Everything You Know is Wrong.

Do you think your religious beliefs/ particular sect of worship are better or more correct than another sect of Christianity such as Catholicism, or even another religion, such as Islam?

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 14:17:53 -0400

Yes.

The Exorcist, Pt. 5: Flesh vs. Spirit

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 14:17:00 -0400

It’s been awhile, blogosphere, but I have returned. Let’s do this thing. It’s time to tackle the Satanic rule to rule them all:

#8: “Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!”

My response is best summed up in an excerpt from a Bob Dylan song:

Stuffed cabbage is the darling
Of the Laundromat
The mouse with the overbite explained
How the rabbits were ensnared

Ooops. Wrong song. This is it:

Everybody’s in despair,
Every girl and boy
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here,
Everybodys gonna jump for joy.

Screw it. On second thought, let’s just sum it up with some Scripture.

GALATIANS 5:13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.

It seems to me that the knee-jerk rejection of Christianity is based on the idea of freedom. People like to be free. Even the most avowed Communist longs to be wholly free. Satanists, and particularly humanists, consider themselves free-thinkers, and they cherish this ideal above even greater ideals (namely sex & bacon). They believe Jesus Christ represents an assault on their freedom because his evil plan is to form every human into the image of an even stiffer Mitt Romney. And so armies of humanists, pagans, atheists, and agnostics are now taking a short break from World of Warcraft to troll the underbelly of internet forums, chat rooms, and the comments sections of Youtube videos, taking brave potshots at Christ Jesus and his supposed assault on their freedom.

From one Christian to however many Christians make up my 17 Tumblr followers, allow me to let you in on a well-kept secret: you were called to be free. You are freer than any free-thinking atheist because you have been forgiven the debt of damnable sin. Now you are free to be in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Imagine you freely murdered someone (because you are a free-thinker after all), and then you had to carry around their stinking corpse on your back forever. Is it safe to say you would be classified a criminal in any part of the world? Is it safe to say you wouldn’t have much luck in the intimacy department? Is it safe to say you would not absolutely kill it in a job interview? Could you even freely go to the grocery store? Establish a bank account? Make non-necrophiliac friends?

Put on pants?

Now imagine a benevolent, loving vigilante cut the corpse loose and expunged your homicidal record from the public domain. And all that benevolent man asked in exchange was friendship. This is the picture of salvation painted by the Scriptures.

You were called to be free, but you were called to be freely involved with Christ Jesus. Were you more free with the corpse hanging around your neck, Creepy McCreeperson? Or are you more free without the life-ruining, spirit-crushing, energy-draining, misery-inducing corpse?

Most people will choose to go their own way, make their choices freely, and then clumsily manage the consequences of their awful decisions. Read through the accounts of the Hebrew kings in I&II Kings/I&II Chronicles (or just google “drunk pictures”) and you will see what I mean. Paul calls this “living by the flesh.” The Satanist calls this “physical, mental, and emotional self-gratification.”

It looks like this:

Gal. 5:19-21 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.

But the Christian, who “lives by the Spirit,” is filled with “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

The problem for the Christian comes down to how we live out the implications of our freedom. Having been set free from the burden of death, how do we ensure we our living “by the Spirit?” The answer, as always, is Jesus.

When a Christian, free to choose and free from death, freely chooses an act of the flesh, we are living like we are still slaves. Set a slave free, and he will still retain habitual slave behaviors. He may call former superiors “boss,” be hesitant to look people in the eye, work at his new job harder than others out of fear of punishment, etc. Set a sinner free, and he will compulsively act like a sinner from time to time. It’s all he has known from the day he was born.

The answer is not to look at the effects of your actions and manage the consequences. That is legalism. That is rule-making. That is precisely what the free-thinking atheist thinks he is rebelling against. In reality, it’s what Christ Jesus actually rebelled against: works of the flesh. Religion.

“Works of the flesh” is attempting to achieve perfection apart from God. It’s defeating alcoholism without Jesus, then boasting that you’re no longer a drunk. Sure, you’re not a drunk, but now you’re prideful, which is the same damnable sin that got Satan thrown from Heaven and the same attitude that led you to be a drunk in the first place.

The Focus on the Family guys who still act like slaves will tell you to throw away your television. The theologian who falls is still acting like a slave tells you the answer is to understand Calvinism/Arminianism more fully. The social-justice-Jesus-was-a-Democrat guys will tell you to work the soup kitchen. The prosperity gospel guys will tell you to give more money and God will bless you more. The Pentecostals will say come down to the altar and let Benny Hinn knock you over.

But the answer is to submit to friendship with Christ Jesus. The answer is to stop doing damage control on the effects of your destructive behavior and get at the root cause: the flesh. Your desire to be in control. Your “free-thinking.” Your physical, mental, and emotional gratification. The answer is to connect your heart, mind, will, and emotions to the Spirit of Christ Jesus. In this, you will be transformed.

I’ll end this post on a confrontational note by asking you humanists and religious zealots alike: if you can be emotionally, physically, and mentally gratified (satiated, at peace, fulfilled) by “freely choosing,” how’s that working for you?

Reblog: Normal Christians

Wed, 23 May 2012 16:13:24 -0400

We interrupt this series on “the Debbil” to bring you a guest blog from The Blazing Center’s Stephen Altrogge. Check it.

I Think I’ll Just Be A Normal Christian From Now On

FACT: We Christians love labeling ourselves.

We’re Reformed, we’re Charismatic, we’re emergent, we’re justice seeking, we’re seeker sensitive, we’re adoptional (I don’t think that’s a word), we’re missional, we’re called to foreign missions, we’re radical, we’re Christian hedonists, we’re organic, all-natural, authentic, and label-loving. You get the point. And I have been extremely helped by so many of these categories. I’m so grateful for the push towards adoption, for Reformed theology, for Christian hedonism, and for the evangelistic emphasis of the missional minded folks.

But sometimes all the labels can be a burden to me. I’m sure the problem is totally with me and my legalistic self, but it seems like each label carries specific requirements with it. If I’m going to be missional I need to be highly focused on reaching out to my community with the gospel. If I’m going to be adoptional I need to create a community of adoption within my church and possibly adopt children myself. If I’m called to missions I need to be constantly thinking about and praying for the unreached people groups in the world. If I’m truly seeking justice I need to be making a concerted effort towards ending sex trafficking in the United States. You get the point.

There are a lot of blog posts and tweets and status updates that remind me of all that I should be doing. I need to more missional, more missions minded, more focused on the Holy Spirit, more authentic with my neighbors, more committed to the cause of adoption, more careful with my eating habits, and more committed to ending sex trafficking in America.

And don’t get me wrong, each of these things is truly biblical. It’s right and good to reach out to the community and to adopt children and to reach the unreached people groups and to fight against horrific things like sex trafficking. But I can’t do all these things at one time with equal intensity and fervor. I’m a pretty limited guy. I’m married and I have three little girls who want to play with dollies and puzzles. I have a yard that needs mowing and a grandpa that needs visiting and people in my church who I need to pray for. I battle physical anxiety from time to time, which puts real physical limitations on what I can do. Most of the time I feel like I’m barely keeping my head above water.

So I think I might just be a normal Christian from now on. In John 15:5 Jesus said:

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

I take this to mean that if I stay close to Jesus and spend time with Jesus and have lots of Jesus’ word in me, I will produce much fruit for Jesus. I’ll do the things that Jesus wants me to do. I’ll be a truly fruitful, successful Christian. Maybe I’ll adopt kids, but maybe not. Maybe I’ll be a missionary to India, but maybe not. Maybe I’ll host a community outreach…maybe not.

If I stay close to Jesus he’ll lead me into the good works that he has prepared for me.

The reality is, the folks in my church who are the most fruitful for Christ are simply those who are closest to Christ. I think of long-term member Tim McKelvy. I don’t think he could tell you what it means to be missional but he and his wife Donna are constantly reaching out to people. I think of my 93 year-old grandfather who probably couldn’t articulate Reformed theology and yet does a Bible study at a nursing home every single month. I think of my dad, who isn’t “adoptional” and yet has adopted two kids.

I want to be like Tim and Donna and my grandpa and my dad. They’re just normal Christians who stay close to Jesus and trust Jesus to make them fruitful.

Here’s to normal.

The Exorcist, Pt. 4: Animal House Rules For Radicals

Fri, 04 May 2012 17:51:00 -0400

I wish people would just be honest about the human “pursuit of happiness” and give credit where credit is due: Satan. Satan is on your side. When given the choice between exalting man and exalting God, he will choose you every time.

But when it comes to exalting himself or exalting man, he will choose himself every time. But don’t think of him like a pilot in your personal Air Force, manning his aircraft no matter how many missiles are fired at him. Think of him as a Nascar driver, carrying your endorsements around on his car and leather jacket. When it comes down to it, he will abandon the car so that he may live to see another trophy and bask in the glory of cold gatorade.

And in this spirit of man-worship, the next Satanic rule presents itself.

Rule #7: “Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his ‘divine spiritual and intellectual development,’ has become the most vicious animal of all!”

I hadn’t shaved in a month when I took this picture with iMac.

I’m not sure how that is a rule; it’s just a confusingly constructed declaration. It acknowledges the truth that man is the only “animal” on the planet that has the capacity to love, create, critically reason, or find pleasure in the pain of hot peppers. Satanism is also correct in stating that man is the most vicious creature on the planet.

But do you really want to go down the road of animalism? Do you want to follow that to its logical end? What, then, is wrong with killing and eating another human, as cannibalism happens frequently in the animal kingdom? How about regularly having full on mating orgy onslaughts like the red garter snake? Or peeing on stuff to claim it as your property? Or licking yourself where the sun don’t shine?

This belief is rampant and firmly ingrained in American men. I hear morons talk all the time about “men have needs.” They go on the sexual prowl for women because their penis is directing their thought patterns to think of women as merely animals. Just turn on your local rap station; the lyrics say, “F*** B*****S, GET MONEY!”

On Kanye’s forthcoming album, “Bigtym Pimpin.”

Men rarely come out and say, “WOMEN ARE JUST OBJECTS WITHOUT SOULS. I JUST WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH THEM AND EAT THEM.” But women call men “animals” all the time. They truly believe the world would run smoother if the idiot cavemen would step aside and let the enlightened females set the policies, steer the ships, and crank the widgets. If I am to believe the commercial advertising for cleaning products, then only omniscient female domestic goddesses are capable of doing the most basic household tasks because the dumb oafs they call “husband” haven’t yet figured out how to work their opposable thumbs. Teenage girls and their cougar moms lust over teenage beefcakes who turn into werewolves. And the feminism movement pushed the demonization of men to a whole new level; women turned the sexual tables on them. Now men could be devalued, demoralized, and used as physical gratification.

The Apostle Paul told us this would happen.

^{Romans 1:21}For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²²Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

²⁴Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.

In other words- people rejected the notion that they were created in the image of God. They eschewed the reason, logic, love, respect, mercy, and justice that only comes from being created in the likeness of Christ Jesus, and as a result they turned into the animals they idolized. You could say Paul was prophetic, but I think he was just pointing out the pedophiles, misogynists, polygamists, and masochists in the Roman culture that surrounded him. These were a free-thinking, democratic people, each free to worship or not worship who they pleased. And they were turning into animals.

Scary, scary animals.

This is a Satanic belief that must be eradicated amongst believers. It is the belief of many Christian wives that their husbands are merely idiot animals, not worthy of respect and dignity, incapable of understanding complex human emotion. It is the belief of many Christian husbands who have treated women as animals by dialing up porn and wallowing in sexual fantasy. Enter the 42% Christian divorce rate.

This is the Satanic belief that validates the selfishness and survival-of-the-fittest mentality of Christian girls who eat their young. 70% of all abortions in the United States are performed on women claiming the name of Christ Jesus.

It is ever important to continually place the focus of the Church on Christ Jesus, what he did, and what he is doing. He was executed in our place to remove the wrath of God that we deserved to provide forgiveness for our animalistic sins. Christ Jesus rose from the dead and placed his Spirit in our bodies to set us apart as his own, transform us into his image, and have us transform Earth into Heaven’s image. He is continually shaping our attitudes and actions to be reflective of Himself. The unrepentant, unregenerate heart will never understand the mind of God (1 Cor. 2:14).

Christ Jesus is not an animal. If you claim the name of Christ, but are ruled by your animal passions, I might suggest that you are indeed an animal. And one day, Christ Jesus will speak to you like the rabid, stray dog you are: “Depart from me. I never knew you. (Matt. 7:23)”

So I just read teh part about people who are obese, have mental health issues, and who are gay and it's really intresting how you can say they are not " yeilding" to Jesus Christ but what I find funny is that i'm gay and i'm christian and proudly wear a cross 24/7 and people who are obese doesn't always mean that they just are yeilding to Christ but keep in mind that you don't have to be thin to be a happy peson in life.

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 23:00:00 -0400

This was a two-part question sent anonymously. Unfortunately, I can only reply to anonymous posts publicly. You did raise one good question by challenging me on my use of the word “bipolar” in an earlier post. To clarify, not all people with mental illness are unyielding to Christ. My use of the word “bipolar” was meant to describe a person who is emotionally unstable and cognisant of the sin. But now, on to the questions.

So I just read teh part about people who are obese, have mental health issues, and who are gay and it’s really intresting how you can say they are not ” yeilding” to Jesus Christ but what I find funny is that i’m gay and i’m christian and proudly wear a cross 24/7 and people who are obese doesn’t always mean that they just are yeilding to Christ but keep in mind that you don’t have to be thin to be a happy peson in life.

First of all- let’s start here. Do you love me? Are your questions, as a Christian, motivated by love? If not, there is no point in this discourse transpiring. There is no love in debate. I have made a decision to love the Body of Christ by teaching Scripture, and I have made the decision to love you in my choice of words, tone, and honesty in my response.

So “how can [I] can say” the obese, the emotionally unstable, and the homosexual are not yielding to Christ? Because Scripture says it. If you are a Christian, then you were purchased by the shed blood of Christ, and the same power that rose Jesus Christ from the grave is in your body. As 2 Corinthians 3 puts it, that is a power that literally transforms you into the image of Christ Jesus. The point of Salvation is not to save your soul. That happens in the process, but it is not the point. The point of Salvation is not to make you happy. There is literally nothing in Scripture that would give you the idea that God would bankrupt Heaven of His Son and let us murder him in cold blood so that you could be happy. When you think about it- that’s just selfish and ridiculous. It’s about transforming you into Christ, and you transforming the fallen world into His Kingdom.

Continueing on, Mental health patients either develop or are born with the defect so just because someone is that way why do you think that they don’t go to church or believe in Christ? Not only am I gay and perfectly happy in myy life right now, ,at my church there3 are people who are blind, suffer from ADHD, people who are homeless, mentally ill, and who suffer from bi polar disorder so to basically say people with disorders don’t ” yeild” to Christ is just a very arrogant statement.

I would never say that there are no gay, fat, or mentally ill Christians. I am saying that Jesus Christ is not gay, fat, or emotionally volatile/abusive (three very distinctly sinful and self-indulgent behaviors). You’ve been called to be holy in all your ways because you’ve been called to be transformed into Jesus. Do you think it is arrogant of Jesus to demand that?

Have I said anything unScriptural? If you claim to be a Christian, then you must be taking offense that I have mischaracterized the Gospel or distorted the Scriptures. If you are just offended because you just have different ideas about life/the world, then you might want to take a second look at the Scriptures and compare it to what you believe.

The Exorcist, PT. 3: More Rules for Radicals

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 22:43:48 -0400

I recently got a feisty email from Hell’s webmaster, XXXbelieber4lyfeXXX, informing me that his Nigerian family needs my help and that I should send $1000 for them to invest in a lottery scam. He also insisted that I retract some lies I allegedly told about Satan. His main objection was that Satan is not directly responsible for the tenets of Satanism. Satan, according to Mr. Belieber4lyfe, does not demand that Satanists worship him. He actually makes it perfectly clear that he is far more invested in men than they are in him.

Direct quote from Satan: “I’m here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began. I’ve nurtured every sensation man’s been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him. In spite of all his imperfections, I’m a fan of man! I’m a humanist. Maybe the last humanist.”

Satan is handsome, by the way.

It is important to understand, as we continue to examine humanism through the lens of Satanism, that Satan is pro-man. Given a choice between exalting God or exalting man, Satan will choose man every time because it serves his God-belittling purposes. But a cursory reading through John 10 will give you a clear understanding that he cares nothing for the well-being of man. If God is the proprietor whose life-savings is invested in the business of your well-being, Satan is at best a hired hand who will drop you like third period French to save his own hide.

And I’m sure the Satanists would understand if he did. Humans, after all, have learned that same behavior of self-preservation from him. Satanists encapsulated that spirit into a religion (or anti-religion). The Christian Church, on the other hand, flatly rejects any sort of Satan worship. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t made the Satanic rules the building blocks of average human relationships. It’s just normal. Consider the next three Satanic rules:

4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates! This is the “screw ‘em!” reflex that we all react to when we feel as if we have suffered injustice. It’s what drives you to invest your time into shallow friendships rather than finding ways to love your demanding, hard-to-please family. It’s what drives you to write off challenging, accountable relationships as “too difficult” and spend your time with yes-men and sycophants. The truth of the matter is that nobody deserves kindness; every Medal of Honor recipient, Gandhi, and the Pope deserve mortal and spiritual death, destruction, misery, and eternal separation from the glory of Christ Jesus because humanity’s sinful nature makes us enemies of God. The Gospel says that, in the ultimate act of kindness, Jesus took all the death, destruction, and misery of God’s wrath that we deserved upon himself. And in response to what Christ Jesus has done for us, we cannot help but do the same. 1 John 3:16 puts it like this: “Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” Then, in verse 17, John throws down the gauntlet: “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?” He just comes out and says it- if you show no kindness to those who need it the most, you do not know God. Shave your head, grow a creepy mustache, and throw your lot in with the Satanists.

The founder of Satanism- not so handsome.

5. Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!
Are you in the freaking Justice League or something? I guess I could give you Scripture here about “JUSTICE IS MINE SAYETH THE LOOORD,” but first- on a practical level- who are you to dish out life/death sentences? On what/whose/whattheheck’s moral authority do you stand? If I cut you off in traffic, are you responsible for determining the proper level of punishment for every perceived grievance? Should you ram the back of my car, punch holes in my tires when I finally park, or worse yet slap a “Kerry/Edwards 2004” sticker on my back windshield? If I offend you, do you give me the silent treatment, post photoshopped naked pictures of me on facebook, or freaking shoot me down in cold blood? The only practical AND Scriptural answer is to leave room for Jesus, the ultimate authority, to repay evil. In the end, Jesus rides up on a horse, pulls a sword out of his mouth, decapitates all his enemies, and feeds them to birds anyway (Revelation 19). You can’t top that anyway.

I chose a silly pic because the real thing is too effing scary.

6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires! I actually don’t think Scripture wholly disagrees with this sentiment; Christ does not call you to have unhealthy relationships with parasites. But extract Christ from this Satanic statement and take the sentiment to its logical end- should fathers and mothers abandon their irresponsible children? Should we give up on teaching young bachelor idiots in the Church who genuinely love Jesus to be conscientious, capable decision makers? No, and no. Just keep Christ in the equation and you can’t go wrong, folks.

The final three rules are coming atcha, folks.

The Exorcist, PT. 2: Rules for Radicals

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 18:41:56 -0400

Since I was on the subject, I decided to go snooping around the Church of Satan website. I came to a few conclusions:

1. They have a really outdated website. Literally, it’s a Geocities template from 2002. Either aesthetics aren’t that important, they don’t have much money in the general fund for a redesign, or potential Satanists are just really easy to impress.

Apparently Satan can’t work Photoshop.

2. ”Satanist” is just another term for “humanist.”

On their hilarious corner of the web I found the rules for Satanists. I was hoping the list would include the phrases “sex sacrifice,” “spider venom cocktail,” and “cannibal penis machine gun.” All I found was the standard operating procedure for basic human behavior. Seriously. The religion of Satanism has encapsulated the easiest possible way to live into nine simple rules, all of which are second nature to your standard angry, jilted, selfish, emotional wreck of a person. And the Body of Christ has let this vile garbage seep into our theology.

Here are the first three rules:

1. Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence. Plainly put, do what feels good. This sentiment is so deeply embedded into American thought that we have a hundred cute phrases for it- Follow your heart. Seize the day. Life life to the fullest. Believe in your dreams. Blah blah blah. This is not the Gospel, though we do treat it that way. DO NOT believe in your dreams, because you probably dreamed about having an upside down tea party with a race of talking caterpillars on Jupiter. DO NOT follow your heart because your heart is corrupt. Following your heart will leave you thrice divorced, looking for the “perfect spouse,” or the “one who got away,” or the “one who was meant to be.” Following your heart left you penniless college student with 12 years of college, 7 changes of major, mountains of debt, and no degree. Following your heart led you to kill Jesus. The only hope for you and the rest of mankind is to fall in love with Jesus; that way you will follow the desires of his heart- a heart that has dreamed bigger and better things for you than you can imagine.

2. Satan represents vital existence rather than spiritual pipe dreams. Satanism/humanism says, “invest your life in the 70 years you get here on Earth, because this is all you get.” Some people think Heaven is pie-in-the-sky, and a vital existence is bowing to every urge; they only obey their appetites. Sexually frustrated? You just need to sleep with a stranger and scratch that itch (though you may get another sexually transmitted itch later on). Career got you feeling helpless and pushed around? Grab a bottle of Wild Turkey, get absolutely plastered, decimate your liver, do 100 things you’ll hate yourself for later, and alienate a bunch of people- but feel like superman for a night! In Philippians 3, the Apostle Paul calls these people “enemies of the Cross whose destiny is destruction.” He says “our citizenship is in Heaven,” meaning we should live as though we are from there. Americans act like Americans. French people retain their Frenchness. Christians should act as Christ Jesus does. A citizen of Heaven finds that to be second nature, and a “vital existence.” A citizen of Heaven lives that way because they are Heavenly by nature, not because they are hoping to eat a pie in the sky. By the way, a pie in the sky seems like a rather disappointing depiction of Heaven (unless we can have a serious conversation about what exactly is in that pie).

Piiiiiiiiiiieeee!

3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit. Well congratulations Satanists. You finally got something right. Undefiled wisdom is a fine goal, but humans are idiots. Ladies and gents, I give you Flava Flav. Therein lies the rub: humans never come to good conclusions out of undefiled wisdom. Human wisdom has given us legally safeguarded and federally funded abortion while protecting the sanctity of turtle eggs. Human wisdom is always defiled. The Christian must keep in mind that “ALL the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ Jesus (Col. 2:3).” James 3 says that human wisdom is motivated by “envy and selfish ambition,” and undefiled wisdom breeds humility. You are an idiot. You are not capable of making consistently sound decisions. Christ is. His wisdom is “first of all pure; then peace loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy, and good fruit, impartial and sincere (James 3:17).”

More rules to come.

The Exorcist, PT. 1

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:24:00 -0400

I’ve always been puzzled by the concept of exorcism. I understand why the public is obsessed with the idea: it is scary as hell. It makes for good movies. It makes Christians look even crazier than we already appear, and nonbelievers lap that kind of stuff up. But it’s always seemed like a distraction. But Christians, I speak to you when I ask, ‘Why are we so enamored with the idea of the devil manifesting himself in a person when he is so entrenched in everything?” So I’m gonna freaking do a series on the devil. And I don’t care how hooky-spooky-uber-evangelical I sound. The fact is, I believe he is real, and I believe he wants us all dead. And I don’t need the power of the Vatican or a super-soaker full of holy water to do it, but I aim to exorcise the demonic influence of the Devil from the Body of Christ.

-hopefully this is the last exorcism movie. it’s getting old.

Before Jesus got beamed up to Heaven, his disciples were better-equipped to do the work of the ministry than any seminary graduate, Doctor of Theology, monk, or evangelist in history. They had more knowledge about God than the pope; they actually knew God. The very same God who painstakingly handcrafted the universe and breathed life into humanity shared a bucket of chicken with them every night. They had more hands-on, practical ministry experience than any missionary that has ever wandered through Amazon rain forest in search of some godless cannibals to convert.

But some of these very same disciples were useless to the cause of Christ because Satan had snuck his way into the unguarded corners of their hearts. Take a look at Matthew 16. When Jesus warned them about his coming execution on a cross, Peter tells Jesus to stop being such a downer and contends that there must be another way to establish the Kingdom of God.

Jesus angrily exclaims, “Get behind me, Satan.” Now if you read that, and said to yourself, “Why would he call him ‘Stan?’” then you are dyslexic, and you should get that checked out. Or your name is actually “Stan,” and as usual, you casually misread it. But Jesus didn’t call him “Stan.” He called him, “Satan,” and rightly accuses Peter of being obsessed only with human concerns and not with the Kingdom.

-This Stan might actually be the devil.

We hesitate to label anything that isn’t akin to axe murder or child pornography as Satanic, so why would Jesus call him Satan? Simple. Any attempt to keep Jesus from the cross is Satanic.

Peter, in that moment, was a soldier for the advancement of religious bondage. He was insisting that there was another way to establish the Kingdom of God besides the sacrifice of Jesus. In effect, he was arguing for the same burdensome curse that mankind had suffered under since the fall of Adam: religion. He insisted that Jesus did not have to die because Heaven could come to Earth by the works of man. That, my friends, is called religion. And religion is Satanic.

If Jesus Christ does not offer himself up to be emptied of every last drop of blood and human dignity, then religion lives. The suffocating bondage of living up to rules, tenets, and checklists lives. The manipulation of your emotions by clergymen and charlatans lives. The uncertainty of your worth, the instability of your mind, and denigration of your will to live… lives on.

If Jesus doesn’t go to the cross, we all end up in hell. That’s why Satan loves religion, because people that love religion are miserable and will spend eternity in Hell.

So when you feel as if you have to measure up to a set of rules, Jesus recognizes its destructiveness and calls that Satanic. There are no more rules to follow. When you spend your life angling to become a “good person,” Jesus sees how it robs you of all life and calls that Satanic. There are no good people or bad people; there are only repentant bad people and unrepentant bad people. When you feel like God is punishing you for something you did wrong, Jesus pinpoints the perverse deceitfulness and calls that Satanic. All punishment for sin has been exacted on Christ Jesus.

In the end, filter all of your thoughts and decisions through this: If it is about Jesus and what he has done, it is good. If it is about you and what you are doing, it is Satanic. There is no other litmus test you need.

Rethinking the Gospel

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:45:51 -0400

Rethinking the Gospel:

Got this from Frank Viola’s blog. Read behind this guy. He has a way of refocusing the Body of Christ on what is actually in the Scriptures instead of encouraging us to waste our time on theological rabbit trails.

The Ungodly God, Pt. III

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:09:00 -0500

God doesn’t need godly Christians, because Jesus is not very godly. We established that in the last two posts. So what is the essence of being a Christian if not to do godly things like gather with other godly people, elect godly politicians, listen to godly music, and give to godly charities? Answer: love God, and love people.

When I drive around Atlanta, I regularly listen to Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host. Yesterday, he was challenging the conventional wisdom that unconditional love is a virtue. And, because I enjoy having people in traffic give me curious stares, I argued with his logic out loud.

The conversation went like this:

DP: “The concept of unconditional love is a relatively new one.”

Me: Yeah, it’s only about 2000 years old.

DP: “I’m not sure who came up with it.”

Me: I’m fairly certain it was an obscure Jewish philosopher named Jesus. Don’t feel bad if you don’t know about it- I think I happened to hear it on Jeopardy.

DP: “It’s unhealthy for everyone involved. It’s quite dangerous.”

Me: “This guy really gets it.”

DP: “You expect me to think that a wife should love her husband no matter how lazy and stupid he is?”

Me: “That’s the idea, Dennis.”

DP: “And that a father should love his children no matter how awful, disrespectful, and disobedient they are?”

Me: “Uh-huh.”

DP: “If we believe God loves us no matter what we do, what would motivate us to be on our best behavior at all times?”

Me: “Wait a second. Maybe you don’t get it.”

DP: “I am familiar with no biblical basis for the notion that God loves us no matter how much cruelty and evil we engage in.”

Me: “OK, we are definitely at odds here. Go back to talking about politics so we can agree again.”

Here’s all the Biblical basis you need: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” I’ll let the theologians do their circular-firing-squad thing over “does-God-really-love-everyone,” but Scripture cannot be clearer that his love is not predicated by our good behavior. If you’re a Calvinist, you are loved because God chose to love you. If you’re an Arminian, you are loved… because God chose to love you. You can’t sweep the Creator of the Universe off his feet by sending him flowers and asking him to prom. Calvinists win this round.

A merely godly person has a Dennis Prager kind of love. They only repay kindness for kindness. They give money to charities that make them feel warm and fuzzy. They are wives that work to stay attractive to their husbands only if he always mows the grass and buys them jewelry. They are husbands that only mow the grass and buy jewelry only if they find their wives attractive.

It sounds like an awful and injurious notion until you consider it’s exactly what Lord Jesus requires of his disciples. Jesus has always known that love, as humans generally define it, is a wild goose chase back to yourself and your misguided pursuit of happiness. So Jesus made it very clear who the object of love should be: “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength (Matt. 22:37).”

There is one conspicuously absent person from that list- you. As part of the Jesus revolution, you are to have little concern for yourself. Love God, and love people. You are not on the list. Just pursue the glory of God and the well-being of other people.

Dennis Prager would ask, “Where does this stop? The next thing you know, these delusional psychos will be dying for their enemies! This is deranged, self-neglectful behavior.” To which I would respond: exactly. And then I would ask the same question of the Christians who subscribe to this school of thought: “Where does your self-interest stop?”

If you feel sufficiently unloved, do you quit your marriage? Do you give up on your problematic child? Do you surround yourself only with sycophant yes-men? Do you only feed a starving, AIDS-infested orphan if they offer to first shine your shoes, pick up your laundry, and cook you an egg sandwich?

Those actions reflect only on the capricious natures of false gods like Allah, Zeus, Ishtar, Thor, Anubis, and Krishna. Self-interest does not reflect on the self-sacrifice and vulnerability of our God. Jesus has called us to gather all the passionate, neurotic love we reserve for ourselves and expend it on others. And if you are part of a Christian community, someone else will be wasting their love on you.

By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:35)

The Ungodly God, Pt. II

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:03:24 -0500

“Questions provide the key to unlocking our unlimited potential.”
-Tony Robbins, Motivational Speaker of the Century

I disagree. Left to fulfill our potential, we created “Toddlers and Tiaras.”

Left to fulfill our potential apart from God, we murdered Jesus. Left to perfectly fulfill every religious obligation and manmade moral imperative, we murdered Jesus. Left to build a utopian society apart from God, we murdered the Son of God. Left to worship our high-minded idea of what a god should look like, we didn’t recognize the one true God when he moved in next door. And then we murdered him. You and I have no potential.

“But we put a man on the moon,” you say. Scripture says, “Neil Armstrong killed Jesus.”

“But we discovered the possibility of alternate parallel universes.” Scripture says, “Stephen Hawking killed Jesus.”

“But I discovered a cure for AIDS!” First, share the secret with everyone else instead of defending your potential. Then, realize that Scripture says, “You killed Jesus.” And have I mentioned “Toddlers and Tiaras?”

We can exalt ourselves and all of our accomplishments until we are living on Mount Olympus, but we will only be more and more human, still just as greedy, lustful, jealous, and impetuous as the next self-aggrandizing nobody. You can have a high school diploma, several college degrees, Nobel prizes, scientific breakthroughs, and eventually be drafted by the populace to be President, but you will still be a human. And humans, left to fulfill their potential, killed Jesus.

For the Christian, the problem comes from defining “godly” as “accomplished.” If you have resisted temptation, you are a success. If you break Beaver Cleaver’s Sunday school attendance record, you are a success. If you stay married to one woman, have three God-fearing children, run a respected business, and donate to charity, you are a success.

If you are a professional clergyman, you have won the Olympic medal of Christian success. The Catholic Church and several Protestant denominations reward this type of success with titles, free swag, more authority, and money, as if moving up the echelon of the Southern Baptist convention is akin to ascending Jacob’s ladder to Heaven.

And we look at all these things, and we call them godly. But as I contended in my last post- these are all possible without the involvement of the Holy Spirit. There are literally millions of successful, moral, generally happy people walking the earth right now; none of them profess to know God, and all of them fit our definition of “godly.” The Apostle Paul writes about this type of godliness and it’s dangers in 2 Timothy 3:
People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

The truth is this: God is not after your godliness, because He is not very godly. He does things very unbecoming of classic deities. A cursory reading through the Gospels shows that he brings 400 gallons of wine to a drunken wedding feast, caresses the rotting flesh of lepers, spits in blind men’s eyes, runs into churches to cause violent disturbances, washes the nasty sore-laden grimy feet of his own servants, and spends quality time sharing meals with the scum of society. Though he has plenty of money and a personal treasurer, he spends his nights sleeping in ghettoes. He builds armies of followers out of whores and cheats. He forgives people who conspire to kill him, and dies to save his executioners.

THAT is the Biblical picture of true, unperverted godliness. The Greek word for “godliness” means to bring the presence of God into every experience. 2 Peter 1 says this kind of godliness is only possible through an intimate knowledge of Jesus Christ. Anything else is, as Paul says, a form of godliness that denies God’s power.

Jesus Christ has invited you to follow him. To shoulder his burden. To pick up a cross. To forsake your life and gain his. To share in his suffering. But he has never, ever asked you to be more “godly.” He has never asked you to fulfill your potential. He has only asked that you be willing and eager to be treated as he was treated. When you are willing to do that, God will fulfill his potential. And he didn’t just put a man on the moon; he created a few billion moons.

The Ungodly God, PT. 1

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:16:00 -0500

What does a non-Christian look like?

The mental picture that Christians seem to have of sinners is one of bloodthirsty, gothic gangsters. They only speak in vulgarities, sleep with multiple sexual partners nightly, and stumble through life impaired by meth. They generally congregate only in underground gay nightclubs, biker bars, Satanic temples, or black markets hidden in the sewers. They prowl the streets committing random acts of terror and carving pentagrams into the bodies of their victims. They eat children.

How many atheists, agnostics, Satanists, or Buddhists do you actually know? I doubt you know any that eat children. I doubt you know any with knowledge of secret bondage-in-a-sewer clubs. Not one person that subscribes to these four belief (or non-belief) systems claims to derive their sense of morality from any form of deity, and yet most of them would be considered “good people.” In essence, these godless savages worship themselves, because the one belief they do hold is that the seventy five years you get on this earth are best spent on the pursuit of happiness.

Just like Christians.

These people live and work in our communities. They go to our schools. They show up in churches. They hold office in our governments. They teach our children. They believe in the rule of law, good manners, and common decency. They raise their kids to be upstanding citizens. All of these are traits on which Christians claim to have a monopoly.

Most of Christian philosophy boils down to the notion that Jesus was a great man who offered humanity a better set of principles by which to live, and if we just abide by those ideals, both the earthly life and the afterlife will be far more pleasant.

But what good is that theology if every other culture in the history of man has figured out those principles without any cognizance of the one true God? Are Christians really the truth cartel, or is all truth God’s truth? Every civilization has a moral code that is remarkably similar to the American Christian’s.

Every culture recognizes and appreciates the law of “You reap what you sow.” And every peaceful culture bases their code of law on the Golden Rule: do unto others what you would have them do unto you. Easterners are on to something when they speak of karma and ahimsa. Every culture places value on some form of prayer or meditation. They know there is something spiritual happening; they just don’t cram the particulars into the box of Christian vernacular. Most importantly, atheists and pagans know right from wrong, just like Christians. Nobody has to explain, “Thou shalt not kill” to them. Romans 2:15 postulates that “the Law” that rules God’s Kingdom is “written on [every unbeliever’s] heart.”

“The Law” that the Bible speaks of is the basic operating procedure for human interaction. It is a set of values that govern right and wrong. And because God loves humans (for some ungodly reason), this law is very important to him for the protection of the ones he loves. When we violate or misapply one of these principles, we inevitably hurt someone else.

When the Apostle Paul says that this Law is written on our hearts, he means that it is ingrained into the consciousness of every single human. As it stands, there are more law-abiding people than outlaws. When the balance shifts, God generally responds with something like a great flood, fire and brimstone, a hostile takeover by foreign conquerors, or a Messiah.

Let’s assume humans are like cars. Actually, don’t assume that. I will not be held responsible for a few idiots ingesting gasoline because they take everything I say literally. FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS METAPHOR, let’s assume humans are like cars. In this particular metaphor’s economy, the most desired feature of any car (in this particular metaphor’s economy) is called “The Law.” Any car that is not equipped with The Law is deemed unsafe, worthless, and destined for a junkyard. So, the omnipotent government mandates that every car be fitted with the Law. If The Law is a standard feature on every model of human that rolls off the assembly line, what makes one more valuable than the other? Labels. Titles. Model names.

A Dodge Neon and a Chrysler PT Cruiser are the same car. They are built on the exact same chassis and driveline. They get the same gas mileage. The only thing that separates the two is the label, unless you can justify paying an extra $10,000 for PT Cruiser’s body shape (which, like a mullet, is business in the front and party in the back). Either way, the perceived value is determined by something entirely superficial. They have the same guts.

If we all have the same guts, why is salvation so often boiled down to unfair judgments based on works and appearances? Even if Christians claim that one is saved by faith and not by works, we still make unfair judgments based on works. Ask yourself this: what subset of people is more fixated on actions and appearances than Christians?

What churchgoer really notices when a normal, law-abiding, body-modification-free youth group kid gets saved? When Beaver Cleaver shows up at the church’s doorstep, there is little concern for his soul, but plenty of salivation over having him join the ranks of our church. The condition of his soul is often overlooked because we need him on the worship team, or we need to plug him into the puppet ministry or something.

On the other hand, the reformation of an orgy-loving, heroine fiend/rock musician is always a shock and a delight, so much so that Christians turn them into trophies. We parade them in front of congregations, put them on all the TV shows, and make them instant fixtures on the youth camp speaking circuit. In our minds, Beaver Cleaver might as well have been a Christian all along. He already fit the mold. But the dope fiend rock musician’s salvation must have truly taken an earth-shaking miracle on par with the parting of the red sea, because without Christ he was probably a flesh-eating, demon-possessed maniac.

What about mission trips and service projects? Have you ever noticed that our benevolent evangelism efforts are always geared towards the poor, as if they need Jesus any less than the rich? If you actually (beeear with me…) read the words of Jesus, you would know that it is nearly impossible for the rich to make it to Heaven.

Many of us really are after a salvation that is based entirely on shallow standards. We just want to claim the “good” people under the right label. We want to claim that any car fitted with The Law is a Christian make and model. But that’s ridiculous, and you know it. Everything we know about goodness and godliness is wrong.

The ugly truth is that you don’t need God to be what most would call a “good person.” We don’t need to be conscious of God to be upstanding citizens or to raise virtuous children. There are a few billion people who do that just fine without Jesus Christ, because God has built the Law into every person’s spirit.

Please don’t think I want to diminish the work of the Holy Spirit. He alone convicts people of their need for God and brings about true repentance. He brings about the second birth and regeneration in every believer. But He doesn’t issue “Get-out-of-Hell-Free” cards based on your adherence to a moral code. He wants no part of cheap salvation that is meant to cleanse the conscience and make you feel like a good person.

Good people don’t need God, and it is also true that God doesn’t need good people. There are countless Scriptural examples of God passing over all the good, strong, morally virtuous people in favor of murderous, adulterous, wishy-washy deadbeats like King David to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

Remember, He is the one that said “There is none righteous. Not one.” There is nothing good about the human race. We are by nature and by choice damned. Just in case you still don’t get it, here’s what God thinks of you apart from Him:

Romans 3:10-18

“There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Jesus often castigated the good people publicly. He would say your mouth is like a rotten, filthy grave. Your lips are so vile that they kill people. Deception and bitterness is your native language. Everything you touch falls apart.

So much of modern Christianity is about helping you become a better you, as if Jesus died so you could fulfill your potential. The reality is this: left to fulfill our potential, you and I murdered Jesus.

The Most Awful Christmas Story Ever.

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:55:00 -0500

“Greetings, you who are highly favored! Blessed are you among women.” You’ll find these words spoken to Mary (mother of Jesus) in Luke chapter one. That angel was a freakin’ liar, or like a fake angel.

Or maybe, Criss Angel.

Mary had her entire life planned out: She was going to marry her middle school sweetheart Joseph the manly carpenter, have a bunch of Torah-loving babies that will grow up and take care of her, and die forgotten in her dusty little town in the middle of nowhere. It was a respectable, normal, uneventful, under-the-radar life of cranking widgets, punching timecards, and carpooling kids to soccer games. And then this jerk angel shows up and starts calling her blessed.

From the moment she was designated as “highly favored” and particularly “blessed among women,” her life got irredeemably, catastrophically awful. The Holy Spirit impregnated her with the human form of Jesus Christ; that sounds like a blessing, but in reality she just became a pregnant, unmarried teen mom. Try explaining that one to your parents. “No, Dad! It’s cool! My boyfriend and I haven’t been fooling around. We’re doing that whole ‘True Love Waits’ thing. The Holy Spirit did this to me! And no, that is not my nickname for Joseph!” Imagine the judgmental stares. The whispering. The smears. The exclusion.

Then, the Roman ruler Herod orders all the Jews to go home for a census, which means a very pregnant Mary was forced to take a 200 mile camel ride to her hometown of Bethlehem. This “highly favored and blessed” stuff sounds like a fast-track to miscarriage. And when she arrives, the motel receptionist promptly informs her that he has no vacancies, so he sends her highly favored butt to sleep in the barn. (I don’t know why this particular motel had a barn out back. Different culture, I guess.)

And because of her favorability rating with the Most High, Mary’s water breaks in the barn. Then the horror story of human birth, with the blood, and placenta, and bleeeeck gross bleeeec;lkadf commences, with drooling cows and diseased mules taking a dump a few feet away. It’s not exactly the romantic picture that Christmas songs and Sunday school lessons paint. It is actually too graphic to accurately portray on film. I wouldn’t watch that movie.

Fast forward a year or two. Herod find out that “a King has been born in Bethlehem.” He is so neurotically obsessed with holding on to his power that he orders all male babies in Bethlehem to be murdered. That’s a hundred babies brutally and unjustly slaughtered by thoroughly cruel Roman thugs. Mary and Joseph escape to the desert of Egypt (another freaking camel journey?!), with the heaviest consciences in the world: a hundred children were just killed, and a few hundred more lives ruined, all because God blessed Mary’s womb.

And thirty years later, she watches the child she nursed and nurtured methodically executed. She watches 75% of Jesus’ skin ripped from his body and a crown of inch long thorns squeezed through his head. This highly favored woman watches her son carry a cross through angry, cursing, spitting, stone-throwing mobs, up to the hill he planned to die on. And then the most blessed woman alive watches her baby boy endure the most excruciating execution in history: an eight hour exercise in asphyxiation.

Blessed. Highly favored. The head and not the tail. The lender and not the borrower. A chosen generation. A royal priesthood. More than a conqueror. Above and not beneath. These are the catchphrases of the happy-go-lucky, allergic-to-pain Western Church.

But in light of Mary, who wants to be blessed?

I listened to an 18 year old kid with terminal cancer and a few weeks to live speak about the faithfulness of God. He called his disease “the blessing of cancer.” Full of power, boldness, and the Holy Spirit, he said he was blessed because he knew when he would die; he felt sorry for all the people who blithely roam about the earth with no purpose just hoping to make it another day. I cannot tell you that this kid’s theology is 100% correct, but he was content to bask in the riches and glory of Christ Jesus. He was doing what James 1:2 instructed: “Count it all joy when you face trials of all kinds because it produces perseverance.” This kid was in the same spiritual state that Mary found herself in: trusting in God to do something amazing with her pain.

Modern Christendom has no answer for these anomalies. We just say, “God works in mysterious ways.” But that doesn’t address the questions everybody has. Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Why are some people born with mental or physical impairments, and some people die at birth? Why are some people healed, and others are not?

Simply put, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this: I do not care. I am not here to answer all of the questions. I am here to do what I see my Father doing. I am here to establish God’s Kingdom. If a “bad thing” happens to a “good person,” I refuse to soothe the pain with platitudes and bumper sticker sentiments. I refuse to make excuses for God. I think, for the first time in my life, I am OK with believing that just maybe it was better for the Kingdom.

We live in complete denial of our loving Creator who wants to lavish every blessing on us because we don’t recognize his gifts as valuable. We want to be blessed, but we don’t want his blessings. We want to win every battle and shed no blood. We want good health, but we don’t a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. We want money, but we don’t want peace. We only want to throw worthless currency down our bottomless souls and hope that we are magically one day satisfied.

All I am saying is that if you lost your job, maybe it was better for the Kingdom. Maybe not. If your grandmother dies of heart disease, maybe it was better for the Kingdom. Maybe not. I assert neither that God caused it to happen, nor that he allowed it to happen, but that he uses all things for his glory and for your good (Romans 8:28). He used the tragedy of Mary’s life, the most blessed woman alive, to bring about our redemption.

None of this is to say that God is mean-spirited to some and gives preferential kindness to others. But it does mean that we have got to get our eyes off our own prosperity and get them fixated on the Kingdom. It does mean that Scripture requires you to take pride in your humble position (James 1:9).

It does mean that before we were a thought in our mother’s heads, God had formed us and laid out a master plan for our lives. It does mean that we cannot chain God to our feeble ideas of blessing and curse; we will miss most of what God has actually blessed us with. We may get blessings we don’t want.

You may get the blessing of losing your health, your reputation, your job, your house, your car, or your family. Or you may get the blessing of an unexpected spirit-pregnancy in a small town, with dashes of barn births and baby genocide thrown in. But you must learn to recognize God’s blessing.

As long as you are squarely in the middle of God’s will, you are blessed. According to the entire book of Ephesians, the greatest blessing is being adopted into the family of Jesus Christ. Romans 6 makes it clear that being part of his family is being united with Jesus Christ, in death and in life. The greatest blessing is being united with Christ. Is that what you really want?

Think of the places Jesus slept. Think of the murder scenes, tombs, leper colonies, ghettos, and execution chambers he ended up in. You may have to be meek, poor in spirit, mourning, and persecuted- that’s what Jesus calls “blessed” in Matthew 5. You may end up alone, sweating blood, abandoned by your friends and family, awaiting your arrest and execution.

Are you positive you want to be united with Jesus? Because someone might actually treat you like Jesus. Are you sure you want to be blessed?

Merry Christmas.

"What religion can deliver me is the prospect of serfdom, mental and physical, and the chance to live..."

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:03:48 -0500

“What religion can deliver me is the prospect of serfdom, mental and physical, and the chance to live under fantastic and cruel laws.”

- Christopher Hitchens, in agreement with Jesus

Guest Blog: The Wedding Scandal

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:34:00 -0500

From sharpiron.wordpress.com

It’s always a treat when someone points out something new (at least for me) in scriptures. Bruxy Cavey, in his excellent book “The End of Religion” talks about the scandal contained within the story of Jesus’ first miracle. This is something that had never occurred to me before. See if you can pick it out.

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

“Dear woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied, “My time has not yet come.”

His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.^[a]

Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.

(John 2:1-11)

Do you see it? If the wedding had run dry then we can assume that there must have been a number of empty wine vessels available. Yet rather than refilling the jars and jugs of wine, Jesus deliberately chose the sacred jars that religious people used for ceremonial hand washing. In performing his first recorded miracle Jesus intentionally desecrates a religious icon. This is hardly something that would go unnoticed at the time; obviously John felt it was significant. But significant of what?

As Cavey simply puts it: “He (Jesus) purposely chooses these sacred jars to challenge the religious system by converting them from icons of personal purification into symbols of relational celebration. Jesus takes us from holy water to wedding wine. From legalism to life. From religion to relationship.”

At least at that particular time Jesus felt that what was needed was more wine and less religion. Why would he feel any differently today?

Jesus Christ Superstar, Pt. 5: The Stronghold of Church

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 21:57:00 -0500

These days, the “called out ones” find themselves depending on a manmade religious machine that God never intended to build in the first place. We have created a monster, and we have this weird symbiotic relationship with it. So what do we do now? Do we have a responsibility to tear down the false church? Should we just stop attending our local gatherings? Should I stop sending money to the anti-goat-erotica ministry of St. Francis National Evangelical Spiritual Baptist Faith Archdiocese of Canada?

I don’t see any Scriptural evidence that it is our job to cripple the false church infrastructure in a literal sense even if we are armed with the truth. The Scripture describes God’s truth as a “two edged sword,” which can cut the ropes of religious bondage OR decapitate an enemy. Left to dismantle the church ourselves, we would probably just be swinging our swords around and killing many an innocent bystander. I am not calling for mass boycotts of church-as-we-know-it. But I do believe that Scripture calls for us to tear down our personal strongholds.

I believe church-as-we-know-it is what Scriptures call a “stronghold.” A stronghold is literally a walled and guarded fortress inside enemy lines. Figuratively, it is a thinking pattern based entirely on human confidence and pride that has ingrained itself into our way of life. And just like a fortress inside enemy lines, it is not easily defeated. Just like a compulsion, obsession, or fear can cause a vulnerable girl to develop an eating disorder, the stronghold of church can cause us to inflict serious damage on ourselves and inadvertently wreak havoc on the lives of others.

The stronghold of church is so formidable that we define our faith by denominations and our associations to certain pastors or organizations. If you question the traditions of a church, you will be met with a vicious defense and a barrage of accusations. We have even created our own subgenres of crappy music and literature specifically tailored to the churchy individual, and feel as if anything else is a dire threat to our salvation. Oh yeah, and there was that time that the stronghold of church drove us to use God to sanction military Crusades to kill/convert every Muslim we could find. We seem much more passionate about church than we are about Christ Jesus.

The Protestant movement appears even more hypocritical when you consider it prides itself on the doctrine of “saved by faith, not by works.” The American Protestant church as a whole is based entirely in works (at least Catholics are sincere about their theology). We form relationships for the sake of achieving a religious community instead of naturally developing communities based on a shared love of Jesus Christ. We base the security of our salvation in attending services and giving money so that religious professionals can do the work of the ministry for us rather than allow the Holy Spirit to use each one of us to heal, preach, prophesy, encourage, etc. Our only motivation to share Jesus Christ with anyone is rooted only in cheerless obligation, and our “faith” never touches our real lives. Works. Nothing but works.

We actually believe that since we recited the magical Christian incantation called the”prayer of salvation” (which I challenge you to find in Scripture) and we loosely follow the rules laid down by the Western church that we are powerful agents for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. That is delusional, and that is a stronghold.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:4-6,

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.

What is the American church hurting? I mean, is it really all that bad? Well, no, except that it sets itself up against the knowledge of God, which is to say that it completely destroys any need for the deity we claim to worship. We have taken the anti-Christ’s clothes and draped them over the Christ who needs no clothes.

So let’s tear this monstrosity down, but for once, let’s do it God’s way. Begin by praying for God to highlight what it is that you can do. Maybe that means you start tackling individual religious prejudices as God highlights them to you. Perhaps it means you start asking (with all love and meekness) your church leaders about why it is your church does what it does. Revisit your deeply held theological beliefs. Once again, I am not telling you to specifically do anything besides take every thought captive and make sure it is in complete and total obedience to the Head of the Church, Jesus Christ, not your emotions or your logic.

Stop practicing a form of godliness and start actually living out the power of the Gospel. There’s a reason you cannot find satisfaction in church. There is a reason that getting your theology correct is never enough. There is a reason the grass is always greener at the other temple, and as a result you can’t seem to find a church that does everything “right.” The answer is simple: you weren’t wired by the Creator to build in vain.

You were hand built by God. Psalm 139 says you were knit together in your mother’s womb. You were “woven together in the depths of the earth.” Just like the original man, Adam, you were created to be the image bearer of God. You don’t need any clothes either; your emotions, your reasoning, your values, your morals, and your sensibilities about justice, worth, and power are all strongholds. They are all filthy rags. You were designed exclusively to carry his glory around and establish his Kingdom on Earth.

I pray that every believer has the experience that Peter had: an experience upon which Jesus wants to build his Kingdom.

Guest Blog: Grisly Labels

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:16:00 -0500

Another guest blog post from www.trevinwax.com

Why Smoking Won’t End Because of Grisly Labels

In June, the Food and Drug Administration announced that, beginning next year, cigarette packs will have graphic pictures plastered on them.

Rotting teeth and gums, people hooked up to breathing machines, a corpse, blackened lungs – these grisly images are the newest attempt by the government to curb smoking. Federal Law will require the warning labels to take up half of the pack, on both sides, by the end of 2012.

Are tobacco companies worried? Not really. Even though the FDA estimates that 213,000 people will stop smoking in 2013, the tobacco companies estimate that their loss of revenue will be less than one percent.

Who is right? The tobacco companies or the FDA?

I’m afraid the tobacco companies are right. Their leaders recognize something about human nature that the FDA does not: Unhealthy behavior cannot be eradicated by merely pointing to the consequences.

The problem of addiction goes much deeper than a warning label. And though the FDA is commendably seeking to put an end to a destructive habit that leads to the premature deaths of thousands of people each year, it is naive to think that grisly images will deter a large number of smokers.

The Church and the “Grisly Label” Approach
Too many times in our churches, when we talk about sin, we share the assumption of the FDA: that people, when given enough information, will make rational, healthy decisions.

Not so.

Sin is irrational. It doesn’t make sense. That’s the whole nature of sinfulness – it goes against the reality of the world we live in. It goes against the grain of our intended submission to the One who has created us.

We might be able to appeal to a person’s willpower to stop engaging in destructive habits. And through common grace, some people may indeed get up the nerve to stop a bad habit.

But we are foolish to think that most people are destroying themselves because they don’t know better. The truth is, we often do know better, and yet we continue on the road to destruction.

Though we know that sin is deep-rooted and irrational, we often act as if sin’s consequences will be the big deterrent to bad behavior. So in youth groups across America, we pass out nasty pictures showing the effects of STDs and tell kids, This is what will happen if you have sex. In marriage seminars, we tell the sad stories of men who lost their families because of a porn addiction, a sexual exploit, or a burst of anger.

We Are Silly Sinners
Now don’t get me wrong. I think we should remind people of sin’s consequences. It is crouching at the door. It has the desire to master us. Be sure your sin will find you out. And of course, we tell a little child to obey or else face punishment (a swift hand to the backside, a time-out, grounding, etc.). One of the ways we learn good behavior from bad behavior is by recognizing that our choices have consequences.

But we are foolish if we think that life change will be rooted in rationality. It’s simply not so. We are silly sinners, engaging in activities we know are destructive to our bodies and souls. Yet somehow we are deceived into thinking we are special, that we will escape judgment. And no matter how many friends die of lung cancer or how many friends contract sexually-transmitted diseases… no matter how many marriages break up because of porn or how many relationships end because of anger, we continue to sin, willfully and (worse) knowingly.

Scared by the Law; Changed by the Gospel
Speaking of the consequences of sinful behavior is good. It’s what the law of God does. It can scare us into temporary obedience. But even as it reveals sinful behavior, it can’t remove and replace a sinful heart.

Grisly images may warn us against the consequences of a bad habit, but they won’t change the heart of a smoker. Only the gospel can change a heart.

What the FDA doesn’t realize (and what many evangelicals forget too) is that sin is a worship-issue. Our destructive behaviors are not just behaviors. They are a symptom of a deeper problem, a root cause – idolatry. Our affections are elsewhere. Our behavior follows our affections. And only the gospel can change the affections to the point that behavior follows.

Jesus Christ Superstar, Pt. 4: Suing God

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:08:00 -0500

Sometimes, our false righteousness takes a less insidious form; we use our fear and distaste of certain sins to justify or vilify certain actions so that we don’t have to be offended by all sin. Many Christians, though they don’t verbalize it, believe God pukes at the thought of homosexuality, but doesn’t bat an eye at divorce. He condemns axe murderers, but he lets the maliciously angry slide. For proof, look no further than obese preachers who take smokers to task for “damaging their temple,” or Christians who drink alcohol in secret (because God apparently disapproves of drinking but is cool with lying about it).

Ever hear someone say, “I could never believe in a God who would _________?” Arminians just can’t believe God would predestine any soul for hell, and Calvinists can’t believe God would let people choose their destiny. Some refuse to believe in hell at all. Atheists can’t come to terms with the idea that a loving God would allow tragedy to happen on Earth.

But what does God have to say about the matter? In Isaiah 55:9, God says, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

When Job accused God of being unjust because of his poverty, disease, and loss, God asked him, “Where were you when I laid the Earth’s foundation?” (Job 38:2) In chapter 40, God effectively says, “What you gonna do, Job? Sue me?”

It’s a fair question. While he was creating dinosaurs, hand-building the human genome, and pimping out planets and wrapping them in custom-made atmospheres, where were you? Nowhere. So what gives you the right to call the Creator into question for anything you perceive as a character flaw? How could you rightfully perceive any injustice in him? That’s like buying a house, finding that you don’t like the dimensions of the master bathroom, and suing the architect for the offense that’s been committed against your comfort level.

When we use God as a foundation for our political, religious, or ideological disapproval of a certain person or people, we can be sure that we have dressed God in some nasty stuff. As political activist Anne Lamott once said, “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

In Isaiah 64, God calls our attempts at righteousness, “filthy rags.” In the original Hebrew, he is referring to menstrual cloths. Used tampons. And we actually dare to wrap the omnipotent King of the Universe in such filth.

Our God simply looks better with no clothes. He just doesn’t need us marketing Him, repackaging Him, and rebranding Him. He has no need to look traditional, untraditional, cool, or attractive.

Jesus’ invitation to be a disciple has zero commercial appeal. He said things like, “Take up your cross daily and follow me.”

This is all the early church had to work with. They didn’t even have the Bible. All they had was the revelation of Jesus Christ as the living God. The Messiah. The answer to every question. The remedy for every ailment. The treasure.

They were telling the establishment, “Everything you know is wrong.” …and that you weren’t worthy of God unless you hated your family. …and that unless you gave away everything you owned you weren’t fit for God’s kingdom.…and that unless you are willing to literally die on a cross, you can forget about God altogether, because He won’t accept anything else.

I, for one, have never heard this kind of challenge in the American church. I don’t hear Christianity’s standard-bearers on TV calling for repentance. I don’t hear them calling for commitment. I only hear them calling for a $100 seed that guarantees you God’s favor, a ten-fold return on your investment into their ministry, and a free love gift (a musical refrigerator magnet that plays “Come as I Am!”).

I am convinced most pastors would rather believe the mystery of Christ boils down to a slick cover band with a vast repertoire of the newest praise and worship hits, three projection screens, and a well-prepared persuasive speech designed to tug at your heartstrings and empty your pockets. Most ministries are designed around the idea of enlisting as many converts as possible. They water down the Gospel and dress it in smoke-machines and flashy lights to make it more seductive to the masses. “Filthy rags” are the latest trend in fashionable Christian attire.

I have this sneaky feeling that Jesus, detached from the promise of a middle to middle-upper class American lifestyle, is not enough for the modern American church. That scares the crap out of me. And it should scare you.

It’s like the rich young ruler (camel-into-a-needle guy) that came after Jesus. He wanted Jesus. But he wanted Jesus plus stuff. Jesus plus a house. Jesus plus a couple of well-adjusted children. Jesus plus a doting wife. Jesus plus two cars. Jesus plus a padded bank account. Jesus plus a clean bill of health. Jesus plus the admiration of his peers. Jesus plus a promotion on the job. Jesus plus relief from guilt. Jesus plus an undying sense of security.

And I know this crap is being preached as gospel because I grew up in churches that perpetuated it, and I continue to hear it on TV and read it from the bestseller stand.

Jesus promised us none of that. Jesus Christ was not preoccupied with filling the pews and the offering plates. He was not concerned with building a bigger congregation. Though he occasionally attracted large crowds, I do not believe Jesus could have pastored a megachurch. He was too controversial. He was too challenging. He demanded too much of his followers. If you were willing to accept a violent, abrupt end to your life, then He had nothing to offer but himself. At the peak of his ministry, he only had a small group of 12 committed disciples who never left his side. Specifically, it was these guys:

So what about his public ministry? Didn’t he openly impress people in the town square with miracles and transcendent Barack Obama-like speeches?

No. His public persona was dangerous, offensive, and divisive. He publicly confronted apathy with a whip. He cussed out the Pharisees in the town square. He made the world watch while his flesh was ripped from his body and his wrists were nailed to planks of wood.

But the private Jesus was very different. Those who could plow through their emotional garbage and the initial shock of Jesus’ “Take me or leave me” gospel got to know the tender-hearted love of the Prodigal Father. Privately, Jesus healed, forgave, and blessed people. And he would tell them to keep their life-altering encounter with him under wraps.

When he rose from the dead, he did so in secret. He let the rumor spread that his body was stolen. Then he revealed himself to only a few people: the “called out ones.” He began building His Church on that revelation.

Jesus Christ Superstar, Pt. 3: The Naked God

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 20:55:00 -0500

The Church cannot be built on the pursuit of happiness, self-esteem, prosperity, political causes, evangelism, relevance, inclusiveness, the gifts, purpose, or even sound doctrine. It must be built by revealing the character of Jesus Christ. It is all about taking the focus off of you and putting it on the only person that matters: Jesus Christ. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ Jesus (Col. 2:3).

The pursuit of happiness, prosperity, relevance, etc.: these are all distractions. They are hallmarks of lowercase gods. We simply must strip the lowercase attributes off of everyone’s perception of God. WE built OUR church on such shaky foundations, and it is crumbling beneath us. We have labored in vain. Millions leave the Christian faith every year. But when God builds HIS church, full of His glory, it stands so strong that all of hell cannot topple it.

The world, in its original format, was full of God’s glory. There was no crime, violence, pain, emotional torment, death, or air of general crappiness because it was also void of man’s glory ( since God made man in His own image). Adam was a direct reflection of the personhood of God. He wears God’s own glory and splendor as a crown (Psalm 8:5). He was God’s love, majesty, splendor, and power packed into a naked body. The only other trait that the writer of Genesis deems important to share with the reader about Adam and Eve is that they were naked. The writer spends all of Genesis chapters one and two telling us about the mind-blowing fabrication of the cosmos at the hands of an Almighty God; then he caps off the greatest two chapters in literary history with the phrase, “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

That’s it. The man and his wife were naked. He tells us nothing about the personality of God, and he tells us nothing else about the crowning achievement of God’s handiwork. All we need to know about man is that he is naked. And since this man is the only picture of God we have, all we need to know about God besides his triune nature is that He is naked.

Psalm 104 says God is clothed in nothing but splendor and majesty. He needs nothing but himself. God is naked and unashamed. He is naked and unconcerned. He doesn’t spend hours in the mirror agonizing over how to better market himself to a judgmental public. He doesn’t have an image consultant. He has never hired Rachel Zoe. He doesn’t agonize for weeks over what outfit he is going to wear to the Dove Awards.

What does that mean for a present day Church that is fixated on dressing God up to be more appealing to the public? When our brains are fixed on using God for self-improvement, we are dressing him in our ridiculous clothes. When we reduce God to a relevant, seeker-sensitive good guy where people do not have to commit to a challenging, palpable, lasting life change, we have wrapped him up in scandal. When we care more about building up our denominations and tearing down other denominations, we are covering his beauty with our filthy rags. When we picture Christ as a disapproving judge with no grace to give or as a carefree and unjust hippie who is OK with sin, we have robed him in slander.

Jesus Christ Superstar, Pt. 2

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 19:39:00 -0500

More often than not, these “called out ones” gather together in small communities. They see reflections of Jesus in other believers, find it attractive, hang out, and take care of each other. Whatever one person lacks, another supplies. Every person willingly and joyfully surrenders what he has to make sure everyone’s needs are met. The community acts just like an organism: organically and effortlessly. It does not create an entirely new system (or “ministry”) or prop up a government to administer the new avant-garde set of guidelines. It just works.

If God is the head, the Church is his body. Paul says in Ephesians 1:22-23, “God placed all things under [Jesus’] feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”

Notice there is one head for the entire body. The Church is not a multi-headed monster. It is not a fractured quasi-network of religious sects who formulate their own vision statements and mission statements and try to figure out how to fit God into them.

Paul’s description of the Church looks more like this: Jesus likes to daydream, and those dreams that roll around in His head can and must be made a reality on Earth by the working of his body. The Church is the mechanism by which his glory will be spread throughout the entire world.

And you and I have the responsibility to make all that happen, right? Wrong.

“The rock” Jesus talks about is not an evangelism program or a church membership drive. It isn’t even a social justice program. It’s bigger than any movement, be it Charismatic, or Emergent, or what have you. The rock that Jesus talks about building a church on is God’s public revelation of himself to man. It is unmasking Jesus Christ and exposing him as mysterious, wild, beautiful, and glorious. Notice Jesus did not mention human resourcefulness in the Church-building process. Jesus said HE would build HIS Church on Earth.

We humans think we are an enlightened species worthy of the universe’s admiration because we sent a man to the moon. Big freaking deal. In the grand scope of things, we connected two tiny dots in the infinitely expanding universe to each other. We haven’t even dented the surface of possibility within our own dimension. We don’t even know why yawning is contagious.

Jesus is talking about another dimension of existence that humans cannot fathom. His Kingdom, as 1 Corinthians 15 says, is “imperishable.” Everything in our world is perishable; it will die. When Jesus talks about his Kingdom or his Church, he is describing an eternal universe or reality that we cannot conceptualize. And he intends to make that reality our reality.

Really think about what an impossible task that is: He will make a divine, intangible, unimaginable Heaven an actuality on Earth. Since he is the perfect fusion of God and man, the Word made flesh, it only makes sense that only Jesus Christ could blur the lines between Heaven and Earth. Are we so arrogant that we believe we are even capable of making that happen? Or have we just not thought this through?

We can build our own weird, warped, powerless incarnation of it, but not the actual Church. Psalm 127:1 says, “Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain.” The implications of that verse are huge. And depressing.

That means that the bulk of the past millennia of Church history can be chalked up as a complete and total loss. In 325 A.D., Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity a state religion and “legitimized” it to the rest of the world by borrowing elements of pagan religions (temples, church services, professional priests and musicians, dress codes, pews, steeples, seminaries, etc.) and implementing them as standard practice of the Christian faith. And the Church has been struggling to fit all of those alien elements into the Gospel ever since.

The most recent, cutting edge attempt man has made at building God’s church is characterized by making everything small, intimate, and fueled by coffee. It’s a reaction against the explosion of hyper-organized megachurches. The assumption is, “If we just meet in a house and fellowship, then we are a non-churchy, cool, relevant New Testament church.”

The problem is that it is still just an attempt at doing church better, like when a quirky, second-rate coffee shop opens to show Starbucks “how it is (supposedly) done.” Unless the Holy Spirit is dictating its actions, God didn’t design it. It is still just a bunch of people trying to fit pagan square pegs into Heavenly round holes.