The Dividing Line: The Sufficiency of Scripture

"For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine.

Instead, to suit their own desires,

they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say

what their itching ears want to hear.

They will turn their ears away from the truth and 

turn aside to myths."

2 Tim. 4: 3-4

I have spent much time over the past few years reflecting upon the state of the church in America and the West.  I have read broadly.  I have engaged with the news of the day.  I have sat with folks with whom I disagree about the proper and biblical way to deal with our current cultural directions.  I have tried to understand.  I have come to a conclusion.  

The defining issue in today's church 

remains the doctrine of scripture.

What does this mean?  Here are some diagnostic questions.

Do you believe that God has spoken clearly to reveal His character and will?  Do you believe that God's will on most moral issues is knowable?  Do you believe Jesus is who He said He is?

Why are these questions so important?  We have come to a point where "evangelical" believers don't share an understanding of how to answer them.  We are speaking past each other because many in "evangelical" churches and denominations have radically shifted their answers to these questions.

How so?

I can hear people saying often, "Christianity is all about Jesus.  All you have to do is believe in Him.  All this other moral and ethical teaching of scripture is not important.  It is all about Jesus."

Well, I could not agree more.  The problem is that many take Jesus so lightly!  Even among those who say it is all about Jesus there can be a dismissal of Jesus' life and teaching.

Jesus was all about promoting human flourishing.  He understood that humanity was in need of complete and total redemption.  He understood the sinful human condition.  He came to speak into that condition.  He came to live a perfect life and die an undeserved death to answer the greatest need of sinful humanity.  He came to define human flourishing in relationship to God and God's glory.  The result was incredible.

In Jesus is forgiveness, but also 
a changed heart, a renewed mind, and a clarity of purpose.

Changed.  Transformed.  Made new.  Renewed.  Revived.  Restored.

Don't those words sound great?  Jesus came to give us grace to live a life of human flourishing.  A life that we were meant to live.  A life of meaning and purpose.  A life in line with how we were created to be.

The question is what does such a life look like?  How do we define "human flourishing?" 

Here is the rub.  Here is where the importance of scripture comes in.  I have heard often, "It is all about love."  Well, love needs some definition.  Even as a culture, we have defined that "controlling" love can be abusive.  So, what is true love?  What are proper expressions of love?

Jesus defines love and he affirms that scripture defines 

the proper expressions and understanding of true love.

Jesus began his ministry by affirming the importance of scripture.  To deny the authority of the bible is to deny the authority of Jesus.  As he states in Matthew 5: 17-18

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets;

I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, 

not the smallest letter,

not the least stroke of a pen,

will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

The winds of cultural thought have turned against the authority of scripture to define love, marriage, truth, and righteousness.  As a culture, we will reap the whirlwind from these cultural tides.

What I don't get is how churches and many "religious teachers" think they should join in our cultural destruction.  God is not mocked.  In other words, 

beware of any church or teacher that does not take scripture seriously.

In our fallen condition, even believers might differ in interpretation.  Yet, truly redeemed folks agree on 98-99% of all doctrine.  Those minor points in which we disagree are really not important.  They are like an intramural scrimmage.  We have way more important things to deal with.

Like what?

Our culture, our friends, our families are often not flourishing.  Many are living in darkness and walking into increasing darkness.  It is not loving to encourage people to walk deeper into sin.  In doing so, we are encouraging folks to live in pain, struggle, brokenness, and death.

In other words, Christians and Christianity cannot approve of what scripture defines as sin.  These are the marks of a false church and false faith.  Doing so it not loving.  It is the opposite of love.  

It is time for the Church to be the Church.  
It is time for believers to be believers.
It is time to learn, to believe, and to embrace what scripture says.

                                                    "Jesus and the Pharisees"
                                                    Jacob Jordaens 1593-1678 

Why Politics Rarely Changes Things...

"I was asking hard questions: 'How do we make a just society?' 'How do we look at the immorality in our world?'  I had tried to make life better through social reform and psychological reform and educational reform and political reform," he says.  "After I got to a certain point, I began to understand that the undergirding of all of those principles has to be spiritual, not something that Freud said but something spiritual.  So that's when I went to seminary."

Gerald Durley in "Pastor and Activist," Leadership (Summer 2000), 54.

In politics, the law of unintended consequences always wins.

What does this mean?

As a group of people, we seek to solve one problem, and we cause at least two more.  We think we can easily solve these two problems, but now we have four new ones.  Before long, we make an unintended problem that is bigger than any issue we tried to solve.

Why does this happen?

We live in a fallen world while we long for a perfect world.

In other words, the primary problem in this world is a spiritual problem.

I agree with Gerald Durley, who has lived an interesting life as a civil rights activist, a political activist, and a pastor.  At its root, the problem in our country, the problem in every country, the problem with every "system" is its tendency toward decay and ruin by running away from God's ways.  

We should never be surprised when we see injustice and immorality.  It is a mark of a world turned in upon itself and away from God.  As the world system pulls further away from how God made it to be, more injustice and immorality will come to pass.  It will become codified into law.  It will be enforced by the heavy hand of the state.  

What is the answer and cure to all these problems?

Believers of every stripe have taken up the cause of politics, education, psychology and other social answers.  In particular, we have aligned ourselves with political parties, and we live and die mentally and spiritually by who wins elections.  We fight by using political means to change our culture, our educational system, and every other system thinking that the arm of the state can make things right.  Then we are disappointed when every political solution has more harmful unintended consequences than helpful results.

While we are called to pursue God's Kingdom by promoting justice and love, our embrace of politics as  "God's primary means" of changing the world is wrong-headed.

Why?

Humans as individuals and humans collectively are a fallen lot!  Our biggest problem is spiritual.  The more fallen people who get together to create a "system" the greater the possibility of corruption and evil to become the new law.  This goes for our political system, our educational system, and even our local churches.  It is a fact that should not be ignored.  If we choose to ignore it, as our culture does, we do so to our own peril.

As a culture, our system is broken.  I believe no amount of tinkering with the fringes of the system will cure the problem.  In fact, I think because the heart of the system is in rebellion against God, the entire system will only grow worse no matter what political party or powerful group tries to take control.

What is truly our greatest need as a culture?

We need to repent and believe in Jesus Christ as individuals and as people involved in a cultural "system."  Instead of claiming "Bush did it" or "Obama is the problem" we need to confess that selfish pride and independence from God because of unbelief are the real problems in our culture.  

Our system is broken because the heart of the system is bad.

Our biggest problem is spiritual.  I am thankful that none of us as individuals is beyond redemption.  Take hope.

I also think that culture is constantly reinventing itself, so perhaps out of the ashes of our consumeristic Western culture will arise a new culture formed on the anvil of repentance and renewed faith.  But just as "bleeding" or "leeches" were once thought as  the best medical cure but later proved to be false, we need to look to the true cure of our individual and cultural woes.

We are sinners in need of grace.  God's ways and truth should not be ignored but recognized.  We recognize God's ways by repenting our our sin against Him and others and believing in Jesus Christ as our source of forgiveness and power for transformation.  We must live this truth as individuals and pray it through and for our country.

Family, Family Life, and the Future

Some interesting statistics about the family and family life.  These statistics are about a year old, but I don't think many of the numbers have changed for the positive in the past year.

What do these statistics mean for church life in the next year?  Ten years?  Twenty years?


Incredible stuff on an economics blog called Zero Hedge.  These folks are not coming from a "Christian Worldview" but I do not think that James Dobson could have said it better.  Amazing stats that call for real revival.  Only changed hearts can change these trends!

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

The family is one of the fundamental building blocks of society.  If you do not have strong families, you are not going to have a strong society.  Unfortunately, the state of the family in America continues to deteriorate.  The marriage rate has fallen to an all-time low, we lead the world in divorce, and about a third of all children live in a home without a father. 

Our young people have been taught that getting married and having a family is not a priority, and many of those that would like to get married and have children are not able to get the kinds of jobs that they need to support a family.  The statistics that you are about to see should absolutely shock you. 

American families have never been this weak, and this is an incredibly troubling sign for the future of our nation.  What will future generations of Americans be like if they do not have stable homes to grow up in?  Will they be even more messed up than we are right now?  That is a frightening thought.  

The following are 27 facts that prove that the family in America is in the worst shape ever...

#1 The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low.  Right now it is sitting at a yearly rate of 6.8 marriages per 1000 people.

#2 Today, an all-time low 44.2 percent of Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket are married.

#3 According to the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of all adults in the United States are currently married.  Back in 1960, 72 percent of all adults in the United States were married.

#4 Back in 1950, 78 percent of all households in the United States contained a married couple.  Today, that number has declined to 48 percent.

#5 100 years ago, 4.52 were living in the average U.S. household, but now the average U.S. household only consists of 2.59 people.

#6 The United States has the highest percentage of one person households on the entire planet.

#7 In the United States today, more than half of all couples "move in together" before they get married.

#8 The divorce rate for couples that live together first is significantly higher than for those that do not.

#9 For women under the age of 30 in the United States, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.

#10 In 1970, the average woman had her first child when she was 21.4 years old.  Now the average woman has her first child when she is25.6 years old.

#11 According to the Centers for Disease Control, there were 69.3 births per 1,000 women in the 15 to 44 year old age bracket in 2007. Now the rate has fallen to 63.2 births per 1,000 women.

#12 The birth rate for American women in the 20 to 24 year old age bracket has fallen to 85.3 births per 1,000 women.  That is a new all-time record low.

#13 The United States has the highest divorce rate in the entire world.

#14 At this point, approximately one out of every three children in the United States lives in a home without a father.

#15 Without a father around, many single mothers in this country are really struggling to survive.  Sadly, approximately 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States are on food stamps.

#16 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point before they reach the age of 18.

#17 Today, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless.  This is the first time that has ever happened in our history.

#18 The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the entire world.  In fact, the United States has a teen pregnancy rate that is more than twice as high as Canada, more than three times as high as France and more than seven times as high as Japan.

#19 In the United States today, approximately 47 percent of all high school students have had sex.

#20 Approximately one out of every four teen girls in the United States has at least one sexually transmitted disease.

#21 According to one survey, 24 percent of all U.S. teens that have at least one sexually transmitted disease say that they still have unprotected sex.

#22 Instead of being raised by parents, an increasing number of children in America are being raised by movies, television and video games.  For example, the average young American will spend 10,000 hours playing video games before the age of 21.

#23 Americans are tied with the British for the highest average number of hours spent watching television each week.

#24 There are more than 3 million reports of child abuse in the United States every single year.

#25 The United States actually has the highest child abuse death rate in the developed world.

#26 Approximately 20 percent of all child sexual abuse victims in the United States are under the age of 8.

#27 It is estimated that one out of every four girls will be sexually abused before they become adults.

Unfortunately, this is a problem that is not going to be fixed overnight.  Getting the "right politicians" into office will not solve our problems and neither will spending a bunch of money.

The change that we need is a change of the heart.  We need to change how we treat one another and we need to get our priorities straight.

Our families are really messed up, and this is hurting our kids the most.  There is no way that this country is going to have any hope for a bright future unless our families start getting stronger.

Or could it be possible that I am overreacting?

What do you think?

Remix: Do Dogs go to Heaven?

I am very thankful that this was my fourth most viewed post of 2014.  I am also thankful it comes up  for reposting just before Christmas.  There is nothing worse than the pain of loss during the holidays.  The first holiday with loss is always the worst.  Then, while the pain never goes fully away, it does get a little further away.

This post was from January 22.  I think it is one of the most important ones I have ever written.  It brings tears to my eyes just re-reading it.


Yesterday was a very sad day for me.  It was a sad day for the family.  Our faithful golden retriever, Perseus, died.  I believe I have not been so sad since my dad's death 13 years ago.

In my years of ministry, I have had three different parishioners come to my church because they were grieving the loss of their beloved pet.  I could understand and I offered words of encouragement and prayers for comfort, but I had not experienced it myself.  

It is not like our family had not experienced the death of pets.  We lived on a farm.  We harvested animals, had many barn cats that met unfortunate ends, and even lost a previous dog.

The difference is that we loved this old boy.  He was an awesome, faithful dog.  When we went to pick him out, he came running out to us, picked up a ball, and played with our then two young children.  The breeder was surprised because as other puppies had been picked, Perseus was always laying around and did not engage other families.  In other words, Perseus chose us.

When he got home, he missed his mother so he whined that first night.  We were living in an apartment, and my wife said, "You are the one who wanted a golden retriever, do something."  

I took him and placed him on my chest so he could hear my heart.  He immediately quieted down, fell asleep, and when I awoke in the morning he was still sleeping comfortably.  From that moment on, he was my dog.  

When I left for speaking engagements or travel, he moped and did not eat until I returned.  He slept on the floor beside me for 13 years.  It took less than 24 hours to house train him, and he would prefer to die of shame than ever make a mess.  He was smart enough that I could point to where I wanted him to do his business, and he would go where I pointed.

I will miss his loving look.  I often shared that men get married so they can see that look of love and devotion in their wife's eyes.  When reality hits and that look stops, they buy a golden retriever so they can have it every day.

He definitely had his quirks.

When he was two or three, lightning hit a tree right behind our home and he got shocked.  From then on, he was not the brave dog of his youth.  He went through most doors backwards.  It was strange seeing an 80 pound dog back up all the time.  He became afraid of loud noises.  He was cautious in new places.  

All of this was ok.  It just made Perseus, Perseus.

We knew he was dying, but when he experienced something catastrophic on Monday, it was still sad.  The end came too soon!  By Tuesday he could not walk.  He did not whimper or whine.  He just gave me the look of please do something.  I am so thankful that we had a vet come to the house to help with the passing.  He went to his final living sleep while looking at me without the stress of being carried into a vet.  He would have had it no other way.

So, do dogs go to heaven?

I have been thinking about this for years.  I believe that some do and some don't.  Kind of like people.  Some have a good heart.  Some have a self-centered and cruel heart.

I think C.S. Lewis was onto something when he portrayed Narnia as populated with animals.  Some have trusting and good souls and some do not.  God knows.  He judges them accurately.

I know that my life was better because I loved this dog and he loved me.  I anticipate that on my dying day, I will be met by Jesus, those who have gone before me that I loved dearly, and a young, unafraid Perseus.  They will be my greeting party.  As I feel the loss so keenly now, I look forward to that day.

Farewell for now my friend.

This Monday

With our now five year old Lily in the background

Not so sure about the water!  He was a strange retriever!

Helping Lily feel welcome

Current Western Fables

"Have nothing to do with worldly fables…"

1 Timothy 4:7

Paul's advice to his disciple Timothy sounds so strange to our modern ears.  We have science and technology, we don't believe in fables.  Or so we think.

What are these "worldly fables" that Paul wrote about?

"But the Spirit explicitly says that in the later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of hypocrisy of liars seared in the their own conscience as with a branding iron." (vss. 1-2)

Wow, Paul.  Tell us how you really feel.  

This is harsh.  In the latter days, people will not follow the truth, but they will follow the teachings of falsehood that are encouraged and taught by demons.  I get the feeling that Paul would not be a "go along to get along" type of guy.  He would not affirm and say that truth is relative to culture and individual preference.  

So, what exactly are the worldly fables Paul was concerned about?

"men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods, which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth." (vs. 3)

Our culture has sought to redefine and de-emphasize marriage.  We argue and believe it is not really important.  "Just live together and get to know each other."  "Marriage is any type of living arrangement agreed to by two parties."  Our tax system is set up to penalize married couples.    At a certain middle class income, it is much cheaper to not be married than to be married.  Obamacare and its mandate with set subsidies tied to income continues this trend.

Am I lying about this?  Is it mere right-wing political propaganda?  I don't think so.  This has nothing to do with politics.  It has to do with truth.  In fact, let me give two prime examples from recent news as illustrations.

First, a recent court ruling concluded that couples who are merely friends can adopt.  Why?  The institution of marriage between a man and a woman is too restrictive.  It is not "fair" that we define a family as a man and a woman.  It could and should be anyone who wants to adopt.

Of course, while making these cultural decisions we have also made adoption so expensive and difficult that many couples can't afford it.  Why?  For the welfare of the children?  I think not.  More likely it is because we believe the state system is really better.  In the name of "protecting the children" we harm these most vulnerable in society.

Second, the CDC reported that 40.7% of all babies born in 2013 were born to unmarried women.  Let that sink in.  2 out of every 5 children.  Isn't this great news.  It means that women have been set free from the shackles of life with a man.  Or so our culture claims.

I think Paul might argue that our current worldly fable is "abstain from marriage" because it is not important.  There have always been children born out of wedlock and in our fallen world there always will be.  In love and mercy, we should deal with these pregnancies and resulting children with compassion.  The problem is that in the last thirty years it went from an exception to the rule.  There is no longer anything irregular about it.  Why?  Marriage is not really important.

I have not even moved toward our cultural desire to regulate what people eat.  No sugary drinks.  No meat.  No candy.  Stop smoking now.

While this might be good advice, could it also be an indicator of our "worldly fables?"  We look down on folks who do not eat and drink what we want them to eat and drink.  It comes so naturally to us.  It is for their own good.  It is for the good of society.  Now everything is a "public health issue" so we have the "right" to regulate everything.

All I ask today is that we think through these cultural assumptions.  According to whose idea of truth  are we believing what we do about marriage and about food?  Our entire culture might say one thing, but if God's word says another then our entire culture is wrong.

Perhaps it is time for each of us to assess the "worldly fables" that we assume to be true.  May God's true Truth abide in His people.

Balancing Heart and Head

What are people looking for today in a church?  This is a question about which everyone has an opinion based upon what they are looking for in a church.  I find even talking about it frustrating.  Why?  All to often the advice given to pastors and to churches is either too general or too personal to the presenter.  I get tired of strange stories that do not ring true to my experience in growing churches.

So what can we do to answer the question?

I think many different church formats and structures can work to attract people to Christ and the gospel.  I believe that every worship style can be attractive.  I know I have been blessed by all kind of worship practices and I have witnessed folks of every age blessed by different worship practices.  Thus, I would say that the answer is not in tips and techniques.

Instead the answer is found in the attitude of the church and individuals within the church to the presence and work of God.  Where passionate spirituality is balanced with thoughtful presentation of the truth a local body of Christ will grow deeper and outward.  People will be attracted to Jesus, there will be conversions, and the gospel will permeate the entire atmosphere of the church.

Why do we not see this more?  If in our fallenness we crave such a place, why are more churches not marked by such balance?

One error is emphasizing the truth while ignoring the heart.  Why does this happen?  To explain I will begin with a thoughtful passage written by John Piper in a new book he co-wrote with D.A. Carson called, The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor.  Piper writes,

Now, how does this relate to the pastor as scholar?  On the one hand, its first effect is to protect the church from the dangers of a scholarly bent.  Many pastors, especially those who love the glorious vision of God's being and beauty and plan of salvation, have a scholarly bent that threatens to over-intellectualize the Christian faith, which means they turn it mainly into a system to be thought about rather than a way of life to be felt and lived.  Of course, it is a system as well as a life.  But the danger is that the whole thing can be made to feel academic rather than heart-wrenchingly real.  That's what Christian hedonism helps us to avoid.

Where the faith is over-intellectualized, many ordinary, authentic saints can smell the error.  Rightly, they start drifting away, but sadly, often into the worst extremes of emotionalism.  But if Christian hedonism is alive- I have found that many starving saints make their way home to a place where head and heart are more in balance, and the reality and power of the Holy Spirit are craved and cherished.

Piper, The Pastor as Scholar, 49.

Over six months ago I received an e-mail from someone who knew me tangentially as a scholar working in a seminary.  This man would listen to the end of some of my classes.  He never took a class, but he said he always found what I had to say interesting and thought-provoking.  He often would conclude, "I should check this out."  Unfortunately, he shared that he often did not go further in his enquiries!

What I found interesting about the e-mail was he shared that he thought I was some sort of Calvinist.  He shared that he hated Calvin, Calvinism, and anything to do with this system of thought.  He had been raised in a Reformed Baptist church and now he had no use for anything to do with Calvinism.  He thought we would have some interesting debates.

Interesting debates, indeed.  I am sure the discussion would have been rich and rather sharp at points.  Yet, I wonder how could this rather anti-intellectual Christian man come to hate Calvin, Calvinism, and the entire system of thought?  In place of a biblical system of thought that is primarily God-focused and grace-centered, he had embraced a strange emotionalism that passed as authentic spirituality.  

My guess is that he rejected a balanced, biblical, and heart-transforming vision of Christian spirituality for emotionalism and Christian-lite platitudes because someone shared the glorious vision of God's being, beauty, and plan of salvation as nothing more than a system of thought.  I know for years I was totally turned off to authentic spirituality because I encountered such an arrogant, heart-less presentation of biblical truth!

True spirituality, what some people would label Reformed/Calvinism as a form of thought, is joy producing and heart changing.  It is also logical and according to reality.  The key is that it should be both!  Why would we ever wish to divorce joy from logic or heart-change/true transformation from truth grounded in creation?  To be a believer, one does not need to check either their emotions or their brains at the door!  Bring both because as Piper has written about for years, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

All of us have met people who have drifted to an extreme of being either too intellectual or too emotional.  These folks do not represent the truth in its entirety!  Keep looking for and striving for a faith that is both intellectually deep and emotionally transformative.  This is the heart of true spirituality. It is the heart of the gospel.  It is also the absolute heart of true and authentic Reformed/Calvinistic spirituality.

Cultural Intelligence in Ministry and Life

It has been a busy and distracting past week or so.  Nothing major, but I feel like I am working harder and getting less done.  Unfortunately, this means less writing on this blog and my other writing.  I hate when this happens.  

Last week I wrote about the importance of emotional intelligence.  Successful ministry leaders are marked by strong emotional intelligence.  There is no way around it.

Today, I wish to move to a mark of successful ministry that will determine whether one oversees a growing ministry marked by evangelistic growth.  We all know that it is possible to grow a ministry without doing real evangelism.  All that occurs is that Christians move from one church to another.  While this feels good to the growing church, it is not real kingdom growth!

How do we grow a ministry marked by increasing depth for believers and solid growth through evangelism to not-yet believers?  We must have a solid cultural intelligence.

So what is cultural intelligence?

Cultural intelligence is "the ability to understand, acknowledge, and appreciate current contextual forces as well as the cultural background of oneself and others." (Covenant, Spring/Summer 2012, 24)  What does this mean?  I like how one Pastors Summit participant put it, "It is vital in ministry to understand cultural norms and nuances in order to discern between what we accept as correct in culture and what is truth as defined in Scripture." (24)

I could not agree more!  Study after study, as well as my experience, illustrate that biblically strong and faithful churches have a chance to grow, but churches that neglect scripture as their norm are by and large shrinking.  Why?  Churches that ignore scripture have "A form of godliness, but they deny its power."  2 Timothy 3:5  I do not believe these churches are attractive to the true spiritual seeker.

The problem is that many church that profess fidelity to scripture are more wed to their cultural understanding of the gospel and its application than they are to the true gospel and its application!

What do I mean?  Most of us are shaped by our childhood.  From that childhood, we assume that our experience is just the way things should be.  As believers in Christ, we do the same thing.  Our early experiences in Christian community often dictate "just how things should be."  

What happens when our church experience declares cultural assumptions as biblical assumptions?  We short-circuit the power of the Spirit and replace it with a cheap cultural substitute.

Let's give an example.  Children should be taught to sit through church at an early age.  Why?  They need to learn the bible and how to worship.  This is best done in our worship experience.

Is this a bad idea?  Obviously no!  It is a great ideal.  It is particularly a good ideal if the children come from homes where the bible is taught in family devotions and where church is a regular part of life.  I know entire churches where this is the accepted practice.

Yet, is this ideal both biblical and culturally aware?  I think we could argue that this is a biblical ideal.  We are to train our children in how to walk with God.  Yet, is having them sit through a worship service the best way to do this?  Maybe yes, but maybe no!

What happens when someone who the Lord is seeking comes to worship at your church?  Immediately they feel and know that their children are different.  They are not well-behaved and not able to sit still through an hour or more of worship.  In fact, they are not learning about the Lord in worship, but they also are distracting mom and dad from learning about God (notice the other cultural assumption!  Mom and Dad?  Most likely the person walking in the door with children is a single parent).  

What about our biblical ideal?  We have replaced a biblical ideal with a cultural assumption.  Culturally, many folks in leadership were brought up in homes where the bible was honored, devotions were insisted upon, and worship was a regular part of life.  These cultural assumptions no longer hold.  In fact, they are impediments to those coming to faith and to those who are in the process of becoming part of our churches!

Today, a church and leadership with solid cultural awareness and intelligence has an intentional, detailed, and culturally sensitive plan for dealing with children.  They fulfill the biblical ideal and goal of training up children in the fear and admonition of the Lord in a different way.  Maybe fifty years from now a great revival will change everything and everyone will go to church again.  At that time, we will train our children differently!

In other words, a cultural intelligent person and church will be aware of their cultural assumptions, the cultural assumptions of their surrounding area, and the unchanging principles of Scripture.  A culturally intelligent person will learn and know how to apply the principles of Scripture to their own life and to the life of the church.

So, are you culturally intelligent?  Is your church culturally intelligent?  What keeps you and your church from growing in this area?  How can you help sharpen your ability and the church's ability to reach out to those the Lord is seeking?

The Law of Unintended Consequences

"I was asking hard questions: 'How do we make a just society?' 'How do we look at the immorality in our world?'  I had tried to make life better through social reform and psychological reform and educational reform and political reform," he says.  "After I got to a certain point, I began to understand that the undergirding of all of those principles has to be spiritual, not something that Freud said but something spiritual.  So that's when I went to seminary."

Gerald Durley in "Pastor and Activist," Leadership (Summer 2000), 54.

In politics, the law of unintended consequences always wins.

What does this mean?

As a group of people, we seek to solve one problem, and we cause at least two more.  We think we can easily solve these two problems, but now we have four new ones.  Before long, we make an unintended problem that is bigger than any issue we tried to solve!

Why does this happen?

We live in a fallen world while we long for a perfect world.

In other words, the primary problem in this world is a spiritual problem.  I agree with Gerald Durley, who has lived an interesting life as a civil rights activist, a political activist, and a pastor.  At its root, the problem in our country, the problem in every country, the problem with every "system" is its tendency toward decay and ruin by running away from God's ways.  

We should never be surprised when we see injustice and immorality.  It is a mark of a world turned in upon itself and away from God.  As the world system pulls further away from how God made it to be, more injustice and immorality will come to pass.  It will become codified into law.  It will be enforced by the heavy hand of the state.  

What is the answer and cure to all these problems?  Believers of every stripe have taken up the cause of politics, education, psychology and other social answers.  In particular, we have aligned ourselves with political parties, and we live and die mentally and spiritually by who wins elections.  We fight using political means to change our culture, our educational system, and every other system thinking that the arm of the state can make things right.  Then we are disappointed when every political solution has more harmful unintended consequences than helpful results!

While we are called to pursue God's Kingdom by promoting justice and love, our embrace of politics as  "God's primary means" of changing the world is wrong-headed.

Why?

Humans as individuals and humans collectively are a fallen lot!  Our biggest problem is spiritual.  The more fallen people who get together to create a "system" the greater the possibility of corruption and evil to become the new law.  This goes for our political system, our educational system, and even our local churches!  It is a fact that should not be ignored.  If we choose to ignore it, as our culture does, we do so to our own peril.

As a culture, our system is broken.  I believe no amount of tinkering with the fringes of the system will cure the problem.  In fact, I think because the heart of the system is in rebellion against God, the entire system will only grow worse no matter what political party or powerful group tries to take control.

What is really our greatest need as a culture?

We need to repent and believe in Jesus Christ as individuals and as people involved in a cultural "system."  Instead of claiming "Bush did it" or "Obama is the problem" we need to confess that selfish pride and independence from God because of unbelief are the real problems in our culture.  

Our system is broken because the heart of the system is bad!

Our biggest problem is spiritual.  I am thankful that none of us as individuals is beyond redemption.  Take hope!

I also think that culture is constantly reinventing itself, so perhaps out of the ashes of our consumeristic Western culture will arise a new culture formed on the anvil of repentance and renewed faith.  But just as "bleeding" or "leeches" were once thought as  the best medical cure but later proved to be false, we need to look to the true cure of our individual and cultural woes.

We are sinners in need of grace.  God's ways and truth should not be ignored but recognized.  We recognize God's ways by repenting our our sin against Him and others and believing in Jesus Christ as our source of forgiveness and power for transformation.  We must live this truth as individuals and pray it through and for our country.

Living an Authentic Life of Faith

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.  For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected it it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

1 Timothy 4: 1-5

Recently I was talking with a new convert to the faith.  This man had lived a rough and hard life away from God.  In the past couple of months, the Lord pursued him and brought him to faith.  It is so encouraging to see God work the ultimate miracle of bringing folks from darkness to light!

As we talked, it became evident that he was searching for what to do next.  What does faith mean in the real world?  What about my love for having a beer, watching football, listening to country music, etc.?  Now that I am a believer, what should I do?

I find this is often the question that keeps people from growing in their faith.  It is a question that keeps them in fear and doubt.  On the one hand, they do not wish to be a hypocrite who now goes to church but is at a bar.  On the other hand, they hear the call for faith that brings life, but they do not wish to be miserable by having to give up all they love.  What should they do?

I think much of what passes for Christian counsel on this issue is well intended, but not helpful.  Here is what I heard as a new believer.  

"You must give up all that worldliness.  You should listen to Christian music.  You should come out and be separate from all the evil of the world.  Destroy the music CDs, clean off the iPod and get music that is godly.  Come hang out with only Christians because your worldly friends will lead you astray."

Have you ever heard this advice?  Have you given it?

I think some of this advice is solid.  Worldliness will kill your soul.  Yet, what is worldliness?  My definition is that it is anything that makes the truth of God look foolish and the foolish traditions of our age look like truth.  There is much of "hard living" that is marked by worldliness.  Yet, as I often have argued in this blog, there is also much of our "Christian community" that is also marked by a strange "religious" worldliness.

What do I mean?

What is the most important element of the truth of God?

We are saved, sustained, and grow by faith in the objective work of Christ on our behalf.  Through repenting of our unbelief and believing in Christ as our only hope, the Holy Spirit transforms our heart by grace so that we live more and more in light of God's presence and will.  This is a process that often moves in fits and starts.  Yet, by His grace we do grow!

In place of this truth, many sincere (and some not so sincere- see Paul above) believers emphasize the human law and tradition in place of an emphasis on repentance and faith.  They emphasize the human will and "making right choices" without understanding that our will and our choices are driven by our corrupt heart.  Why?  Because their understanding of life is more often marked by our corrupt cultural understanding of humanity (coming from the Enlightenment and through postmodernism) than by a Biblical perspective.  

So, these folks emphasize what you should and shouldn't do to "help" people grow.  They emphasize avoiding "worldly" activities and enforce total immersion in the Christian community.  Many of these folks use church and the Christian community as a totally separate world- I would call it a Christian bubble- to protect themselves from the evil outside their bubble.

Notice the above passage by Paul.  "The Spirit says that in the later times people will depart from the faith  by ... forbidding things that should not be forbidden."  Honestly, did you see that coming?  Does he not care about protecting folks from worldliness, sin and death?

Of course he does!  He just realizes that worldliness, sin, and death can take many forms.  From this passage, what would he say about today's world and to new convert who is struggling to apply the faith to everyday life?

First, the bar scene can easily be marked by worldliness.  If it leads one away from faith, it is best to avoid it.  If drinking leads you astray, stop it.  If surfing the web leads you to surfing the porn sites, don't surf the web or don't ever surf while alone.  Avoid those places and behaviors that lead to sin.  Protect your faith by remaining in a place of repenting for your unbelief and believing in Jesus by asking Him for grace to grow deeper and to tell others about Jesus.

Yet, as a new believer, you will never have more contacts with folks that need Jesus than you do right now.  Go tell folks about Jesus and what He has done in your life!  Some will reject this message and perhaps you.  Others will share in your journey of faith and join you!  Tell your friends about what God is doing.

This might well mean that you meet them in the bar.  Why?  This is where you met them for years.  What is different?  This time take Jesus and your faith with you.  Ask Him to open conversations.  If drinking is a problem, drink a coke instead.  Most folks will assume it is rum and coke anyway.  The bar is not necessarily evil.  It is what you do while there that determines if the place or activity is good or bad.

In terms of music, does becoming a believer mean your music choices have to change?  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  What would Paul say?  "Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer."  As part of the created order, music has a profound impact on our soul.  It can point us and prepare our hearts to reflect goodness or evil.  Like all art, it is a doorway to the heart.

Does the music you listen to lead you to sin by leading you away from depending on Jesus in repentance and faith?  If it does, then stop listening to it.  Perhaps as you grow in grace, you will be able to pick it back up later when you can bring Jesus with you as you listen to music.  

I have to be honest here.  I find that listening to much of what passes for "Christian music" does not help me grow in faith.  I find the lyrics trite and the musical ability of the bands mediocre at best.  I also find that much of the "Christian radio teaching" is not helpful to my growth.  Thus, I avoid it!  I love music and I have been musician and hung out with good musicians for decades.  I prefer good music and real lyrics to some worldly version of the Christian faith.

So, where does this lead us?  "For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer."  Bring Jesus with you in all you do- work, play, hobbies, relationships, sex, eating, worship, and hanging out.  When you do, He will use it all to help you grow deeper!

Also, those new to the faith have an opportunity to witness that will never come again in the same way. Tell your friends.  You do not have to have it all together (trust me you never will), but you can point to the only one who does- the Lord Jesus Christ.

Appalachian Poverty

It is time for a weekend economic thought blog.  I am borrowing this great blog post from Zero Hedge, which is an economic blog I read often.  This post was reposted there today and it is written by Michael Snyder.  I thank him. 

For me, the following post is rather personal.  My family on my dad's side is from the hills and hollers of Appalachia in central West Virginia.  It has been several years since I have been back, but I would say the following post is nothing new.  To say that in Appalachia the last Recession did not end is an understatement.  In my opinion, in central West Virginia, the Great Depression never ended. 

Real poverty is awful.  It is a trap of the soul.  It smells of sin and death.  Real poverty is not trying to make ends meet while having two newer model cars, children in nice clothing, and having to make the sacrifice of not traveling for vacation.  It is a quest for survival.

Please read the following blog post and then ask what should be the Christian response to such defeat and death?

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

If you want to get an idea of where the rest of America is heading, just take a trip through the western half of West Virginia and the eastern half of Kentucky some time.  Once you leave the main highways, you will rapidly encounter poverty on a level that is absolutely staggering.  Overall, about 15 percent of the entire nation is under the poverty line, but in some areas of eastern Kentucky, more than 40 percent of the population is living in poverty.  Most of the people would work if they could.  Over the past couple of decades, locals have witnessed businesses and industries leave the region at a steady pace.  When another factory or business shuts down, many of the unemployed do not even realize that their jobs have been shipped overseas.  Coal mining still produces jobs that pay a decent wage, but Barack Obama is doing his very best to kill off that entire industry. After decades of decline, vast stretches of impoverished Appalachia look like they have been through a war.  Those living in the area know that things are not good, but they just try to do the best that they can with what they have.

In previous articles about areas of the country that are economically depressed, I have typically focused on large cities such as Detroit or Camden, New Jersey.  But the economic suffering that is taking place in rural communities in the heartland of America is just as tragic.  We just don't hear about it as much.

Most of those that live in the heart of Appalachia are really good "salt of the earth" people that just want to work hard and do what is right for their families.  But after decades of increasing poverty, the entire region has been transformed into an economic nightmare that never seems to end.  The following is a description of what life is like in Appalachia today that comes from a recent article by Kevin D. Williamson...

Thinking about the future here and its bleak prospects is not much fun at all, so instead of too much black-minded introspection you have the pills and the dope, the morning beers, the endless scratch-off lotto cards, healing meetings up on the hill, the federally funded ritual of trading cases of food-stamp Pepsi for packs of Kentucky’s Best cigarettes and good old hard currency, tall piles of gas-station nachos, the occasional blast of meth, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, petty crime, the draw, the recreational making and surgical unmaking of teenaged mothers, and death: Life expectancies are short — the typical man here dies well over a decade earlier than does a man in Fairfax County, Va. — and they are getting shorter, women’s life expectancy having declined by nearly 1.1 percent from 1987 to 2007.

In these kinds of conditions, people do whatever they have to do just to survive.  With so much poverty around, serving those on food stamps has become an important part of the local economy.  In fact, cases of soda purchased with food stamps have become a form of "alternative currency" in the region.  In his article, Williamson described how this works...

It works like this: Once a month, the debit-card accounts of those receiving what we still call food stamps are credited with a few hundred dollars — about $500 for a family of four, on average — which are immediately converted into a unit of exchange, in this case cases of soda. On the day when accounts are credited, local establishments accepting EBT cards — and all across the Big White Ghetto, “We Accept Food Stamps” is the new E pluribus unum – are swamped with locals using their public benefits to buy cases and cases — reports put the number at 30 to 40 cases for some buyers — of soda. Those cases of soda then either go on to another retailer, who buys them at 50 cents on the dollar, in effect laundering those $500 in monthly benefits into $250 in cash — a considerably worse rate than your typical organized-crime money launderer offers — or else they go into the local black-market economy, where they can be used as currency in such ventures as the dealing of unauthorized prescription painkillers — by “pillbillies,” as they are known at the sympathetic establishments in Florida that do so much business with Kentucky and West Virginia that the relevant interstate bus service is nicknamed the “OxyContin Express.” A woman who is intimately familiar with the local drug economy suggests that the exchange rate between sexual favors and cases of pop — some dealers will accept either — is about 1:1, meaning that the value of a woman in the local prescription-drug economy is about $12.99 at Walmart prices.

I would encourage everyone to read the rest of Williamson's excellent article.  You can find the entire article right here.

In Appalachia, the abuse of alcohol, meth and other legal and illegal drugs is significantly higher than in the U.S. population as a whole.  In a desperate attempt to deal with the pain of their lives, many people living in the region are looking for anything that will allow them to "escape" for a little while.  The following is an excerpt from an excellent article by Chris Hedges which describes what life is like in the little town of Gary, West Virginia at this point...

Joe and I are sitting in the Tug River Health Clinic in Gary with a registered nurse who does not want her name used. The clinic handles federal and state black lung applications. It runs a program for those addicted to prescription pills. It also handles what in the local vernacular is known as “the crazy check” -- payments obtained for mental illness from Medicaid or SSI -- a vital source of income for those whose five years of welfare payments have run out. Doctors willing to diagnose a patient as mentally ill are important to economic survival.

“They come in and want to be diagnosed as soon as they can for the crazy check,” the nurse says. “They will insist to us they are crazy. They will tell us, ‘I know I’m not right.’ People here are very resigned. They will avoid working by being diagnosed as crazy.”

The reliance on government checks, and a vast array of painkillers and opiates, has turned towns like Gary into modern opium dens. The painkillers OxyContin, fentanyl -- 80 times stronger than morphine -- Lortab, as well as a wide variety of anti-anxiety medications such as Xanax, are widely abused. Many top off their daily cocktail of painkillers at night with sleeping pills and muscle relaxants. And for fun, addicts, especially the young, hold “pharm parties,” in which they combine their pills in a bowl, scoop out handfuls of medication, swallow them, and wait to feel the result.

Of course this kind of thing is not just happening in the heart of Appalachia.  All over the country there are rural communities that are economically depressed.  In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, economic activity in about half of the counties in the entire nation is still below pre-recession levels...

About half of the nation’s 3,069 county economies are still short of their prerecession economic output, reflecting the uneven economic recovery,according to a new report from the National Association of Counties.

So what are our "leaders" doing to fix this?

Well, they plan to ship millions more of our good jobs overseas.

Unfortunately, I am not kidding.

Republicans in the House of Representatives are introducing "fast track" trade promotion authority legislation that will pave the way for rapid approval of the secret trade treaty that Barack Obama has been negotiating.  The following is how I described this insidious treaty in a previous article...

Did you know that the Obama administration is negotiating a super secret "trade agreement" that is so sensitive that he isn't even allowing members of Congress to see it?  The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being called the "NAFTA of the Pacific" and "NAFTA on steroids", but the truth is that it is so much more than just a trade agreement.  This treaty has 29 chapters, but only 5 of them have to do with trade.  Most Americans don't realize this, but this treaty will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, health care, the trading of derivatives, copyright issues, food safety, environmental standards, civil liberties and so much more.  It will also merge the United States far more deeply into the emerging one world economic system.

Once again, our politicians are betraying the American people and millions of jobs will be lost as a result.

Not that the economy needs another reason to go downhill.  The truth is that our economic foundations have already been rotting away for quite some time.

But now the ongoing economic collapse seems to be picking up steam again.  For example, the Baltic Dry Index (a very important indicator of global economic activity) is collapsing at a rate not seen since the great financial crash of 2008...

Despite 'blaming' the drop in the cost of dry bulk shipping on Colombian coal restrictions, it seems increasingly clear that the 40% collapse in the Baltic Dry Index since the start of the year is more than just that. While this is the worst start to a year in over 30 years, the scale of this meltdown is only matched by the total devastation that occurred in Q3 2008. Of course, the mainstream media will continue to ignore this dour index until it decides to rise once again, but for now, 9 days in a row of plunging prices is yet another canary in the global trade coalmine and suggests what inventory stacking that occurred in Q3/4 2013 is anything but sustained.

Soon economic conditions will get even worse for Appalachia and for the rest of the country.  The consequences of decades of very foolish decisions are rapidly catching up with us, and millions upon millions of Americans are going to experience immense economic pain during the years to come.