Idols

As some of you may have gathered, I've had a rather bad last few days due to a certain happening in the music world. Last Thursday, Mike Portnoy, drummer, songwriter, lyricist, public face, and creative driving force of my favorite metal band Dream Theater, abruptly left the band he's led for the past 25 years. Let me make this perfectly clear: Dream Theater is not Dream Theater without Mike Portnoy. And by leaving one of the best bands out there at the height of its career, he has lost whatever respect I had for him. I won't say any more on how heartbroken and angry I am on the subject. Maybe I'll post a rant on my music blog sometime.

Anyway, off on a reflective tangent. I was basically in grief after I heard the news. In fact, I went into denial for a day or so, thinking there was no possible way that he could leave--I couldn't even imagine Dream Theater without Portnoy. I thought it was some kind of bad joke. Once it became real to me, I became quite angry. No idea if I'll start bargaining next or how that would work here. Putting this into perspective, I was shocked by how broken up I was (and am) about it; it was like I'd lost a loved one. All this for a lousy band? For something that doesn't personally affect me at all? What's wrong with me? Maybe the sad news was a much-needed wakeup call.

This led me to thinking about how much trust I put into temporary things. Even the things we feel most secure in could be gone tomorrow. The impossible can happen without any warning. I'm sure you all have your own experiences proving this. Does it really make sense to look for happiness in things when we might not live to see tomorrow?

Jesus told a parable about this in Luke 12, which I think speaks to Christians and non-Christians alike.

 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

The parable is a sober warning for anyone who focuses on temporary, worldly things instead of eternal things (which we find by knowing God). So instead of storing up treasures you can't take with you, seek to become "rich toward God"--rich in eternal treasures like love, joy, wisdom, and a relationship with God.

And while you're still on earth, stick it to Dream Theater--listen to Queensrÿche!

The Law

This post relates to my previous one in addressing the modern state of 'religion', specifically its perceived legalism. But I'm coming from a more dangerous perspective: one I have never had, that of the non-Christian, the outsider to the church. I'm talking about people who think being a 'good' Christian means you have to follow all of the (at times crazy) laws in the Old Testament. (Let's call them legalists) This is a common method of making fun of Christianity; I'm sure you're familiar with satirical websites on whom to stone or what kind of animals to sacrifice to God and such. More innocuously, maybe you've heard of the guy who attempted to follow all the Old Testament laws with rather humorous results.

The basic line of reasoning behind these occurrences, I think, goes something like this: the Bible is supposedly the inspired, always-true word of God, and it has all these incredibly specific instructions and laws in the first five books, so of course we have to follow all these rules if we claim to be Christians who hold the Bible in such high esteem.

Well lucky me, the previously-cited chapter, Ephesians 5, happens to be all about Christians who think they have to follow Old Testament law! Some context: in chapter 1, Paul says the Galatian church is "deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and [is] turning to a different gospel--which is really no gospel at all." As my pastor told it, what happened was that after Paul planted the Galatian church, some Pharisees came along and told them they had to follow Jewish law (i.e. Leviticus and Deuteronomy) to be Christians. Specifically, they told the church they had to be circumcised, an outward symbol of God's old covenant with the Jews. (v. 2-6) In the beginning of chapter 3 Paul contrasts their efforts to observe the [Jewish] law with simply believing.

Indeed, the main point of the whole letter is to address the Galatians' reliance on following the law to be saved instead of simply believing. And he is at his harshest in reprimanding them; he had nice things to say to greet even the Corinthians, who were a seriously messed-up church (taking each other to court over disputes, cheering on a guy who sleeps with his stepmom, obsessing over the gift of tongues), but not here. Paul is pretty clear that the Galatians (and, by logical extension, believers in general) are not expected to follow the laws of the Jews; just read 5:2-6. (Or just about anywhere in the book except chapter 2)

Back to the modern misconception that Christians are supposed to follow all those rules just as the Galatians thought they had to. How do we answer that train of logic? Paul does it for us in chapter 3, verses 15-25, where he discusses the purpose of the law. Specifically, he says it was given "because of transgressions until the Seed [Christ] referred had come." The law was only a temporary measure given to keep the Jews from completely turning from God until Jesus came.

But that doesn't seem to be the main purpose of the law. In v. 23, Paul says "we [the Jews] were held prisoners of the law"--apparently he found it just as constraining as we do. Part of this is because no one can fully observe the law--"Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin." (v. 22) What's the point of a law that no one can follow? To direct people to the alternative to the law, the real way to be declared righteous and saved from the penalty of sin: faith in Jesus. (v. 24) Attempting to completely follow the law is not God's intended response to it; instead, we should see how impossibly high God's standard of holiness is (for all we know, it might even be above and beyond the Old Testament law) and that we have no chance at all of meeting it on our own; we need to be saved by faith in Jesus. Finally, in verse 25, Paul pretty much summarizes the whole book: "Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law."

And that's a fine take-home, if you remember nothing else. By sending His son to take the penalty of our sins for us, God gave us an alternative to the futility of trying to be righteous by following the law. To use an extremely bad modern analogy, a Christian striving to be 'good' and obey the law is like a Monopoly player trying to roll his way out of jail instead of using the get-out-of-jail-free card he already has. Through Jesus, God gave us all a free ticket out of the penalty of our sins; who would turn down such a deal?

If I ended my post after that last paragraph, I might leave readers with the notion that since Jesus forgave our sins, we can just do whatever we want; after all, His grace is unlimited, right? Paul addresses this opposite idea to legalism in a different letter, Romans. "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" (6:1-2) Going back to my Monopoly analogy, this would be like immediately returning to jail after getting out for free. You don't want to go back to jail.

Another example more applicable to my peers: say you've made it through college but have racked up enough debt to keep you busy for several lifetimes, when suddenly your parents step in and pay it all off. (Maybe they used their RV fund or something) You have a clean slate, a fresh start to life, financially speaking. There are two extreme ways to respond to this stupendous act of generosity:

1. "Sweet, my parents will bail me out! Let's buy that Lamborghini I always wanted and hit the casino! PARTY TIME!!!"
2. "Wow, I can't believe they paid it all. I'm going to be careful with my money and try to avoid getting into debt from now on!"

Which way do you think makes more sense? Hopefully #2. And so it is with the much greater gift of salvation. Responding by simply taking license and doing whatever you want with the assurance that you will be forgiven makes no sense; it shows that you don't appreciate the gift at all, only freedom from the penalty of sin. Instead, Paul says, we should consider ourselves "dead to sin" and live consistently. Not in order to be saved, but because we already are.

A Farewell to "Religion"

Today at Hope Community Church was "rally day"--the first day that everyone is back at the U, creating a huge boost in attendance for Hope. Naturally Pastor Steve would want the preaching to be top-notch for such a momentous event; last year we had just reached 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 (the part about head coverings for women!). So this year we're in the middle of a quick series about Hope's core values; this week we covered Galatians 5 on living filled with the Spirit. I could write many posts on what this entails, but for now I'm going to focus on something from the sermon (and that I'm increasingly seeing) that hit me.

The sermon was basically about how the Christian life is a constant struggle to avoid slipping into two extremes--trying to earn your salvation by being legalistically righteous on one hand, and abusing God's grace by living however you want on the other. He mainly focused on avoiding the first extreme; instead of having our righteous work from the outside in, making ourselves "good people" by acting holy, we're to live from the inside out, letting the Spirit make us righteous via relationship with God.

I couldn't agree with any of that more, and overall I really enjoyed the sermon. I just wanted to focus quickly on Pastor Steve's universal name for this kind of legalistic, outside-in living: 'religion'. The way I grew up, when someone asked me my religion, I would have said I was a Christian (even if I wasn't necessarily living it out yet, but it was the descriptor). As I grew up and learned about the importance of a relationship with God and how we're supposed to live that, religion was the word I used to tie it all together.

Thanks to this redefinition, Christian writers and preachers actively shun religion and look for other words to use: 'faith' 'relationship', fill in the blank; you may have heard more than me. Nowadays, religion has become a very bad word in the evangelical community--a thing to be avoided, to dissociate yourself and your church from. It's associated with dogma, divisiveness, petty doctrinal disputes, empty rituals, and the imposing of morality on others. Perhaps because of these associations, it's become of the two things you never talk about in American culture--a shame!

And the saddest part is, I can't really disagree with them. It's easier for Christians and churches to distance themselves from the term than to try and redeem it in the juggernaut of American culture. I sigh when I see student groups promising "Jesus, not religion", but if 'religion' is such a huge stumbling block to so many people, maybe it's time to move on, with 1 Corinthians 10:22 flexibility.

The Spiritual Gift of Celibacy

To the world, singleness is at best a problem easily remedied by personal ads and online dating sites, and at worst a time to party, sleep around, and avoid commitment. Even the church can sometimes adopt this kind of attitude, exerting subconscious pressure on singles to "settle down" and get married. The worst that can happen (which, thankfully, I haven't seen anything of in churches I've attended) is the church treating singles as second-class citizens. Is this a biblical attitude? Paul has this to say in 1 Corinthians 7:8: "Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am." This verse (and really, the entire chapter) is a bucket of cold water on the head for anyone who thinks marriage is the ultimate earthly goal for the Christian life. It's one of the few times the New Testament goes into much depth on the subject of marriage, and a subject of frequent study for me.

In the chapter, Paul is addressing those in the Corinthian church who held an opposite view to the pro-marriage one seen today. Influenced by the Greek philosophy of asceticism, which shunned all worldly pleasures, including marriage and sex, some in the Corinthian church were forbidding others to marry as part of "Christian holiness". Paul speaks out against this additional restriction on the church and qualifies it. Paul looks favorably upon the state of singleness, but advises the Corinthians to marry "because these is so much immorality." he says this "as a concession, not a command" (v. 6)--a concession to the sexual drive God has given most people, which would lead to sexual immorality if not given the Godly outlet of sex within marriage. He expresses a personal preference for staying single, but stresses that it isn't a sin to get married.

But Paul emphasizes that whether you're married or unmarried isn't the point--"keeping God's commands is what counts." (v. 19) His basic point in verses 17-31 is that we shouldn't let concerns about our position in the world--like being a slave, or free, or married, or single--become more important than our commitment to God, which is the same for all situations. We should be faithful to the place in life where God has called us. If making some change in our life doesn't interfere with our service to God, we are free as believers to do something about it. As Paul writes in Philippians 3:8, he considers all things rubbish--including his singleness--compared to knowing Jesus. Likewise, we are to put out relatioship with Jesus first and let that being the overriding influence on life decisions like marriage.

Statistically speaking, God will call most of us to a marriage that will hopefully be another way to glorify Him--a sermon series I listened to said that about 90% of us can expect to get married at some point, though I wonder if this might be an underestimate. But Paul clearly says that not everyone has this calling. In verse 7 he says "I wish all men were as I am [single]. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that." What he is getting at here is that being able to glorify God through a marriage is itself a (likely spiritual) gift from God. And, on the flipside, being able to abstain from marriage and not "burn with passion" and fall into sexual immorality is another. This is the spiritual gift of celibacy (or singleness).

What good is this gift? Why not get married? Paul explains in verses 32-35.

I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord's affairs--how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world--how he can please his wife--and his interests are divided.

When you think about it, the value of the gift of celibacy is obvious: it gives a person undivided time, resources, and thoughts for God. Though marriage can be a very good thing, it occupies a huge chunk of one's life, which a single person can give unreservedly to God. For examples of what this can look like, the Bible has three shining examples: Paul, John the Baptist, and Jesus Himself. I can only speculate as to how their ministries would have been different had they been married, but they would have had to devote time and effort to providing for and protecting a family. Paul seemed to be happier being able to devote himself completely to serving God and thought that others could be as well.

It's important to distinguish between the spiritual gift of celibacy and the temporary state of singleness that God gives as a gift to everyone before they get married. Everyone is called to see their singleness as more than just a waiting period before marriage and make the most of it to the glory of God. Some people only learn they have the spiritual gift in hindsight as they realize all the kingdom work they did wouldn't have been feasible if they'd been married. What a shame it would have been if they'd spent their time looking for a spouse instead of serving God right where He put them?

But though Paul says that being single is better than being married, the spiritual gift of celibacy has some downsides he doesn't touch on. The biggest one for me is the loss of perspective I would have gained from marriage. The church-as-Christ's-bride metaphor doesn't come alive for me like it does for a married couple, and I imagine that being a dad would help in understanding God's role as our heavenly Father. Additionally, without the unknown variables of who I'll marry and how many kids I'll have to worry about, I sometimes find myself planning out my entire life in broad swaths, even though I still have no idea whatGod's plans might be. But despite these, I agree with Paul in thinking that the gift of celibacy is pure awesome. I'm excited to see the exciting things God has in store for me!

The Spiritual Gift of Service

First, one addendum to my post on wisdom and knowledge: I think one of the applications of the spiritual gift of knowledge is the study and pursuit of theology and apologetics. Expanding peoples' knowledge of the nature of the Trinity won't directly change how they live their lives, but it might improve their view of God and inspire them to pursue a deeper relationship with Him. Similarly, apologetics certainly promotes the "common good" by removing intellectual obstacles people have to knowing God and allowing them to come to Him.

Anyway, on to the spiritual gift of service. The Bible doesn't have quite as much to say about service in a Christian context; the gift is only mentioned in Romans 12:7 as part of one of Paul's lists of spiritual gifts. But service itself is frequently mentioned as an important virtue. Jesus said "the greatest among you will be your servant" (Matthew 23:11). Humble service is a key trait for any Christian.

So what does it mean to have the spiritual gift of service? Most forms of service are things anyone can do--it doesn't take a college degree to help build a house or work at a charity event. the gift probably doesn't take the form of being exceptionally gifted or being "good" at serving in the sense that I'm "good" (skilled) at theater tech. I think the gift more takes the form of especially enjoying acts of service, and therefore being more eager to serve and able to serve more often. We're all called to serve, but someone with this gift is able to enjoy serving and do it in a greater capacity.

So, I don't have much more to say about the gift of service; it's pretty simple. For gifts like this that aren't clearly supernatural/obvious, like tongues or prophecy, it might be hard to tell if you have them, even with a questionnaire. I think that using your spiritual gifts in the body of Christ is important in recognizing them; sometimes the only way to find out is for someone else to approach you and say "you have a real gift for ____".

Wisdom and Knowledge

The spiritual gifts of wisdom and knowledge are closely related, so I'm covering them both here.

Firstly, what is wisdom? Proverbs, a book of the Bible all about wisdom written by one of the wisest people ever, has much to say on the subject. In Proverbs, as well as Job (12:13 and 28:12), it is associated with understanding; of the 370 verses mentioning wisdom in the NIV, 39 also mention understanding.  Proverbs 14:8 says "the wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways". Matthew 11:19 is telling: "'But wisdom is proved right by her actions'". James 3:13 says anyone who professes to be wise and understanding should "show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom."

What I gather from all of this is that wisdom isn't just knowing a lot of facts. By its very nature, wisdom is applied; it is understanding deeper than the facts. It is reading between the lines and being able to discern how to apply the knowledge of the Lord to live a life pleasing to Him in any situation.

One might be tempted to think that knowledge-the simple knowing and discernment of facts--is then somehow "lower" than wisdom, that it's simply the raw material that wisdom takes to discern how to live righteously. But I disagree. Again, the two are often mentioned together on equal footing in the Bible (31 of the 130 verses knowledge comes up in). Certainly applying knowledge of God in wisdom requires having that knowledge to begin with--how will we begin to truly love our neighbors if we don't know that God is love, for instance? I think knowledge also refers to a deeper kind of knowing--knowing God on an intimate level, like a close friend. In this sense, knowledge--getting to know God better--is certainly as important as wisdom.

So wisdom and knowledge are both good. How do we get them? Despite their differences, they are given in the same way. Proverbs 15:33 says that we gain wisdom by "the fear of the Lord", while verse 1:7 says "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." A quick aside: I've never really liked the phrase "fear of the Lord." If God is really for us and not against us, if He loves us and sent His Son to die for us to save us, if we are freed from His wrath by trusting in His forgiveness, what do we have to fear from God? Only our turning away from Him. I think 'fear' is a somewhat misleading word, and I think 'awe' might do better: an overpowering sense of God's hugeness and, at the same time, our smallness before Him and utter dependence on Him. John Piper has this to say about fearing God: it means that "God is, in your mind and heart, so powerful and so holy and so awesome that you would not dare to run away from Him, but only run to Him."

So we gain wisdom and knowledge by having this inexpressibly huge picture of God and being in right relationship to Him: creature to Creator, needy child to generous Father, damned sinner to all-forgiving Savior. Use your wisdom to figure out what this means. No need to seek wisdom and knowledge for their own sake; if we are right with God He will give them to us as He pleases. Now, all Christians are obviously called to 'fear' God so we have all been given some measure of His wisdom and knowledge. Presumably, then, the spiritual gifts of knowledge and wisdom simply mean being given an extra measure of them for a purpose: 1 Corinthians 8 calls them a "message" of knowledge/wisdom.

As I mentioned last time, the purpose of all the spiritual gifts is "the common good" and the strengthening of the church. The way to put wisdom and knowledge to this purpose is easy: share them with the church! The way Pastor Steve describes it in the sermon previously linked to is that you're speaking a message of wisdom or knowledge that people respond to, that really ministers to them where they're at and that they can tell is from the Spirit. These gifts are made to be shared, with faith that God will use your message to bless someone. I've found that if nothing else, Facebook is a handy way to ensure that many people will at least read these messages. (Maybe I should get a Twitter...nah, who uses that?)

Spiritual gifts! We all have spiritual gifts!

Towards the end of Summer Project, we all caught a bit of spiritual gifts fever. (The blog post originally talking about it is here) It all started when one of the City on a Hill staff left a spiritual gifts questionnaire lying around our floor. Pretty soon the men were taking it, then the ladies caught on and we brought the well-worn packet down to the social lounge to share it with everyone. We were really excited to see what spiritual gifts we'd been given! I got pretty into studying the subject, so now I figured that before returning to school I would share my findings with the blagosphere. I think spiritual gifts (and the Spirit in general) is a topic that doesn't get enough attention in the church today. My college church did an excellent sermon on the subject during our series on 1 Corinthians. I recommend checking it out, but in case you don't have time, I'll sum it up here. The text of the sermon is 1 Corinthians 12:7-11:

7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.8 To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10 to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.

So what are spiritual gifts? Verse 7 is the best definition I know of: the manifestation of the [Holy] Spirit, given for the common good. "Manifestation of the Spirit" is a pretty vague definition, but as we'll see this can take many different forms: exceptional talents, ways of living, even supernatural abilities. Paul immediately goes into examples of gifts the Spirit can give believers: a message of wisdom, message of knowledge, faith, etc. Speaking in tongues, the gift focused on so much by the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements (which the sermon goes into depth on) is just one of the ones listed here. Paul and Peter list spiritual gifts at other points in the New Testament. I mentioned in my blog post from when this was happening that I typed up a list of the gifts mentioned in scripture; I've put it online here. That's an overview of all the gifts mentioned in the Bible with quick definitions of them.

But notice how I say all the gifts mentioned in the Bible. I don't think that these are all the spiritual gifts people can have. Like the sheet says, Paul never knew his letters would be put together in the New Testament, so he intended all his lists of spiritual gifts to stand alone. Each of them has a different selection of gifts, so it's obvious that he's not giving an exhaustive list at any point. Indeed, the questionnaire we took had several gifts not on my list but that certainly seem like they should be spiritual gifts, like hospitality, voluntary poverty, and exorcism.

So we all have spiritual gifts; verse 7 says "to each one" the manifestation of the Spirit is given. We all have at least one Spiritual gift. (In addition, I like to think, besides all having either the gift of marriage or celibacy) Now what do we do with them? It says they're "for the common good". Paul goes on in chapter 12 to talk about how each member of the body of Christ (the church--the sum of all believers) and how the parts all need to work together. I think spiritual gifts tie into that. The different gifts are like the functions of different body parts; they're all meant to benefit the body in different ways. In 1 Corinthians 14:26 Paul says that these gifts "must be done for the strengthening of the church". And, of course, gifts like evangelism are also for the benefit of those outside the church. Ultimately, the point of spiritual gifts is the point of everything else: bringing glory to God and showing off how good He really is.

So that seems simple enough. What might also be helpful is mentioning what using spiritual gifts should NOT look like. The Corinthians are a perfect example of this. From what I gather from 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, they were focusing on certain gifts--especially speaking on tongues--to the exclusion of other gifts and proper worship. In 14:27-28 he says that only a few should speak in tongues at a time, and only if there is someone with the gift of interpreting their tongues. Presumably they weren't doing this before; I'm picturing half the church standing up shouting gibberish at once. Orderly worship indeed!

In chapter 12 he reassures the Corinthians that God has arranged all the parts of the body of Christ (the church) just as He wants them. He also emphasizes that you don't cease to be part of the body if you aren't a certain part (i.e. if you don't have a certain gift). Judging by how he addresses the gift of tongues heavily in chapter 14, I'm guessing Paul is reprimanding them for focusing on that gift while devaluing the others. In verse 12:11, Paul says the Spirit gives these gifts of each one, "just as he determines". It's foolish to focus on the importance of one gift when not everyone necessarily has that gift.

Basically, the Corinthians were worshipping the gifts (or rather, one particular gift) rather than the Giver. And this mistake definitely isn't unique to spiritual gifts; we cross over into sin when we stop being grateful to God for our place in life, possessions, friends, or anything else. Like all the other things we're given in life, we're called not to get greedy with spiritual gifts and use them to our glory, but to give them back to God, the Giver of all our gifts, in obedience to Him.

What does this look like, then? I don't really feel at liberty to try to explain how to use the gifts I don't have myself--even the ones I have didn't come with instruction manuals and I can't claim to know terribly much about them. But my intention is that this post kicks off a quick series on spiritual gifts that will last the rest of my summer vacation (until Saturday). I'll go into more depth on the gifts I think I have and maybe answer some other questions on spiritual gifts. Feel free to ask away!

P.S. I also typed up the spiritual gifts questionnaire and have it hosted here for whoever wants to take it.