Thoughts of The Day 11/24/11 Thanksgiving

Thoughts of The Day
11/24/11
Thanksgiving

Observations:
Information overload. Staying at the Lang’s up in Grinell, Iowa. The worst thing about being here is the fact that their family is so freakin’ legit and I know that eventually, Jesse is going to leave Ozark and go to Iowa state. I love that guy, he is one devoted and loyal man of God. Had thanksgiving dinner and then a Long, long, discussion with a friend? Of the langs/younkins, not really sure who. A lot of it is semantics, learned something from him though, that is, that highly objective thinkers can easily think that they are not scarred or wounded by something just because they don’t have emotion tied to their thoughts and provocations. I am a highly objective thinker, and this was revealing. All theological issues are heart issues, and we tend to think that heart equals emotion. Well thinkers just don’t experience emotions the same way if at all, or at least with much more rarity, logical thoughts and streams are what we function with most of the time. It is the difference of thinkers and feelers in the Myers Briggs personality test. Theological issues that thinkers come in contact with are heart issues, just in a different matter. Time for an example:

If I, as a thinker, have an issue with believing that Christianity, or rather Christ, is the only way to heaven, that my salvation (soteriology) is the only right salvation that will actually save. Let’s say my issue with salvation leads me to look at the validity of other religions, that others are actually going to heaven, it is very apparent that something afflicted my theological comfort. I would immediately point to hell, hell was the problem. The truth of hell sucks, and I would use much more crass words because of the great sorrow of the truth of hell. No one wants to condemn people, and that’s exactly what Christians have to pronounce, sadly, and we have missed out on this because of the generations before us which burnt and scorched the world with talk of hell. The heart issue is hell, it just seems to harsh, and we don’t want to abandon our meaning or our God so we look to try and deconstruct hell, into little pieces, pack it away in a closet, we accept the validity of other scriptures (qu’ran, book of Mormon, ba’hai scriptures, etc.), and we unpack the other religions that we had packed away accepting and tolerating them. After a while we don’t realize that you can’t pack the fire of hell away in a closet, because it will burn down the house and you with it. The problem we thinkers can have with our heart issues are much like mind issues really, with hell we have trouble reconciling, and logically believing that an eternal punishment called hell could come from God if he is good. Our heart issues are largely separated from emotion, this doesn’t mean that these are heart issues. The heart is the center of belief, the center of what we accept to be true as well as well as where emotions and pain and love are held and where they flow from.
For all the thinkers we need to be objective to the fact that we can think that we are being objective when we really are not being objective. All it is, is that we have learned how to think without feeling our heart, but the issues still surfaces, regardless of our feeling it or not

Hell:
Regarding God and hell, we cannot get rid of hell. First of all because it is true and it is real, secondarily even if we did, we would make God less good. We would think a lack of punishment would make God more good. Well it would make him more likable but not more good. God is good and holy and requires justice, for himself but primarily for us. Love considers others more than themselves, God is love and considers us more, thinks about us more, if God is consumed with concern for us, which is apparent in scripture, he is doing everything he can to save us, then his justice concerns us. The biggest issue with justice is that we are all guilty, we are all sinners and all deserve the price which is death; eternal death; hell. So how can God be seeking justice for humans if humans are the ones guilty, regardless of outside influence that Satan brings. He is guilty alone but we have cohorts with him regardless of our understanding that that is what our sin does. Hell then is a deserving justice for all men, but if all men are thrown into hell then there is no vindication for anyone, for all are perpetrators and all are victims. But through faith in Christ, grace is administered, which is the wiping away of sins continuously, all sins of the past of an individual’s life, and the sins that are committed or omitted afterward during the process of sanctification. Because God is infinitely good and holy, sin is infinitely offensive. So we have these people able the escape the well-deserved judgment, now we have a people that are becoming holy, but will not reach holiness in these bodies, because of the fall, and the fallen world around them, it is impossible to be 100% holy. But now we have a people being redeemed and forgiven, so now the people going to hell are going to hell to pay the price. And their perpetration are things like bringing others to hell, sinning against others, and sinning against God, so God is taking up the cause of the guilty as well as the innocent, who are innocent by the grace of God.
Now the problem of hell is that we want the bad people to go there and not the people that we consider good moral people. The issue there is that the ‘bad people’ are really only guilty of a civil badness, a badness decided by the majority of society, people like Hitler, Stalin etc. But we fail to acknowledge that we are fallen people, and we have fallen worlds, fallen societies, and fallen minds. We fail to realize that our own badness makes smaller badness seem like not so bad after all. Our minds are distorted, we as unholy creatures, unholy products of the fall, cannot see the full perpetration of ‘small sins’ to a holy God, or the devastation that ‘small sins’ bring to the lives of others and how they contribute to the badness of society. We need a god sized lens, like oh, say the bible, God’s word, his revelation of our sin, to us. We get self-defensive when people start saying things like this because it means that we would be thrown in lot with Hitler, rapists and all the real bad lot, when we think we are only kind of bad. The truth is God is God and we are not, judging the fairness of hell based on civil morality, suggests that we are building and governing our own kingdom/democracy/(place type of government or lack-there-of here), when the reality is that God owns everything and he will build his kingdom, regardless of whether we are on board, or even if we are in the way of it.
From the Christian perspective we however can’t imagine why someone would want to oppose the kingdom of God, it’s just too darned good, who wants to oppose that and not be a part of it? Well, the answer is self-idolaters. Fallen minds are rebellious and don’t like the idea of being subject to anyone.
As Christians we can’t argue it away, Jesus said it, scriptures say it and confirm it, there is too much fire talk. Really don’t want to get into specifics about hell, fairness of eternal punishment, just haven’t thought about it enough or studied it enough.

Skepticism:
Another lesson learned today, skepticism needs boundaries. Within the Christian Context, in the body of believers, I’m talking honest to goodness, fruit tested, faith in Christ, works out of faith, bible literate, devoted, loving Christians, in this context, skepticism needs to take a back seat. We limit our learning with skepticism, especially during a sermon, a talk, things of the like. If we take our skepticism to the community, then there cannot be a one in mindedness, there cannot be trust, there can’t be redeemed human relationships if you think everyone is out to rub false doctrine off on you. The truth is that people will harm your theology, not by much but they probably will, but we aren’t saved by theology, we are saved by faith. Our theology is easily repaired in comparison to relationships with people. We may realize that we changed something we believed for a dumb reason. Now this is not to be lackadaisical about our theological doctrine, it is just to say that outside of the context of community with believers it is useless. If we are one man island Christians then we are disobeying God, and useless. The Church is our home and what has been decided to be used by God. Skepticism cannot become king because then we elevate truth above people, and we separate truth from the context of humans, truth is supposed to live in the human heart, and our sharpening each other through discussion and love and challenging is what makes the truth in our heart secure and helps to manifest it into action. It helps root the truth in our hearts through love, and it helps for the faith in the truth to sprout and grow out of that into our actions and produce fruit.
The other problem with crowned-as-king skepticism is that we deny God, through the avenues that he chooses to reveal, teach manifest, whatever it is that he chooses to do. Skepticism, in the context of community, limits God in people and his work in them, it denies the power of the holy spirit to administer truth to us through them, it also downplays the holy spirit in us, and his ability to help us discern and protect the truth in our hearts, he is the reason we can see truth, not our own perception of truth, we can’t do anything right on our own except go to hell in a stylish fashion. When we disbelieve Christians via extreme skepticism, we deny the Holy Spirit’s power to allow others to see the truth, and we deny the ability of that very spirit in ourselves to allow us to see the truth and we exalt our own individual ability to see the truth. It becomes self-idolatry without our even recognizing it.


Christianity and Religious systems:
People get Christianity and religion all wrong. We misunderstand it’s purpose, especially Christianity. Other religions are all soteriological(study of salvation) methods, methods to save ourselves as humans from whatever the badness is (that all humans all somehow recognize). Salvation through works or goodness gained, whatever it is, it is based on human mechanism to achieve salvation.
Christ and Christianity are separate, sort of. Christ is not contained inside of Christianity, he is independent of it, but he chooses to be a part of it, obviously. In short, Christ and his salvation and works can exist outside of Christianity, but Christianity cannot exist outside of Christ, or without Christ involved with it. If it does exist outside of Christ or Christ is not a part of it, then it is not Christianity, it is rather something different.

Time for a metaphysical analogy to explain:
Or a policeman, a policeman is meant to be under the laws of the land, and with the purpose to protect and make things right. If the policeman breaks the laws or disregard them completely he is not acting as a policeman, and if he uses his gun, to kill the innocent, then he is not protecting, he raises up the wicked by taking bribes and allowing drug cartels to go on existing, and oppresses the poor with his authority, then he is no longer a policeman. He is in a sense because he still looks like one, but In symbolism of this travesty and distortion of purpose he is stripped of his badge, uniform, authority, gun, everything, and thrown into prison for his crime. He is made to be what he truly is, and that is a criminal and not a policeman.
The policeman is the Church when it goes astray, like, oh say the crusades of every other major deviation. The Policeman (The Church), to continue being a policeman (The Church), must exist inside the context of the law (requirements of being the Church and being a Christian), and inside the policeman must be the right motive (to do and make right for Christ, and for people).

So Christianity can be evil, if it goes outside of the context of the very things that make it what it is, which by definition, makes it no longer what it is supposed to be, it becomes something else. If I melt down a car into a block of steel then it is no longer a car.
But Christianity within its proper context is good. Christians are saved by faith not works. Our works are a manifestation of our faith. So what is this Christian system? This Christianity? It is a system, that’s all really. So why not just choose Christ and him be enough? Well he is enough, but systems and organization help us be better Christians, helps us love each other, love the world, and especially love Christ better. In a system we are under authority, we are in community, we are under preaching and teaching, we are in a context of corporate worship. In a personal sense Christianity would be our spiritual disciplines, things we do during certain situations, if we are considering heavy options we fast and pray, we discuss. If we are damaging the community, we are rebuked and go into solitude. If we are habitually sinning, we confess, we find accountability. It helps us live out our faith to a greater degree than we could on our own.

So the next issue is that when we try to just follow Christ we end up with a new Christianity anyway, new systems come into place. And as American Christians we realize that the last thing that we need to do is divide even more. Rather we should delve into the community, delve into the system and fix it, make it better, we need to be the right kind of people so that the right kind of ideas and things will rub off onto the community and off onto the system, refining it. When we start a new system we just create a new system that is good at things that the old system was bad at and is bad at the things that the old system was good at. We come not closer to the truth or improvement of our faith. We just jump to a more comfortable system. One that meets the needs of our longings that we wish the old system of Christianity would fill, and we ignore the old important ones because we feel they are unimportant, and we ignore them because we are spoiled that we always had them, and we feel like we have had enough of the old ones to last a lifetime, our lifetime at least, and because of this we raise up a new generation that is sick of the system we create.

We need people devoted to the system created by believers, not devoted above Christ, the Church or anything else, but at least to the point that we are willing to stick to it to see it become better. Are we just looking to gain something from the religious system of Christianity and have our desires and needs met or are we willing to stick with it and pour into it to make it better for the community as a whole.

The problem happens when people trust in the system too much, beyond faith, and faith becomes nullified, and we trust in the system and not Christ.
Trust in the system, go to hell. Trust in God, be saved by God by grace in faith