The New Testament takes communion very seriously as well. In fact, it is so serious that Paul viewed it as a life and death matter. In I Corinthians 11 Paul declares that some people have “fallen asleep,” (i.e. died) because they participated unworthily in communion. While most pastors don’t go around scaring people away from taking communion with the threat of death, most churches do remind partakers that the matter is considered a very serious one. In light of this, participants are often reminded and encouraged to examine themselves before God and repent of sins prior to taking communion. I think this is a great practice and a somber reminder to reflect on our lives and the work of God. However, it seems quite apparent that this concept of general reflection and general repentance misses much of the weight of Paul’s admonishment.
Photo from scop.io by Jose González Buenaposada Communion is an extremely important event for Christians, or at least it should be. Jesus tells us that it’s something we ought to do in remembrance of him, and many faith traditions believe that there is a very real, but mystical means of grace which is manifested in the meal. Our church, and many other churches in our denomination, partake of communion weekly, as we strongly value the mystical bond of communion, not only in its binding of us to Christ, but in the way it binds the community together.
The New Testament takes communion very seriously as well. In fact, it is so serious that Paul viewed it as a life and death matter. In I Corinthians 11 Paul declares that some people have “fallen asleep,” (i.e. died) because they participated unworthily in communion. While most pastors don’t go around scaring people away from taking communion with the threat of death, most churches do remind partakers that the matter is considered a very serious one. In light of this, participants are often reminded and encouraged to examine themselves before God and repent of sins prior to taking communion. I think this is a great practice and a somber reminder to reflect on our lives and the work of God. However, it seems quite apparent that this concept of general reflection and general repentance misses much of the weight of Paul’s admonishment.
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Bludgeoning with Peace and Purity
When news came out about Ravi Zacharias and his sexual predation, I was devastated, but not surprised. It's always heartbreaking to find out that someone you hold in high esteem is guilty of heinous evil, but history, experience, and my Christian worldview move me to expect that such things will occur. As Dr. Clay Jones says, these things aren't inhuman, they're what humans do. The state of humanity is not rainbows and butterflies, it's sin and wickedness. Without transformation and a community of accountability, sin has a tendency to work itself out to its final, hideous form of exploitation and destruction. There are two things I particularly love about Reformed theology: its ability to drive one towards humility, and its emphasis on upholding the importance of doctrine. First, Reformed theology is perfectly equipped to drive one to humility through its doctrine - doctrine which demands introspection. The Reformed are well known for using the saying, "There but for the grace of God, go I." Due to the strong doctrine of total depravity, God's grace, and an understanding that our hearts are wicked and deceitful, Reformed believers have no grounds to be shocked when the most godly leader in the world falls, and no grounds to think that anyone is above any sin, even and especially oneself. There is a fear and trembling that Reformed doctrines should produce in our daily living, as well as a converse wonder and awe at the beautiful and extravagant grace of God. Reformed doctrines ought to drive us to humility..
Second, Reformed doctrines are equipped to drive us towards holding doctrine in high esteem. If humanity's problem is a looking to self and a forcing of God into the dark recesses of one's heart and mind, then the knowledge - the true and accurate knowledge of God and his son Jesus Christ, revealed in the Word, through the Spirit, ought to be core to our conversion and continued sanctification. Reformed faith should drive us to seek the knowledge of God in our theology, because right theology ought to cause us to become more and more conformed to the image of Jesus, who is the perfect image of God. There are quite a few people in my circles who aren’t too fond of all the demonstrations which have been going on. In their minds, all demonstrations related to racial issues are "riots," and all of the demonstrations are lead by leftist, Marxist, communist, anarchists. Many of the same criticisms conservatives once levied against the abolitionist or Civil Rights leaders of old are being reused against those claiming to fight racial injustice today. It’s certainly possible that the movement today is of a different character than it was the last several times movements arose in the face of racial upheaval. But it’s also possible that we conservatives who have always sought to conserve the status quo and our power have the same modus operandi today as we’ve always had. It's possible that we are denying injustice in order to preserve our position, just as we've always done. Time will tell, I suppose, as hindsight will eventually make current events more clear. But until then, I think it's important to have a good dose of honest and difficult self-reflection.
While I don’t know whether or not my conservative community is wrong in its majority assessment of the current events, I do want to speak into my community and highlight an inconsistency which I find rather bothersome. One of the most used arguments I see from Christians against the current social movement is that to join one's voice in the outcry is to jettison, forego, or downplay the gospel. To join the movement decrying injustice and calling for societal change is to embrace the social gospel. To join the movement is to declare that the gospel is not enough. What the world really needs is not social change or the social gospel. What the world really needs right now is the pure gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is only the gospel which transforms hearts. The argument here is that the eternal is more important than the temporal, and that if you get your eternal priorities straight, a change of your heart and spiritual focus will change your actions. If you accept the gospel of Christ you will also change your actions. If we just get everyone saved, racism will diminish. It is the gospel which changes society, not social movements, so we ought to spend our time accordingly. In all the turmoil, disagreement, and tension I see amongst Christians today, two words keep coming to my mind: obligation and preference. These two ideas are ultimately what most of our issues seem to boil down to. One group of Christians views some issue as a moral obligation, while the other group views the same issue as a moral preference. Should we take down the confederate flag in consideration of others, or should others respect our freedom to interpret and use symbols as we desire? Should we support an evil political party and/or candidate in order to accomplish a greater good, or are we able to abstain from the system? Should we tear down statues which represent great oppression to many, or should those opposed accept the good and ignore the evil in our monuments, realizing that all heroes are flawed? Should we wear masks out in public in an attempt to protect others from a virus, or should others recognize that the rescinding of freedoms for safety is a more dangerous ill? The issues are endless, but the crux of the problem is almost always the same. There is a discrepancy in how different groups think about moral obligations towards others versus personal freedoms we should be able to pursue and enjoy if we so choose.
This very dichotomy came up a few weeks ago when I had an interesting conversation about race with a few guys from church. I respect these guys very much, though we definitely disagree on various racial and political issues. As we got to talking about race, one of the men said, "I don't think there's anything wrong with white people going to a white church and black people going to a black church. We all have different preferences in music and worship style, so why would we try to force something that's going to create a church style which nobody will be happy with?" While I intuitively disagreed with the argument, I didn't at that time know how to push back. The individual viewed church diversity as a preference, whereas it seemed more akin to a moral obligation to me. After a few weeks of thought, the following is what I wish I would have been able to explore in our conversation. John Vanier, co-author of "Living Gently in a Violent World." For most of my life I found the story of Adam and Eve perplexing for a number of reasons. Beside the talking snake, the seemingly silly command of God not to eat from a tree, or the woman being made out of Adam's rib - one of the most puzzling elements to me was our forebear's first response to sin. The first response wasn't to hide, to repent, or to run. Their response was a recognition of their nakedness. Talk about a weird story. But as I've learned more about the Bible, I have come to recognize that these odd details are often some of the most important details, because they indicate something profound. Such is the case with the nakedness of Adam and Eve.
I didn't know too much about Eastern Orthodoxy before preparing to move to Romania. While I still have much to learn, I have spent the last year picking up pieces of information, talking with individuals who identify as Orthodox and making my own observations. There are many aspects of Orthodoxy which stand out - aspects of theology, worship, traditions, etc. But perhaps the first and most apparent aspect which will stand out to any onlooker is the Orthodox church buildings. Orthodox buildings are far more ornate and opulent than Catholic and Protestant churches. They catch the eye with the glimmer of gold you can see from miles away. Learning about Orthodoxy has lead me to believe that one of their major emphases is on the beauty and experience of God. Their architecture is meant to accost your senses and the sensual experience only grows from the outside in, as your entrance into the church greets you with many colors and the smell of incense.
"Ce e bun, e rar."
That which is good, is rare. I was introduced to this Romanian phrase the other week at Bible study, when our Romanian leader for that week put this idea forward and asked whether everyone agreed with the statement. Such a statement seems true on its face. Yachts, diamonds, vintage wines, and front row seating at a concert are wonderful things, but extremely rare. They're something you savor when you experience them, and often pay a high price to obtain them. The more magnificent something is, the rarer and harder to obtain it will be. For the most part, all of us agreed with the phrase. While I typically shy away from universal statements, it at least seemed generally true. It does seem like the best things are rare. After discussing the Romanian phrase, our leader then asked a tough follow-up question. "If the love and grace of God is so wonderful, how could it be so plentiful?" The implication, of course, was that if God's love was so amazing, it would be rare and difficult to obtain, but we know that God's love is endless and readily available. Our leader pointed out that a grace like that presented in the gospels seems like something that would devalue itself. Flooding the spiritual market with grace, like flooding the economic market with money, would make the value, wonder, and power of grace diminish. I appreciated this question, as our Romanian leader had grown up with a very strong emphasis on merit. This notion of free, unmerited grace was new to him. It seemed like he found it interesting and compelling, but couldn't figure out how such a thing could be real. If you don't want to have to read this in parts and click through all the links below, you can download the whole file here.
Part 1: Circumcision and Baptism - Introduction, importance, and the connection of baptism's symbolism and application between the Old and New Testaments
Part 2: Sprinkling and Consecration - The connection between the mode of consecration in the Old and New Testaments as well as the identification of the person of the godhead responsible for cleansing and consecration, the Spirit. Part 3: The Family and Federal Headship - Explores how God has deemed the children of believers holy, and how representation through federal headship is a beautiful aspect of God's grace to us as seen particularly through God's view of our holiness via Christ. This provides a framework for how we, in our independent, decisional culture can baptize individuals before their own faith in view of their parent's faith. Part 4: Contextual Evidence - Addresses some of the problematic logistics of immersion, specific baptism events in the NT, and some of the "problem passages" for sprinkling as the mode of baptism (e.g. Jesus's baptism and the Eunuch's baptism) Part 5: Church History - Church Father quotes from (approximately) the first 350 years of church history following the writing of the first NT books. I also very briefly address a few key archaeological points. Part 6: Counter-Rebuttals - I very briefly address what I believe to be some of the most common and/or strongest counters to the case I laid out (Israel vs. the church, one verse zingers, Greek word baptizo, circumcision practiced alongside baptism, and "just because"). Part 7: Conclusion and Resources - Self-explanatory
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*The views and ideas on this site are in no way affiliated with any organization, business, or individuals we are a part of or work with. They're also not theological certainties. They're simply thinking out loud, on issues and difficulties as I process things.
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