Evangelism and Bible Study

This one will be unpopular.  Hold on.

The opening line in any Church of Christ evangelistic move is always the same:  "Would you like to have a Bible study?"  Throughout my life I have acquired dozens, if not hundreds, of pamphlets that all center on a study of the Scriptures in order to bring somebody to the point of baptism.  Though they all have their quirks, all jump from Scripture to Scripture along this journey.  This was how I was trained to do 'personal work', to bring people to Christ.

As I have gotten older, however, I am finding that this is not the best method for today.  Quite simply, in my opinion beginning with Bible sutdy focuses far more on the head, about finding out about Christ and about the church than it does on the heart, in which somebody follows Jesus.

It's not that I think Bible study is bad...far from it.  But I do wonder whether or not we should rather focus upon Bible study more after somebody is baptized rather than when somebody is simply learning God's will for the first time.  Because my experience is that learning to be a genuine follower of Jesus Christ is not so much about knowing all the right things to know, but rather a heart that loves Jesus and sees his impact in the lives of other believers.  Isn't this what Hebrews 1:1-2 is saying about how God speaks to people today, or how John 1:1-5 speaks of Jesus as being the 'word' of God?  Most of the people I have had the honor to baptize in my life chose to be baptized not because of a perfect kind of head knowledge, but rather because they had seen in me (and in others) the power of a changed, sanctified life.  Later on they would study Scripture and want to know more detail of what that life looks like...but I wonder whether or not we have baptized a lot of heads and not so much their hearts.

Here's an example: many of the pamphlets I have looked at will have a long section about the need for the church.  And that's absolutely right...the church is the body of Christ, and a new (or any) Christian cannot hope to thrive or grow without the church.  But most pamphlets will speak about the church: the 'qualifications' of elders, what makes God happy in worship (prayer, the Lord's Supper, giving, Bible study, and especially non-instrumental music), and perhaps, in some of the more modern ones, the need for love.  Yet again, while these things might be right in their teaching, often they do little to really draw somebody into the church.  If a preacher or a church member has a private Bible study with somebody and that person is then baptized, most often to this point there has been little or no real contact with the church.  No chance to see it as a place of love, fellowship, and good works.  It's no wonder, then, that many new Christians quickly fall away from the church, because they never had a chance to know it!

Another problem with these kinds of studies is that many people today are not so willing to follow along the proof-text path.  One might bring up a subject like the inspiration of Scripture...and usually most studies will jump straight towards 2 Timothy 3:16-17 or 2 Peter 1:20-21.  Fair enough, this is how I was taught and I believe these truths.  But then there are questions...reading the context, these Scriptures are speaking of the Old Testament, not the New, what then?  Or should we immediately accept the statements from Scripture itself about its inspiration?  Don't all religious texts (the Quran, the Book of Mormon, etc.) do this to some extent?  Quickly this leads us down a path of subjects that many even faithful Christians do not know about.  Simply following along the old paths that many were trained with are no longer enough.

I am more convinced than ever that evangelism, in this day and age, is not easy, but it is possible if we will allow time for people to see the life of Jesus within us.  But we're not usually ready for that...we'd rather have them buy our understanding of things, and shake the dust off of our feet when they are not so ready to accept it.

We are Bible-believing Christians, but first and foremost we ought to be Jesus-following disciples.  If we really live like this, people will be able to see him in us and that will make all the difference.

The American President

Yesterday we arrived home after a much-needed week-long vacation out into the mountains.  It was nice to get away, and nice to be 'off the grid' for a few days as I could not get cell phone service many places we went.  Not being able to Twitter or Facebook was healthy for me.

Of course, coming back in yesterday there was once again an instance where my first reaction was "Trump said WHAT?"  Once again, our adolescent president took to his Twitter handle to say something stupid and vulgar about people whom he feels hurt him.  Regardless of when you are reading this, you don't have to check the date, as likely he will say something just as offensive a month or a year from now, just as he said something stupid a month or a year ago.  It never ends with this man. Even his supporters may shake their heads and say that he shouldn't say that, but they continue to support this man and so enable his idiocy.

However, after a week of seeing America, even as I enjoyed our trip and am blessed to live in a country with beauty everywhere, I am more and more convinced that he is truly an American President.  That is, he actually represents a good percentage of my fellow citizens.  A few hours west of here driving through a small town I saw a huge sign that had in crude printing, "Hillary Urine A**hole".  I have no idea what that means, exactly, but I am sure that it is not word of praise.

A few days later, I was driving a state highway doing 75 in a 65.  A huge pickup was behind me and obviously wanted me to drive faster.  When he finally got past me, he gave me the middle finger...not just for a moment, but for a good 15-20 seconds...he wanted me to know for certain how much he hated that I was only going 10 miles above the speed limit.

And then the other day we were visiting an amusement and water park in a large American city.  Such places, as I get older, are more and more uncomfortable for me because of the teeming masses of people (I'm a bit of a claustrophobic), but it's not just that there are people there, but that these people who represent so much of America are really quite disgusting.  Young couples who have no shame of PDA while waiting in lines, guys who have T-shirts with middle fingers on them to show how rebellious they are, and all kinds of people with terrible tattoos that they have to expose.  Near the end of the day I was waiting in the overcrowded waterpark for my kids and a youngish woman with blue hair was screaming on her cell phone, "Mom, it's all just f***ing s**t!"  I started to listen in as she screamed for a good ten minutes about how this had been a terrible day because all her friends started going their own directions.  No great tragedy, I think, but for her it led to a profanity-laced tirade towards her mother.

Yes, this is the America that voted for Donald Trump.  Vulgar, rude, and often disgusting.  If we get the president that truly represents America, I don't think we could have made a better choice.

The Adolescent President

It's been said many times before, but we have a 12-year old boy in the White House.  No, it's not Barron Trump (I think he still lives in New York with his mother).  It's the president, Donald Trump.  Watching him the last year or so has called to mind the Tom Hanks character in Big, a little boy who makes a wish for a big boy body and wakes up to find himself an adult.  For awhile, it's fun.  He gets to plays like a big boy until he finds out that it's not all that he thought it would be.  The only difference between Josh Baskin (the character in Big) and Trump is that a)Baskin eventually starts acting like an adult and b)then returns back to being a child again without all of his big-boy responsibilities.

How else can we explain a character like Trump?  Whether it is him bragging about getting a second scoop of ice cream (while everyone else gets one), or is never happier than while pretending to drive a semi, or harassing women by grabbing them by the p***y or walking in on them while they are getting dressed, or obsessing about how many people came to his party, he's a little boy who thinks that the world revolves around himself and throws tantrums when this doesn't seem to be the case.

Many liberals see Trump as a much more sinister, evil character, but after watching him for a year, I don't think he really is.  Compared to a character like Frank Underwood in House of Cards, who is simply about power and seems to have a Palpatine vibe, Trump is a lot more about the pretend world of what he imagines power and influence to be.  I'm not convinced after all this that he is smart or mature enough to get away with many of the things he is accused of doing.  That's why he so nakedly tried to tell James Comey to stop snooping around (and then screams out DID NOT! when he finds out this is illegal); that's why he can't keep a poker face and keeps tweeting whatever is on his mind (or whatever he saw on Faux News); that's why so little of what he wants (big walls!  tremendous growth!  the best people!) will eventually come to be (though, of course, the GOP/Tea Party in Congress seem to be getting everything they want).  He's just not capable of being the evil overlord that many fear him to be.

In the end, the strongest feeling I have for Trump is to feel really sorry for him, and I really do need to pray for him more.  All his life he's gotten away with doing what he wanted and faced very few consequences.  Nobody who has been as emotionally challenged as he is should be forced to do what he is doing.  There's a reason we don't let horny, immature, self-involved 12-year-old boys drive cars or make important decisions, let alone run the country.  For their own good, we patiently wait for them to grow up.  Too bad we didn't do this with Mr. Trump.

The Handmaid's Tale and Biblical Illiteracy

I have been watching The Handmaid's Tale, adapted from the book of the same name, on Hulu the past few weeks.  Not the greatest show I've ever seen, but it's still a solid 8.  Two things keep running through my head as I watch it.

First, how do the villains in movies in which Bad Guys Take Over The World always find such a ready and willing supply of henchmen?  The premise of this movie is that a plot is devised in which the government is overthrown by militias sympathetic to this cause.  This, of course, makes one wonder where the police and military and national security agents were in all this.  In addition, in this age of constant Big-Brotherism, how extensive could the Gilead government be considering there are it seems a dozen dudes in black vests and stocking hats sitting on each corner in Boston?  And are these henchmen all being paid good wages?  Did none of them have wives or girlfriends who found out and reported these plots?  How on earth did this million-man militia arise without somebody at the Washington Post or the FBI getting word of it?

But second, and more importantly, what has really struck me about this show is how prevalent Biblically illiteracy would have to be for people to allow it to happen.  One of the key points of the show is that when the handmaidens are essentially raped each month in the hopes of producing a healthy heir, a passage of the Bible (Genesis 30, I think) is read as a guide for how this can happen.  Now, bad hermeneutics have enabled people to justify many terrible doctrines and practices over the years...but usually in every age there have people who have stood up and said, um, I think you are completely misunderstanding the Bible.

The more I think of it, though, even people who claim to be most religious often have no idea what their holy books actually teach, and ignorance allows those who misuse those books to get away with such things.  Those who should know better stay silent because, in the end, they don't really know, and when the evil people of Gilead point to Genesis 30, the people who know that this can't be right cannot say why it is not right.  Of course,  goes in many other directions as well...today many use the Bible to support conservative principles such as low taxation, income inequality, or 2nd amendment rights; of the latter issue, the one that cracked me up the most was the one in which Jesus' disciples say to him, "'Look, Lord, here are two swords.  And he said to them, 'It is enough.'"  As if Jesus was saying that self-defense weapons were justified before he went to the cross.  Liberals, too, misuse the Bible, thinking that Jesus only preached unlimited love and freedom without responsibility, salvation by just 'being good people' and the like...but again, they are just as wrong as conservatives.

This, my friends, is another reason why Biblical literacy matters.  It's not just about ensuring that we avoid sins, but that we don't get ourselves believing that the Bible endorses rape, extreme patriarchy, or any other kind of foolishness.  If we don't know what is right, then we can't very well speak up for what is right, can we?

A brief thought about the effects of war on the soul

I am not a radical pacifist.  There are times, it seems, in which Christians (and others) are called to defend the rights of the most vulnerable.  Were somebody to try and hurt my wife or children or other loved ones, I suspect I would react violently in their defense.

But, as Ghandi supposedly said, 'An eye for an eye will leave everybody blind.'  Violence (and the treasuring of the weapons that enable it) is far too acceptable for many Christians today.  Most of the wars that we have fought in our national history should never have been fought; WWII might be one exception, though it seems to have sprung out of the soil of the wholly unnecessary WWI.

I have been re-reading David Harrell's book 'Quest for a Christian America, 1800-1865', which is about the social forces shaping the restoration movement in the early 19th century.  This morning I was reading about the effects of the Civil War upon the movement, how it helped cause many of the cracks that would later rupture our movement.  There were two passages that stood out.

The first was a quotation from a writer named William Baxter, concerning a man named BF Hall, who had been a gospel minister for years and thought to be a godly man.  Upon seeing Hall again after he had gone off to war with a Texas regiment, Baxter writes "I had known him (Hall) in former years and was not prepared for the change, which a few hours' intercourse was sufficient to convince me had taken place.  He boasted of his trusty rifle, of the accuracy of his aim, and doubted not that the weapon, with which he claimed to have killed deer at two hundred yards, would be quite as effectual when a Yankee was the mark....I ventured to ask what were his views concerning his brethren with and for whom he had labored in other years in the North and West.  He replied that they were no brethren of his, that the religionists on the other side of the line were all infidel, and that true religion was now only to be found in the South....Once during the evening he wished that the people of the North were upon one vast platform, with a magazine of powder beneath, and that he might have the pleasure of applying the match to hurl them into all eternity."

I confess that I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh back in the 90s, and while I have seen how wrong he is on many things, one thing he said still stands out to me, that the military has two purposes: kill people and break things.  He's absolutely right...at its core, the military is designed to be a killing machine. Over the years the question of how Christians can get behind this has long confused me.  Again, while radical pacifism might not be realistic, and a strong military may be necessary as a deterrent against violence, how can people who desire to follow the Prince of Peace be so happy to engage in warfare?

In a second passage in which Harrell was analyzing the effects of the conflict on the unity of the church, he considers the writings of H Richard Niebuhr, and concludes that "Never before in American history had churchmen been so willing to renounce long-held convictions, rationalize fragile and unconvincing arguments, and spring to the defense of the socio-economic interests of their section-'the kingdom of Mars had conquered the kingdom of Christ.'" 

Warfare and its godfathers nationalism and patriotism have a way of making people crazy.  It makes them forget about the cross of Christ because they are too busy pledging allegiance to the flag.  On Sunday I preached from Deuteronomy 12, in which Israel was reminded to put away idols and worship the one true God.  I used the modern example of patriotism as perhaps a great danger, that it can become an idol that we allow to merge with our discipleship of Christ, a 'syncretism' that is akin to the idolatry that became prevalent in Israel's worship.  I was nervous about using this as an example, and many of those who normally comment about how they like my sermons said nothing to me afterwards.  I'm sure I made a few people upset, but I think I'm right on this.  Anytime we let our true allegiance to Christ be pushed aside for patriotic, nationalistic, or militaristic reasons, we have let idolatry into our camp.  It creates wedges between Christians, it causes people to become hateful to those whom they once loved and cared for, and it distracts us from our discipleship.

May God forgive us when we make the same mistake again and again.