How Eld am I?

As of November 21 I'm officially a church elder at Elk Creek. Can you believe it, at age 31? Elder is such a funny term, implying so many different things. I think of it like the guy who volunteers for the carnival dunking booth. He’s willing to smile as he is dropped into the water.

It's not like Mormons where everyone's an elder. There are only 4 lay-members at Elk Creek, serving a 2 year term. The term is part of the bylaws, but the Elder board is quite Biblical.

I was raised in a regular old pastor/deacon Baptist church and Elders were always the way of "those other" churches. It's a new thing to me; I'll just have to roll with the punches I guess.

Elder Jerry. ;-)

Are you Lost?

I simply must comment on Lost, yet another terrific television creation of J.J. Abrams - the creator of Alias (which will be starting up again in January). Kyndall and I watched Lost last night (Wednesday) ; needless to say I think we are totally hooked. It’s one of those shows that leaves you panting for the next episode and dreading a rerun or baseball game pushing it back a week. With the absence of alias from the Fall lineup, Lost fills the void for weird, drama-oriented, sci-fi-esque, adventure.

Plus it's all shot in Hawaii making for many breathtaking shots.

Christianity in Politics

I recently had a conversation with friends regarding Christianity in politics. This is not the same as the participation of Christians in politics, but rather it was if Christians should participate in an organized fashion.

My friend’s reasoning goes like this. The Bible is our model and the New Testament Church or Jesus Christ is not involved in politics – except for rebuking them. This “rebuking” aside is used to imply that the rebuke of the Sadducees by Jesus that politics (or government) as a whole is not a Christian agenda.

This is relevant, when generally more right (that is conservative) politicians are sweeping federal offices and exit polls show voters are primarily thinking of the undefined “moral values.”

My friend’s conclusion is that the individual can participate in politics, but Christianity as a corporate body has no place there; Jesus never modeled the church as a political influence.

I believe this is a fallacy by Christians separating individual roles from corporate (church) roles. In the end, the individual’s and the church’s roles are indifferentiatable.

Consider that the church is to deliver the gospel – so is the individual. The church is to serve the poor – so is the individual. The church is to reach the lost – so is the individual. The church is to offer sanctuary – so is the individual. The church is to worship God – so is the individual. The church is to “feed my sheep” – so is the individual. Ad nauseam.

We forget there is one role and two instruments. We relegate responsibilities as individuals to the church – leaving us blissfully idle and innocent of the church’s innumerable failures.

But, you might ask, what about our involvement in politics?

Remembere Christ expects the same of the individual as what He expects of His church – with the syntactical difference that the individual belongs to the church and the church belongs to the individual.

This is revolutionary to some minds.

We (both the individual and the church) have two identical purposes in existence. (1) A loving relationship with the Creator and (2) Loving relationships with fellow man. It’s a four-square, Greatest Commandment kind of thing, served clearest through the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations.

So we no longer ask: should the church should be involved in the world, but rather as: should the individual be involved in the world. We all know the answer: a light on a hilltop cannot be easily hidden; we are intended to be the salt of the earth – a phrase referring to the purifying qualities of salt in the presence of decay

So, let’s stop and see if we agree. The most important missions of the church and the individual are the same, to love God and love others while fulfilling the Great Commission. Jesus wants His church and His followers to engage the world to reach the lost and demonstrate love.

Now, you might say something like, “you think Dr. James Dobson’s political lambastes on Larry King shows the world love?” Of course using a single experience to implicate a universal truth is nuts, but for the sake of thinking it through – would you also say “You think God sending people to a state of eternal separation with Him shows the world love?” The fact is the question’s semantics indicts the truth.

Yes a loving God can send people to Hell, and yes you can use strong words in a public forum and still demonstrate love. Love is not warm and fuzzy, although love is kind. But love is also “just” and it protects; it rebukes, judges and punishes. Love tells the truth and it is no longer love when it doesn’t.

So, the answer is not so easy. Just because it doesn’t sound nice, just because it doesn’t make you feel good, just because it isn’t popular, and just because you don’t like what it is saying doesn’t mean it isn’t love.

Doe that mean James Dobson is love? Not necessarily.

Let’s move on.

Politics has a huge potential for good (and bad). Right now, I am not going to go into the potential goods political service can bring about, but they are there and they are real.

And, if those goods are the driving force of a call to political office then it serves at least one purpose in life, to love other people – after all, love is a verb acted out as service and sacrifice.

People serve differently out of our own gifts. Political service for the some finds a straight forward justification; and my thesis here is that justification for the individual is implicit justification for the corporate body of the church.

Democracy vs Christianity

Recently I was discussing the perfect state with some friends.

I think most Americans are satisfied to consider a Democracy, or more accurately a Democratic Republic, as pretty close to the perfect state and humankind can ever get.

A Democracy is a government run by the people; all the decisions are made by the polity at large and it’s hard to get things done if the population is big.

A Republic is a government run by representatives of the people; all the decisions are made by the representatives and it’s a good solution to the population problem. It is not a necessary part of a Republic to have general elections.

A Democratic Republic is a government run by representatives of the people who are elected by the polity at large; it’s like a Republic with the benefits of social consent that come from a Democracy.

I agree; Democracy is pretty sweet.

But because I like to argue and simple agreement gets us nowhere; I was arguing that a Democratic Republic is not God’s idea of a perfect state. I was arguing that God’s ideal state is a Theocracy.

A Theocracy is a state under the authority of God. Unlike a Democracy where votes ultimately make decisions from the ground up, a Theocracy is governed from the top down – with God as its head. In practice it is very similar to a Monarchy.

A Monarchy is a state where a, typically God-ordained, man or woman (the Monarch) governs a state with absolute authority. In the case of England, which is a Parliamentary Monarchy, the figurative leader is the Monarch while the power resides in the Parliament.

Here was my argument.

In the Bible, there is no example of God taking a people from the State of Nature to a state, except one – Israel was formed from the seed of Abraham to a Theocracy. Israel briefly became a Monarchy but it was not God’s idea.

A State of Nature is a philosophical device used to describe man/men without any political structure. The imaginary construct allows political philosophers to trace the cause and effects to an eventual type of government and the possibilities of an ideal type.

I continued that since the Bible shows only one example then we have to use that example. (Reality check; my two little girls were racing around the table like rug rats at the time so I am embellishing the quality of my argument here).

Should Christians try to make America a Theocracy?

I don’t think that the Bible is calling Christians to revolt against anything that is not a Theocracy. Indeed, the New Testament doesn’t have any examples of this at a time when the state was very hostile against the faith. So it does not play out that Democracy should be the enemy of the church either.

We don’t fight against princes or principalities anyway.

Final note: If a Christian were to find himself in the State of Nature someday and could influence the type of state to ultimately govern him, I believe he should shoot for a Theocracy. I cannot imagine a better head of state than the bridegroom of the Church.

Christian Thinking

A friend was walking from a restaurant to the parking lot and briefly posed that a Christian in politics should not use Christian-based justifications to validate his thought process.

Here’s how that can play out.

You decide to vote for a larger highway bill and although you feel God has honored your prayers for guidance, you instead tell the press you made the decision based on the potential boost to the economy.

You decide to vote against late term abortions and although you feel God has clearly told you that the practice dishonors him, you instead tell the press you made the decision based on the potential danger to the mother’s health.

You decide to vote against gay marriage and although you feel God has put you in that very place to make that very vote, you instead tell the press you made the decision based on your constituency’s overall disposition on the issue.

Here was her reasoning.

If you tell people “because the Bible tells me so” then your opinion will not have grounds with a pagan polity who does not also hold to the authority of Scripture.

If you tell people “because God has made it clear to me” then your opinion will not have grounds with a secular public who may not even believe there is a God.

And why does that matter?

Because, it is implied, the office has potential for good and to undermine your own authority by using a misunderstood reasoning-base you put in jeopardy your very office.

I also think there is another unstated reason that you want to appeal broadly to the people, reaching the thoughts of those in concert with your thinking and those not similarly aligned.

But is it the best way?

I can make a rational, Bible-free, case against the main issues like murder, rape, stealing and so on. Should I make my cases Bible-free? My friend pointed this out to me saying how much of the Bible is common sense, but surprising followed up with, “Do you think adultery should be against the law?

Here’s why I think the entire Bible deserves to be regular law.

What is there that the Bible says is bad that is actually good. You might answer: the individual can make decisions as they like. I would respond: no one acts individually, personal decisions impact others – there is no getting around it. Drunkenness should be illegal, adultery should be illegal, even neglecting to rest one day a week should be illegal. Close your eyes and picture the resulting society and then try and say today’s real world of 50% divorce is better.

That’s a weak final line, but I am leaving it with that.

Religious Decision-Making

A relative of mine told me that it was wrong for a politician to allow his religious beliefs to impact the decision-making process. His logic went like this: If you are elected to represent all the people but you use the religion of a group, you are then representing that group and no longer all the people.

Here’s the problem – people are people.

No one is objective. We all have our own presuppositions and experiences that impact how we think and how we make decisions. To tell someone to ignore who they are and to act as a vanilla automaton is not only silly, it is also impossible to comply.

There’s not a person alive who could take his religion out of his decision-making process. Remember, all people are religious; even the atheist believes.

Here’s another consideration. When you elect a person you elect who they are; you are not electing a person who can simply execute the textbook. Similarly the system uses judges to apply the black and white letters of the law to circumstances.

If you know someone’s character and then they abandon that character for the current direction of opinion polls, they betray the very thing you trusted about them.

And the take away is this: an official elected in a democratic republic represents his constituency as a whole. This can mean that the minority are underrepresented. The US Constitution doesn’t protect the minority opinion from underrepresentation; it protects the minority from no representation. After all: majority rule.

Finally, I’m sick of hearing the misquoted separation of church and state. Yes, it’s a real concept which the courts employ but it is not a constitutional right. Clearly the state cannot coerce the church – that’s right there in the bill of rights, but nowhere is the opposite, saying the church cannot coerce the state.

Considering the evils of a secular polity I want a moral influence.

Remember Alias

JJ Abrams created Alias, a Spy vs Spy action drama slotted at 8 o'clock on Sundays. Right now Desperate Housewives occupies the ABC slot, but in January the Alias season will start and run straight through without a single rerun to interupt it. The show's quite cliff hanger-oriented so it's an ideal setup for the audience; even if we had to wait almost an entire year to see the gripping conclusion to last season's "to be continued" finale.

Two months and counting...

Solafidianism

A story goes that Martin Luther visited Rome at a time Latin was the language of the clergy and the Bible. His visit was to reaffirm his faith in the church as a whole.

There, in St. Peter's Cathedral, priests would hold small masses throughout the cathedral throughout the day. Martin Luther overheard these masses only to discover that priests were having personal conversations with each other in Latin, faning mass. Martin Luther wrote to the Papacy who disregarded his letter, overwhelming Luther with the corruption in the Roman Catholic Church.

This only heightened Luther's already strong conclusion that the teachings of the church were not in concert with the scriptures. Eventually Luther would come to the conclusion that the church was in error and would bring about the Reformation, an effort only intended to pruify the Roman Catholic Church, not to bring about what we today call Protestantism.

Luther's Reformation included three key teachings:

sola gratia (Grace Alone)

That is, salvation itself is only possible as a result of God's grace. This is relevant in Luther's time and our own as it addresses that no one can "earn" their way to heaven through good works. By the grace of God alone can man be saved.

sola fide (Faith Alone)

In light of not earning our way into heaven, then by what action can man be saved? Faith Alone confirms Grace Alone in that man can do no work, but only through faith in God can he receive God's gift of salvation.

sola scriptura (Scripture Alone)

Again relevant in Luther's and our own time, Scripture Alone speaks to what has final authority in the arbitration of doctrine. Scripture Alone does not discredit other sources of guidance such as Revelation and Counsel, but Sola Scriptura declares that the Bible's authority trumps that of any other.