I am neither employed by nor do I speak for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, its administration nor agencies. I'm just one Adventist guy with a studied opinion - more of a watchman on the walls than a voice crying in the wilderness.
Showing posts with label The Christian Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Christian Life. Show all posts
AN AMAZING FACT: After World War I, leaders in Washington became
concerned about the state of the nation’s roads. The automobile was
still a relatively new invention, so most transcontinental travel
depended on a few train tracks spanning the country. The U.S. War
Department wanted to know if the nation’s roads could handle
coast-to-coast movements of Army units by road. As a test, the
Transcontinental Motor Convoy—some 80 military vehicles and 280
soldiers—took an epic road trip from Washington, D.C. to California. The
starting date was July 7, 1919.
Like the cavalry of old, Army scouts would ride in advance of the
convoy to check out the conditions that lay just ahead, except they were
mounted on Harley-Davidsons instead of horses. The convoy traveled over
dirt roads, rutted paths, winding mountain trails, and shifting desert
sands roughly along the route of present-day Interstate 80.
Many
areas were nearly impassable, and the men often had to push or pull the
heavy trucks along through the summer heat. The vehicles frequently
broke down, got stuck in quicksand and mud, and sank when roads and
bridges collapsed under them. In spite of the hardships, 62 days after
it left Washington, D.C., the convoy reached San Francisco. It had
covered 3,251 miles, averaging 58 miles a day at an average speed of 6
mph. The official report of the War Department concluded that the
existing roads in the United States were “absolutely incapable of
meeting the present-day traffic requirements.”
One of the Army
officers on the convoy was 28-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Dwight D.
Eisenhower, who later said the roads they encountered “varied from
average to non-existent.” Eisenhower never forgot this grueling
experience, and one of the most important things he did after becoming
president was to create the interstate highway system. Construction
began in 1956, and the entire interstate system now has a total length
of 46,837 miles. It’s the largest highway system in the world and the
largest public works project in history.
Did you know the Bible
speaks of an army of highway workers that will go before the Lord? “The
voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God’” (Isaiah 40:3). Not
only did John the Baptist fulfill this prophecy, but we too may help
make straight roads that guide others to heaven.
KEY BIBLE TEXTS
Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye the way of the people;
cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up a standard
for the people.
Isaiah 62:10
Note from Tom: The Interstate Highway System is often cited as an example of socialism in action. It actually wasn't. It was Americans and their government fixing a problem together that everyone agreed needed fixing. Each state participates in maintaining the Interstates. We all contribute to it. We do this because it enables commerce in the national marketplace and contributes to making us all a bit wealthier in the process. The Interstates were primarily designed to help move troops in case of an invasion (we learned about the dangers of that in WWII. It had the added benefit of allowing commercial and private citizens to move easily about the the country. It was the sort of thing the Constitution said we were creating a government for - in this case to provide for the common defense.
I am either an exceptionally honest person who has the ability to see both sides of an issue or I'm without principles. Depends on who you talk to. Those who would divide my church into evil heartless legalists and caring understanding, nurturing, accepting Christians, have a tendency to disallow agreeing with anything on the opposite side of the conservative/liberal wall. Jesus, if you remember, had just that sort of church to deal with at his first coming. Pharisees were conservatives, Sadducees were liberals. The Scribes were like the news media. Their job was to write things down and they were probably just as biased as today's news media.
I found my self agreeing with one article in Adventist Today and disagreeing with another. That's probably a sign that either Adventist Today is unbiased or that I am. One of us must be because I'm a conservative and I'm not supposed to agree with articles of either sort. The first article concerned the rise of authoritarianism in the church leadership (which I'm against) and the other concerned how mean it was not to accept homosexuality as okey dokey (which I'm also against). Though I am against both things, in once case I agreed with the author. In the other I did not.
I've spoken plenty in regard to the first issue. As to the second, I have kept fairly low key. The article entitled "The Violence of a Heartless Theology" by Alicia Johnston appeared in Adventist Today recently. It is a heart-tugging appeal to Adventists to accept the sexuality of Ms. Johnston and others like her. To not "accept" her sexuality, she posits is heartless and cruel and leads to suicide and other negative consequences to people who are members of what progressives and feminist studies professors today call "persons with non sys-normative gender identity". There are some serious logical fallacies present in Ms. Johnston's argument. I'll try and address them with kindness and understanding. I have friends who struggle with gender identity and, contrary to the way my line of thought is portrayed in the Adventist Today piece, I do care about their feelings and do not wish to cause them unnecessary pain. Their struggle is a real one and deserves our understanding and sympathy.
Begging the Question - In the article Johnston states, "Devaluation of feelings is part of a particular approach to theology and religion." She goes on to claim this "approach" is heartless, cruel and that such an approach is heartless and that scripture gives equal weight to reason and feelings (or spirituality as she calls it). This talking point assumes that feelings and reason are somehow equal in importance to the practice of Christianity. I would argue that we are born with instincts and that through experience and the process of making choices we reason out how we feel about things. More on the neuroscience behind that idea later. At this point I'd like to point out that the argument is a setup to an either/or question which is another logical fallacy (the false dichotomy). Our position on gender identity is not a question of whether or not we accept or reject the value of feelings in the Christian life, though the original statement would try to make it so.
Straw Man Fallacy - Ms. Johnston next makes arguments to support her statement that "It’s common to treat theology like arithmetic and people like CPUs." She backs this up with statements about what "they" think or believe, that is people who believe homosexual behavior is a sin. She sets this mythical "they" up so she can knock them down for their cold-heartedness. This type of magical thinking allows one to assume that if one or two people say something unkind to you, everybody else is thinking it. Unless Ms. Johnston has had a look at the Book of Life, she cannot make such a statement that again sets up a false dichotomy that "they" treat theology like arithmetic and people like computers. You either accept her argument that feelings are as important as reason or you are a cold heartless automaton (made of straw in this case).
Post Hoc/False Cause - Ms Johnston next claims that since "Jesus said that you can tell whether a tree is good or bad by looking at
its fruit" then believing that same-sex relationships and transgender identity are sinful proves the tree of your opinion is a bad tree. She then goes about blaming all sorts of statistics related to homosexual and transgenders is caused simply by people not "accepting" a person's alternate sexuality. She blissfully ignores evidence that there might well be a mental disorder behind these consequences that has little or nothing to do with one's acceptance. If I were to claim, for instance, that if we all just "accept" people with bipolar disorder then the problem would be solved, I'd be barking mad. I have two family members with bipolar and accept them and love them both without reservation. One is in prison due to poor choices he made while manic and off his meds. I got three hours of sleep last night because I was up with the other one because she was having a panic attack. It had nothing to do with "acceptance". It has everything to do with having a mental disorder with a physical basis. Mental illness cannot be cured by everybody approving of your sexual lifestyle. Significantly, however, the LGBTQ community has gotten their condition removed from the American Psychological Asssociation's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, effectively halting research into treatment modalities. In essence, the only thing a therapist can do for a person who is homosexual or transsexual or whatever is to tell him to go and have sex with someone. This is quite the opposite of what Jesus told the woman caught in adultery. I'm sure she felt like having sex with the guy she was caught with. Jesus in his compassion forgave her and rebuked her accusers, but, significantly, Jesus did NOT say, "Go and commit adultery some more and feel better about it." He was very definite that she should act against her very basic instincts and stop doing what she was doing. In other words, her feelings weren't the issue. It was her choices.
The Bandwagon Fallacy - The statistics she uses to "prove" her bad fruit/bad tree misapplied analogy. The analogy is false since the fruit she is talking about may not be coming from the theological tree she is attacking. She lists suicide rates and homelessness and apologies by conversion therapy groups as evidence that rejecting the Biblical position that homosexual and other nonsysnormative (i.e. deviant) behaviors are sin is the only way to prove you are a good tree and not a bad one.
The Hasty Generalization - Like claims that only religions start wars, the article cites friends who were told that their "sexuality" was a sin then wanted to commit suicide as evidence that this is true across the board. First of all, I know of few people who claim that feelings are a sin. Otherwise every time a sysgender normal guy drove past a billboard with a woman in a bikini on it, he commits a mortal and unforgivable sin. Few Christians think that, although some loud ones admittedly do. It's not the feelings it's the behavior that is at issue and yet many many persons in favor of striking non-heterosexual behavior off the list o' sins seems to make their argument assuming that most people despise gay people. It's just not so anymore than we despise divorcees and adulterers. We still believe that the commandment about being loyal to your spouse is still one you should not violate, we do offer forgiveness and reconciliation. What we do not do is say, "Go and do it again so you'll feel better."
The Non Sequiter - Then there's this statement. "God loves the world deeply, forgives us for our failures to love, and
teaches us how to love completely and fully. The fruits of affirming
theology certainly are full of love and life. The fruits of
non-affirming theology bring harm and suffering." Sounds great doesn't it? But again it goes back and again creates a straw man built onto a false dichotomy swirled up in a bandwagon fallacy. She leaves out a crucial bit. God does love the world deeply. He sent His Son to die for the world. He does forgive us for our failures and teaches us how to love completely and fully. That's where Ms. Johnston would like to stop, but that's not all God does. He then tells us to "Go and sin no more," and helps us learn to obey. No where does God tell us to obey our feelings. Quite the contrary. He tells us to obey the law. He forgives us when we try and fail, but nowhere have I found a place in scripture where he tells us we can go on sinning if we feel like it, nor does he scratch out any commandments for us because we don't like them.
Begging the question (again) - Ms Johnston finally makes this pronouncement about those who believe homosexual behavior is a sin. "It’s easy not to involve yourself with those whose lives you judge to be
unworthy of the blessings of marriage and church membership." This assumes that the people she is chiding (a group which includes me), do, in fact, judge people who struggle with homosexual feelings to be unworthy of the blessings of marriage and church membership. The truth is, it is most often the person who is gay or transgender who most often rejects church membership or the blessings of marriage of the sort the church offers.
To demand that a church reject it's own beliefs in order to accommodate your personal sins so that you don't have to feel guilty about doing them, is really not fair. If I am a child abuser and see nothing wrong with knocking my kids around, should I demand the church make me a board member? If I like gambling, should I demand the church allow me to set up a floating crap game in the youth department? If I want to attend church in the nude, who am I hurting? Adam and Eve started out naked after all. Our bodies are beautiful. Your prejudice against undressed people hurts my feelings and makes me want to commit suicide. Must the church accommodate.
Jesus offers a place in his kingdom based on two basic requirements - that we love Him and keep his commandments. He even offers to help us keep those commandments by changing our hearts. I can tell you that I didn't "feel" like changing some of my bad habits. Some I'm still working on. I'm heterosexual. I have those kinds of feelings too. Unfortunately, due to health issues, that aspect of my life with my wife has been curtailed severely. I feel like having sex, but can't because it would harm my partner. One can live without it. It's not easy, but having sex is not required to be a fulfilled person. Remember Paul said he had a "thorn in the side" that he was forced to live with. One wonders if that "thorn" was related to his lifelong celibacy. I think Paul showed us how to deal with urges to do things scripture tells us not to do. Peter struggled with his lifelong prejudice against Gentiles. God and the Apostle Paul both reprimanded him. God punished David for his adultery. It didn't matter that David had seen Bathsheba naked and had an "urge". God forgave him horrible things and he submitted. Despite David's struggles with sin, God called David a man after his own heart. That was because David never gave up the struggle.
As to the feeling vs. reason issue, recent advances in psychology and neuroscience have shown that the brain is set up so that if we think out a thing or repeatedly do a thing enough times, we train our feelings to recognize such thoughts or actions as "right". It's the same for physical skills. Swing a baseball bat enough times and you'll come to recognize a good swing by how right it feels when you make one. Jesus understood the human mind and how it can be trained. I've been a Christian for 46 years and studied Scripture daily. I've struggled with old "urges" and behaviors for many years. All these years later, I find that things that appealed to me back in the 70s, no longer whole any appeal for me today. Things feel "wrong" now that once felt natural. It took more than four decades for God to teach me to "do justice" and to "love mercy" and to "walk humbly with my God." I'm not all the way there yet, but it does get easier with time and practice.
I've never considered demanding that the church "accept" my bad language or my short temper. Both things "felt" right because in my youth, before I met Christ, I practiced both a lot and they became natural. Jesus asked me to give up those things and because I love Him and because He has forgiven me my sins, I want to obey Him and please Him. Sin is sin and a thing to be overcome with his help. He will put a new heart and mind in you, but it may take some time. Heart transplants and Neurosurgery are very delicate things. Just because it doesn't happen instantaneously, doesn't mean that it won't. I know many individuals who struggle with homosexuality and have overcome it. It's slow and they get support from their straight friends in the church.
Those who reject people who have "feelings" that betray them into sin are not unique because they are gay. Everyone struggles with impulses to sin. Homosexual lust is not greater or lesser a sin than heterosexual lust or greed for money or power. It's all one and the same and God can help you overcome your particular sins whatever they are.
And we don't have to change the rules; we only must allow God to change ourselves. Ms Johnston was right about one thing. God does love us and forgives our sins and wants to produce "good fruit". He also wants give us the power to obey and even changes our hearts for us. That seems to be the thing missing from Ms Johnston's argument.
One of the reasons God said, "Have no other gods before me." Gods like Molech weren't very nice gods.
Too often we think of "commandments" as harsh and arbitrary orders. In all of history, the only time God has actually spoken to mankind was to deliver ten of those commandments to the children of Israel. These commandments have been recorded in Scripture and have heavily influenced jurisprudence throughout the Christian world. And yet, in Scripture we find God portrayed as the very embodiment of love. So how do we reconcile a loving God who also barks commandments that brook no nonsense. Thou shalt not steal, lie, murder or be greedy are pretty straightforward commands. There isn't a lot of wiggle room. They are so blunt, in fact, that some denominations of Christendom (who shall remain nameless) have had to revise the ten commandments by deleting one altogether and revising two others so that one doesn't say what it used to say and the other becomes two separate commandments to fill in the hole where they took out the one about graven images. Left as it is in the original Hebrew text, however, those church practices are clearly not permissible.
Let's take them one by one and examine how such a command might also be an expression of love by a God who wants only the best for his children.
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me." - Human beings are always searching for God whether they know it or not. Some have described it as having a "God-shaped hole" in our very being. We search for God in all the wrong places at first - in our selves, in powerful leaders, in science, and in nature, all with unsatisfying results. We search for God all our lives until we allow him to find us. The first commandment is just God encouraging us to skip all that fruitless searching and come straight to the only God who can fill that empty place in our hearts.
"You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments." - I've always believed that a human being is not really a complete human being until he or she has become a parent. When we were tossed from the Garden of Eden, God began immediately to teach us. Our first homework assignment was to "be fruitful and multiply." Remember, God was angry when He said it. I'm not sure you can fully understand why a loving God will be a jealous God unless you have experienced the terrors of being a parent. Who among us parents hasn't issued some form of this commandment to our own children. "If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you just jump right off with them?" God, like any good parent, doesn't want to see his children do that which is harmful and let me tell you, idolatry is almost inevitably vicious and cruel. That gentle Mother Goddess all the New-Agers maunder on about, wasn't so gentle back in the day. She demanded rivers of blood to make the crops grow or the rains to come. At the time the Israelites took over Canaan, some 23,000 children were placed in the fires as a sacrifice to Molech EVERY SINGLE YEAR. We tell our children not to play with fire lest they get burned. That's what the second commandment is all about. God doesn't want his children playing with stray dogs or the sadistic little boy who lives down the street and tortures squirrels for fun.
“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name." - As a parent have you ever told your child to "Watch your mouth when you speak to me!" Why do you as a loving parent demand that your child respect you? It's because you know that if you do not require respect, your child will soon not listen to your teaching and follow after other teachers who probably won't have his best interests at heart. If you are a shepherd, you carry a staff and have a dog with you because unless the sheep respect your authority, they may wander off and get eaten by a bear. The third commandment is for our safety. But ultimately the third commandment is not about using ugly words. It's about presuming to speak on behalf of God - to invoke His name for your own purposes. Don't do that. It's a very big no, no.
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.Six days you shall labor and do all your work,but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord
your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or
daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any
foreigner residing in your towns.For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." - The Sabbath command basically says, take a day off every week and spend it with me. Do you have a family night with your children? Why do you make them go through the torture of spending time with Mom and Dad? It's because you wish to maintain a lifelong relationship with your kids and to spend quality time with them when you are NOT punishing them for misbehavior, making them do their chores and getting ready to go to school. Well, God wants to spend quality time with His children and like many a human parent, he has to make it non-negotiable or the kids won't do it. And like many a parent, God has to 'splain why he chose the day and time he did or the kids start shifting family night around so nobody can schedule the rest of their week around family night and pretty soon everybody's off water-skiing or watching a football game or anything besides getting together with their parents.
“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you." - Remember that God told us to have children for a reason. Parents are a child's earliest peek at what the character of God is like. He wants us to respect our parents who created us in the same way He wants us all to respect He who created the world and all that is therein. In this way, all our lives we are taught to respect our creators, both human and divine. And the family unit is by far the most effective nurturing and training organization for children ever conceived. God wants you to go to a good school. Mom and Dad, however flawed they might be, are the best we've got.
“You shall not murder." - This one is kind of obvious. God does not give any man the arbitrary right to kill other people. Otherwise the world would descend to chaos. Even atheists recognize this rule as a good thing. It's not like God is trying to spoil your fun, although if you're Vlad the Impaler, you might see it that way.
“You shall not commit adultery." - Let's go back to God's first lesson study - "Be fruitful and multiply." Adam and Eve blew the first educational opportunity they had so God set up an alternative educational system. It's said that if you really want to learn a subject, teach it. I can tell you that this is true. Our first parents likely learned a lot from their kids. They had successes and failures, tragedies and triumphs. The prohibition on adultery goes back to a reflection of the "Have no other gods before me." If the family unit was to follow the divine model, the faithfulness has to be a key element. If you begin to be unfaithful to your spouse, who is with you every day and whom you can see, then you are all the more likely to be unfaithful to your God, whom you cannot see either. God's not spoiling your fun. He's preserving your character and helping you understand the nature of the relationship you must have with God that Jesus later said, was the way to gain eternal life.
“You shall not steal." - This one's easy to understand, especially if you've raised children. Stealing leads to chaos. Property rights are an essential key to a functioning society. Everywhere the Marxist idea of all property belonging to the workers has been tried, the infrastructure breaks down. If it belongs to everyone, nobody wants to bother to maintain it. Why mow your law if it's not your lawn and anybody who wants to can dig holes in it if they want to? We parents love our kids, but we don't let them steal from one another.
“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor." - As a parent, we have all admonished our children not to lie. And why not? Society would collapse if people weren't basically honest. We have plenty of trouble as it is with people lying, even in court. That's why we punish them for perjury. If we didn't society would soon become unmanageable. Besides it's not nice!
“You shall not covet
your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his
male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to
your neighbor.” - Here's another one where God assumes the parent role and has to explain just what he means. Don't be greedy isn't terribly specific and greedy people automatically begin looking for loopholes in any law, because greed is THE way to achieve power and control over others. And the lust for power my friends was the original sin - wanting to be gods ourselves; a job for which we are ill-suited. The tenth commandment is often the most overlooked and probably the most violated one, even more so than adultery, which sin also includes elements of both #7 and #10. One can almost see God standing there tapping his foot going, "No you can't covet his car. I know I said donkey, but the principle still applies. And no not his power tools either." The point is God wants us to be satisfied with what we've got. He doesn't mind if we acquire things, just so those things aren't acquired at the expense of others. That includes our children and family too. We loving parents deny ourselves all sorts of thing in order to provide for our children. This is how God purges the tendency toward greed from us. Some of us, sadly, don't learn the lesson.
So God gave every single commandment out of love. Not one is from some egomaniacal demand by God that we bow down and worship and make sacrifices. God gets no pleasure from the blood of sacrifices or from our sore knees in church. While we might kneel or give generously to the church, but we do so because we recognize that we have a loving God and wish to be more like him. Our hearts are opened to the needs of others and like God, we desire to give to others, to relieve suffering and to bring comfort to those in pain or in want.
I just don't understand why people think that the application of Grace makes the ten commandments go away, as though Grace makes it okay to lie, cheat, steal, screw around and be greedy, or, more often, skip the Sabbath and use God's name as a curse word. Grace gives us the will to do good. And what is good? See the above commandments. That's what good looks like.
David spares Saul though he himself had been anointed King by Samuel.
Follow the money.
There is an old principal that police detectives have learned when investigating crimes, especially white collar crimes, drug crimes or political crimes. If there is corruption going on, usually it's easiest to track it through money behind the corruption. Another old saw states that money is power and money truly does seem to be the most tangible form of power that there is.
There is a reason that tracing the flow of power leads you to the source of trouble. Like electricity is needed to power your radio or lights, power of the temporal sort is needed to support evil. Like electricity, temporal power can be useful, but it can also be dangerous when misused. It's also tempting.
The lust for power dates all the way back to Eden. In
the Garden, the serpent first tempted Eve by offering her the power to “be like
gods”.Eve’s real sin was not that she
was hungry and ate some fruit. Hers was not the sin of appetite. It was the
lust for power and control over her own life and future. Rather than trusting
God to care for her needs, Eve wanted the power that belonged to God. It
doesn’t say why she wanted that power. That’s the great mystery, but the lust
for power pretty much underpins every other sin. It is, in effect, the first
sin of all.
And it’s still a problem today. Politicians will lie, manipulate and
steal to achieve political power. Business people will lie, cheat, manipulate
and steal to protect their fortunes. Sadly, even Christians fall victim to the
lust for power. Most obviously, we see television preachers building massive
monuments ostensibly to God, but no one is fooled as to whose power such
edifices celebrate. Preachers live in massive homes, build theme parks and
drive expensive cars. Bishops live in massive homes, fly all over the world,
and collect some of the most expensive artwork in the world in jewel-encrusted
cathedrals. But lest we think that our simpler, more modest churches and
congregations are safe from the sin of lust for power, it takes a pass through
a mere handful of stars to find congregations torn apart because one group or
one person or faction decides they should be in control and should tell all the
other members how they ought to worship, what they ought to wear or how they
ought to behave.
The wonderful thing about being an Adventist church member is that we have
no church tradition of authoritarianism. Adventists tend to believe that
they are responsible, not to bishops, cardinals and priests, but to Christ
alone. So what do we do when an elder or a wealthy member of your congregation
begins throwing his weight around?Is a
zeal for the purity of the church even a sin? After all, those who “run the
church” believe they are doing so for our own good and who are we to challenge
leaders that are chosen by God?Aren’t
they given such authority by God?
Fortunately, we have plenty of examples in scripture and
history to guide us. These stories demonstrate the proper way to respond to
those who assume religious authority that rightly belongs only to Christ. In fact,
some of the greatest leaders in scripture were individuals who did NOT want
power in the first place. Moses protested that he wasn’t the man for the job,
when God sent him to the Egyptians. Joseph didn’t seek power in Egypt; he just
did the best he could, even when he wound up in prison. David refused to take
power even though he’d been anointed King so long as the old King Saul was
still alive. Time and time again, God chose reluctant leaders like Gideon to
step up and take charge. These great leaders all had one thing in common – they
weren’t interested in holding power. Elijah had no interest in a position of power in Ahab's kingdom. God told him to go deliver a message. Elijah knew what might happen if he did.
And yet among our congregations there are those who take
upon themselves the authority of Christ, which does not belong to them. I
once moved to a church in which one of these authoritarian cliques had pretty
much seized political control of the church. The church became very stiff and
stodgy. No pastor could make the masters of the church happy. The first time
the pastor wasn’t compliant with the bosses, the Conference office got a visit
and he was soon looking for another job. The church had developed a reputation
as a career killer for pastors because of the political masters of the church.
We were losing our children who were leaving the church as fast as they turned
teenagers.
With the help of a wise Conference President and the parents
of the upcoming generation of youth and the grandparents of those children, the
congregation stood up to the good old boy leadership. Our pastor, who was under
attack, hung on and when the problem folks got mad and boycotted the services,
we replaced them on the boards and committees and by the time we got a new
pastor and they returned, they no longer had power. The church they returned to
was at peace, the youth were being made an active part of the services and new
members were joining and old members were coming back. We even paid off the
school building in just six weeks.
That church is now a plum congregation for pastors, we have a strong school and
a very active younger generation who take one of the Sabbath services every
week. The strife and unhappiness that once darkened the life of the church is
gone. Some of the folk responsible couldn’t stand it and moved their membership
elsewhere.
Those who lust for power cannot stand the pure atmosphere of selfless love,
kindness and joy that comes from heaven. They are either changed by it of
flee from it. An SDA congregation serves Christ, not the pastor or the head
elder or the Conference President or the GC president. If we see our church
congregations being bullied by individuals or groups who feel they have the
right to give orders to others and to force others to comply with their edicts
about how to run the church, we CAN stand up to them. Sometimes, as David
demonstrated, all it takes is one person having the courage to stand for what
is right, to do what is necessary, and then to step aside, lay down his sword
and let God rule. Ellen White spoke about this and she had her own difficulty
with people in authority. That was one of the reasons I suspect that the GC was
so interested in shipping her off to Australia. She had a way of speaking truth
to power, in exactly the same way the Old Testament prophets used to upset the
kings and got themselves murdered for their trouble. To counter the lust for
power within the church, Ellen White said this.
"The greatest want of the world is the want of men - men who
will not be bought or sold; men who in their inmost souls are true and honest;
men who do not fear to call sin by its right name; men whose conscience is as
true to duty as the needle to the pole; men who will stand for the right though
the heavens fall.”
Here at the end of the world, is it not time for Adventist
men to stand strong for Christ and to resist any who would seize authority that
belongs to Christ alone, especially in our local churches?The local
congregation is where the rubber meets the road for our faith and it is there
that we introduce Christ to the world.
With Christ you do not walk alone whatever trials may come.
Up front, let me tell you I am no stranger to grief. At the age of four, my cousin who my Mom babysat regularly died suddenly of SIDS. It was my first encounter with death and the sadness that accompanies it. When I was a little older, my baby brother died due to a heart defect that he was born with. We kids brought German measles home and gave it to my Mom which caused Craig to be born with it. My 16 year old brother Donnie was shot through the chest with a 12 gauge shotgun at close range by a friend when I was 18. Fifteen years later, my stepmother shot my father through the chest with a 12 gauge shotgun and then waited to call 911 till she was sure he'd stopped breathing. I lost a business and home we had invested countless hours and dollars in. I had several jobs fold up under me. My family asked me not to visit my beloved grandmother anymore because it upset her, even though my grandmother had told us on our last visit with her that she'd never felt closer to God than she had while my wife had been staying with her. Her apparent stroke and mental confusion caused my aunt's ban on our visiting her. This effectively cut me off from my extended family on my Dad's side for years.
In struggling to do God's will with our lives we've run up against roadblocks and what I can only describe as attacks by Satan. We endured poverty and deprivation, our son developed a seizure disorder. Another son developed bipolar disorder. Our middle son died in his sleep in his senior year of college. I did CPR for 30 minutes before the ambulance arrrived. My wife developed bipolar and suffered a massive breakdown. My son's bipolar and the poor choices he made while not on his meds landed him in jail for we know not how long. We have passed through displacement, hunger and homelessness. We've witnessed God's deliverance and intervention many times when we thought we could not go on.
And then last month, the little dog that God had given us and who had brought us untold comfort and joy through the difficulties of the past 7 years died in my arms. It felt like losing a child. Then, my wife went back home to Louisiana for six weeks to help a cousin who's husband is suffering liver failure due to exposure to Agent Orange during his time in Vietnam. I found myself alone without even my doggy companion to keep me company. It sounds like a tale of unrelenting woe when you put it like that. My life, however, is not a tale of woe. Viewed from the perspective of one who endeavors to serve God as best that he can, my life has been chiefly one of peace, joy, love and happiness, albeit interspersed with grief and trouble. I have done things that I thought God wanted doing and am pleased that many of them resulted in good things happening. I have friends who love us, children I am proud of and the hope of heaven. I am content.
Grief
can make you a kinder, more sympathetic person or it can turn you into a
self-absorbed angry monster. It is living daily with Jesus that makes
the difference. It is He who heals a broken heart and keeps it from
hardening and turning in on itself. It is Christ who helps the
broken-hearted to heal by opening those same hearts to even more
opportunities to share his love with a world suffering at the hands of
the Prince of Darkness.
Men grieve differently than women. Though we don't show it or talk about it as much, we still experience it. In many ways male grief is a more difficult process. Women talk about their grief and express their emotions openly with other women and with their supportive menfolk - fathers, brothers or spouses mostly. Men seldom show emotion with other men and often actively hide it in front of their womenfolk. Because we stuff our grief, we probably aren't terribly good at listening when our wives are grieving over the same thing we are. To listen and empathize would mean exposing ourselves to the danger of opening up our own emotional pain and that is something men don't like to do.
Most of the time, if men shed tears over our grief, it is when we are alone, driving in our cars, sitting in a fishing boat or walking alone in the woods. In every case in my own life where I lost someone important to me, my tears have flowed mostly where no one but God could see them. I had to actively go to God about my grief, because, for some reason, the human mind processes grief in close proximity to where it generates anger. I've had to pray a lot during periods of grief in order to keep from being surly or short with my loved ones. Solitary prayer alone with God can help. Walking and weeping while praying seems to valve off some of that emotional pressure caused by the internal struggle we men have in trying to bury our sadness and sense of terrible loss.
We learn through grief that loving others, that
offering ourselves to act as the instruments of our loving God is the
only way through our pain. There is a bright and hopeful eternity beyond this
sad little world, but we cannot go around life's dark valleys. We must, like David said in Psalm 23, "... walk through the valley of the shadow of death." David, in typical male fashion, however, follows up that statement with a ringing declaration. "I WILL FEAR NO EVIL!" One evening during a particularly difficult personal trial, I had just received another phone call with more bad news. I went out on the front porch and stood there looking out upon a darkening wood. I suddenly remembered David's declaration. Almost instinctively, I squared my shoulders, raised an arm and shook my fist at the darkness. Out loud I shouted, "Come on you old deceiver. Is that the best you've got?" Some people chide me for doing that, saying you should never tempt Satan that way. To me it felt like a battle cry in the midst of some war that was going on in my life. It gave me courage in a strange way and even though the devil didn't let up on us for a while, we did manage to overcome him anyway and came out with our faith stronger for it.
My neighbors probably wondered what the crazy man next door was yelling about, but it did give me a great sense of relief. The Apostle Paul said, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers,
against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and
against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." In any conflict, it is important to understand who your enemies are. It helps you to bear the losses that you inevitably have during any war and helps you stay out of the trap of blaming yourself or, worse, of blaming God.
A life which bears much grief can be viewed as either a tragedy or a
triumph. Loss doesn't have to be defeat. Remember the Alamo. Remember the cross. Whether your life ends in defeat or victory, it's resolution does not depend on your won/loss record nor even on how well you fought. Whether you win or lose depends instead on who you know.
We lost our beloved dog Daisy a couple of weeks ago. My wife and I were crazy about that little animal. I'm not one of those who believe the old "all dogs go to heaven" / Rainbow Bridge mythology, but I have come to believe that some dogs definitely must go to heaven if the universe makes sense at all.
Daisy and the old guy she rescued.
I'm working on a book about the subject that I hope you'll read when it comes out. It outlines the thinking and scripture that have brought me to the opinion that God will one day reunite us with our beloved animal companions.
First, it's possible. If God can raise something as complex as a human being from the dead, I do believe he can manage to restore a feisty little bit of a mixed breed retriever. I say that because I know for sure and certain that God sent us the little dog in the first place.
Back in 2005, my daughter's dog Suzy was living with us. We'd had her for more than a decade and she eventually became very sick and my daughter made the difficult decision to have her put to sleep. It was a huge blow to our family as we were all very attached to her. We all showed up at the vet's at the end - three large men and two tall women all crammed into the tiny treatment room. The vet saw that there was a lot of emotion happening and wasn't sure quite how to handle that much grief packed into one little room surrounding one very sick little dog. He brought us a children's book called the Rainbow Bridge. Now all of my kids were in their twenties. I had gray hair. There were no children there, but the vet had no other comfort to offer. We grieved for that little beagle for years.
Walking with Suzy
Then our middle son, died suddenly and once again we were plunged into grief that was deep and painful. My wife developed a full blown case of bipolar disorder, in part, due to the stress of losing our boy. One thing we both knew was that we couldn't imagine every taking in another dog. We become too attached to living things that we care for.
So, Sheila, my precious wife, never one to sit around and do nothing found her nursing skills becoming impaired. She developed a severe hand tremor and had to quite working as a nurse. She took up home care for elderly clients and took on one lovely woman named, Mary Bob. Not content to provide care on the fly, my wife took on the job with all the energy and efficiency of two people, despite the continuing damage being done to her by her struggle with bipolar. Where she no longer had the skills to provide help to Miss Mary Bob, she roped me into it. One afternoon, after I had finished pressure washing the mold off the sides of Miss Mary Bob's house, I was carrying my tools back to the shed when I saw movement in the grass. Mary Bob's regular landscaper/gardener had recently been deported to Mexico and hadn't swum back yet, so the grass was getting pretty tall. As I watched a pair of black ears emerged from the grass followed by dark eyes and a friendly doggy snout.
She came up out of the grass and loped over to me where she threw herself down on her back at my feet, exposing a skinny ribcage covered with fleas. I looked at her and hardened my heart. "Oh, no," I said. "We just can't take in another dog. It would hurt too much to lose another one." I put up the tools and avoiding eye contact, I went back to the house, climbed up on the porch and sat down on a chair to remove my dirty boots.
And there she sat. Making eye contact. "Oh no," I repeated. She ignored me. Instead she came straight up to me, put her paws in my lap and laid her ear right on my heart and stayed that away. God didn't exactly say, "This is your dog now," but the message was clear. I called out "Help" hoping my wife would come and take the decision away for me. She burst out the front door thinking I'd cut off a finger or something. When she saw the little tableau, the dog hugging me as though afraid to let go, she stopped short. My wife is very perceptive about spiritual things. She recognizes the hand of God when she sees it.
Did someone say breakfast?
"Do you think she'll eat tuna?" she asked. In short order, the dog had been fed, scrubbed and washed and named Daisy (because she popped up out of a meadow like a flower). Miss Mary Bob even contributed to her rescue and gave us $50 to pay for the cost of the vet so we could get started right with her. She went home with us that day and lived with us for the rest of her life. She house-trained herself. She had one accident and I told her "NO, don't do that," and took her outside. After that, when she needed to go, she went to the door and asked to be let out. Never had another accident. She was the smartest most good-natured dog I've ever known. She didn't seem to be able to bark. It was a year after we got her that I heard a dog barking in the house and wondered whose dog it was. It turned out it was Daisy. She was parking at an approaching UPS delivery guy. She never barked except to warn us that someone was coming. If she knew the people or decided they were harmless, she never barked, reserving her wrath for UPS, FedEx, the postman or anyone else in uniform that approached the house with a little too much cheek.
When she was younger, I used to let her out a couple of times a day to run. She would go bounding through the woods and along the beach near out house like some kind of demented kangaroo. She'd come home, eyes sparkling and tongue hanging out with a big stupid old doggy grin on her face. She was a high class mooch who always demanded some offering from every plate of food we ate. She didn't bark or steal food off the table. She'd just sit there with those big sad eyes till one of us, usually my wife would crumble and give her something. I always put stuff on my plate that she could safely eat. Our sharing food with her made her feel like family.
And she was family. I used to make fun of old people who talked baby talk to their pets and doted over them like they were human. Over the short span of Daisy's, however, I found myself more and more talking just like that to her as she ever more endeared herself to our hearts. She died suddenly on my birthday in April. We fought hard to save her. Christian and not-so-Christian friends donated nearly $1800 to pay for her veterinary bills. Sadly, in spite of our prayers and the prayers of literally hundreds of others, her health continued to deteriorate rapidly over the last couple of weeks. We went for our last walk as a family just three days before she died. My wife and I were and are devastated. We prayed as hard for that little dog as we do for our children. Once again it was a pitiful scene in the vet's office as we let her go. She died with her stuffed squirrel under her paw where she liked to have it at nap time. Her ashes are on top of my rolltop desk next to a vase with a fresh daisy in it.
Daisy in her Service Dog outfit.
Daisy got us through a lot of tough times over the past few years. She would come and get me if Sheila was having a panic attack and get up right beside her and offer Sheila a head to stroke until the terror subsided. She goaded me into taking longer and longer walks that have helped me gradually lose almost 30 pounds in the past few years. People have asked me if we rescued Daisy. I tell them, "No, Daisy rescued us." C.S. Lewis had an interesting notion about the Earth where we will spend eternity that I find hints of throughout scripture, especially in Isaiah. He believed that in the New Earth, we will find all the good things of the old Earth - that this life is something like a crucible in which the dross is burned out of us leaving behind the pure gold which he will then save. Lewis and I with him think of those things as the "real" things of Earth of which this is all but a shadow. I never met a more perfect dog than Daisy, although Suzy wasn't far behind and it wasn't as if she didn't try to be a perfect dog. If the shadow Daisy was that good, then what must the "real" Daisy, recreated by our loving Father be like?. I sometimes think that it is no accident that dog spelled backward is what it is.
Dogs love us unconditionally.
Dogs are always glad to see us.
Dogs forgive us easily and often.
Dogs want to spend time with us.
Dogs will die to defend you or protect you.
Dogs like Daisy are patient, loyal and do not give up on you.
Daisy and me - worship time.
Some of the more moribund of Christian theologians scoff at the idea of God resurrecting something so lowly as a dog. "They cannot choose to follow Christ, so they cannot be saved," they say. There is no baptism for dogs. These are also the same people who believe God will chicken fry little children in an ever-burning hell just because the pastor said "in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" instead of "in Jesus name" over them when they were baptized. I don't hold much credence in such grim theology.
A creature, as perfectly lovely as our Daisy was, just shouldn't be lost. He who sees the sparrow fall and makes the lion to lie down with the lamb in peace, is, I am certain after my 44 year walk with Christ, surely able and willing to give us that which is good and pure and lovely. And I have met very little in this world as good and pure and lovely as our little Daisy. God will surely not deny us good things. Jesus said he wouldn't. And while there may be a reason God let our furry baby go to her rest sooner than we wanted to in this world, I can think of no reason for him not to give her back to us in the next.
Daisy and I and Miss Sheila have a lot of exploring yet to do. It will
be one of the great joys of eternal life for us to ramble the hills of
our vast and perfect world. May he come soon. I know I have a lot of
folk waiting up ahead in time for us to arrive at the moment of
resurrection when we are all reunited. The we will look up and see Jesus
coming in the clouds. The timing of that is His, not mine. For now I
wait upon Him, trusting in His goodness and wisdom. I've got a couple of brothers, a son, my grandpa, and others - a whole crowd of loved ones I expect to see again at the last trumpet. I'll also be looking around for a couple of very happy hound dogs that will throw themselves into our arms, wagging their tails for joy. That to me is the very essence of heaven and of heaven's kindly and loving Lord.
Wendy Francisco, whose husband wrote the song "He's alive!" wrote this little song that expresses my feelings about our doggy friends precisely. I sang it once for church and found I had tears running down my face by the time I got through it. A creature who inspires that kind of love and emotion in a human being, should have a place among the redeemed of Earth.
He that dwelleth in the the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
Psalm 91: 1-4
There is a secret place
within all of us that we are reluctant to share with anyone.Yet, as we
pass through this life we are constantly reminded of it and when we are
emotions come to the surface that we may think of as less than manly. We
dismiss such tender feelings with scorn, calling them "nostalgia" or
romanticism, adolescent or childish, as though we are above such
nonsense. It is a secret place within us that we cannot tell anyone
about. At the same time, we cannot share this place with anyone either,
lest we reveal too much about our selves and what we may quite
mistakenly believe is our weakest place.
Our
secret place persists in trying to reveal itself to the world, peaking
its head out from the pages of a book, or from a movie, television show
or particularly poignant commercial for a fast food restaurant. On
occasion, our world connects with our secret places in ways we do not
expect and we find ourselves turning quickly away lest someone spot a
mist in our eyes and try to discover the place we have tried so hard to
hide for all these years.
These invasions from that other world,
we attribute to a brush with something beautiful or sad or some lost
memory, as if beauty, sadness or memory were the thing itself. Some of
us even avoid paying too much attention to such things lest they betray
that secret place within us.
We
all have such a place. It is a hollow inside us that is reserved for
God and ourselves alone - a perfect place from which everything we
perceive as good and worthwhile is reflected in the "real" world. The
great temptation is to mistake beauty or some other thing that is good
for the thing itself in our desire to remain steadfastly rooted in the
"real world". In this way, idols are set up, obsessions are created and
lusts are cultivated.
But
the scent of a flower, the red and gold of a sunset or the waves of an
aurora across the sky are not the thing itself. The beauty of a woman,
the effervescence for a child or the taste of good food is merely the
reflection of the beauty that lives in the secret hollow of our souls.
What we perceive as good and pure and fine is recognized because we
already have an image of what such things ought to look like imprinted
upon our souls.
Men
in particular are taught that we need to outgrow all that childish
fantasy about secret places where love is true, men are brave, and
truth, honesty and integrity are as easily had as wildflowers in a
spring meadow. That's kind of sad really, for that secret place in the
soul is filled by God to give us an internal guide - a sort of compass
that always points toward Heaven and the New Earth.
We
are always turning around a corner somewhere and stumbling upon
something that opens that door a bit and tells us we have seen something
of the land beyond. When it happens, those of us who cherish that
secret place find that, in that unexpected instance, our emotions may
betray us. We find ourselves weeping over a scene from a movie or
shouting "YES!" in recognition of a hint of that secret thing in some
post on Facebook or a story in the news.
If we walk humbly
with Christ, we are not ashamed to embrace those messages from the
divine country which God seeks to plant within us. That secret place is
not easily dislodged from us, despite our efforts to shut the door on it
and accept some hollow shadow of reality. It's hard work to close that
door and even if we think we have successfully walled off that secret
place, when life beats us down as it surely will, the light from that
place is waiting, knocking patiently, waiting to break down the door if
we will but turn the key. Our reward for that small surrender is a flood
that breaks over us and drowns us in the very light and joy we were
hunting for in the "real" world but could not find, because we had shut
it away and closed our ears to it's knocking.
C.S. Lewis described it this way, "These
things--the beauty, the memory of our own past--are good images of what
we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they
turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they
are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have
not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard; news from a country we
have never yet visited."
It is the secret place of the Most
High where it is best to dwell, for living there changes us into the
living image of all that is good, and kind and patient and loving and
wise in that place.
Apparently God does not want me to be wealthy. That's my cross to bear. Yours may be different. One of the hazards of committing your life to Christ is that Satan doesn't like it when you do. You may pay your tithe, you may go to church faithfully and you may do the best you can to treat others as you would want to be treated, but sometimes the cannibals still eat you.
Someone asked me today what I thought of the so-called gospel of prosperity. The Prosperity Gospel says to trust in God, enlarge your tents and God will fill up you storehouses.So, to answer this question, I went back to the Scriptures and I asked myself, "If being a follower of God is a guarantee of prosperity, how do you explain Job or Joseph or Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Mikaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Habakkuk, John the Baptist, all 12 apostles and Jesus. Here is a breakdown of the prosperous lives of these faithful men of God.
Job - Bankrupted, houses wrecked, crops burned, cattle stolen, his children killed and his best friends told him it was all his own fault.
Joseph - Sold into slavery and imprisoned on false charges.
Isaiah - Sawed in half
Jeremiah - Tradition says he was stoned by Jews in Egypt
Zechariah - Murdered in the temple by Joash between the altar and the Holy Place
Mikaiah - Slain by Joram the son of Ahab
Ezekiel - Stoned by Babylonian Jews
Amos - Martyred under the ill-treatment of Amaziah the priest of Bethel and his son
Habakkuk - Stoned by Jews in Jerusalem
John the Baptist - Beheaded
Stephen - Stoned by the Jews
Peter - Crucified upside down
James - Stabbed with a sword by Herod Agrippa
Andrew - Hanged from an olive tree
Thomas - Stabbed with spears, tortured with red hot plates, then burned alive
Phillip - Tortured AND crucified
Matthew - Beheaded by the Jews
Nathaniel - Flayed AND crucified
James the Lesser - Thrown off the temple, then bashed in the head with a club till dead
Simon the Zealot - Crucified by the governor of Syria
Judas Thaddeus - Beaten to death with sticks
Matthias - Stoned to death WHILE hanging on a cross
Paul of Tarsus - Beheaded
John the Revelator - Boiled in oil, imprisoned on a barren island and then died of old age (the only apostle to do so).
Jesus of Nazareth - Crucified without even his clothes.
So no, I don't buy the prosperity gospel. Either that or God's got a very different idea of what "prosperity" means. As far as I'm concerned, the gospel of prosperity is little more than religious snake oil. The fact is, that if you commit your life to Christ, it's very likely to really make someone angry enough to not only financially destroy you if possible, but also to find some way to bump you off in the most unpleasant manner possible. Sinners don't like to be called on their sins. It makes 'em cranky and even more so as the time of the end approaches.
In Ellen White's book "Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing" she cites Christ's warning that if they did such things to the sinless Son of God, they will likely do as much to his followers as well. C.S. Lewis once observed that the cause of Satan "is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still
intending, to do (God's) will, looks round upon a universe from
which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has
been forsaken, and still obeys.”
Apparently, as he did with Job, Satan often tries to break such people. Someone once told me when I was going through a series of very public trials and disasters that it might not be about me at all. She said, "People are watching to see what you'll do."
Being a witness for Christ is often not a comfortable thing at all. Anyone who promises you riches in this world in exchange for your service to Christ is selling something.
The most profound change in your life comes when you realize that when God says you have eternal life, He means it starts today. We are no longer subject to the kind of death that the human race fears so much. Eternity has already begun for us. If we cease to breathe for a time and sleep for a while then wake when Christ comes for us, then death isn't death at all, but what my grandpa called a "dirt nap". And oh, the joy when we wake up in that incredible "great gettin' up morning".
Teach that to your children. It changes everything for them, especially their relationship to the trials, tribulations and the troubles that present themselves when they are growing up. It brings the petty persecutions, the sadness and loneliness of being an adolescent more bearable.
I got a peek at that idea in my senior year at Valley Grande Academy. I made the 500 mile pilgrimage to Weslaco, Texas mostly because there was this girl...
She dumped me the first week for her old boyfriend. I locked myself in my dorm room for 3 days. Our campus pastor, Mike Hansen, dropped by my room to talk. I didn't want to talk. I wanted to be miserable, but I let him in. He told me something that changed things for me.
He said, "Tom, God has a wonderful girl picked out for you already. This one just wasn't her. She's waiting for you up ahead. You just have to find her." I got up off the bed, took a shower and went back to living my life. Six more girls dumped me before it finally occurred to me that God might want to be more involved in the selection process. So I got down on my knees and prayed very hard. I said, "God, you pick the next one. I'm done." Two weeks later the love of my life invited me to sit with her on the bus to Bible camp so we could play guitar and sing. Shortly after that God smacked me up beside the head (literally, I think - there was a sudden shock and I saw stars). He told me as clearly as I've ever heard his voice that this girl was precious to Him and that I was to take care of her.
So I did. But what Pastor Hansen told me something I've never forgotten. We live on God's time. He has all the wonderful things we can imagine prepared for us. All we have to do is walk the path he lays out for us. He never promised us unending sunshine and rainbows in this life. What he promised us is that if we trust our hearts and our lives to him that in the end it would be well worth the wait. I'm grateful that God helped me wait to find the other half of me. Together we have begun an eternal life together. I am not afraid anymore like I was that day in my dorm room when I was entertaining notions that my life was doomed to be eternally miserable.
If you come upon a young person who is deeply troubled, sad and discouraged, remind him that eternal life has already begun if he or she will only allow God to give that to them. We may have to walk a rough and rocky road to get there, but the journey is so worth it. Along that road you will find love, you will see the faces of your children as they enter the world, you will see them grow, you will grow closer and closer to your beloved and to God and when it's done you will go home with Jesus - every day a new tomorrow filled with joy unimaginable and nothing the devil can do to you will take that away from you.
This question comes up a lot and usually is answered with something like "I'm spiritual not religious, as though that's somehow better. That's kind of like saying, "I'm a lifeguard, but I don't actually go in for all that throwing ring buoys and rescuing drowning people." Let's not buy into the anti-religion propaganda just because someone says being religious is bad, shall we?
A religion is a system of beliefs according to Webster and "usually based on a belief in a deity". According to the actual English usage as codified by a reliable dictionary, religion is not the pejorative many would have you believe. A religion is not necessarily a church with all its trappings. It can be argued that atheism, a very strict belief system in its own right, is a religion. James said this: "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to
visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself
unstained from the world." (James 1:27)
How a person practices his or her religion, may be delightful to his or her fellow humans or obnoxious. If I am caring for the "widows and orphans" and trying my best to be "unstained by the world" some people may find me pleasant and a delight to live next door to. My neighbor with whom I have had many lovely chats about religion (he's a Christian Scientist) once said we were the nicest Christian people he'd ever known. It's what we were going for by adhering to the Golden Rule as best we could. His reaction to us was a direct result of us being "religious".
If by "religious", you mean self-righteous and obnoxious, the problem dear friend is that you misunderstand the definition of "religious". Religious merely means true to your belief system. If you are an obnoxious Jehovah's Witness, Primitive Baptist, Adventist or Atheist and you are a downright unpleasant fellow, you are nonetheless practicing your religious beliefs, even though, especially in the case of Adventists, you may be totally at variance with the actual teaching of the church. I don't recall "Thou shalt be self-righteous and obnoxious" as being one of the 27 Fundamental Beliefs.
Being a "Christian" (which is a system of beliefs) and being "religious" (which is the practice of a set of beliefs), while not exactly the same thing are inextricably intertwined. You can believe in the Christian belief system without practicing those beliefs but it really plays merry hob with your head. I think the prophecy that this age's church would be lukewarm referred directly to this trend of "believing" without putting a lot of effort into practicing your beliefs. I am religious. I am unashamed to be so. If I practice my beliefs as Christ did, not everyone will like me. Jesus told us this would be true. He said, "“Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matt. 5:11-12).
If they hated and persecuted Jesus simply for being who he was, what makes us think that if we quit being "religious" that we will escape criticism or worse by evil people. The question is not whether we can avoid being "religious" and still maintain our Christianity. The question is actually whether we are avoiding being Christian by not being religious. I don't think you can separate the two.
If we accept our enemy's attempts to redefine the idea of being "religious" to mean some kind of bad or irritating behavior, then we accept the idea that Christian behavior should be hidden from the world because it offends them. When I was a kid, I endured a lot of bullying. Bullies torment others who "irritate" them. Usually the source of this irritation that bullies feel is any act by another that shows them up or makes them look bad because they're too lazy to study or too ignorant to contribute something worthwhile to their community, be that a family, school, town, city or nation. Bullies seek to make things that irritate them into unacceptable behavior by intimidation. That's what all this redefinition of what it means to be religious is about. It's an effort by the prince of darkness to make anyone, who disagrees with how the world's dominant set of "religious beliefs" behaves, to sit down and shut up. And by religious beliefs I mean the screwed up bastardized unconscious cultural "religious" beliefs of the unchurched. These beliefs include a vague idea of some undefined spiritual force that doesn't worry too much about sex, drugs or rock n' roll, reincarnation and past lives, people becoming angels when they die, and a loose bucketful of Greek, Roman and pagan mythology. Apparently, if you're not really sure what you believe these days, you don't have to feel any guilt about your behavior being at odds with what you believe.
The Bible, however, says that if we are silent about what we believe, the very rocks will cry out.
If we hide our light, our light will go out and we too will be left in
darkness. It's perfectly okay, even noble to be "religious". It simply
takes some courage and Jesus even promises to supply that along with the
grace to do it as he did it. But even "gentle Jesus meek and mild" was
hated so much that the "religious" leaders plotted to kill him. There's
"religious" and there's "religious". How religion is practiced is based
on the person's underlying belief system and there may be beliefs in
that system that aren't spelled out in the catechism or the 27
fundamental beliefs. Without a clearly defined belief system, it's little wonder so many people are morally and spiritually adrift these days.
So can you call yourself a Christian and not be religious?
Sure. You can call yourself a rutabaga and never go into the soup, but
what's the point? There will apparently be a lot of guys like that at
the final judgement. The trouble for them is that God does not know any of
them. I think I prefer to be recognizable as a Christian when it comes to that point.
“Let the wife make her husband glad to come home and let him make her sorry to see him leave.”
- Martin Luther
There is a little trick I have learned over the years that has made a huge difference in the quality of my relationship with my beloved wife. It is the pause and the quiet breath before speaking. In that moment, whatever is happening, being said or done, I try to think before I speak. What is really going on? What is she really trying to say. What does she need. It's merely an application of the Golden Rule - Treat others as you want to be treated. But it is more than that. It's putting yourself in her place and trying to understand what need I can fulfill. Sometimes it's not exactly the one being requested or the situation is not as it seems. If you are confused or do not understand, even if you are hurt or offended, stop and think about her first. Take that long quiet breath - careful, it's not a sigh you're going for. It's oxygen to the brain.
She does this for me all the time - thinks of me over her own needs. It is why we've lasted 39 years. It's wonderful to be loved so much, but what is even more wonderful is to love so much. In this way, 1 plus 1 equals wonderful.
I haven't posted here in a while. I'm working on editing scans of Sam Campbell's book, "Loony Coon" for a group that's doing a film and website about the legendary nature writer most of us SDA kids remember from our childhood. As part of it, they're creating eBooks and digitizing his surviving films. It's a great project and I'm pleased to be a volunteer on the project.
I've written a couple of pieces aimed at non Adventist audiences that I think might also be appropriate here. I also intend to write up the second part of my article on the Dobson Telescope. I was hoping to assemble the scope I'm working on and take pictures of the process. I'm working on 6 eBooks I have contracts for, so it will likely be a few more weeks before I get time, though.
I wrote I'm Not a Physicist, But I Play One in My Head....... as a tongue-in-cheek poke at the latest incongruous discover in physics and the lengths scientists go to in order to avoid including God in their explanations.
The Proper Use of Campfires is a piece I wrote after watching a Christian music video that took me back to the campfires of my youth and how these mini-celebrations of life are a powerful metaphor for Christian fellowship.
My Favorite Uncle Bobby Story is a tribute I wrote to the late former president of the Oklahoma Conference of Seventh Day Adventists, Robert Rider, a man I learned and important lesson about leadership from. He was also my uncle. Uncle Bob taught me that you need to stop and take a look at what you're really supposed to be doing once in a while. It's a lesson every youth leader and Pathfinder director needs to learn before his puts the patch and the pin on his uniform.
All God's Creatures Got a Place in the Choir is about the joy of spontaneous musical events. It offers an idea that can be used with young people as a witnessing tool - the "flashmob choir". It's a neat deal to set up at your local mall or a busy downtown plaza or at a park when there are a lot of people there.
Thanks for following me here. Please leave a comment if you have any ideas related to these posts. I'm also looking for "guest" writers who have something to contribute that helps define the roll of Adventist men and offers positive ways we can contribute the church. In this age of relentless negativity, SDA men need to be relentlessly positive.
