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Oblivious to Pronouns

In the western world we talk a great deal of Rights. Individual Human Rights are foundational to the US Constitution which calls on God as underwriter for them. In all the talk of rights, liberty, license, and freedom the meaning gets lost and we start to lose the forest for the trees. Ironically, inherent in the the term liberty is the state of liberation and you can’t be liberated without having once been bound. In each of these terms there is a similar link to a binary state, a juxtaposition of polar opposites.

The state of holding or exercising a right is righteousness, and that is a term that many in the secular world shy away from. It’s natural they should given the alternate is unrighteousness and there is a specific moral, ethical, and religious component to these concepts. What is a right? Continue reading “Oblivious to Pronouns”

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Cantonese Saturday Night? Just Stop!

כור את־יום השבת לקדשו׃ Or as it is said in the King James version, “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” This phrase has shaped and lead to many of the deepest divisions and conflicts within the umbrella of Judaeo-Christian or as the Muslims say Bookish people. Even the Muslims themselves, as well as the Druze and Samaritans are affected. Remember the Sabbath. Keep it holy. These simple words weigh on people more than the injunctions against blasphemy or murder. But have any of the parties to this debate actually parsed the words well enough to form such divisive and rigid doctrines?

This is a command in two parts. The first seems plain enough. Remember the Sabbath, Shabbat, Shabbas to the Ashkenazi (Kenites?) among us, seems to be a reminder to honor and practice the Sabbath. That’s Saturday on the English calendar, right? Simple enough. But how do we practice it?

But wait. Most Christians tell us that the Sabbath is Sunday. Sunday? Saturday? Which is it? Continue reading “Cantonese Saturday Night? Just Stop!”

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Blessed Bloody Barbecue

I always find it ironic when one of the Ashkenazi repeat the mantra of doubt, “The Christian Bible isn’t my Bible.” There is a lot of of finagling on the part of Jewish teachers to arrive at that conclusion, which is then taken to heart by the uninformed congregant and repeated with the eye-watering fervor of a child wishing for a precious toy. I can certainly empathize with this position. Having argued with certain individuals who use fallacy and polemic to twist scripture so that it says whatever currently suits them, I know what it feels like to argue a known obvious truth with someone who simply changes the meaning to suit their conclusions. It’s like wrestling atop a pile of sand draining through a hopper. The domain of the topic can completely shift from one clause to the next, in a single statement by a deceitful polemicist. Continue reading “Blessed Bloody Barbecue”

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Christians are Weirdos in Relationship to God

Christian living is a complicated subject largely because it is a matter of interpolation. Jesus and to a degree the apostle Paul–a.k.a. Saul l’Tarsi–are role models, mentors to be imitated. We have their sermons and narratives to draw on to see how they lived and what doctrines and principals are to be applied. However, we are forced to then interpolate those principals and doctrines to our present day circumstances and then using sound interpretation apply the commands and instructions of scripture to our lives. It’s pretty complicated if you break it down and focus on every little step. If you are trying to accomplish it on your own it just doesn’t work. Likewise if you are completely uninvolved, believing that Grace is a big magic wand that frees you from responsibility to exert any effort in achieving the goal of be shaped in the form of Christ, you’ve failed before you begin.

To complicate things further, there are several distinct heresies, Continue reading “Christians are Weirdos in Relationship to God”

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Forget to Forgive

A sermon today included the following points:

  1. Woe to him that is offended for God shall not heal his life nor grant him a miracle.
  2. If you are offended you must forgive. In fact, you cannot be blessed by God unless you forgive everyone everything.
  3. Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting, failing to hold a person accountable or free from punishment.
  4. [The pastor] believes in doing to them what they do to you. But that means forgive everyone cause Jesus forgives everyone.
  5. Forgiveness doesn’t mean [the pastor and his church] won’t track you down and beat you if you are doing something violent, never-the-less you can’t hold grudges.

This lead me to revisit the passages cited which were MAT 18:7 (kjv) and COL 3:13-14 (kjv). Continue reading “Forget to Forgive”

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Dead Camels Fill the Heavens with Midges

A young woman named V recently argued that old dead heresy of Calvin in the context of whether the Holy Spirit still baptised and conferred gifts. The greater questions have been dealt with previously, but she raised the following questions:

1) I suppose what I dont understand, then, is why does the Bible say once we are saved, we are sealed? What can break the seal?
2) How do you believe one becomes saved?
3) Why do you believe that once salvation was offered to the gentiles, paul only preached salvation by grace through faith?

What follows was my response with expanded exposition on the scriptures:

First things first. Continue reading “Dead Camels Fill the Heavens with Midges”

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Wickly Burning?

There is a traditional Jewish teaching involving a candle. If you take a candle from a cupboard and examine it, it gives no light, it has potential but no life. One could easily say that it is no more than a lump of wax with a string though it. But when you touch a flame to it light shines and the candle expresses it purpose for being. The question is when do wax and string become a candle? The answer: When fire is applied. When does a beast become a man? When the fire or light of Torah is applied.

In the first century, Jesus–Yehoshua HaNazari¹–taught Continue reading “Wickly Burning?”

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DOA

Several years ago I witnessed the aftermath of a fatal car accident. A Friend picked me up from the airport and we were exiting the parking lot onto the multilane throughway that feeds the airfield. Traffic was stop and go along the the overpass and onto the onramp and we were both frustrated. Time was of the essence. Then we saw the cause.

A man in a minitruck, perhaps you remember the mid ’70’s Chevy Luv and the Datsun/Mitsubishi offerings, had taken a wrong turn and come up the onramp the wrong way and been run off the road. The truck had hit a piling and teetered precariously on the edge of the ramp. Our lane of traffic inched along the road, pressed as far to the right as possible as we passed the lifeless body of the man who hung halfway out the driver’s side window.

There is nothing quite like seeing a dead human body in the place where it died, only moments after the life has fled. There is something missing, and you can’t define it emotionally. A statue is expected to be lifeless as is a picture, but this lump of flesh that had life and motion, lying where it has fallen, still bearing all the form and potential that it once had, but robbed of the something that made it live– It’s an eerie experience.

Similarly, the Christian church, the body of Christ lies dead today. There is growth in numbers of members. There are even teachings that benefit some by encouraging  People praise God and perform, They use stage magic and lighting tricks, neurolinguistic programming in the form of mind-numbing repetition of verses. In some cases they are so bold as to use cold readings, shills who feed preachers info, etc. They create a warm fuzzy emotional feeling. But they fail utterly to invite and encourage the awesome presence of the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit of the Living God.

God is not an emotion.

Let me repeat that. When you feel a warm emotion in your heart, that emotion is not the Ruach Elohim, the Spirit of the Sons of God that participated in the creation of the Universe. The Spirit of God is not an emotion.

When Abraham was in the Spirit his face had such a glowry, people were blinded by it. When Peter was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and Annanias and Sephira lied to get credit for their monetary sacrifice in the offering plate, they dropped dead. When the church worshiped (not praised, worshiped) the living God in concert and prayed for a solution, steel manacles spontaneously shattered, an earthquake opened the doors of a maximum security prison and hardened prison guards begged the inmate, Peter, to save them.

When the Holy Spirit is present, the false doctrine of Eternal Security is forgotten because people have the supernatural power to live in obedience, the fruit of the Spirit are evident in their lives. There aren’t any psychological profiles to assess your aptitude, because God tells you what you need to do, and the ability is not a natural, testable talent, but a supernatural gift.

The Gifts and Callings of the Lord are without repentance. This has many layers of meaning. One is that the church is still gifted, so long as the spirit of rebellion doesn’t talk them into keeping the Holy Spirit in check. Where are your tongues with interpretation, your prophecy, your healing, your miracles. Tongues have not ceased, knowledge is still required, that which is perfect is still bidding time awaiting the command of God to initiate the second coming.

Spiritual Life is living in God’s presence, allowing him to work the way He decided and with His paradigm, and living in obedience.

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Becomming Dis-Spirited.

I’ve heard a lot of commentary to the effect that a person is “spiritual” not religious. On the surface this makes sense. It was a common fad in the Pentecostal as well as Evangelical circles in the 20th century to equate innovative faiths like the Catholic and Calvinist faiths with “religion” and western Orthodoxy with non-religious “relationship” and “Faith”.

I’ve been guilty this in the past as well. Religiosity is one of the few remaining pejoratives allowed to the politically correct and they brood it about like a goad. The problem is the way the term “Spiritual” has been pirated by the New Age movement and pagan faiths. What used to be a distinction between empty ritual and a relational faith in the person and character of a tangible, present, paternal Creator–has become a cop-out to avoid adherence to any given creed or doctrine. It is being used to cast the Received, Orthodox, Western Christian tradition as a boogeyman out to oppress the free thinker and the Godly.

You ask a person what “kind” of Christian are you and you get vague answers about being spiritual and “just believing the Bible.” Good, you believe the Bible–Torah, Neviim, Khetuvim, Gospels, Epistles, and Revelation of John. Good deal. But what does it MEAN to you? Why are you evading the question? What do you have to hide? What body of doctrinal forestructure, what tradition of faith are you so ashamed of that you can’t tell me what it is?

Another problem with this wishy-washy Spirituality, is the question of what “spirits” are involved? Do you mean the Ruach Hakodesh and the Seven Tributary Spirits of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, or do you mean you cousin Bob who died in 1984? Do you have familiar spirits? A strange black cat? A dozens cats? Sheilaism is rampant.

These Spiritualists see no distinction between Christianity, Mormonism and Islam. The formative principles of these faiths are diametrically opposed, yet “spiritual” individuals insist they believe in all of them. Oddly they often fail to conflate Judaism and Christianity. Isn’t it Ironic? These are the two Religions that are actually capable of commingling, given that essential Christianity is a revision and expansion of Judaism. But the very understanding of God and deity between Mormonism and other faiths is irreconcilable. “As Man is now, God once was?” Blasphemy, if you are a Christian or a Jew–or both.

I’m not advocating armed religious conflict. But Christian, “stand up and be counted.” Stop hiding behind silly semantics and demonstrate what makes you separate. Without distinction and yes, discrimination–what do you really have to offer. But above all, admit that you have religion. The Christian Religion.

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Why The Bible is P-CURSive

A friend from college just reiterated a statement of faith that is both a rejection of the sound teaching he received as a child and one of the five most damaging heresies to ever plague the Body of Christ. It saddened and depressed me deeply, especially when I considered how the Western Orthodoxy has been displaced so thoroughly that Pentecostal Restoration is critically ill, at best. The particular heresy in question is not particularly relevant. You need only tune in to what passes for religious or philosophical programming on television to find a flood of wealthy men who teach greed, lasciviousness, sorcery (psychology), magic, rebellion, idolatry, and superstition; all in the name of Jesus Nazarene and Messiah. (I like the sound of his name and title as it would have been spoken when he walked the earth, Yehasuah Hanzari Hameshiach.) Such spiritual corruption is preached in Jesus’ name and captures far too many young believers to their destruction.

One of the major causes of such confusion and ungodly teaching is the less obvious motive of sloth. Studying the scripture in its raw state, unfettered by preconceptions or worldly philosophies takes effort that is beyond the consumer minded western heart. This failing is as prevalent among teachers and preachers as it is pew sitters and lay ministers.

The most common form that this lazybones doctrine takes is the desire to summarize the meaning of scripture in simplistic saws and cute acronyms. Even poor scholarship, such as eisegesis and proof-texting, accounts for less of the confusion of false doctrines and dogmas. It may seem hypocritical on first blush, but I’ve worried at the frayed knot of the most pernicious of these trying not to refute them but to refute them in as simplistic a manner as the original. The purpose is not to repeat the same error but outreach to those who are unable or unwilling to digest a more formal apology.

The results of my efforts have been mixed. But spurred on by me friend’s tragic confession I finally worked out the acronym: PCURS. Like the flowery acronym that it is intended to refute and reprimand, PCURS touches on most areas of the gospel including anthropology, theology, soteriology and harmatiology. So at risk of being overly simplistic, consider that the Christian Gospel can be summarized as follows:

Personal Depravity
Every human being is born with a sinful nature, a congenital deffect of the mind, which leads every person to commit evil in the same moment they first gain the capacity to distinguish good from evil.

Conditional Love
God’s love for the individual is initiated by God, but contingent on repentance, ardent pursuit and obedience on the part of the object of God’s love.

Unlimited Atonement
God’s love for corporate humanity lead him to plan and execute the perfect sacrifice, providing him the means to make overture to fallen man, without compromising his law or rectitude. It is not God’s will for any to experience the damnation called the second death. Innocent blood is the price of redemption and, like he did for Abraham, God provided the perfect sacrifice in Jesus the Lamb.

Resistible Grace
The attonement is freely offered to all humanity without discrimination. The Spirit of Holiness attempts to convict the hearts men and women through the preaching of the Gospel.  Taking part in that sacrifice requires identification with Jesus in his death. The price of that identity is repentence, ritual confession through baptism, and a life spent in obedience to the moral law of both covenants & penitent restitution for prior bad acts.

Sanctification of the Persistent
No one can steal a child of God from his embrace, however he is not a jailer. If after receiving the grace of Salvation, you return to your prior life of intentional sin and rebellion, there is not more attoning sacrifice for you. Against the will of God, you may willfully seak your own destruction in the eternity of second death. However, if a believer willfully pursues a life of obedience and is persistent enough to finish the natural course of life in relationship and submission to God through Christ, you will be made holy. This holiness is at once a legal action and a progressive transformation. Beginning with a specific crisis moment, perfection of the mind is a matter of conforming to the model of Jesus character, while retaining individuality and growing as a unique and uniquely qualified individual.

Like the author of the cuter and unfortunately more captivating acronym referenced at the beginning of this musing, I have not bothered to cite the specific scripture. This is be design. However, the explication of each point is largely a collection of paraphrases. Please take the opportunity to verify these points with scripture.

Yours in Christ,

Fred