A Misconception of Christianity

Perhaps the most frequent misconception I hear when talking to people about my faith is that Christianity is a club for the "good people". I hear it when someone says "Well, I could never be a Christian because there are certain vices I just can't give up". (Incidentally, I don't expect serious change to happen until after someone has committed their life to Jesus. Only He brings lasting life change.) And I hear it in more judgemental tones when someone within Christianity has made very poor, and very public, choices.

The central problem with this misconception is that it puts the defining characteristic of Christianity on our ability to live up to a perceived moral standard. The error here is, I hope, quite obvious. The point of Christianity is dealing with precisely that problem, none of us can live up to the moral standards expected of us. And this is exactly what I point out. My presentation often goes something like this:

"A lot of people think that Christianity is a club for the 'good people', when the opposite is in fact true. Christianity at its core is a group of people who recognize they can never be good enough to meet God's standards of morality. They are relying Jesus to pay for their sins, and they do their best to follow Jesus' teachings out of love for Him. So Christianity really isn't a club for the 'good people', but rather the 'not-good-enough people who know it'."

Notice what I intend to do with this clarification. First, I am attempting to remove that excuse in a person's mind that they can't be a Christian until they've got their life in shape. Second, I am trying to "defang" the red herring accusations centered around Christians who aren't living like they should. As Christians, we know that salvation is by grace through faith alone. But to the average person, Christianity is just like every other religion measuring followers by a moral code. We should take every opportunity to build a category for grace and faith in their minds.

My Book List

I am not sharing this list to brag, far from it. I will readily admit that I haven't read the majority of these books half as well as they deserve. I have not taken the time or given the thought.

Rather, I share this list to give you a context for my thinking. I share to promote these books to others. And I welcome recomendations as you see holes in my reading. Ultimately, I hope this list pushes the reader and the author to better reading, as iron sharpens iron.

2008

• Future Grace - John Piper
• The God Who Is There - Francis A Schaeffer
• The Rest of God - Mark Buchanan
• Prayer - Philip Yancey
• Embracing the Mysterious God - James Emery White
• A Mind For God - James Emery White
• Basic Christianity - John RW Stott

2007

• What's So Great About Christianity - Dinesh D'Souza
• The God Questions - Hal Seed and Dan Grider
• In But Not Of - James Emery White
• The Holiness of God - RC Sproul
• The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
• The Pleasures of God - John Piper
• The Holy Wild - Mark Buchanan
• Serious Times - James Emery White
• 90 Minutes In Heaven - Don Piper
• Don't Waste Your Life - John Piper
• Experiencing God - Henry T. Blackaby
• Praise Habits - David Crowder

2006

• The Consequences of Ideas - RC Sproul
• The Sovereignty of God - A.W. Pink
• How Movies Helped Save My Soul - Gareth Higgins
• What Ever Happened to the Gospel of Grace? - James Montgomery Boice
• The Purpose Driven Life - Rick Warren
• Defeating Darwinism - Philip E. Johnson
• The Bible Jesus Read - Philip Yancey
• The Practice of the Presence of God - Brother Lawrence
• Loving God - Chuck Colson
• Things Unseen - Mark Buchanan
• Reaching for the Invisible God - Philip Yancey

2005-Conception (College and before)

• Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
• What's So Amazing About Grace? - Philip Yancey
• Your God Is Too Safe - Mark Buchanan
• Wild At Heart - John Eldredge
• Disappointment With God - Philip Yancey
• Desiring God - John Piper
• Sacred Romance - John Eldredge
• The Gospel According to the Apostles - John MacArthur
• The Joyful Christian - C.S. Lewis
• The Vanishing Conscience - John MacArthur
• The God Who Loves - John MacArthur
• Every Man's Battle - Steve Arterburn and Fred Stoeker
• Passion and Purity - Elizabeth Elliott
• Losing Our Virtue - David F. Wells
• A Matrix of Meanings - Detweiler and Taylor
• The Anti-Christ - Friedrich Nietzsche
• Shaping a Christian Worldview - Dockery and Thornbury
• Christian Ethics - Dr. Jim Eckman
• The Four Loves - C.S. Lewis
• The Great Divorce - C.S. Lewis
• Philosophy of Religion - C. Stephen Evans
• Worldview - David K. Naugle
  

Abortion, Juno, and a Dire Education

Barack Obama was in Omaha the other day and, as I drove past the convention center, I saw a truck that was pulling a mobile billboard bearing large images of aborted fetuses. If there was a message on the billboard I missed it, being fully shocked by the photos. I drove home saddened, not only by the images and the reminder of the reality of abortion, but more so by the damage I felt those protesters were doing to the pro-life cause.

I do not mean that there is no place for protesting at an event or a clinic if it is done in an honest and compassionate manner. However, I am fully convinced that the most effective tactic to combat abortion is not guilt, not fear, not intimidation, but education. Most people I have talked to have put little or no thought into the humanity of the fetus. Their thought process has not passed "women's rights" before they've made up their mind. It is simply too uncomfortable to consider further. Thus, if we haven't proven to them that every abortion ends the life of a living human being, then all the screaming and offending we do only serves to push them further from a pro-life position.

There is no love lost on my part towards PETA and their causes. I see them as generally angry, crazy, and overly zealous for a less than essential cause. But even as I write these adjectives, I realize that most pro-lifers have the same reputation. Most people have bought into the lie that unborn babies are sub-human (or lower), on par with the animals that PETA is fighting for. So unless we have convinced our audience of the humanity of the unborn, we will be as ineffective as the PETA people throwing red pain on fur coats or brandishing photos of skinned animals.

In Juno, the title character intends to get an abortion when she is approached by a classmate protesting by herself outside the clinic. With timidity and compassion the girl says to Juno, "It has fingernails, you know". Unable to shake the image as she enters the clinic, she watches the people around her use their fingernails to tap, scratch, and pick. Ultimately she leaves and decides to give birth to her baby. In wonderful narrative form, the movie shows the value of the unborn human life and the power of information.

http://www.abort73.com

Does Jesus accept everyone?

Recently, I had a guest on my shuttle (I drive for a hotel) and she noticed I was reading What's So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D'Souza, a defense of Christianity. She told me that she had problems with much of what she saw in Christianity today because she has always heard that "Jesus loved and accepted everyone". Instead, she sees a church today that expects certain behavior and excludes certain lifestyles. Her implied charge was that today's Christians are not following in the footsteps and teaching of Jesus and, while she was fine with Christ, she couldn't get on board with Christianity.

This is not an unusual argument, but it is based on caricature of Jesus that is proven false after even a brief reading of the Gospels. I replied that, yes, Jesus did hang out with tax collectors and sinners. He did forgive the woman caught in adultery. He did draw criticism from the religious leaders of that day for the type of people He hung out with. Jesus loved everyone but Jesus accepted no one living an unchanged life. The rich, young ruler is a perfect example of this, as Jesus saw that his heart had not changed and brought this to the surface in asking of him something he would not give up. Jesus loved everyone but Jesus (as the church today) expected certain behavior and called people away from certain lifestyles. Jesus did not say to the woman caught in adultery, "Your sins are forgiven, go and keep living just as you have been".

Don't let an argument like this derail you in sharing the true Christ. Jesus loved everyone, but not everyone loved Him more than themselves. Jesus accepted everyone that followed Him, but following Jesus meant more than just walking behind Him. Following Jesus meant obeying His teachings and turning away from certain things. While Jesus loves everyone, certain changes in lifestyle and behavior are expected (even demanded) from the true followers.

My Moral Resolve

Today's blog will not likely be a long one, but I wanted to relay a short story that I haven't been able to shake from my mind. I have heard both John MacArthur and Ravi Zacharias tell it, so forgive me if it is not new to you.

A story is told of a very wealthy man who, during a flight, sees a
beautiful woman who arrests his attention. He strikes up a conversation with her and, as the plane is nearing its final approach, he propositions her for five million dollars. She accepts and joins him in a cab back to his hotel.

On the drive, he turns to her and says, "I feel that five million dollars is too much, how does five hundred sound?"
"Five hundred dollars?!!" she cries. "What sort of woman do you think I am?!"
To which he replies, "We've already established that. Now we're just haggling over the price."

Now perhaps I am overly introspective, but I am quite convicted at this story and how much I see myself in that woman. I have my moral standards and stances, but would I abandon some of them for a price? Mind you, I am not talking about gray areas of morality or white lies here. Of course I wouldn't murder anyone or prostitute myself, but why is there a hesitation when I consider lying or stealing? And what does that say of my moral resolve if some of my moral stances are for sale?

This tells me a lot about myself, my fallenness, and how poor my grasp is of the holiness of God. Lying and stealing is as contrary to the nature of God as murder. And for any follower of Christ to be more inclined towards some of these behaviors is only to highlight the residual effect of how bent humankind still is. Of course, murder has greater earthly consequences than lying, but both are an affront to the holiness of God.

I pray that we all, as Christ-followers, may establish what sort of people we are, so that it never comes to haggling over the price.

Thoughts on Capital Punishment

What follows is a letter to the editor printed in the Omaha World Herald and my response printed a couple days later. Certainly the issue cannot be satisfactorily covered in 200 words or less, but I did what I could. Enjoy!

Killing Breeds Killing
An Associated Press story in the Jan. 6 World-Herald discussed the financial benefits of banning the death penalty. But, of course, death-penalty advocates will just say that we should do away with the appeals.
The argument I prefer to make is about setting an example. For instance, a father who smokes has difficulty preventing his children from smoking because he has weakened his own authority on the issue by setting a poor example.
When the government says killing is against the law, except when it does it, the government weakens its own authority with this hypocrisy.
This is why homicide rates can go up during times of war. The atmosphere created in a country at war is inherently more tolerant of killing, just as the atmosphere created by a country with the death penalty is inherently more tolerant of killing. Perhaps this explains the high homicide rate in some states.
When the country stoops to the level of a criminal, it elevates crime to the level of normalcy. There can be no compassionate conservatism in such an atmosphere. A moral government demonstrates moral leadership by example.
Andrew White, Shelton, Neb.

Depends on Authority
A letter from Andrew W. printed on Sunday entitled "Killing breeds killing" stated that any government who uses the death penalty as a punishment for murder "weakens its own authority with this hypocrisy". Is it also hypocrisy for a country to have a prison system and yet consider kidnapping a crime?
White used the illustration of a father who smokes and the difficulty he would have in preventing such behavior in his kids (and his hypocrisy in trying). However, this analogy really only serves to cloud the issue around two differing acts.
Keeping the parent-child imagery, a better analogy would be that of a mother telling her son he cannot punish his sister when he is angry or feels mistreated because he does not have the authority. If he tries to spank her or send her to her room (either out of anger or revenge), he is in the wrong and is deserving of punishment himself. The mother has parental authority to do things the son cannot.
Talking of murder and the death penalty as two identical actions serves only to blur the difference between taking a life for selfish reasons and taking a life as punishment under the proper authority.
Jared Totten, Omaha, Neb.

Is God Fair?

"But that's not fair!" I've heard this protest often in my life, and been the one protesting on more than one occasion. Recently, however, I've heard this charge in response to how the Bible presents God's dealings with us sinners. No matter your views on predestination, election, and God's sovereignty in regards to salvation, the Bible is unequivocally clear that some will go to heaven and others to hell. However, all three of those themes (predestination, election, and sovereignty) are present by name in the Bible, and every fair biblical scholar must have room for them in his or her theology.

So let me give you a definitive answer right now, God is not fair. Erase that category for God in your mind. Fairness is never an attribute that the Bible gives to God. This may surprise a lot of people, but it isn't in there.

However, before you jump to any conclusions, let me clarify something. When I say that God is not fair, I am simply saying that God does not act equally and identically towards all people. It is not the same as saying God is not just or not right in His actions. I am simply saying that God acts differently towards different people.

This is not to say that God acts wrongly. All of us, as fallen and rebellious human beings, deserve God's justice and condemnation to hell. God would be perfectly just in saving no one. This would be the end of every single person if not for the grace and mercy of God. But due to this grace and mercy, God exercised His justice and condemnation upon Jesus on behalf of all those called as saints. In this way, God's justice is not ignored or denied, but rather fully satisfied.

Thus we see that God acts out His justice and judgement on some, and He acts out His grace and mercy on others. However, in both these actions, God does not act unjustly on anyone. Of course, this is where the protest comes into play, "That's not fair!" And I must ask "Who told you God must be fair?" To say that God must be merciful and gracious to everyone equally it to nullify mercy. Mercy is never something that is obligatory, mercy is something that God does freely and voluntarily. Mercy by definition is something that God doesn't have to do. As soon as you say God "owes" us mercy, you aren't talking about mercy anymore.

So we have two categories of humanity, those who receive mercy and those who receive justice. But (and here is my point) nobody receives injustice. No one has ever received injustice at the hands of God. So while God is not fair, it really works in our favor as we receive grace and mercy rather than the justice we have earned. Thus, God is not fair and I thank God for it.