J.S. Park

Question: Let’s Blame Religion For Everything

I was writing an essay for class when I stumbled upon information about Hitler. I found out that he was very much into Christianity and he was a strong believer which led him to do the things that were horrible but he used God as his support. He did things which the Christians in the bible did yet 100% of the people in the world can say that he was wrong and sinful. But then to refute this, Hitler could say God vs. world (people). How does one know if they are for God or against?

This is such an awesome nerdy question that my theology-antenna is doing cartwheels.

At first glance it seems this argument holds up well —

If there was no such thing as religion, we wouldn’t have so many wars and genocide and killings and bad things!

And of course, according to Godwin’s Law, someone must always bring in Hitler or Nazis into an argument.  The moment you bring in Hitler or Nazis to make your case, you’ve gone off the deep end into hyperbolic excess.

No self-respecting irreligious person would even argue this anymore.  There are too many cases where religion has done good and where the absence of religion has gone horribly wrong — so it’s a really weak argument that my former atheist self would’ve avoided altogether.  It’s much too randomized to make any correlation.

But I do understand your concern.  The Bible has been used (wrongly) to support slavery, chauvinism, imperial oppression, genocide, witch hunts, and just about any horrible thing you want.  If you were really determined, you could also make the Bible support homosexuality, incest, and abortion.

All that to say: Human beings are so broken that they can take ANY good thing and turn it into a tool for their own ends.

The Bible actually says that people would do this.  Even if it didn’t though, the problem is not religion, just as much as “sexuality” doesn’t cause rape or “psychology” doesn’t cause schizophrenia. 

There is a clear distinction between the intention of any belief system and its implementation.  

Please allow me to quote a wonderful sister in Christ, who says it better than I can:

When an irreligious person shoots someone, we blame guns. When a religious person bombs someone, we blame religion.

… Here’s the truth: Anyone can twist what they already believe to justify what they already want to do. We should not be blaming Islam for the Boston bombings, atheism for the Colombine shooting, or Christianity for the Salem witch trials.

What do all of these things have in common? The hypocrisy of human nature. Our very being is broken. We are not as we should be, or even as we want to be. There is something wrong with us.

I’m not sure it’s so hard to know if we are “for God” or against Him. 

In every era, while certainly we are a product of our times, there is always a remnant people who see something is obviously wrong — and they aim to fix it. 

When slavery was rampant, Abraham Lincoln did something about it.  Forget the fact that it might have been politically driven or that he was a deeply flawed man: the fact remains that Lincoln pursued abolition at great cost to himself when he didn’t have to. 

There’s a common thread through Gandhi, MLK Jr., Dorothea Dix, Mother Teresa, and Rosa Parks.  I know I’m bringing up some divisive figures here (and I won’t comment on whether it matters if they’re Christian), but history tends to make sense of each impactful individual in every generation. 

We know where Hitler stands in contrast to them.  We can’t play dumb with this for too long.  Our morality on a whole is much more obvious than your college professor will dare to tell you.

Great men and women are highlighted by their humanity: and we know even heroes are deeply imperfect.  Any thoughtful person will know that it is neither “religion” nor ideology that really defines our sense of good — but posthumously, we are seen in how much we heal or destroy.  At the end, we will certainly stand before the One who makes the final call on that too. 

How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.

— C.S. Lewis

— J.S.

Reactionary Culture: I’m Not Like Those Other Christians

As he cursed up a storm and lit his next cigar, he says to me, “I’m not like those other Christians. I actually get it.”

Suddenly I’m nervous. I didn’t get what he was getting. He must be talking about me: I’m one of those stupid Christians who is missing it and doing it wrong. How did I not get it all this time? This cigar-smoking man had the truth. Thank God! Tell me more.

The man went on about megachurches, how doctrine is not that important, how most sermons suck, how pastors don’t have a clue, how he wanted to teach churches how to be a good church.

I wanted to take notes, but then I thought he would say, “Only those stupid Christians do that.” I started playing with a napkin. He noticed, so I stopped.

He continued. I looked up for a second and this huge cloud had opened up. Right then, I thought of Jesus listening in on us — and I became pretty sad about the whole thing. Like you know, Jesus went through that cloud and became one of us and died for us, and all we could really say was, “I’m not like this other guy.”

I told the cigar-smoking man I had to go home. I felt sick. Some from the cigar, but mostly because of my heart.

Matrix, Methods, McChurch

There’s a pattern. A group of Christians is really flaming mad at Christianity, so they form their own version of Christianity by doing the opposite of these other Christians, and everyone lives happily ever after.

That’s until a group of Christians inside these Better Christians get mad again, so they reboot like the Matrix and mix some from Column A and some from Exhibit B, and it should totally work out this time.

We’re doing a really great job of standing on the anti-ground of what we stand against. Over and over.

We form these isolated camps of My Right Methodology, and then presume this must be the only way, and I got it, and you don’t, and you megachurches are evil, and my non-megachurch is really what Jesus had in mind.

I’ve seen pastors who try to blanket-bomb their ideology onto other ministries — but if every church was a carbon-copy of your ministry, without a care for context or people, then that’s a mindless Orwellian dictatorship. Sort of a McDonald church world. God has grace for you too: but no one wants that.

Jesus (Didn’t) Say, “Follow The Opposite of Everyone”

Underneath all this counter-cultural rightness, there’s a smug superiority that destroys any hope of unity. Even saying, “I’m above all these divisions” is still division. You go left, I go right, you go black, I go white — which lands us in suffocating circles of theology about theology.

We forget that Jesus celebrated uniqueness, that he welcomed a wild diversity of personalities, that he worked with every individual in their contextual corner of the universe.

Jesus did not limit his imagination. He didn’t just react to provocation. He somehow managed to originate action while embracing the existing culture without having to brand himself in diametric categories.

Most of us today are overreacting. We react solely from our deepest hurts: which is not wrong, but not sustainable. Our theology is I’m not like those other Christians — and we forgot: we are called to be like Christ.

Chronological Prison: You’re a Product of Your Times

When I first attended church, the Seeker Movement was the next big thing. Little talk of sin, secular songs in service, and lots of welcoming teams. But soon, Christians got tired of watered-down doctrine so they went all Young-Restless-Reformed, with a bunch of Calvinist bloggers demanding tight expository sermons and Gospel Centrality. Then you got a pushback against the Calvinism from the New Perspective on Paul with a Trinitarian focus of — well, you get it.

I’m wondering what’s next: but then I feel sick again.

Historically, humans tend to react sharply to whatever happened before. Especially Christians. We’re not very original. If someone writes a book saying “There’s no hell” — then guaranteed, you’ll get fifty people declaring, “The liberals are winning!”

Of course we should respond. Of course there is room for back-and-forth discussion. But I really want to see thoughtful conversation that does not condemn the other.

I’m tired of saying “them” and “us.”

I’m exhausted of xenophobic classist politically-driven doctrine.

I’m sick of using others camps as a moral standard for my rightness.

I’m not impressed when people bash megachurches or house churches or emergent churches.

I get nauseous over the Calvinist-Arminian beef.

I hate alienating people based on a few points of doctrine that won’t matter when we stand in the face-melting glory of God.

I’m so jaded with hip evangelicals who satirize the Christian culture to appear relevant.

I pray not to be like the Pharisee who compared himself to the tax collector — and that God would have grace for us both.

I know I could be doing the same thing I’m calling out others on — I am reacting to reaction — but my heart hurts to reach across the divide, to understand the other.

Yes, I love them too, with a broken heart that wants to unite all these people under the roof of Heaven to praise a glorious God who loves us all the same. I love them so much I can’t stop weeping over our divisiveness. I grieve for unity.

Theology is Jesus

Where we start is how we finish.

If you think electric guitar in a full band is too loud and you decide to only do acoustic guitar with a cajon, then cool. But I hope you talk this out with Jesus and you’re motivated by a heart that looks to him first. I hope it’s not to be rebellious against big bands and big stages and subwoofers — because no one cares about your statement of rebellion, including you.

If you despise megachurches that spend too much money on fancy coffee bars and jumbo projection screens and laser light shows, then why don’t you build a relationship with them and inspire them to invest in your social justice and homeless ministry and community service. Maybe this church is dying to do something more, and maybe you’re the guy to help them with that. You could be the bridge.

We can’t establish ourselves on a counter-theology. It will collapse. It always does. These movements fade. We can embrace them and be aware of culture: but it’s not your altar. Don’t idolize anti-idolatry. It never works.

It is not the Way of Christ to dismantle others because you think you’re doing it better. If you actually are doing it better: show us how.

And if no one listens, then please don’t be so hyper-critical to look down your nose on Christian culture. No one really cares what you think about it. People only care if you care about them — and you can only care about them if you are within the love of Christ.

Start with Jesus, finish with Jesus.

— J.S.

Question: A Mega-Post on Guilt, Fear, Shame, Fire and Brimstone

Five anons:

- I’ve always been on the receiving end of what you would call the ‘guilt-fear-shame’ tactics. When I was seven, I was handed one of those infamous “You’re a Sinner and You’re Going to Hell” pamphlets. Ever since then I’ve struggled … that I’m still doomed to hell simply because ALL I’ve ever known is the terror, the guilt, and the shame … How can they do this to others?

- I have always been told … “Don’t read anything that isn’t the Bible”, “You’re going to hell because you enjoyed Pokemon”, “Don’t you know Hollywood is a den of sin?” I constantly feel like it’s WRONG to have interests outside of theology/religion … I feel like I’m being trained to be a nun or monk. Is it right to feel this way?

- I sometimes feel like I’m sinning when I don’t have a bible in my hand 24/7. I feel that way when I’m doing my homework & watching cartoons. I feel that way reading anything that isn’t theology-derrived … Is this a natural part of growing on the journey?

- The word grace appears in so many bible verses, lessons and sermons… but I’ve never known what it actually means. so, what is grace?

- This isn’t an ask, but rather a thank you for your time writing. I feel I’ve grown more reading this blog than I ever have from being that person beaten in the face with all the ‘do not associate’ and ‘there is no depression if you believe’ tirades. Some of the things you say sting from time to time … but it’s a good hurt. I am VERY grateful for your condemnation-free encouragement…I would hug you and crush your ribs if I could.

Thank you for these very honest questions and for the awesome encouragement.  You and I both have been hurt by tons of churches that breathed condemnation: and for some of us, it could take a long time to recover. 

So please allow me the grace to break this down a bit with a little more nuance.  Please feel free to skip around.

1) Guilt/fear/shame are natural first reactions that point to a human truth.

If you would’ve asked me in the last two years if “guilt/fear/shame” were wrong, I would’ve yelled an emphatic YES.  Faith can never be sustained by the motivation of guilt because it’s an exhausting race that isn’t fueled by God nor even running towards Him.

But I began thinking: Why do we even feel guilt?  Should I be so quick to call it evil? Isn’t it as significant as every other emotion?  No one believes that all pain is bad either, because pain points to our humanity.

So feeling guilty is not wrong — it’s expected.  Please do not feel bad for feeling bad.

We’re all hard-wired to feel guilt/fear/shame.  These are the effects of the Fall in Genesis 3, and any time we feel those emotions burning our gut, it’s always pointing to something missing. In other words: Guilty feelings point to a “positional” guilt.  Guilt is part of our humanity saying: Something is wrong here, and we need a better way.

Sin killed our connection with God in the Garden.  You can see it in this broken fractured world.  We know this is not how things ought to be.  When we conform to the Fall, our hearts will the feel the guilt of going against our Creator.  It’s that sick feeling in your stomach which already tells me: you know what I mean.  

Even the kindest preacher in the world will still press your guilt-button, because you will always feel the gap between who you are and who you could be. This tension is an inevitable part of our fallen condition.

2) Guilt/fear/shame will always be wrong when it’s used by the preacher as a motivator.

The problem is when the preacher is yelling at you on Sunday about porn or drugs or TV shows, he’s dropping a sledgehammer down your throat.  He’s over-doing it.  He is mostly saying what you already know is true, and he’s not offering a solution.

A bad preacher will only tell you how it is.  A good preacher will carry you on a transformative journey from how it is to how things could be — and he does that by pointing to Jesus, the one who came to rescue us. 

Feeling guilt is natural, but if you think it will navigate your walk: it will only consume more energy than it creates, and that’s how self-condemnation happens.  To put it in theological terms, you can’t use the feelings of guilt as leverage to pay off the positional guilt.

3) Guilt/fear/shame, as an initial reaction, is inevitable because it points to the Holiness of God.

The Bible over and over talks about men and women who meet God, fall on their face, repent in dust and ashes, wear a sackcloth on their head, fast in terror of the Lord, and wish they were dead.  So much of the Bible is about God’s wrath, God warning us, God laying down justice.  We shouldn’t dismiss that.

If you could see the throneroom of God, like Isaiah did, you’d probably say the same thing: Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips … and my eyes have seen the King. 

Isaiah, who is probably holier than you and me and your grandma and Mother Teresa, could hardly stand his own sinfulness in the glorious sight of God.  I don’t mean to over-state the case: because I don’t think I can.

When we preach a “hyper-grace,” we short-circuit the Holiness of God.  I’ve seen what hyper-grace can do to people.  They often think they’re never wrong.  They dismiss rebuke as a “guilt trip.”  They become sermon-snobs.  They brush off the consequences of sin and jump quickly to grace, which is good, but unrealistic.

4) Yet God does NOT want you to stay in guilt.  In the end, we can only walk this walk by God’s grace.

If your first reaction is guilt, you need to know it’s okay.  It’s healthy and normal.  But we can’t stay there.  Ultimately, God doesn’t keep us in fear.  He is not some parole officer holding the trapdoor lever to Hell. In our continual faith journey, all fear gets put to death. 

That’s why 1 John 4:18 says,

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

God doesn’t want us to base our relationship with Him on do-more, try-harder, maybe you’ll make it.  It’s not based on the TV shows you watch, or reading the right Christian authors, or plugging into church programs.  You might know all this: but guilt is still controlling you.

Apostle Paul in Romans 8 says,

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ

— in perhaps the most victorious monologue in the entire Bible.

So the difference is that guilt never really finishes the sentence and doesn’t root for you to move forward.  Sure, guilt is inevitable, but it’s not the conclusion.

I know God’s grace is scary because we want to earn it somehow: but that’s the point.  We can’t.  God loves us in a way we don’t deserve and we can’t earn.  It is finished, he said.  We can only receive the gift.  It’s this love which picks us up, restores our brokenness, and sets us on His mission. 

Like Isaiah, we respond, “Here am I, send me!”  It’s the same when Jesus in Matthew 17 revealed his fully blazing glory on the mountaintop, then went down to a fallen Peter and told him, “Get up … Don’t be afraid.”  Jesus was the only one who could lift him up.  He picks up his disciples from the floor of their shame into his grace.

I’ll end here by unabashedly quoting myself:

When someone unconditionally loves you despite you with no end in sight, it changes you.  The only other option is to beat you up with religion and rules, which can’t sustain you for your whole life.  While grace takes longer, it will become a part of you in a way that moral conformity never can. 

Without grace, we’re just clocking in our daily tasks until we “feel holy” or we’re desperately trying to hit an arbitrary standard.  With grace, we a have a limitless love that provokes us into the same kind of love.  It changes not only what you do, but what you want to do.  It turns nobodies into somebodies as long as they remember they’re nothing who received something.

That’s the only truth that could ever motivate someone to anything.  We work hard, but grace empowers every effort.

— J.S.

Question: Breaking Through The Fear of Prayer

Anonymous asked:

Hi, I recently decided to get serious with my relationship with God. I really want to draw close to him and have an intimate relationship with him. But one of the things I’m not so good at is prayer. Most of my prayers sound empty and dry to my ears and sometimes I don’t feel like sitting and talking with God. I really want to get to a point where I am constantly seeking him. Do you have any advice on how I could do this?

You know, dear friend: I have never met a single person that ever said, “I’m really good at prayer.  I got that so locked down.”

Almost everyone I know has four major fears about praying:

1) I don’t pray as much as I should.

2) When I do pray, I can’t focus.  It’s like a bad signal.

3) When I pray, it feels like I’m using God or just asking for stuff.

4) I don’t know if prayer is doing anything or I’m just talking to myself.

And it doesn’t help that some preachers are beating you up about the “spiritual disciplines” and piling on the guilt.  I mean it’s not entirely their fault: we all switch to guilt-mode when we try to follow God because for most of us, that’s the only way we know how.

So please allow me the grace to respond to these four fears.

1) God doesn’t keep score of your prayers, and He is delighted to hear from you.

Please don’t hear me saying that God is some impotent teenager waiting for your phone call.  But the more I discovered that praying to God was talking with the Perfect Father who loves me and delights in me, the more I actually wanted to talk to Him.  I had to get over the idea that God was some kind of cosmic parole officer keeping track of my every infraction.

Some of my favorite times in life have been getting in the corner of my bedroom and pouring out my heart to God with the streetlight shining through my window.  I don’t do this everyday.  But yes, it’s awesome every time.  I had to unburden myself with thinking that God was mad because I had not “kept in touch.”  I had to approach God like I would a loving dad, simply starting off, “Father, today I —” and telling Him about my day. 

If you can begin there, you’ll actually miss prayer time because you will miss Him.  As corny as it sounds, there are days when I can’t wait to pray: and a routine happens without even noticing a routine.

2) Because of our human nature and spiritual warfare, there is a “prayer barrier.”

When people tell me they can’t focus while praying: this is the natural default of our hearts.  No one is naturally good at prayer. 

The first few minutes will take adjustment.  Random thoughts and noises will distract you.  Satan will bombard you with last-minute annoyances like “check the stove” or “tomorrow you-have-to.”  Let that pass.  The mind is a much busier place than you think.  You’ll need to run through this “barrier” like a giant stocking and rip through to the other side. 

It’s like that moment when you’re on the phone with someone, and after the initial awkwardness, you settle into a comfortable momentum where the conversation just flows. 

Also keep in mind that your physicality plays a role.  Some people are good at the 5am prayer.  I am not: I prefer night time.  Work with your own body to see what works best, and don’t bother with a nine step program or the latest bestseller.

3) It’s okay to ask God for stuff, because God is the God of stuff and He will direct you through it.

I know there’s a lot of guilt about making requests of God, and I have probably heard dozens of sermons asking, “Do you want God for His stuff or for HIM? Huh?!”  I understand those sentiments, and there’s some truth in it — but Scripture shows it’s okay to ask for things.  Because ultimately, God will shape our hearts with the things we ask for.

Look no further than the Lord’s Prayer.  It’s a lot of requests, even for daily bread.  Look at Proverbs 30:8-9, which say:

Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.

Notice how Agur (the writer of this chapter) not only asks God for provision, but also asks to shape his own character when he gets those provisions.  So let’s get off the guilt about prayer requests, and instead move forward on HOW we can make those requests.

4) Prayer certainly shapes us, but I also believe prayer changes the fabric of history by God’s sovereign orchestration of events.

This last one requires that tricky thing called faith.  Some people say prayer is only meant to change our hearts, but I think it’s a bit more than that.  I believe in a God who wrote Himself into the story of humanity by redeeming us from evil into His eternal grace through Jesus: so certainly I believe in a God who intervenes when we pray.  He listens.

I must qualify by saying that of course, God doesn’t always answer.  At times it feels like a God-silent world and the “amount” of our faith doesn’t dictate His movement.  Many of our unanswered prayers remain mysteries in His plan.  Yet I do believe God listens, that He knows best, that He steps in somehow when we pray, on His own terms, in ways that He wouldn’t if we didn’t ask for them.

I don’t mean to minimize the trials we go through.  This is a much larger discussion that I won’t pretend to understand.  There is a ton of hurt out there that makes me wonder about God’s work sometimes.  I’ve heard all the horrible heartbreaking stories there is to tell.  Yet … it continues to make sense to pray instead of retreat.  And I have seen just enough miracles to keep faith amidst the doubts and struggle — and even if I never experienced a miracle again, I have experienced Jesus.

I believe so many of our grieving cries for God are ultimately answered in the cross and resurrection: and while it sounds so trite to say so, I think much of our anguish is compensated within a cross where we are rescued from a broken world that is not really our final home. Jesus really is our answered prayer.  It’s God saying, “I love you no matter how it looks around you and I have written the ending you’ve always longed for.”  The overarching shadow of the cross secures our eternity; the God who runs history secures our today.

— J.S.

Question: Can I Lose My Salvation?

Hi, my name is Erica. First I want to tell you I have huge respect for you and what you do. I have been struggling with a question about salvation. I am without a doubt saved and do my very best to stay in God’s will, but I wonder is there a way to lose salvation? I was taught that it is impossible, however as I read the scripture (with very little ability to research), it seems like it can be lost. Can you help shine some light on this for me? Thanks a ton

Hello Erica!  Thank you so much for your encouragement and for blessing me today.

Let’s think through this question together.  I promise I’m not being sarcastic at all.

Question: Can I lose my salvation?

But then let’s ask, What is salvation?  A thing I obtain?  Something I hold?  An intangible factoid?  A conceptual piece of knowledge?  A feeling of assurance?

And what do we mean by lose?  Like the way we lose a wallet or my job or my mind?

I think many of us feel about salvation the same way we do some kind of shiny precious trophy — “This is my precious and I have to hold it for dear life.”

But maybe this premise is actually wrong. I don’t think salvation is like a toy we can keep or lose — because the author of our salvation is the very one who does the holding.  Salvation is not so much a thing as it is about a story and a person.  We get it backwards: we don’t so much have God as God has us.  It sounds like a cute preacher thing to say, but let’s not confuse “cute” for “untrue.”  It’s completely true.

I know we can read verses like Hebrews 6:4-6 and feel like salvation is “lose-able.”  But in the context of the entire Bible, we need to balance these verses within the scope of God’s Narrative.  Once God calls us and we respond, we belong to Him from eternity past to eternity future (John 10:28).  Like God told Moses, “Is the Lord’s arm too short?” (Numbers 11:23). 

If you ask me to explain how both can be true — that we choose God as God chooses us — my head might explode, or it would have to be the size of the universe to understand.  All I know is: once we’re adopted, it’s a done deal.

Any Bible passage that talks about “losing salvation” (this phrase never shows up) is talking about those who have never had it.  I believe 1 John 2:19 makes that pretty clear.

As for you: The very fact that you are desiring to stay within God’s Will already shows you are saved, forever.  The problem is when Christians judge too quickly and say, “He just stopped caring about Jesus and started sinning like crazy, so I don’t think he was really saved.” 

But do we know what he’s really going through?  Even if he’s numb to God, I bet it bothers him that it doesn’t bother him — and that means somewhere in his heart, he still believes.  Even a person who has committed suicide, crying out for mercy in their regret, can be saved at the end.  I don’t judge those things so I can’t say it with certainty, but I do believe in a God who sees through the vast complexities of our heart to what we really desire.

There will be days when you don’t feel very confident in God’s Promises.  You won’t feel the assurance that you see in other Christians.  It won’t always be an on-fire super-spiritual rock show.  And that’s okay. 

What’s important is that even a tiny scrap of weak faith continues to trust in the singular promises of God, who has conquered all our rebellion and pain and iniquity through the certain gift of His Son.  And we should be absolutely thankful when we do have confidence, because it’s a blessed moment when we can totally rest in the comfort of God’s goodness.  Either way, He keeps His Word.  Either way, history has already proven His love by the cross.

“If you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”

— C.S. Lewis

 

¹¹ Here is a trustworthy saying:

If we died with him,
    we will also live with him;
¹² if we endure,
    we will also reign with him.
If we disown him,
    he will also disown us;
¹³ if we are faithless,
    he will remain faithful,
    for he cannot disown himself.

— 2 Timothy 2:11-13

Question: Ten Thoughts About Calvinism

leavealegacy asked:

Hey there sir, do you agree with Calvinism?

My short answer: Yes!

I’ve been known to pick on Calvinists a lot, but the truth is: I love my Calvinist brothers and sisters, and the best way to describe my own theology is Calvinism. I just no longer associate with them.

I was deeply entrenched in the Calvinist circles for quite a while, but I stopped identifying myself as a Reformed Calvinist many months ago.  At the time, I wrote some angry things about them, but really I was grieving at their overwhelmingly superior snobby attitude. 

It wasn’t just a few of them — it was the majority of the whole camp.  Nearly every pastor I have met says the same thing: “Calvinists?  Those guys are effing a-holes.”  I would laugh, but it actually breaks my heart.

Here are just a few quick thoughts about it, and I’ll leave it at that.  I’m aware I’ll be making some blanket statements here, but I’m also aware this does not include everyone nor am I demonizing anyone.  If anything, I am preaching to myself.

1) John Calvin’s theology has been distorted beyond recognition, so what passes for Calvinism today would probably not pass with Pastor John.

2) Today’s Reformed Neo-Calvinism overemphasizes predestination way too much.  You’d think this wouldn’t be a problem, but it tends to be the psychological basis for a lot of the religious Pharisee-ism.  Lest we forget: God invented free will, too.

3) The need for Doctrinal Perfection in Calvinist circles has caused what I’ve called “Gospel Idolatry,” in which the tenets of a specific doctrine overtake intimacy with Jesus and his mission.  This is why you have twenty year old blogger kings dissecting each other’s words while they fail to lift a finger to help the poor.  You can be doctrinally right without being right.

4) The Five Points of Calvinism are pretty biblical, but you don’t need to know them to be saved.  We’re done arguing about this. 

5) The Calvinist subculture will always be a ghetto within Christianity.  No one else cares about Calvinism except — surprise! — Calvinists.

6) Dude: it’s a pretty serious thing to accuse someone of heresy, but this happens like every other hour in the Reformed camp.  You might as well accuse a five year old of heresy because he doesn’t believe in a pretribulational rapture. 

7) I believe most Calvinists are actually just scared.  They want to look doctrinally sound in front of their other Calvinist buddies, so they have to act tough online or someone will yell heresy.  Really they’re just trying to impress everyone by flexing their theological muscles and it’s a constant paranoid show of false machismo.  To meet a relaxed Reformed guy is just as likely as a three-horned unicorn.

8) I’ve met very awesome Reformed Calvinists, and you know what — I can hardly tell they were “Calvinists.”  They just loved Jesus and loved people.  Too many Calvinists make it known that they’re this prophetic doctrinally sound super-blogger, while truly Reformed brothers and sisters don’t make a big deal out of it.  They’re actually in the mess of people.

9) Arminians are saved too.  So are Pentecostals, Lutherans, and Roman Catholics.  The common thread is Jesus.

10) Jesus was not a Calvinist.  John Calvin was a Jesus-ist.

— J.S.

Question: I Want My Faith How It Used To Be

Anonymous asked:

How can I return to my First Love? I feel like I have a really strange struggle: I don’t desire God. I’m not doubting God, but I doubt my devotion cause of my idolatry. I’ve had this problem for a few years: I love reading books on systematic theology and listening to online sermons and serving, but I struggle to read the bible or pray or love God daily. Maybe this is just the curse of a reformed Calvinist (you joke about us all the time lol). I almost want to unlearn everything to love Him again.

My very dear, dear friend: welcome to the Christian life.

Let’s tackle this one at a time.  Please feel free to skip around.

1) Many of us put absurd spiritual parameters on our “progress” so we expect to sustain how we first felt. 

A true long-term sustainable faith will never feel like it first did, and it’s not supposed to. How could it? Coming to faith in Christ is always exciting at first — but keeping up that level of emotionalism is impossible.

Think of a hit TV show in its first season.  New characters, plot lines, scenarios, dialogue: it’s all so fresh and thrilling.  But even a TV show that maintains high quality will be a little stale by the third season, because we become very familiar with the tropes and twists and writing.

Think of a marriage: the honeymoon phase.  This doesn’t last forever, but many people expect the “butterflies” and “electricity” to keep going.  When it doesn’t, disillusionment leads to adultery or divorce or both.  Because it doesn’t “feel like it used to” or the very lame “I love you but I’m not in love with you.”

Please don’t do that to yourself.  We are done with arbitrary shackles and false goal lines.

If you can push past the initial barrier of fireworks and fog machines, around the bend is a breakthrough in faith that might not “feel” like it did, but was never meant to: because up ahead is an ocean-deep realness that feels more real than feelings ever could.

2) We tend to confuse nostalgia with first love, and that’s a mistake.

When the preacher asks, “Was there ever a time you felt Jesus more than you do today?” — he is totally asking the wrong question.

In fact, a lot of that “first love” was probably mixed in with false emotions and weird theology and wrong ideas.  The more I get to know someone, the more real that friendship becomes: warts and all.  Of course it’s real in the beginning — I don’t mean to question that — but I would never trade what I have today with my very first naive understanding.

Let’s quit looking behind us for a reference point (Philippians 3:12-16). Satan would love to see you panic here, but those crisis moments are often God surgically removing those distorted first ideas and strengthening your faith to another level.

Our spiritual walk is also a crazy up-and-down animal that is never some increasing line on a graph chart.  It’s all over the place.  Even today, I snapped at some cashier in Walmart (who was possibly a racist and was downright rude, which still doesn’t absolve me) when I knew better.  I kept thinking, “How could I have thrown away my Christianity to yell at this woman?” — but that’s pretty dumb theology. 

Our default setting is sin, and while we get a little better along the way, an act of righteousness is always a miracle.  I felt pretty bad: but bad enough to know I need a savior and not so bad that I avoided him.  That’s the only way that would actually empower me to do better next time.  Each day is a new day that forgets yesterday, and that’s how repentance and grace work.

3) Embrace both the emotion AND intellect.

Mostly everyone begins faith in emotion and moves to intellect, but these are not mutually exclusive principles. It appears you might want those old feelings back and you want to unlearn the academic stuff: but now that’s a false dichotomy.

You see: I know all the crazy obscure doctrine and I’ve read over 300 Christian books; I got enough head-knowledge to fit a textbook that would kill you and your extended family. None of that is a good thing. Hardly nothing in church surprises me on an emotional or intellectual level at all. I’ve rolled my eyes enough in church to map out the inside of my brain.

So my solution: I became jaded to my own jadedness.  That was the combo-breaker.  I quit measuring myself on how I “felt” or if my “brain was tickled.”  I just stopped all that and came around to Jesus.  I know he loves me and I love him too, and most days that’s that.

If that makes me an idiot, then fine — I’m his idiot.

And believe me: I love the Reformed Calvinists (God help them) as much as the Charismatics and the inner-city ministries and the megachurch and the new hipster church down the street.  I no longer care to have a reactionary faith that excludes others.  I appreciate the emotional part of my faith as much as the intellect.  It’s a tough balancing act, but that’s the journey. Let’s not pit them against each other more than necessary.

4) I learned that deep commitment to God and to people no matter how I feel is what leads to true growth. 

When I can persevere despite myself, that’s where I breach a surface-thin faith. When I can weather the storms by Spirit-powered obedience to the Lord, my faith becomes that much more authentic and gritty and real.  Our faith thrives when it survives: and the scars proves it.

In Revelation 2:4-5, Jesus tells the church in Ephesus, “You have forsaken your first love,” but notice after that he does NOT say, “Now go feel the things you did at first.”  Instead he says, “Repent and do the things you did at first.” 

Please hear me that I’m not endorsing “do stuff to get saved.”  But clearly we as Christians are called and designed for a mission, and if we’re not neck-deep in the midst of broken people inside AND outside the church, we’ll get tempted to wander off or just lose sight of the big picture. 

If we’re not loving broken people like Jesus, then Christianity will remain an abstract doctrine.  That’s also why Ephesians 2:8-9 also has a verse 10.

5) I expected the valleys around every corner, and I became okay with the struggle.

It’s okay to struggle. Embrace it and receive the grace.  It’s okay some days to just want to throw the Bible in the trash; we experience those seasons too.  That’s why our mountaintop moments will also inform our valleys.

I don’t mean to be too cute here, but trees during the winter actually deepen their roots to draw more nutrients, and that’s exactly what Christians are called to do in their own winter seasons (James 1:2-4, 1 Peter 4:19, Hebrews 12:11).  So I keep reading my Bible, some days getting nothing except to ask God to be patient with me one more day.  And He is.

That’s not an excuse to be lukewarm.  Get with someone and be honest.  Tell your pastor, mentor, close friend — get right down to the truth.  Pursue after Christ.   Be brutally real with God, and it’s His grace that will restore you every time. Deepen your roots, prepare for the next season, and learn to doubt your own doubts. 

Maybe you heard all that before: but you and I, we’re such forgetful people, aren’t we?  Don’t panic, my friend.  You’re further along than you think, and God is doing His wonderfully wild work in you.

Faith … is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.

— C.S. Lewis

Question: Why Pray When You Can Act?

Anonymous asked:

Does God answer petitionary prayers? If so then how does He go about answering them? It seems like the most obvious thing to do is get up and do something about it instead of praying to God about it. Petitionary prayer almost seems like an unnecessary waste of time when it is so much more efficient to get up and do something. Also it seems like God would have more reasons to not answer our prayers given our sinful nature.

Like Forrest Gump once said: I think it’s both.

I often see a false dichotomy between two biblical ideas that, plainly speaking, says more about our un-nuanced black-and-white 3 lb. brain than anything about the Bible. When my stupid human categories can’t fit something, I tend to run to one extreme or another. It leads to wildly unbiblical conclusions.

We do this with a ton of stuff:

- Predestination Vs. Free Will

- My Politics Vs. Your Politics

- Effort Vs. Legalism

- Grace Vs. Truth

- Receiving the Rebellious Vs. Religious

- Evangelism Vs. Discipleship

- Technology/Fog Machines Vs. Hipsters/Beards

People often are incapable of holding two extremes in balance together, but this is exactly what the Christian is meant to do: to hold such amplitudes in tension that a third unpredictable way is created. It’s almost never either/or, but usually both/and. This is why most mature Christians have hard-to-pin political views and theological opinions — because no Christian should ever be a carbon copy clone.

All that to say: Prayer is just as much as trusting God as it is moving forward into where God is working. There is NO false split between prayer and action. The godly person prays AND acts.

It’s like the single girl who is patiently waiting for a man to fall out of the sky. Patience doesn’t mean “Let go and let God.” It also means getting into a scene where meeting a godly guy is more likely to happen: and that’s totally okay.

We are active participants in the Story of God, and we’re called to ask just as much as we’re called to act.

If you read verses like Philippians 4:6 about prayer and petition, there is a ton of context that sandwiches these verses which talk about action. Prayer is our conduit to the Giver of all our strength to move from step to step: to be thankful, to repent, to learn, to be restored to what is better.

A quick story: I was once ripped off on Ebay way back when there was hardly any protection. This was a time when people still mailed each other cash and hoped to get their stuff. I had won some cards (from a game called Magic The Gathering, and I know how nerdy that is), but the dude never sent them.

In my very basic understanding of Christianity, I prayed for God to deal some justice on this guy. And I also emailed this dude almost everyday. A couple months later, the guy writes me an email apologizing like crazy saying how guilty he’s been feeling: and he sends me not only the cards I bid on, but a bunch of extra goodies.

Now I could’ve waited all “patiently” in denial or I could’ve stalked this dude’s house: but I prayed and I acted as godly as I knew how. Both things brought a result that couldn’t have come any other way.

Yet prayer isn’t just about what we do. I also totally believe that God hears us and answers. In some mysterious way, God dips His hand into history based on our meager prayers. Think of that: the God of the universe who created everything and is sustaining your molecules right now also has His ear to your voice. Prayer somehow touches the space-time fabric around us when God weaves a tapestry surrounding our requests. The more I think of it, the more I shudder and shrink.

While we contribute to the story of God, ultimately it’s His story and He is writing it while we are still free to choose.

An answered prayer is almost like God saying, “Yes, I approve of that edit to the story.”

Some would say, “I pray because it changes me,” but again, that’s the false dichotomy. Prayer both changes us AND affects God. If you ask me about free will or foreknowledge or predeterminism: I don’t know. My head can’t fit a galaxy. We don’t know how to reconcile both extremes because of our tiny human minds, but somehow God forges a paradox into an unknowable reality.

So pray. Pray like God can change you and your situation. Roll your sleeves up because you’re also part of the story. And if He doesn’t answer the way you’ve been asking, keep praying, and move.