Oddities

OT Christians vs. NT Christians

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One of the many mistakes I believe Christians make today concerns viewing the Bible as a book of answers. That may be true to a point, especially for the babe in Christ, but I find that as I mature the Bible holds just as many questions as it does answers, perhaps more.

Take the opening Psalm:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
—Psalm 1

Out getting our teeth worked on today, my son and I listened to John MacArthur’s “Grace to You” program. See, I’m one of those countercultural fools who likes my Christian radio packed with teaching, as opposed to what passes for music on those same channels. Fortunately, I just so happened to tune in right as MacArthur started his program. When I heard he’d be expositing Psalm 1, one of my favorite Psalms, I stayed put.

MacArthur did a great job, but then stumbled egregiously on the very heart of the Psalm:

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.
—Psalms 1:3

See, MacArthur got super-spiritual and claimed that “In all he does, he prospers,” refers to spiritual prosperity. But the text doesn’t say that. It says in ALL he does he prospers. Yes, his spiritual life prospers, but so does his physical, emotional, and intellectual life. God blesses him with prosperity in all aspects of life. He’s got a supermodel for a wife, the world’s greatest klatch of kids, money in the bank, the respect of his peers, a voice that people heed, a powerful network of business partners, and on and on. When the town needs something done, it goes to the Psalm One Guy.

What bothered me was MacArthur’s New Testament-izing of that Old Testament passage. And it shows me how poorly we Christians integrate the Old Testament with the New. In fact, I would say that we don’t truly integrate the OT and NT, but instead form our denominations around which one we prefer!

What do I mean by that?

Well, I think that we have folks in the Church who divide into two camps, one that leans heavily on the OT for its theology, and one that goes NT.

Pentecostals, Assemblies of God, charismatics, and a lot of mainline Protestant churches stand their ground on the OT. When they talk about believing the promises of God, they stand on verses that God spoke over His chosen people, verses that talk about taking the land, abiding in the promises, overthrowing giants, growing from the least into the greatest, and fire coming down out of heaven to consume one’s enemies. It’s a view that sees the godly man as the pillar of his community, chessmen.jpga community of chosen established by God. It’s lowly Israel made a great nation, its men held up for esteem so that kings seek them out.

On the other side, many Evangelicals pitch their tent in a NT view that sees the Church as a persecuted, ragtag bunch of misfits held together by grace. The godly man is not only poor in spirit, but quite possibly poor in purse. Verses that appeal to this view hold up dying to self, renouncing worldly gain, becoming the scum of the earth, and abandoning earthly prosperity for heavenly reward. The godly man is the one speared to death in a Roman colosseum, a martyr for the cause of Christ.

So these two camps war. The NT proponents enter the OT and start revising all the verses to fit their idea of what the true NT man must be. The OT proponents, though, wade into the NT and try to dismantle the NT camp’s “suffering servants.”

This, to me, explains why John MacArthur must overlay Psalm 1 with a spiritualized meaning rather than taking it at its word. He espouses the NT camp’s philosophy, so it can’t possibly mean that God prospers a man by giving him earthly wealth. As MacArthur jumped back into the NT for the rest of his teaching, he showed his hand by defaulting to NT readings that reinforced the spiritualization of Psalm 1.

And that leaves me with questions.

To me, Psalm 1 is clear, as are the rest of the OT passages that support God prospering the righteous with wealth, power, and respect. And I also see the NT side that supports a view of the Church as the downtrodden of society who have received the Good News when the rich and powerful did not. Both are clearly in the Scriptures, and both are clearly true.

Now, how do we reconcile them?

First, I’d like the OT camp to realize that “taking dominion” doesn’t always look like a Lexus in the driveway. Sometimes the greatest saints of God are the most lowly. To the NT camp, not every person who’s named the name of Christ winds up crucified upside down. Many of the Church’s greatest scholars and theologians came from privileged homes. Some even bankrolled their churches.

God may desire to have some become poor to prosper the Kingdom, while in His good measure He deems that some acquire wealth, power, and respect to expand that same Kingdom. Both OT and NT Christians don’t wish to hear this, though. It strikes me even more odd that many of the world’s poor take the OT side, while the rich of the world take the NT side, yet neither truly experiences the reality of the side they hope to claim!

Like so many things in the Christian walk, the truth may well reside in the middle of those two views. Attempting to make a law out of either side only creates trouble and misunderstanding. The Pentecostal who believes that God will bless and prosper him gets the “prosperity gospel” label by the other side, while the conservative Baptist is seen as a sad sack who hasn’t appropriated his inheritance as a child of the King of Kings.

Despite what the two camps say, I don’t believe they’re mutually exclusive. But finding that overlap (where I believe truth reigns) requires work and possibly abandoning preconceptions, two things that don’t come easy to the American Church circa 2007.

It means asking plenty of questions, too. I’m willing to work at discovering that middle ground, though. Anyone else?

Throwing Stones in Glass Houses of Worship

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People who worship in glass houses...Some arguments that crop up in the Godblogosphere just kill me. If I were a non-Christian, I’d have all the ammo I’d need from blogs alone to make a compelling argument to look somewhere other than Jesus for my salvation.

Can I reiterate the old aphorism that the biggest argument against Christianity are Christians? Hackneyed, yes, but sadly true.

Last week, the old divisive question of cessationism vs. charismata raised its perpetually ugly head for the umpteenth time over at Pyromaniacs. It seems that we simply can’t let this issue die, as if one more post on it’s going to force one side or the other to capitulate.

Whenever the supporters of a cessationist view want to make their point that all charismatics are “shambalahonda”-babbling, heretical nutjobs, they go to the same well again and again: TBN. The same tired arguments are trotted out. “Look at Benny Hinn! Will you get a load of that screwloose?” Or “What’s with Paul and Jan Crouch? I mean, seriously!”

And thus all charismatics—myself included—are painted with the same exceedingly broad brush. The blanket of condemnation falls on anyone who spoke in tongues after the Apostle John died, and we’re all Benny Hinns, W.V. Grants, and purveyors of error worthy of an extra bucket of red-hot embers when we finally croak and wind up in hell.

But is that the truth?

I’d like readers to bear with me through the next few paragraphs. Don’t even read them unless you’re willing to read to the end. Just stop reading now if you aren’t going to finish this post. I’ll even highlight the questionable words in blue so you know which ones I mean.

Pyromaniacs is a Reformed site. They support 5-point TULIP Calvinism. In truth, we agree on most things, though I understand that my Lutheran theology (though Reformation-inspired) coupled with a belief that the charismata are still working today would not endear me to my brothers there. Certainly, I would not be branded Reformed by their definition.

So while Phil Johnson of Pyromaniacs talks of bad experiences with charismaniacs, I’d like to share my experiences in the Reformed church, since I was a part of a few Reformed churches over the years and have friends who have attended Reformed Calvinist churches.

One Bible study I attended consisted solely of men from a respected, wealthy Reformed church. Before the Bible studies started, these men would sit around and belittle the poor, talking about “those people” and how they were lazy and ignorant. (That they laughed while they tore down “the least of these” made it all the more excruciating for me to even be in the same room with those “Christians.”)

Or let’s consider the Calvinist church that split because some people in that church wanted to evangelize the nearby Hispanic community. Objections swirled that the church would be ruined should “those people” (there it is again!) come in and disrupt things by bringing their culture and customs with them.

Or how about greeters at a Reformed church “greeting” visitors by immediately asking if they were Calvinists, then walking away when the visitors said they did not know?

What can be said of the Reformed church that belittles congregants who can’t afford to send their kids to an exclusive, private Christian school (founded in part by the church)?

Or how about the couple who wanted to start an evangelistic outreach in their Reformed church, but encountered constant apathy on the part of the congregation because “those who were predestined were already in the church”?

In short, which is worse—the babbling, emotional, theology-challenged, snake-handling charismaniac OR the self-righteous, xenophobic, status-seeking, materialistic Reformed/Calvinist?

It’s a pointless question, isn’t it?

If we Christians want to speak words of death in the Church, then by all means let’s resort to naming the worst possible examples of living the Christian life that we might possibly find in some other denomination or sect. Then let’s write as if those worst possible examples were the norm.

I didn’t want to write this post. That this post even needs to be written saddens me. Writing those examples of how some perverse subset of Reformed/Calvinist brothers and sisters ignored the very heart of the Gospel gave me no pleasure at all. Why? Because I know that thousands more Reformed Calvinist brothers and sisters in Christ are NOT like that. In the same way, thoughtful, theologically-sound charismatics who don’t like TBN or the excesses displayed within some charismatic churches exist in large numbers.

Because some Reformed and Calvinist believers are jerks doesn’t negate the Reformed/Calvinist message anymore than wacky charismatics negate theirs. The truth here is that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Before we disparage others from some other flavor of Christianity, we should ask if our own flavor has its house in order. Railing on “those other guys” comes easy to us because few of us wish to acknowledge the problems in our own house. (If Team Pyro wants to correct those Reformed churches I mentioned above, I’ve got the phone numbers for a couple of them. They can drop me an e-mail. I’ve already corrected charismania many times here.)

If Reformed/Calvinists with a keen eye for discernment would work to clean up their house, and Baptists worked to clean up their house, and Nazarenes worked to clean up their house, and charismatics worked to clean up their house, I have an idea that God would bless each house in a profound way. Perhaps then, even our differences wouldn’t seem so large.

But if the Nazarenes decide to point fingers at the mess in the Baptist’s house, and the Reformed/Calvinists decide to ridicule the excesses in the charismatic house, then the world they all live in will go on spinning and the Church of Jesus Christ will smother itself with a blanket of words that kill.

Because I can always find a problem with my neighbor. It’s my own problems I’m not so keen to fix.

Killing Him Softly

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I’m not one for Christian celebrities. To me, the whole concept of a “Christian celebrity” loiters in oxymoron territory, like “jumbo shrimp” or “corporate ethics.” Still, Christian celebrities exist and hold a lot of sway in some circles.

Recently, Kirk Cameron (actor/hero of the Left Behind films) addressed a convention of Southern Baptist pastors on what he sees as a pressing need in the pastorate:

Can I speak to you from my heart for a moment? I realize that, theologically, I’m not worthy to wash your socks. But imagine this scenario with me, if you will: Imagine I’m a “seeker- I’m a non-Christian, sitting in your church week after week after week listening to you. Am I ever going to hear the message that will save my soul from Hell? Will you ever tell me the truth clearly enough so that I realize that my sin has made me an enemy of God: that I am currently on the path that leads to destruction, with the wrath of God dwelling upon me, and that unless I repent and put my faith in the Savior, I will perish? Or have you decided that it’s better to simply entertain me, and on Sundays I can come to have my “felt needs met with good music and good advice? Pastor, while I would appreciate that, it’s the ultimate betrayal of my trust in you if you don’t tell me the truth. Will I ever hear the words “repent, “surrender, “turn to the Savior, “be born again? If you don’t tell me those things, how will I ever know to do it?Please don’t leave it up to the Wednesday night small-group leader. They’re taking their cues from you. You’re leading the flock.

(HT: The Thinklings)

Awesome passion there out of Mr. Cameron. I’m certain a few hearty “Amens” will rise up out of the reading audience.

But on perusing that impassioned plea, I noticed a couple enormous problems.

Here’s another set of enormous problems (compiled by Pastor Darren Patrick):

  • Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
  • Fifty percent of pastors’ marriages will end in divorce.
  • Eighty percent of pastors and eighty-four percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
  • Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
  • Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.
  • Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression.
  • Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.
  • Seventy percent said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they are preparing their sermons.
  • Eighty percent of pastors’ spouses feel their spouse is overworked.
  • Eighty percent of pastors’ spouses wish their spouse would choose another profession.
  • The majority of pastors’ wives surveyed said that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage and family was the day they entered the ministry.

While the issues Cameron confronts and Patrick notes appear unrelated, a general truth emerges about the flawed way we American Christians do church.

Consider the following verse:

And truly He gave some to be apostles, and some to be prophets, and some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.
—Ephesians 4:11-12 MKJV

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…
—Ephesians 4:11-12 ESV

And indeed He gave some to be apostles; and some prophets; and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers; with a view to the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ…
—Ephesians 4:11-12 LITV

I gave a few different translations there to provide a more thorough understanding of the passage in question. The Greek word used for pastor is the same as used for shepherd in the NT. Either way one looks at the word, it carries the meaning I wish to use in what follows.

My main criticism of Cameron’s exhortation is not that it’s wrong in content, but that it’s directed to the wrong people. Cameron’s talking to pastors, but he clearly gears his message to people inhabiting another ministerial office. Notice the meat sentences:

Pastor… it’s the ultimate betrayal of my trust in you if you don’t tell me the truth. Will I ever hear the words “repent, “surrender, “turn to the Savior, “be born again? If you don’t tell me those things, how will I ever know to do it?

Cameron’s mistake here is to charge the pastor with the job of the evangelist. Some will accuse me of drawing too fine a line on this, but you’ll have to argue with Paul. The apostle clearly noted a distinction between pastors and evangelists in Ephesians 4.

It’s popular today to speak of The Five-fold Ministry of Ephesians 4, and many churches adhere to the idea that the pastor should be an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher, but I can’t read the Bible and find folks who fit that mold. (The role of apostle itself appears to include many of the functions of the others, but let’s be real here: apostles are exceedingly rare.) I mentioned the NT prophet Agabus the other day, but no one called him a pastor or teacher. Paul told Timothy to do the work of an evangelist, but he didn’t tell him to also do the work of a prophet or apostle.

Why are we not asking what the genuine biblical role of the pastor is? Perhaps it’s far more limited in scope than we’ve made it out to be.

If we consider the finer truth of the use of the word shepherd for pastor, what does a shepherd do?

  • He protects the flock from harm.
  • He tends to their wounds and diseases.
  • He comforts them when they are afraid.
  • He takes them out to a place where they can find the substantial food and water weaned sheep need to reproduce, tend their lambs, grow, and prosper.

I think that’s an apt description of what a pastor does with his flock of believers. We can take this analogy one step further. The apostle is the one who supervises the farm’s staff. The evangelist is the one who coordinates the reproduction, overseeing the birthing of new lambs. The prophet communicates the will of the farm owner.

But we in the Western Church don’t run our churches this way, do we? I hear so many calls from big name Christians to raise up more pastors. But who is calling to raise up more evangelists? Do we even acknowledge that such a role exists in the modern Church? Should we assume that all pastors are evangelists?

I’m not sure we should. This doesn’t mean that a pastor should never address issues the evangelist lives for. He should. But that’s not his primary role! And we forget this to the detriment of pastors and their flocks.

Cameron’s exhortation opens up another problem as it relates to pastoring: making the elementary primary.

I’ve long contended at Cerulean Sanctum that we’ve bungled a major Gospel truth by turning our churches, which are meant as the assembly of believing saints, into a pre-natal ward. Our church meetings were never intended to be a place for unbelievers to hang out and hear an evangelistic message Sunday after Sunday. You simply can’t find evidence for that kind of idea in the New Testament.

We’re to go outside the church walls and lead people to Christ, THEN bring them into the church. This places the onus of evangelism squarely on the shoulders of the regular Joes and Janes in the pews. Spiritual reproduction is the mark of mature Christians. Real Christians lead other people to Christ. We simply can’t walk away from that truth.

But what we’ve done (erroneously) is make our churches into midwife clinics. The result?

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.
—Hebrews 5:12-6:2

Does your church sound like the kind of church that reiterates the same elementary principles week in and week out? How does anyone go on to maturity in such a church?

The answer is that few can. The fallout comes when we look around and can’t find mature believers, the kind that reproduce spiritual children. And why can’t we? Because we rely on the pastor to do all the heavy lifting of leading folks to Christ. And because that’s how we run our churches today, we can never go on to maturity because we force pastors to dole out milk.

It’s a vicious cycle. And who gets killed softly in this vicious cycle? Yes, your pastor.

Considering that our pastoral model in the modern American Church may not even be biblical, should we be surprised at the damage a pastor endures? Tired. And he lost. Your pastor?When we ask him to be everything, how can he not fail? When he’s forced to constantly preach and teach milk, how can he ever grow enough mature believers to fill the other roles in Ephesian 4, crucial roles designed to take the pressure off him?

Folks, we need an overhaul in the way we do church and how we define the role of pastor. Perhaps then we wouldn’t grind up so many good men of God (and their families). Perhaps then we’d do a better job raising up evangelists. Perhaps then we could grow more Christians to maturity. Perhaps then we could bring more people to the Lord.

Perhaps then we could attain the fullness of the beloved Bride of Christ, the fullness the Bridegroom so longs for us to have.

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