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
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
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
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
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
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 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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)