By the book?
Pagan Christianity talks about how Socrates is considered to be the father of philosophy by some historians. He was born and raised in Athens and he would go around town relentlessly asking questions and analysing the popular views of his day. He believed that the truth was found by talking and talking about an issue and questioning the answer given by others. This method eventually got him killed. His incessant questioning of tightly held traditions provoked the leaders of Athens to charge him with “corrupting the youth.” They put him to death, and the leaders made it clear that anyone who followed his ways of relentlessly asking questions, would be put to death. Socrates was not the only one to be killed for his questions and for their nonconformity; Isaiah was sawn in half, John the Baptist was beheaded and Jesus was crucified, and the many of thousands of christians who have been martyred for their faith.
We are taught as Christians by our leaders to believe certain ideas and behave certain ways, and told to read the Bible. And most importantly, we are taught to never question or challenge our leaders. We never seem to ask why we do the things we do we just carry out our church traditions without asking where they came from. We are taught that how we are doing things is from the New Testament so you don’t question things.
Barna and Viola bring up a disturbing revolution
“A great deal of what we Christians do for Sunday morning church did not come from Jesus Christ, the apostles or the Scriptures. Nor did it come from Judaism. After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in AD70, Judaic Christianity waned in numbers and powers. Gentile Christianity dominated, and the new faith began to absorb Greco- Roman philosophy and ritual. Judaic Christianity survived for 5 centuries in the little group of Syriac Christianity called Ebionim, but their influence was not very wide spread”…” strikingly, much of what we do for “church” was lifted directly out of pagan culture in the postapostolic period”…” While today we often use the word pagan to describe those who claim no religion whatsoever, to the early Christians, pagans were those polytheists who followed the gods of the Roman Empire.”
This is something I don’t think that many Christians have any idea about this, and usually the ones that do are the ones who are the ones doing church postmodernly. But again, some of those are not doing it “by the book.” I’m not much of a fan of knowing that how we do church today is taken from paganism, but could it be so wrong if it works for us? Or should we totally re-invent Christianity to do it “by the book?”
Add a comment December 14, 2009
Pagan Christianity?
The book “Pagan Christianity” by Frank Viola and George Barna talks about if how we do church today is actually doing it “by the book.” As a church whole, we tend to change how we do our services and programs to go along with how we think the Bible instructs us to. But as you read through the book, we find out we are further from what the Bible says than ever. The beginning of the book starts with a quote from Joseph Campbell, a twentieth- century american writer, saying, ” There is perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder and discovering that you’re on the wrong wall.” This basically puts the entire book into perspective. The book goes through church history and ends up showing us that many of our cherished church traditions that we embrace today didn’t actually originate in the New Testament, but out of pagan practices. One of the most troubling outcomes has been the effect on average believers: turning them from living expressions of Christ’s glory and power to passive observers. In George Barna’s introduction, he says,
“ The heart of the Revoluntionaries is not in question. There is ample research to show that they are seeking more of God. They have a passion to be faithful to His Word and to be more in tune with His leading. They ardently want their relationship with the Lord to be their top priority in life. They are tired of the institutions, denominations and routines getting in the way of a resonant connection with Him. The are worn out on the endless programs that fail to facilitate transformation. The are weary of being sent off to complete assignments, memorize facts and passages, and engage in simplistic practices that to not draw them into God’s presence.”
We are seeing more and more churches becoming non-demoninational these days because there weren’t any denominations in the New Testament, which is true, but what tends to end up happening is they get so caught up in being non-demoninational, they don’t focus on why they decided to do away with it in the first place.
Viola and Barna are such great writers in the sense that they explain and describe what we are doing wrong and how we are doing it wrong. They tell a story about this pastor who says ” We do EVERYTHING by the Word of God! The New Testament is our guide for faith and practice! We live… and we die… by this Book!” They then describe a member of the church (Winchester) and how just an hour earlier he had a fuming fight with his wife. This was a common occurence with his wife and 3 daughters as they got ready for church on Sunday morning. They go on to write about the conversation and all the yelling and screaming going on in the house, and as they step out of the car at church, they all have smiles, and the pastor and his wife are linked arm and arm, greeting fellow members, and laughing, making it all seem that everything was well. As the pastor is giving his sermon., Winchester is brooding with self- condemnation, he began to ask himself questions: “Why am I dressed up like this looking like a good Christian when I acted like a heathen just an hour ago?… I wonder how many other families had this same pitiful experience this morning? Yet we are all smelling nice and looking pretty for God.” As he is thinking all of this, another thought comes into his mind, ” I don’t remember reading anywhere in the Bible that Christians are supposed to dress up to go to church. Is that by the book?”
The authors draw out many questions and thoughts that some of us have probably never thought about and as you read this you wonder, “are we really doing this by the book.” It really opens your eyes and allows you to question and make some very important decisions in the way that you worship God.
2 comments December 14, 2009
Self Centeredness
In the book Blue Like Jazz, Miller quotes C.S. Lewis. Miller has included this in his book because when he first read it he related to it and it made him think about his faith. In this poem by C.S. Lewis he faces himself and he addresses his own depravity with a soulful sort of bravery:
” All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek;
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love- a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek-
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.”
Miller goes on to say after he read this he thought to himself if he was like the parrot in the poem, basically having no idea what he was saying. He says ” I talk about love, forgiveness, social justice; I rage against American materialism in the name of altruism, but have I even controlled my own heart? The overwhelming majority of time I spend thinking about myself, pleasing myself, reassuring myself, and when I am done there is nother to spare for the needy. Six billion people live in this world, and I can only muster thoughts for one. Me.”
It is amazing how much we tend to think of ourselves. Even when we think we are doing things for others we usually do those things to make ourselves feel better. I watched this episode of Reba a while ago and i only caught this one part, but it was talking about how Shyanne (the oldest daughter) was throwing a surprise for her younger sister Keria, because for Keria’s 5th birthday Shyanne made it all about herself. Well she ended up feeling bad about it so she decided to throw Keria a birthday party but she made the mistake of saying she was doing it so Keria would feel better but so would she about ruining her birthday. Why is it that we are only capable of thinking of ourselves? Is it our sinful nature? Or is it just how society has made it? I think it is a combination of both. Out sinful nature has caused us to look to society for ideas and for affirmation if we are doing things right.
3 comments December 9, 2009
Blue Like Jazz
Like Ricky, I am also reading “Blue Like Jazz” by Donald Miller. His work is hard to criticise literary, but it’s one of those quotes that you have to go back to over and over again because it makes you think so hard, and more about what he is saying.
In one part, he talks about how in Sunday school we are taught all these nice light and fluffy Bible stories, when in fact, if we knew when we were kids what they were really about, it would horrify us. Take Noah and the Ark for example. Miller says this
” Can you imagine a children’s book about Noah’s ark complete with paintings of people gasping in gallons of water, mothers grasping their children while their bodies go flying down white-rapid rivers, the children’s tiny heads being bashed against rocks or hung up in fallen trees? I dont think a children’s book like that would sell many copies”
Why are we teaching our children these light and fluffy stories? They are just going to be confused when they grow up and realize what the stories are actually about. I wish I learned more about stories in the Bible and the actual stories, not the light and fluffy hiding something from you versions. I’m 21 years old, and at Bible college I am learning things about stories I learned about in Sunday school I never knew. Is there a way for us to teach our kids these stories without hiding or obscuring anything from them? I dont know about that, there is a chance that if we go out and tell 5 and 6 year olds about Noah’s ark, the true Noah’s ark, there may be a few nightmares. I never thought to look at that story that way. It put some very graphic pictures into my head with the way he described the children and babies. But because God wiped out all of humanity with that flood, it happened that way, even though it is a horrendous thought.
3 comments December 1, 2009
Proverbs
Lately, my boyfriend and I have been reading Proverbs together as our devotions, and wow, it has been powerful. I’m not sure if I am allowed to blog on the Bible, but I felt the need to share this.
Proverbs chapter 5 and chapter 7 both talk about immoral women and how men should stay away from them. Proverbs 7: 24-27 say ” So listen to me, my sons, and pay attention to my words. Don’t let your hearts stray away toward her. Don’t wander down her wayward path. For she has been the ruin of many; many men have been her victims. Her house is the road to the grave. Her bedroom is the den of death.”
Immoral women leading to death? Really? How? Well if we look harder into this passage, we find that this woman Solomon is talking about does this often and she would be considered a modern day prostitute. But how can being with someone like this lead you to death? Perhaps Solomon is talking about a spiritual death. Meaning being with this woman will kill you spiritually and cause you to fall away from God because let’s face it, we all know there is some sort of momentary satisfaction with sinning, but with sexual sin, it causes us to fall farther away from God sometimes. Perhaps that what he is talking about. Or is he meaning a literal death? If he is meaning literal death, then this should be a scary warning to all the young men out there. Does he mean that she kills the men she sleeps with? Or again maybe it is metaphorically.
Then why did Solomon right something like this? Well we know that proverbs are sometimes not to be taken literally. So if that is true then he must be meaning a spiritual death.
Now how are we supposed to take this and put it to practice today when all we see and hear around us is the complete opposite? It is very challenging and it makes you wonder if it is possible. But for it to be in the Bible, we know that it must apply to all generations. So there has to be something that we can take from it. I guess we can take that as hard as it is going to be to stay away from temptation and from this type of person ( now men can be this way as well, so we can’t just blame the women), otherwise we could be headed down the path of spiritual death. Which we all know is quite possible with the way the devil works, but with God on our side, we know all things are possible! Including overcoming temptation.
This is why I love Proverbs. There are many explanations for what is written here. I challenge each of you to read a chapter a day for a month. That’s all it takes. I bet you will find something in there that will change or challenge the way you think.
Add a comment November 29, 2009
What Happened?
I have been meaning to write this for over a week now but have gotten side tracked.. so here it goes
After finishing my last blog, I kept reading Out of the Silent Planet by C.S Lewis, and it got so weird! I had no idea what to think about it. I got all confused and just put the book down because I was so frustrated with it! Since they are on this other planet, there is a totally new language. Lewis seems to just throw it in there without a lot of explanation of the words so you are stuck flipping back pages to see if he has explained it. One part of the book goes like this
“Ever since he had discovered the rationality of the hrossa he had been haunted by a conscientious scruple to whether it might not be his duty to undertake their religious instruction; now, as a result of his tentative efforts, he found himself being treated as if he were the savage and being given the first sketch of civilized relgion- a sort of hrossian equivalent of the shorter catechism. It became plain that Maleldil was a spirit without body, parts and passions.
‘ He is not a hnua’ said the hross
‘ What is hnua?‘ asked Ransom
‘ You are hnua. the seroni are hnua. The pfifltriggi are hnua‘
‘ pfifltriggi?’ said Ransom?
‘ More than ten days’ journey to the west,’ said Hnohra ‘ The harandra sinks down not into the handramit but into a broad place, an open place, spreading every way’”
Now what is one supposed to think of this? I’m sorry but I can not seem to understand where Lewis is going with this, and why he had to make up the language so difficult to understand and just plain weird. I don’t even know how to start to interpret this! I have never been so lost in a book in my life!
It has almost turned me off of this book… but I will continue to see if it does get any better.
1 comment November 19, 2009
Out of the Silent Planet
So I am reading “Out of the silent planet” by C.S. Lewis, and I have never read a book so weird yet not be able to put it down! It is so intriguing. It starts out like a normal novel, well normal for the 1930′s. A man named Ransom is doing a walking tour, which I am guessing is modern day hiking? Correct me if I am wrong. Anyways, Ransom is walking around trying to find a place to stay when he meets an older lady frantically looking for her son. We find out he is “simple” (which I personally find a terrible term), and he is working at this house for Devine and Weston. Ransom tells the old woman he will go and find out where the boy is and send him home. When he gets to the house, the gate is locked. Ransom is about to give up but remembers the vow to the old woman so he decides to climb over the hedge. Once over, he goes to the back of the house and hears Harry, the woman’s son, screaming “Let me go! Let me go!” (pg10) So Ransom decides to go into the house and make sure Harry is okay. [skipping the dialogue to the good part]. So we find out Ransom went to school with Devine at Cambridge College. Anyways, Weston and Devine drug Ransom and put him in this room and close the door and Ransom passes out. When he wakes up, he is in space and it looks like they are going to the moon. Well they don’t go to the moon; they end up going to Malacandra, another planet sort of thing. C.S Lewis paints such a good picture of the planet that it feels like you are right there with them and you can imagine exactly what it looks like.
“Naturally enough all he saw was the ground- a circle of pale pink, almost white; whether very close and short vegetation or very wrinkled and granulated rock or soil he could not say”… ” He saw a pale blue sky- a fine winter morning sky it would have been on earth- a great billowy cumular mass of rose colour lower down which he took for a cloud” (pg 45&46)
The way that he describes the animals is amazing. Ransom runs into these creatures after he has run away from Devine and Weston and Lewis describes it like this:
“the giant stature, the cadaverous leanness, the long, drooping, wizard like profile of a sorn. The head appeared to be narrow and conical; the hands or paws with which it parted the stems before it as it moved were thin, mobile, spidery and almost transparent” (pg 60)
“Suddenly the water heaved and a round shining, black thing like a cannonball came into sight. Then he saw the eyes and mouth- a puffing mouth bearded with bubbles. More of the thing came out of the water. It was gleaming black. Finally it splashed and wallowed to the shore and rose, steaming, on its hind legs- six or seven feet high and too thin for its height, like everything in Malacandra. it had a coat of thick black hair, lucid as sealskin, very short legs with webbed feet, a broad beaver-like or fish-like tail, strong fore-limbs with webbed claws or fingers, and some complication halfway up its belly which Ransom took to be its genitals. It was something like a penguin, something like an otter, something like a seal; the slenderness and flexibility of the body suggested a giant stoat. The great round head, heavily whiskered, was mainly responsible for the suggestion of seal; but it was higher in the forehead then a seal’s and the mouth was smaller” (pg 61)
This style of writing that Lewis uses allows the reader to develop the setting for the book. Whenever I read very detailed books like this, I tend to make up what I think would be happening in the movie, if there was to be one.
This book reminds me a lot of Ted Dekker’s series of Red, Black and White. With it being on another planet. I just find this book is quite a bit easier to follow and read then Ted Dekker’s books.
I don’t know if this is how Lewis always writes since this is the first ever book I have read by him, but it has definitely gotten me interested and wanting more!
1 comment November 13, 2009
I finished “Little Women” quite awhile ago and had moved on to another book, but I saw it on my shelf with a bookmark in it and remembered there was something that really hit me and wanted to share.
The book is about the March family. 4 daughters ;Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy,and their mother Margret living in hard times while their father is being a chaplin in the army. Up to the point in the book I want to address, not much has happened. Amy has decided to burn Jo’s beloved book she writes her stories in because Jo got angry at her the day before. Well, being sisters, obviously words start to fly and a fight has begun. That night, Jo and her mother sit down and have a talk, and it is what Mrs. March said that really touched me and made me think
”My child, the troubles and temptations of your life are beginning, and may be many; but you can overcome and outlive them all, if you learn to feel the strength and tenderness of your Heavenly Father as you do that of your earthly one. The more you love and trust Him, the nearer you will feel to HIm, and the less you will depend on your human power and wisdom. His love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of lifelong peace, happiness and strength. Believe this heartily, and go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother” (pg 79)
I remember at this time I was reading this, I was feeling so overwhelmed with school work and life. Since I have been out of school for 3 years, I was very scared coming back into it. What the author was writing, I knew in my head all along, but it is one of those things that you don’t remember it until it is brought into your life again and it is usually done right at the time you need it the most.
And now, even weeks after reading this for the first time, it again hits home for me. Sometimes you get to a point in your life where you feel like you are doing everything wrong and there is no way you can go to the Lord with anything because He is perfect and you aren’t and you feel He just won’t understand. Our sermon yesterday at church was on “Forgivness” and our Pastor touched on this area also. It’s something so hard for people to wrap their heads around, that the Lord is there no matter what you do, say or feel. What blows my mind, is that the Lord still loves us after we mess up a thousand times, and the people close to us can’t forgive us. We are so fortunate to experience the Lord’s unconditional love and yet people still don’t want anything to do with God.
I guess I have gone off topic alittle, I tend to do that often. But if it gets the point across then so be it. I guess the whole thing I was trying to get across what the Lord is there for you always, and if you love and trust Him, the closer you will feel to him. Maybe its something we need to think about more. I know everyone “knows” this but sometimes you just have to be in a certian situation for it to really hit you personally and it shows a whole new meaning.
Playlist for this blog…
Life house- hanging by a moment
Newsboys- Shine
Underoath-Some seek forgivness, others escape
Brad Paisley-Mud on the Tires
2 comments October 19, 2009
This day in age…
We were talking about technology in class last week and it really started a great discussion. Its amazing what we have now a days. I was talking to my parents about their childhood and my mom was talking about how much she loved it when the milk horse would come around and deliver the milk! Can you even picture a horse coming to your door and a man jumping off and delivering you your milk? It just makes me laugh at the image I come up with. The amount our world has changed in the past 50 years blows my mind. And even how much it has changed in the past 20! We are just so advanced now in pretty much everything.
The first book I read was Little Women by Louisa Mae Alcott. It was written in1868, now how am I supposed to relate to a book written in 1868? But let me say, it really made me appreciate what I have. Can you even imagine heating your house with a wood stove oven? Or using that as your stove? I sure can’t.
The amount of gagets we have now in our lives is ridiculous. I don’t even want to think about what my kids will have to play with. It scares me actually. The amount of time I have spent on the internet and neglected my family and friends and work just makes me sick. And to think that my kids will probably have twice as much as I did. I tried to go a week without interent once… ya I almost died. Now, this was in grade 12 (4 years ago), and it was one of those stages in life where parents and family just wasn’t important to me, but it still makes me sick.
It really makes you think doesn’t it? How would we do without all of the technology advances in our lives today? Does it scare you as much as it scares me for our childrens future?
Add a comment October 4, 2009
