Monthly Archive for January, 2006

It’s the dog days of the dogmatic!

We’re a long ways from the dog days of summer; however, we at LRC and much of the West are definitely in the dog days of the dogmatic! I am not going to name any groups that I deem dogmatic as my purpose is not anywhere near that application. But, if you’re looking for a definiton of dogma or of dogmatic, you can always click the red liks in all of my commentaries. Bottom line is that there are a lot of opinions that are held close to the vest by sincere Christians which are simply not true!
Continue reading ‘The Dogmatic’

How far saved are you?

For most that’s a question that doesn’t compute. How far? What do you mean ‘how far saved’? In my days as a Baptist, my programmed answer was that you can’t be a little bit pregnant. You were either with child, or you weren’t! Once saved always saved was the banner that I carried. For far too long I saw my faith, my religion, my denomination in terms of my righteousness; more often in my unrighteousness. I was always trying to get it right: what a struggle. A common thread that ran through the tapestry of my belief system was an ego that could defend all my beliefs on the best of intellectual arguments. Was I ever good at that!

At the end of every argument came the same conclusion: I was right, they were wrong!
Continue reading ‘How Far Are You?’

We who call ourselves Christians are an interesting and diverse lot to say the least. Weird and flaky would be the names given by most who do not ascribe to our beliefs. I don’t watch “Christian TV” (I watch little TV period) but from what I’ve been told, you can pick up about any kind of belief you’d like to embrace. The two most common things I hear is that it is so confusing and the people don’t seem real; and it’s mroe than the big hair or weird language. It is from those comments that I want to launch out today.

Do we dare pin our faith on one man, Jesus Christ? Yes, he’s the most influential man in all of history, but can we trust just one man? Well, DUH! If that one man IS God, and He says He was and is, then YEAH! But how many of us really and truly BELIEVE that: live like we believe it?

The entrire Old Testament is nothing but a collection of road signs pointing to the coming of Jesus Christ. I doubt any had an insight to this point, but looking back you can see where the Holy Spirit was working through them to allow those who came afterward to see what was meant. I don’t believe in the verbal plenary concept endorsed primarily by conservative fundamental scholars. I don’t think the authors set down, shut off their minds, and went into some sort of “automatic writing” mode. I believe God used each writers personality, view of culture, and intellect, guided by the Holy Spirit, to set in place the essential sign posts for the Hebrew culture.

Unfortunately man finds it difficult to focus, especially if you’re talking about one man. The Bible has more than 2,900 characters from which we have stories and insights. They are put there for us to see the various human behaviors and the results stemming from them should we take a similiar approach to life. However, there is only ONE that did it right, only ONE was without sin, only ONE was the Son of God. So, why don’t we focus more on Him?

Why do we get so side-tracked on peripheral ideas, theories, and concepts? Most probably because we are humans and we are EGO driven. Daniel and Revelation are God’s bait for all those who live by their ego’s, to write books and give us their opinions about what it all means. And of course one of the most used detours that we travel are our local churches and denominations! Come this way! No come His way. Come and see!

May our conversations be about Jesus Christ! May we be the living epistles that give some insight and guidance as to what Jesus is like. May the word Christian be equated with forgiveness, not judgmentalism. May we not boast or even mention our denominations or church. Everyone needs to be IN one; however, He is the calling card. Focus on Jesus Christ, study Jesus Christ, model Jesus Christ, quote Jesus Christ, and bring all conversations back to Him! When we do that, we are looked upon as no longer wacky and weird (though we well may be), but passionate about a man they want to be drawn to as well, to see what it is that has so captured our hearts! People are drawn to other passionate people: even the crazy and dangerous ones.

Jesus Christ is the anvil on which all hammers of criticism will wear themselves out on.

Jesus was a Jew.

But, He was also the Son of God, the exact representation of who and what God, the Father is! And it was in His Jewish roots that He made many references to the Old Testament. In fact, He is reported as having quoted 24 of the 39 Old Testament books. My hat is off to those who have done diligent research informing us that there are some 300 quotes in the NT (beyond just Jesus’s quotes). And to those of us who call ourselves Protestants, it should be noted that there are quotes in the NT of books that are only found in the Catholic Bible (deuterocanonical). Hmmm.
Continue reading ‘Embrace Him’

One of the things that has stumped me over the years is the importance that Christians give to the Bible, and yet how little they truly know about it. I love the Bible, but don’t put me in the neighborhood of Bibliolatry. Ask a person who put it together and they don’t know. When were the Books in the Bible authenticated and established as canon- and what is canon? Why do the Catholics have more books in their Bible than the Protestants: and which one is correct? Why did Luther throw out four of the books we have in our Bible today, relegating them to end notes? And how many of the original manuscripts do we have anyway?
Continue reading ‘How Little We Know’