Most of us prefer to drink water that has been found pure. The same can be said about most of our food. Purity is something we consider a serious matter especially when it relates to what we see as most important in life. Perhaps we should be reminded that God takes purity rather seriously as well.
The creation came into existence free from the impurity of sin. Old Testament sacrifices were to be pure, without blemish or scar. The prophets called the people of Israel to practice a pure faith free from the corrupting influence of pagan religions. The God of Israel demanded a pure and holy people that would be his royal priesthood among the nations.
The perfect sacrifice that was pure in every way came in the person of Jesus Christ. He preached purity. He lived in purity. He died in purity. He was raised from the dead in purity to ascend to sit by the throne of glory. Purity is no laughing matter or subject of coarse jokes in the eyes of the Creator of the universe.
Some of my favorite verses for memorization (and thus reminders of how I ought to be living) include the concept of purity. In the New Testament we find in the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:8, "Blessed are the pure in heart"; in Paul's counsel to Timothy (I Tim. 4:12) he says to set an example for others that includes purity, and in his letter to the Philippian believers he encourages them to keep their thoughts focused on what is pure (4:8); and James says that wisdom from above is known first and foremost by its purity (3:17).
This concept is not just some commercial for getting the stains and residue out of your life. The two more common words used for purity in the New Testament bring together concepts of morality and freedom from corruption, such as an innocent life, clean water, and gold without contamination. There is even the root reference that purity has its foundation in the divine. Being and staying pure is serious stuff.
An individual that responds to the call of Christ is called to be pure, as well as holy, perfect, etc! To be consistent this must be reflected not only in deeds and words but also thoughts. Jesus made it clear that just as sin is a matter of the heart so is purity. Words and actions only follow what has already set up housekeeping in the mind.
Churches are made up of individual believers. Associations and conventions are made of churches that are made up of individual believers. The motives and the actions they prompt in our churches and more extended organizations cannot but help reflect the nature of the individual believers. God calls for us to make sure that nature is pure.
Individual Christians should be motivated out of pure minds. Their words and deeds should reflect that aspect of their transformed nature. Believers should relate to others out of the pure, divine love of their Savior. Believers should see others through purified eyes. They should speak with purified words. They should act in ways that reveal they have been purified by surrender to the Lordship of the Holy Spirit.
Churches should respond to their communities out of a purity of purpose and motivation. The self-sacrificing agape love of our Savior can be the only guide we have. The Church must be pure if it is to be the salt and light its Lord intended. The sins of self-preservation and need for domination have no place in the Church, the Bride of Christ.
Purity in the same way must mark the motivation and actions of the Church in its expanded image of associations and conventions. Self is always subordinated to the divinely recognized needs of humanity. These larger entities must look deep within themselves and find the truth of who they are and why they exist. If purity does not mark what they find, then change is demanded.
Purity demands constant self-evaluation, confession, and repentance. This is no less true of the Church, the association, and conventions than it is of the individual believer.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Practicing Our Religious Freedom
Yes, we Americans do have religious freedom, more than we practice in fact. Last Monday, January 16, carried the designation of "Religious Freedom Day". A little recognized occasion it is often lost in the commemoration of MLK Jr Day. It does exist, however, and began under the presidency of Bill Clinton. It deserves greater recognition and dissemination through a broad based educational effort. A description of the day and suggestions for how to observe it may be found at www.religiousfreedomday.com.
I had not heard of the day before this year. I have never heard it announced in one of my churches. I never heard of it while volunteering in a public school over a period of four years. I have never heard my Baptist state convention promote it. A quick search of Baptist Press articles showed the last one on the subject was an opinion piece written in 2007 indicating to me the subject is not a huge, newsworthy topic even in the conservative press.
Why is it not a major topic? One of the universal complaints I find in the churches I serve is the terrible thing our government did by taking Bible reading and prayer out of our public schools. The government has taken steps to remove state and school administration mandated Bible reading as a devotional exercise and prayer out of the daily routine. I for one have no problem denying our public school children the necessity of having to hear devotional readings from the Quran, the Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha, the Book of Mormon, the Book of the Dead, or the Bhagavad-Gita. If we insist in our free country that our children hear the Bible read each day, those same children will also be required to hear readings from other works considered sacred by their adherents. You cannot have it both ways in a free country!
My suggestion is to make the most of the freedom we have. As the old saying goes, "As long as there are tests in school, there will be prayer in school." I can vouch for that. There is no law anywhere that says a student cannot bring a Bible to school and read it for personal benefit when it does not distract from the classroom efforts of the teacher. A student can read the Bible during lunch, in a study period, or standing in an open hallway. Anyone who tries to interfere can be accused of harassment.
Far more important than having prayer and Bible reading in our schools is having prayer and Bible reading in our homes and in our churches, yes in our churches! Before we condemn the government for taking state-mandated prayer and Bible reading out of the public arena, we need to see how much we do in our private settings. Religious Freedom Day should judge how much time we spend in our homes with the Bible open. The Day should judge how much time we spend in prayer (beyond the cursory "Thanks for the grub, God."). The Day should judge how important it is to us that our children see that prayer and Bible reading are important to their parents. We can do this without fear that someone will break into our homes and arrest us for practicing our faith or be waiting outside our church doors with guns and hand grenades to kill us all.
Think for a moment about the last time you were in a Christian worship service. How much time was spent reading the Bible? How much time was spent in prayer? What was the subject of the prayer? Where are our people when it comes time for small group Bible study? Are all the ones who want our public schools to read the Bible taking advantage of the freedom to study it themselves at home and other places?
Worship for the Christian is a process of personal acknowledgment of who God is and the individual's place before God. That process can take the form of silent waiting, singing, listening to both the reading of the Bible and its explanation/application. It will include prayer that is both personal and guided. Yet with all this, how much comes through our traditional worship services that says the Bible should be the handbook on life for every believer and that prayer is the method of communicating with the most important Person in your life. Better use it!
Religious Freedom Day for the American Christian should be a day on which we celebrate our freedom to read the Bible and not be forced to read someone else's holy book. We should celebrate that we can pray and not worry about someone spying on us to see what we are doing. We should celebrate that we have the freedom to try to convince all those other people who read something else that they are missing out on the Truth, and we don't have to worry about being locked up in jail or beheaded for doing it. We must educate our membership at all levels of our religious organizations about the freedoms and responsibility we have as free American Christians. We just need to be compassionate and live out our freedom the way our Lord taught and practiced it.
I had not heard of the day before this year. I have never heard it announced in one of my churches. I never heard of it while volunteering in a public school over a period of four years. I have never heard my Baptist state convention promote it. A quick search of Baptist Press articles showed the last one on the subject was an opinion piece written in 2007 indicating to me the subject is not a huge, newsworthy topic even in the conservative press.
Why is it not a major topic? One of the universal complaints I find in the churches I serve is the terrible thing our government did by taking Bible reading and prayer out of our public schools. The government has taken steps to remove state and school administration mandated Bible reading as a devotional exercise and prayer out of the daily routine. I for one have no problem denying our public school children the necessity of having to hear devotional readings from the Quran, the Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha, the Book of Mormon, the Book of the Dead, or the Bhagavad-Gita. If we insist in our free country that our children hear the Bible read each day, those same children will also be required to hear readings from other works considered sacred by their adherents. You cannot have it both ways in a free country!
My suggestion is to make the most of the freedom we have. As the old saying goes, "As long as there are tests in school, there will be prayer in school." I can vouch for that. There is no law anywhere that says a student cannot bring a Bible to school and read it for personal benefit when it does not distract from the classroom efforts of the teacher. A student can read the Bible during lunch, in a study period, or standing in an open hallway. Anyone who tries to interfere can be accused of harassment.
Far more important than having prayer and Bible reading in our schools is having prayer and Bible reading in our homes and in our churches, yes in our churches! Before we condemn the government for taking state-mandated prayer and Bible reading out of the public arena, we need to see how much we do in our private settings. Religious Freedom Day should judge how much time we spend in our homes with the Bible open. The Day should judge how much time we spend in prayer (beyond the cursory "Thanks for the grub, God."). The Day should judge how important it is to us that our children see that prayer and Bible reading are important to their parents. We can do this without fear that someone will break into our homes and arrest us for practicing our faith or be waiting outside our church doors with guns and hand grenades to kill us all.
Think for a moment about the last time you were in a Christian worship service. How much time was spent reading the Bible? How much time was spent in prayer? What was the subject of the prayer? Where are our people when it comes time for small group Bible study? Are all the ones who want our public schools to read the Bible taking advantage of the freedom to study it themselves at home and other places?
Worship for the Christian is a process of personal acknowledgment of who God is and the individual's place before God. That process can take the form of silent waiting, singing, listening to both the reading of the Bible and its explanation/application. It will include prayer that is both personal and guided. Yet with all this, how much comes through our traditional worship services that says the Bible should be the handbook on life for every believer and that prayer is the method of communicating with the most important Person in your life. Better use it!
Religious Freedom Day for the American Christian should be a day on which we celebrate our freedom to read the Bible and not be forced to read someone else's holy book. We should celebrate that we can pray and not worry about someone spying on us to see what we are doing. We should celebrate that we have the freedom to try to convince all those other people who read something else that they are missing out on the Truth, and we don't have to worry about being locked up in jail or beheaded for doing it. We must educate our membership at all levels of our religious organizations about the freedoms and responsibility we have as free American Christians. We just need to be compassionate and live out our freedom the way our Lord taught and practiced it.
Friday, January 13, 2012
When the Church Acts Like the Church
Acts 2:47 contains the interesting phrase "and having favor with all the people." The Church was acting like the Church and that was the response from society. Of course the story continues to show that society did not always respond in such positive terms. In later chapters when the Church acted like the Church, adherents were thrown into prison, beaten, cast out of cities, killed, and often faced a less than satisfactory reception from the community.
Things don't seem to have changed much in the 21st century for the Church when it tries to act like the Church. Individuals that seek to be good neighbors often find their actions are reciprocated, this even in countries where Christianity is at least frowned upon if not openly persecuted. One on one, Christians who act like Christ followers often find acceptance when they are rejected by society in general.
Does this mean if you love your neighbor as yourself, life will be just wonderful? Hardly. If that were the case, Jesus would never have had to mention stuff like turning the other cheek. No, often good still gets evil as its reward. It will get its hand slapped for trying to help.
At the same time we cannot escape the lesson that the Church does the most good and has the greatest positive influence on its society when it simply carries out those earliest actions. We treat fellow believers with love, compassion, and respect. We are generous with all that we have believing that it already belongs to God. We focus on our relationship with God through prayer and constant reminders of what he left us in the testimony of those first witnesses. We give of ourselves for in so doing we believe we are giving to Christ.
When the Church acts like the Church, the Body of Christ, it reveals a pattern of life and a standard of relationships that are radically different than what the world exemplifies. When the Church acts like the Church, people take notice and cannot escape its influence on both individuals and society. When the Church acts like the Church, it will not be ignored and a response will come.
Does it make a difference what response the Church gets when it acts like the Church? No, it doesn't. The Church does not answer to the world. It answers only to its Lord, the One who died for it and gave it life. The Church must act like the Church without regard to cost or consequences. Human laws will never replace the power of the Church acting like the Church. Only as the Church acts like the Church will hearts be changed and transformation last longer than a visit from a law enforcement official.
Things don't seem to have changed much in the 21st century for the Church when it tries to act like the Church. Individuals that seek to be good neighbors often find their actions are reciprocated, this even in countries where Christianity is at least frowned upon if not openly persecuted. One on one, Christians who act like Christ followers often find acceptance when they are rejected by society in general.
Does this mean if you love your neighbor as yourself, life will be just wonderful? Hardly. If that were the case, Jesus would never have had to mention stuff like turning the other cheek. No, often good still gets evil as its reward. It will get its hand slapped for trying to help.
At the same time we cannot escape the lesson that the Church does the most good and has the greatest positive influence on its society when it simply carries out those earliest actions. We treat fellow believers with love, compassion, and respect. We are generous with all that we have believing that it already belongs to God. We focus on our relationship with God through prayer and constant reminders of what he left us in the testimony of those first witnesses. We give of ourselves for in so doing we believe we are giving to Christ.
When the Church acts like the Church, the Body of Christ, it reveals a pattern of life and a standard of relationships that are radically different than what the world exemplifies. When the Church acts like the Church, people take notice and cannot escape its influence on both individuals and society. When the Church acts like the Church, it will not be ignored and a response will come.
Does it make a difference what response the Church gets when it acts like the Church? No, it doesn't. The Church does not answer to the world. It answers only to its Lord, the One who died for it and gave it life. The Church must act like the Church without regard to cost or consequences. Human laws will never replace the power of the Church acting like the Church. Only as the Church acts like the Church will hearts be changed and transformation last longer than a visit from a law enforcement official.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Future Stuff
Some thoughts about the future are reassuring. Others can leave you wondering if it wouldn't just be better to stay in bed and avoid the whole idea of facing the new day and the year it brings with it, but you know you cannot do that. That's the thing about the future. You have to face it whether you want to or not no matter what your thoughts may be. Even if you decide you won't wake up tomorrow, you still have to face the future waiting on the other side of the veil. You cannot escape moving into the future. You can only decide your attitude about it as you do.
Consider these thoughts:
1. It's inevitable that the future will get here.
2. You will face the future with what you are whatever that may be.
3. Your attitude as you face the future is under your control.
4. Decisions made today determine future results.
5. You cannot change past decisions, but you can make decisions today that will change short and long range results in the future.
6. Other people's futures will be affected by your decisions in both short and long term impact.
7. God's plan for the future is bigger than yours.
8. God's plan for the future has a guaranteed conclusion.
9. Each person is in God's plan whether they want to be or not.
10. Each person can choose his or her part in God's plan but they cannot avoid it.
11. God's plan is the best whether it feels that way or not.
12. Following God's plan gives the best future most often seen through hindsight.
We are stuck with a future, even those who do not think they have one. We might as well make the best of it. The future has little that is fair about it just like the present. You cannot avoid seeing the innocent get clobbered or the guilty get away with their sins. That is the result of living in a world ruled by sin. It rains on the just and the unjust. The sun shines on the righteous and the unrighteous. That is the result of a Creator-God who is always offering a second chance. The Golden Rule remains one of the best life patterns ever given to man.
Perhaps it is simply that God is watching to see how his children will respond to the future and all that it holds even while he calls them to be like his Son in preparation for an eternal future that is beyond our greatest dreams. Gold and silver are refined by the fire, not destroyed by it.
Consider these thoughts:
1. It's inevitable that the future will get here.
2. You will face the future with what you are whatever that may be.
3. Your attitude as you face the future is under your control.
4. Decisions made today determine future results.
5. You cannot change past decisions, but you can make decisions today that will change short and long range results in the future.
6. Other people's futures will be affected by your decisions in both short and long term impact.
7. God's plan for the future is bigger than yours.
8. God's plan for the future has a guaranteed conclusion.
9. Each person is in God's plan whether they want to be or not.
10. Each person can choose his or her part in God's plan but they cannot avoid it.
11. God's plan is the best whether it feels that way or not.
12. Following God's plan gives the best future most often seen through hindsight.
We are stuck with a future, even those who do not think they have one. We might as well make the best of it. The future has little that is fair about it just like the present. You cannot avoid seeing the innocent get clobbered or the guilty get away with their sins. That is the result of living in a world ruled by sin. It rains on the just and the unjust. The sun shines on the righteous and the unrighteous. That is the result of a Creator-God who is always offering a second chance. The Golden Rule remains one of the best life patterns ever given to man.
Perhaps it is simply that God is watching to see how his children will respond to the future and all that it holds even while he calls them to be like his Son in preparation for an eternal future that is beyond our greatest dreams. Gold and silver are refined by the fire, not destroyed by it.
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