He is a functional deist

While listening to a Christian talk radio host, a pastor and political pundit, on  the way home from work last week, I heard something quite disturbing.  Among the many eyebrow lifting statements made was that God surrenders some of His sovereignty so that we may be free moral agents. While I agree that we are responsible for our actions, to say that God can surrender even a bit of His sovereignty is akin to saying that God can surrender a bit of His holiness, a bit of His omnipotence, that God is changeable. If true, God ceases to be immutable God and becomes an object not worthy of worship. We may as well be deists or open theists, and perhaps that is the unconscious and default attitude of much of the church in America.

The effect of this errant theology, if embraced, is this: I cannot trust completely a God who is not absolutely sovereign over the created order, over His created moral agents. I cannot trust that God works all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose if He allows created beings to thwart His plans. I lose any comfort and solace from God if I find myself suffering trial and tribulation if God is not sovereign, who is, as the saccharine sentiment goes, ‘too much a gentleman to intrude on our ‘free’ will’. I could entertain such a god when life goes well, when all I need is a god who acts to enhance an already nice life with motivational platitudes, but such a god who is even able to surrender even the smallest quantum of his sovereignty could not possibly be a mighty fortress in times of trouble. I need to know that God is in control even when immediate circumstances seem otherwise.

What amazes me is that so many cling to some notion of a ‘free will’ that God respects so much that He will not act against it when the Biblical witness is diametrically opposed to such a sentiment. Biblically, the unregenerate are not free, but are slaves to their fallen nature. Apart from the grace of God,  humanity is as free to choose the triune God as a zebra is free to change it’s stripes. Follows is but a small handful of Biblical proclamations on the nature of God’s sovereign rule over His creation that the aforementioned pastor/pundit would do well to dwell upon:

Ps. 103:19 His Sovereignty rules over all.

Isaiah 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;

Prov. 16:33, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.”

Ps. 135:6 Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in seas and in all deeps.

Pr. 16:4 The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil.

Pr. 20:24 Man’s steps are ordained by the Lord; how then can man understand his way?

Pr. 21:1 The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes

Jn. 6:44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.

Acts 13:48 And as many as had been appointed [ordained] to eternal life believed.

And God…or…but God?

Here is a wonderful podcast from the White Horse Inn:

By Grace Alone Through Faith Alone

You will need to register to download the audio, but the podcast is worth the modest effort required.

 

The Lens of Grace and John 3:16

On Free Will, by the same speaker, thinking my thoughts, but with more lucidity:

(a bit long for a YouTube, but worth the time spent in viewing it)

What should happen when one embraces the truth of Sovereign Grace is eventually an attitude of overarching humility and a destruction of prideful moralism. Without regard to the correctness of our Christian soteriology, we all still struggle with the bent of our old nature, though. I have collected all the swag, those metaphorical tee-shirts and bumper stickers, to know that such is true. I still have those struggles.

As an aside and in context to discussions that revolve around issues of free will, I really, intensely, dislike that “God does not want robots to love Him” thing. I have heard it too many times and from good people, but I know that conceit is sometimes driven by a prideful emotionalism that leads to errant, unbiblical conclusions. It ultimately leads to place where we find a needy God Who tries to make Himself attractive to us so as to woo us. We often find, too, a faux therapeutic gospel.

There is nothing attractive about the cross, that Roman torture and death machine. The foot of the cross is for rebels who hate the true God and have no place for Him, ultimately for you and me. It is only His sovereign grace  and His ability to replace a heart of stone with a heart of flesh that draws us to the beauty of the Messiah. Too, that door you hear about in altar calls upon which sad, patient Jesus is always plaintively knocking, hoping that somebody might open it for Him….it is not the door to the heart of the unregenerate, an evangelical call, but was the door to the church in first century Laodicea, a damaged, complacent, body of believers.

I think about the following, and quite popular, video, one I have watched and commented on before. I know that it has ministered to many people on some level, and I do not question the authenticity of their faith.

However, and without regard to how strongly this video tugs on ones emotional strings, I think it unbibically portrays fallen humanity more as victim than rebel, than sinner. I also find egregious error in its depiction of a god who waits helplessly on the sidelines for the victim to decide, or find within themselves the ability to reach out for help to Himself.

Also, that worried, hand-wringing portrayal of god is not the sovereign, settled, in-control of everything in the created order Triune God revealed in the  Biblical texts. He does not struggle to draw His people too Himself. This portrayal of God in the following skit, comforting and approachable as he may seem, stands in sharp contrast to the completely sovereign God, the one who captured my own darkened heart and sin-bound will.

I do not need a God who simply throws me a rope and then struggles to clear a path for me so as to, when I finally make my way to him, simply dust me off and dance with me. None of that is the Gospel.  I need a God who breaths life into me. Again, I am not merely a victim, but a perpetrator, and I need a sovereign Savior. I love Him, albeit so weakly, so falteringly in my humanity in contrast to which He is worthy, because He sovereignty drew me to himself when I was in death-bound rebellion against Him. If you think that makes me a robot, than so be it.

[youtube-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_M0H5nrY8E]

One more thought: How bold must someone be to portray God in a skit? I think of Peter who deemed himself unworthy to even be crucified in the same manner as our Messiah, asking instead to be crucified upside down.

In conclusion, here is some text from the same Gospel that gave us John 3:16:

John 6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which has sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

John 6:65 And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.

John 15:19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

The Shack: Part 2

In part one of my review of The Shack, I ended the post with a quote from the book that, if truly taken to heart by the Christian, would tend to undermine the foundation of the faith, the authoritative nature of the Biblical texts, and would do so with such a breezy dismissal that it takes one’s breath away.

The fact that large swaths of the evangelical church could entertain this book after  reading no further than the aforementioned quote, and more, endorse it, is a subject of great concern for me. Before elaborating further, I must admit that, beyond the unbiblical casualness exhibited by all parties at Mack’s encounter with Young’s version of a triune god in that shack,  I understand deeply the yearning for an authentic experience with God. I understand the burning desire, even if theologically errant, to have hard things explained and to be given a coherent reason for suffering. However, like Job, we will ultimately find that we must sometimes be content with the fact that God is God and owes us, the limited and created things, no explanation. For fallen people, that is a hard thing to swallow.

We must also affirm that the Biblical texts are a sufficient revelation of God’s nature, of redemptive history, of His self-revelation that we need not look to subjective experience or extra-biblical revelation to define the nature of God or what He desires to communicate with mankind, without regard to where we reside on the scale of modernity.

Young also does his readers a great disservice, he lies, when he infers that the God of the Hebrews was in constant individual communication with His children of antiquity, that modernity and the church militant limits itself when it limits itself to the Bible. At no point in Biblical redemptive history do we find God gushing over all ‘His kids’ with personal messages and revelation.

If I had a dime for every time someone has said something ridiculous under the auspices of divine revelation, that ‘God told me this’ thing, or the “God revealed to me that’  thing, I would be a less financially limited man.The Apostle Paul would be jealous of God’s informality with  today’s Christian.

More to follow…..

Also, to those who do not wish to navigate my bloggeria so much, here is the quote from The Shack to which I refer:

…the thought of God passing notes did not fit well with his theological training. In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners’ access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?

A book review, part 1: A bit behind the curve on this one..

Recently a friend from work lent me her copy of the Shack. I have read the reviews, am aware of the controversial nature of the book, and know that my perceptions of this read are going to be colored by the aforementioned. Even so,  and even if the wave of controversy surrounding The Shack has long since crested, I will now put down other titles I am reading, focus on The Shack, and render my thoughts on the book as I read my way through it.

First, I know that The Shack was, and is,  dearly loved by many. It’s lengthy stay on the New York Times best-seller list attests to that fact. I think it brought a sense of solace to many and made God seem warmly imminent, perhaps for the first time in their lives. I think many people have their own “Shack” somewhere in their history, and I know I do. We all, to some degree, struggle with the very real and very theological problem of persistent evil in the world, and The Shack is one such story of struggle, perhaps a theodicy of sorts.

Next, as mentioned earlier, I am aware of the theological controversy surrounding this book. The reformed tribe, among others, found egregious error, even heresy, in much the theological assertions in The Shack. Others pontificated that this is not a theological textbook, but a mere novel. “Lighten up, man!’  However, I say any theological talk, be it in a novel or a systematic theology, especially when it is warmly received my much of the American evangelical community, is worthy of critique, and what follows is mine.

The First Five Chapters:

From the first page, I find Young’s writing, quite honestly, a bit cloying, as if written by an earnest fourteen year old school-girl with but a modest amount of talent with the written word. Second, I hate overt emotional manipulation. Before going further, let me state that I am a bit of a romantic, at times. At the end of the movie, The Gladiator, my eyes were a bit moist. I found the framing device of Saving Private Ryan a bit sentimental, but, again, my eyes were moist when Tom Hank’s character dies at the end of the film. I have to admit, too, that as a father, Young’s writing made me feel Mack’s pain. I did get a bit misty.

However, is it possible to construct a more cynically and emotionally manipulative framing device than the one presented by The Shack?

First, we find Mack and Missy having just had a discourse on the nature of grace and sacrifice in Mack’s recounting of the story of the Multnomah princess, supposedly an analog of the Gospel, though I think a profoundly weak one. In that story, the princess voluntarily sacrifices her life by jumping off a cliff to her death, something apparently required by an Indian prophesy to save the men of the tribe who were all dying from some illness.  As an omen, perhaps, young Missy later asks Mack if God would ever ask her to jump of a cliff? Mack, his heart wrenched by Missy’s question, says no.

Soon after, we find Josh and Kate, two of Mack’s five children, involved in a canoeing mishap wherein Mack, his instincts as a life-guard in his younger days rising up at this moment of crisis, dives into the water and saves his son Josh from drowning. Upon returning to shore, crisis over – at least that one -  everyone safe and sound, Mack finds his youngest daughter, ten years old, if memory serves, ominously missing. The stage for The Great Sadness is set.

As the story unfolds, Missy’s body is never found, but the dress, now blood-stained, worn when she was abducted by her killer is located. It is found in a shack in the woods.

I am at the point now where Mack has received an invitation, via a message in his mailbox, from a character called  Papa to visit him at the shack, a proposal of which Mack is understandably quite dubious, though intrigued.

Again, is it possible for a Young to construct a more emotionally manipulative framing device, the abduction and murder of his ten year old daughter by a serial killer who preys on young girls for a narrative than the one he constructed in The Shack? He has built a literary device of great manipulative and visceral power seeming designed so as to emotionally deconstruct any critical thought.

I will end this initial installment with a quote, found below, starting at the end of page 65 of the soft-cover edition. My next post, when time allows and sooner rather than later I hope, will be to deconstruct this wretched, sophomoric, post-modern intellectual detritus that passes for profundity and then perhaps examine the next few chapters….if I can muster up the where-with-all to stay the course…

…the thought of God passing notes did not fit well with his theological training. In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners’ access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?

I have seen the hooligans, and they could have been you or me….

I am thinking about the recent riots in Britain a bit today. It has been the subject of conversation over the last couple of days with most of the opinion being that those restless yobs, those vandals and hooligans, should just get a job and shoulder some responsibility for once in their wasted lives. Vent your wretched boredom, rage, sense of injustice, or whatever it is that drives your wanton acts of destruction into a more productive and socially beneficial conduit. Others, however, may blame, and with perhaps some small validity, the influence of malignant economic, political, and social forces outside the domain of individual responsibility as being the prime mover behind the unrest and place the perpetrators into the category of victim or righteous rebel.

Without regard to what political pole you swing from, I see things somewhat differently. I believe, perhaps with what some would see as no small bit of cognitive dissonance, the hoodlums, without regard to environmental influences, are morally responsible for their acts. But if you or I, in castigating their behavior, were born into their circumstances, having been raised on and subsisting by the largess of the welfare state with no real incentive to work, would we behave any differently than they do?

Where I go in my thoughts is perhaps to a place of a sophomoric and unoriginal debate on free-will and determinism (and with a bit of compatiblism thrown in). Quite frankly, the more I ponder the human condition….the more I look beyond the predictable punditry and common wisdom, and without regard to some religious people who proudly tout their free will to choose a Savior, the more I believe people are trapped. We are held in bondage, defined by our upbringing, by our genetics, by our brain chemistry. By the light of reformation theology, I see, too and more profoundly, that we are held in bondage by our innate fallen nature. You do not need to teach a child to misbehave and act selfishly.

I did not choose, nor am I responsible for, where I am born, to what time or generation I am born, nor to whom I am born. I did not choose my gender, I did not choose my eye color, nor did I choose my skin color. I did not choose the economic milieu into which I was born, nor did I choose my intellectual capability, IQ, or lack thereof. I also do not choose any genetic markers that may predispose me in certain directions physically or behaviorally. Given all the aforementioned, are we merely a passive passenger on the train of causality? Are we merely sophisticated meat machines?

In regards to behavior, I recall my years working in health care, as a non-professional, often assisting geriatrics, many suffering from dementia, from Alzheimer’s. To see the pages of the books of their lives been slowly torn out, one by one, and discarded by their malfunctioning brain is truly heart-rending. They would have moments of lucidity and moments when they would exhibit behaviors that would have got them slapped, or worse, in other times and places. They were not responsible for their behavior in their biological duress, though.

Too, I think of those with dyslexic sexuality who claim no choice in their same-sex attraction. Quite frankly, I have no choice in my very attraction to the opposite gender.

The over-arching question is this: at what places am I truly free? An idealistic eighteen year old neophyte intellectual taking a entry level Philosophy class will think on such things differently than a thoughtful, though academically bereft factory worker. I will tell you what I think as I look through my favorite and best lens, my theological ones, and ultimately, everything in the final analysis, whether one admits it or not, is theological.

Think on this: you set before your pet dog a bowl of English peas to its left and a bowl of juicy, meaty dog food to its right. The dog can physically and freely eat from either bowl, but he will choose according to his nature. The dog will chose the meaty dog food. The machinery of the dog is wired in such a way so as to predispose the dog to choose the bowl on the right.

We are not so unlike that dog. We have certain, limited freedom of choice, but our choices are limited by our nature. We must admit, too, that even though we are breathtakingly more sophisticated in thought and behavior than that dog, we are still made of humble meat, not so unlike the dog . In the Garden, the Triune God breathed life into dirt. We are not meant to be Gnostic in our view of matter.

However, in the Fall, the Great Rebellion, and event in real time and real place, all our aspects, physical, intellectual, and spiritual, the meat and the software, were damaged beyond complete repair by the free act of our federal representative in the Garden. Our choices became limited to our now fallen nature. We often put pretty coats of paint on our derelict house of self, and that house may often look pretty from the outside for a time, but all we do is cover up rot. That is the current nature of unregenerate humanity. Our choices are not always the worst, most evil, possible choices, but they are always colored by our fallen nature. Ultimately, this leads me to a place where I cannot stand on a home-made moral loft and say that I am innately better, more moral than a soccer hooligan or Compton gangster below me, for we differ by at best small degree, not kind. We are all now, and left to our own devices, to some tangible degree, sub-righteous.

So then, I will ask rhetorically, where can one find true freedom? Most of those drawn to this blog already know the answer. It is at that place where the Gospel snatches you out of your imprisonment.

As a personal aside, it seem sometimes, though, that the journey out of prison may not be seem to be as experientially instantaneous as one would like. Freedom isn’t always easy.

Chapter Four….being completely honest with myself…

What follows may be considered to be the long-threatened sequel to An Ecclesiastical Journey

I think it may be the curse of the spiritually malcontent and damaged to feel, at times, abandoned by God. Such is the stuff of classical myths and disaffected youth. I have my own narrative about such things.

I was raised in a searingly, achingly, persistently dysfunctional environment beset, surrounded by mental illness, apathy, weakness, and tangible evil in those that should have nurtured me. I do not want to go into deep details for various reasons, nor do I want to come across as much of a whiner seeking the role of the victim, but the hard truth is that one would be hard pressed to erect a more effective framework within which to emotionally and psychologically and permanently cripple a bright, introspective, and creative child. Moved from town to town seventeen times by the time I was eighteen often under great duress and instability, I knew neither mentor, protector, or friend. My refuge was books and music. The most difficult aspect of growing up in such circumstances for me was the sense that, though I often cried out, often tearfully, to God for help, stability, for rescue, He never seemed to provide the help or shelter I craved.

Therein one finds those divine abandonment issues. I was, however, fairly relentless in seeking concourse with God albeit with some frustration. I grew up feeding myself spiritually the best I could without much benefit from the church, and along the way picked up some erroneous doctrine. The few times in my youth that I bumped into the church, I usually ended up in the presence of aberrational and strange charismatic mania  that did me no good.

Years flow by, the past is buried and compressed, and after marriage and fatherhood, the journey towards God becomes more focused. As I moved from a liberal church to a seeker-sensitive church, and then, to a more Christ-centered reformed theology, I came to a more profound understanding of the sovereignty and grace of God and my own sinfulness. Such a deeper understanding of God’s sovereignty, at first, gave me great solace in knowing that God not only was aware of my struggles with my dysfunctional past, with my sin, with my weakness, but He was in control of such and would use them to grow me into Christ-likeness and for His glory. All good and fine….but….not so long ago a perfect multi-front storm of stressors arose, and along with my years of struggling with depression and anxiety, I found myself unable to cope with circumstances. My brain’s serotonin level had became woefully deficient to the point I could not think, could not perform at work, could not interact with others. I crashed so hard and damaged everything that was of value to me. Too, and quite importantly, the church I was involved in, and really no fault of their own, was one of the major factors of my slow-motion, substained crash.

Eventually, I ended up taking a week or so off from work, sought professional help (which, over time, wasn’t very helpful, quite honestly), and began taking an SSRI in the form of an antidepressant called Paxhil. I also found I suffered, as per professional diagnosis, from social anxiety disorder (though I suspected Aspergers Syndrome – but you cannot always trust online mental health diagnostics), post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and clinical depression, all of which I had often self-medicated with (mostly) modest amounts of alcohol. After the passage of some time and as my serotonin levels normalized, I was able to function once again, but damage had been done both at work and home and church. Embarrassment and shame were, and remain, my constant shadows. Eventually, I weened myself off Paxhil, experiencing disturbing lucid dreams and nightmares at night and dizziness during the day in the process, all the while trying to be a good father, husband and employee.

Where this all has led me is to a post-Paxhil, post-church place where I feel as if I have been rebooted, as it were. Much of the mental malware that has belabored me for a lifetime seems to be gone and I feel more whole and assured  and fearless than I ever have in my life, but what seems to have been lost is an innocent, childlike faith in God I experienced for a short few years not too long ago. I do not believe I can lean on the Creator completely anymore. I intellectually acknowledge that He is trustworthy, but that perhaps I am, in His good sovereignty, more a vessel molded for dishonor rather than honor. Perhaps I never really believed like I thought I did. I affirm that He works out all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, but now and in light of His seeming absence through much of the course of my 50+ years, I question my love for Him and I question that I am called according to His purpose. Inversely, I question that He has for me anything other than common grace. Quite honestly, I know I do not deserve even that.

In an earlier post, I cryptically alluded to the fact that I may change the direction of this blog due to certain issues, and all the aforementioned is why. Perhaps I will occasionally blog on theological things while I remain in this state of flux, but I may, for a while, let the blog drift into other directions and interests.

I must affirm that I have no significant intellectual issues with orthodox Christianity. I cannot walk away from the real and historical nature of the resurrection of the Christ. I cannot walk away from the natural revelation of the Creator. I would be intellectually dishonest to wed myself to evolutionary thought. If I could honestly do so, quite frankly, my internal tensions would not be so intense. It would be  relatively easy for me to be agnostic at this point and stage. However, things are too complex to take that easy route.

Quite honestly, if anyone wants to correct my thinking, call me out on anything that I have written here, slap me around a bit to knock some sense into me, please go ahead. I did not get to this point overnight. I have been drifting in this direction for quite a while, in all truthfulness,  and I would love to be in another place, as it were. All that being said, my one real theological hope is this: even though I do not like where my head is at spiritually right now, I cannot walk away from the fact that God is sovereign. If he so pleases, He will bring me to a place of trust, and it will be through His effort, not mine, and I will be the wiser for it. If He does not please to do so, I will enjoy His common grace knowing that He is Creator, not me, and in my falleness, I deserve no better than what I get. I believe – I think, help me in my unbelief. What will chapter five bring? I hope a renewed faith.

If it were laid upon me….

I sat on this post for awhile due to the issues described  here,  internally debating whether or not I should post it. After all, how could I authentically speak to issues of ecclesiology if I struggled with doubts of even belonging to the church militant?  Without regards to such issues, I decided to unveil my thoughts, anyway.

If I ever were to pastor a church, which would only happen if God has a great sense of irony and loves to use the weak, the foolish, those prone to sin and despises it, and those with no leadership or interpersonal skills, these are some things I would insist upon:

• Sundays would not be a polished affair with state-of-the-art audio and visual accouterments. Musical instruments would probably be in the back of the church. Focus is to be on the Word unfolded so as to feed the sheep, not on a musical performance.  I would refuse to play any music that was programmed to draw in people who would not otherwise go to church.

• I would never, never, never, ever lay the burden of the  tithe, an unbiblical practice as taught by the contemporary church,  upon the sheep. I will not pastor over the church of Galatia. There would be relatively few sermons or speeches on financial stewardship. Though important, you don’t need Jesus to teach you to balance your checkbook and save for a rainy day. Plus…I am not so good with money, myself. It just does not mean that much to me as it does others.

• I would probably be bi-vocational.

• There would be no sermons with seven steps to this or five keys to that. Legalism lite leads to Jesus lite. Legalism is a path that leads to Hell

• I would do my best to talk a lot about Christ using few if any personal anecdotes. I want you to learn about the Messiah, not about me. If I cannot teach redemptive Biblical history, the historical and true story of Christ alone, by faith alone, by grace alone, by the authority of the Bible alone, to the glory of God alone without telling stories about me and my life experience (boring thought it would be), I do not need to claim to be a pastor. If I ever become a pastor, which is highly unlikely,  I will not be there to entertain you. When I die, I would just as soon be forgotten then be remembered as having been a charismatic leader.

• I would not ask for your personal testimonies, though you are certainly free to share – but, foremost, tell me Christ’s story in church, not yours. Your changed life, though I am happy for you, is not necessarily the Gospel. Paxil changes lives, AA changes lives, art changes lives, Mormonism has changed lives for the better. The Gospel story is what breaths life into rotten corpses. The apostle Peter probably had many interesting stories, but he told Christ’s story every time, all the time.

• There would never, never, ever be any altar call nor any other crass emotional manipulation of the flock. If Jesus and the apostles did not need them, then neither do I need that extra-biblical and rather recent and often detrimental appendage to the Gospel call. No. Sappy. Music. In. Church. Ever. Too, why do I need to close my eyes and bow my head during altar calls? Seriously….

• I would seek to heal you with the Gospel rather the Law. Too many preachers wield the Law like an anvil against the sheep when a salve of grace is called for.

• Preaching would be mostly expostional. Exceptions to expostional preaching might entail, for example, teaching about the lives and doctrines of the early church fathers and martyrs. I would also like to learn and teach on church history. Doing a class on systematic theology in the evenings would be cool, too. Theology is a fundamental part of the church. If I ever pastored a church, it would be lovingly doctrinal. Doctrine is the spine and immune system of the church.

• I would strongly discourage the turning of hobbies into ministries. You like to golf, hunt, and ride motorcycles. Such is fine with me; just don’t baptize them. Let me know when you want to go for a ride though. It would be fun to join with you.

• The crippled, the poor, the mentally ill and emotionally scarred, those not so articulate would welcomed and embraced.   Along the same lines, introverts are welcome and loved. I understand because I am an introvert, too. If you are uncomfortable in certain social circumstances, we can fellowship, you and me, over a cup of coffee or can of beer where ever you are most comfortable. I personally like sweet tea. Occasionally, a shot or two of Evan Williams is fine. Church is not easy, sometimes, for introverts.

• I would insist that the elders and teachers hold the the Doctrines of Grace.

• No. Skits. Ever. No drama teams, either. You want drama, entertainment, go to a theater. The Word, being potent in and of itself, does not need our help. Drama merely adds extraneous layers. As an aside, it amazes me that people can feel comfortable playing the role of Christ in musical dramas and plays. I recall Peter requesting his body to be crucified upside down because he deemed himself to be unworthy to be crucified in the fashion of the Messiah.

• I would not make too big a deal about secondary issues such as eschatology, though they would not be ignored.

• Communion would be a real meal, I think, not a piece of bread or a plastic shot glass of grape juice. Wine would be available if desired. I also am not wed to the amount of water used in baptisms. Sprinkle or dunk, I can accommodate either. No major problems with either paedo and credo-baptism. I see valid Biblical arguments for either, though I lean towards credo-baptism.

• I would never say, as many do from the stage and pulpit, that I would not sacrifice my family for of the church, though I would hope I would never face such circumstances. Such statements, though common, seem strange and present a hopefully false dichotomy. I would die a thousand times for the church of the Christ. If my wife or children are not with me on this, then they turn their backs on the bride and body of Christ. I would not.

• I will not be a Christian culture warrior, ever. I will not try to dress unregenerate corpses up with the Law when they need the Gospel. You want a moral nation above all, have Utah succeed and move there. They are nice, family-friendly, moral people even without the Gospel delivered by the apostles. I would never preach pure moralism. It is the anti-thesis of grace.

• Children will not have to go to kids church when big people church starts if the family wants their children to be with them. Distractions are OK, to a degree, and a part of life, and a part of the body, a part of families. You hear me on this one Furtick and Noble​? I will not force families to split up when the preaching starts. Shame on you, Furtick, for removing Christ from your service for being a distraction to your show…..as you do the the least of these……

• I would probably not let my church grow much beyond 200 people if I had such control. Should it do so, and this would be a great thing, we split into two sister churches, each with trained and approved elders and pastors. If a pastor cannot at least recognize his sheep, he needs to have others step up to help feed, lead and shelter the flock. Move half of them to another pasture.  Keep growing the flock, and then splitting off to new pastures.

• Naive on my part, perhaps, but I would hope the hypothetical church I fed would not be success oriented with tangible metrics. Leave that for businesses. I would not count salivations. That is no ones job but the Holy Spirits; no one else is qualified to separate wheat from chaff. I would hope we would have an orientation of humility. If the seats are filled, fine. If not, fine. It will be Christ who grows His church, not me.

• I would literally die to protect my sheep from wolves, from bad theology. You will not see Wild At Heart or The Shack as recommended reading the churches library. I would never endorse heretics like TD Jakes as have many nominally orthodox pastors.

• I would never, ever have a fund raiser. If someone is in deep financial need, I would sell my possessions, give up vacations, and work overtime to help you. I hope the flock would do the same. Saddest thing I have seen in a long time is a large, evidently wealthy church holding a bake sale fund raiser for a child needing surgery.

• If you want to volunteer to help in the church, that is great. If not, that is fine with me, too. I know your probably work hard to support your family and need no extra burdens. Quite frankly, when you get rid of all the extraneous parking teams, media teams, creative teams, hospitality teams, volunteer coordination team volunteers, you find you do not need volunteers so much.

• Small groups, meh. I have seen them too often be pools of ignorance to which, not so long ago, I helped make even more deeply ignorant. If we do small groups, it will be elder led and Word focused. They are what you make of them.

• If you want a God of second chances, go to where the Gospel is light and cheap. I will give you a Gospel for dead men and women who float hopeless in the dark waters. They don’t need second chances. I, and they, would mess up the second chance, and the third, and the forth. I will point you to a Savior, to paraphrase Paul Capon, if memory serves, who dives into deep water to breath life into sin infused, rotten corpses, dies in the process, and later appears on the shore alive and waits for you having defeated death and sin.

Enough of my orthopraxic utopianism…

Perhaps just for awhile

To the few who read this blog on a regular basis, there may be a change of its core content and in its direction for a while as I work through some rather difficult theological issues and wrestle with some personal issues that are fellow travelers with the aforementioned and unmentioned theological issues.

What I hope may eventually be birthed from this caldron is perhaps chapter four of An Ecclesiastical Journey, something I have been wanting to do for quite a while. I hope for a more firmly grounded faith. On the other hand, I may end up in another space altogether as I try piece some foundational things back together.  Failing to find a way to do so will leave me with no option but to sadly walk away from what I have held dear for the last few years. What I will journey to if I cannot piece it all together, well I am not so sure.

Cryptic, I know, and I could ramble on, but that is the best I can do for now.

In the interim, I may do some more writing on evolution, Darwinism, ID and creationism. I may also indulge in more hobby related blogging. Time will tell.

I Believe in Limited Atonement

HT: James White – Alpha and Omega Ministries
A bit long for some to watch on YouTube, but worth the time.