First Post and it's a Doozy!!!

It has come to my attention that there is a rather large lack of understanding of Christianity in secular circles today. There are several points that I want to write about and since this is a blog, not a formal essay, I’m just going to write.



Literal interpretation of the Bible vs. figurative/”Picking and choosing”


This is a problem in mainstream liberal churches. It is also apparently a problem in secular circles. In liberal churches, they prefer to interpret the Bible figuratively. That way we can get rid of the “problem” of Hell and sin, and just teach that Jesus came to love people and we all go to heaven because God is love. I call this the Love Doctrine. This doctrine comes out of picking and choosing the passages in the Bible like “love your neighbor as you love yourself,” “judge not lest ye be judged” and “beloved let us love one another for love is of God and anyone who loves is born of God and knows God, he who does not know love does not know God for God is love…” And don’t get me wrong! These are important verses! God is love! Jesus came to love! The problem with the Love Doctrine is not the verses it uses as its basis, but the fact that it ignores the rest of the Bible. The Love Doctrine ignores the part of the Bible where Jesus rebukes the Pharisees saying “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you whitewashed tombs!” That was certainly not the “tolerance” that the Love Doctrine preaches Jesus had for all people! The Love Doctrine ignores the part of the Gospels where the rich man wants to follow Jesus soooo badly, and Jesus has to send him away because he is unwilling to give up his earthly possessions. Why wouldn’t Jesus just accept the man and let him follow Him? These are all things that are blatantly ignored by teachers of the Love Doctrine. What we end up with in the Love Doctrine is a squishy God and a squishy Jesus who have no real power, no real backbone, and a picture that is completely inconsistent with the rest of Scripture. But, then again, I forgot, we’re not looking at the rest of Scripture are we?

In secular circles there is just as much picking and choosing going on. They love to try to use the Bible against Christians. So, they pick and choose the verses that they think point out how awful we are. “Judge not lest ye be judged!!” They cry. If I have to hear that one more time from a non believer to defend sin I will be sick! So, was Jesus “judging” the Pharisees when He rebuked them? How about the church in Laodicea when Jesus says to them “I want to spit you out of my mouth!” Hmmm, was there judging going on there? Of course there was! Granted, Jesus is God, and He has a right to judge, but the point is that sin should not be allowed to go unchecked. In James it says that if we know of a fellow believer who is walking in sin we have a RESPONSIBILITY to try to put them back on track! The secular world loves to use bits and pieces of the Old Testament to try to hang us up too. All those laws spelled out in Leviticus and Deuteronomy frequently get thrown at us “see you’re sinning!” they cry. I guess if you weren’t a believer it would be hard to understand the idea that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament law and that we are no longer under the old covenant, but rather under the new covenant. However, because we are free in Christ from the old covenant we no longer have to worry about unclean animals, and unclean diseases. We have an example of mercy and grace in Jesus Christ so we no longer have to stone the adulterer, there is forgiveness and repentance. All this to say that we simply cannot pick and choose what parts of the Bible we like, and what parts we don’t like, and we cannot just decide what’s literal and what’s figurative. The Bible is one book, it fits together as a whole. We have to understand the whole book in order to truly understand what God has revealed of Himself to us.



The church is only after your money!


I hear this one all the time! I guess in this day in age of prosperity “gospel” preachers and televangelists who sit on their golden thrones in their $1500 suits and dresses and laugh gleefully all the way to the bank to cash the little old lady on social secuity’s check it’s not hard to see why people think that. When preachers are flying around in their own private jets to tell people that God will make them rich while the economy falls down the drain, it’s easy to see why people in secular circles are so cynical about the idea of giving money to the church. The prosperity “gospel” has been allowed to run rampant in America partly because Americans want to believe it! I mean who wouldn’t want to believe that all you have to do is have faith in God and money will pour into your bank account like Niagara Falls? It’s so easy! It’s too easy. These preachers use verses about God blessing His children and passages in which His children prosper to illustrate how right they are about this doctrine. The problem is that we run into picking and choosing again. I’m sure that Paul’s money bag was overflowing as he was being shipwrecked, imprisoned, whipped, beaten and left for dead, run out of town, turned on by his own people, abandoned by all but his closest friends, and eventually beheaded. I’m nearly positive that the Apostle John lived in a golden mansion on the Island of Patmos where he lived the rest of his life in exile. That’s only after the Roman government attempted to boil him alive in a vat of boiling oil. Oh and don’t forget all those modern day Christians over in China I forgot about their beautiful 3 story houses with their luxury cars in the driveway that they show off every morning as they pull into their crystal cathedral churches. Are you getting the picture here? It’s absurd to think that if we have enough faith God will bless us with material things and monetary wealth. I do believe God blesses His children. I think we are blessed to be called His children. We are blessed with mercy and grace that has saved us from our sin. We are blessed with a relationship with God. We are blessed with the gift of the Holy Spirit to indwell us. Many believers are blessed with family and friends and supportive churches. God does bless His children, it’s just that limiting His blessings to only monetary and material wealth is not only limiting God, it’s short changing yourself. I keep thinking how horrible it would be for me, someone who is not wealthy by ANY stretch of the imagination, to subscribe to this doctrine and be beating myself up every day because my faith obviously isn’t strong enough to make me rich. What’s worse is that this doctrine is spreading out to some of the most destitute countries in the world! It’s going to places like Africa, and India, and other poor Asian countries. These pastors are flying to these countries and telling the poorest people there that God will make them rich! How awful is that? John Piper calls it “America’s Ugly Exported Gospel.” I agree. Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that God will make you rich. God never promises that life will be easy. As a matter of fact, the Bible speaks to the direct opposite. Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Jesus also said that if we are to follow Him we must take up our cross, our burdens!! The cross is not an easy thing to bear, but we must bear it for His sake! Jesus said “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace, in this world you will have trouble but take heart for I have overcome the world.” (John 15:33) My point in all this is if you serve money, you cannot serve God.

So, where does tithing and giving fit into all of this? Simply put, we give not because we have to but because we want to give back to God out that with which He has blessed us, whether that be a little or a lot. I tithe out of the first of my paycheck because God has blessed me with a job that pays my bills, and the least I can do is help my local church, which serves me to serve the Lord, pay their bills. The church does not take in any money besides that which is given. Christians give to support their local church and the ministries that come out of it. How can the church feed the homeless if the church members don’t give? How can the church support missionaries if the church members don’t give? We don’t give to the church because we feel the church is greedy and is asking for our money, or laying a guilt trip on us. We give to the church because we agree with and support and want to be a part of the ministries coming out of it; ministries that could not be possible if we did not give. And the amount doesn’t matter! That’s the beautiful part! We give what we can when we can because we know that we are not bound by a law of “so much at this time!” Jesus praised the poor widow who gave what she could, and sacrificed to do so, and criticized the rich people who were giving much, but sacrificing little. That is the paradox of Jesus’ teachings. It’s all about the heart, not the action!