salooper57

Desire plays an important role in life. If it were not for desire, the human race would not propagate. God made humans in such a way that they need, and are capable of experiencing, desire.

Desire is also important in the religious life, though its role is seen in vastly different ways, depending on the religion espoused. In Buddhism, if I understand it correctly, desire (or longing) is regarded as the principal cause of suffering. Desire is the fetter that binds people and keeps them from reaching enlightenment.

The Christian view on desire is nuanced. The King James word for it is “lust,” which frequently refers to inappropriate and destructive desires (like the desire to have another person’s spouse), but occasionally refers to appropriate and healthy desires. Jesus, for example, “eagerly desired” – the word regularly translated as “lusted” – “to eat the Passover” meal with his disciples.

Buddhism approaches desire or longing as something to renounce and eventually eliminate by following the eight-fold path. There are many points of contact for Christians and Buddhists along the eight-fold path, though their underlying assumptions will be at odds and will inevitably lead them in different directions.

Christians are never asked to make a universal renunciation of desire. Such a renunciation would be counterproductive. Instead, they are told to “put to death evil desires” while cultivating healthy ones. While they know that desire can fetter a person to a life of lovelessness and suffering, they also believe that desire can be a springboard into a life full of love and contentment. They don’t want to get rid of their desires, they want to transform them.

If it were possible to take an X-ray of all our desires – to see them the way a radiologist sees fractures and growths – we could pretty accurately diagnose our spiritual health and prognosticate our spiritual futures, apart from intervention. Fortunately, intervention by the one Christians call the Great Physician is always possible.

This intervention occurs at a level we cannot reach, rather as gene therapy operates on a level we cannot reach. Christians believe that God is able and willing to work at the origination point of desire, actually giving and shaping the desires of their hearts. The Christian then cooperates with these deep-level operations in practices that cultivate and bring to fruition these new desires.

These practices are sometimes referred to as spiritual disciplines. They fall into two principal categories: those that put to death “evil desires” and those that cultivate God-given desires. It is common to talk about these as the disciplines of “abstinence” and of “engagement.” Both are important.

Among the disciplines of abstinence, which help people “put to death evil desires,” are solitude, silence, secrecy (that is, not broadcasting our good or religious deeds in order to win admiration), and fasting. These practices enable a person to discern unhealthy desires. On a more fundamental level, they enable people to understand that they are more than their desires, something that is urgently needed in contemporary culture.

The disciplines of engagement, which aid in the cultivation of God-given desires, include worship, Bible reading, prayer, acts of humble service, and fellowship (or “soul friendship,” as it has been called). The value of these disciplines resides, in part, in the way they increase the intensity and staying power of God-given desires.

But none of these spiritual practices, however performed, can create a desire. That is outside their scope and beyond our ability. For that to happen, people are dependent on outside intervention. They are dependent upon God.

When we understand the importance of desire and the role God’s intervention plays in it, we are ready to appreciate the insight of the psalmist who wrote, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” The psalmist is not thinking of God giving us the new car we’ve been dreaming about. He is thinking of God giving us new desires, the kind that can be fulfilled without doing harm, the kind that can lead a person to deeper love and richer contentment. The role desires play in the spiritual life, and our part in curtailing or cultivating them, is absolutely critical.

First published by Gatehouse Media

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Exaggerthinking: How to Counter It

Posted on September 3, 2020 by salooper57
Photo by Yogi Purnama on Unsplash

St. Paul says (Romans 12:3) to “every person” (not just to the proud): “Do not exaggerthink.” But how do we avoid it? Some of us, because of the way we were raised – and I’m not thinking of kids whose parents were always bragging on them – are predisposed to exaggerthinking. How do we stay out of the trap?

First, a look at the text where Paul raises the issue (Romans 12:3). In spite of the way dozens of translations render verse 3, Paul does not say we are to think about ourselves. What he says is: “Don’t exaggerthink but think in a way that leads to realistic thinking” (my translation). Realistic thinking can’t happen if you are only thinking about yourself. To think realistically, we must include God and others in our thoughts.

Specifically, the first way to think realistically is to think in the light of the role God has entrusted to you (verse 3). The end of verse 3 is famously difficult for translators. It’s not that the words are difficult; it’s that Paul’s meaning has been hard to uncover. What is meant by “in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you”?

Nowhere else does Paul or any other biblical writer speak of God distributing faith to people in different measures. Because of that, most commentators think that faith here must refer to “the faith, once delivered.” They say the faith is the measure (or yardstick, that’s the idea) by which we are to think of ourselves. But then it’s hard to make sense of the idea of distributing or (more precisely) apportioning the faith once delivered.

There is a third way to take it, which seems to me most likely, though linguistic support for it is slim. Occasionally, contemporaries of Paul would use the word here translated as “faith” to describe a “trust” that has been given to a person – a stewardship. Paul himself uses the word in its verb form in this way in Titus 1:2, when he writes about “the preaching entrusted to me” – that is, given to me as a trust. God has given every member of the body of Christ a trust, a role to play, a faith to keep.

I am less likely to exaggerthink if I am playing that role, honoring that trust. I have not been given every role to play – that’s not my job; I am not smart enough for that, strong enough, or skilled enough – but neither have I been given no role to play. I have been given a trust. I must keep faith with God. Awareness of that keeps me from exaggerthinking.

A second way to avoid exaggerthink is to recognize the oneness of those who belong to Christ. (This is from Romans 12:4-5.) We belong to one another. I am yours. You are mine, but not in the way a tool in mine. I am not free to use you. You are not even mine the way a treasure is mine – a cherished book or a jewel or a work of art. You are mine the way an eye or hand is mine. As Paul puts it in verse 5, we are “members of one another.”

That means if I hurt you, I hurt myself. Taking a jab at you – including a verbal one – is like poking my own eye. If I look down on you, I look down on myself – worse, I look down on Christ. We belong together. As that truth becomes settled in my mind, as it dawns on me that I am part of something bigger, I am on my way to realistic thinking and am better equipped to recognize exaggerthink.

Third, when we are using our gifts, we will naturally think more realistically. God graced each of us with a gift (verses 6-8) that will help us keep faith with him as we perform the role entrusted to us. Actually doing the work is the fastest way to get rid of exaggerthink.  

When I’m sitting on the couch watching a football game, I am prone to give advice to the quarterback and the coaches. “You’ve had that slant route all day long. The middle linebacker is dropping too far back in the zone. Can’t you see that? Why aren’t you taking advantage of it?” Then I get up for a cup of coffee and a piece of cake.

But if I were behind center – even if I were 30 years old again – and there were four three-hundred-pound brutes on the other side of the line itching to beat me to a pulp, I would forget all about the slant route. I’d forget the count. I’d forget my own name. Getting out and actually doing the work, whether on the field or in the church, has a wonderful way of checking exaggerthink.

These words of S. D. Gordon are worthy of consideration. “We have nothing to do with how much ability we’ve got, or how little, but with what we do with what we have. The man with great talent is apt to be puffed up” (that’s exaggerthinking) “and the man with little [talent] to belittle the little.” (More exaggerating.) But “… much or little, ‘Our part is to be faithful,’ doing the level best with every bit and scrap.”

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Exaggerthinking

Posted on August 29, 2020 by salooper57

St. Paul told the Roman Church, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought…” (Romans 12:3, NIV). The NIV supplies the words “of yourself” – they are not in the Greek text – which is something like “do not overthink.”

It does not seem to me that Paul is saying, “Don’t be conceited,” although that is what most people take him to mean. If that is what he meant to say, Greek offered him the vocabulary to say it, a vocabulary he makes frequent use of elsewhere. But here he uses a different word, one he may have coined himself, since it appears nowhere else in the Bible.

To translate the word Paul coined, I had to coin one myself. So here is the Looper translation: “For through the grace given to me I tell every one of you not to exaggerthink…”This doesn’t necessarily refer to thinking you are more important than other people. A person who exaggerthinks may be quite humble but her mind inflates what she can do, what she is called to do, and makes her responsible for how everything turns out.

People who exaggerthink often take on more than they should, robbing other people of service opportunities and wearing themselves out in the process. That is exaggerthinking.

The exaggerthinker is liable to assume that the truth he sees is the whole truth, which makes it difficult for him to listen to other people. But only God sees the whole truth. He has 360-degree vision. We don’t.

But we do see parts, and when we stop exaggerthinking, we realize that other people see parts too. In giving us the body of Christ, God has broadened our vision. The body of Christ sees more than any one person can see. As such, the whole body of Christ (and not just the individual) is needed to discern the whole will of God. It is only “together with all the saints” that we “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ…” (Ephesians 3:18).

One of the biggest problems with exaggerthinking is that it leaves us believing that it all depends on me. When I exaggerthink, even though I am fully aware of my sins and weaknesses, even though I don’t mean to do so and would scoff at the very idea, I cast myself in the role of savior. It would be comical if it were not so painful.

The exaggerthinker believes it’s up to him to save the church, save the business, save the relationship, save the family, save the truth. No one else will do it. Perhaps no one else can do it. Unless I do it, it won’t get done.

People who think like this end up like Elijah: depressed, anxious, shame-bearing, and alone. Remember what was going over and over in his mind? “It’s all up to me and I’m not up to the task. My best is not enough. I’m a failure. I just want to die.” To which God said (in effect), “Elijah, you and I need to have a talk. But just so you know, I have plenty of people who are ready to help. You’re not the only one. It doesn’t all depend on you.”

Listen: we already have a savior. We don’t need to be one. It is not all up to you or me and it never has been. God has resources we know nothing about.

All of us exaggerthink at times, in one way or another. I say that as one who has often engaged in it. You may say, “I don’t do that. I know I’m a nobody.” But that is exaggerthinking in a negative direction—just the kind of thing Elijah was doing, and it was ruining his life. It will ruin yours too. It will rob you of joy. It will make it impossible for you to trust God. And it will separate you from others.

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Falwell and Evangelicalism’s Theological Confusion

Posted on August 27, 2020 by salooper57

Evangelicalism has a problem: Evangelicals.

It is not a new problem. Evangelicals have been giving evangelicalism a bad name for years. The disconnect between the gospel proclaimed by prominent evangelicals and the lifestyle exhibited by them sometimes is impossible to ignore.

The scandals associated with such names as Jimmy Swaggart, Robert Tilton, Jim and Tammy Bakker and many others follow the familiar road of greed, sex, and power. It’s not like these people didn’t know better. These are issues Jesus and his apostles addressed.

These moral failures point to an underlying problem that is not merely ethical but theological. The latest scandal involving Jerry Falwell, Jr., is a case in point.

Falwell, Jr. was, until recently, the president of Liberty University, which was founded by his famous televangelist father. During Falwell, Jr.’s tenure, Liberty saw student enrollment increase phenomenally, making it the largest school in the country. Falwell’s name recognition has also increased in recent years, in large part because of his political activism. Falwell has become one of the most familiar names in evangelicalism.

When candidates in the 2016 presidential campaign sought the highly prized support of evangelicals, the first place they turned was Liberty University. Ted Cruz launched his campaign there. Falwell allowed him to announce his candidacy from the Liberty Campus arena and even required the student body to attend.

It looked as if Cruz had the inside lane on evangelical support but then, in an unexpected move, Falwell endorsed Donald Trump. Interviews followed. Speaking engagements. Falwell called candidate Trump “a man who … can lead our country to greatness again.” Photo ops with the candidate followed. At one point, according to Falwell, Mr. Trump discussed with him the possibility of serving as the United States Secretary of Education.

All I knew about Jerry Falwell, Jr. prior to his highly publicized endorsement of Donald Trump, was that Liberty University had grown wildly in just a few years under his leadership. With regard to the academic health of the university, this seemed reckless to me. Then began the trickle of reports of questionable behavior, which grew into a stream, and then a cataract.

Mr. Falwell insists that he has been targeted by the Left because of his support of President Trump. I don’t doubt that he is right. He painted the target on his own back when he threw his support to Mr. Trump in 2016. But he has no call to complain. He is the one who gave his opponents their ammunition.

I sensed there was a problem when Falwell defended himself against accusations of hypocrisy by saying, “I have never been a pastor.” He seemed to suggest that only pastors are expected to live by biblical standards of holiness. He has repeated this kind of thing a number of times, most recently around the time of his resignation.

Falwell’s misunderstanding exposes a theological fault that runs through evangelicalism: the false idea, as Christopher Wright puts it, that “there can be a belief of faith separate from the life of faith; that people can be saved by something that goes on in their heads without worrying too much about what happens in their lives.”

This belief persists in evangelicalism despite the abundance of biblical teaching against it, in both Old and New Testaments. St. Paul himself, who never budged from his insistence that people are saved by grace through faith, absolutely refused to divide faith from life. He characterized his life work as bringing about “the obedience of faith .. among all the nations.”

The divide between faith and life – whether in Jerry Falwell, Jr. or in any of us – is one reason so many people find it hard to take seriously the claims of Jesus Christ. As Wright said, “the moral state of those who claim to be God’s people … is a major hindrance to the mission we claim to have on [Christ’s] behalf.”

“The obedience of faith” in not a matter for pastors only, as Mr. Falwell implied, but for everyone who claims to belong to Christ. The world will not judge the church on the basis of its statement of faith, but on the quality of its life.

(First published by Gatehouse Media.)

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Spiritual Gifts and the Church

Posted on August 25, 2020 by salooper57

(from the Sermon: Body of Christ -pt. 1, 1 Cor. 12. Starts at 24:34 – 50:00.)

When it comes to the use of spiritual gifts, we often think in terms of serving the church. We talk about serving the church by teaching Sunday School or becoming a trustee, which promotes the idea that God gives us gifts so we can serve the church.

Well, yes; that’s true. But we mustn’t miss the more important reason God gave us gifts: to serve the Lord Jesus. The gifts are not, first of all, so that individuals can serve the church but so that the church can serve the savior. The purpose of the gifts, as we will see in the coming weeks, is to make possible through us the actions of the Son by the Spirit to fulfill the intentions of the Father.

When people think solely in terms of serving the church, they often feel their part is small and not especially important. Or they think that their part goes unnoticed and start feeling they are being taken for granted. Either way, that kind of thing is hard to avoid when we think that what we are doing is all for the church.

It is better (and more in line with Scripture) not to think we are doing something for the church but that we are the church doing something for the Lord. We are not functioning for the body, as if we were not a part of it. We are the body.

Third, notice the wording of verse 7: “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” Paul does not say that each gift – whether prophecy or tongues or service or teaching – is given for the common good, but the “manifestation of the Spirit” is given for the common good. What blesses a church, transforms an individual, makes a Sunday School class life-changing, encourages the discouraged and upholds the floundering is not the gift but the God who gives it. The gift is given so that the manifestation of the Spirit can occur; that is, so that God can show up among us. That’s why our focus shouldn’t be on the gift but on the Giver.

Finally, this passage (and the sum of the teaching on the Body of Christ) makes it abundantly clear that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves. It is not all up to you or to me. But by design at least one thing is up to you and up to me. We can’t do everything. We needn’t do everything. We shouldn’t do everything. But we can do something, need to do something, and ought to do something. Verse 11 teaches that the Spirit has given a gift to each of us. Each of us. And each gift is given for a purpose. Each gift counts. Each has a place in Jesus’s operation through the church.

On a July night in 1969, our family was finishing out a vacation. I came in from a motel pool just in time to watch – can you guess (July 1969)? – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step out of the lunar module and walk – and jump – across the surface of the moon.

The pilot for that historic flight was Michael Collins. He said, “All this is possible only through the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands of people… All you see are the three of us, but underneath the surface are thousands and thousands of others.” It’s been estimated that there were about 400,000 people who helped in some way on the Apollo 11 mission.

There were radio telescope operators and parachute designers. There were 17,000 engineers. There were mechanics, soldiers, and contractors who set up the missile for launch. There were guys in Houston monitoring how much fuel the lunar module was using during descent. There was a 24-year-old “computer whiz kid” who worked through software glitches in real time. There were programmers who wrote the code. Approximately 500 people worked on the space suits, including a seamstress who said, “We didn’t worry too much until the guys on the moon started jumping up and down.”

All those people. No wonder Neil Armstrong said that when he stepped onto the moon he thought about the thousands of people who made that step possible.

None of us can do it all, any more than Neil Armstrong could fly to the moon on his own. But we do need to do our part, just like that seamstress. (Imagine if she hadn’t done her part!) When we do our part, something amazing happens, which Paul calls “the manifestation of the Spirit.” God shows up. And when he does, good things happen.

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Is Your Soul Healthy? Take the Test

Posted on August 24, 2020 by salooper57

Jesus was constantly saying things that undermined society’s norms and made people uncomfortable. This was never truer than when he spoke of money.  

Jesus once said: “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” We’ve been taught to see money as power. Jesus saw it as a test of character.

When people suddenly come into money, whether a half-a-billion dollars or a few thousand, it is like they have walked into the hospital for a battery of tests: X-rays, CT Scans, MRIs, blood work. Only this is a soul hospital. Money tests the health of the soul.

When Jesus spoke about trusting someone with “very little,” the little thing he was talking about was money. He considered it a trifle. Money, in his mind, is just a little thing – but it’s a little thing like taking an X-ray or getting a C.T. scan is a little thing. When exposed to it, the state of a person’s soul is revealed.

The translation, “Whoever can be trusted” is misleading. Jesus was not speaking about future possibilities but about present realities. The verse should be rendered: “Whoever is trustworthy with very little is trustworthy with much and whoever is unrighteous with very little is unrighteous with much.” In each case, present tense verbs are used.

I’ve heard people say, “If I won the lottery, I’d give it all away.” I wonder. Would they really? Or would they stop taking calls from friends and family and start spending every spare minute with lawyers and accountants? Would they tell themselves that God had given them the money for a reason, so they must be wise about it and not make any quick decisions?

Who knows what we would do were we to win the lottery? But what we do with our take-home pay is also a test, and there is nothing hypothetical about that. It is a matter of record. For followers of Jesus (like myself), the use of money ought to reflect God’s in-breaking kingdom and the outworking of our salvation. If it doesn’t, we’ve failed the test. Our soul is sick. We’ve got the disease.

According to Jesus, the money test has consequences. If we fail, we will not be entrusted with true riches. But how do we pass the test? It’s simple: by using the money in our possession as a trust and not as discretionary funds. Like every other resource, money belongs to God. We have been entrusted with its use as his representatives.

That doesn’t mean we must account for every nickel in our expense accounts. It doesn’t mean we are OCD about our budget. It does mean that we think about and pray about how to use the money entrusted to us in a God-honoring way.

The almost breathtaking possibility here is that if we are trustworthy in this little thing – money – God will give us (literally, entrust us with) the true thing. Money amounts to training wheels for tots. Money is a preliminary, get-your-feet-wet trial run. If we do well with it, we are in a position to receive the real thing.

The real thing, as compared to the “very little thing,” is influence with the God of heaven. Authority in his kingdom. Only a fool would choose money over that.

Once a person has proved trustworthy with the money entrusted to him, he will be given “property of his own.” God trusts such a person with resources and authority in a measure equal to his faithfulness.

Augustine had this kind of thing in mind when he said, “Love God and do what you will.” When someone is loving God, they will do what is good and God will trust them. But no one can love money and love God at the same time., They are mutually exclusive.

Money-love is a spiritual illness, and it is progressive. It spreads through a person’s life and affects all their relationships, including the relationship with God. But God-love is also progressive. It too spreads through a person’s life and affects and enhances all their relationships.

First published by Gatehouse Media

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Going to Church: Entering Foreign Territory?

Posted on August 22, 2020 by salooper57
Photo by ev on Unsplash

Stepping into a church can seem like entering a foreign country. The natives, for example, speak their own language: “Stop by the welcome table in the narthex.” What’s a narthex?

Newcomers do not know what is expected of them. Where is the entrance? Where do they sit? Is everyone intended to stand? Is participation in Holy Communion expected? Is it even allowed?

I experienced this sense of being in a foreign place when I attended a conference on worship. It was being held in a large church with a campus that looked like a shopping mall. I found my way to an already crowded room and took an aisle seat.

People all around the room were chatting amiably, just as they do before any conference. As the band and choir took the stage, the flow of conversation continued unabated. Then the worship leader came to the mic, spoke a few words and everything changed. The room was electrified. People were on their feet.

The band struck the first chords. Shouts and applause accompanied them. A woman stepped into the aisle next to me and used it as a dance floor. I had registered for a Pentecostal worship conference without knowing it. I think back on it as a good conference, but I experienced it as a stranger in a foreign land.

My wife and I worship with other churches when we are on vacation. One year, we were trying to get to a particular church, but road work blocked us at every turn. We were running out of time and had still not discovered a way through the construction maze, so we made the decision to return to a large church we had passed on the highway. We rushed in, minutes before the service began.

I was carrying an NIV Worship Bible. It was a very “charismatic” looking Bible, with a picture of two hands stretched toward the sky on the cover. As we entered, I realized that people were staring at my Bible. It soon occurred to me that I was the only man in the building without a tie, and one of only two men with a beard.

I felt like I we had stumbled into another country. People were nice enough – some even engaged us in conversation after the service. But when they asked where we were from and what I did for a living, I noticed their surprise (or did I just imagine it?) when I told them I was a pastor. I believe they had no category for a tieless, bearded pastor—unless it was “heretic.”

Then there was the time we were visiting relatives. My wife’s sister, who had begun attending a local church, invited us to a Sunday service. We gladly accepted.

When we arrived, we found that the church was quite small. Sunday School was still in session, so we slipped in and sat in the back. When class ended, we moved nearer the front and sat in the second row. There were five in our immediate family, which constituted about 20 percent of the worshipers present that morning. I am fairly certain we were the only visitors.

The pastor stepped into the pulpit. He took a long look around the room and his eyes settled on us. In a rich, Southern accent, he welcomed all. Then, still looking at us, he stated that the church used the King James Version of the Holy Bible and said: “If anyone” (here his eyes met mine) “happens to have any other kind of Bible, you can just leave it on the pew when you go, and we’ll know what to do with it.”

Making people feel welcome, and avoiding the things that make them feel unwelcome, can be tricky. In an effort to do so, churches install welcome centers and design welcome strategies, which are helpful and good. But more is needed. Jesus was remarkable for making everyone feel welcome. When he invited people to come to him, they knew he meant it. They felt included. They felt loved. There is no substitute for that. A welcome strategy can break down in a dozen ways, but a church that makes people feel loved will always be a welcoming place.

First published by Gatehouse Media

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Reader’s Question: What About Unbelieving Friends and Family?

Posted on August 20, 2020 by salooper57

Helen D. asked the question in the title in response to a piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago (A Biblical Look into the Future). It is a familiar question. I initially responded in the comment section but we continued the conversation by email. Excerpts are included below. (Thanks, Helen!)

Helen: Pastor, I too enjoy your columns in the paper and just read the “New Earth” perspective using the train analogy. I’m curious where you see our unbelieving friends and relatives.

Shayne: I think there is clear biblical support for the idea presented in the newspaper column (A Biblical Look into the Future), some of which I outlined and much of which I did not have space to include. There is also other biblical data which must be taken seriously: the abundant support for the idea of judgment and loss for those who (variously) “do not know God,” “do not glorify God,” who “do not believe [in Jesus]”, are “unrighteous,” etc.

How these two sets of biblical data relate is the question. My understanding is that those who do not want God to be God, who reject him in his self-giving in Jesus Christ, will not enter the life of the new age. In my word picture from the column, they will deboard the one train but not board the other. For such people, the terminal at the end of the line is terminal. In the words of the Scripture, they experience “death” and do not have “eternal life” or (literally) “the life of the age.” One of the reasons I write is to help such people see the hope and beauty of the gospel of Christ.

Helen: The [church] where I went when I had my conversion experience at age 42, teaches that all souls live forever, but believers will live with God and nonbelievers will live without God, which seems terrifying to me since He is Light and Love, and who wants to live that way?!  You believe their lives just end without further consequence?

Shayne: No, not without further consequence, though I hardly understand what those consequences might seem to the person experiencing them. Read C. S. Lewis on this (the chapter on Hell in The Problem of Pain). It seems to me that the Bible teaches that a person – though “person” may cease to be accurate terminology for the damned – continues to exist. There are, however, some good men and great scholars (John Stott, for example) who believe that judgment will result in a final punishment that will bring such a person to an end rather than to ongoing torment.

The problem in talking about such things (or so it seems to me) is that we cannot imagine what damnation entails, just as we cannot imagine what glorification (its biblical opposite) entails. In both cases, I think, the person will be transformed. In the one, to something greater, wiser, and more beautiful (in which the redeemed senses of the enlarged self experience realities we cannot now know); in the other, to something less, something duller (with a diminution of self and – perhaps – of the corresponding senses). This is a horrible end. Those who insist on the keeping themselves inevitably lose themselves, just as Jesus said.

What we can be sure of is that God remains God; that is, he remains loving. He will give us the best we can receive and, sadly, for some people that seems to be damnation. But as Dallas Willard says, “Hell is not an oops!” People who experience damnation will be those who determinedly have chosen “not God.”

All that said, it is best we stay away from medieval images of punishment and stick to biblical texts.

(Have comments? Join the conversation!)

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