Trying to be sensible about doctrine.
I have had a new idea for a type of blog post the quick thought.
I have to be honest, it takes me months to come up with a full sized post. Instead of waiting for such time as I have a full-sized article to post, I intend to write shorter posts too.
These short posts, which I am calling “quick thoughts” will be a single thought. Something I can express in a paragraph or two.
Is it okay for Christians to question God? Asking questions is often cited as a sign of intelligence. We see several examples in the Bible that seem to suggest it is. Should we place God (and leaders) beyond the scope of our challenge?
Continue readingIt was recently pointed out that there were no results for the exact search phrase “how to question church doctrine” on Google. That in itself is
When scriptures say things like test everything (1 John 4:1) and examine the scriptures to see if it is true (Acts 17:11 and 1 Corinthians 14:29) – how are we not teaching our congregations how to do this?
To correct that, I plan to try and write a whole series on this one topic – how to question (church) doctrine. More importantly, how to question your own doctrine.
Asking questions is a sign of maturity and intelligence. Asking questions shows that you are interested. Not to mention that, asking questions stops us from making assumptions that mislead and cause confusion.
At the heart of questioning doctrine, is the idea of putting it to the test. That’s something I have addressed before.
A lot
There are a number of metrics you can use to question doctrine. I’ve talked about them before.
Doctrines do not need you to defend them. If they fall over without a rigorous, active, and complex defense then it was not a very good doctrine to begin with. God’s truth can stand by itself while the ideas of mortals tend to be a bit more flakey.
That is why I intend to examine ways to question church doctrine. Ideas welcome.
Do we know how to truly repent? It seems to me that many of us misunderstand what repentance even is. Continue reading
There is a trend that the church simply cannot afford to ignore – cybermisogyny and harassment of women “in the name of Christ”. I wish I was joking.
I’ve talked before about what I call “Trolls For Christ” – the worst kind of ill-informed Pharisee determined to spill hate in defence of the church. Just recently I penned an open letter to a church leader engaged in cybermisogyny dressed up as a book review.
This “defending the church” argument in support of cybermisogyny (because it targets women far more than men) is wrong on two grounds – a minor point but the church does not need us to defend it (that’s taken care of, read the Bible) but more importantly – because hate speech should have no part in Christian living. Not ever.
Jesus talked about being meek, turning the other cheek, forgiving sins, and healing people. Somehow we have made it all about defending our rights. Did we forget that he said over and over that when someone tries to trample your rights – help them to do it? If they sue you for your coat, give them also your shirt. If someone compels you to go a mile, go two miles. That is literally where the expression “to go the extra mile” comes from.
The Guardian reports that women writers are facing unprecedented levels of harassment, rape threats, and abuse.
In 2014 there was an organised campaign of harassment that became known as GamerGate. The harassment campaign targeted several women in the video game industry; notably game developers Zoë Quinn, Brianna Wu, and media critic Anita Sarkeesian.
Account upon account of the online harassment of women continues to pile up.
WMC report that this can include defamation and accusations of blasphemy. Defamation, in this case, can include coordinated attempts where a person, or, sometimes, organized groups deliberately flood Google, social media and review sites with negative and defamatory information.
As for the blasphemy charges…
Women face online threats globally, but they run a unique risk in conservative religious countries, where, in blasphemy is against the law and where honor killings are a serious threat. Accusing someone of blasphemy can become, itself, an act of violence.
A 2013 report from the organisation Working to Halt Abuse Online showed that 72.5% of those who reported being abused on the internet were female. That, right there, is cybermisogyny.
This all culminated in a campaign under the hashtag #MeToo. How did the church respond?
Is the church speaking up those that have no voice like the scriptures say (Proverbs 31:8)? Do we weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15-18)? Do we, as God’s law command, protect the fatherless and the widow (Deuteronomy 10:17-19)?
No. No, we do not.
We don’t do this because the church is too busy joining in with the cybermisogyny. We cannot condemn the sin because we are the sin.
To all the people who are sending me messages like this one via my website Contact Page (many of those messages with language too foul & offensive for me to post here) please stop. It serves no purpose, it just causes me pain. Nothing about this models God’s love or grace. pic.twitter.com/9ttW28jdts
— Vicky Beeching (@vickybeeching) July 20, 2018
Australian Christian news website, Eternity News, shared an article dedicated to ordinary women revealing sexual harassment by Christians.
#MeToo: Christian women share stories of assault at the hands of Christian men
And we wonder why the church is not seen as relevant any more?
I hate to have to be the one pointing this out because I thought we were past these basics but disagreeing with someone while being a woman is not a sin; harassing a person you disagree with is a sin, though.
Treating women like something you can own is a sin.
This cybermisogyny, protecting cybermisogyny, and failing to speak out against cybermisogyny from Christians are all sins too.
It is not okay to call women all kinds of names, to suggest their character, their faith, or their life is anything less than it is just because the way they interpret the Bible or chose to live their lives, differs from the way you do.
Jesus said, in John 13:35, that it would be our love for each other that would show we are his disciples. This behaviour shows that we are not His disciples. Maybe few of us ever were.
The moment #MeToo started to break headlines, church groups the world over should have joined with the oppressed and cried out for justice. We did not and that is to our shame.
Our churches must, most urgently, change how we address sexual violence. So far we have done too poor a job of even recognising that it exists. We have failed to be salt and light. I think we all know all that salt which is no longer salty is good for?
I don’t pretend to have a plan for how we can change but Eugene Hung has some strong suggestions.
We need to change and we need to change fast.
This post, in a rapid departure from my usual format, is in response to an open letter by David to Vicky Beeching. I’ll confess I have not read the book in question and am simply responding to the form and content of the blog post in question.
Dear David,
In your open letter, you have the following words to say, and it is by according to these words that I will reply to you.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by the door of my heart, but I hope it is always open to reflect the glory of the God who is love. I also want to keep open the door of my mind and be open to reason, evidence and persuasion.
I hope, therefore that we can reason together. However, for us both, this will be tinged with the same conflict of interest – blogs by their very nature are about public attention and love in its nature is not. Let us continue then, assuming the very best of intentions but with the full knowledge that we are flawed.
Growing up in an Evangelical Charismatic church I thought I knew what it meant to be saved.
As far as my 12-year-old-self knew, you said the sinner’s prayer and then you were saved and going to heaven. Just wait at the rapture bus stop. While you are waiting, preach to people you would like in heaven with you and make them Christian too.
We quoted Romans 10:9-13 which described what we did in the sinner’s prayer (or so I thought). At the same time, we cited Ephesians 2:8-9 in case anyone started thinking that the prayer was what saved us. And we frequently made mention of John 3:17 and so we knew that it is Jesus that saves.
We glossed over Acts 16:31, where a man believes and his entire household are saved. Likewise, Mark 16:16 was only used at baptisms in case anyone got the idea that baptism was required to be saved even though “the Bible clearly says” as much.
There is a great deal that we leave out or gloss over when it comes to teachings on being saved. If we are to have a valid and unshakable doctrine of salvation all of these issues must be addressed.
We talk about “my church”, “my pastor”, and “my ministry”. These things are not yours.
Our church is our family. Our church is where we are pastored (nurtured) and where we minister to (nurture) each other.
The difference is between a place where you take for yourself and a place where you care for others. One is a club for Bible geeks and the other is the Kingdom of Heaven.
This pharisaical toxin in our thinking is inherited from the trace amounts of pharisee presence in our church culture and wider doctrinal teachings. Pharisaical influence is like leaven (yeast) of Galatians 5:9 – any is too much. The church is suffering from a yeast infection.
I suggest that it is time to remove pharisaical influence and rethink the way we think about “church”.
Agnosis means “I don’t know everything” because I do not. It is the antithesis of the idea that “the Bible clearly says…”
Jesus (Iesou) seemed to understand that the great truths of God are hidden from the wise and learned. In Matthew 11:25 and Luke 10:21-22, He thanks the Father for doing this.
In a post titled “The lost art of humility: homosexuality and usury“, the writer of Undeception says:
…no human may legitimately claim or imply the unimpeachability of his opinion merely by adorning it with the words, “The Bible says…” in place of the more accurate statement, “I interpret certain passages of Scripture to mean…”; to grant that even knowing what the Bible says is no guarantor that one knows the meaning or value of what it says.
This, I would suggest to you, is exactly the principle of Agnosis that I wrote about before.
If we accept that man is flawed and that we are men, then we must conclude that we are flawed. Therefore, If it is true that we are flawed it follows that our reading of the Bible – no matter how seemingly accurate – must be flawed. If it is flawed, it is yet to be perfected. If yet to be perfected then all of the following must be true:
Proverbs 16:18 teaches us that pride is always destructive. Therefore any doctrine proudly held up as perfect will crumble in time.
Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
We would be fools to think we have gotten everything right. Our only recourse is towards humility. Maybe the Calvinists are right; perhaps the Orthodoxy is most correct, it could be the more liberal universalists are on to something, or perhaps the purest truth is known only to a madman preaching on a hillside. Whatever our doctrinal position let us embrace those who have a different understanding as brothers first and foremost as the scriptures direct.
I feel that the church has been lacking a sound biblical perspective on Brexit. While I doubt that I am the one to write a definitive study, here is what I have decerned from scripture.
Polling from Lord Ashcroft showed that nearly 60% of those that identified as Christian voted to leave. Why?
According to Christianity Today:
A host of blogs, websites and claims of ‘prophetic words’ have fuelled a fear of the European Union’s apparent spiritual side. A minefield of ‘prophetic’ websites, many of which border on the extreme end of conspiracy theories, warn of a supposed darkness in the EU project.
I want to take a clear-headed look at what the Bible really has to say.