We're not about religion, man

Why have so many Christians equated "religion" with "legalism?" Take a look at this:



This dude makes some good points, no doubt. But everything he says about religion seems to be aimed properly at legalism.

Some thoughts here.

1. The English word religion is used to describe belief and practice with reference to supernatural things. For Christians, this encompasses belief in the revelation of God, and obedience to the forms of worship proscribed thereby. Thus our religion is found in the Scriptures. Jesus Christ, as the great prophet of God, gave us forms of worship to submit ourselves to. These include the means of grace--baptism, the Lord's supper, the preaching of the Word--but also certain aspects of worship such as the observance of a day of rest, meeting together in a group, forms of prayer, etc.

2. From this we can see why older writers employed the word religion quite freely (and properly) to describe Christian worship and practice.

3. The entire Bible, old and new, along with godly expositors of it in every generation, have carefully distinguished between godly religious practice("worshiping in Spirit and truth," per John iv), which is internal and external according to the Word, and false or hypocritical worship, which is either invented, or merely external.

4. These are the two evils: an invented religion of man, or else a bare external observance. Because all religious practice is aimed at a unified communion with God (relationship, we would say, though we should more carefully define what we mean by that), it needs to be done both according to his command, and with the whole self. To alter either of those overthrows the whole purpose of religion. Or more precisely, makes true religion false.

5. In both of those we can see Keller's two thieves (an apt metaphor) of legalism and antinomianism. The Pharisees of the new testament emptied true religious observance of meaning (ex. praying in the streets to be seen), and invented complex religious practice designed to bring about communion with God. This is legalism. Paul fought both of these when men tried to alter the conditions of men's approach to God to include various legal observances.

6. So certainly, false religion always includes in it legalism. Also, the prescribed forms of religion for the church, such as prayer, fellowship, Lord's supper, when made merely external, are legalistic.

7. But why conflate the two? Probably because many Christians are embarrassed about various abuses which have flown under the banner of Christianity, such as the Crusades and the Inquisition. Also, perhaps they attempt to remove the objection they hear before it can even be made. "I'm just not into religion." "Ah, but neither was Jesus!" they say. Boom, objection answered, though of course what lay behind the objection was a rejection not of religion but of God.

8. Who cares though? Words are constantly changing their meaning. If you read "cleave" in a seventeenth century book it means to cling to something. But the most common usage nowadays is to split something apart. That's nothing to get mad about, it is just the common evolution of language. It annoys me as all poorly defined cliches do, but many things annoy me without needing a long blog post (a short facebook status suffices for most).

9. In this case, it matters because there is a communication disconnect between audience and the speaker. The definition of religion held in mind by the speaker is not the same as the one held in mind by the listener. When a non-Christian says "religion," they do not necessarily mean legalism. Even many Christians do not mean "legalism" when they say "religion." Communication is important, and since English translations of the Bible do not include this legalism-religion equivalency, we are holding our audience captive to a position they cannot find for themselves in the Scriptures.

10. We therefore do them a disservice by not speaking the Biblical language to them, and by denying that religion is what we offer, we deal in bad faith with them. For the Christian MUST be participative in the forms of religion that Jesus has given! Religion is no enemy, except when legalistic.

Be careful wand'ring heart!

Be careful wand'ring heart!
Whole worlds cannot contain nor satisfy,
Insatiable she is and why?
The whole she wants, not part.

Be careful wand'ring heart!
By nature blind, restored in eyes but late,
And trained by empty years to sate,
Her hunger on but part

Be careful wand'ring heart!
The world deceives and pleasant empty lies,
Seem true when mixed with pleasure's cries,
They death alone impart,

Be careful wand'ring heart!
The mind cannot restrain what is not known,
And all to flatter self are prone,
Though hidden lurks sin's dart.

Be careful wand'ring heart!
Preserve her love by no work of your own
But work! You must protect your throne!
Her guard lest you depart.

Good Friday

Loyal readers will remember that I am not such a big fan of the liturgical calendar. I think the increased interest in liturgy by disaffected young Evangelicals is absurd.

How to Get What You Want From the Word

1. Ignore context

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Therefore, there is full equality for women in all roles in the church.

2. Have your idea already in place before you crack open the Scriptures.

If you look long and hard enough, you'll be able to support it.

3. Use narrative stories to prescribe normal actions.

This works great for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, less great for the spiritual gift of hearing a talking donkey.

4. Claim that you need another special key for understanding the author.

Without these special documents that we scholars have analyzed, how can you know what Saint Paul REALLY said?

5. Don't read it.

That way you can pretend you're following it.

6. Remember that thing you read that one time? Or that thing you heard that pastor say? That explains it all.

No it doesn't. It was just what you wanted to hear.

7. Spend all your time thinking about that part you really like.

But I like that part! Yeah well, God wrote more.

8. If a passage is ambiguous, choose the meaning you most like, rather than using cross references.

The Puritans called this the "analogy of Scripture."

28 things I learned in 28 years

28. Trying new food is a low-risk, high-reward activity.

27. Don't set your heart too strongly on shirts, because they tend to disappear.

26. Don't buy cheap pants.

25. Who cares how nice your car is? Anyone who does is an idiot.

24. If you are angry with someone, you can either talk to them directly, or forgive them completely. Those are the two options. Not an option: talking about with other people, or clinging to the anger.

23. The outdoors is nice, but it is also outdoors.

22. Two easy things: exceeding low expectations, and disappointing high ones.

21. My least favorite question: "What is your favorite color?" I just pick a random color and then the conversation is over.

20. Fear of change is futile. Things will always change. Ignoring inevitabilities is stupid. How many evils have come from a simple fear of something new?

19. Always look for new friends.

18. I have never regretted obeying the Word. No matter the difficulty of it, no matter the immediate consequences. By contrast, every regret I have contains within the flavor of rebellion and disobedience.

17. When people say, I regret nothing, it is empty bravado. We all have things we regret.

16. Everything new!

15. Fear is the great enemy! Fear holds me back from so much, from so much depth of fellowship, so many moments of potential joy and pleasure! I look forward to the day when fear will be no more.

14. This prayer I pray for myself every day: "May the eyes of my heart be enlightened, in order that I might see the hope to which he has called me, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints."

13. Most of the time when you are trying to impress other people, they are mostly thinking about how they can impress you, and so you both end missing each other. The signals you send are misinterpreted, and vice versa. A fearless man will always love.

12. The real reason I decided not to pursue classical music further than I did was that the minutiae of excerpt practicing was killing me. I love to learn new things too much.

11. A valuable thing: a careful balance.

10. My most valuable possession: knowledge of the Word.

9. It is the great embarrassment of Christianity, that its people are so shamelessly ignorant of the Word, and that the ministers of God seem so content to leave their people in ignorance. Even excellent churches, even excellent ministries, even famous and brilliant pastors hardly seem to care that the average person in the pew knows his Bible so little.

8. Most of the things people worry about are completely pointless.

7. The cost-ness of life here, that all things cost, energy, money, time. All of them finite, all of them over. We instinctively hate this.

6. That my father and mother are my friends, my confidantes, and my advisors...what a blessing.

5. Don't be content with poor communication. Don't satisfy yourself with empty sayings that you couldn't define if someone asked you. Don't let your emotions lead into sloppy thinking.

4. There is no place for lies in our life. Learn to hate a lie for what it is.

3. I am unmarried. I have not learned to be content in this.

2. I am irrational.

1. What foundation can I stand upon except forgiveness? How could I make my way in pain without knowledge of future relief? How can I comprehend all things except ordered and purposeful? Jesus is the root, the offspring, the lamb, the king, the foundation. This is my all, for many years now, and until I die.

Some thoughts from John Bunyan on the ministry of the gospel

Taken from Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

He is relating his experience in being called to preach and his various struggles in it.

1. He was hesitant to enter into this high calling.

He began by only speaking one-to-one, and began his public ministry only because of the persistent request of the saints around him. They asked him to, and persisted in asking. He found that he was not content unless he was in the exercise of his gift, not because of the public acclaim (which in truth, in his own day Bunyan got little of), but because the gifts themselves were given not so that a man might edify only himself.

2. He only believed that he was gifted in it, when he saw the fruit of it.

But I first could not believe that God should speak by me to the heart of any man, still counting myself unworthy. This was not false humility, for before entering into ministry Bunyan wrestled with fear of damnation and a terrible consciousness of his sin for nearly ten years. It was really amazing to him that God would see fit to use him.

3. He preached his own experience.

I have been as one sent to them from the dead; I went myself in chains, to preach to them in chains; and carried that fire in my own conscience, that I persuaded them to be aware of. Bunyan recounts that his ministry began by his preaching of the law and the reality of sin (this was his theme for two years!), and then he altered his preaching to hold forth Jesus Christ in all His offices. This he continued in for a further two years. After this, he spoke on the mystery of union (by which he means communion, or depth of experential intimacy) with Christ. These he calls the three chief points of God. He only stayed on the third point for one year because he was arrested.

4. He was concerned with the good of the person he preached to.

He would constantly pray as he preached that God would make the word effectual to the salvation of the soul he spoke to, and would grieve that Satan would steal him away. In this, he relied always on the power of God. It pleased me nothing to see people drink in opinions, if they seemed ignorant of Jesus Christ, and the worth of their salvation...

5. He stuck to what was important

I never cared to meddle with things that were controverted, and in dispute among the saints. This should be tempered by his fierce opposition to things that we might consider unimportant but which Bunyan saw as essential. He opposed the Arminian conception of salvation, and the Roman system of worship. But the matters of church government, details of Sabbath-keeping, music, etc he did not concern himself with. What was important: the word of faith, and the remission of sins by the death and sufferings of Jesus.

6. He didn't plagiarize

Though he didn't condemn those who do. He wanted to feel his sermons, and so spoke ex tempore.

7. He gloried in saving souls.

Here are some good lines: My heart hath been so wrapped up in the glory of this excellent work, that I counted myself more blessed and honored of God by this, than if He had made me the emperor of the Christian world, or the lord of all the glory of the earth without it.

Pride and the Minister of the Gospel

Notes from personal experience

Natural man

1. The effect of pride is first for the soul to magnify whatever is attractive and good and to hide from self-knowledge all that is ugly and sinful. The conclusion readily reached, which can exist side-by-side even with professions of sinfulness ("I am the worst of sinners!" proclaims the man, hoping by this to set his humility in the same category as Paul's), is that he is not so bad, for all that.

2. Then also, what will they think if they knew and saw the deep wanderings, the terrifying things that lurk in his heart? Perhaps they will think that he is no different from all sinful men, but he is loath to lose his self-deceit.

3. Self-knowledge and self-deceit, the first known intellectually and the second felt experentially. So a man knows he is a sinner even when he fails to hate his sin.

4. But it is just a little one! says pride. There are none that are little. Wasn't it just a small act of deceit when the pride of Annas led him to lie to the Holy Spirit and to the church?

Also in his work

5. His giftings are of unique purpose for the church, and unique prominence. In him works strongest that Pharisaical temptation, to offer up prayers on the street corners, to bless God that he stands in his place, that he teaches, that he is not like other men (does this not hide in your heart?). Thus he may brag about his relationship with God. He fails to learn from Paul that "our presentable parts need no special honor."

6. His knowledge was given him as a trust, but he must always know that the way of salvation is simple, that sufficient knowledge unto salvation is possessed by men who know nothing of the subtleties he glories in. Christ once told him that he must become like a child if he would enter. Has the knowledge of maturity puffed him beyond this simple state?

7. Thus he glories in what he knows, and thinking that all must know it, he makes for himself and others a maze of intellectual inquiry, a vain and empty pursuit that men have tasted the dust of from the Greeks onward. Knowledge is fear, says the Hebrews, who were wiser when they taught not to separate what is known from what is done.

8. Pride hides from view the gap between these two inseparable things. Pride makes one rest in the fallibility of one's own thoughts. Pride is self-deception. Thus Paul, who would beat his body and make it his slave, lest he speak from an empty knowledge and miss for himself the promises.

9. Pride holds him back from the warnings of Scripture, that a man may preach Christ from false motives, winning his audience but losing his own soul. Pride makes him forget what even the Apostle James held in reverence when he said that not many of us should presume to be teachers. Pride shifts his eyes first from his own path into the path of others.

10. A turn of phrase! Admired for some neat definition! When he has not praise he despises those who do under the mask of false humility. When he has it he puffs up his own opinions to despise those that disagree without acclaim. But all the time he lacks that terrible, consuming remembrance that it is the holy things of the temple which he handles, that Nadab and Abihu were consumed when the offered there idolatrous fire in the name of piety.

His conclusions, advice for those who minister

11. Speak plainly. If you hold in trust a communication from God to men, dare you confuse it with flowery phrases?

12. Search yourself. "Hate what is evil, cling to what is good."

13. The Words you speak to them and to yourself must be searching. They must grip and shake. They must enter your soul. This is that living and active Word, with its own power. This is where you focus, on this power, bending all your giftings and power to the workings of the Word of God itself and the actings of faith upon it. Here be concerned that God be glorified in the revelation of himself in what you say. If this consumes you, at cost to all dignity, all position, all fame, all honor among men, you will have entered the narrow gate, and you will have seized the kingdom of God with force.

14. Remember always the great mercy and love of God, that he would give such double-minded and sin-riddled men the gift of his mercy, the participation in this greatest of works, and thus forge in us the crown he will later place on our heads.

15. Would you give all for this crown? Would you have fame in your small circle, or this crown? Who among us who has tasted even a bit of the power of the coming age would exchange that crown for the world? Yet the time may be long from the power of that taste until perseverance has its reward, a sojourn in darkness and difficulty. Our hearts are weak and betray us. He who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.

Dodging

BASHIR: So, why do you choose, for example, to accept and promote the works of the early writer Origen and not, for example, Arius who took a view of Jesus' deity as being not God? Why do you select one and not select the other?

BELL: Because first and foremost, I'm a pastor, and so I deal with real people in a real world asking and wrestling with these issues of faith. What I have discovered over and over again is there are people who have questions and hunches and have sort of, "I'm really struggling with this," and when you can simply give them the gift of, "By the way, within the Christian tradition, there are scholars and theologians and there are other people who have had the same questions. They have had the same theories."

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The question asked is avoided.