How far from Jesus' teachings have we strayed?

Why aren't American Christians being persecuted? I remember pondering this years ago, soon after I became a believer. Doesn't scripture say

...all that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution? (2 Timothy 3:12).

"All?" Does the fact that I'm unable to convince family and others of Christ count as persecution? Does the fact that they politely tell me to buzz off count? Does the fact that serious atheists get very rude about it in internet discussions count? Does the fact that I early on lost a lot of my pre-Christian friendships count? Is that persecution? Well, to an extent I suppose some of it is, though some would probably tell me it's just the expected result of my own faulty way of presenting the gospel, and they may be right. But of course even if it's persecution to some extent, it's far from the horrendous sufferings and martyrdoms of millions of true believers through the ages and across the world even now, and far from Paul's own experience in the verse just previous to the one quoted above:

...persecutions, sufferings. What things befell me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured. And out of them all the Lord delivered me. (2 Timothy 3:11)

We in America thank God for our freedom to worship here, for the freedoms built into our Constitution that permit it. It just seems that we are living in a time and place where we are blessedly free of persecution. But scripture says we SHALL experience persecution IF we are living godly in Christ Jesus. This suggests there is more to it than the happenstance of living in a tolerant nation.

Some of us see a time coming soon when our freedoms are going to be more and more restricted. President Obama right now is discussing rescinding the previous administration's protection of the conscience of medical staff who object to abortion. He wants a law denying them that freedom of conscience. Will he get it? The signs are that he probably will, eventually at least. His views are very popular.

What will it mean if he does? Well, it OUGHT to mean, I think, that Christian doctors and nurses who oppose abortion will defy the law, refusing to participate in abortions as always, expecting to lose their jobs, or leave their profession altogether before that happens.

THEN some of us may begin to know what it means that those who would live godly SHALL be persecuted.

THAT's the radical Christian life as we should be living it. That's life in this world as the scriptures present it to us. That's the called-out life that brings persecution and if we aren't living it we aren't obedient to Christ, we're useless Christians, we're salt that has lost its savor. This is certainly not life as we've been living it in the West, but that's because we've been living it wrong. We've capitulated to the culture. We're supposed to be salt and light to the culture, but instead the culture has completely ensnared us.

So perhaps a law against freedom of conscience could be the beginning of the radicalization of the church that we've been needing. ANYTHING to force us to begin to live as true citizens of our Lord's Kingdom which is not of this world, and show ourselves distinct from the kingdoms of this world as we should -- and FINALLY, start getting persecuted for living as we should.

That would be a very good thing but the problem started way before we got to this point, though it's been rationalized away on the basis of our living in such a tolerant country. Under this rationalization the church has simply been conforming more and more to the culture and losing more and more of our savor as salt.

Really, it's probably the case that it wasn't ever just that we enjoy peace because we have freedom to worship in this country, we've simply been bamboozled by our belief that this is a Christian nation with our best interests at heart, or at least was at one time. That is probably one of the main reasons for our weak and backslidden condition. Whatever the reason, we don't live enough like the true Kingdom of God to BE the church that Jesus founded, so we don't push the culture, it pushes us.

If we DID live as He wants of us, we WOULD be persecuted.

To what extent have we in America been putting our trust in a WORLDLY INSTITUTION, the Constitution of the United States, RATHER THAN IN GOD?

Of course we ARE living in a blessedly free country (so far) so there's something to the reasoning that we are spared persecution for that reason, but still I often remember the scripture that says flatly that we WILL be persecuted if we are living right and puzzle over it.

Seems Christians make compromises with the world without acknowledging it as such, or they may rationalize it as a necessity of some sort. By that kind of reasoning just about nothing the Lord asks of us can be practiced because it's ALWAYS inconvenient. The Kingdom of God just IS at odds with the world. I've known Christians who gave in to a son's living with his girlfriend without marriage, even under the Christian's own roof, accepting them without objection just as they'd chosen to live. The reasoning usually goes that there's really nothing they could do about it, they're adults after all, and they wouldn't want to break up the family, and they WERE going to get married eventually -- such as when the girlfriend's divorce was final, which from my new perspective on remarriage makes that a double sin.

They'd have experienced some persecution if they'd refused to allow them to live together in their home. THEN they would experience what Jesus taught about His truth bringing a sword into families. When we capitulate to the culture we bring Jesus' warnings to naught, but they will judge us in the end.

So I had those questions in my mind at the beginning of my Christian life but although in the first flush of impassioned belief I did try to live up to what I understood to be Jesus' strict call, it was easy to let it go and become just like the rest of the church, easygoing, no different from the world around me.

We aren't going to be persecuted if we aren't being obedient to Christ. America may well be a wonderful nation that allows us many freedoms, and Christians do usually remember to thank God for this blessing, but perhaps this very blessing has worked to the detriment of Christian witness in this country. Prosperity is generally not a good thing for the Christian life.

That has often been the case through history. Radical obedient movements have sprung up over and over, ALWAYS courting persecution and often martyrdom, only to lose their cutting edge as they prosper and the next generation forgets what it cost the first to follow Christ. America's prosperity has been our undoing. And we tend to forget: America is not the Kingdom of God; America is a worldly kingdom no matter how tolerant of Christianity.

And it is tolerant only up to a point, and the tolerance has been decidedly shrinking over the last decades.

The Pax Romana (a long period of peace in the Roman Empire) was attributed by at least one early Christian writer to the church's praying for the empire; but we reverse this order and say our peace as Christians is to be attributed to the wisdom of the state we live in? Something doesn't compute here.

Whatever the causes, and they're probably many, at the very least we haven't been living obediently enough to push the envelope on how far America really would make room for the true Christian life. We've capitulated over and over in this country. It's frequently lamented by Christian observers how little the church differs from the culture, how our divorce rate is equal to and even higher than the culture at large for instance, but I don't think I've seen a radical enough critique of the situation from these commentators, something that really gets at the root of our problem.

How many even think about whether we've fallen and how far? Many churches are quite content and complacent in their lukewarm Christianity. The root of the problem is really the abandonment by the best most conservative churches of Biblical commands we hardly even think about any more. Some of them have been theologically rationalized away, some have merely fallen into neglect.

We've only started to object to the world's imposition of ungodly practices in abortion and homosexual rights over the last few years. But our sickness started way earlier than that and it's OUR sickness, not the culture's. Such things as abortion and gay rights wouldn't even come up if God weren't judging not just the nation but the churches in this nation.

What does God have against us? This is going to take much deeper soul searching than noting our divorce rate. That's just the tip of the iceberg. That's just a symptom. Our inability to have an impact on abortion laws is another symptom. Obama's being elected is another symptom.

It's also God's judgment, against the nation.

But primarily against the church.

It's time for the church to radically separate from the culture.

I think we should seriously set ourselves to let go of every worldly comfort we've permitted ourselves and cut ourselves down to the barest possible minimum. Four walls, the simplest bed to sleep in, the simplest food to eat, the simplest neat functional and modest clothing, the minimally necessary transportation. Away with everything unnecessary, everything of fashion and indulgence. Give away the TV and all the electronic paraphernalia that isn't absolutely necessary. Give away most of our money to the poor -- THAT's a Biblical guideline we push off on specific circumstances and don't apply to ourselves. Not just a little here and there, not just a tithe, but for those who have large incomes MOST of it has to go for alms, or for the Lord's causes as He directs. And those who are poor, those for instance who lose their jobs for standing up for Christ, should be willingly supported by the rest of the church (one of the early church fathers showed that they did this in their day. We have certainly fallen short of that standard in ours!).

But this is just to begin to begin to sketch in the picture I'm starting to have in mind and starting to try to live myself, slowly. I'll get to more of it as time goes on, Lord willing.

Justifying second marriages by spurious logic

Got to pondering the question of what God really requires concerning divorce and remarriage.

Jesus made a very clear statement prohibiting divorce, saying that unless it is on account of adultery it will lead to adultery, meaning of course that it would lead to remarriage. The statement is really pretty clear: remarriage after divorce IS adultery. Only the death of a spouse makes a second marriage permissible. (Divorce for the commission of adultery is often said to be permissible and remarriage afterward, but think about it, it's only "permissible" because adultery has already been committed; but remarriage will simply continue the adultery and for the innocent one of the divorced spouses it will actually cause adultery to be committed. How can that really be what Jesus had in mind?)

Heard a teaching recently that was pretty strict in an overall way about this prohibition, but did find some Biblical exceptions (or loopholes, depending on your point of view). The preacher is quite clear that remarriage IS adultery, as Jesus said, since marriage was ordained by God as the making of one flesh out of two at the very creation of humankind, but he believes there is scriptural support for second marriages after divorce that were already contracted before one or both of the spouses became Christian believers.

The basic idea is that becoming a Christian erases your past sins and clears the slate so to speak. Sometimes this argument focuses on baptism as the point of change, but this preacher argues simply that if you are a believer your past sins are forgiven and your guilt is gone. The idea is that when second marriages are already in existence at the point of coming to belief, when the people recognize the sin involved and confess and repent of it, the sin of divorce is forgiven and the sin of remarriage is forgiven, washed in the blood, wiped clean, and you start anew as a new creation with no guilt.

This makes logical sense up to a point, but as I kept pondering it the logic began to fall apart.

One thing that is questionable in this preaching is how you can "repent" of remarriage without actually leaving the marriage. Perhaps this preacher is accepting sorrow for the sin in this case as repentance. But this is just one aspect of the problem with this idea.

In a discussion at another message board, someone reported struggling with another argument, similar to this one: that baptism can wipe the slate clean and make a remarriage valid. He answered himself by pointing out that baptism doesn't break the previous marriage bond, the bond established by God and not merely by human law, and that if it did it would also break the bond of legitimately married couples who get baptised.

I have to add that neither does forgiveness of sins break the previous legitimate marriage bond, in reference to the argument I've been considering here. So the argument for the cleansing of baptism may really be the same as this pastor argues -- not that the bond is broken but that the sin of remarriage/adultery is forgiven through the blood of the Lamb. Your past sins are wiped clean, the sin of remarriage is wiped clean along with all the rest ...

...making it a valid marriage?

That's the logic, yes, that's the argument here.

This of course treats the sin as the one-time sin of the illegitimate marriage contract itself, rather than the ongoing sexual sin within the marriage, which you will find often debated when you follow this topic for a while.

I believe I've finally resolved this. I came to realize that this reasoning really does not hold up. There is no way to wipe out the ongoing sin of adultery in the remarriage by simply wiping out the PAST sins of the adultery. The sin isn't merely the marriage event, which by God's standards isn't even valid, it's the entire sexual relationship.

It has to be. Consider this: If a person committed fornication/adultery without marriage or remarriage, say a couple who were living together without marriage, we'd certainly expect THAT sin to stop cold upon belief, either by their getting married or splitting up. If either of them was previously married there's no way to justify a remarriage, however, based on the facts I've already given above, so splitting up would be the only possible option, simply ending the sin, a true repentance.

When we come to the Lord, we repent, that is, we STOP SINNING. Sometimes we even have to make restitution for our past sins, but at least we STOP sinning. Likewise, if later, at any point after we've become a Christian, we come to understand that something is sin although we were ignorant of this fact before, we also repent then.

The past sin is forgiven, yes, but if the adultery continues after the person becomes a Christian, or after the sin is recognized, this ongoing sin has to come under church discipline, and in the case of unmarried people there is no doubt in anyone's mind that their continuing in the sexual relationship is sin.

So why is the situation any different if the couple is in an illegitimate second marriage? If we compare such a remarriage with unmarried adultery, how can we think that a remarriage is NOT ongoing sin? Isn't it really the same thing?

What's the difference? Nothing!!! Only a man-made contract.

Again, the former adultery is forgiven, no problem, but the ongoing adultery HAS to stop, same as it would have to stop if the couple were not married. Again, we INSIST that it stop if the person is unmarried, but somehow we're confused into tolerating the case of the second marriage by the mere fact that there is a man-made contract involved. A man-made contract has no power over God's ordinance which made the original couples one flesh -- in fact the ordinance makes the man-made contract itself sin.

Later: I just thought of another way this argument doesn't hold water. Consider a couple, either one or both of whom was previously divorced, now in a relationship and planning to get married. But before the marriage occurs, one or both of them comes to Christ. If the remarriage is the sin then now that they are believers they CANNOT marry, while the other couple who is already remarried simply has to "repent" of their previous sin, now forgiven and washed clean, and are allowed to go on in their remarried adulterous state as if it were no longer adulterous. So one couple gets to stay married "legitimately" while the other couple, due to bad timing, can't marry at all, though their situations are identical otherwise.

Any way you look at it, if a second marriage was adultery before coming to Christ then it is adultery after coming to Christ.

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Conclusion: There is NO way that remarriage after divorce is not adultery. That's certain. However, it might be possible that there are circumstances that make it permissible, For instance, remarriage could be the lesser of two sins which are a person's only options, and there are some arguments along these lines I might consider later. However, becoming a believer whose past sins are forgiven does not fit this circumstance.

Maybe we're the apostate church?

This blog is really a record of changes I've been going through. I'm going through a period in which all sorts of things that feel wrong to me, that have bothered me for some time at some barely-conscious level, are coming to consciousness and I'm willing now to argue the point. The question in my last post about living on credit is just one of the latest.

As I say in my Profile I started out at the beginning of 2007 seeking the Lord and through that seeking being led back to a concern I had dropped a few years previous to that, about the question of whether women should cover our heads in church. That was the one that started it all. I'd dropped it because I'd discovered hostility to it -- specifically a jocular mocking of the idea as a few of the women pranced around coquettishly wearing hats for a while, including the pastor's wife (I'd discussed it with him earlier but not with her). After that I rationalized dropping it as being too much of a disturbance to make an issue of it. But some things SHOULD cause a disturbance. Not that it should come from me personally. (Or maybe it should if there's nobody else. I'll have to pray about that more.)

Some two and a half years later, though, at the beginning of 2007, I was clearly convicted of it and had to begin covering my own head at least, no matter what. I also did a thorough study of the question in order to be able to defend the idea to people, covered all the material available to me including a recommendation by my pastor, found many good articles on it on the internet. I started wearing a simple little beret type hat to church, pretty inconspicuous (and not really quite what the Bible requires either, but a beginning compromise since shocking people with anything more than that is clearly not going to be productive), but again found myself frozen out by the women, mostly polite nonresponse but again with some subtle mocking behavior. Six months later I left that church anyway, for a number of reasons, some of them doctrinal. At first it was accidental: For a while I was without a ride to church. I kept letting it slide and then all my disagreements with them started adding up too. I believe it's the best church around here, nevertheless, the best preaching anyway, on most subjects, and the Lord may yet have me go back.

More recently I got involved in the Bible versions question, which I've covered at perhaps tedious length on this blog already. That was also an issue for me some years before that I'd also dropped -- also because it made me the lone defender of an unpopular idea among the Christians I know, coward that I am. On this subject I find myself almost just as much at odds with the King James defenders as with the multiple-version Westcott and Hort defenders. I guess that's because I'm really a Textus-Receptus defender more than a King James-only defender. But I'd like to see the King James preserved as far as possible for a variety of reasons. On this subject it seems even the best churches and best teachers in my opinion are completely given over to the multiple translations and I probably have even less of a chance of convincing anyone I know of this than of the head covering.

Back at the beginning of 2007 I also started pursuing the question why we aren't having revival in the churches, whether we could still, and how it might happen if the Lord would permit it. Time is getting short it seems, things are looking a lot like we're winding down to the Very End. Many signs of it as I discussed early on in this blog. Really wanting to know why we aren't having revival in such a time as this led me into thoughts about how perhaps the churches are simply too far out of God's will by now for Him to be willing to send us a true revival. Perhaps the women's head covering matters more than anyone wants to think? The last major revivals I'm aware of, a century or so ago, were in churches where women still wore something on their heads. I doubt that could be the only reason we aren't having revival now, of course, but after studying it I can't think it's unimportant. It's a creation-based command of God, it concerns his government for his creation, it involves respect for his order in this universe.

As for other reasons, well, even in the conservative churches you'll find Jesus' teaching on divorce and remarriage compromised. He said, and Paul confirmed it, that there's no reason for divorce except sexual unfaithfulness and no reason at all for remarriage ever, after divorce that is; it's only legitimate if the first spouse has died. None of this was a point of contention a hundred years ago. I've heard it argued that if scripture grants an exception for divorce an exception is granted also thereby for remarriage, but I'm not yet convinced. For one thing it is NEVER stated anywhere that remarriage is permitted. Not that it can't be forgiven once it has been committed ignorantly.

Along with all this compromised teaching in the conservative churches as a reason God might not give us revival, there are plenty of fake revivals going on too, and a real danger that the majority of lukewarm Christians could be drawn into the counterfeits even by a serious seeking for true revival. This is a real possibility because there is so little genuine spiritual discernment among Christians, and because we've all sat under this compromised teaching I'm talking about. Somehow or other the whole church, at least the whole church in the West, is out of step with the Lord. How far out of step? How deep is the problem?

We conservative Christians are used to being able to point to churches we recognize as apostate, all the "liberal" churches that outright deny certain Biblical commands and precepts, on homosexuality for instance. But is it possible that the apostasy is actually closer to home?

One thing that bothers me quite a bit, though I feel bad saying it because it seems so innocent in a way, is all the light sentimental and jokey emails I get from Christian friends. It's just not a Christian tone. I'm also lately getting particularly bothered by the political focus of so many of them -- and I've contributed to that myself. Where is the church that was to be a light to the world? We're just acting like the world. Where is the power? Where is our awareness of the glorious Kingdom and our Lord of glory? Where is the radical self-denial we're supposed to be living? I have to say that I do not see this in ANY church or ANY Christian I've ever known, certainly including myself.

A subject I want to talk about in a blog or two after this is some helpful websites I've discovered and especially what I've learned about the practices of the first couple centuries of Christians. THEY lived what Jesus taught in a way we simply do not. They lived true self-denial, true love of the brethren, true separation from the world in a way that has become sadly foreign to Christians today, sadly and certainly including me.

Is it OK for Christians to live on credit?

Had a very strange conversation (as "CJ") on another blog recently. The topic was how exorbitant credit card fees are, and I responded that at least for Christians we shouldn't operate on credit at all. "Owe no man any thing," said Paul in Romans 13:8. I found myself immediately embroiled in an argument with the Christians there, four or five altogether I believe.

Is it really such a foreign idea that Christians ought not to operate on credit? I thought I might get some guilty apologetic Yes-buts but instead I got out-and-out disagreement.

I do know it is a very foreign idea to many Christians though. I know that most people own their houses on mortgages, also pay for their cars in monthly installments, and that many church buildings are in fact mortgaged. It's always FELT wrong to me but because nobody objects, or few object, I don't say anything either.

The oddest part of that conversation was someone's suggesting that we can't avoid credit because we pay our utilites on credit. I was flummoxed by that one at first but eventually got my mind back and realized, No we don't! Just because we pay monthly doesn't mean we're buying our utilities on credit. Utilities are something that we use over time, and we pay for the amount we used at the end of the month. We get a month's worth of use and at the end of the month we pay for it. We pay at the end because we can't know in advance how much we're going to use, but at that point if we pay it on time we're paid up -- no loan, no credit involved. A mortgaged house and a car loan are a different thing altogether. We are paying on a total amount over many years because we are unable to pay for it outright. With utilities we pay for what we just received. With a house and car, no, we are not going to have paid for them for years though we received them already -- utilities are a matter of time of use, a house is a material thing we have or don't have.

I couldn't get that difference across to anybody. And then they also seemed to miss the point about not being able to afford it or pay for it outright, even just to entertain it for discussion's sake. We are so used to thinking in terms of monthly payments on mortgages we forget it's a loan, we forget we owe for the item we're paying on. They do think of it in the same way they think of utilities payments. They figure that since they can meet their monthly payments there's no problem, it's not as if they've contracted for something they're unable to pay, forgetting that they are unable to pay the whole price outright and that's why it's on loan.

I'm not yet completely sure just how radical to be on this subject, but the conversation was instructive about how much is taken for granted by Christians about the ways of the world. My FEELING is to go as radical as possible and say, no, it IS the world's ways and it IS owing when we should not, and if we cannot afford something outright we have no business buying it at all. But I'm going to have to give it further thought. The reason the radical position appeals to me, however, is that it would mark Christians as truly "not of this world" to live like that, as we're supposed to live. Otherwise we're just living like everybody else and making no impact for the Kingdom of God in the area of money.

Christians in our time in the West seem to expect to be comfortable in this world. We're not SUPPOSED to be comfortable in this world. Our comfort is to come from out of this world.

A sense in which Jesus' death paid for all humanity

The subject came up on another blog concerning what happens to infants and young children who die: I just ran across this in a book by George D. Watson, 19th century Holiness teacher, an explanation I'm not at all familiar with, but it's very interesting.

I'll quote him:

"Now the first death is that which is entailed upon us by the fall of our first parents ...

"Now this first death, which comes from Adam, both morally and physically, has been atoned for by the incarnation and death of the Son of God, so that no human being will ever be finally lost because of Adam's transgression. Jesus has purchased, by His sufferings and death and resurrection, an absolute indemnity from the fall of Adam, making ample provision for all the consequences of Adam's transgression, both for the removal of all original sin, and the raising again from the dead of every human being.

"Every infant born in the human race comes into being under the covenant
of redeeming grace. We are expressly told that, "as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive." From this we learn that the iniquity of Adam, as an open transgressor, is not imputed to any infant in the form of actual guilt, and that the principle of indwelling sin, which is in the infant, has its ample remedy in the shed blood of Jesus. If the infant dies before reaching the age of accountability, its nature is thoroughly purified on the basis of the covenant which the Son of God made with the Father, as the second Adam, and true Head of the race.

"Thus we see that of all the millions of human beings who may be finally lost, not one of them will be permitted to attribute his everlasting woe to our first parents... [God] has dealt with the human race on such an enormous scale of mercy, justice, equity, redeeming love and impartiality, that every one will be compelled to attribute his ruin to himself."

(Steps to the throne, M.O.V.E Press 1980, pp 29-30)

There's something very satisfying about this way of looking at it. It accounts for those parts of scripture that do seem to suggest that Jesus' sacrifice was effective for the whole human race, while not supporting universal salvation. This salvation from the first death would apparently only apply to those who are incapable of accountability, very young children certainly and perhaps mentally deficient people(?) The second death is for all others, those who reject Christ.

It might even provide an answer to those who complain that people who have no chance to hear the gospel shouldn't be punished for that. It suggests a level of salvation that is not full salvation, yet both provided by the sacrifice of Christ.

Needs more revelation.

Conspiracy Theories gone way too far

I'd rather not have to say anything about this, but since I've occasionally recommended Scott Johnson's talks at Sermon Audio I really do have to note when he goes too far. I've written him about this too.

In recent talks he's repeated the false information that healings had occurred at Obama events. This is a story that was made up by a satirical website, Lark News. I had written him about it earlier and I have to suppose others did too, but he continues to pass along the false information.

Now on his latest topic he speaks very sarcastically of the government's financing of the switch to digital TV, wondering about their supposed eagerness to impose this new technology on us to the extent that they'd finance it. It doesn't seem to occur to him that not everything is a conspiracy and there may be perfectly reasonable explanations for some things. In this case why assume anything more suspicious than that the technology is now available to improve television enormously but since it is going to require a complete switch from the old technology to the new the public needs to be aggressively prepared for it. And since it's going to make all the older TVs obsolete the government has an obligation to help people pay for the switch.

There may very well be conspiracies afoot in the world that we need to know about, but unfortunately there is such a thing as conspiracy thinking that always sees conspiracies where there is really no justification for it. It is a violation of the virtue of charity to keep implying evil motives in people with as little justification as your own ability to imagine that a new technology could be misused. A quote from this same teaching has it that

. . .any television manufactured after 1995 already has a built in feature to send abroadcast signal from your living room of live images of what’s happening in your home.

A bit alarming, no? Does it occur to him to ask whether this is perhaps a POTENTIAL feature that a person could choose to activate or not, the way you can choose to use a webcam or Skype to broadcast yourself as people now do? Does it occur to him that there are civil liberties hounds who would be up in arms at the use of such a technology against the will of the people?

We can't find out the truth about any of this if the person presenting it has a locked-in conspiracy mental set. This attitude compromises everything he says. If he wants to be helpful he's going to have to realize that even if his material is "documented" it doesn't prove that the interpretation of it all is correct. There is no doubt a potential for a lot of technologies to be misused, but technology in itself is morally neutral.

In earlier teachings Dr. Johnson also appears to be much too credulous toward the many-times-debunked Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as well as the "Merovingian" blood lines conspiracy notion. I haven't the knowledge to criticize these things carefully myself but Dr. Johnson SHOULD require himself to have that knowledge before he speaks and should not so irresponsibly pass on such material that has been criticized carefully by others.

You need to be a LOT more careful, Dr. Johnson.

Degrees of Faith?

Stories of escape from the attacks on Westerners at hotels in Mumbai (Bombay) have been going around. I've heard two full reports now and some brief accounts as well, some miraculous escapes in some cases, such as near misses, odd circumstances keeping a person out of harm's way and so on. There were many such stories about escape from the WTC towers on 9/11 too, stories showing God's hand in various rescues, faith-building stories. I appreciate these stories. They are inspiring.

But they also raise a question in my mind whether saving our lives is of such high priority in the Christian life. The emphasis is always on the saving of the life, you see. A hero's death may also be inspiring too of course.

Both of the stories about escape from Mumbai (Bombay) emphasize the person's focused aim of escaping. They don't claim to be Christians exactly, but they do mention God, and there's no doubt that God saved them. I don't doubt that for a moment. But I do wonder about being focused on escaping because Jesus said we are not to try to save our own lives but to lose our lives for His sake.

Didn't He? But people will object if you point that out to them. They will say that maybe we are to try to save ourselves to be of use later or something like that. I think that misses the point of Jesus' teaching.

I'm not talking about the immediate aim of avoiding sure death. I don't think that's what Jesus meant -- unless you have a clear leading from Him to be doing something else in the situation rather than avoiding death of course. I'm talking about the exclusive focus on escape as opposed to seeking God's will in the circumstance.

God may use us whether or not we are being obedient, but obeying Him and dying to ourselves should at the very least mean that we aren't seeking to save ourselves from a calamity but putting His will above our own and seeking what He wants of us in that situation. If we are seeking Him then we can know in our spirit what He wants of us, we don't have to be blind to His will. We may remain blind to His will of course, that's up to Him, but we may not: He may show us something clear that He wants of us. It is possible He simply wants to lead us out of there, but more likely He would have us serve others in some way, as He did when He walked this earth and still does from heaven. This would involve self-sacrifice of course, even if we are protected from harm and eventually escape. It is by definition a sacrifice of self to put others ahead of ourselves.

I've been mulling over lately how easy it seems to be for this kind of teaching to be misunderstood, indeed not even recognized at all by Christians. Someone may accuse me of "seeking martyrdom" by simply quoting Jesus' saying we are to lose our lives for His sake, even if the context is clearly circumstances over which a person has no control. Someone else may think I'm denying that God is in control of whether we live or die if I say that saving onself is not to be our priority, based on the same quote. I'm never quite prepared for such misunderstandings. It makes me think that the Sermon on the Mount is not really taken seriously.

This was the response of a couple of people to what I wrote in response to one of the Mumbai stories, here:

What a story. Touching to hear of all the Indians helping him. I wonder if Alex or his friends were killed or let go?

I'm sure I'd react with full-bore adrenaline too (which would probably give me a heart attack but oh well), but these stories usually make me wonder how as a Christian I SHOULD react, and saving my own life shouldn't be top priority. Of course it sounds impossibly idealistic but Jesus' teachings ARE counterintuitive, clearly aimed at overcoming our natural self-protective reactions by His power, as He overcame when He went to the cross for us. We're to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors for instance, forgive our enemies and not call for their death. It's the Spirit-powered Christian response that wins people, not anything we do in the flesh. Better to convert a terrorist even while dying at his hand than escape. Truly. We're to die to self and saving our lives will lose our lives, but losing them for His sake will save them. Jesus' teaching is full of such paradoxes. We're to fear nothing, not those who can take our physical lives but only Him who has power over our eternal lives. "Perfect love casts out fear." We're to put others ahead of ourselves, those who were milling around dazed for instance. If we really lived like this, something impossible to us and possible only by God's own power, Ducky could have nothing to say against us ever.

I know this is all talk coming from me, and the walk would be an adrenaline-powered run same as the writer's unless God gave me an infusion of grace at that moment to obey Him, and I'm truly glad for this man's escape and the story he has to tell, but I can't help at least KNOWING what God would want me to be doing instead. I truly believe that this is the Christian life as God wants us to live it, in His power, and I'm well aware of my own failure to do so. What power the church would have if we learned this life as Jesus teaches it.

I believe this. I yearn for this power, this total self-giving to God's will. Most Christians, however, seem content to recognize God's hand in their lives. I don't mean to minimize such a recognition; it's wonderful. It's faith, it's belief, it's salvation.

But is the Sermon on the Mount to be regarded as something beyond normal Christian life? What gets called the "Higher Christian Life" is really just obedience to Jesus, it seems to me.