Christian Rights

The short version is Christians have no rights.

None at all. Period. No human rights, no political rights, no social rights, no religious rights, no family rights. Nothing. Not even the right to heaven, itself.

As Christians, what we have are promises and responsibilities. The same is true of those not Christians, actually. But the secular world isn't supposed to have a clue. As Christians, we should know better.

This idea that won't set well with some people. It takes a little thought and a little getting used to, but when you look at it, it's clearly the Biblical view. It's just been corrupted by a society with such a strong sense of entitlement that the idea has bled into the Church as well.

We are slaves, bought and paid for, with no material difference between us and those in the American south – or those in the Roman Empire, to whom the Biblical concept actually refers. Who ever heard of a slave having rights?

"Wait," you say, "didn't Paul exercise his political rights in the Book of Acts?" He did. And Jesus pointed out to the Sanhedrin that his own rights were being violated. So how can I say we have no rights?

Paul exercised his rights when he called for the Philippian city leaders to come personally and let him out of jail. Had Paul allowed the Philippians to release him privately, as they wished, it would have branded Christianity as immoral and unethical, a criminal conspiracy deserving the condemnation of the courts, making further evangelism in that city difficult to impossible. Paul acted not for himself, but to further the mission for which God called him.

Later he used his Roman citizenship to keep from being scourged and to appeal his case to Caesar. But it was also Paul who said to be wronged, rather than press your civil case in court. Neither Paul nor Jesus ever tried to force the government to act legally toward them, and both died by the hand of the government in a complete abrogation of their "rights."

What does all this mean? Of course you can exercise the opportunities you have to influence the world for Christ, including what we think of as "political rights." Just understand that while we can use our political and social rights for the furtherance of God's will, we really can't demand them, and never for our personal benefit.

And when it comes to God, we can't demand anything at all. He owns us. We are His to do with as He pleases. We don't even have the right to go to heaven. We have God's promise that we will, but He is not obligated to promise us any such thing. He does it from His generosity.

If I promise you a dollar you didn't earn, then don't give it to you, I am a liar, but I have not denied you anything you have a right to. So it is with God. He is not a liar, of course, and we can depend on His promises, but that doesn't give us the right to anything, it gives us the hope of things we have no right to.

Our duty – and it should be our pleasure – is to live as God commands, under the circumstances He provides. In this time many are likely to lose jobs and businesses. I hope that doesn't happen, especially to my friends, but it is possible. If our relationship with God is truly servant/master, as it should be, nothing we lose can take away our joy at life or in Christ.

Luke 12:42-44, 22:54-71, Acts 16:14-40, 22:24-28, Romans 1:1, 3:24, 6:16-17,23, I Corinthians 3:5, 7:21-22, II Corinthians 7:4, 12:10, Ephesians 2:8-9, 6:5-7, Philippians 4:11

The Unchanging God

Is God different in the Old and New Testaments? Did He change between the two sections of the Bible? Is the Old Testament God a God of thunder and carnage while the New Testament God is a God whose only attributes are love, mercy and forgiveness?

Some people think so.

But the answer to all these questions is a loud and resounding no! God is completely unchanging and anything more than a cursory reading of the Bible makes that clear.

God says He is the same yesterday, today and forever. When God says something it's true and irrefutable, or He wouldn't be God. How could one who lacks the power to back up his own words create and control the universe?

So what about this Old Testament, New Testament thing?

God's love and redemptive power are on display throughout the Old Testament, beginning as early as creation and becoming really clear by the time of the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. Even in the middle of such carnage as the destruction of Jericho, God spared the life of Rahab and her family.

Some people assert that God struck down whole peoples seemingly for the "fun" of it, or to help the Israelites steal their land and property. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Bible makes it clear that in every case God gave those peoples opportunity after opportunity to seek after Him and turn from their wickedness, and they refused until God finally brought His justice to bear against them. That is completely within God's character.

Just so, God's justice is seen in the New Testament. Jesus warned the Jews that the direction they were taking as a nation would bring retribution upon them in their lifetime, and a few years after the crucifixtion the Romans destroyed their country and scattered them over the face of Europe, Asia and Africa.

Judas lost his life and was consigned to hell because his heart was never right. The same is true of the thief on the left hand cross, the Rich Young Ruler and many others. Ananias and Sapphira lost their lives, if not their souls, for the same reason.

One of the problems with religion in our society is that many want God to conform to their will, instead of the other way around. They try to limit the attributes of God to those they prefer, such as love, mercy and forgiveness.

But justice and discipline are also among God's attributes. All these facets of God were alive and well in both testaments, and remain so today. God is a loving, forgiving, merciful God. Accept the plan of salvation He sacrificed so much to offer you, do your best to live as He directs you, and you can expect to see His mercy and forgiveness, even when you momentarily fail.

Ignore His sacrifice and shun His ways and you can expect His wrath, judgment and discipline, just as certainly as those peoples in the Old Testament.

The real question is not whether God has changed. The real question is whether you will.

Genesis 1:26-28, 3:14-15, Exodus 23:23-24, 33, Numbers 23:19, 33:50-56, Joshua 6:17, I Samuel 15:29, Psalm 33:11, 102:27, Mark10:17-22, Luke 21:5-6, Acts 1:14-20, 5:1-10, Hebrews 13:8

Choosing Your Own God

I would rather have titled this entry "The Fallacy of Choosing Your Own God," but that title didn't fit adequately in the allotted space, so please forgive if this one is misleading.

The idea for this blog came from an article I read last week in Slate. For those unfamiliar, Slate is an online magazine whose articles are often printed on MSN. It's very liberal and I normally don't read it, but occasionally I see something that catches my eye.

Such was the case last week when I saw an article by an atheist, touting the worth of reading the Bible. Giving the good before the bad, I was pleased and a little proud when he said his research showed the only religious group which routinely read the entire Bible was Evangelical Christians.

If he had stopped there everything would have been great, but of course he didn't. He went on to declare two things that, while I've heard them both before, always leave me shaking my head. The first was that he could not worship a God who would treat people as God had in the Old Testament. The second was that, essentially, God had changed between the Old and New Testaments.

The second of these assertions will be my next blog subject, but for today I wanted to deal with the idea that it's okay to pick and choose what God you serve.

The fallacy of that idea is so broad and so deep that, as I said above, it leaves me shaking my head in wonder. That people who think themselves intelligent could believe such a thing produces even more wonder.

First, every religion preaches exclusivity to some degree. Some, such as Buddhism, accomplish this by simply drawing everyone under their net, including Christianity and Islam, though both religions shudder at the thought. Others, such as many of the ancient or Native American religions, recognized other gods but not for their own people. In any case, no religion can afford to say "worship who you please, we're nothing special" for the obvious reason they would soon die out.

That, alone, seems to me to kill the idea of choosing a religion of convenience. It also makes it vitally important to find and worship the "right" god. Choosing wrong leaves you no better off than following no god at all. That being the case, it behooves every person to search the scriptures and make sure they are secure in the knowledge that God is really God. In the case of Christians, there is ample reason, though beyond the scope of this blog subject, to be satisfied on that score.

Beyond that, however, I want to address the idea of saying that you can't worship God unless He does things your way. I have even heard evangelical Christians say they couldn't worship a God who was not a loving God.

HELLO! PEOPLE!

You will worship God the way He says to worship Him, or not at all. If God demanded child sacrifice and pagan sex rituals, that's exactly what you would, and should, do. You don't get to pick and choose. God made you and, in the end, you have to answer to Him.

Thankfully, God is a God of love and does care for us. But if he didn't it would not matter, we still have to worship Him because He is God and He not only knows what is best, He decided what would be best. The only choice you have is to follow Him, as he commands, or not to follow him at all.

Exodus 20:3, Job 38-41, Acts 17:22-31

The Biblical View of Divorce

If it's hard to think about family without thinking about marriage, in today's society it is, unfortunately, equally hard to think about marriage without thinking about divorce. Divorce has become something of a guiltless sin. We gloss over it, ignore it and excuse it for any reason, biblical or not. And by "we" I mean evangelical Christians, not the lost of the world.

The Bible takes a far different view. According to the Bible, there are only two reasons for divorce. First is adultery and the second is abandonment. In other words, if your spouse leaves and you can't find them, or if they divorce you and you can't keep them from it, you are, as Paul put it, not under bondage.

In any other circumstances, remarriage after a divorce is adultery.

That's not a very pleasant conclusion, but it is the Biblical one. Abuse is not an excuse for divorce. Neither is mental cruelty or incompatibility or any of the myriad other things that are used in the courts today.

I don't mean to say, of course, that a person should stay in the house with an abusive spouse until they or their children are killed. But what I do mean to say is that while separation may be necessary to save lives, divorce is not an option. And separation is an option only in exigent circumstances. That is why it is so important to marry carefully and within the Lord.

Of late there has even been a huge debate over whether ministers and deacons should be allowed to serve while divorced, asserting that Paul was referring to plural marriage in the qualifications for ordination, not divorce. That is a patently self-serving view.

The truth is, plural marriage is an Eastern, not a Western, custom. Although it did happen in the West, it was uncommon. The cultures of Greece, Rome and Israel were all monogamous. And every one of them had a huge problem with divorce – with rates rivaling those in America today. That is the problem Paul was addressing.

If you doubt that, then think on this. The Jews had periodically had issues with plural marriage in the Old Testament. Yet, in the gospels, Jesus never once addressed plural marriage, but repeatedly addressed divorce.

Here's the thing – as evangelicals we either live by the Bible or we don't. If we pick and choose, or change it to suit ourselves, we're doing no different from those we preach to. This is exactly the tactic of the homosexual and abortion lobbies. Jesus said if the salt of the earth has lost its taste, it is good only to be thrown out. He also said to get the beam out of our own eye before we went after the speck in someone else's.

In other words, we can't preach that others should hold fast to the word of God, as written, unless we do it.

As a final word, what about the person who is already divorced? If they have not remarried, they should seek to be reunited with their original spouse. If they have remarried, they should stay with the spouse they are now married to, and cannot ever remarry their original spouse. Beyond that, they should ask God's forgiveness, which He will grant if they are sincere, and accept the limitations God has placed on their activities gracefully and with the understanding that we all must accept God's limitations at some point, and from there seek to live God's will for the rest of their lives the very best they can. This, of course, is the recipe for forgiveness of any sin.

Deuteronomy 24: 1-4, Matthew 5:32, I Corinthians 7:15, I Timothy 3:12, Titus 1:5-6, I John, 1:9

The Biblical View of Marriage

It's difficult to think about family issues and avoid the Biblical view of marriage. I may be wrong, but it seems to me there is hardly any area in Christian life so little heeded, with such dire results.

Let's start with the obvious. A Christian marriage can only take place between two Christians! When segregation was still active in this country, the Old Testament ban on Jews marrying non-Jews was often taught as racial. That's completely incorrect, as even a cursory New Testament reading on the subject will show.

What God actually says is not to marry anyone who doesn't believe in, and follow, Him. You can never completely know the state of another person's soul, but it is a sin to marry a person you don't believe is a Christian. That's right, a sin. Not unwise. Not a poor choice. God says Christians should only marry Christians.

That naturally impacts dating. Christians should only date Christians. Why? Because in its largest sense dating is about finding a mate. In America, almost every serious relationship starts as a casual one.

But what if you didn't heed God's command, or you weren't saved, yourself, until after you married an unsaved person? The Bible says you should live a Christian life before that person, hoping your example will persuade them to accept Christ.

That means you should stay married to them and not respond in kind if the unchristian person acts in an unchristian way. Tough? Absolutely. That's why God commanded that you marry a Christian to begin with. Much of God's discipline in our lives is reaping what we sow. Nowhere have I seen that to be more true than marriage.

The next thing that needs to be addressed is the idea of love in marriage. The Bible is clear that we should love our spouse. But we often mistake love for passion. The two are not the same. By marrying for "love," we think loving our spouse will be easy.

Wrong!

After the passion wears thin, we're still married. Passion is not enough to fuel a marriage for a lifetime. Though feelings usually accompany love, love is not a feeling. Love is a decision. "Forsaking all others" and "'til death do us part" – that's what love is. The "romps in the hay" are the easy part. Love is the decision to stick around and do your part, no matter what.

The truth is, while the Bible does not speak against marrying for "love," it doesn't promote the idea, either. In fact, the Bible doesn't even suggest there is a right reason to choose a particular mate. Like it or not, there is nothing wrong with marrying for money or power or looks or passion or any other reason you choose, as long as you marry a Christian.

The thing is, though, the Bible says that once you marry – for any reason – the required commitment is the same. Marry for money if you want. But you still have to love your spouse and forsake all others for the rest of the time you are both left on earth. Marry because you think he or she is good looking – same thing. Marry for "love" – same thing.

Knowing this, a wise person would look past the superficial and at least try to base their marriage of things of depth. But that's your call. Your commitment to the marriage, on the other hand, is God's commandment.

Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:6, I Corinthians 7:2-3, 12-16, II Corinthians 6:14, Ephesians 5:25-30, Colossians 3:19, I Timothy 5:14, Hebrews 13:4

The Right to Life

Abortion has the support of a couple of the catchiest euphemisms I know. "A woman has the right to do as she pleases with here own body." That's one. The other – "A woman's right to choose."

Choose what?

All of us have some opportunities to choose, I suppose. But we're not talking chocolate or vanilla, here. We're talking about the life of a human being. There may be some question when life begins, but it's certainly before abortion.

Where else is there even the suggestion that a person has the right to kill another person for the sake of convenience? We have laws, and civic groups, to protect animals from that kind of behavior. But that's what the "right to choose" is.

Don't want to take the responsibility for not having illicit sex? Don't want to take even the responsibility of protecting yourself from getting pregnant when you have illicit sex? Don't want to take the responsibility of raising the child your irresponsibility created? Just kill it. After all, if you've never seen it, how can it possibly be wrong? And it's not convenient for your lifestyle.

Such reasoning would be bizarre in any other setting, and it's just as bizarre regarding abortion.

As for the right of a person, woman or not, to do as they please with their own body, also not true. That right is limited by political law (every state has laws against suicide, for instance). It's absolutely ridiculous to suggest such a thing might be within God's law.

But that assumes someone is actually meaning to do something to their own body. The fact is, any damage to their own body is incidental in abortion. What they want is to kill another body. That other body does not belong to them, it only rests within them temporarily.

The whole idea is the moral equivalent of singeing your hands while you burn someone at the stake. The fact that you are slightly injured does not absolve you of the murder of that other person.

The undeniable fact is that abortion is the killing of a person. Another fact, whose only deniability is a bunch of irresponsible people claiming it so, is that such killing is murder, at least morally. The Bible makes itself clear on both issues.

If you don't want children, the responsible thing to do is to avoid having sexual intercourse, not to kill the product of said intercourse.

Some would try to claim an exemption for incest or rape. Sorry, while such a situation elicits sympathy in any reasonable person, that's a no go, too. Even if there were no alternatives but abortion or raising the child, the Bible remains clear. You don't harm an innocent person because of your misfortune. But there are other alternatives, specifically adoption, which can give the child a loving home without making you a criminal as well as a victim.

The only exception – and it's a tenuous one – is when there is a clear choice between losing the child and losing the mother. Such a case is too horrible to contemplate, but occasionally must be contemplated anyway. This, however, is a choice of which life to save, not the irresponsible choice to kill a child for sexual pleasure. Further, it's a choice, which must be made. In that case only, each person must make their choice in accordance with their best understanding of God's will.

Exodus 20:13, 21:22-25, Mark 12:28-31, Luke 10:30-37, John 9:41, Romans 13:13, 15:1, I Corinthians 3:16-17, II Corinthians 5:15, Ephesians 2:3, I Thessalonians 4:3

The Right to Family

This week's news has been all about Nadya Suleman, the mother of the Octuplets, who already had six children. I don't know enough about her to comment directly and this posting shouldn't be taken as such. But there are two issues her story brings to the fore. The one I will deal with today is the sanctity of the family. Next week I will address the sanctity of life.

First, there is nothing wrong with having fourteen children, by choice. In this era of birth control we sometimes forget that. Right and wrong is based on the Bible, and nothing else, and the Bible does not condemn large families in any way.

It does, however condemn irresponsibility.

So when is having children irresponsible? There are at least two circumstances that qualify: deliberately having a child you know you can't provide for or deliberately having a child without a complete family unit.

Let's consider the first. If you bought a corvette and couldn't afford gasoline, you couldn't drive it. You shouldn't be offended if others won't buy these things for you, they are your responsibility.

You can't equate a child with a car, of course. Children are much more important. But that's the very point. If it's irresponsible to buy a car you can't afford, how much more so to bring a child you can't support into the world. Those who did not join in making the decision to have the child with you should not normally be expected to support it. They are responsible for their own families.

That does not mean poor people should not have children! Poverty is not a sin, nor is it abuse. All of us want to do the best we can for our children. But as a society, and as Christians in this society, we've forgotten that the best we can do has little to do with money.

Many poor people have raised families without indifference or neglect. And though it usually takes different forms, many wealthy children are raised with those same two problems. Not being able to buy your children the latest high dollar sunshades, tennis shoes or jeans is not irresponsible. It's not even unfortunate. That's not the same thing as having children and then expecting others to pay their way.

Likewise, no child should be deliberately brought into the world without a family to care for it. By family I mean at the very least a mother and father. Not two mothers or two fathers. Not a person who wants a child but not a spouse. God ordained the family before any other institution. That alone shows its importance. He also defined it, and the definition is no less important than the ordination. Each parent has something important to give the child – something they can't adequately get elsewhere.

Having said all that, I add one caveat. I am talking about choice – sometimes you don't have one. Parent's die or bail. Jobs get lost. The unexpected happens.

Should a single man or woman not take in a child in need? Of course, that's an intensely personal situation, but that type of generosity can never be classed as irresponsible. Likewise, if a family loses its expected income, that doesn't mean they had, or have, no right to their children, or to temporary help in caring for them.

But Biblical responsibility dictates that you don't create subnormal family situations for personal convenience or gratification.

Genesis 1:28, 2:24, 9:1, Matthew 25:1-13, 14-30, Luke 14:25-32, I Corinthians 7:2, II Thessalonians 3:7-12