Tag Archives: love

Are People Generally Good or Basically Bad?

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DSB Question 3 of 10

Michael Wittmer has asked some great questions in his book Don’t Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus is Not Enough. I’ve been reviewing this book chapter by chapter because the book closely identifies with the content of ChurchETHOS. I’ve been able to give away 5 copies of the book already and you can still get one for free here. So far, Wittmer has asked, Must You Believe Something to be Saved? and Do Right Beliefs Get in the Way of Good Works? In my posts I’ve tried to be fair to Wittmer’s thoughts and I’ve sprinkled the posts with some of my own responses to those questions as well. There have been some great comments so I hope you will go back and check out the conversation.

The Next Question

Today, I want to talk about chapter four of DSB. Wittmer asks, “Are people generally good or basically bad?”

The problem with this question is that we want to believe in the innate goodness of people. Since we want to believe it, we often do and we tend to ignore the more important  question of what God thinks about our goodness. This becomes a Big Assumption that holds us and keeps us from recognizing the truth that we are in desperate need of being rescued from ourselves (I don’t care how good you think you are).

There is certainly some goodness in our lives, but there is also some badness. In comparison to Bin Laden I’m a saint. In comparison to Mother Theresa I’m a sinner. But in comparison to God?

Universally Created By God to Enjoy Him Forever

The first question and answer of the Westminster Catechism is:

Q. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

There is something that all of us have in common: we were all created by God to glorify and enjoy Him forever. We were created in His image. Our first parents were placed in a beautiful garden. God looked at all that He had made and it was very good. Our common – and very human – love for life, for beauty, for creation, and for our fellow human are part of what it means to be human. Nothing we’ve ever done can remove those sorts of qualities (and others) from our human nature. I’m confident that I can find something good in ANYONE if I spent enough time looking.

Humans do good things. We write checks to charity. We help old ladies cross streets. We generally try and care for the defenseless, the helpless, the hopeless. People are generally capable of doing good.

Universal Rejection of God

We humans have all been created, therefore we are generally good, but we all have something else in common too. Wittmer writes, “Everyone possesses a relative goodness that enables us to help others. But when we lift our eyes above our natural level and compare our goodness with God, we confront a double problem: God’s higher standard and our sinful brokenness.” We were all created, but we also have ALL rejected God, something the Bible calls sin. Some do it willfully, some do it ignorantly, but the fact remains, we’ve all done it.

For those of us who have turned back to God and asked His forgiveness, we must realize that we are no better than anyone else. Wittmer encourages Christian humility and I strongly agree. Just because I’m forgiven and someone else isn’t doesn’t mean that that same grace and love and forgiveness isn’t extended to them by God too. God loves those He has created. He created all of us and He wants us to enjoy Him forever. He extends His grace to ALL who will receive it. He longs for us to be reconciled to Him.

The Fall is what happened when Adam and Eve disobeyed God. Ever since then, humanity is living under a curse. Sure, we can do some good things every once-in-a-while, but we can also do some bad things. Some have more discipline than others and though they don’t know God they are able to listen more attentively to their God-given conscience and they restrain themselves from doing too much evil. But we all do it. We all have hurt someone. We’ve all let someone down. This world may be a better place thanks to you, but just barely. A lot of people feel like they’ve got to do more good to offset the bad that they’ve done. That’s noble and is advisable, but God is more concerned with your relationship with Him. You can make a bigger difference in the world if you obey Him.

Even though “obedience” doesn’t sound good what is God asking us to obey? Jesus summed it up into “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength…and love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) If you could do that perfectly, then you would truly be good with no shred of evil in you. Jesus is the only one capable of that kind of obedience. When we confess our disobedience to God and ask His forgiveness, He begins the process of healing us from the evil that permeates our nature. He begins to show us how to be good again.

So What Is Good?

A lot of people don’t want us to bring up sin and the Fall. They want us to simply celebrate the good that we find in others and accept the bad that sometimes happens. This weakens the need for forgiveness and lets us just live our lives however we deem best (and that’s often not as good as we think). That kind of goodness will never measure up.

Wittmer gives a good example of this:

Yesterday my six-year-old pounded out his first recognizable tune on the piano, and I made quite a fuss about it. “Landon, that is ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’! You are playing the piano! Good Job!” And it was – especially good for a beginner and far better than anything I can play. But compared to my wife or a concert pianist, it was not very good at all. Goodness is a relative term. It depends on what we are talking about.

Again, when we talk about good things people do, I think we can all agree that we are generally good, but in comparison with the God who created us, we all fall short. There is a chasm that we ourselves have dug with our sin that separates us from God, not because of God, but because of us! That’s not good.

Picture 1Wittmer quotes Tony Jones, another “postmodern innovator” who said, “a common metaphor showed God on one side of a diagram and a stick figure (you) on the other; the chasm between was labeled ‘Sin,’ and the only bridge across was in the shape of Jesus’ cross. But emergents ask, ‘What kind of God can’t reach across a chasm? Chasms can’t stop God!’” Wittmer replies brilliantly to this naive comment: “I am not sure what Jones is objecting to here, for the metaphor’s point is that while the chasm prevents us from coming to God, it does not stop God from reaching across. Perhaps he means that God should be able to reach us in some other way besides the cross? Or perhaps that our sin does not separate us from God?”

For those of us who believe the truth of the Bible, we can already see how God has reached across the chasm. Hey, I don’t like simplistic, cartoon versions of the gospel either but the basic truth is that we ARE sinful and we ARE separated from God. Thanks be to God that He HAS reached across the chasm to reconcile us to Himself!

Is Our Good, Good Enough?

We have to realize that we may do some good things but when it comes to loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves, we just aren’t cutting it. We are in need of an overhaul of our sinful system and God lovingly provides the answer through His Son Jesus. Our good may help a person in need, or bring a smile to someone’s face, but our eternal relationship with God depends on our willingness to give up and confess that we can’t do it without His help.

Wittmer writes, “People are created, and so we may unreservedly love them. People are fallen, and so there is a difference between those who are running their own lives and those who are striving to follow Jesus. Our common creation enables Christians and non-Christians to cooperate, and our response to the Fall explains why we often compete.” Let’s learn how to love each other God’s way. He is the only One who is ultimately Good. We need to be restored to Him and that relationship with Him will help us love others and enjoy Him forever.

Checklist Christianity vs. Following Jesus

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Picture 1 Jeremy is a pastor in Jackson, Michigan and he blogs at jeremyhoover.com. He writes most often about progressive faith and the intersections between faith, culture, and politics. Jeremy and I got connected through conversations on Twitter. Through 140 character conversations or less we found that we sometimes disagree on minor points but often are fighting for the same thing: relevant and authentic followers of Jesus. It has been a productive and ongoing conversation so I’ve asked him to write a guest post here at ChurchETHOS for your benefit:

______

My thinking about the topic of following Jesus led to the first real conversation Nathan and I had on Twitter, so I’m thankful for it. I’m also thankful we grow spiritually by a variety of practices. But I’m always afraid of an overemphasis on what I call “Checklist Christianity.” “Checklist Christianity” is that form of religion that teaches, either directly or indirectly, that our spiritual growth, or even our worth as a Christian, is tied up in what we do. Specifically, the more bible studies you attend, the more extra-curricular “Christian” activities you are involved in, the more you read your bible and pray on your own, the more you are growing spiritually.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the forms of Christianity that we teach in the church. Perhaps I’ve given something away even in my description because if the emphasis in “church” is on “teaching” then the primary intent of our form is information transmission. This doesn’t mean we don’t connect with people and other things aren’t done; just that we view the primary reason for gathering as transmitting information about the bible.

The idea is this: The more you know about the bible, the more you will be equipped to live a Christian life. But the result is often very different from this.

I know Christians who have sat through more than 4,000 bible studies and sermons in their lives but who are no different today than they were a decade ago. I know Christian men who have sat through this same number of bible studies but couldn’t teach one even if their life depended on it!

This gives the appearance of the activity itself adding value. Instead, value should come from the transformative change that should occur through the activity.

So there is a clear disconnect (for me, at least) between how much and how often biblical information is transmitted…and how it is received. Instead, the activity serves as a checklist that, once checked off, indicates to us that we have “done our duty.” But the result is far worse: we have fooled ourselves into thinking that spiritual growth is about accomplishing things rather than being changed.

Being a Christian is about following Jesus. It seems to me, then, that a good barometer of our success would be in how well we follow him. Checking things off a list will never bring us close to Jesus, but actually following him, his teaching, and his example, will.

Jesus said, “I did not come to be served, but to serve” (Matt. 20:28). We are called to be followers of Jesus. A follower, well, follows! So we should be doing the same things Jesus did.

But when we treat our Christianity as a checklist rather than as a relationship we view our relationship with God not as a true relationship but as a list of things we must do or a set of requirements we need to fulfill. We wait for others to take the initiative. We don’t connect with each other away from the church building because it’s not on our list.

If Jesus did not seek to be served by others, why do many of us? Why do we criticize the minister or someone else for not visiting us when we never bothered to pick up the phone or make an appointment to spend time with someone else?

Jesus served others. He added value to the lives of others. The best question we can ask ourselves is not how we can fill a building with people, or how we can get others to do what we want them to do, or how we can make sure the minister “does his job.”

The best question we can ask ourselves, to be a true follower of Jesus, is:

Who can I love right now? And how?

That’s what it means to follow Jesus.

“Don’t Stop Believing” by Michael E. Wittmer

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51VDd6LY8nLMichael E. Wittmer writes 1980′s rock and roll songs books that are rocking the establishment in more ways than one. His first book Heaven Is A Place On Earth has now been followed by his second book, Don’t Stop Believing. I’m suggesting that his next book be “Karma Chameleon” but somehow I doubt that will happen.

In the Introduction to “Don’t Stop Believing,” (from Zondervan) Wittmer begins to set the stage for providing a third way between the ubiquitous liberal vs. conservative divide. In fact, he changes the terms to postmodern vs. conservative. I was slow to accept his terminology because I feel like I’m both postmodern and conservative but as I continued reading I began to understand his methodology. In fact, the goal of the book is to come to a middle ground while shaving off the problematic tendencies of both liberals and conservative. I found that I was in agreement with what he was talking about and that’s why I somewhat identified with both categories.

As Wittmer defined his terms and described the postmoderns and the conservatives, I was struggling to recognize those he was describing. He contrasts the worst of the fundamentalist conservatives with the worst of the postmodern liberals and other than TBN and the Ooze, I just couldn’t get there. However, as the first few chapters rolled on I realized that he was highlighting the extremes to illustrate where each of us might be headed if we stray from right belief (orthodoxy) or from right practice (orthopraxy). He is dealing with a systemic problem that both camps seem to have. He did a great job of showing how we have the tendency to align ourselves with one or the other camp. The best way is to have right belief AND right practice.

Wittmer proposes a third way, and that third way unfolds with how we answer the following questions. For too long we’ve simply answered these questions as liberals or conservatives, but Wittmer encourages us to answer them as followers of Jesus who show their love for Him by obeying Him but by also believing in Him.

What are your answers to these questions?

Must you believe something to be saved?
Do right beliefs get in the way of good works?
Are people generally good or basically bad?
Which is worse: Homosexuals or the bigots who persecute them?
Is the cross divine child abuse?
Can you belong before you believe?
Does the Kingdom of God include non-Christians?
Is hell for real and forever?
Is the Bible God’s true word?

Depending on whether or not you are liberal or conservative you might answer those questions in many different ways. Wittmer does a great job of helping us find an anchor in Scripture and tradition but also in the world around us so that we can answer these questions with confidence.

This is a fun, easy-to-read, scholarly book. There are 166 pages of content from Intro to Epilogue, but there are an additional 42 pages of Notes. Don’t let that scare you; as end notes, they aren’t in the way as you read through the book the first time, but there is so much there that you will want to read this book again soon to explore the extra information the author has so meticulously included at the back of the book.

This is a pretty brief book review but I find it to be a well-written and important book and almost exactly what I want to say here at ChurchETHOS. So, I’ve decided to begin a series on it that will dedicate one post for each of the above questions. The series will be interrupted by other posts at various times but at the end I will include a follow up post that will include links to each post in the series. Also, I will be reaching out to the author to see if I can set up an interview with him through email.

Free Books

Finally, to show how much I’m behind this book, I want to give away a free copy. In addition to the free copy I’m giving away personally, Zondervan Academic has offered to give another eleven copies away to ChurchETHOS subscribers. So now I’m giving away twelve free books. Find out how here.

I hope you enjoy the book!

A Gathering Church

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img_2299What should Christians be doing when we gather together?

There are all sorts of people who want to know the answer to that question:
- Non-Christians who are wondering if there’s anything to this following Jesus business.
- Ex-Christians who are leaving the church because their time with other Christians seemed like a waste.
- Christians who are sitting in seats looking at the back of people’s heads wondering if there’s more to the Christian life.
- Pastors who are scratching their heads wondering what happened to all the people.

I’m sure there are others demanding answers and I understand where each of these groups is coming from. There are also other questions that we should be asking: How often should Christians get together? Where should we meet together? How long should we be meeting together? Who should lead our times together? Should anyone be leading anything?

The operative word in all of these questions is “should”. (You thought it was going to be “together” didn’t you?) We all know something is wrong. We all know there’s something missing. Something needs to change! What is it? What is it that should be? Doesn’t the Bible talk about Christian fellowship, brotherly love, you know, all those “one anothers”? We are missing the mark in our interdependence and interconnectedness with one another and something should be done about it.

So, what should Christians be doing when we get together?

We should be Loving one another

If there is someone in your church fellowship that you refuse to talk to then YOU have a problem. I don’t care what he or she did, if you know there is a wedge between the two of you then you are being disobedient to God if you aren’t attempting to reconcile with them.

If something comes between me and my wife I don’t give her the silent treatment indefinitely…we work it out. There are too many people who refuse to worship with other Christians because they’ve got a problem with someone else in the body. That is a big problem.

Colossians 3:14 says, “Above all, put on love – the perfect bond of unity.” The “above all” refers to the short list of things we should be putting on as Christians: hearts of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, etc. Those are the sorts of things we express to one another because of our love. Love wraps all those other gifts into a beautiful package that can be given away daily to our church family.

We should be Praying for one another

Praying for one another sounds easy doesn’t it? I think most Christians know that when we get together somebody needs to pray. I hate when I’m asked to pray simply because I’m ordained. Like I have some special connection with God that no one else has. We think the Model Prayer in Matthew 6 goes something like this:

Our Father who art in heaven,
bless Tom’s half-sister Ethel.
And for my toenail
that’s now ingrown
it hurts as it has all day.
Give us today our daily desires
and be with all people
as all people have need of prayers from us.
For yours is the ability
and the responsibility
to take care of us forever. Amen.

Okay, I kind of feel bad for being sarcastic about the way we sometimes spend our prayer time in our church gatherings…I’m over it.

We have to stop spending all of our prayer time praying for those twice removed from us. God’s desire is that we pray for His kingdom and glory. That’s priority one! Praise him, exalt him, ask him to use you to advance his kingdom, etc. A close second to that is praying for one another. Open up! Share what God is doing in your life. What spiritual challenges are you facing? Where are you being tempted? Finally, after you’ve spent 98% of the time praying for God’s glory and for one another, now if it’s important to ask for prayer for Tom’s half-sister Ethel, then I guess you are free to do so.

Praying for Ethel is safe because it doesn’t expose our inner turmoil. We might actually have to admit that we don’t have everything together. That’s hard, but we aren’t truly praying for one another if we’re only praying through a laundry list of people and problems who aren’t sitting in the room at the moment.

Be an adult and share!

We should be Caring for one another

To care for one another means we have to know one another on a deep enough level to know each other’s needs. A Christian should always be asking this question: What needs am I uniquely positioned by God to meet today?

picture-13Maybe you are meant to meet the needs of your spouse or children, your neighbor, your friend, your pastor, or your student. Maybe you have the ability to meet a financial need. Maybe you have the blessing of time that you can give to someone. Maybe you are able to listen or teach or advise or encourage or give joy or build or share or volunteer or sing or cook or hold a hand or repair or provide a shoulder. Find a need. Meet a need.

We should be Trusting one another

My friend Mark recently gave me a point to ponder. He asked, “Have you ever thought about how Jesus got the disciples to trust one another?” We had been talking about how at least two of the disciples had political views of hatred towards the Romans and then there was Matthew who had sold out his fellow Jews to work for the Romans – collecting taxes no less.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a whole lot of glimpses at the interpersonal relationships of the disciples other than the arguments they got into and the times Jesus had to correct their foolishness. Sounds a lot like us doesn’t it? Regardless of our political or cultural or generational outlook, we need to learn how to trust one another. It takes time, it takes vulnerability, it takes effort, it takes Colossians 3:12-17, it takes a lot but it’s worth everything we put into it.

We should be Challenging one another

I’ll give you another sentence from Colossians 3: “Let the Word of Christ dwell richly among you, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom…” (v. 15) I also love Hebrews 10:24-25, which says, “Let us be concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works, not staying away from our meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging each other…”

picture-3So, our meetings are characterized by encouragement, concern for one another, prompting each other to love and good works, and consistency according to the writer of Hebrews. The first verse from Paul to the Christians in Colossae says we are to teach and admonish one another, which is how the “Word of Christ” becomes richly indwelt among us. This includes a sermon that a pastor might give to everyone but it also includes a timely word, rebuke, encouragement, or advice between two or three friends.

Conclusion: A Vision for the Church

So how long and how often should we gather together? Where should we be meeting? When? The answer is, wherever and whenever and as long and as often as it takes to truly and deeply connect with each other as described above.

If you think you can accomplish all of the above in only one hour a week, or if you think you should be getting all of the above in only one hour a week, then you don’t understand what it means to follow Jesus. However, that doesn’t mean an hour or two with a large gathering of people isn’t important – far from it.

Imagine groups of three or four or ten or eleven or however many Christians coming together throughout the week praying and caring and trusting one another deeply, consistently, faithfully. They call each other when they are having a crisis. They can’t wait to share good news with their small group of fellow believers. They connect with each other often because they love each other. They’ve become family.

Now, when all these interconnected groups of loving, caring, praying people gather together with other small groups of loving, caring, praying people there is really a cause for celebration. They don’t just show up for a Sunday song and sermon, they are expecting God to challenge them and move them and change them. The “Sunday service” is valuable because people who are sharing the experience of fellowship are coming together to lift up their voices and worship God…together.

There are too many people throwing away the one hour Sunday service because it is meaningless and lifeless to them. They never realized they were supposed to live a life of discipleship beyond 12PM on Sunday. The answer isn’t to give up on that one hour, the answer is to give a few more hours and commit yourself to fellowship with other believers.

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You can also find this post at smallgrouptrader.com.

An Unnatural Life

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The Church is on the decline in Western society today. There is division in the Church in part due to a lack of diligence on the part of elders to ward off false teaching. Christians have become lazy in their thought and in their actions. The Church has ceased to have any major impact on the world.

There are thousands of root causes to the lack of influence possessed by the Church in the West. However, there is one cause that presents itself as a large heading under which many of those causes are categorized. The problem with the Church in the West is that we’ve forgotten that Christianity has no power apart from struggle. Indeed, many church goers are doing their best to avoid struggle and pain. They are hoping that the Church will give them their best life now. Surely, being a child of the King of Kings bears a certain pride and privilege. After all, we aren’t like those sinners are we?

Many of the qualities of the fruit of the Spirit require struggle before they can be obtained. It takes effort. I’ve grown up hearing people say, “Don’t pray for patience or you just might get what you asked for.” They glibly realize and articulate that if our desire is for patience, God just might test us in a difficult way. We just might have to undergo a beating before we get it right. When we finally learn a lesson of patience God might just make us go through it again so we don’t get caught up in pride – humility being another quality that takes a lot of “lessons” from God (of all things, don’t ask God for humility, right?).

Struggle is essential to the Christian life. God will not develop such things as discipline, humility, selfless love, peace, and patience in us without tests of our character. The fact that the Western Church today lacks these qualities is due to the fact that we run from trials and tests. Peter says, “You rejoice in this [inheritance], though now for a short time you have had to be distressed by various trials so that the genuineness of your faith – more valuable than gold, which perishes though refined by fire – may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:6-7) James even encourages us to “consider it joy…whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.” (James 1:2-4) From these passages and others (not to mention the sufferings of Christ) we find the call to suffer. This call is referred to in several places as a refining process. The verse from 1 Peter even talks about being distressed by various trials even though we have a right to an amazing inheritance. 

Why do we go through this struggle? Purity, Genuineness, Sincerity, Experience, Endurance, Joy, Maturity, Perfection and God’s glory are but a few things that come to mind in light of the above verses and reflection on the life of Jesus. What happens when we don’t endure this struggle? Division, Greed, Selfishness, Laziness, Complacency, Unorthodoxy, Immorality, Jealousy, Strife, Envy, and Drunkenness all come to mind based on Galatians 5 and even a cursory glance at the status of the Western Church today. 

God has called us to something that is unnatural. God has called us to something that is impossible apart from Him. No wonder people give up so quickly when confronted with a difficult challenge. This is not natural! It’s not natural to discipline your body and your mind for God’s glory. There are natural laws that tell us the universe decays and winds down. Our spiritual life is under the same natural law that tends towards decay unless the Spirit of God energizes us and enables us to… to what? To have our best life now? To obtain all of the promises and inheritance of God? No, the Spirit energizes us to serve, to struggle, to discipline, to grow, to mature, to be patient, and to love. That doesn’t come naturally. God is the force that is at work helping us in our weakness to overcome various trials and tests.

The decline in the Church is due to natural rather than supernatural living. The Church is not in the habit of suffering and serving. We have traded in good habits for bad habits or simply stopped being spiritually disciplined all together. The Church is winding down due to a decreased desire for struggle and an increased desire for stuff. Ultimately, the Church will come to a complete stop if we don’t realize that we are called to live an unnatural life that is pleasing to God. It’s not natural to live by faith. It’s not natural to be self-controlled. It’s not natural to be patient. It’s not natural to love. But with God all things are possible. Let’s pray that the Church will receive the discipline of the Lord and become disciplined in their habits and actions.