Christianity

•

Head coverings? Really? That is so 1900's. Or 1700's, or maybe 100's. How did I get here?

My husband, Phil, and I attend a small group Bible study and we’ve been working through 1 Corinthians.  The men take turns leading and we thought head coverings would be a quick study with some invigorating conversations. Phil took that chapter to lead.

The process begins

I had read through 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, on my own as well as in a women’s group but this time it caught my attention.   There are books! The process of listening to sermons, reading websites, getting another book...or three began.  There are tangents and then the tangents found tangents.  Since I process better when I write, I began to type my notes and add the questions I asked myself.

About a week into all this I decided to wear a hat to church for the purpose of a head covering.  The next week I wore a wide headband with my hair in a bun. If it’s in the Bible, I have a duty to obey.  Phil told me that since I would be affected more than he would, he would stand back and let the study take its course and he would honor whatever conviction I came to.

Facebook started showing me memes that pointed me straight at Scripture and I was reminded of my own thoughts on Sola Scriptura.

What are we afraid of?

I shifted "if this is a command I have to do it" to "this is a symbol of my joyful submission to God's created order"

Moving from wide head bands to a more traditional cover, I discovered "Garlands of Grace"

The study of this passage took a couple of months, so I did due diligence. It's been a process for sure, and it's brought joy and frustration and tears of joy "because of the angels"

•

I started reading "Importunity" and realized that the author died at the age of 33 and I wondered why. Oh. My.

Christopher Love, a lesser known Puritan, was born in 1618 in Cardiff, Wales.

Before the age of 15, he had not even heard a sermon, and decided to hear William Erbery in the pulpit, for the fun of it. He was convicted of sin and became a Christian.

Christopher mourned over his sin, which his father saw as "melancholy" and locked him in the house. Christoper climbed out a window and down a rope in order to go hear a sermon by William Erbery.

He was executed by Parliament on Friday, August 22, 1651

By the time he was 15 he became a Christian - his father disapproved and locked him in his bedroom...so he climbed out the window in order to go to church.Love was executed at the age of 33 for speaking out against Parliament over the execution of Charles I and supporting Charles II. (the actual charge was involvement with Scottish Presbyterians who were raising money to restore Charles II to the monarchy, a charge that Love denied)

“There is but two steps between me and glory. It is but lying down upon the block that I shall ascend upon a throne. I am exchanging a pulpit for a scaffold and a scaffold for a throne. I am exchanging a guard of soldiers for a guard of angels, to carry me to Abraham’s bosom."

https://www.apuritansmind.com/puritan-favorites/christopher-love/the-life-and-death-of-christopher-love/

Christopher's wife, Mary wrote a last letter to him:

Be comforted, my dear heart. It is but a little stroke and thou shalt be there where the weary shall be at rest and the wicked shall cease from troubling. Remember that thou mayest eat thy dinner with bitter herbs, yet thou shalt have a sweet supper with Christ that night

https://innocencerestored.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/letter-to-christopher-love/

One stroke of the axe, one heartbeat, one moment and those who are found in Christ will be in His presence.

•

I've been either a member or regular-attender at several different churches, over over close to thirty years. (Put that way, the "church hopping number" doesn't sound all that bad, especially since two of the moves were because I moved to a new state.)

Church hopping has a definition that doesn't fit my whole experience: First, a working definition: church hopping is going from one church to another without committing to any one church for any significant period of time (which makes it different than legitimate church “shopping”). (definition from Crosswalk)

I am reading "Grounded in the Gospel" - a book about the Christian tradition of teaching through catechism. One thing led to another in my brain and that led me to this post. Going over what led me, and kept me in various churches.

So let's take a walk. I'm not going to name the churches, unless they were spectacular.

The Pre-history

I had taken a few years off from church and I can remember so very clearly the day I knew I had to return. We had taken a vacation and had ended up in Nauvoo, Illinois. Nauvoo is a Mormon settlement on the Mississippi River and they have a beautiful "monument to women" (I am *NOT* pro-Mormon; we were there for the history).

Being what Mormon is, the statues not only had Book of Mormon references, they had Bible references also. As I walked through this garden with my two children (then ages 5 and 3) I knew that if I wanted to be what God wanted me to be, I had to return to Him.

In my church hopping experiences, each church that I've been in has led me to a deep topical study, and that's a good thing. Even in the churches that suck...something good came of it.

...continue reading →

•

This book is a solid, Bible-based book on emotions and how to deal with them as a Christian.

“Feelings and Faith” by Brian Borgman

“I am a pastor who loves theology.  The theological stream I consciously drink from takes doctrine very seriously, something with which I wholeheartedly agree.  That’s one of the reasons I drink there.  My theological tradition (Reformed) puts a great deal of emphasis on the mind.  It is a strongly academic tradition and can become very cerebral.  So why am I writing a book about the emotions?  A few years ago I “felt” the need to teach on the emotions.  Since I believe that there is a biblical doctrine of the emotions and am convinced that in our mind-oriented tradition we could use some perspective on the emotions, I started a “short” sermon series…”

This book is the result of this sermon series.

"Feelings and Faith" is solidly Bible-based.

Brian Borgman immerses us in the Bible’s perspectives on feelings and the book is good teaching on emotions (and the negative and positive results).

Borgman writes, that the book is practical theology – and he quotes what was said about Jonathan Edwards:  “All of his doctrine was application and all of his application was doctrine.”

The book has two major parts" foundations and applications.

...continue reading →

•

Pushing back on the "sin" of anger

saw this image today on the "sin" of anger and need to push back:

I need to push back on the idea that anger (in and of itself) is sin.

That idea that anger is always sin..

- well, let me tell you about a Sunday School lesson we taught on propitiation. A student asked, "what is propitiation" - that's when God's anger is satisfied by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

"That can't be right, because anger is a sin and if God gets angry, He can't be God!"

Emotion (yes, even anger) is the catalyst for action

Do you get angry when you know that unborn babies are being slaughtered in the womb? (if not, why not?) If yes, that anger may spur you on to action, whether it be talking to a pregnant mom and talking her out of abortion, it may lead to being a foster parent, it may get you out of the sidewalk in front of an abortion clinic.Are you angry at injustice? Then get going and work for justice.The point is, it is not sinful to be angry at the things that God is angry at.If we're angry at things that God does not get angry at, the root sin may not be anger, it may be pride, selfishness, lust.

It is only when we examine ourselves through the lens of Scripture that we know if our anger is sinful.

"Feelings and Faith" is a helpful book on understanding emotions

"We are created in the image of God and that includes our emotions (which are marred by sin) - however, emotions are more than feelings; they are the expressions of our values and evaluations that affect motives and conduct"

Brian Borgman, "Feelings and Faith: Cultivating Godly Emotions in the Christian Life"

From the same book:

Although anger is a common and harmful sin, anger in and of itself is not sinful. In fact, our capacity to be angry is a reflection of the image of God in us.

Emotion (yes, even anger) is the catalyst for action.

Do you get angry when you know that unborn babies are being slaughtered in the womb? (if not, why not?) If yes, that anger may spur you on to action, whether it be talking to a pregnant mom and talking her out of abortion, it may lead to being a foster parent, it may get you out of the sidewalk in front of an abortion clinic.

Are you angry at injustice? Then get going and work for justice. The point is, it is not sinful to be angry at the things that God is angry at.

In my first marriage, there were things to be angry about. Those things spurred me action - boundaries, accountability, conditions. Because I was angry enough to *DO* something, my marriage got better.

If we're angry at things that God does not get angry at, the root sin may not be anger, it may be pride, selfishness, lust. It is only when we examine ourselves through the lens of Scripture that we know if our anger is sinful.

•

I just finished "Things We Couldn't Say"  by Diet Eman, published in 1999.

The book, "Things We Couldn't Say" is simultaneously hopeful and fearful; the author can lament the situation while resting in the love of God.

Diet Eman and her fiance, Hein Sietsma, watched from the beginning on Nazi occupation in the Netherlands, wondering, "what is starting here?" to  "what can we do?" to "what *SHOULD* we do?"

Diet Eman is in the company of Corrie Ten Boom - in fact, at one point they were in the same prison camp.  If anything, Eman was more involved in the Resistance Network than Ten Boom was.

Why did she do what she did?

As a Reformed Christian, Eman's philosophy of the resistance was based in her faith in God and that faith spurred her into action.  At her most exhausted and in her moments of deepest fear, it was God that carried her.

She wrote: 

When I opened the book [the Bible] that night at the end of February 1945, it said, "Being exhausted, yet keeping up the pursuit" (Judges 8:4). Even after what I had said of wanting out, even after that humiliation, the physical exhaustion, the deep despair I felt, those words were my new marching orders. The next morning, I swung my rucksack over my shoulders and was off again.

 Most authors put the "why I wrote this book" at the beginning. 

 The author puts her reasons for writing in the postscript - she wanted to forget. When Corrie Ten Boom come to the town Eman was living in (Grand Rapids, MI) Eman began being convicted that 

...every time I opened the Bible something like "Tell the great things I have done" stared me in the face. Then a pastor who knew that I had been in the same prison as Corrie asked me to speak to his church. I wanted to scream, "No, I want to forget," but I didn't dare. So I went, but it was very difficult.  (Diet Eman;James Schaap. Things We Couldn't Say (Kindle Locations 3502-3504). Kindle Edition.)

Friends and family began to encourage her to write her story as a sort of therapy. She needed to write and the world needed to know.

All those years between WWII and when she told the story, she kept her diaries and letters and those of her fiance, Hein.  She shares those notes and fills in the blanks with her memories.

We read along as Diet goes from an innocent child, to a young woman in love with a young man, and then she becomes a confused Dutch woman unsure of what to do in the face of an invading force and then she launches into the Resistance.

Diet spent months in a Nazi prison camp, where she wrote:

And also, I forget to see that this all happens with God's permission. I keep on staring at the injustice which our country and people are suffering, but I forget that you bring your trials on this earth because you deem this necessary, otherwise it would not have happened. (location 412)

 Why does it matter?

As I write this review, I'm listening to the radio.  I am writing with the memory of last Wednesday, when a mob of people stormed the Capital Building. The President has been banned from a couple of social media platforms and an entire social media network (Parler) has been removed from app stores and has had their website taken down by their ISP.  Senator Ronis in "facebook jail" for unknown reasons.  

Reports of people who were merely present at the protest - on the fringes, *NOT* part of the mob who stormed the gates - being turned in by grandchildren and getting fired from their jobs.  For peaceful assembly!

Diet wrote:

What will this year bring us? Peace? Liberty? Reunion? Lord, you know it already! This time last year, when we were all together, we would never have thought that all this would happen! But you knew it. And we still have to give you thanks, for in some way this is necessary for the big plan you have for this world.

The Biden Administration is about to begin. I watch who is being "cancelled", who is being fired, and who is being silenced.

 My husband posted:"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar. You're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."- George R.R. Martin

This book is a "must read"

 The book has a tragic story, but the way that's it's written catches at the heart.  Going back and forth from Hein to Diet, reading their diaries and letters, one can see how each person reacts to an event (the queen of the Netherlands escaping to England)

Reading the book, while watching our own current events unfold is unsettling.

Read it...think on it...and (I think) be prepared to ponder where your own "line in the sand" will be.

•

Reason #ILostCount - I'm not going back"I'm not going back" is a refrain at our house, and we have reasons...we usually make up a number (reason #848) but I just lost count.

And I'm not going back.

My daddy died last week and  I know that he's with Jesus.  I heard another refrain:  If you want to see Jesus, you need to be holy.

Here's the thing - if you're holy enough to get yourself into heaven - raise your hand.

I'm not.

I'm not holy enough - far, far from it.  To paraphrase Mark Driscoll - this kind of teaching leads to either pride or despair.  Pride (I got this) or despair (I can't do this.)

Reason #ILostCount

When Dad got to heaven, I know that he lived his life in faith in Christ.  He never pointed at his works; he pointed to Jesus and the cross.

For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. (Romans 3:28 ESV)

What is "law?"  Law (simple explanation) is God's character codified.  In the law, we learn God's character, and His standard for holiness.  God is perfect and His law is perfect.

We are not and we cannot be, this side of the grave.

Since we are not perfect, how do we see Jesus?  How are we justified?

We are justified by faith, and not by works.

Yes, sanctification is a thing and for a person who is justified by faith, that faith will be evidenced by sanctification.

I asked a Sunday School student - do you do your chores because you are part of your family?  Or do you do your chores in order to become part of your family?

Do we obey the law because we belong to Christ?  Or do we obey the law in order to belong to Christ?

The difference is worth an eternity.

•

So...we're starting this book club thing...and the first book is Athanasius' "On the Incarnation of the Word."  The questions in this post are "pre-book" questions and will hopefully stay in our minds.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL QUESTIONS:

Q. Who wrote the book?

St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria

Q. To whom was it written?

"Incarnation" was written to Christians who were being influenced by various heresies undermining the understanding of the life and death of Jesus.

Q. When was it written?

4th Century

Q. Where was it written?

Alexandria

Q. Why was it written?

The book explains why God chose to approach his fallen people in human form and defends the incarnation of Christ against the derision of 4th century non-believers

Exploratory Questions
  1. Why would one's view of creation influence one's view of incarnation?

All things were created by and through the Word. The Word created man, the Word became Man; because He because one of us, those who walked with Him gave testimony about Him

  1. Why is Christ's incarnation necessary anyway?

When we were separated from God by our sin, our very nature changed from one of perfection to one that is permeated by sin.

  1. Equally, why are his death and resurrection necessary?

Only the perfect could satisfy the Perfect.  Jesus’ death was the payment for sin, and His resurrection was proof that the Father accepted the payment.

  1. Should the death of Christ be seen as a triumph? Why or why not?

Absolutely.  When Adam sinned, the very nature of mankind was changed and without hope of reconciliation.

Because Christ died and was raised from the dead, we who are in Christ have hope for eternity.

My dad died a week ago today.  Because Jesus died, I know I will see him again.  Right now, my dad is reunited with his mom and dad, and his sister that he knew, and is getting to know his brothers and sisters who died before he was born.

That is a triumph.

 

  1. If Adam had not sinned, would God the Son have become incarnate? Why or why not?

I don't believe Jesus would have walked on earth to save us, if we didn't need saving.

  1. Has Jesus achieved anything since his incarnation that is not directly related to dealing with the consequences of sin? (You might like to take a look at Genesis 1:26-28; Psalm 8; Hebrews 1:1-2; 2:5-8.

Jesus holds the universe together by the word of his power.

  1. “Jesus died with his arms outstretched, showing his desire to draw all men to himself.” What do you think of this kind of exegesis? (THESE ARE NOT ON TheCity)

Jesus died with His arms outstretched because that fulfilled a prophesy that He would die on a tree (cross.)

I think this is not exegesis at all, rather it is eisogesis -

Exegesis takes what is in the text and allows us to determine what it means, and so it steers our beliefs.

Eisogesis starts with what we believe, and allows us to read into the text what we want it to mean, steering what we think is in the text.

 

•

Last week, we sang this at my dad's funeral, and we will sing it at my mom's funeral...remember...When We All Get to Heaven

my brother-in-law (Michael) reminded us that those who are in Christ will see each other again, "here, there, or in the air."

1. Sing the wondrous love of Jesus;
sing his mercy and his grace.
In the mansions bright and blessed
he'll prepare for us a place.

Refrain:
When we all get to heaven,
what a day of rejoicing that will be!
When we all see Jesus,
we'll sing and shout the victory!

2. While we walk the pilgrim pathway,
clouds will overspread the sky;
but when traveling days are over,
not a shadow, not a sigh.
(Refrain)

When we all get to heaven,
what a day of rejoicing that will be!
When we all see Jesus,
we'll sing and shout the victory!
3. Let us then be true and faithful,
trusting, serving every day;
just one glimpse of him in glory
will the toils of life repay.
(Refrain)
When we all get to heaven,
what a day of rejoicing that will be!
When we all see Jesus,
we'll sing and shout the victory!
4. Onward to the prize before us!
Soon his beauty we'll behold;
soon the pearly gates will open;
we shall tread the streets of gold.
(Refrain)

When we all get to heaven,
what a day of rejoicing that will be!
When we all see Jesus,
we'll sing and shout the victory!

•

Okay, at the beginning of yesterday's sermon, the pastor showed a PowerPoint slide of a yogurt foil label.

I took that visual in a different direction than I think the pastor intended.

Stirrers, skimmers, diggers...We have all of these types in the Christian body.

STIR,

Those who stir, those who skim, and those who dig.  The beauty is that each of us shows all of these tendencies at some point or another.

When you hear "stir" - what do you think of?  Is it the negative "stir up bottom muck?"

Or do you think positive?

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, (Hebrews 10:24 ESV)

As believers, do we stir up one another to look more like Christ?  How does this work?  For me, getting into the fringes of something, then finding another person, taking that "something" and running with it...with that other person, pulling more and more people into this "something."

Or simply encouraging another into a deeper walk.

Or

STIR,

I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, (1 Peter 1:13)

what was Peter "stirring?"  The list begins... faith, virtue, knowledge.

I see (rightly or wrongly) a lot of anti-intellectualism in a lot of people.  "Knowledge" is third on Peter's list and knowledge is what leads to self-control,  steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, love.

They're in this order for a reason, and each acts a foundation for the next.

How do we stir our spiritual siblings to greater faith, virtue, knowledge?

Then...

SKIM

Merriam-Websters has one definition:

to look over or read (something) quickly especially to find the main ideas

Yeah, okay.  That works.   Why would a Christian "skim?"

We may skim a chapter of Scripture, then settle on the "main idea" and go for a deeper study of that idea that the Holy Spirit is laying on our heart and mind.

We may skim the church bulletin and rest our eyes on something that intrigues us.

We may skim community groups until we find one that we really click with.

Somebody may ask a question and we skim material looking for information.

These can show good fruit.  I know a little bit about a lot of different things.  Enough so that if somebody asks me a question, I can point them to good resources.  A lot of these things I have not dug into deeply.

I pass over a lot of ministry opportunities that are not in my range of interest...

Waiting to find the right place is good.

but...you if you stay in that "skim" place, or if ALL of your places are skim place, that shows a shallowness that does not show good fruit.

You have to

DIG

I can skim Philippians, then land on "I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel,"

What does the Bible say about persecution?  Start digging...

I can skim the church bulletin, then land on one opportunity that screams at me...start digging.

But we don't exist in a vacuum.  Help others dig!

So, in some things, I'm a skimmer, others places a digger.  In still other places, I can stir up others to do their own skimming and digging.

And...that's where I took that PowerPoint slide...