Dear Timothy,

© 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 by Wesleyan Episcopal Assemblies Pentecostal. All rights reserved

The realities of life have made it necessary for me to reduce the frequency of these essays to quarterly. I hope to find contributors who will add their own unique voice to this appeal for Godly truth and Intellect. God willing we will grow into a monthly newsletter.

New inquiries have been made from Europe and Africa regarding credential for ministry. Let me invite all inquiries. We offer information packets for a small charge which is subtracted from the application fee. The reason we charge for these packets and for application is to insure that those who request this information are only those who are seriously interested in the ministry.

We would also like to invite current pastors and other ministers and ministry professionals to affiliate with WEAP in our ongoing cause to bring a fresh move of the Holy Spirit to our generation. Many have called this generation Gen-X or the Lost generation. I remind you that the Greek word Christos (Christ) begins with a Chi or X. Let's work to make the lasting legacy of this generation a Godly legacy let's become generation C-ristos.

...

A Tussle for Orthodoxy

April 2009

I have been anonymously contributing citations to support some passages in the Wikipedia article on Pentecost or as they insist on calling it Pentecostalism. Wiki has a standard that requires citations for many things that are simple fact. Ironically one of the critical comments that is often used by editors is {{fact}} which goes to show that wiki insists on opinion not fact. And I've often observed that if they could get away with it they'd try to force you to prove blue is blue.

All facetiousness aside, the problem is a serious one. More authority is given to an uninitiated even unsaved "scholar" than those who are eye witness to events and movements. I understand the interest in objectivity, but if primary sources are rejected out of hand, valuable data are never presented for analysis and a horribly skewed perspective is presented. This has been illustrated most clearly by a dialog that I've been having with another editor who self identifies as "a pentecostal believer".

Several years ago when we came to this article it was a morass of cheap attacks and misinformation supported by the worst sort of yellow journalism coming from the BBC, CBC and NatGeo among others. The picture it painted with unsubstantiated claims was that all Pentecostals and Charismatics were essentially identical and practiced snake charming and drinking rat poison as sacraments. I spent a bit of time anonymously patching this, but I didn't get to finish before other issues drew me away.

In the interim this editor came to the article and began a total rewrite and he has done a good job on the whole.

Our points of contention arose over his classification of movements. Now I grew up in the Assemblies of God and my family for generations have been clerics in first the Wesleyan Holiness movement and later the Assemblies of God. I not only have primary sources close at hand, I have the memories of what I was taught in Sunday School and the pulpit, as well as an Assemblies of God university.

Much to my surprise I found that the other editor, who I'll call Bill just to make things simpler, had claimed that the Church of God in Christ (CGOC) and the Assemblies of God (AG) were part of disparate movements. The claim was that the CGOC was Wesleyan Holiness but that the AG were part of a movement called "Higher Life" (HL). Now I had never heard of this Higher Life movement. Odd that I was a member of a movement that I'd never heard of. Knowing, as I did that the AG was founded by white CGOC members who separated over the issue of racial segregation laws, I was surprised that those men had somehow magically become something else between receiving their ordination in the CGOC and the first General Council of the AG.

Looking into it further I found that the official Assemblies of God history agreed with me (of course facts don't change because a new theory is put forward by a historian or sociologist) and I fixed the text. This lead to a revision war with Bill that ended with a compromise. We agreed that we'd say that the AG started as Wesleyan Holiness but drifted till it became Higher Life.

Since I'd agreed to this I realized I better go check on the movement. What I found was that the HL was a movement in Britain that differed from Holiness in the understanding of Sanctification. HL taught the same Wesleyan doctrine of a Second moment called Sanctification. The only difference I could find was that it arose from the Wesleyan Holiness movement, as a book and a movement begun by William Boardman in Britain and arising from the American expression of the Wesleyan Holiness movement.

Ironically the only source I could find about HL was on wikipedia and we must remember that the AG was founded in the US, in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Many delegates were from as far away as Egypt, but it was an American birth. To claim that it was founded in the US from a movement founded in Britain, based on a movement in the US, but based on the Wesleyan Holiness Movement which originated in Britain. . . You can see how silly it gets. So my initial assertion stands, the AG was birthed in the heart of the Wesleyan Holiness movement.

Now why worry. The issue came up because Bill was struggling with the issues regarding Sanctification. Now I remember the old timers testifying how blessed they were because God's grace made them, "Saved, Sanctified, and Filled with the Holy Ghost." It was formulaic and we all knew this was the same as Wesley's First, Second and Third "moments" of grace. And we knew that the first moment was sufficient to save. The second blessing or second moment was requisite to the third and the third was requisite to the infinite growth available to the believer.

Our view of sanctification like Wesley, follows the Pauline model of initial legislative act followed by pruning and improvement. Most agree Paul was pretty thoroughly removed from the opportunity of sin and was sound enough by his own standards to rebuke not only the bishops and elders under his direct tutelage (Turkey and Anatolia) but others of the twelve (e.g. Peter) on issues of both faith and baptism. Paul never the less felt compelled to confess fault and sin, where most of us would have seen perfection. This wasn't depression, it was the fact that God takes us beyond simple sanctification into greater perfection as we allow him. "Be perfect as I am perfect," is the command of our God.

On the other hand

However, like Wesley, Arminius and Paul before that, we Pentecostals have always taught and believed that it was possible to backslide and that the unregenerate, or those who backslide after receiving the Baptism, must surely be cut off. We see in Jesus own words that many who had the supernatural gifts of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit will be cut off and Jesus will say, "I never knew you." How is this possible, except by venality of disfellowship. The loss of salvation due to unrepentant, habitual sin leads eventually to a state where God must remove his grace.

This fall from grace is permanent and irremediable, as it would require that we "crucify Christ afresh." This is an impossibility and as a result those souls that reach this unlikely state are never able to be renewed. One might believe this is harsh, but it is not. God grants those who are saved a supernatural power as a free gift associated with grace, "the power to become the sons of God."

Associated with the sanctification is the power to resist temptation, to avoid occasion to sin and to repent of those sins. Repentance requires that one entirely stop engaging in the given sin, and that one make restitution to one's victim(s), and finally that one dedicate one's life to preventing such sins from being repeated by others. Again, God grants the power, he only demands willingness to obey.

But some sins are just too precious to us. For instance, a Christian believer might have been tempted so badly that he or she marries another believer who committed the sin of divorcing his or her spouse. So we have a case where a Believer has married a believer who has a believing former spouse. This is an abomination before God. Jesus said that the couple are living in open and unrepentant adultery. The only option for them is to divorce. Though God doesn't view the legal agreement as a marriage in the first place and as such there's nothing to divorce. The only option for this couple is to dissolve the fraudulent marriage and reconcile with the previously married partner, if the former spouse is willing and able, and on the former spouses' terms.  If the former spouse is not amenable then enforced celibacy by the (now twice) divorced spouse is the only path. God in the person of Jesus Christ in Matthew 19 is the Judge.

This follows the pattern I mentioned because the couple have victimized the former spouse by committing adultery, which the Bible views as a form of robbery. Your body, regardless of your gender, is the chattel property of your spouse and you do NOT have the choice. You can come to an agreement to remain celibate for a time, or make accounting for the incapacity of one spouse, but you cannot refuse your spouse otherwise. It is rebellion and theft.

Now I know there are practicalities of mood and arousal etcetera, and I'm not suggesting you ignore those, only that you have to make a good faith effort to accommodate your spouse, every time. That's love. Love does not promote it's own mood, by refusing or forcing. But legalistically it is sin to refuse. And the fact of guilt will damage your soul just as the fact of adulterous guilt or murderous guilt will. So mature Christians will voluntarily accommodate their spouses' need for sex out of Love. Period.

Some have suggested that you can never reach a point of losing your salvation. That it's a "finished work" and therefore you can never escape God.

This is a doctrine of Demons. It is intended to allow the unrepentant to as Paul put it, "leaven the whole lump" meaning the whole church. It sounds loving, and kind. But the Devil used to be an Angel, he knows how to fake grace and love in a religious context. The Devil has been in the business of religion for an awfully long time. By encouraging the sinful to feel like they are okay just as long as they pray a little rote prayer of repentance, or confess to a priest, eventually, he encourages the unrepentant to get closer and closer to the edge every time they slip

The eventual outcome is a damned soul who looks good, and speaks well, and may have supernatural gifts of the Spirit, but who is a fraud.  As a fraud, he'll have replaced the fruit of the spirit with the sorcerous tripe found in psychology text books and magazines.  He'll label self sacrifice as codependency, Chrstian love as enabling, patience as ambivalence, etc.  But worst of all, he'll replace faith with belief in a kind of magical emmination, instead of simple trust in the character and compassion of the divine spirit we serve.

Or, conversely, he may claim there is no answer to prayer and God does move miraculously.  HIs brand of Christianity denies the power of Godliness.

Why do they have gifts? Because, "the gifts and callings of the Lord are without repentance." God never takes the gifts away, and even uses the gifted but lost to reach others who are lost and redeem the presence of the gift. It is possible to find a gifted Evangelist who heals the sick, preaches the gospel and leads many to Christ - who is himself lost because he blasphemed the spirit by calling another man of God a demoniac. Such a man becomes delusional. As the Bible puts it, "that they believe a lie." And his conscience becomes seared to the point he never struggles to improve his walk or cares about his pet sin. Even Satan stops tempting him very hard because he's "in the bag" like a game bird.

And he'll start teaching sin and false grace. Grace that is not a precious commodity to be cherished and protected through obedience, but Grace that is a faded tattoo that can never truly be lost.

This counterfeit grace is a stain and it marks the fraud, the servant of antiChrist, like a beacon. Bear in mind this is not a burden placed on the lost and unregenerate. This is a responsibility given to those whom God has supernaturally gifted to be able.

How does this relate to Bill? Well Bill's sources were a pair of authors I am personally acquainted with, although I haven't had contact with one in 14 years and the other in 11 years. These men, like myself, grew up in the Assemblies of God and were educated in the same institutions I was. But, unlike myself never achieved that third moment of grace, the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, prior to becoming influential authors. As such, they were on the outside looking in so to speak. Lacking the perspective to understand the experience they accepted a Charismatic Doctrine that substituted emotional response in place of supernatural experience and gifts.

I have debated this issue with the both of them, though they are likely to have forgotten me among the hundreds of authentic Pentecostals who tried to teach them. So, like the expert skydiver who has never jumped, they teach what they do not know. They are part of a movement that has attempted to eradicate the Pentecostal message from Pentecostal churches and replace it with a Charismatic (second wave) theology which is reformation Evangelical rather than orthodox Arminian (not to be confused with the Armenian Orthodox Church).

This insurgency is designed, like those we've faced in every generation going back to Paul, to divert the church from the simple gospel of Christ into pagan philosophies, psychological sorceries and compromised witness without the power of the Holy Spirit working visibly in the gifts of the prophets.

Remember "the gift of the prophet is subject to the PROPHET"! Gifts are given to individuals, as a reward for their obedience and faith, for the benefit of the church. Prophets, which we seem more comfortable calling preachers, have been the target of every great move to destroy or distort the church. Eliminate the prophets and you eliminate the gifts, as he has done every time in the past. When you eliminate the office of prophet, established in the scriptures, cited in the Didache, and made manifest in the Pentecostal movements through the ages. God removes his spirit and his blessing from the church and the land. God is not obliged to gift where we decide, because people have established protocol demanding God gift their elected leaders. God will move and gift where HE sees fit. As he always has done.

God bless you as you seek his face,

Fred

In His Wings

April 2009

It saddens me how often these musings are inspired by misinformation and ignorance in the pulpit or the tele-evangelists studio. Godly men in the role of teacher and preacher are held to a higher standard in both knowledge and practice of the word. Evangelism is properly the work of reaching the lost on a wholesale scale. When an evangelist uses his venue to teach or a pastor or teacher moves his sermons and lessons to the mass media, it is a frightening thing. He assumes great responsibility for the lives and spiritual welfare of mass humanity whom he has never met nor been inspired to teach.

Such a mass market approach is the proper purveue of the prophet whom we are more comfortable calling preacher. Preaching is the activity of conveying God's inspired word to believers who are strayed from the faith or entertaining heterodoxy, or who are backslidden and in rebellion. We are so much more comfortable with the term preacher because we in the west associate prophet with canonicity, and rightly recognize that false prophecy is a matter of life and death. By calling prophets, preachers, we seem to think we not only reduce the import and urgency of their appeal, we insulate the speaker from the liability toward God that he incurs when he compromises with the powers that be or presents a sermon based on bad scholarship or deceit.

Sadly this semantic manipulation does not dissuade God or eliminate the very serious responsibility the failed or false prophet has to the hearer and to God.

Recently I heard a recording of a man who has spent at least the last 30 years teaching and preaching to the people of North America. This man has a sweet disposition and has helped a large body of believers to fall in love with the scripture and to discover the Biblical patriarchs and matriarchs as real people instead of shallow characters from obscure parables. I'm not sure how old the recording is but I believe it to be at least 15 years old (dating from his tenure as a pastor). In this lesson, he attempted to interpret the passage in James where the sibling of our Lord Jesus told us to "call upon on the elders of the church ... and [their] prayer ... shall heal the sick."

It should be noted that this man is a fairly good student of the scripture, but he has embraced the heterodoxy neo-Irvingite theology that we in America call Evangelical. However he could properly be call a charismatic because, like his Irvingite fathers, he grudgingly accepts the gifts of the spirit including supernatural tongues and prophecy as occasionally present in today's church. He would argue against their proper role as a normative component of spirit filled living.

That is an important observation, in that it skews his cosmology and his doctrine to the point that it is a primary cause of the eisegesis which he exercised in this lesson. His dogma informs his study and overrides doctrine therefore reinforcing his chosen dogma. This is the worst pitfall of the student theologian and should have been eliminated from this man's habits long ago. He took a single word from the passage, the one translated anoint, and attempted to redefine it as medical treatment.

Basing his argument on extra-biblical sources he established the word's common usage to refer to a specific medical treatment common in Hellenistic Greece, and extrapolated it to mean medical treatment in general. He then ignored the proper syntax of the passage and argued that it should have read approximately like, "and they shall administer medical treatment". This is a surprising abuse of scripture given the source, a man who has a history of scrupulous adherence to context and canonical criticism. He compounded his error by smugly announcing, "now you've never heard a pastor say that before!" To be fair, this was after he had explained that he felt unfairly exploited if a person came for prayer when they haven't first gone for medical treatment.

One is tempted to coin the term reverse reactionism, to refer to the activity of liberal theologians who, upon discovering that a preacher of prophet is making headway in bringing about revival and repentance, attack in order to defend the entrenched liberal theology. This preacher would be just such a reverse-reactionary, attempting to prevent God's people from turning away from reliance on modern medicine and philosophies.

Before he was done he had recklessly announced that 1) he had no power, and 2) that he had members of his congregation who needed psychiatric drugs and he would not pray for healing of their minds, and 3) that you should have faith in your doctor. Every successive statement was more heterodox and rebellious than the last. I must admit I was offended and appalled. I can only hope he'll repent and destroy the copies of this sermon.

His faithlessness was tantamount to an argument that the God who made the mind was not capable of healing it. He was also arguing that there is no power in the godly obedience, that the prayer of faith will not save the sick, and that God does not bring the spirit of a sound mind. Essentially he was replacing God with men in the most vomitous piece of carnality and humanism I have seen in a pulpit.

Let's look at the passage. It is patently clear that the passage says, "and they [the elders of the church] shall anoint" the petitioner. Now it may be true that the term translated anoint is the Hellenistic equivalent of "slap some oil on ya," but that doesn't obviate the translation as anoint. What it does is highlight the crude, folksy patois used by the author of James. It's common usage outside of the present context does not obviate the context, and the speaker is just wrong due to bad scholarship.

The present context is calling upon the Elders of the Church. If that Elder has no special power he isn't a legitimate Elder. The office of Elder conveys the power to speak with authority on matters of faith and practice and this passage clearly indicates it conveys a deepened responsibility for the welfare of younger members. This is the result of longer service and the deepened relationship and trust in God's character that comes from long, authentic service (as opposed to inauthentic service which is a waste of time and does produce a powerless and ineffectual leader).

Regardless of any other consideration, the abuse of scripture evidenced in this passage is not only troubling it discredits the entirety of the resulting sermon and indicates a need for repentance on the part of this teacher. As a personal aside I want to make the following appeal to the teacher mentioned above:

You are a man of God, and I have followed your ministry with appreciation for many years. But, you know more than most that the appeal of compromise is an unrelenting temptation for the compassionate teacher. A desire to see our student flourish and succeed can cause the best of us to falter in holding the line of Biblical theology and holiness. But if we do not hold our students accountable, just as they hold us accountable, God will hold us accountable for their blood. If you feel powerless, then I'd invite you to seek the gift of healing and the deeper infilling and communion of the Holy Spirit that accompanies Glossalalia (as opposed to the supernatural gift Xenolalia).

God is gracious, please hear my appeal. And for the sake of those whom you lead, don't dismiss this appeal with a smirk and a chuckle as you are wont to do. Please brother, show the godly remorse and repentance that you so appreciate in David. I know you have a heart that seeks to know God's heart.

Your brother,

Fred

With This Vow I thee Wed

July 2007

I realize I've spent a lot of time on what Christian marriage and sexual morality is not. In the interest of balance I will make a point of expressing the positive definition of marriage and Christian sexuality. This is a much more difficult task since essentially the position of the Bible is "anything not prohibited is implicitly encouraged and in some cases commanded." 

The best place to start is with the traditional Christian marriage vows. Bear in mind that marriage is validated by scripture in such a way that all marriages between a man and a woman regardless of the religion or lack there of involved in the ceremony, including common law marriages are given equal weight by the scripture. Even the lack of ceremony is no bar to marriage. Simply purporting to be married before witnesses and the community at large constitutes a valid marriage by Biblical standards as long as 1) the parties to the marriage genuinely intend to be married, and 2) the parties to the marriage are legitimately marriageable by Biblical standard. That said, marriage is hard enough to live up to without complicating things with unclear expectations and a lack of initiation.

In order to aid in commitment among other reasons the church has traditional religious ceremonies that provide a point of initiation. This clearly defined point of demarcation and public oath of marriage helps to reinforce the serious nature of marriage for the sincere believer. It provides a context for a crisis event that reinforces the objective reality of being married.

What I've done following is take traditional vows which are derived as an expression of Biblical standards for living married as a Christian couple and look at the legal and spiritual implications of the oaths we call vows. They are in fact Vows before god and man, but constitute a verbal contract in the form of oaths publicly sworn.

The particular formula I chose to analyze was as follows:

First the husband 

I N.N. take you N.N. to be my holy wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till in death we do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and in this intent I pledge my oath to you.

 Then the wife

 I N. take you to be my holy wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish and to obey, forsaking all other lovers, till we do part in death, according to God's holy ordinance; and in this intent I pledge my oath to you.

 Breaking it down the husband's vows read something like this.

The Husband's Vow

I N.N. take you N.N. to be my holy wedded wife,

Holy wedded wife indicates both that the act of marriage is a religious rather than civil observance and that the office of wife is a religious office to which a woman is ordained.

to have and to hold,

In old English have is a term that is richer in meaning than the way it is used in modern parlance. To have is not to merely possess in the simple sense of custody, but to thoroughly control all aspects and features which can be possessed and to have the right of determination and consumption of all features and produce. To have a wife is to possess her sexually, to command her respect for your position if not your person, and to determine the course of her life.

Holding is also very different from when the vows were first composed. A holder is one who has taken a property which belongs to another and is empowered as steward. But more than than holding includes developing natural resources, grooming and developing. In the sense it was intended, to hold a wife is to take possession of her with the intention of grooming her into a finer person and to hold the title to her as a grant of authority from her true owners, namely she herself and God almighty.

Legally this entails the agreement to guide, instruct, and discipline the wife in every aspect of person and personality, taking personal responsibility for her wellbeing and provision. It also entails the grant of power of attorney and medical power of attorney simultaneously and anatomical gifting in toto of a mans person and living tissues, in the interest of meeting the needs of his wife.

from this day forward,

Obviously demonstrates that the title of husband is being conferred effective immediately.

for better or worse,

This is the most misunderstood part. In this context it surely means that the title remains effective even when the husband is ineffective and fails to succeed in his appointed task. This includes criminal conviction, incarceration or legal obligation of the wife, or any other failure. The vow is inviolate.

for richer or poorer,

Whether the marriage leads to, or through times of wealth or poverty, the marriage itself is inviolate. Poverty is no grounds for divorce and a man who leaves his wife because of poverty violates his oath of office and breaks a vow to God. Scripture clearly indicates that breaking a vow instigates a curse from God himself.

in sickness and in health,

Again sickness of your spouse is no nullification of obligation and no divorce on grounds of mental or physical illness is valid.

to love and to cherish,

This is fascinating in many ways. Love is ill defined in any language and for any culture. 1 Corinthians 4 defines it as patient, kind, generous, modest, proprietary, unselfish, even tempered, trusting, compassionate, committed to truth, accepting, accepting, hopeful, durable and permanently reliable. Even still this is just a pale inadequate definition.

To cherish is to place not only affection but inherent value in the object of that affection. To cherish a woman is to see her as an object of fine value and yet to hold tender affection for her as a person.

Combined these to elements of the vow rob the draconian teeth from what has come before. They provide the checks and balances to the great power which a woman confirms in her husband by taking this vow. This juxtaposition of guiding authority and doting lover provides a synthesis that truly meets the needs of a woman and leads her to health and stability that she craves.

till in death we do part,

The vow is both the confirmation of an ordinance and holy order of the church, but also a contract or covenant between the spouses. As such each spouse is party to that contract. The grants of authority and personal power given to the Husband are stringent and the degree of submission and surrender of self determination give the wife the right to expect some guarantee that the value of her service and labor will not be rendered for its numismatic value and then discarded to the exclusive benefit of the husband. In this interest the duration of the agreement is until one or both parties to he agreement are deceased. If any term is violated, except sexual activity with any person other than the husband's own wife, the power to discipline the husband is sufficient to cover the breach and retain the contract intact. In the case of infidelity by the husband, it is recommended that discipline be the only measure taken to adjust the quid pro quo nature of the contract, however dissolution is a much discouraged option.

according to God's holy ordinance; and in this intent I pledge my oath to you.

This term establishes the bible both old and new testament as the legal and religious context for interpretation of the vow and resolution of disputes.

The Wife's Vow

I N. take you to be my holy wedded husband,

The word husband is the English term that really means executive gardener or breeder, steward and landscape architect. The formula again indicates this is a holy order and office confirmed in the wedding ceremony.

to have and to hold,

Again we have the old usage of the word have indicating possession, control and consumption. However having just expressed the intention of setting that possession as a husband overseeing herself the effect of having is somewhat modified. The best analogy is the horse groom and rider. Horses are powerful and deadly beasts, yet with proper treatment and respect they offer loyal and reliable service. A justifiable respect for the danger combined with gentle guidance leads to a mutually satisfying relationship. The horse carries the rider and bears burdens for the rider in exchange for care, and respect. To have a husband is to embrace him sexually, to command her respect for your position if not your person, and to gently guide him in the direction that will meet you own needs while allowing him to have his way and expend his energies in meeting those needs as well as his own with varied cadence and ever changing intensity.

Again title is held at the sufferance of the true owners meaning God and the husband himself.

Legally this entails the agreement to be guided, instructed, and disciplined by the husband in every aspect of person and personality. It also entails the grant of power of attorney and medical power of attorney simultaneously and anatomical gifting in toto of a woman's person and living tissues, in the interest of meeting her husband's needs and desires.

from this day forward,

This is a reciprocal announcement that the agreement carries forward immediately from the moment it is made.

for better or worse,

Again no change in fortunes, legal status or degree of success or failure is sufficient to terminate the agreement.

for richer or poorer,

Financial status cannot affect the agreement.

in sickness and in health,

Mental, or physical health and wholeness in no way affect the durability of the agreement.

to love, cherish and to obey,

Love is a balance to the intent to guide. By making himself responsible and emotionally vulnerable a man is in real danger of damage from his wife. Genuine love will temper her response limiting her from emotional abuse and mental cruelty, or infidelity which can crush the psyche and soul of a man.

forsaking all other lovers,

Obviously this set exclusive monogamy as a term of the agreement. The penalty of failure to meet this condition is flexible and at the discretion of the husband. Valid penalties being disciplinary action or in extreme conditions termination of the agreement.

till we do part in death,

The demands of vowing to take such a high degree of responsibility for another person, combined with the emotional vulnerability and drain of vowing to cherish and love, makes the marriage a great commitment for a man. No man can lightly provide these things and having invested so great an amount of himself he is entitled to a guarantee that this investment will not be torn away, rendered for its numismatic value and then discarded. In this interest the Vow is for the duration that both parties to the agreement live. This vow is a verbal contract and the term of duration is until one or both parties is diseased. If any term except exclusivity (forsaking all other lovers) is violated the power to discipline the wife is sufficient to cover the breach and retain the contract intact. In the case of breach it is recommended that discipline be the only measure taken to adjust the quid pro quo nature of the contract, however dissolution is a much discouraged option.

according to God's holy ordinance; and in this intent I pledge my oath to you.

This term establishes the bible both old and new testament as the legal and religious context for interpretation of the vow and resolution of disputes.

 The vows themselves are both contract and covenant, and like the covenant between God and man they express a contractual obligation. But they also define a healthy and rewarding relationship that brings joy and reward to both parties. It is my prayerful hope that this discussion helps you to grow in your faith and in right relationship with your own spouse or prospective spouse.

in his service

Fred

A Marriage Most Convenient

May 2007

Recently I heard a sermon from a popular televangelist. Now, this man is a part of the growing Epicurean movement in the former Calvinist and Evangelical churches in America. Neo-Epicureanism has found a way to create a fascinating dynamic tension between Stoicism and a sort of "Enlightened" Hedonism (ref. Enlightened Self Interest in any encyclopedia). They blend the sharply defined dualism of the stoics and Gnostics with a licentiousness that changes disobedience of Christ, from a damnable failure, into a mere character flaw that can be overlooked in anyone. Overlooked, so long as they are popular with the people of a given congregation. This is similar to the pride the Corinthian Church took in their perversion of grace and forgiveness. A grace that allowed a man to live in an incestuous relationship with his mother, without censure from the congregation.

This strange belief system lead the speaker to do something that I would respect a great deal if it were coming from someone with a sound doctrinal approach to interpreting scripture. As I have pointed out numerous times, some of the most politically and socially narrow belief systems come from the most liberal of interpretive forestructure. In other words, a liberal doctrine like that of the reformation theologians leads, inexorably, to a legalistic dogma like that of the puritans. And incidentally to a complete failure of the popular piety to reflect that rigid dogma.

The beauty of this particular sermon was that it violated some of the legalism of the speaker's own tradition, by delving into the topic of human sexuality from the pulpit, in a marginally graphic way. By using popular slang as a system of euphemism, he was able to do this without causing his audience to rout. And, he made some very astute points with regard to the Biblical view on sexuality.

Now, most liberal theologies, like the puritanical theologies of the reformation or the ascetic Gnosticism of the Roman Catholic Church, lead one to censure human sexuality and censor any reference to or education in the proper view and habits of the Biblical Christian. Dictates are made, but they are inevitably a list of "don'ts" and these "don'ts" are made up of the worst and ugliest behaviors, in the view of the theologians of the given church body. Lists of "do's" are given no attention and are viewed with the same prurient attitude that a preadolescent takes toward the subject (lot's of giggles and blushes, or angry censure and accusation).

This televangelist avoided that prurient behavior by rediscovering that the "Sex is a beautiful gift from God" doctrine naturally requires a more exhaustive exploration of scripture than is found in the church today. Sex has been left to philosophers, educators and medical personnel to explain and teach, when it is the natural topic of scripture. Scripture spends more time speaking about sexuality in both prophetic dictates and in narrative accounts than most any other topic. If reading the bible doesn't lead to discussions of sexuality, then you aren't reading honestly and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, do we want psychologists and educators teaching our children how to engage in sex, when all those kids have heard is a list of "don'ts" that are supposedly going to send them to hell?

This minister, was rightly lead to broach the subject and he did a credible job of euphemistically walking tiptoe around the sensibilities of some people, while essentially instilling the basic principal that sex within marriage is not a thing God grudgingly allows so the species can be perpetuated. Instead, he pointed out that God ordained sex as component of the first commandment of all time, preceding, "Don't eat from the tree of Knowledge." This command precedes the fall of Man, the flood, The Passover, the Law and the Resurrection -- and yet it has been reiterated and expounded on after each of these events. God wants you to be sexually active and married. Heterosexual activity glorifies and pleases God. In point of fact, it is an act of worship and obedience, and Christ himself warned us that those who censure marriage and marital sexuality are false prophets.

As the speaker developed this idea, he happened onto the fact that the Law of Grace often shows intensification of the requirements made on a Christian. Where before the fall there was one standard, we see greater expectations and higher standards instituted at the fall, the flood, the death of Sodom and Gomorrah, the reception of the Mosaic Law (Torah/Pentateuch), and the coming of Christ; a natural progression, (Heilsgeschichte or history of salvation) in direct proportion to the increased grace meted out with each revelation of God.

So, where grace doth abound, expectations of a righteous and holy God do more greatly abound. This is pointed out by Jesus in different ways, but two that stand out are the attack on Jesus preachments against divorce and lust by Pharisees. In the divorce passages, he says before you were allowed to do thus and so, for the reason of your own weakness, but now "I bring you a better way." This minister pointed out that there is a parallel in the discussion of lust, where Jesus says you have been taught thus and so "but I say if a man commits lust in his heart he is guilty of adultery already."

There are similar treatments of moral imperative salted throughout Jesus' ministry. These two, however, can leave a student theologian grasping for some means to reconcile the passages and reassure himself that Jesus hasn't contradicted himself. Let me assure you he has not.

The apparent contradiction resides in the fact that Jesus said divorce was not allowable for a Christian, except in the case where the believer's spouse has committed adultery. Given that lust is unavoidable for the teenaged, and usually the twenty something male, this would seem to indicate that every marriage is invalidated a priori (before the fact of wedding). What's more, although I cannot speak to the mind of young women, I suspect that the fascination with muscular athletes and large appendages is far from platonic, or even innocent.

These factors would seem to obviate and invalidate the preachments on divorce by our Lord. Worse yet, the narrative of Jesus encounters with the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery, seem to broach an even more direct contradiction given the common interpretation of these events and the strategic amnesia toward certain statements made to these women by Jesus.

Much ado is made of Jesus' challenge that "he who is without sin" should cast the first stone, and yet he, Jesus cast none. I wonder sometimes how the scene would have played out if the accusers had acknowledged Jesus' sinlessness and demanded that he indeed begin the stoning. The passage might have taken on a very different dimension, and I would like to have heard Jesus' answer to them. But, cowardice and unbelief won the day and, when Jesus looked up, he lacked the testimony of even two witnesses. Therefore, he sent her on her way in accordance with the Law of Moses. "For, by the mouth of two or three witnesses let a thing be established." He did give her an inflexible admonition that is conveniently forgotten by most citations of this passage.

If this were a genuine contradiction and Jesus were preaching in favor of adulterers, the whole of the new testament would collapse as just so much historical text. In the minds of some people this is what happens. Let's examine that premise however. What did Jesus mean when he said that the lustful person has committed adultery. Is lust, in fact, a sin limited to married men? No, we hinted earlier that there is reason to believe that women are capable of lust. On top of that, common sense and recent legal cases tell us that people lust more often before marriage than after, with the celibate suffering most of all.

If you read closely you begin to notice that the term used is adultery not just sexual immorality and not fornication. So an unmarried woman who is celibate unmarried and virginal, but who dreams of a man with gentle hands stroking her bare flesh in an intimate way can't be married because she is guilty of adultery. Does this reading make sense? Not even a little.

There is a scriptural dichotomy dividing sins of the flesh from sins of the heart. We see this in the old testament where unbelief in God, Lust, desire for what doesn't belong to you, even lack of sufficient affection for God are sins which bring judgment and damnation. They do not however incur civil or punitive penalties, to be applied by other people or by the state. They are terribly serious sins committed against God alone.

God is depicted in midrash and therefore in the New testament as a bridegroom to the corporate body of believers. This is a metaphysical or spiritual principle that is seeded throughout Jesus' ministry. So in this sense, any sin against God is by definition a form of adultery. This idea is developed in Jeremiah 3, where God depicts the northern Kingdom of Israel as one of two wives, Judea being the other. He makes a great deal of the fact that he "divorced" himself from the northern tribes because of their sin and unbelief. Then in a twist, he divorces himself from Judah and remarries Israel because the Levites, Jews (Judah and Benjamin), and Simeonites, are going through the motions of serving him but are corrupt and sinful despite their profession of faith.* This initiated the Jilted husband motif that is a factor in the prophets and proverbs and Jesus uses it liberally in his sermons.

For this reason Marriage is sacrosanct to the believer. It is an earthly type in the midrashic sense for the relationship between God and the congregation of his believers. But similarly, in the New Testament there are ways in which we can violate this get or covenant of marriage in a way that tempts God to divorce us. This is the adultery that Jesus is referring and it is a heart condition. When you lust, or even covet your neighbors new car, you have committed adultery in your heart. Even if you have never married, it is adultery against God, the father and lord of all creation. It is adultery against Jesus as Christians are the bride of Christ .

However, since it is an activity of the heart, and not a sin of the flesh, it is not a sin against one's present or future spouse. Don't make the mistake of thinking a sin against God is lesser than a sin against your spouse. When God divorces people or nations, lives are lost and souls are damned to eternal exile from God's presence (fate far worse than death). But what it does clearly show is that, your spouse is not entitled to divorce you because you have lusted after another.

In fact, Jesus clearly indicated that when a person divorces an adulterous spouse, the faithful spouse has shown an unforgiving and hard heart in defiance of Jesus' commands. The faithful but unforgiving spouse has made it through the eye of a technicality, but is not in right relationship with God. They have succumbed to legalism and selfishness. They get their freedom from the adulterer, but loose the opportunity to bring that spouse home to Christ and have a long way to go in repairing their relationship with Jesus.

Is there a point where divorce becomes necessary? There are some simple guidelines to follow in these cases:

1. When the threat to your children, or your life due to sexually transmitted diseases, or the hardening of your hearts due to the loss of intimacy threatens bodily harm -- you have to weigh the consequences of your actions and prayerfully seek God's guidance. He won't be happy with divorce (Mal 2:15-17;Jer 3:1), but being certain to get permission first will go a long way in preserving your relationship with him. Bear in mind that remarriage to a third party is only possible for a spouse who has not committed adultery prior to divorce.

2. Be sure that you have not retaliated against your spouse by engaging in adultery as well. If you are both guilty, neither has the moral high ground and neither has the authority to seek divorce. In that case, divorce itself is adultery and you both will suffer. In fact, when you are the victim of an adulterous spouse, do not seek companionship from anyone who is a potential sexual partner. You will inevitably find yourself embroiled in one form of adultery or another. You will not be able to get good guidance from God because you will be distracted by ungodly impulses.

3. If both spouses are Christians, you really only have the option of mutually agreed upon separation. And it must be mutual agreement. Divorce is really not an option. If a new believer has a spouse who is not a believer at the time of the divorce, and has never professed Christ, the non-believer is free to divorce the believer and in this limited case the Apostle Paul has granted, by the authority of the spirit an a priori (before the fact) annulment with the words "it is as if your were never married."

Ultimately, the reason the question of divorce comes up so often is the rebellious nature of western society. Divorce cannot subside from the words of God's prophets because God's people have become so corrupt and self-righteous they challenge the Corinthians of the first century. Where in Corinth they were proud to be so forgiving and loving that they allowed a man to attend services, knowing that he was sleeping with a woman who was his mother or stepmother -- today, homosexuals and pimps are welcomed and the unbiblical proverb is cited that church is where sinners belong. This is the same licentiousness that Paul took 3 chapters in 1 Corinthians (ch.s 4-6) to challenge.

The most disheartening thing is the fact that the corruption has grown to such proportion that it is commonplace to find ministers of the gospel who are themselves living in a parody of marriage with a spouse who was formerly married and has divorced without benefit of the biblical standards on divorce. In other cases homosexuals, gluttons and the patrons of whores are standing in pulpits on a Sunday morning, officiating at communion, while preaching that men who have succumbed to reviewing pornographic images are guilty of adultery and therefore subject to divorce.

Talk about Pharisaic hypocrisy. These Corinthian Family Values are strangling the life from the church and destroying the testimony of its people. It's time for the people of God to discover how to make their yeahs be yeahs and nays be nays, such that "I do" at the altar is genuinely binding even during the worst of times, just as the oath of marriage says. Life long marriage even when you decide at some point you may have chosen the wrong spouse, needs to be the rule not the exception. And that "wrong" spouse should never be made to know that they were wrong. The believer has access to a supernatural font of love and compassion. If Jesus can die on a cross for you, you can make a loving home with your spouse. If you can't and you abandon your spouse, you become responsible to God for their sex life (Matt 5:22), however sinful it may become. Imagine living out a life walking in the spirit and, when you face God, losing out because you were so hard-hearted you divorced your husband for reason that he snored or wasn't hardworking enough to suit you.

When you break a vow, even a marriage vow, you are under condemnation, and Calvinist Dualism heresy aside, God will hold you accountable both in this life and in the next -- even if you are a believer, and even if you can legitimately stand and say, "Lord didn't I preach in your name, didn't I heal the sick, didn't I cast out demons." Of such Jesus spoke in the "Parable of the Sower". They are the shallow ground. In fact, they do convert to Christ, but in the end they fall away and are damned. Repent. As we all must. Your immortal soul is at stake.

God bless you as you seek him in spirit and in truth.

With love,

Fred

* There is a third clause in that passage where Jeremiah reports God's intention to merge the pagan Israelis, Righteous Gentiles and Judah and corporately refer to all of them as Jews.

Sexy Christians

March 2006

Recently the media has been hammering home a particularly crude form of propaganda regarding what they and law enforcement have come to refer to as "sex offenders". The typical mode is to feature a lawyer who is representing a defendant from a particularly ugly accusation. This lawyer is then pitted against a team of law enforcement, right wing politicos and a particularly abrasive and belligerent district attorney.

The announcer will pretend to be neutral, but go out of his way to undermine the lone defender. The intention is to use cracks, potshots and logical fallacy in an attempt to confuse the audience. Then end up with the sanctimonious proclamation by the DA that, "these kinds of offenders can't be rehabilitated."

This ongoing move is only one part of a terrifying trend in American jurist imprudence and in so called conservative values. Marking the sex offender with GPS tracking devices, state registries, automatic notification of neighbors and coworkers has been a huge step toward the sort of excesses that were carried out in Nazi Germany and in the USSR. People who have owned a house in a particular place for many years are now forced to sell and move in order to find a place that isn't within a certain distance of a school.

For a single mistake, however egregious, this is tantamount to cruel and unwarranted, unusual punishment. Shall we tag every convict? Perhaps we should tag governors who have settled out of court for fondling costars. Perhaps we should tag presidents who have sex with interns less than half their age or sexually assault campaign staff and senators who send homosexual cybersex emails to underage pages.

Would law makers and law enforcement be so ready to take such a draconian approach if all sex offenses were similarly treated? How about tagging cops who commit adultery, and DAs who visit prostitutes? How about tagging legislators who commit sodomy, there would be some quick backpedaling then.

The basic premise of this movement is the idea that there can be no rehabilitation for sex offenders. This sentiment couldn't be more erroneous or lacking is simple human compassion. It is fueled by nothing less than a desire for vengeance. Vengeance is illegal under American Legal tradition and these laws are certainly unconstitutional.

But who is the F. Lee Bailey who will stand up and defend the rights of these admittedly repugnant offenses? Because that is the way the propaganda paints this issue. It's not about people who for whatever motive have committed a heinous and repugnant crime. It's not about people who have deprived a family of loved ones or who have damaged a loved one in a life altering way. It's about criminals or, in some cases, falsely accused innocents, who are being seen as the crime itself rather than human beings.

This rush to perverted justice and dysfunctional thinking is not newly born with sex offenses in America. Twenty-five years ago the great bugaboo that law enforcement used to justify wicked infringement on civil rights and oppression of the people was drug addiction. Millions were imprisoned and innocent lives were sacrificed when whole families were regularly deprived of house and home because one individual was dealing drugs. People were imprisoned where they were raped and fed even more drugs, only to be released with no treatment and soon found drugs on the street. This was called justice.

Someone once said, when the only tool you have is a hammer you see every problem as a nail. This certainly applies to psychology or sorcery. When the only tool you have is a couch, then you see every problem as a coma. Applied to the church, when the only tool you have is healing, you see every problem as a wound. There is no more effective paradigm.

Sin is a wound in the soul or psyche of man. Drug abuse and sexual abuse are two of the main issues for which Christianity, and Orthodox Judaism have no lack of treatment. God encourages free and open affection and uninhibited sexuality. Plentiful sex is such a priority for God that even in the cursed state of sin, he commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The vast amount of Biblical treatment of sex is not intended to inhibit human sexuality but limit the paradigms of interpersonal relations in a way that is healthy and conducive to good social order and the protection of innocents.

Similarly the treatment of the soul or psyche is not ignored by the Bible. While philosophies such as psychology are censured and the use of drugs or meditative techniques are strictly forbidden to the believer, the bible in toto is primarily a tractate on how to achieve good relations with God and mental or soul (pyschic) related healing.

The old testament law proscribed death for the psychologist with his manipulative brainwashing and vain philosophies, the psychiatrist with his pharmacopoea, or the witch who proscribes various worts and herbs. Under the new covenant we are instructed to reach out to these deceived and destructive sorcerers and lead them to salvation and rehabilitation. Similarly we are to heal the victim of sorcery, whether that is a valium addict, or the person who has lost the ability to function without brain altering 'antidepressant' potions, or the marijuana user who mellows out his stresses.

Drug abuse is one branch of sorcery, which is generally the alteration of perception and manipulation of consciousness or brain washing through mesmerism, hypnosis, pharmaceuticals, neurolinguistic programming, self-hypnosis and/or redactive psychotherapy. Because of this it is considered rebellion against God and is very prominently censured in both the old and new testaments. God is very clear that magical thinking and new age techniques are neither new nor tolerable. But the Bible never leaves one with condemnation and no means to effect a correction.

Because the prison system had no answers and psychology is impotent to provide any relief or aid to a suffering mind, these people were deemed incorrigible. The grand pontification by many DAs was that 'these people' could not be rehabilitated. When criminal justice departments finally gave up and got out of the way, the church went to work. Because, the answer to every problem is Jesus.

Christ centered drug programs such as Teen Challenge have a less than 10% recidivism rate. I'm not sure of the statistics with regard to Chabad houses, but my suspicion is that they are similar. God is our healer and our counselor. God is the savior. When a drug user who is "not rehabilitable" genuinely encounters God there is a genuine change in the very make up of his personality. He will change in such a way that he is no longer an addict.

I'm not talking about some anomalous or anonymous higher power (which by the way has some effectiveness but a much higher recidivism rate). I'm not talking about numbered steps that magically redeem you, and have to be repeated incessantly because you are forever bound to the addiction and only get by day by day and by the skin of your teeth.

I'm talking about real and permanent healing. If you break your arm and it heals, it will be forever different but it will be whole and reliable, so long as you do not break it again. Choosing not to fall from great height is usually sufficient to avoid repeating the injury. God's healing for the addict is similarly effective. He takes the sin nature and the human spirit and replaces it with his own. The life force within you becomes that of God. You become converted into a new thing. Where you were born with a carnal spirit, you have a new life and become a new creation or a new species without the same foibles and faults. Of course perfection is a goal and not achieved over night. But the potential is now there where it was impossible in your prior state.

This is proven for drug addicts and it is proven for all kinds of sex offenders. To God there is no difference between the child molester, the prostitute, the incestuous, the pedophile, the rapist, the adulterer, the homosexual, and those who have sex prior to marriage. All are guilty of a capital crime and all these sex offenders are repugnant to God.

But God also grants mercy and forgiveness. He rehabilitates prostitutes, like Mary Magdalene who was the first to greet Jesus in the resurrection, or Rahab who became Joshua's wife and a mother in the line of Jewish Kings. He rehabilitates Adulteresses like the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery from Mathew's Gospel and King David, who was not only a sex offender but a murderer. He rehabilitates the incestuous like Abraham, and Lot.

Mary the mother of Jesus was innocent, but she was presumed to have been guilty of fornication (which is premarital sex). If sex offenders had been treated the way America now treats them, she would have been branded with a scarlet letter like Hawthorne's character or worse stoned to death. Sexual depravity is rehabilitable. Jesus provides this healing, for by his lacerations at the hand of a Roman and on the accusation of the High Priest of Israel, we are healed.

As we enter this Passover season, let's remember that by the blood of the Passover lamb, we are recognized as the children of God, and protected from the justified touch of the Angel of Death. Jesus is both our Great High Priest and also our Supreme paschal lamb. Let us remember his seder and the salvation in his blood. And in doing so let us remember that a Judao-Christian nation must be merciful as well as just, or God will begin a winnowing.

Tiptoeing Through the Fertilizer

February 2007

Recently I was talking to a mixed group of business acquaintances about the question of liberality. It was the tired old discussion that always arises when a Christian in America admits to Christianity. The immediate leap the average person makes is to political and social conservatism, as well as moral relativism vs. objective values (values based on an external fixed point of reference which is immutable and absolute). The tragic thing is the laughable way these very different continua are typically merged and blended into a confused self contradictory whole in the mind of the critic.

For example, a critic of conservative Christian faith might argue something Like the following:

Christians are so intolerant. Look at the way they judge everybody else's religious beliefs. For hundreds of years Christians have perpetuated the colonial system by sending representatives and provocateurs (i.e. missionaries/apostles) to spread western values. These missionaries tell people their own traditions aren't good enough and try to shame them into changing into westerners. What's worse, Christians have no social conscience. They don't try to help the poor and the homeless and they don't believe in social change. Christians are evil because they start all the wars in the world and they... and they...

Well you get the point I hope. I could go on with this composite tirade that I have had to endure repeatedly from Jews, Buddhists, Neo Pagans/Wiccans, Muslims, Hindus, Native American shamanistic believers from various first nations, and best of all the lapsed Roman Catholic or Baptist. But, the argument presented above is enough to demonstrate the lack of rational thought involved in this merger. If break it down we see that Social conscience is supposed to be important, and the critic equates social conscience with believing in social change or programming in order to improve living standards and protect the homeless, and the poor, and one would presume other disenfranchised groups like orphans, single moms and the list goes on.

So we can gather from that, the following proposition, that 1 (good or not evil people believe in social change) and 2 (social change is attempting to change elements of society that cause disenfranchisement and suffering).

Another earlier passage in this tirade criticizes believers for trying to change traditional elements in other cultures and presumably blocking trends that the critic supports in our own. In other words sending missionaries in an intolerant ploy to change peoples and societies. What is a little known statistic is that believing Christians are 90% more likely to give to charitable causes than the base population. This charitable giving is a huge part of the intolerance cited by my hypothetical critic. More, the missionaries who work in other countries tend to focus on building infrastructure, teaching reading and the sciences, and improving agriculture. This is the teach a man to fish doctrine.

In fact, our master, Jesus, taught us to be fishers of men and to then impart this knowledge to new recruits. This spreading the gospel with a social component of improving practical living conditions is the basis of Authentic Christianity. Jesus taught us to care for the sick, care for the orphaned and to care for the single mom. These commands can be found unambiguously preached in the new testament. Christians believe in social change for he betterment of the individual soul and the community.

This can be laid out as 2 (Christians believe in changing elements of society that cause disenfranchisement and suffering)

With these three facts we can lay out an interesting logical chain in the midst of the critic's own tirade:

A (a form of goodness) = B (social change for the betterment of disenfranchised and suffering people)

AND

D (Christians engage in social change for the betterment of disenfranchised people)

Logically:

A = B AND B = D THEREFORE A = D (Christian behavior in the world IS a form of goodness)

Essentially the critic has argued against his own point without even seeing the contradiction. Now some might argue that the TYPE of social change Christians favor is what is at fault and the above argument is a fallacy for that reason. Well the relative merits of Christians as a force for social change (light and salt/food preservative as Jesus called us) is a question for another letter. However I believe the preponderance of evidence lies well in favor of the conservative Christian. But that leads into the point I'd like to make about the above illustration.

In this letter I'd like to look at how people get so confused in their thinking. A sociology professor of mine had an interesting take on the issue. He claimed that there were three different continua that are perpendicular and generally unrelated to one another that govern religious and social identity. His first continuum was Social responsibility and he labeled the vanishing points on his line as indifference vs. codependency. The second was biblical interpretation which he labeled as allegorical vs. hyper-literal. And the last was political which he labeled as totalitarian vs. anarchic.

Now you have to understand that is has been over 10 years since the class and his precise terminology was different but I have captured the essence here. These are an illustration of the continua at work:

Social

indifference                   codependency
 |           C PG   vs.P           RC    |
<|---------|-|--|----|-|-------|----|----|>
Theological

Now granted, the positions on the continua I have posted are hypothetical but I invite you to study the data gathered by Barna Research, in Ventura California, regarding American religiosity. While Barna uses a very loose and debatable definition for what constitutes a believer, the raw data are eye opening and resolve themselves into something approximating the chart above.

What we find in this professor's diagram is that Roman Catholics lie left of center theologically and politically in American terms, but far to right in terms of social involvement. While churches that arose directly from the protestant reformation tend to lie left of center in all three continua. The Neo orthodoxy that got it's impetus from the teachings of Joseph Arminius falls somewhere in the middle with a right wing leaning. No the teacher in question tried unsuccessfully to draw a correlation between biblical conservatism and social liberalism but as you can see he failed in that.

The reason for his error was that he had made two fatal flaws in his reasoning. For one, he forgot that the European definition of Political conservatism is leftism for the American mind and the European idea of liberalism is rightwing fanaticism to the American. America was born out of a search for political, social and religious freedom that was not available in Europe and much of American political ideology comes from the political doctrines of the Iroquois Confederation. To borrow a term, European conservatism is the American equivalent of Anti-Revolutionism. This is what paints the gulf between the US and it's neighbors to the North and to the south who inculcated European politics so thoroughly.

His second major error was in his definition of Biblical Conservatism. He had inadvertently placed the Calvinists on the right side of the spectrum along with the Fundamentalists. This is a common error and one that both the Protestants and the Roman Catholics perpetuate. It arises from the mistaken belief that Calvin's TULIP -- which was the measure of heresy in Holland, Great Britain and France during periods of the Renaissance -- is a form of hyper literal interpretation of Scripture since it departs from the hyper allegorical stance taken by the Roman Catholic Church.

The proposition that my teacher made was valid, the problem was his skewed view of the centrist position with regard to theology. The Bible is filled, both Tanakh and New Covenant, with clear prophesy regarding the responsibility of the wealthy to the poor, the able to the disabled, and the powerful to the disenfranchised. A truly conservative theological position takes the intention of scripture to be the literal communication of God's will and character to the people who follow his direction. It does not take every reference and passage to be literal when removed from the surrounding context. And it views these texts as a source of doctrine both for theological guidance and also political and social guidance. I would introduce a 4'th continuum, which would be morality. The extents would be license vs. legalism and of course the Biblical message would be centrist.

When one is guided by the scripture one tends toward the middle. As Paul said, "in all things moderation." But that means not indifferent nor codependent. I like to term it interdependent. Interdependence with the rest of humanity, leads to helping with needs and that includes attempting to inculcate values and skills which may be at odds with native tradition, but which improve life for every individual.

It leads not to totalitarianism nor to anarchy, but to Federalism. As Jefferson put it, the ideal American (and I'd say the ideal Christian) is self sufficient, self employed and well educated. This sort of person neither submits to authoritarian nor conformist political dogma, nor does he foment open rebellion where such is not called for in order to correct social injustice. This is the sort of person who risked life and limb to smuggle slaves out of the south on the "underground railway" as the Methodist churches in America did.

This is the sort of person who went to martyrdom in Rome rather than accept the Universalist teaching that all religions are equally valid and a good citizen will pray to Caesar on his day and Jesus on his. And this is the sort of person who will stand against the persecution of a non Christian religious group, out of Love for God's creatures, even at the risk of his or her own safety and freedom. This is the way that Corrie ten Boom's family behaved, as did Gerrit J. ten Zythoff whom I have heard speak on the subject at length. This courage must be a part of the believer even today as we consider the policies of the American and British Governments and our involvement with our nation's politics. Our politics MUST be informed by our faith and a true conservative will cry alongside the holocaust survivor, "NEVER AGAIN!", even if when the subject is a group we do not accept or approve of.

Today American churches are being persecuted for expressing theological and moral opinions on candidates and issues that directly affect their parishioners. This is a clear violation of the 1st amendment -- which was instituted specifically to prevent the gagging of clergy, and the use of financial pressures to enforce the dissemination of propaganda.

This comes back to the root cause of my hypothetical critic's fatal error. He is the victim of propaganda. We face propaganda in the news media, in our advertisements and commercials and now even from our pulpits. Propaganda that says, a good and righteous life has no fear of inspection, therefore let there be unreasonable search and seizure. "Cause you won't mind the invasion of privacy unless you have something to hide." This is an old cry. It came up in the McCarthy era. Old "devil Joe" as I like to call him, taught us that there was a red under our bed, so even our bedrooms had to be subject to scrutiny. The dissemination of false information, or perjury as I like to call it, promoted an atmosphere of fear and paranoia that gripped this country till we couldn't breath. It can't be allowed a repeat.

Churches are being told that they can't preach against sin such as homo sexuality or they will loose their tax exempt status, while "gay rights" advocates are allowed to teach that the church is evil and in effect sinful for opposing homosexuality. George Bush, the supposed advocate of American values and opposition to homosexual marriage, has permitted the IRS to do this. He is the Executive, they answer to him. He therefore is personally responsible for this extortionary policy against the Church.

Churches have been threatened with loosing tax exempt status on the grounds that they oppose Bush's policies on the War in Iraq. They've been attacked by the IRS for criticizing the war and Bush's policies. In a free society, Churches are free to practice their faith as they see fit. If that includes position statements with regard to political issues that affect their parishioners then so be it. Schools are nothing less than a bully pulpit for opposing views, gagging the church is a violation of the 1st amendment. Bush is the Executive, they answer to him. He is therefore personally responsible for this extortionary policy toward the Church. One which, I might add, he benefits from.

Lord help this nation. Save us from the foolishness that is leading us so far astray.

The Substance of Things Not Seen

July 2006

Faith is a topic that has essential, dare I say Fundamental importance to the Christian and to the Jewish religion. In fact, Christianity and Judaism are most often referred to as faiths, as opposed to religion. The transformation of the verb faith into a noun in order to indicate these complimentary belief systems, is indicative of the "real" or substantive meaning of the word, as opposed to the late modern fad or fabulous meaning. Especially in Calvinist churches and among atheist or pagan opposers of the Church & the Jewish people, Faith has taken on a meaning that is not consistent with the English Language or the Biblical definitions. Faith has become a magic emanation resulting from unwavering and unfounded belief.

The natural meaning of the English word faith is trust. We prove good faith in a business deal by providing some gesture or advance on monies or products. This prior gesture shows that we intend to follow through and on the basis of this concrete proof the other party rewards us with faith in our intentions and character. When you have faith in an institution like your bank, you are showing trust that they will protect your savings and investments, and that they will conduct their own investments in a sound manner that returns a profit. Why would people choose to distort the meaning in the case of Christian Faith, so that it refers to an unreasoned belief that has no concrete evidence to support it.

Obviously the Atheist benefits from such distortion by using it for polemic. By redefining faith as a "FAITH" he can claim that reason and intellect have no place in religion and religions therefore have no place in general society. However, this paper tiger offense is only given legitimacy by the fact of inadequate learning on the part of the church and society in general.

This concept of Faith as an emanation is loosely derived from scripture. However, it is the result of a theology and an exegetical methodology that takes small portions and individual verses out of the surrounding context and the idiom of the author and attempts to base doctrine on the literal meaning of these passages as they have been commonly translated. Now translations vary in accuracy and as they age, the idiom used by translators can become as obscure as the original.

A case that comes to mind is the passage where David is hidden in a cave and Saul, who has been hunting him, comes to do something in the mouth of that cave while his soldiers are camped below. David creeps up and because Saul is busy "covering his feet" David is able to cut a piece of fabric from Saul's clothing and leave again. David later feels ashamed and apologizes for having shamed Saul in such a crude fashion.

Now the question lost to history is what does "covering the feet" mean? It has been speculated to mean many things including sexual intercourse, defecation and simple sleep. No really knows for sure. Now when that passage is cited out of the greater context of the ongoing terrorist campaign that David was waging against the Israelis, it can be warped in many ways.

A typical application of the bad exegesis I'm referring to would be to take the passage "covering his feet" and then create as dogmatic rule that no-one who is "Christian" can wear shoes. The reason that would be cited is that Saul the evil dictator, was overcome by the righteous avenger because he was busy committing the sin of covering his feet. So this proves that you had better not cover your feet or you'll be a demoniac like Saul and worse you'll be tricked and overcome by the righteous avenger. Don't let him catch you with your shoes on, instead tread barefoot on God's holy ground like Abraham did before the burning bush.

Now this ridiculous distortion of God's word is commonplace among those who have failed to study, to show themselves approved, workmen who need not to be ashamed. A similar real world distortion is the distortion of passages relating to faith. The verse "faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen" is one of the important passages regarding faith. Taken out of context however it is used to support the notion that faith is something other than trust. This substance of things hoped for is misused to prove the concept of faith as a magical emanation. The intimation that is made by interpreting the literal English is that hoping really hard gives the imaginations of the mind, substance. This is then coupled with other contextually orphaned passages such as life and death reside in the tongue. And a whole pagan magical system of thaumaturgy is imposed on Christianity to the detriment of souls.

These passages are idiomatic and in their proper context it is clear that they are used as hyperbole intended to drive home a very different point. For instance the substance passage is clearly part of a greater dialectic determined to convince people to have unwavering trust or faith in God and in his character and benevolence. Therefore trusting in him and asking him for things in a prayerful and respectful manner will give substance to those hopes as he provides those things like a doting parent. The Biblical author was trying to use a poetic form of expression to stress the importance of faith in achieving answers to prayer and also achieving confidence in the final disposition of our lives.

This point is even more poignantly made in the second clause of the self same quote. The evidence of things not seen refers to the concept of the evidentiary nature of faith. What it hints at is that the "things not seen" in question have an independent reality which is revealed in the faith of the supplicant rather than being dependent on that faith for existence. Simply exchanging the word faith, which is marginally archaic, with the more modern term belief will tend to dispel the superstitious distortions. The resultant translation reads something like: The substance of desired things and the proof of things not visible is belief. And contextually we find that the belief is belief in the character and competence of God. Belief in the character and competence of God results from hearing the word of God.

The other passage, "life and death reside in the tongue", and it's kin are similarly abused. Clearly they are intended to encourage people to be careful or mindful of the potential stupidity and effects of their speech. The extreme application is that of the power to speak non existent things into being. Claiming this power attributed to God, can be possessed by the believer is similar to the claim that Satan made in order to convince Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit. Ultimately it was the lust for power that lead to the fall. The counterfeit faith, as an impersonal power that makes the imaginations of the mind into reality, is nothing more than this same misguided quest for power and rebellion.

Real saving faith is the trust that God is and that he rewards those who diligently seek him. This is a question of character. It is nothing less or more than trust in the reliable character of Christ. God rewards this faith in two ways. One, he rewards the search itself. If you diligently seek God he will reward that diligence by making himself available to you. This availability is the essence of communion. By diligently seeking God you will come to recognize the presence of his spirit (the ruach elohim) and you will begin to receive instruction and guidance in the choices that you make.

The second form of reward is the answer to prayer. Elsewhere we have looked at the meaning of prayer. Prayer is the sort of petition one makes before a court, whether that is a court of law or a noble court; heartfelt pleas made in deference and humility hoping for the reward of a positive answer granting the substance of the request. As we draw nearer to God we find that he is willing to provide our requests and even the desires of our heart.

Faith is the least complicated and the least effort driven function of the believers life. The state of being a believer is all the faith that is. The state of trusting God's character is only faith substance. Ward your mind against disparate voices who are spouting instruction in thaumaturgical rites in place of Biblical faith. Trust your loving heavenly father and allow him to command you. Beware those demonic spirits that would teach you, as Satan has so often tried, that a mere human creation can rise up and, on the strength of God's word or his name (hashem), manipulate or command God. Such is the substance of things feared the evidence of damnation to come.

May God richly bless you as you seek his will and character.

Fred

It's Still Rock-n-Roll to Me

March 2006

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Ephesians 5:22-24

This is one of the most maligned passages of scripture in the New Testament Bible. Many have tried to elide it from scripture because of confusion and/or rebellion. This is a passage that, by definition, cannot be understood by the carnal mind. Since carnality is the ever growing pandemic in the Christian church, it is inevitable that this scripture will be misapplied and misunderstood at best, and in many cases intentionally twisted for the ruin of souls.

This carnality insinuates itself in subtle ways. The immediate carnal response is to demand that the following verse "Husbands love your wives as Christ has loved the church" must be dealt with simultaneously. In reality, such a plea soon deteriorates into a ploy to study the next verse to the exclusion of those sited for this study. In fact, the majority of the church would like to believe, and may in fact believe, that the fifth chapter of Ephesians skips from verse 21: "Submitting yourselves one to another..." to verse 25: "Husbands love your wives..."

The other equally carnal application of this verse tends toward a Sufi, Wahabbi or Shi'ia (Islamic) view of women. And, while Ephesus was a community located on the Turkish peninsula and Paul was a native of Tarsis another community of displaced Jews located on the southern cost of Turkey, such a view is unbalanced and lacks the moderation Paul preaches in the other Epistles. Such a view demands women to assume the role of passive automaton or robot.

Either view is prompted from a desire to patronize women, treating them as irresponsible children who are not only relieved from responsibility but are to be either held in reign or appeased. The first of these approaches stems from the growing antichristian feminism and the latter perverts the concept of Biblical submission. In either case, the result is to forsake "the natural use of the woman" as was warned would be the trend in the last days. This causes this small, generally misunderstood passage to become key to Godly worship.

So let's examine this passage. The common mistake made by both groups is to approach the passage with an eye for the men who may read the passage. Ironically, no great concern is expressed for the effect of women reading Eph 5:26. The common expectation is that a man reading will justifiably or unjustifiably read the passage and begin to demand that his wife become his servant and view her as his chattel or personal property. This is considered his due by one camp and as a horrific abuse of a woman's person by the other.

What both camps fail to recognize is that the passage is not directed to men. The first sentence addresses the passage quite effectively. "Wives, submit yourselves." This is not a blanket statement to all women. The same author tells us, "there are now no more ... male nor female". So then, it can't be intended as a general statement with the goal of causing women to become a lower caste to men. (Obviously women cannot be allowed to assume a superior caste either.) This instruction is directed specifically to women who have married a man and the instruction limits the submission to a woman's "own husband".

What then can this submission entail? Submission certainly evokes definitions that are based on the world history of feudalism and slavery. The pictures of bondage and physical torture in a sexual context blend with pictures of black slaves being raped by white owners in the American Southeast. The history runs to noble warriors raping and getting unwanted bastard children on the daughters of poor serfs who are prevented from protecting those women on penalty of death.

These images cloud our understanding and make woman fearful of, or resigned to, a life of indignity and drudgery. These same images make sane men uncomfortable to the point, themselves, of pretending this passage out of existence. Healthy men are generally unattracted to a passive woman who sets aside her intellect and will in order to be submitted. Healthy men are generally attracted to a vibrant, active and youthful mind almost as much as to an attractive body and pretty face. This is what often leads to the fabled midlife crisis. A man tries to recapture his own youth by dating and bedding a much younger woman with the sort of youthful exuberance he is not experiencing in his spouse. A side effect of the age difference is that the younger woman will often fall into the role of Godly submission, instinctively. She will cater to the older man in ways women his own age feel too reticent or superior engage in. This perverted illusion of the God ordained paradigm for marriage, buried in the reality of adultery, is so seductive that few men have the will to entirely resist it.

This issue of submission carries into the bedroom as well. Clearly, the Bible tells us that a married person does not have ownership over his or her body. A Christian alternative to the Feminist pro-choice mantra would be, "My body Your choice!" Because the Bible clearly commands that the married person is the sexual object and property of the spouse, most people who are aware of this tend to overlook the fact that the commands creating this state are gender neutral. This means that a man is a "sex object" for his wife just as surely as she is for him.

Given that Submission of a wife to her husband and his ownership of her body (California Law would define it is as an anatomical gift) is absolute, doesn't this in fact describe sexual and practical slavery? Isn't it Biblical to expect that a woman must serve her husband passively and silently not complaining or resisting? After all, Onesimus was forced to return to his owner.

These are the common arguments, but once again these are carnal and overly simplistic readings. Let's look at the least read clause in the entire passage. "Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing." This is the third time he has repeated this same concept in the space of three sentences. Yet most readers have gotten tired and ceased to see it as a practical instruction by the time they get to this line. If they actually read it, they are probably a member of that minority that overly mysticize and warp the instruction into some theological or metaphysical philosophy.

Granted, the passage obviously links the rite of marriage with the ecclesiology or study of the organization and role of the church. This is another of Paul's prose poems, where he assumes that one pregnant point of theology is so obvious that he skims over it and uses it as a proof for another unrelated point. Yes, Paul is demonstrating that the role of the church in relation to Jesus is a direct analog to the role of a wife in relation to her own husband, and not to any other man. However, the author skims close to the edge of suggesting that a husband occupies the role of Saviour and intercessor for his wife. The leads the woman reading it to understand that any scripture illustrating the role the church plays in relation to Jesus, is her rightful role in relation to her husband. The ecclesiology becomes a road map for "wifely" behavior and submission.

This is a relationship that is well documented in other passages, by this and other authors. So the proper way to understand the submission that is indicated here is to look at the role of the church in relation to Christ as documented. The church is called to be a dynamic and aggressive servant. Passages everywhere reveal a role that requires the church to be intuitive in anticipating and meeting the needs of Christ -- to be a repository of trust, praise, worship and active eager service with a desire to please and even exceed Christ's expectations. A passive, flaccid church is rebuked by James, who says simply, "Show me your faith without works and I'll show you my faith by my works." Jesus says of the church, "God loves a cheerful giver." The verses go on and on describing a role of the church as cheerful active excited lover and servant, anxious to not only please but anticipate and delight.

This is the role of a Godly wife as expressed in this scripture. The image is not a drudge, scullion and concubine - grudgingly or helplessly acceding to her husband's wishes, needs and desires - but a cheerful anxious servant and sexual partner anxious to please and delight, anticipating her husbands desires and exceeding his needs. However, she must also be willing to persistently seek her own needs and desires by prayerful request. To quote Christ for the benefit of married women, "You have not because you ask not. Come boldly before the throne of your spouse and ask as a beloved." To draw an analogy from the world, she is to be his groupie placing him on the pedestal of Rock Superstar and Monarch.

But remember, this is an instruction to a Wife not to men. It's not a husband's job to force or cajole a wife to be his groupie, or to request the solution to her needs. Just as the church must assume this role by choice and by faith that overcomes disappointment and disillusionment in the face of perceived failure in Christ, a woman must learn to overlook her husband's human frailty and failing, to the extent necessary to be his committed groupie for life. In fact, the attitude and behavior a woman assumes in relating to her own husband is a public expression of her relationship with God. If she is verbally abusive, uses sex or humiliation to manipulate her husband, or threatens to leave him in order to control his behavior - she is exposing the fact that she treats God with similar impudence in her prayer life and in her Christian