Tag Archive for 'apostasy'

Three Verses that Revealed my Contradictions

Published on 7/6/2009 in Bible Study. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

So the question yesterday that a guy at Sunday School asked was about Matthew 5.27-30, where Jesus talks about ripping out eyes and chopping off hands if they lead you to sin. He asked if we should take that seriously or not. I love the way he asked that question, because you can only answer YES if the question is “Should we take what Jesus said seriously?”

Ok, so that leads to some discussion, and then I realized this: I think of every other command or teaching in the sermon on the mount as literal and right and what people should do, except for these 3 verses.

what?! How can that be? How can we have pick-and-choose discipleship?

I hear people say, “Jesus is obviously exaggerating because poking out your eye wouldn’t change your heart. It wouldn’t stop you from lusting on the inside.”

It wouldn’t? Isn’t is through hardship that we learn to be closer to God? If I sat down and gouged out my eyeball, it seems like that would be an event that would stick with me for a while. And if I associated it with lust, then next time wouldn’t I absolutely cower in fear? If I chopped my hand off, would I not consider the consequences of sin whenever I reached to commit the sin, and there was nothing there?! I know I sound a little absurd, but I want to get out of this mode of applying 21st century ‘reason’ to the words of Jesus.

We don’t say that Jesus is exaggerating to make a point about other extreme things He taught. I just wonder if maybe we want to keep our eyes and our hands a little too much. We’d rather literally pay off a debt or forgive an enemy, but don’t *really* ask us to chop off our hands. hmmmm

Abundant Life, Rule Free, from Jesus the Shepherd

Published on 5/12/2009 in Bible Study. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

[I am sick as a dog today. stopped up, cold, runny nose, some stomach pains and nausea earlier. I’ve just been still in the chair surfing the internet for a while. It’s hard to think.]

v.8 Jesus isn’t talking about the prophets, but about false prophets and false teachers. The wild thing is, the converse of His statement is “if you listened to them, you are not my sheep”

Jesus contrasts Himself to the previous anti-shepherds by saying that He came for the sheep to have life abundantly. It seems like it would be easy to see from the previous chapter that the Pharisees are not on the side of having abundant life, but on the side of having abundant requirements, regulations, and judgments. I talked to a guy recently that is struggling to do the things “Jesus expects” and to do the things his pastor tells him to do. He is weighed down with burdens like the Pharisees would assign. ‘Do this activity this way. Don’t do this. This is wrong. This is good.’

Jesus was alive, and lived a lot talking about what the Kingdom of God was and what the Father is like. If I teach my son how to ride a bike by telling him all of the places he shouldn’t ride his bike and all of the ways he should not sit on his bike and all of the improper ways of holding the handle bars, he will never learn how to ride a bike. He will certainly be an expert on how to not ride a bike incorrectly! But he won’t be able to ride it 4 feet! When I taught my oldest son how to ride a bike, I assured him of this: “You will fall and it will hurt, but you can’t give up. I will take care of you and your booboos will get better, and you will become a better bike rider.” It was all true, and now he rides like the wind (and sometimes I wish I could get a little fear back into him!)

That’s how I think of Jesus giving us abundant life. He doesn’t train the sheep in how to avoid the wolf, or carry on telling the sheep how evil and hungry the wolf is. He just takes care of them and has them follow Him. How much of life is taken care of in that one little lesson?!

Follow the voice of the shepherd.

Here is to living life free in the Son, and trusting that the sheep of Christ will hear is voice and not be distracted by the sound of the [zealboy phrase edited out]

New News on ‘Missing the Mark’

Published on 5/9/2009 in Bookstore and Short Quotes. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

“In Hebrew, that is kha-ta’ – what we call “sin,” our world-wide, pervasive proclivity to mess up. We often hear it defined as “missing the mark” as though our trouble is just a matter of not being perfect enough (nowhere in Scripture does it say that!). An arrow that goes shy of the bull’s eye. Bt such trivializes God. It hints at His being overly fussy, and petty in His expectations for humans. Whereas, kha-ta is not just a matter of missing perfection. More aptly, it’s a matter of missing GOD’s aim in a given situation. Or then, even worse – missing His full purposes for our lives.”

—from “The Trouble With Grace” by Keith Hueftle

The Trouble with Grace

Jesus Is [like] the Bread and Water of Life

Published on 9/12/2008 in Bible Study. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I just read in the Catholic Encyclopedia that only wheat bread is allowed for communion. It specifically says NOT barley bread. Heh. How about that, with what we read that the feeding of the 5000 was most likely barley bread?!

On that same vein, it makes another comment about Jesus miraculously turning the wine into His blood before they drank it. If this were the case, they would have all drank blood at the ‘Last Supper’ which would have been the first time anything like that had ever happened in Judaism, but a common practice in paganism. When Jesus said, “I won’t drink the fruit of the vine again until the kingdom comes” then what was he talking about?

They made the same mistake w/ Eucharisto that Nicodemas made w/ being born again.

John 6:35 ¶ Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.

See the parable:

Whoever comes to Jesus will have their needs met IN HIM, and whoever believes in Him will never lack the most necessary thing to all life. You can go well over a month without food, but you can only go about 3 days without water. In Jesus even our most basic needs for REAL life are met (and a lot of our needs for the life we see are met too)

Leftovers and the Tithe

Published on 9/2/2008 in Bible Study. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

I was just reading Rick’s notes on John 6.1-13 and the recurring theme of God giving in abundance and there being leftovers comes up over and over again. When Jesus handed out the bread, there were leftovers, when He turned the water into wine, I HOPE there were leftovers!, when they caught all of the fish, there were so many the nets began to break…So I’m left thinking…where are my leftovers? It’s sad to say but that was my first reaction. Then my neck was a little sore and I looked around (heh, my stiff neck, Ex. 32.9) and I see all of the stuff we have at our house. My sons have robots! I have 2 nice cameras (still and motion) There are appliances, furnishings, conveniences, lavishings!

I think I’ve spent all of my leftovers on myself. If you add in credit cards, I’ve even spent FUTURE leftovers on myself!

Which makes me want to start giving even more.

Any of the Christian budgeting theories and books and manuals and videos will tell you in your budget to factor in your income, then take 10% off of that for your tithe, and then make your monthly budget. They get the 10% from the present-day teaching that Jews used to give 10% of their income to God. (often thought of as a donation to the temple, but it really wasn’t) Check out this link http://www.acts17-11.com/dialogs_tithe.html I just came across looking for the OT reference.

So instead of arguing the case for giving vs. titheing, I’m just going to post the above link and move on.

When I lived in Asia, I didn’t really have an income. I had a balance of money, and every month I would ask for whatever I wanted that month and I would get it. I also was really convicted by this teaching of Jesus in Luke 6.30 & 34. I wasn’t 100% at it, but I did loan out a lot of things that I would have never considered loaning before. Now if I kept track of what I gave away or loaned out to make sure I stayed at 10%, where would my joy be? And how many times did I meet beggar kids and signal them to hide from the grocery store security guards while I bought them bags of groceries, and keep track of how much I spent on them? Honestly, I did that as much as I kept track of all of the people that would write us a kind note via email and then drop $100 into our account.

A lot of the churches in my neighborhood preach the message that “you can’t out-give God” and I would say that is correct. He is continually out-giving us, and just as He keeps no account of His mercy or our sin, I think He would appreciate us freely giving out what we freely have received. I think they are going to have some regrets when they have to give an account for taking money “given to God” and buying Cadillacs and gold rings, which is why I’m going to spend today looking to see how I can give away my leftovers…but not starting with my sons’ robots.

I turned on the radio…

Published on 7/8/2008 in Short Quotes. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I turned on the radio long enough to hear an advertisement for a tape series on how to live a Biblically based world view, and I thought wow! Is that the goal now? And, turned off my radio.

Isn’t that what the Pharisees that crucified Jesus were working on?!

Disturbing Church

Published on 5/26/2008 in Family Life and Short Quotes. 5 Comments Tags: , , .

During the most important part of the church service, the background music played is an anthem to their country. Pictures of their military are shown, some even with guns in hand, while the congregation meditates on the Eucharist-the body and blood of Jesus who said “blessed are the peacemakers.” At the end, the men’s choir who is usually brought in to sing the most stirring and powerful songs about the saving power of the Gospel puts words to the same song played earlier, singing about God’s favor for the country and the men that fought in bloody wars to keep it ‘free’. The final moments of the song were punctuated with video of huge guns being shot off and cheers from the congregation.

This is not a tale from some state-controlled church in a third world military dictatorship. This is from my church in Indiana, and to all of my non-american friends I say I am so sorry.

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