Posted by Anthony on August 27, 2010
Two of my recent posts have tackled the issue of terminology in the Church and my position that it is not without consequence. The first go around, I challenged how much our understanding of the terms ‘worship,’ ‘church,’ and ‘love’ were grounded in the Scriptures. The second time, I took aim at the divide between ‘contemporary’ and ‘traditional’ ‘worship,’ challenging whether in either case the word ‘worship’ was the appropriate word to describe the purpose and nature of Christian gatherings.
From all this, one might gather that I would have resonated with the ‘anti-Church’ / ‘anti-organized religion’ spiel that Anne Rice unleashed recently. To a degree, and in a way, yes. However, if you read my reply to her you will see that there is a serious point of departure between our positions. Namely, Ms. Rice is unable to distinguish between the ‘organizational Church’ and the ‘Organic Church.’
Put simply, there is no good deed done by any Christian anywhere or at any time that is not done by the Church, for the straight forward reason that the Church is composed of people who are, quite literally and in reality, the Body of Christ. This is an organic relationship. The Christian Scriptures are abundantly clear that in a very real sense, Jesus is still incarnate on the earth through the people, who are his members. When a Christian helps a poor person- it is Christ doing it, hence, it is the Church doing it. If a Christian comforts a grieving person, it is Christ doing it- therefore it is the Church doing it. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Anthony on August 24, 2010
My last post ran over 2,000 words and it still did not say all that I wanted to say. If you do read the last post, you’ll see that the title of this post already engages in the error described in it, assuming that ‘worship’ is the appropriate word to describe that gathering time among Christians once a week on Sundays. (You really should read that last one before reacting violently to this one).
I phrased it this way, though, to help clarify my position.
I find among Christians two basic mindsets regarding the Sunday morning ‘service.’ One mindset sees tremendous value to liturgical forms in our gatherings and the other sees value in ‘contemporary’ ones. Typically, one mindset frowns down upon the other. It is rare, though it does happen, to find someone who finds value in both. You probably have never met someone like me, though, who finds value in neither.
Thus, no one reading this post, or the previous post, should think that I have a secret agenda pushing one side or the other in the ‘worship wars.’ My argument is that that particular war is being fought on entirely the wrong front. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Anthony on August 19, 2010
The title of this post does not do the matter justice. The word ‘abuse’ is too mild, and it might be even more accurate to say that in actual fact the sweeping trend within Christendom is that there is outright plain ignorance on what these terms mean. The charge only matters at all to those Christians who believe that the Scriptures are the final and ultimate authority. A huge swath of people who call themselves Christians obviously don’t, so this post is not really for them, even though they share in the guilt. Of course, the term ‘Christian’ itself is commonly abused, but I am not saying that these are the only three words that get abused. These are just three really big ones and the ones I intend to treat in this post.
Having laid down a stinging charge, I must now defend it. Unfortunately, it would take a book to do so adequately. I have only 1,500 words- if I’m lucky. So, instead my goal will be to try to raise doubt in your mind that maybe, just maybe, I’m right.
The nature of the abuse of these three words have two basic things in common. First of all, even though these are terms closely associated with the Christian faith, they generally escape close scrutiny and very little grounding in what the Scriptures might actually have to say about them. They escape this scrutiny because we think we already know what they mean. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Anthony on August 1, 2010
Several years ago I had the privilege of having Anne Rice discover my review of her book “Out of Egypt.” She left a comment. This was an honor, and also a frightening reminder that sometimes the subjects of my blog posts actually read them. In respect to her, when I reviewed “The Road to Cana” I forwarded it along to her. In private correspondence, she told me I did a great job. Well, I thought she had done a good job. When it came time to review her spiritual autobiography, I worried that the good feelings might ebb. As a courtesy, I sent it along to her… and never heard what she thought of that! (I will also be forwarding this to her.)
Anyone who was surprised by her announcement that she was ‘quitting’ Christianity clearly had not read her spiritual autobiography. In my review of it, I went on to say something that seems a bit prescient now:
I do not want one of conservative Christians to read what I just wrote and say “Well, I can write Anne Rice off, now!” What Anne says in this final chapter contains much of value. The fact is that people do have trouble disassociating God from the Church and the Church should take this into account when it acts, knowing that in driving people away from the Church, they can drive them away from God.
I also said in that review: “I cannot cover all of the ground that a good long conversation could more appropriately handle regarding such matters.” WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Anthony on June 24, 2010
Here is a post that is a long time coming. First some caveats: my target audience here is the Bible-believing Christian, namely the kind that takes the Scriptures as authoritative. That said, I believe that Christianity manifests the true account of the moral code, and as such I think that what follows might apply to non-Christians, too.
Ok, now, this will sound like a weird place to start, but stick with me a moment. I consider myself a conservative (although more precisely, a libertarian-constitutionalist-voluntaryist) but I wasn’t always one. I grew up on default… that is, more or less as a liberal, especially on political and economic issues. What changed? Well, when I came to the place where I decided that Truth mattered, I realized that my belief system should, to the best of my ability, resemble reality.
This notion that I should adjust my mind to the world as it really was was really critical in shaping how I’ve come now. You see, there are lots of things that I wished were the case. Unfortunately, they aren’t. For example, I might wish that the members of the government can be trusted to look after the interests of the citizens, but it just isn’t the case. (Formative for me on this point was Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky). History and today’s newspaper reveal otherwise.
I have learned that in life, actions have consequences. I can try to shut my eyes to them and hope that by magic this time the action will have a different consequence (the one that I wished would happen) or I can accept reality. Accepting reality made me into a conservative.
Now, I say all of this in prelude because in this post I’m going to tackle something that I think even conservatives don’t get right a lot of times. I have heard liberals and pacifists and progressives all say something very similar to… “Violence is never the answer.” But I have heard conservatives say it, too. A quick google search reveals people across the spectrum making this statement.
But every sane person knows that, in fact, there are times when violence is the answer. Even most insane people know that sometimes violence is the answer.
So what we have here is a sentiment that is casually flung around that nearly all of us know isn’t true. In short, in saying such a thing, we are out of touch with reality. And one of the things I’ve learned about holding sentiments that don’t actually mesh with the real world is that inevitably bad things result. For example, if you think that you can step in front of a bus going 70 mph without getting hurt, a bad thing will result. Some times, the ‘bad things’ aren’t immediate or clear, but never fear, God cannot be mocked: we reap what we sow. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Anthony on June 17, 2010
One of the things I’ve come to realize is the truth of this statement:
As the dead do not know the living, or even that they themselves are dead, so too irrationality does not know rationality.
Augustine argued that evil was not a ‘thing-in-itself’ but always some good thing that has been corrupted. Evil is a direction away from good. I think he is right about that and I know now that there are many examples of the same principle. Rationality and Irrationality are one example. The Living and the Dead, another. Morality and Immorality yet one more. I’m sure there are others, and now that I am more alert to the principle I’ll keep my eye out for them.
But it does raise interesting questions: if the dead do not know they are dead how are you to proceed if you are a live person in the business of raising the dead?
Posted by Anthony on May 25, 2010
I try mightily to keep myself from having unexamined beliefs. I turned one up, though, in the last month or so, no doubt because of the writing contest and online apologetics conference I was working on. The writing contest, for example, is labeled as a Christian writing contest. I began to think about how an endeavor like writing, or any endeavor at all, could justify being termed ‘Christian’ and realized I had never really thought about it much before, and had rather accepted the presumptions that had been handed down to me. I hate it when I do that! Even if the presumptions are right!
However, what I turned up when I began my examination may surprise the reader. In Evangelical circles, the Christian sub-culture is a constant temptation and Christianese the prevailing language, which I myself attack in this post warning about Christianese and shibboleths. There is a silly sense within Christendom that you can slap the label ‘Christian’ on front of something and you’ve sanctified it. The truth usually is that it’s merely been rendered more marketable within the Church.
The reader would be wrong if he thought that the presumption handed down to me was the one I just described, however. The understanding that I had received regarding such things was that there was in many areas no distinctly Christian perspective on human endeavors. The slogan often is, “We do not need Christian X, we need Xers who are Christians.” (Where X is the activity in question). WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
