Tag: church

Lukewarm Tools

~ jim0211 ~ Leave a comment

On its own, humanity lives enslaved to a worldly system of excessive pleasure, greed, and selfish pride.

Jesus proclaimed freedom, the coming of the kingdom of God, in which such slavery would no longer exist. All forms of slavery that could not be eliminated through natural means would be eliminated as He sent His disciples out to announce this good news and bring about the kingdom, changing the nature of the world. To be effective at this work, the disciples learned to be channels through which the Spirit worked to change hearts, not just minds.

From the beginning, Christians followed this call in ways that overtook empires and changed society, altering the very fabric of Western civilization. When freeing slaves looked like healing people, ending slavery looked like establishing hospitals, advancing medicine. Reading and writing became ubiquitous as formal education was made widely available even up to university levels, and the institution of literal slavery itself was dismantled. All these are examples of the Spirit working through those who had more in order to help those with less.

Today, however, we have gone back to natural means for establishing God’s rule, relying on human capabilities. Through things like rationality, organization, and legalism, we have worked to change circumstances and behavior. This seems successful as we continue to free slaves, but falls short of both Jesus’ command and the early church’s example of ending slavery. Many of our efforts today reach only some of those who need to hear of God’s love, and so limit the degree to which the kingdom can advance.

Perhaps as Western society flourished as a largely Christian place, we became complacent to the spiritual needs around us. Perhaps we have allowed ourselves to feel good about freeing the occasional slave while leaving slavery itself intact. However, being a good steward of God’s grace means bringing reconciliation to society, not just individuals.

So, while we’re patting ourselves on the back for how many slaves we’ve freed, Jesus stands at the door, calling us out of lukewarmness with offers of His Spirit.

Creating God

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There is a popular quote that expresses the ease with which we can deceive ourselves when it comes to understanding God:

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” ― Anne Lamott11

The quote makes the point that we tend to map our own preferences and biases onto God so that our image of Him is really just a projection of our own selves.

Although this quote was mainly about our relationships and how we think of other people, it seems the principle can also be applied elsewhere. In fact, there is probably a danger of mapping many of our own theological perspectives onto God, not just how we think about people.

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The Priority of Christian Nationalism

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Christian Nationalism seems to be getting a lot of attention these days. Obviously, there are many non-Christians who don’t think much of the idea. But not all Christians agree with it either, and question whether it’s even Biblical. Of course, it may partly depend on what one thinks it means.

In my understanding, one way to think of Christian Nationalism is that it seeks to establish a national framework of laws and behaviors that promote personal and societal flourishing through the adoption of Christian values and behaviors, possibly reflecting what some people believe to be the original vision of the nation’s founders.

Thus, it can be thought of as a sort of legalism – religious values and ideas are encoded into laws that constrain people’s behavior. However, this isn’t necessarily the sort of legalism that asserts that correct behavior is necessary for salvation rather than a result of it. It merely tries to establish a flourishing society through the change of people’s behavior without there necessarily having been a change of heart.

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Idolatry and Mars Hill

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Although there are various expressions of Christianity, many different denominations, one thing that is common is the belief that idolatry is a sin. In fact, perhaps one of the chief sins.

After all, the Ten Commandments clearly forbids it, and idolatry is clearly taught against all through the Old Testament, especially in the prophetic writings. The Jews were so strongly monotheistic that Rome gave them special leeway to practice their religion. Christians picked this up, of course, and were thus known as “atheists” because they did not believe in the deity of Caesar, only in the one true God.

Against this historical and theological backdrop, it’s interesting to look at Paul’s speech on Mar’s Hill.

When Paul was in Athens, he was very troubled by the amount of idolatry on display there. He started to speak about Jesus in the public square and as a result was asked to speak at the Areopagus, a group of intellectual Greeks. Among the things that they commented on was that he seemed to be speaking of “foreign divinities”.

Given all these things, one would expect a scathing polemic against idolatry and a clear declaration of God as the one true deity, incarnated in the one true Lord, Jesus Christ.

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Exploring Antioch and Laodicea

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As discussed in earlier posts, I think that evangelism – proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God – is a key aspect of the Christian faith. It’s a vital part of the way we should live in this world, which is why Jesus pointed to it many times, trained and sent out disciples, focused the disciples on it in the beginning of Acts, and perhaps even why God has given us the book of Acts as the main picture of the early church.

Given the clear directive and the amount of effort put into evangelism, one would expect continual growth of the kingdom. However, this clearly isn’t happening, and it seems to many people that the world is getting spiritually darker every day. Whatever tactics are being used today to grow the kingdom, it’s clearly not working.

Trying to understand this led me to the letter to the Laodiceans in Revelations. In that letter, Jesus rebukes the church in Laodicea as being lukewarm, which in the context of the letter, likely meant that the church was ineffective and not fulfilling its purpose, just like both cool refreshing water and hot healing water became unpleasant, even useless, when piped from their sources to Laodicea, because the water was lukewarm.

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Remembering Resurrection

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For many Christians today, it seems that the world is getting darker all the time. Not just in statistics like dropping church attendance, but in the growing secularism of many of our systems, the growing acceptance of immoral behavior in our leaders, the growing wealth disparity and other signs of a greed-dominated culture, and so on. In many cases, people still describe themselves as spiritual even when they stop associating with any specific religion, so the need is there, it just isn’t being met by Christianity.

Of course, there are many theories, books, and pundits that try to explain these observations, for most part focusing on the social, psychological, and sometimes even spiritual, trends of the last century or so. However, I’ve also noticed, really highlighted by the Covid pandemic, how different many of our beliefs and practices are from the early church.

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White Garments in Laodicea

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Evangelism is important, but the church’s efforts today seem not to be working. This is not a problem with the world, but with the church. If there is an element of ineffectiveness in the church today, perhaps we can gain insight by looking at the letter to the Laodiceans.

The letter to the Laodiceans is the only one of the seven letters that has no commendation. They are described as being lukewarm, a contrast to two nearby cities that provided water. At their sources, one was cold and refreshing while the other was hot mineral water that was useful for healing. By the time the waters made it to Laodicea, however, they were lukewarm and ineffective for their original purposes.

Thus, the Laodiceans could be said to have been ineffective in their service to the Lord.

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Refining the Discipleship Model

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In my previous post, I discussed a ministry model based on statements about Jesus’ activities in Scripture. There are a handful of repeated statements that summarize Jesus’ activities and these are reflected in the rest of the narratives. The thought was that those summary statements give a grouping of actions that a follower of Christ would want to emulate if we are to be growing in likeness to Him. However, in thinking about those statements more, I noticed one other detail that I think can result in a more effective model.

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A Model for Congregational Discipleship

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As disciples of Jesus, Christians should be growing into His likeness. This means we should become more and more like Him, and it seems this should include all of His attributes, behaviors., and so on. We often study the Scriptures to find these attributes, and different people have produced different models of Jesus’ activities.

However, in addition to the many detailed accounts of them, the gospels include many statements that summarize Jesus’ activities. These tend to repeat the same three things over and over, so perhaps they represent a way to think of His actions in a way that we could grow into.

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Fully Sharing the Kingdom

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I have a friend who is not religious. He has plenty of experience with church but now rejects anything supernatural. He does seem to be seeking something more, often describing a great new life direction but then later finding something new. Always seeking but never finding.

Perhaps because of earlier church experiences, conventional religion now leaves him cold, and talking about God with any of the standard approaches never seems fruitful. Frankly, so much of what we do to introduce God to people, through either action or word, simply isn’t effective anymore. It’s as if a different language is needed today, especially in our increasingly secular culture.

Therefore many people, like my friend, have no real invitation to the kingdom.

This is not only a spiritual problem for those individuals, but it’s also a problem for realizing God’s kingdom in a physical way, for tangibly showing God’s love to those in need. This is because many of those most hardened to God are also most able to help those who need it. However, the prevailing self-focused secular mindset is a barrier to releasing that help. Although most people recognize the value of doing some good, Christ’s example of self-sacrificial giving is a much more powerful force.

Because of Christ’s example and the Spirit working through His people, Western society has experienced radical improvements in compassion and love since the cross.

History is full of examples of Christians impacting the culture for the kingdom. The establishment of wide-spread health care and education, the growth of science and medicine as forces for good, and the end of slavery, are all examples of Christians using their resources and influence to bring the kingdom in tangible ways.

Today, however, power and wealth are primarily seen as corrupting influences that isolate people from God, rather than resources that can be redeemed for kingdom purposes. As a result, the church’s efforts have narrowed to that which can be done with our own limited resources. Such work makes us feel good and seems helpful, but is a far cry from the transformative work of the Spirit through history.

It’s as if we are now satisfied by what we can do through human effort, even when it’s not much more than that done by secular organizations. It allows us to feel good about ourselves and have a good reputation in the community, but never really changes society. Where once Christians were a force driving the end of slavery, we now content ourselves with occasionally freeing a few slaves. It feels good, but it’s not what we were called to do.

Perhaps realizing the kingdom fully requires us to pay attention to the spiritual as well as the physical, to see people through Jesus’ eyes as well as our own eyes of flesh.

When I look at things that way, I see my friend as sick and in need of a physician. The challenge becomes introducing my friend to such a healer. This is a spiritual work that is much more dependent on God, and yet is so easy to miss. May God open our eyes to the ways that He wants to work through us to bring the kingdom in people’s hearts and lives.