Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Thoughts on the Sabbath School Lesson for 10.15.11

In the interest of full disclosure, I hate conflict.  I will go to great lengths and do almost anything to avoid it.  I know folks who, maybe love is too strong a word, but are not afraid to say exactly what they mean even if they’re pretty sure it’s going to upset someone. 

Anyway, when we talk about the early Christians we like to concentrate on the “all in one accord” parts of the story – they were so unified.  Everybody got along and there was no conflict in the early church.  But that’s not the way it was!  We forget that as the disciples were setting things up, they ran in to some rough spots; some places where they didn’t agree.  We can even read in Paul’s letters how he reminded them to not let their disagreements over who their preacher was get in the way of their belief in Jesus.

“I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. My brothers Sand sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another, ‘I follow Christ.’  Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?” 1 Corinthians 1:10-13

When I think of unity – “all in one accord”, I think of that famous scene in the movie, Spartacus.  In case you haven’t seen it:

“Spartacus is a classic movie that retells the historical account of the great Roman slave rebellion in 71 B.C. Spartacus was a highly trained gladiator who escaped and led other slaves to freedom. As news of his rebellion grew, thousands of slaves joined his cause and followed him through victories and defeats.
“Near the end of the movie, a massive Roman army under the command of Senator Crassus (Laurance Olivier) captures the rebels. Although Crassus does not know what Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) looks like, he suspects that Spartacus is alive amongst the prisoners under guard. In full Roman uniform, Crassus gallops up to the mouth of the valley where the prisoners are being held and shouts an offer to them: they can escape death by crucifixion if they turn Spartacus over to him.
“Spartacus studies the ground for a moment and then nobly gets to his feet, intending to turn himself in. But before he can do so, his comrade to the left stands and calls out, ‘I am Spartacus!’ Then his comrade to the right also stands and calls out, ‘I am Spartacus!’ As the real Spartacus looks on, comrade after comrade in his slave army rises to their feet and calls out, ‘I am Spartacus!’ until there is a chorus of thousands united.”[1]

That scene really demonstrates the concept of unity, something that can so easily be lost in our day to day walk with Jesus.   We get caught up in our differences of opinion about things that don’t really matter to our salvation, like whether the pews should be dark or light wood and whether the bathrooms are painted blue or green.  Remember, the early Christians met in the catacombs, caves filled with dead people.  I’m pretty sure decorating was not the first thing on their minds.

Unity is really, really important, but sometimes, our push for unity goes too far.  We decide that unity is more important that truth and that’s a real problem.

Check out this comment from a church leader about what is more important – unity or truth:

"If you must make a choice between heresy and schism, always choose heresy."[2]

This quote comes from an Episcopal bishop, Peter James Lee.  He was voting with 59 other Episcopal bishops whether or not to approve a practicing gay man as bishop.  Now, I’m not trying to debate the whole homosexuality issue, what I want you to notice is what this bishop is saying.  He is saying that he believes that if we ever come to a place where we have to decide between allowing false teachings into our church or standing up for the truth at the risk of causing a split in the church, we should accept the false teachings.  Did you get that?  Unity at the cost of truth … wow.

Maybe you’ve seen the bumper sticker/t-shirt that says "COEXIST" using the symbols that represent Islam, Pacifism, Gay Rights, Judaism, Paganism, Taoism and Christianity for the respective letters in the word. 

If the question is, “Can we, as Christians, get along with all these other people?” the answer is, “YES!” 

“Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God:  Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.”  I Corinthians 10:32-33

But if the question is, “Should we agree with all of those beliefs and practice them in our own congregations?”  Then the answer is absolutely, “NO!”  Unity doesn’t mean compromising the truth.

“The Texas Army National Guard has a group of special workers called riggers. Their job is to fold and pack the parachutes soldiers use when jumping from an airplane at 5,000 feet. These people are intensely dedicated to their task. The Rigger's Creed states, ‘I will be sure always!’ They know jumpers need assurance that everything regarding their chutes is perfect. In the 20 minutes it takes to meticulously pack an MC1-1 military parachute, 30 folds are required. A jumper has nothing to do with the chute until they put it on before a jump. Trust in the error-free performance of the riggers is all a jumper has to rely on.
The Rigger's Creed further states: ‘I will never let the idea that a piece of work is 'good enough' make me a potential murderer through a careless mistake or oversight, for I know there can be no compromise with perfection.’  Riggers know that the parachute business is a life-or-death enterprise. Mistakes cost lives. There is no room for complacency.
“Do we approach our kingdom responsibilities with equal fervor?”[3]

Satan uses many ways to turn us away from God.  He can use the everyday conflicts between people to drive us out of the church or he can use the infiltration of false teaching so we are lost without ever leaving the church. 

We can’t let our salvation be threatened by disagreements with our brothers and sisters in Christ, but we also must guard against compromising what we know to be truth in an effort to be unified.

“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”  1Peter 5:8

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[1] Spartacus (Universal Pictures, 1960), directed by Stanley Kubrick; submitted by Bill White, Paramount, California

[2] BreakPoint with Charles Colson, (Commentary #040205, 02-05-04)

[3] Bill Donahue and Russ Robinson, Walking the Small Group Tightrope (Zondervan, 2003) p. 157-158

Name Your Price

Thoughts on the Sabbath School Lesson for 9.3.11

You know in all those detective and cop shows, there’s often a bad guy who wants to make his troubles go away by paying someone large amounts of money.  When that someone refuses, the amount of money often goes up.  The good guy usually says something like, “I can’t be bought.”  To which the bad guy usually replies, “Everyone has a price.” 

Now, I don’t know how often bad guys try to bribe good guys in real life, but think about this for a second.  Isn’t that pretty much what Satan is doing?  He’s trying to find out what it will take for us to turn away from God.  He’s trying to find out what our price is.  Have you ever thought about what you’re willing to take to stop worshiping God the way He asks us to worship Him?

In Ezekiel 8, we read about some folks who had named their price, taken their pay off, and turned so far away from God that they were worshiping idols and pagan gods in God’s own house.  God took Ezekiel on a tour so that Ezekiel could write it down. 

“… On the fifth day of the sixth month, I was sitting in my house. The elders of Judah were sitting there with me. The Lord and King put his powerful hand on me there … In visions God gave me, the Spirit took me to Jerusalem. He brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the inner courtyard. The statue of a god was standing there. It made God very angry. … Then the Lord said to me, ‘Son of man, look toward the north.’ So I did. I saw a statue that made God angry. It was in the entrance of the gate north of the altar.  He said to me, ‘Son of man, do you see what the people of Israel are doing here? They are doing things I hate very much. Those things will cause me to go far away from my temple. But you will see things I hate even more.’  Then he brought me to the entrance to the courtyard. … And I saw a door there. He continued, ‘Go through it. Look at the evil things they are doing here. I hate those things.’ … All over the walls were pictures of all kinds of crawling things and other animals. The Lord hates it when people worship those things. There were also carvings of all of the gods of the people of Israel.  In front of them stood 70 elders of Israel. …  Each elder was holding a shallow cup. A sweet-smelling cloud of incense was rising from the cups.  The Lord said to me, ‘Son of man, do you see what the elders of Israel are doing in the dark? Each of them is in his own room worshiping his own god. They say, “The Lord doesn't see us. He has deserted the land.”’ He continued, ‘You will see them doing things I hate even more.’  Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the Lord's house. I saw women sitting there. They were sobbing over the god Tammuz. The Lord said to me, ‘Son of man, do you see what they are doing? You will see things I hate even more.’  Then he brought me into the inner courtyard of the Lord's house. About 25 men were there. They were at the entrance to the Lord's temple between the porch and the altar. Their backs were turned toward the temple. Their faces were turned toward the east. And they were bowing down to the sun.  He said to me, ‘Son of man, have you seen all of that? The people of Judah are doing things here that I hate.’”  (most of) Ezekiel 8

I know, they didn’t leave God and start worshiping other gods all at once.  I’m sure it took several generations.  They took baby steps but look where they ended up!  It makes me think about how I worship God.  What compromise am I making that will make it easier for someone else to make another compromise?

Do you know that the churches in Europe are being turned into movie theaters and night clubs?  I realize they’re not “sacred” the way the Temple in the Bible was sacred, but it still seems kind of sacrilegious to me.

Here in the United States there are folks who believe that the fasted growing “religion” here isn’t really a religion, but sports.

Wait.  What? 

That’s right.

“‘Sport is America's newest and fastest-growing religion, far outdistancing whatever is in second place,’ says Charles S. Prebish, associate professor of religious studies at Pennsylvania State University. ‘...It is not merely “like” a religion, he argues, nor is it a “secular” religion, as other religion scholars and sociologists have postulated.’

“To Mr. Prebish, sport can and does provide its followers everything that traditional religions have provided over the centuries. He writes: ‘For me, it is not just a parallel that is emerging between sport and religion, but rather a complete identity. Sport is religion for growing numbers of Americans, and this is no product of simply facile reasoning or wishful thinking. Further, for many, sport religion has become a more appropriate expression of personal religiosity than Christianity, Judaism, or any of the traditional religions. ...’

“Athletes and spectators for whom sport is religion may differ in their ideas about what the ‘ultimate’ is, Mr. Prebish says, but sport is the vehicle by which all of them find it.”[1]

You and I may read what Mr. Prebish has to say and think he’s overstating or overreacting…but how different is that really than what Ezekiel described? 

We’re all prone to compromise, for any number of reasons – we don’t want to seem different than the folks around us, convenience, money.  Especially when we think that no one will notice.

I think about Daniel and his three buddies – just barely adults, their parents gone, their cushy lives gone, in a situation that screamed for compromise, if not complete abandonment of their beliefs.  And when it came down to compromise or death, each one of them stood firm.  Absolutely amazing.

Yeah, but nobody’s that tough today, right?  Um, not so fast.

“Following Sunday worship services on January 8, 2006, five young men attacked and threatened to kill a Protestant church leader in Turkey's fourth largest city. Kamil Kiroglu, 29, had just left his church in Adana when he was ambushed and beaten so severely that he fell unconscious twice.

“‘They were trying to force me to deny Jesus,’ Kiroglu said. ‘But each time they asked me to deny Jesus and become a Muslim, I was saying, “Jesus is Lord.” The more I said, “Jesus is Lord.” the more they beat me.’ One of the attackers pulled out a long butcher knife and threatened to kill Kiroglu if he did not deny his Christian faith and return to Islam. Kiroglu refused.

“After the incident, he said, ‘I am praising God—not because he saved me from death, but because he helped me not to deny him in the shadow of death.’”[2]

Is there anybody big enough to stand between us and God?  Satan says, “Yes.”  God says, “No.”  Who are we going to believe?  “What should we say then? Since God is on our side, who can be against us?”  Romans 8:31

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[1] M. Scott Vance, The Chronicle of Higher Education. Christianity Today, Vol. 29, no. 18.

[2] Compass Direct (January 2006)

Blurred

Thoughts on the Sabbath School Lesson for 8.20.11

We hear a lot about compromise these days.  For the most part, it looks like everybody says compromise is a great idea, until it’s his (or her) turn to have to do the compromising.  On the other hand, all of us make compromises pretty much all the time. When we feel like we’re not fitting with our peers, we’ll push the edge of our belief system back a bit so that we blend in with the crowd better.  Not many people want to stick out.

I guess there are times when everybody needs to compromise to get important things accomplished, but when it comes to personal beliefs and morality, I can’t see any time compromise has a happy ending.  And in most cases, we don’t even realize it’s been happening until we look around one day and don’t even recognize ourselves or the people around us.

Have you ever experienced that?  I realized the other day that until I went to the 7^th grade, girls were not allowed to wear pants to school.  Then, in Middle School we were allowed to wear pants, but they had to be part of a “pants suit” (shudder).  That changed almost immediately because in 8^th grade girls could wear pants, the only exception being jeans.  Blue jeans were not allowed on boys or girls.  That actually held all the way through high school, except that finally everybody could wear jeans on pep rally days.

That whole process didn’t seem at all unusual for those of us living through it.  It’s only in looking back that I can see how drastically things had changed in just six years.

I believe that things like that can happen in other areas of our lives as well.  I guess there are areas where gradual change in one direction or the other is not of any great importance, but when it comes to worship, we need to be very aware of which direction things are going.  Why?  Because we are sinful beings, and, on our own, we almost never drift toward something better.  Even with our best intentions, we can end up going the wrong direction.

Here’s an example of a church that, I’m sure, had the very best of intentions and was sincerely committed to drawing people into church, but I believe they went off course somewhere along the way.

John Beukema relates:  

“When I opened my mail that night, the first letter was from a local church, inviting me to visit their ‘special community.’ They listed the ways they were unique:  ‘No religious dogma—We encourage the freedom of individual thought and belief. A humanist view of life—Our faith is based on celebrating the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
“‘Warm, accessible services—Our Sunday services…typically include a mix of readings, music, moments of meditation or contemplation, and a sermon….
“‘Our children's religious education program—We teach our kids to be accepting of differing beliefs and the importance of each person seeking his or her own truth. They study the world's major religions and draw on the core values of each faith tradition….
“‘So if you're looking for a congregation that cherishes freedom of belief and opinion, with a warm sense of community and fellowship, please visit us!’”[1]

What do you think?  Is that approach to worship refreshing or disturbing?

 In 1Kings 12, we learn about a Jewish king named Jeroboam.   The Jewish kingdom was disintegrating and the part that Jeroboam ended up with didn’t have any of the major places of worship in it.  He got worried that his people would travel to the other kingdom and decide they liked that one better and stay.  So he started the putting together a system of worship that was “almost as good.”  Kind of the “close but know cookie” system of worship.   You know, he didn’t get the part with Jerusalem in it, so he had to improvise, right?

“‘If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam.’
“After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, ‘It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ One he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan. And this thing became a sin; the people came to worship the one at Bethel and went as far as Dan to worship the other.
“Jeroboam built shrines on high places and appointed priests from all sorts of people, even though they were not Levites. He instituted a festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the festival held in Judah, and offered sacrifices on the altar. This he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves he had made. And at Bethel he also installed priests at the high places he had made. On the fifteenth day of the eighth month, a month of his own choosing, he offered sacrifices on the altar he had built at Bethel. So he instituted the festival for the Israelites and went up to the altar to make offerings.”  1Kings 12:27-33

Jeroboam blurred the edges of worship because he was afraid of losing his kingdom.  Why do we blur our beliefs?  Maybe they’re inconvenient.  Maybe they’re unpopular.  Maybe they cause us to lose money.  Maybe we feel like if we looked more like everybody else, more people would come into our churches and hear the truth.

We can be like Jeroboam and try to keep things convenient and friendly.  Or we can be like 

“Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian Jew, [who] has been called ‘the voice of the underground church.’ In the 1940s, he was jailed and tortured by communist officials in his home country. While imprisoned, he spoke boldly of the gospel to his atheistic captors.
“About one experience in the 14 years he spent in prison, he wrote, ‘The political officer asked me harshly, “How long will you continue to keep your stupid religion?”
“‘I said to him, “I have seen innumerable atheists regretting on their deathbeds that they have been godless; they called on Christ. Can you imagine that a Christian could regret when death is near that he has been a Christian and call on Marx or Lenin to rescue him from his faith?”
“‘The atheist began to laugh, “A clever answer.”
“‘I continued, “When an engineer has built a bridge, the fact that a cat can pass over the bridge is no proof that the bridge is good. A train must pass over it to prove its strength. The fact that you can be an atheist when everything goes well does not prove the truth of atheism. It does not hold up in moments of great crisis.”
“‘I used Lenin's books to prove to him that, even after becoming prime minister of the Soviet Union, Lenin himself prayed when things went wrong.’”[2]

“And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.”  Malachi 3:18

With so little time left, let’s pray for discernment so we can stay on the right path and keep our hearts and our worship fixed on Jesus.

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[1] John Beukema, Western Springs, Illinois

[2] DC Talk, Jesus Freaks: DC Talk and The Voice of the Martyrs (Bethany House, 2002), pp. 53-54