Why the Need for Cerulean Sanctum?

Every day, throughout the world, children wake up to abuse. A drunken father beats his five year old son – just because. A drug-addicted mother fails to feed her toddler, using the little money she has to buy drugs instead of food. An uncle sexually molests his retarded niece. A hearing-impaired boy is beaten senseless by a school bully.

Does this make you angry? Does it make you want to do something? Do you love those children?

Me? I love the Church. I love the people of God who want to know Him, who want to behold Him with unveiled faces. And I believe that in many ways the Church is being abused by people who want to drive it into the ground. People who are only after acclaim. People who love error and hate the Truth. And even those people who simply don’t know any better.

Aren’t we all meeting people who are thinking, “No church for me please, it’s too screwed up” or “not right” or “not meeting my needs” or “not showing me God” or any of the myriad reasons why people are out there trying to “re-image” the Church?

Why would anyone want to do that if the Church is truly being the Church?

I don’t want the sickly Christianity that I see so many preaching today. This pop-psych, powerless, hopeless, error-ridden thing we are preaching is not right.
When your shadow falls on the lame do they get up and walk? Is God more real to you than your own life? Have you hidden the Word of God deep in your being? Do you go to bed at night thinking, “I can’t wait to wake so I can spend more time with Christ in prayer?”

Where is the Church that turns the world upside down? That confronts injustice? That tears down strongholds? That goes to the lost and says, “We know the way out of the darkness and we will do everything possible by the grace of God to help you out of that darkness.”

Ironically enough, I’m listening to a jukebox of several hundred Christian music MP3s and guess what randomly started playing when I was typing the last couple paragraphs? Keith Green’s “Asleep in the Light”:

Do you see, do you see, all the people sinking down,
Don’t you care, don’t you care, are you gonna let them drown,
How can you be so numb, not to care if they come,
You close your eyes and pretend the job’s done.
Oh Bless me Lord, bless me Lord, you know it’s all I ever hear,
No one aches, no one hurts, no one even sheds one tear,
But He cries, He weeps, He bleeds, and He cares for your needs,
And you just lay back and keep soaking it in, oh, can’t you see it’s such sin?
Cause He brings people to your door,
And you turn them away, as you smile and say,
God bless you, be at peace, and all Heaven just weeps,
Cause Jesus came to your door, you’ve left Him out on the streets.
Open up, open up, and give yourself away,
You’ve seen the need, you hear the cry, so how can you delay,
God’s calling and you’re the one, but like Jonah you run,
He’s told you to speak, but you keep holding it in,
Oh, can’t you see it’s such sin?
The world is sleeping in the dark,
That the church can’t fight, cause it’s asleep in the light,
How can you be so dead, when you’ve been so well fed,
Jesus rose from the grave, and you, you can’t even get out of bed,
Oh, Jesus rose from the dead, come on, get out of your bed.
How can you be so numb, not to care if they come,
You close your eyes and pretend the job’s done,
You close your eyes and pretend the job’s done,
Don’t close your eyes, don’t pretend the job’s done.
Come away, come away, come away with Me, My love,
Come away, from this mess, come away with Me, My love.

We’re wrapped up in technique and we’re “Purpose-Driven.” We’re conferenced, seminar-ed, and meeting-ed to death. We have all the talk in the world and yet there is no revival. I don’t think anyone here can take a look at the Book of Acts and say the Church today resembles what we see written in those pages. Why not???

I have a zeal for the Church. I want the Bride of Christ to be strong, beautiful, unblemished and holy. I hope to think the anger I am said to have is a righteous and holy anger at seeing that Bride reduced to being less than she can be.

Some say the Church of the 21st Century is apostate. That may be true, but I am going to see what I can do to make certain that is not the case. I may be a fool, but I will God’s fool, because I believe Him and because I believe He can do more if we simply abandon everything for Him. The man who sold all he had to buy the Pearl of Great Price did so because he knew the unparalleled treasure he held in his hand.

If you want to join me, please do.

Cults: What is not covered here…

In the midst of this examination of the major branches of practice within the American Church, a word must be said about cults.

Ask any two cult experts what defines a “cult” and you will find a variety of answers. For me, the two most common beliefs of pseudo-Christian cults are:

1. Non-Trinitarian
2. “Jesus and…”

Denying the orthodox truth of the Trinitarian nature of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is a surefire way to get a cult label. This test alone weeds out your major pseudo-Christian cults: Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons (Latter Day Saints), The Unity School of Christianity, and others.

“Jesus and…” is a more critical test. Adding to the finished work of Christ is an enormous mistake. Many supposedly Christian churches fall down here, insisting that salvation only comes when something else (i.e. – a ritual, practice, a human leader, or additional extra-biblical theology) is added to Christ’s propitiary work.

The “Jesus and…” test traps the major cults above, too. Sadly, this test also culls the Roman Catholic Church (for more on what the RCC adds, click here.)

For this reason, pseudo-Christian cults will not factor into anything we discuss here.

Our basis will always be that the Trinity reflects the true nature of God and that salvation comes from Jesus’s finished work alone operating in the life of the believer.

Fortresses and Compromise

What does the Orthodox Church have in common with liberal mainline Protestant churches?

Actually… nothing when you think about it. Their commonality is in their complete antithesis. The Orthodox Church is a fortress that probably has not changed one iota since its founding. Mainstream liberal Protestant churches, on the other hand, have given it all away in an effort to be socially relevant. The former is one of the true bastions of historic Christianity, while the latter is letting it all hang out.

Something is to be said for a sense of history and the Orthodox faith understands this well. Church fathers spoke long ago, but still speak today. Orthodoxy remembers.

And yet, there are not many around to do the remembering. People are born into the church, but in all the years I have lived, I have never once had anyone of Orthodox faith ever approach me about Jesus. I don’t know anyone of Orthodox faith. In short, where is the church’s presence in the world?

That’s the problem with fortresses. They keep the world out, but they keep themselves in, as well.

Mainline Protestantism, on the other hand, can’t keep the world out, and has done a good job of losing their brightest and best to the ranks of evangelicalism, charismatic churches, and splinter groups. Between the Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Church of Christ, they’ve probably spawned a hundred splinter denominations, each one seeking to correct the errors of the parent church.

The Jesus of a large bulk of mainline Protestantism is unrecognizable to more conservative Christians. In kind, the Bible is of questionable origin, too patriarchal, and phobic of just about every people group known to Man that fails to go by the acronym, “W.A.S.P.” Christianity is pretty much what you make of it. Absolute Truth? Who needs it!

Despite the soul-numbing “neo-fusion-syncretism” of the mainline churches, they do have one thing going for them: they understand the needs of the neediest. These churches built many of the hospitals, orphanages, senior homes, and community centers found in this country. That contribution is hard to ignore. And despite the fact that many of those accomplishments are in the past, these churches still manage to be on the cutting edge of helping others.

The Christianity that makes the world stand up and take notice is one that blends the best of both. It looks outside, seeing the need and meeting it, bringing the Gospel into the darkness. It also keeps the darkness outside the camp, protecting that which must be guarded and doing it relentlessly. History cannot be forgotten, either, since we must learn from the past and cherish it as part of our link to the Lord Jesus Himself.