CHURCH: Are You Part of the Body of Christ?

I ask the question, are you part of the Body of Christ? If you answer yes, then my next question is does your attitude about the Church reflect that reality?

I just finished reading this very good book, Serious Times, in which the author asked this very question. He said that many evangelical Christians have a profoundly negative attitude about the Church and often express it more than most outside the Church. The Holy Spirit began to work on my heart as I sat the book down and contemplated how this applied to me. I have been speaking negatively about the Church as if I existed separate from it. I have had conversations with many people in which we say things like "the Church sucks at relevant outreach" or "the Church is a bunch of old people holding onto tradition". The attitude that has created in my mind is that somehow I can be separate from that, as if "the Church" doesn't not include me or anyone doing effective ministry.

I took this deeper in how I think about denominations and local congregations. The Holy Spirit asked the question about how I view various denominations? Do I talk about them as if they are part of the same Body of Christ as I am? The answer sadly is no. This seems so small but I think it affects our thinking more than we know. I have heard Christians talk worse about churches and denominations than any non-believer I have met.

But this is not what the apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 4: "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."

I have been convicted to change my view of the Church and remind myself that I am a part of the same Body as each local congregation of believers that calls Jesus Lord and Savior of all, no matter where in the world or of what denomination.

But this is not enough, it goes deeper. What about how we view conflict in the Church. Do we just leave the Church when we don't like something? Do we just leave the Church when we have conflict with members? I believe that if we view ourselves as intimately connected to these other members there would be less people walking out at the first sign of conflict or something they don't like. Paul uses the analogy of a body, in which each part functions with a Divine purpose, and cannot just leave the rest of the body.

Are you walking out on the Body because you don't want to deal with the hard stuff? Are you walking out on the Body because you don't like something someone said? Does your attitude of the Church reflect what the apostle Paul says it should be? If any of this applies to you, I challenge you to stop putting down the Church and acting like they are not a part of the same Body you belong to. God has convicted me of my attitude and I hope to stand up for the Church and humbly seek resolution to conflicts in the Body. Please join me in this and encourage others to do so.

DISCIPLESHIP: The Authority of Scripture

My mind has recently been captured by God's Word and how I have been so wrong in the past about my interpretation of His Word. Several friends have commented on how much I have changed in my interpretations of what I believe Scripture says about certain issues from when I started at Clarion. Some people view this as evidence of me growing and maturing in my faith and others view this as a negative thing of me having been corrupted. These comments have caused me to reflect on a deeper level these changes in myself. Why have I changed?

I think the answer to the question has 2 parts. First is that I have really learned to engage in healthy discussion with people who have differing Biblical interpretations. I used to make fun of the conclusions of a person's argument whom I disagreed without every actually listening to their reasoning to see if they had a valid point. Since I have begun to do this over the last 2 years I have seen that others have very good points that I ignored before without critically thinking about them. Second is that I have learned that really believing in the authority of Scripture means constantly going back and re-examining it. This means being open to correction by the Holy Spirit as I uncover new pieces of Scripture or read something I have never read before.

A crucial distinction must be made when talking about the authority of Scripture. Being faithful to an specific interpretation of a particular Biblical passage is NOT being faithful to the Scriptures. As I have wrestled with the Holy Spirit on Scripture issues that I have struggled with, He constantly brought me back to the fact that I need to be humble in the process and realize that just because God got it right doesn't mean I will interpret it right. Bible scholars have already shown that there have been errors in the translation of the King James Version of the Bible. Some of you may immediately have red flags going up and feel that I have degraded Scripture. The belief that Scripture is inerrant is about the collection of original manuscripts not the modern day English translations.

I have been learning that humility is absolutely key in the process. A humble approach to interpreting Scripture is evidenced by a constant willingness to evaluate differing interpretations and go back to the original text over and over again seeking to understand it better and better. This is why I have have changed many of my Biblical interpretations on certain issues. And I am willing to discuss those issues with anyone who wants to. Even now and for the rest of my life I am willing to constantly re-evaluate my interpretation of Scripture because when I get to Heaven it is likely that I will be right on some things and wrong on others. Humility is absolutely necessary if we profess a belief in the authority of Scripture.

DISCIPLESHIP: What is God's Calling on my life?

Ever since Urbana I have been praying a lot about what the calling of God on my life. In the past year I have experienced tons of growth in my walk with the Lord as I have been seeing a whole new dimension to the Gospel of Jesus that I never saw before. I am speaking of the Kingdom message. This Kingdom message is about righting the wrongs of injustice now on this earth. This is how we bring the Kingdom here. I have often said that I wanted to see God's Kingdom come on our campus and in the world but what have I done for it? I have proclaimed the forgiveness of sins and cared about the eternal resting place of their soul but have neglected the current physical state that people are in. I have remained ignorant of much of the injustice in the world as long as it didn't directly affect my little world. But that has all changed in the last year.

Beginning with MAC training January and February 2006 I began to see the relevance of the Gospel in other cultures and that I need to be informed about other cultures to know how to share the Gospel with them. Then I went on the Cleveland Urban Plunge in March 2006 and learned about the relevance of the Gospel in the inner city and my ignorance of what was going on there. There were Christians down dirty in the trenches of the spiritual battle and physical battles of the inner city and I was just sitting comfortably on the outside ignorant of it. Then I went on Xining Global Project for 6 weeks in the summer of 2006. My eyes were opened wide to the plight of the Christians struggling to see God's Kingdom come in China. I was extremely humbled by how financially rich I was compared to them but also how spiritually rich my Chinese friends were compared to me. This past school year I have been reading More Than Equals with the Community Group Leaders and my eyes have been open to my ignorance of the racial reconciliation issue and how I need to work through these racial issues with my ethnic minority brothers and sisters. Then I went to Urbana at the end of December 2006. I was amazed to see the diversity of God's people represented there and how we sang multi-lingual songs the whole conference.

All this put together God has given me a passion for seeing the Kingdom message of Jesus to actualize in all the world. I care about the injustice of the world and want to educate myself on these issues. I want to go on staff with IV for awhile because I believe changing the campus can change the world. Then I want to go back to school to get my Doctorate in Philosophy and teach at a secular University in the philosophy department because I want to have influence in the classroom showing students how Christianity can stand up to the philosophical criticism. Then I want to go back to school and get my doctorate in Political Science and then to law school. Then I want to become a U.S. Senator. I want a chance to stand up for the Biblical principles in our great country and see God's justice come to all people of the world. In that kind of position I can work toward ending systemic injustice which is at much of the root of injustice in the world. I am always open to how the Spirit moves in my heart and this will take a lifetime to all work out but based on a logical assessment of the passions that God has given me and my interests and my spiritual gifts this is what I think I am called to do. To God be the GLORY!!!

METAPHYSICS: What is a Christian Metaphysic?

I just finished reading the book Metaphysics by William Hasker. I was reading it for my own personal growth and to supplement a Christian point of view for my Philosophy of Mind class. This book really changed my understanding of what it means to be a Christian philosopher. I used to think that in philosophy I can assume what God reveals to us in the Bible as groundwork and then move on from there. I no longer take that view point. To do that is to study theology. Theology and philosophy are supposed to be different and I would just be replacing philosophy with theology. I honestly never understood the difference between them, but now I do. This is not to say that I stop believing what God has said in the Bible to be true but that I try to come to those conclusions using philosophical reasoning.

I believe that the Christian faith is capable to stand up against all logical attacks. God is a logically consistent God and no logically true argument can ever knock Him down. This is where I come in as a Christian philosopher. I set out to prove the existence and nature of God through philosophical reasoning. The reason why this is so important is that theology is studied by people who already believe in the existence of God according to His revealed Word but philosophy is studied by people with all kinds of worldviews. Some of these worldviews include the idea of a God and others exclude it.

Metaphysics is all about answering the question: what is the ultimate nature of reality? There are many different metaphysical points of view about reality of the world, humans, and God. Can we develop a Christian metaphysic? This is what Hasker says in response.

"There is no one metaphysical system which is definitely Christian, but rather a number of systems, ll of them more or less inconsistent with each other and all of them more or less adaquate to the content of Christian faith. But the fact that Christianity is a religion of salvation also suggests that in a sense no philosophical system can be fully Christian, because no philosophical system can express the unique content of Christianity."

This idea was hard for me to grasp because I have such a strong bias towards objective Truth and here it seems that Christians can hold different metaphysical beliefs and both still staying true to Biblical revelation about reality. When I think about this further I think I understand and it is humbling. Basically the Bible tells us a lot but not everything about the ultimate nature of reality.

What would make these Christian metaphysical theories Christian? Hasker responds to this with 3 things that a Christian metaphysic must have.
1. It must speak of God
2. It must speak of Creation by God.
3. It must speak of man as the image of God.

Is there at least some broad categories that all Christian metaphysics should fall into? Hasker points out that a Christian metaphysic must be theistic by nature and cannot be naturalistic, pantheistic, or panentheistic. This is because theism is the only one that acknowledges God's true character as Creator of the world and existing independently of His creation. Also a Christian metaphysic must adopt philosophical realism concerning the physical world.

An important note to end on is that no philosophical reasoning or human reflection can bring us the message of salvation through Jesus Christ. This is the limit of this discipline. The Apostle Paul expands on this in 1 Corinthians 2:4-8.

"My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power. We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God's wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory."

EVANGELISM: Partnering in God's Work on Campus

I recently have had very positive experiences doing conversational evangelism and I would like to share them. This year while being committed to conversational evangelism as a effective method of evangelism and continually teaching others about it I have done little of it myself this year. After York Moore's extremely encouraging and empowering training on evangelism a couple of weeks ago I was convicted that I needed to practice what I have been preaching. Mandy also had this conviction and committed to doing conversational evangelism with each of the servant leadership team members during our 1 on 1's.

Last Thursday Mandy and I met and were both very nervous but knew that we wanted to partner with God's work on campus. Once again fear set into my heart and I began thinking of all the excuses of why this wouldn't be a good idea and why there would be no one to talk to, but I was wrong. After a very encouraging time of prayer Mandy spotted a girl who was sitting alone eating and felt that would be a good person to ask.

We walked over and introduced ourselves, Mandy of course with her amazing gifts of compassion and gentleness, gave the introduction and asked if she would like to talk with us about her spiritual beliefs about Jesus. Her name was Abby and she said yes. Contrary to what I had thought in my head, she was very open to talking with us since we were open to her in what we wanted to talk about. After getting to know her a little I asked if I could share with her the Gospel of Jesus in a drawing. She said that was cool. And so I drew the bridge diagram and persisted to walk her through the full Gospel of Jesus and she intently listened to what I was sharing. I used the relevant information that she shared with us about herself and her spiritual background into the Gospel presentation. After that I asked her if she had heard this before and she wasn't really sure. She had heard bits and pieces of it. She then went on to say that she had gone through some kind of confirmation process. We weren't really sure where to go from there because she wasn't sure what to think. So we didn't push it we asked if we could pray for her and so we prayed for her. Then we exchanged information and she said she lives in Reinhard and wanted to get plugged in. So we got her information and passed it onto Ben, who is the Reinhard Community Group Leader.

I learned a lot from this experience. Mainly that going for awhile without doing conversational evangelism brings back all my fears and doubts about it. I loved seeing God work through our conversation and Mandy and I got to partner in it. This never would have happened if we didn't have the boldness to go out of our comfort zones and act on our belief that God is at work in people's hearts. Conversational evangelism is an amazingly effective way to partner with God in His work and I love it!

EVANGELISM: The Invitation to the person of Jesus

In InterVarsity we talk a lot about doing evangelism as a natural outflow of our love for Christ and a step into maturity for the Christian. What is our mindset about sharing the Gospel? I confess that up until this point I have been treating Jesus Christ as a theological concept instead of real person. I have been acting as Jesus defense in the trial of life to all skeptics of His existence, divinity, and relevance to their lives.

The New Testament is full of examples of disciples of Christ given their testimony to the skeptics and the nonbelievers. Upon a fresher look at these examples I realized that somewhere along the way I forgot about Jesus role in evangelism. That I am not inviting someone only to subscribe to a set of intellectual beliefs but to the real and ALIVE person of Jesus Christ. York Moore, an IV evangelist, actually phrased this Truth better than I could by saying that God is inviting us to take part in the work His is already doing in the hearts of nonbelievers and skeptics all over the world.

These Truths of God already doing the work of evangelism and the person of Jesus Christ as who we invite people to meet, should change our mindset of evangelism. We should be excited about who God must have set up to talk with us about the most amazing Truth in the whole world. We should invite skeptics to wrestle with the claims of Jesus in the Gospels and to trust that the Holy Spirit is the one doing the convicting in the hearts of humans. This may seem simple to you but an amazing Truth to me that I have forgotten.

LAW: The Slippery Slope of Selective Obedience

I was talking with my friend Steve and someone made a comment about how Dr. Rourke wouldn't let anyone jaywalk on the streets of Washington, D.C. while we were there for the March for Life. Then Steve asked me, do you know why he doesn't do that? I wasn't sure, then Steve responded explaining how Dr. Rourke has a conviction that as a Christian he cannot pick and choose which laws to break and which to obey, because it becomes a slippery slope of continually making compromises that start out small and eventually end in ruin. How interesting!

This of course got me pondering over this concept. Should this be a standard by which all Christians should follow?

About 2 years ago my best friend and former roommate, Greg, was convicted about his use of illegal software and collection of illegal media. He uninstalled all the illegal software and deleted the install files and deleted his illegal media. This really fascinated me because just 2 years earlier during our freshmen year Greg was hording all of the illegal software he could find and even bragging about how large his collection got. This is a dramatic change my friends. Myself and Niki (now his beautiful wife) were surprised that he would do such a thing. I remember thinking how it seemed unnecessary and breaking such a small law wasn't hurting anyone.

Was Greg's collection of illegal software and media hurting anyone? Was his action of deleting it unnecessary?

For as long as I have known him, my missionary friend Sam, was always a gentle and compassionate man of God. He was also known for never going above the speed limit (even if it meant being late) when driving. I heard many of my friends from home make comments about how he is really extreme in his convictions, especially about obeying the speed limit.

Is Sam being extreme by not breaking the law? Since when did obeying the law become extreme to Christians?

I cited these 3 examples because I can think of many Christians who break all these "unnecessary" laws very frequently. To those it applies, why do you do it? Why do I do it? I break all 3 of these examples just about everyday. The sad thing is that no one has ever called me out on it except for Greg, who one day asked me why do I still have illegal software and media on my computer? I had no answer for him because I knew I was breaking the law on purpose. He didn't mention it anymore. He didn't have to, because I knew I was wrong.

Why do so many of us in the Body of Christ purposefully break these laws? We should be challenging each other to do better. The only example we find of Jesus breaking the laws are when the violate God's Word. The Pharisees twisted many of God's laws into keeping a set of rituals instead of worshiping God. These are the only times that Jesus breaks the law, because they violated the law of God in the Torah. The same is true for the Apostles. Peter and John were brought before the Sanhedrin in Acts 5 and were commanded to not preach in the name of Jesus. They broke this law because it went against God's commands. It is not documented anywhere in Scripture where anyone broke a law other than if it was contrary to the will or commands of God.

How many of us, Christians, would call Jesus extreme today? Not because of his teachings or times when he did purposefully break the laws but for all the times he obeyed them?

I agree with Dr. Rourke that we are setting ourselves up for a slippery slope to fall down when we pick and choose which laws to obey. Imagine if a non-Christian called you out on it, you would look as stupid as I did when Greg asked me the question. We would be hypocrites. Any Christian who does this would also wash out the foundation of the moral standard that God holds for us.

The more I learn about God and grow closer to Him, the more I am beginning to see how consistency in all areas of my life is what He wants. This is true Lordship of Jesus Christ. If you break even the smallest law that is not against God's will or Word, you are sinning. This includes me.

Since I want to purge my life of all sin so that I can run faster to Jesus and be more effective witness I am deleting all my illegal media. I have already deleted my illegal software. I am also going to follow the example of brother Sam and only drive the speed limit. I hope that you will follow my example as I am trying to follow Jesus, like my awesome brothers Dr. Rourke, Greg, and Sam.

INTERVARSITY: Fund Development for InterVarsity Staff

Being a ministry intern for IV while still finishing school was supposed to give me a head start on my fund development. I have been realizing how I have been going to the extreme of allowing it to consume all of my thinking to the point of worry and unable to do anything else or the extreme of keeping my mind and time so scheduled so that I don't stop to think about it. The result of both is that no fund development has gotten done this school year and it is half over. Jesse has been talking to me and praying for me to help motivate me to overcome my fear of doing fund development. Bottom line is that if I cannot fund raise the money, I cannot be an IV staff worker.

Jesse is really good brother in Christ and he keeps pushing me and praying for me. I realize that there is deeper issues in my heart that this brings out. Why am I avoiding working on this? Why does my heart drop out of my chest when I see Jesse's number come up on my cell phone? Why do I purposely not answer the phone when he or Paul calls? I thought I was more mature of a Christian than to be doing such foolish behavior.

I intellectually understand all the reasons why fund development is important and how it grows my trust in the Lord's provision, but this is the true test. I do not want to do this. I don't want to make the list of names or write my newsletter or make phone call asks or set up appointments. Why? I thought my intellectual knowledge of the right answers should overcome my emotions? I guess I am a more emotional guy than I realized. These are the moments that really define who we are. The ones that throw us out of our comfort zones faster that we can adapt to the change. That is when our true self rears its ugly head. I am challenged in this area of weakness. As Jesse asked me in our phone conversation on Friday, am I more afraid of God or of other people's responses when I ask for their financial support? Wow that is a cut to the core, no BS kind of question. First my mind goes to work and finds the answer but not as quickly as the sinking feeling in my heart, nor as strong. I continually yield to the feeling of insecurity and I fear man more that God.

Lord please help me through this like you have done ever other time. Give me the strength to walk by faith. I would appreciate the prayers of anyone reading this as well, thanks.

COMMUNICATION: On the Use of Globalizing Language

I having been thinking a lot about how often people use globalizing language to describe situations or groups of people. I just had to backspace and retype that last sentence about 3 times before I said what I wanted to say without using globalizing language. This is how pervasive it is in my life. What I mean by globalizing language is expressing your thoughts about a situation or people group by using terms like always or never. These terms are all inclusive and leave no room for exceptions by definition of their usage.

Is it appropriate or even accurate to use globalizing language in any circumstance? I would like to separate it into categories of descriptive and normative. Descriptive means talking about the way things are and normative means talking about the way things ought to be. It seems like very rarely is it accurate to describe something in globalizing terms. The best examples of this comes to mind when I think about fights between friends or couples. One person will say "you always do this" and the other will say "I never do that". The use of globalizing language is most likely not accurate in these situations but merely seems like it. When in a argument the use of terms like "always" or "never" seems to keep us from fairly evaluating each situation by itself to see it that is true. There seem to exceptions to our descriptions most of the time.

I have observed in my own life that most times that I talk in globalizing terms in describing a situation I haven't done the work to analyze fairly each situation, I just want the outcome I already feel in one situation to be true for all the situations. My own stereotypes about people groups, politicians, nations, cultures, and subcultures have come from taking one situation involving an individual affiliated with one of those larger groups and painting their actions as an accurate description of the actions of all individuals in the larger groups. Democrats always do..., the French are, goth people always, women never.... The results of descriptions like this may be true of some with that affiliation, but in reality I honestly cannot be sure of what percentage does my statement accurately depict. Therefore I should not say such things.

Imagine how this would change our conversations, my conversations. It seems that it would force people to examine each person for who they are or each situation for what it is instead of my preconceived notions based on another person of their group affiliation. Wow, this would be really hard. During this blog post alone I had to retype many of my sentences because without thinking I would make globalizing descriptions of people. Something I haven't done is look at how Jesus used globalizing terms, if He ever did. If anyone wants to do that let me know if a comment.

The question that leads us to is: is it ever appropriate and accurate to use globalizing terms? If you remember back in the beginning of this post I made two categorical distinctions of descriptive and normative. Up until this point we have just been talking about the descriptive uses of globalizing terms. I believe the normative uses are appropriate and necessary to convey the Truth of the way reality ought to be or how people ought to act. For example, you should never have sex outside of marriage. This is a normative use of globalizing terms and it is true and accurate.

I hope to make all my future descriptive posts in non globalizing language, if I don't please point it out to me.

A New Resolution for the New Year 2007

Over the past week I have been reflecting on what has been happening in my life and what the Lord has convicted me of. After the amazing experience of going to InterVarsity's missions conference Urbana 06, I was convicted of not taking enough focus on cultivating my relationship with God. The Lord used my good friend and roomate from SLT 2005, Scott. He shared with me how he has been going through the Bible 1 chapter at a time and studying it and posting his thoughts after reading online in his blog. That got me thinking about my Daily Quiet Times and how they have been more like Weekly or Monthly Quiet Times. Then when I came home from Urbana I began reading a new book I had bought there called A Mind for God by James Emery White. I just finished it about 2 hours ago. In it White argues that the cultivation of our mind is essential to spiritual growth. That it is an ongoing process of reading, studying, reflecting, and applying Scripture to our lives. This is something that excites me as a philosophy major and a Christian. I realize it needs to start with consistent study and reflection on Scripture. That is where this blog comes in. This is where I will post my thoughts on the Scripture from my DQT's.

The reason I am using this blog, instead of a private journal, is that I want to be upfront and honest about how my DQT's are going and show people that I am actually doing them. Also an even larger goal of this blog is to live my faith out load by engaging in the ongoing dialogue on historic and current issues and the big questions. I pray that the Lord is honored by this endeavor, the Body of Christ built up, and the world educated about the Truth claims of Christ in culture.