In Velvet Elvis Rob Bell discusses Doctrine as the spring on a trampoline. The springs are not the main point; they merely facilitate the greater goal of “us finding our lives in God.” He compares it to looking at doctrine as a brick wall that when bricks are removed simply falls apart. However a trampoline missing a few springs can still be useful.

This analogy falls apart in itself in that when you remove enough springs you no longer have a trampoline but a tarp. However it betrays an understanding of Christianity that is becoming more invasive as this “emergent” line of thinking expands. Christianity, unlike other religions, isn’t based on a system of living; if you do more good than bad you will be accepted by God. It is based on the premise that our very nature is abhorrent to a perfect God and we can by no means please him. In fact we don’t even know enough to pursue him or look for him save for his provision of grace. Christianity isn’t simply a better way to live, which has lead non believers to the idea of “That may work for you but not for me or others.” Christianity isn’t subjective in its claims, the first century church was called to testify and bear witness of Christ’s resurrection, as historical fact.

There are certain dogma’s of the faith (the proper definition of dogma is to mean those things which can not be compromised not the negative connotation it has taken on) which we can not allow to be compromised for to do so would bring a halt to our Lords work.

Things like the resurrection must stand lest all of Christianity be destroyed, for even the apostle Paul said “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men….If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised,
‘Let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die.’”

If Christ is not raised we are left with nothing but a human invention of morality by which to live.

Christianity is different because the LORD not only requires perfection which we can not obtain but then provides the mean by which it is imputed to us by his grace and not by our own means, otherwise we would still be lost. Not other religion is one of grace and destroying the solid brick foundation of those dogmas destroys the Christian faith. I don’t think I am looking to bounce so much as I am looking for a ROCK upon which to build my house.

To be clear I am not opposed to examining other aspects of how we do things as Christians, I believe methodology is always up to examination and change as we adjust to the culture. However we can not compromise out doctrine in the process.

Photograph: Virgil Vaduva

I was influenced to write on this topic by Alan Knox over at The Assembling of the Church and his new series along the same lines.  To be quite honest I think this article may be more for me than any of my readers as I tend to not believe anyone else is quite the geek that I am, perhaps I will be proven wrong.  As well as Alan I will base my thoughts on John Wesley’s Quadrilateral which states ones view of God is influenced by four points: Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience.  I believe these four quadrants cover all the various influences to ones theological thoughts.  Wesley is quoted as saying “Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason. Scripture [however] is primary, revealing the Word of God ‘so far as it is necessary for our salvation.”[i]
The view of scripture as primary source of divine revelation was one of the largest factors in the protestant reformation.  Sola scriptura was one of their rallying cries which literally means ‘by scripture alone.’ (Information of the five solas can be found here and is quite interesting if you are, like me, a theology geek)  Sola Scriptura is the assertion that the Bible as God’s written word is self-authenticating, clear (perspicuous) to the rational reader, its own interpreter (“Scripture interprets Scripture”), and sufficient of itself to be the final authority of Christian doctrine. [ii]  While this sounds like a positive and proper way of determining our theology I would assert that it is hypothetical at best.  Every individual has who has been exposed to the world around them has already began to carry baggage that makes complete objectivity near impossible.  In fact as Alan Knox points out:

Of course, this raises a big question: When we say “Scripture”, to what are we referring? When most Protestants say “Scripture”, they are referring to the 66 books usually called Old Testament and New Testament. However, it seems fairly clear that the word “Scripture” in the Old and New Testaments did not refer to these same books. Thus, in the Scriptures themselves, the word “Scripture” refers to the Pentateuch, the Pentateuch and the Law, the entire Old Testament (Pentateuch, Prophets, and Writings), or the entire Old Testaments and parts of the New Testament. We may infer that the word “Scripture” in the writings themselves can refer to our entire Bible, but we will not find that designation within the pages of the Bible. 

If this is true we assume some tradition in determining what will stand alone as scripture and our only pure revelation.  There were some books that were heavily debated before being accepted as canon; we believe God has formed his Bible through men by faith in God, not in faith in those men.

But this underlying concept is why I use Wesley’s Quadrilateral to guide my faith with my foundation built on prima scriptura which is a doctrine that says canonized scripture is “first” or “above all” sources of divine revelation.[iii]  Scripture must be the ultimate authority when determining doctrine but we must also accept that we interpret scripture through the lens of our tradition, reason and experience.  Scripture can not simply stand alone as our guide whether we realize it or not.

I have been examining my own beliefs, in light of scripture, regularly since I became a Christian and will continue to do so prayerfully until the day I see the Lord.  We must all consider as we read and hear matters pertaining to theology what influences our thoughts so that we can not only understand ourselves but how we see God.

[ii] “Sola scriptura.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 19 Feb 2008, 01:48 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 20 Feb 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sola_scriptura&oldid=192453714>.

[iii] “Prima scriptura.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 6 Feb 2008, 05:29 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 20 Feb 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prima_scriptura&oldid=189439264>.

I know several families that foster and adopt children as a ministry and do a great job of it.  My own spiritual father (Don Nonnenman) had more children through their house then I can remember, but it seems like we should be able to eliminate the need for orphanages if we were truly to live missionally.

             Heather and I have talked about our desire to have a lot of kids in our home although not all biologically ours.  We have decided to wait until we are done having our own to bring others into the house, but I can’t wait for that day.  I don’t try to be cynical but I can’t help but notice that a lot of the churches and Christians that I know are more interested in receiving the blessing of God in the form of a new car than helping a widow or an orphan.  If the missional church is going to be more than just the newest catch phrase for churches to use in their marketing it is going to take all of us as Christians stepping up and making sacrifices in our own lives that help those around us.

I have simply concluded that I do not treat the Bible with the respect due to the Word of God.  I believe that your actions reveal more about your beliefs than a doctrinal statement or your words ever can.  My actions say I don’t believe the Bible to be the word of God.  I haven’t read and studied like I should have since I left my youth pastorate, I have a plethora of reasons but none that are valid or worth wasting your time discussing.

If we truly believe this to be God’s message to us then reading it is not an option.  It was CS Lewis who said, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”  I believe this can be said about the Bible as well.  I have not given my time to study.  I have abused it by trying using it to make my point, I have ignored the authors intent and inserted my own.  As a minister I have used it as a spring board to make my own message sound biblical, and I will never do it again.

I will make God’s word a priority in my life, despite the cost.

]]> http://www.blog.godfidence.org/2007/04/i-no-longer-believe-the-bible-is-the-word-of-god/feed/ 5 http://www.blog.godfidence.org/2007/04/dear-pastor-saul/ http://www.blog.godfidence.org/2007/04/dear-pastor-saul/#comments Fri, 06 Apr 2007 13:00:11 +0000 Jason http://www.blog.godfidence.org/2007/04/06/dear-pastor-saul/ This is a letter I found written to Pastor (King) Saul, it equally reflects some views on the modern religious church.

Dear Saul,

I am writing this to inform you that I am leaving your church system. I know that a letter is not the best way to do things but I figured that without my informing you, you may not have even realized that I had left.

It is really no surprise that you would not have noticed my being gone- I was not one of those that you seem to prefer for a member; I was no doctor, lawyer or wealthy businessman. I am only a working class believer without huge amounts of money to throw into the offering basket or huge amounts of time to spend frequenting all of your social programs.

Although you may never notice my absence, I wanted to let you know why I am leaving your system because in my heart, I always find myself hoping that somehow you will turn things around.

For continuing to stay in position even when the bleating of the sheep can be heard. (1 Samuel 15: 13-14)

Performing part of what the Lord tells us to do while ignoring the rest of His command is not acceptable, Saul. I guess that you do this in order to please the people who are following you. But the Lord does not care about your good intentions towards the people- He cares about your obedience to Him. Have you forgotten that the word says that if you seek to please men, you can not be a servant of God?

I see you so many times worrying about what the people want to hear. I see you providing every conceivable program and entertainment in order to draw them. But what happened to telling them the whole truth? You can’t exclude the cross from your teachings because the people don’t like to hear it, unless of course you have excluded the cross from your own life. If that is the case, you really have no right to teach it anyway.

The bottom line is that you are not a servant of God so long as you are seeking to please men. And I can not stay involved in a system where those that lead are doing it after their own imagination and not the will of the Lord.

For bringing us into your churches as a novelty, so long as we pleased you. (1 Samuel 16: 17-23)

It took us awhile to figure out that you were doing this to us. We were always so pleased that you had “discovered” us that we just did whatever you wanted us to. We encouraged you, helped you in your ministry and defended you against every foe that we saw.

What we didn’t know is that you viewed us as a novelty that could be thrown away when we stopped being so shiny. Being rejected is not a good feeling for anyone and especially not for people like us. We put our whole heart into trying to help you, Saul. And we never purposefully did anything that we thought would hurt you. It seems that so long as we found favor in your sight, we were allowed to stand just behind you. But any time that your favor ceased- we were sent back to Jesse’s house.

We always found ourselves believing that there was something wrong with us personally when you had no more use for us. We would cry out to God to show us where we were so wrong that we should be rejected. The answer that we finally got from our Lord shocked us, Saul- He said that you were not Him.

For creating an effeminate army and then allowing the world to march out and mock it every day while you do nothing. (1 Samuel 17: 1-11)

Nothing that has been done sickens me quite as much as this one. When I came into the church, I didn’t do so from some squeaky-clean background. I came up on the rough side of the mountain, so to speak. To be honest, when I came into the church I didn’t really know what a real Christian man even looked like. I had been brainwashed by your generation into believing that my parents couldn’t be trusted and that the “old folks” had been way too rigid and their way of thinking should be done away with.

I came in looking for an answer and for role models to pattern myself after but what I found shocked me. I found the “warriors” who were sent to stand against the enemy too afraid to even go to the battle. I found that all of these “men” who had become the products of teachings on “Bridal Intimacy”, too soft to fight. They were so tough behind the closed doors of the church- tearing down make-believe strongholds and “prophesying” to the territorial spirits. But when the real enemy reared his head, the men were more likely to huddle than melee. Men like this are the obvious child of the hippy Jesus of the 60’s who is more a love bead sporting Gandhi than the biblical Christ. The disease of the 60’s had come home to roost in the church.

I am not of your generation and I hold no soft spot for your social commentary. When you talk of revolution, you mean love-ins and protests. When I talk of it, I don’t mean token gestures but kicking the enemy full in the face and rooting all of his garbage out of the church. I will defend the innocent, preserve liberty and hold the line at the cost of my own body if necessary. I will defend those who need it from the tyranny of evil men and I will do so with the Lord as my front guard and rear guard. Blessed be the Lord who teaches my hands to war and my fingers to fight.

It is a new day and I look far in the past, before you came around, to find my role models. I look to the heroes of WWII, who did not shirk at the possibility of death in order to stop the pain of the innocent. Who prayed for and supported their president. Who did their duty and never thought of burning a draft card or running away. These men are who I look to- men who could be Christians and find the heart of the Lord that dwells somewhere between pacifism and outright Jihad.

I do not look to your generation and your liberal, cowardly, psychobabble-spouting excuse for men.

Duck and cover, Saul.

For trying to force us to wear your armor when we are going to war to clean up your mess. (1 Samuel 17: 32-39)

If we were to have listened to you, Saul, we would not have even gone up to the battle. You were doing nothing, of course, but you said that we should not go because we were only youths. But when we came to this camp of the Lord, we did so with some past experience under our belt. We came after having survived the war zone of L.A. in the 80’s or the Ghettos of Chicago in the 90’s. We came from the Nazi Skinheads and Goths, the Gang Bangers and Punks. We came to you full of the understanding that God had saved us from the lion and the bear and any uncircumcised Philistine that stood against God would end up just like these had.

You told us that if we had to go to war, we had to go just like you did. But your armor doesn’t fit us and it never will. You don’t understand why we have tattoos or why we practice MMA for fellowship. You don’t know why we look up to people like Matt Hughes or Rich Franklin. You say that we can’t even be a Christian if we have plugs in our ears or if we don’t sound like you when we preach.

But we beg to differ, Saul.

You have failed to reach our generation with your Gospel. They are dying by the multiplied millions while you pose and parade and practice the fine art of political correctness.

We reject your legalism that has no comprehension that holiness is not about getting better- it’s about getting deader. That true holiness has nothing to do with the marks on our skin but it is about the nail marks on our hearts.

And we will wait for your approval no longer to do battle. If all that will stand up to the Goliaths of our day is we few, tattooed and pierced, socially questionable radicals than so be it. We will do so with 5 smooth stones and the battle song of the Lord on our lips. We will not look to you when we decide how a church should be run. We will not look to you when we evangelize our generation.

We will look to the Lord and to the battles that he has already brought us through.

All of this being said really just boils down to this:

Goodbye Saul, we have a battle to run to.

See you anon,

The Lazarus Generation.

I understand this origionally came from Firefall church

I suppose it is my way of respecting the Word of God, if we believe the Bible to be the God’s word then he doesn’t need us adding anything to it even if it is for our own good, that is what the Pharisee’s thought when they burdened the people with their laws.

Speaking of the law, this week considers the many laws of tithing….

The “Law” of the Tithe

There are some interesting things to be found when you begin to honestly look into the Law, and see what it has to say about the tithe. As I began my study I started by looking up every time the word tithe appears in the old covenant. What I read was very interesting and I had rarely heard taught from any pulpit.

Leviticus 27 bring clarity to the idea of what the Israelites were to tithe on.

‘A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the LORD; it is holy to the LORD. 31 If a man redeems any of his tithe, he must add a fifth of the value to it. 32 The entire tithe of the herd and flock–every tenth animal that passes under the shepherd’s rod–will be holy to the LORD. 33 He must not pick out the good from the bad or make any substitution. If he does make a substitution, both the animal and its substitute become holy and cannot be redeemed.’”

The tithe is everything from the “LAND.” This covenant was for the land of Israel, the Promised Land. It was for the fruit of the land, the crops and the agricultural products like animals. Tithing was tied to the land, if you owned no land or produced no crop you paid no tithe. Additionally we learn in Deuteronomy that the poor are not required to tithe; they receive from tithes they do not pay them. I have heard so many people ask “What if I can’t afford to tithe” and the reflexive response of those to espouse an obligation to the tithe is “You can’t afford not to, if you don’t tithe you will be cursed with a curse, but if you do tithe God will bless you.” This is not only disgusting in my opinion but the exact opposite of what the Bible tells us. When you examine Jewish history you discover that the poor were never required to tithe. “He who has barely sufficient for his own needs, is not obligated to give charity, for his own sustenance takes precedence over another’s,” is how the Code of Jewish Law puts it. Now in our materialistic society we may say we need things that we want however we are not permitted to splurge our way into poverty to avoid the tithe as some people do for taxes, but to demand someone sacrificially give into poverty is deplorable. Although, most people who teach tithe require all people to pay it, we have no proof that anyone who made a wage was ever required to pay a tithe, as a wage was an exchange for services, and the tithe was an offering to the Lord for the increase.

Another interesting question we must ask ourselves when examining the Old Covenant teachings on the tithe is “Just how many tithes were there?” Was it just one ten percent tithe, two ten percent tithes or more? I only know of one church that teaches the second tithe taken every third year for the widows and orphans. However it appears with a little bit of study that there were three tithes. The first is the tithe to the Levites to replacement for their inheritance as discussed in Numbers 18 “”I give to the Levites all the tithes in Israel as their inheritance in return for the work they do while serving at the Tent of Meeting.” The second discussed in Deuteronomy if a festival tithe and the Bible requires us to do what would be considered a very strange thing in today’s churches.

Deut 14:22 – Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year. 23 Eat the tithe of your grain, new wine and oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the presence of the LORD your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name, so that you may learn to revere the LORD your God always. 24 But if that place is too distant and you have been blessed by the LORD your God and cannot carry your tithe (because the place where the LORD will choose to put his Name is so far away), 25 then exchange your tithe for silver, and take the silver with you and go to the place the LORD your God will choose. 26 Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, or anything you wish. Then you and your household shall eat there in the presence of the LORD your God and rejoice. 27 And do not neglect the Levites living in your towns, for they have no allotment or inheritance of their own.

Notice again that the tithe is only referring to agricultural items, what your fields produce and your herds and flocks. Secondly you are supposed to eat it and celebrate the goodness of God. I have heard sermons talking about “eating your tithe” but it was always negative; it referred to people who did not pay their tithe but instead consumed it in their daily lives. However, right here in a passage marked tithes by most bibles, we are told we are to consume it, and if one was not able to transport it you could sell it and then buy what you liked, including fermented drink! Could you imagine using your tithe to throw a party inviting all the people who would not be able to afford such a celebration? I do not think it would go over well with most of the church but it appears it would be the biblical thing to do.
Finally just after this passage in Deuteronomy we find the passage explaining tithe for the needy.

Deut 14 28 – At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns, 29 so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

Scholars have debated for a long time if this is a separate tithe or if ever three years the normal tithe was to be used to help those in need. The only church I know that teaches this teaches it is an additional tithe so those members pay thirteen and a third percent every year to make budgeting easier. Nevertheless it appears that Old Covenant tithing was at least twenty percent if not twenty three and a third. As Dr. Kelly so eloquently tells us:

These texts, Deuteronomy 12:6-7; 14:22-29; and 26:12-13 present a real dilemma for those who teach New Covenant tithing. First, if these verses are only a later amended part of the original tithe ordinance found in Numbers 18, then Deuteronomy should have priority over Leviticus and Numbers. This would mean that tithers should be allowed to feast off the tithes they bring to church! [How does one eat money?] Failure to do so would be failure to follow the final biblical tithing revelation. Second, if the church admits that the feast tithe was indeed a second tithe, then it must also teach a minimum of twenty percent as an expectation of the church. This is a lose-lose situation!

For the sake of brevity I will move on to new things but if you would like to read more about the law and the tithe I highly recommend Dr Kelly’s thesis which can be downloaded here (http://www.shouldthechurchteachtithing.com/) it is very much worth the time it takes to read it.

The Discovery that Changed my life I
The Discovery that Changed my life II
The Discovery that Changed my life III
The Discovery that Changed my life IV
The Discovery that Changed my life V

Na – What is Humble Orthodoxy?