Teach Him a Lesson

Jim from Smoke on the Water has issued a prayer request. He and his significant other, Iris, closed on a house five weeks ago. In GALVESTON. On a BARRIER ISLAND.

They are preparing for Ike right now. Pray it hits France.

Not really, but you get the idea.

Be Careful About Throwing Them Away

A reader sent me a blog link today. It’s about a lady who took her four-year-old daughter to see John McCain and Sarah Palin. Her daughter has Down’s Syndrome.

It occurred to me, as I read the entry, that they may be an unexpected benefit to a Sarah Palin Vice Presidency. It may change people’s attitudes toward kids with Down’s Syndrome and other problems.

It’s not something that should be milked for political advantage, but it seems inevitable, should John McCain win. We’ll be seeing Trig Palin on the news over and over, surrounded by a loving family. He’s already a Youtube hit; everyone has seen the short clip of his sister, grooming his hair.

The prospect of having a handicapped kid scares people. I assume. Surely that’s the reason so many handicapped babies are aborted. The thought has certainly scared me. I hope the abortions are not the result of a sick desire to have “perfect” children to show off, although maybe I’m naive. I believe many couples and single women see ominous prenatal test results and choose abortion, simply because they think raising a handicapped child will be too hard for them.

That attitude will necessarily be eroded by the spectacle of a warm, loving family with a child who has Down’s Syndrome. I don’t know how many people the message will reach, but I’m sure a large number of pregnant women will be influenced, and that they’ll take the healthier path, confronting the problem instead of running from it.

As a nation, we aren’t all that familiar with Down’s Syndrome. Sometimes we see ridiculous movies and TV shows which stupidly portray retarded people as the smartest folks around, but saying those efforts teach us about Down’s Syndrome is like saying G.I. Jane taught us about the Navy Seals. A real-life example will have much more impact.

People whose children have physical problems seem fairly united in their perceptions. For the most part, they tell us their experiences have been fulfilling and surprising. That makes sense. We were put here to face challenges like this. God didn’t create us to have “show families,” the way some people have show dogs and show horses. We are supposed to have problems, and the hope is that by facing them with faith and principle, we can turn them into blessings. This is something I find hard to remember, at times when it can serve me best. I don’t blame other people for forgetting. But it’s still true.

Man’s way of making life perfect is quick and futile. God’s way is slow, subtle, and lasting. You could say God’s approach is nuanced, if you wanted to start a fight.

We always say a child is a gift from God; presumably a child with a special challenge is a special gift. Maybe each of those medical waste bags the abortion industry has filled represents a gift that has been rejected. It’s an awful thing to consider.

Maybe the seeming imperfection of the Palin family is a gift to our nation, which we should study carefully before we turn it down.

In the sidebar to your left, you will find a link to Care-Net.

Refreshing

Here are two sides of the same interesting coin.

First, Christians are facing growing persecution in the Muslim world. Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein of The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews just wrote an op-ed about it in The New York Daily News.

Highlights:

* “Just this month, a Pakistani court upheld the kidnapping, conversion and ‘marriage’ to older Muslim men of two Christian sisters, aged 10 and 13.”

* “Although they comprise less than 4% of Iraq’s population, Iraqi Christians now account for 40% of its refugees.”

* “Thirty years ago, Lebanon was 60% Christian; today it is barely 25%. And the growing political power of Iran-backed Hezbollah is encouraging further departures.”

Evangelist Brother Andrew encourages ex-Muslim converts to stay in Muslim lands and work to strengthen the church and proselytize. That is hard advice to follow, in times when persecution is increasing. Would I stay in a country where I knew there was a good chance that I or my loved ones would be killed? Would I do that, to help the church? Not a chance. Sorry to say it. No way. Barring a supernatural experience proving to my satisfaction that God wanted me there, I would be looking for the fastest way out. I’ve read horror story after horror story. Maybe some day I’ll be committed enough to risk imprisonment, torture, maiming, and execution. At the moment, I am not feeling it. I could never advise another human being to stay. How could I ask someone else to face a risk I won’t face? I have nothing but admiration for people who put their lives on the line in this manner.

Here’s the other side of the coin. A Coptic priest named Zakaria Botros has become a celebrity in Muslim countries. He has a 90-minute television show aimed at Muslims, and he is converting them at a very high rate. So high, there is a bounty on his head. It is rumored to be as high as sixty million dollars.

You would think the figure would be certain; for a bounty to work, it has to be publicized clearly. But I have no reason to doubt that it’s real.

Father Botros is Egyptian, but he lives in the US. That makes sense. If he were in Egypt, he’d be dead. Egypt is not a safe place for Christians, and I’m sure that applies very heavily to Christians who proselytize via television.

He believes a thousand Muslims convert via his phone banks each month, and because the lines are jammed, he believes the actual conversion figure is much higher. And he has websites.

It looks like television and the Internet are highly effective. And considerably safer than face-to-face evangelism.

What’s the conclusion? Hard to say. I feel sure God never intended evangelism to be completely safe, or that it be performed purely by automated means. We’re expected to risk suffering, to some degree. And a TV set is no substitute for a church and a flesh-and-blood pastor. But should Christians risk their lives unnecessarily? Is that required, and is it even effective, compared with TV and the web? And if you decide both types of outreach are needed, how do you balance them? How many people should stay behind in Muslim countries and face violence and oppression?

You won’t get an answer from me. I don’t have a clue.

Here’s something very strange about this blog post. There are two links in the above text. One goes to a story about Muslim oppression of Christians, and the story was penned by an active Orthodox Rabbi who chairs an organization which steers Christian donations to Jewish needs. The other goes to a blog entry about a Christian priest who proselytizes Muslims, and whose life has been credibly threatened by them, and the story was written by a Messianic Jew, Joel Rosenberg. My head is spinning.

Assuming Father Botros checks out, I can’t imagine a better place to send donations. Think about it. You can directly sponsor a Christian outreach to Muslims. What could be better than that? When you drop a bomb on a jihadist, you reduce the enemy’s numbers by one, and our numbers remain steady, and a person dies in ignorance. When you convert a Muslim, the number of our potential enemies is reduced by one, the number of our allies is increased by one, and a person is rescued from darkness.

Please tell me Father Zakarias doesn’t have a yacht and an air-conditioned dog house with a jacuzzi.

It’s Below His Pay Grade

I think I should explain why I’m so irritated with the “Jesus was a community organizer” lie.

It’s not that I object to mixing religion with politics. If anything, I think we should do more of that. We should consider how political platforms comport with our religions when we vote, and when we see problems, we should point them out to others. The IRS ban on mentioning politics from tax-exempt pulpits seems ridiculous to me. To conjure an example at random, if a priest wants to tell his flock to vote against a candidate who supports convenience abortion, he should be able to do it without fear of a big tax penalty. Convenience abortion is a legitimate religious issue; the fact that it has political aspects doesn’t change that.

The ban is obviously an anti-conservative policy. Conservatives are more religious than liberals. There are more conservatives than liberals in churches every week. Even if the intent of the ban is politically neutral, the effect isn’t.

We have to be careful about inappropriate and unrealistic reliance on government to advance religious aims. But our votes have to jibe with our beliefs, as nearly as possible.

The reason I don’t like the community organizer lie, apart from the fact that I generally dislike lies, is that it’s a disgusting and hypocritical effort to portray Jesus as sympathetic to Democrat policies, which He would obviously find repugnant. This is the party that supports nearly every known type of sexual immorality. They support convenience abortion, largely because it’s a necessary adjunct to their support for sexual immorality. They support recreational drug use. They support socialism, which is the single biggest enemy Jesus ever faced; socialist governments overtly oppose Christianity. Liberal Democrats even attempt to supplant God by claiming Man can bring about his own age of peace and prosperity. They’re forcing Christianity out of public buildings, including schools. And they don’t even imitate Jesus’s attitude toward others. They give less to charity than conservatives do. Finally, they support those who oppose Jesus’s people, the Jews, and His nation, Israel.

The GOP may not be a Christian party, but we’re not nearly as hostile to Christianity as the Democrats.

When the Democrats claim Jesus, it’s as if the Republicans were claiming Matthew Shepard. It’s absurd and offensive. This is reflected in a recent news story. A Catholic bishop has asked Nancy Pelosi to come to a meeting and explain why she should be allowed to receive communion, given her support for unrestricted abortion.

“Community organization” is not a Christian tool. It’s a tool of radical politicians. Under other names, it’s a tool of corrupt but non-radical political machines. There is nothing spiritual about it. You may disagree. If you think Ho Chi Minh and Boss Tweed were clergymen.

Claiming Jesus as a liberal agitator appears to be an egregious example of taking the Lord’s name in vain. It would be bad to claim Him while engaged in a spiritually neutral enterprise. But claiming His support while endorsing abortion, sex outside of marriage, and humanism…that’s just crazy. And like sliming Sarah Palin with disproven lies, it is an offensive tactic likely to backfire.

Fire up the Machinery

This is too good not to share.

More than once, I have made it clear that Jesus was anything but a community organizer, i.e. political machine stooge. Here’s a great comment from reader Ed:

I mentioned yesterday in Sunday School, when a reference was made to Jesus as a teacher, that he was not a community organizer. My pastor was in the back and said, “No. He was a maverick”.

I suggested a shirt design to Aaron. Don’t know if he will be interested in marketing this one, as an Orthodox Jew:

“Hitler was a community organizer. Jesus was a maverick.”

It’s funny; if you use Castro, Che, Lenin, Marx, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, or Pol Pot instead of Hitler, it doesn’t work. Liberals think those guys are heroes.

It’s nearly true, if you use Osama bin Laden.

First One This Week

Help me out, here.

I know someone who is in the process of making a devastating mistake. The kind of mistake that has severe negative effects that last longer than a lifetime. I can’t give any details.

Do me a favor and pray that this person will have a change of heart and stop while there is time.

Thanks.

Your Sloppy Thinking Makes Comrade Lenin Spin in His Glass Box

Even though Hurricane Ike is still a Category 4 storm, I have to say that things are going better than expected. It whacked Grand Turk, damaging 80% of the homes. That’s terrible, BUT the population of Grand Turk is under 4,000. We’re not talking about Nassau here. Things could have been a lot worse.

Right now, Ike is going over Great Inagua, in the Bahamas. I haven’t been there; the Bahamas are full of remote islands and industrial islands no one visits, and this is one of them. It’s the site of a huge Morton Salt plant, and the island’s population is under a thousand.

Cuba comes next. Ike is going to miss Haiti, thank God. Maybe the mountains of eastern Cuba will help break it up.

I’m hoping the storm heads for relatively empty forest in the Yucatan Peninsula. Louisiana doesn’t need another hit.

I got a lot of comments on yesterday’s post, in which I pointed out the absurdity of the claim that Jesus was a community organizer. As I noted, one of the main reasons the Jews rejected Him was that He was not a political leader. Based on their understanding of prophecy, they expected a king who would deliver them from Roman rule. Instead, they got a man who was eager to associate with, and preach to, hated Jews who collected taxes for the Romans. No sincere radical agitator (if such a bird exists) would do a thing like that. And while He cared for the poor, He associated with prosperous business owners who had servants. James, John, Andrew, and Peter, for example. They didn’t fish while standing barefoot in ponds. They owned fishing businesses, with hired help. He also healed the servant of a Roman centurion, who probably was not Jewish, as he was a member of the Roman’s household. Jews were not supposed to live with Gentiles. He allowed Martha’s sister Mary to rub expensive perfume on his feet, instead of selling it to help the poor.

I noted that Jesus opposed civil disobedience, and like any Christian who knows anything about the Bible, Virgil understood instantly:

“Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s…” Not much political activism in those words.

The opponents of Jesus tried to trick Him into endorsing civil disobedience, with a question about paying taxes. And He told them to pay up.

It’s distressing that leftists now claim Jesus as a community organizer, because that’s exactly what His enemies told the Romans. They said He was setting Himself up as king. And that was untrue; even Pilate saw through it. It made no sense at all, in view of dissatisfaction over His unwillingness to be a political figure.

After 2000 years, you would think the enemies of the church could come up with a better, or at least more original, slander.

And leftists, including America’s relatively watery variety, are enemies of the church; a century and a half of history makes that clear.

I read a horrendous story about East Germany. The East German government, like all leftist governments of the time, tried to eradicate religion. The story is in Brother Andrew’s book, God’s Smuggler. The East Germans obtained machinery to harvest wheat, and they were proud of this advance (usually leftists oppose automation, but we’ll let that pass). Harvest time came, and rain came with it. The machines could not be used on wet fields. They required a couple of days of dry weather.

The government put up posters, and in German, they said, “Without God and without sun, we will get the harvest done.”

And it kept raining, and the harvest was lost, and it became impossible to find bread in East Germany.

The government put out reports criticizing the “lies” about the harvest, saying bread was everywhere. At least the Germans got to read about bread while their bellies rumbled.

Imagine the anti-Christian hostility you would have to have, to put up a poster like that.

And let’s not discuss the Cuban government, which forced clergymen to cut sugar cane–slave labor–because they were considered unproductive members of society.

Anyway, Jesus organized communities about as vigorously as Obama tried to reform the corrupt Chicago machine. Which is where HIS bread came from.

Make it Stop

Here’s a scary story about my efforts to be a better Christian.

I was tired of criticizing people all the time. I did it even in my mind. I did it automatically. I was so used to being rewarded for insulting people, it had become a habit. This is one of the things that drove me to be more religious. For example, maybe I would see some stranger taking a long time to cross the street, and a little voice inside me would start saying, “No wonder you’re so slow. Look at the size of your rear end.” Things like that. I horrified myself. I criticized people who didn’t begin to deserve it. I was impatient with old people! It’s a wonder I wasn’t struck by lightning.

I came up with what I thought was a good strategy. I’d say a little prayer for anyone I insulted in my head. Great, right? People would get the benefit of prayer, and I would be reminded of what I was doing wrong.

What a mistake. Can you imagine watching MSNBC with a rule like that? Chris Matthews? Keith Olbermann? Why did I do this during a convention week? I am so tired of praying for people, now when I look at a person, it almost scares me. That same little voice yells, “WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T THINK ANYTHING NASTY. I AM WORN OUT.”

Usually when I make a little rule for myself, I disregard it as soon as it becomes inconvenient. But how can I do that, when I know I deserve the inconvenience and aggravation it causes me?

Please don’t do anything I might find fault with.

A Lie That Would Bring a Tear to the Eye of Joseph Goebbels

I can’t believe there are Jewish Democrats who are trying to portray Sarah Palin as an anti-Semite. This is insane. The claim? She “supported Pat Buchanan” in an election bid. The truth? While working for the Steve Forbes campaign, Buchanan showed up for a visit, and she put on a Buchanan button, as a courtesy.

How can you work for the Forbes campaign and be a Buchanan supporter? You can’t. I bought a Nader shirt, as a joke. I guess that makes me a liberal.

When are American Jews going to realize that Bible-believing American Christians are their most powerful allies, and that as far as Israel is concerned, the bank accounts of American Christians are God’s purse?

Sarah Palin governs a state with very few Jews. She’s extremely popular, so she has no need to court favor with a small minority. Yet she works hard to maintain good relations with them, she decorates her office with an Israeli flag, and she wears an Israeli flag pin. This is in contrast to Barack Obama, who had to be bullied into wearing the flag of his own country, and who has a decades-long track record of close friendship with–and of absorbing religious and moral instruction from–an anti-Semitic pastor. Alaskan Jewish leaders have nothing but good things to say about her. If they knew of a problem, don’t you think they’d be complaining?

Buchanan is a disgrace, and it was a mistake to wear the button. But if wearing a Buchanan button for one day is proof of hostility to Jews, why don’t we condemn his publisher and the liberal cable network that keep him on their payrolls? Actually, condemning MNBC is a pretty good idea. Buchanan’s issues with Jews and Israel are sufficiently well documented to make the granting of regular television airtime utterly inappropriate and somewhat offensive.

How can American Jews be so blind about the intentions of conservative Christians like Sarah Palin? It has to be the result of a deliberate effort to ignore the facts. All over America, we are supporting Israel and the Jews financially and in prayer, and we even base our votes largely on Israel’s interests. More than Jews do. And we do it all gladly, with no expectation of reward or even the opportunity to proselytize. What more can we do?

Obviously, Christians are not Jews. We don’t agree on doctrine. We think Jews are mistaken about some of their beliefs. We would love to see them all wake up one day and decide Jesus is the Messiah. So what? Our money and our loyalty and our prayers have no strings attached. Aren’t benevolent Christians who help you all they can better than hostile leftists who call Israel “Palestine”?

There are Jewish leaders who do everything they can to prevent Christian money from reaching Israel. That’s beyond belief. If we can think you’re wrong and still give you hundreds of millions of dollars, can’t you think we’re wrong and take it?

“Hundreds of millions” is probably understating the case. The International Federation of Christians and Jews (Christians donating, Jews coordinating and distributing) has provided hundreds of millions, all by itself. And politicans we elect have the power to send much more.

If liberal American Jews think our money is tainted, they should be sending so much of their own, ours isn’t needed. But they aren’t. Show me a Jew other Jews aren’t helping, and then tell me a Christian shouldn’t pitch in. Tell me it’s wrong for a Christian to send money to fly an Ethiopian Jewish couple home to Israel. Take a look at the way oppressed Jews are living in filthy Ethiopian camps and then try to sell me. Tell me we shouldn’t be buying hot food for Holocaust survivors who are alone and too old to take care of themselves. I would like to hear your arguments. Christians have sent hundreds of thousands of Jews home to Israel. How many has George Soros sent? We are responsible for the existence of a substantial percentage of Israel’s population. How big a percentage? At least 5%. Imagine the US without Michigan and Minnesota.

Americans send charity money to people all over the world. How can it be possible that Jews are the only people we should not help?

You know what Jewry’s punishment will be, if American Jews don’t wake up and accept the Christian right as friends? NOTHING. We’re going to send money ANYWAY. How can you beat a deal like that? This is one of the few areas in which we begin to approach Jesus’s altruistic style. We’re doing something consistent with what we preach. Give us a break. Acknowledge it. The ancient Jews let the Gentile Cyrus build the second temple. As the Jews fled Egypt, they accepted money and treasure from their former tormentors, who feared the Jewish God. Surely my money is just as clean. Why discount one of the most beautiful developments in your history?

If we are on the side of Jews in Israel, it stands to reason that we are on the side of Jews in the US. We may differ on social issues, but in an increasingly anti-Semitic world, in which the people who agree with you politically get more hostile every year, how important is that?

If anything, Sarah Palin’s political and religious beliefs indicate she is very likely to be a diehard friend of the Jews. That ought to be obvious. Goebbels said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will perceive it as the truth. Funny how that doesn’t seem to work for the truth itself.

I Think It’s Possible

Sometimes I like to write about my experiences as I pursue my faith, to see how they compare to what happens to others. This is one of those times.

Aaron is an Orthodox Jew. He doesn’t allow broadcast or cable television in his house. And he has…boy, I hope I get the number right…six well-mannered kids with wonderful personalities. He’s glad he kept TV out of their lives. He says there is no way to restore lost innocence.

I think what he has done is smart. Feeding your mind television is like giving your body a diet of Skittles and vodka, and his kids lost nothing of value. But I suspect that innocence can be restored.

Over the course of my life, I’ve become jaded and cynical to shut out the pain of feeling things. It’s a defense I worked at deliberately. The world is a challenging place when you let yourself feel, and growing a thick skin can save you a lot of suffering. On the other hand, you lose the ability to gauge the effects of the things you say and do. Your empathy becomes masked. You find yourself saying and doing things which, on reflection, seem hard or trashy or cruel. It becomes hard to avoid offending people, and you find that you’re often embarrassed by the memory of your actions. How many times have I crossed the line here? More than I can remember.

It’s perverse. You develop the defense because you’re innately sensitive, and therefore vulnerable. compared to other people. You do it in response to behavior which you perceive as wrong. Then what happens? You find yourself behaving like the people you wanted to protect yourself from. Your sense of humor turns dark. You laugh at suffering. And people reward you for it. They laugh, too. They approve. The unspoken excuse is that everyone knows you’re joking. But sometimes you may find that you’re not joking. Or you’re not sure whether you’re joking.

It’s an easy trap to fall into. Since the late Seventies, American humor has been very cruel. It seems like there was a turning point in that era. Maybe it happened with Kentucky Fried Movie or The Groove Tube, or maybe it came later, with Animal House. I was a pretty nice kid, but after I was exposed to cruel humor on TV and at the movies, I developed the ability to make people laugh by saying things that were extremely vile. Worse than anything I’ve put in my writing. And even while I’ve been blogging and thinking of myself as a Christian, in private, I’ve said things that would curl your hair. And as I’ve said before, I’ve gotten tired of myself. And it wasn’t something I could quit on my own. It’s one of the things I ask God for help with. It may not seem important, but it is. If you can become convinced that everything you do or say is okay, because deep inside you don’t mean it, you may sink deeper and deeper into the behavior, until you reach a point where you do mean it, and you still think it’s okay. Then you’re a jerk. A bad person.

You may think I’m a nice person, even after all the things you’ve read here, but before you say it in a comment, ask yourself if you might have the same problem I do. You’ve been exposed to our sick culture, too. I may be nice by current standards, but that’s not a high bar to clear. Especially on the Internet.

Since I’ve been trying to correct my backslidden ways, I’ve noticed some changes in myself. I feel as if my emotions are being brought back to life. I think more about other people’s feelings. Things that wouldn’t have stirred me at all three years ago make my eyes mist up. I get much more pleasure out of doing things for people. And I become more and more aware of the things I’ve been doing wrong. I was trying to be a moral person already, but my compass was rusty.

I feel lighter. I feel less comfortable watching and reading things I know are bad for me. I’m not reformed, but I’ve improved a lot. Sometimes I’m a little shocked, when I think about the things I thought were acceptable. I was crazy.

My hope is that this is what is referred to in the Bible as “the fruit of the Spirit.” When I was a churchgoer, we heard a lot about the gifts of the Spirit, which means things like prophecy and discerning of spirits and so on. But those things don’t make you a good person. They don’t bring happiness or repair your life. The fruit are more important. Things like love and patience and generosity. And empathy. How can you have love, if you don’t empathize?

I think this is a good thing to write about. It’s easy to feel that the world is a certain way now, and that you have to conform to it or go live in a cave. It may seem that the baseness of modern life is inescapable. But it’s not. A lot of people manage to live on this planet without getting too dirty. A lot of them are actually successful and popular. The fear that tells you you have to fit in is an illusion. Maybe someone who reads this blog will read this and be encouraged. It’s good to change your behavior, but it’s better to be re-made, so the behavior isn’t natural to you any more. That’s what I think.

We’ll see how I do in the long run. If it works out, you’ll have no excuse not to try it yourself.

So…

Just heard from a friend. He and his wife are looking for better jobs, and he asked me to keep them in my prayers. I can do better than that. I’ll keep them in YOUR prayers.

Put in a word for them, if you have a minute.

Get Religion on the Dirty old Web

I rooted around online today, checking out such local churches as had bothered to create a website.

I’m very confused about the Assemblies of God. On the one hand, they have a lot of problems in their history, such as the Swaggart and PTL scandals. On the other, it seems like many of the churches are fed up with the monkey business, and they’re talking about things like the need to lead a righteous life.

I looked at David Wilkerson’s site, just to find out what he was about. This is the man who wrote The Cross and the Switchblade. He moved to New York City in the Fifties and started reaching out to gang members, and now he has a huge ministry.

I listened to a couple of his sermons. He makes me a little nervous when he talks about how he’s sure the end of the world is close. A lot of preachers have ended up embarrassing themselves, talking like that for fifty years and then dying without seeing any of it come to pass. But he talked very convincingly about living by faith, and unless I have him confused with someone else I listened to today, he said he never asks for money.

I turned on the TV at breakfast time, and a guy named Randy Brodhagen was on. At first, he came off as crabby and maybe a little crazy, but he gave a lot of good, stern advice about forgiveness. He doesn’t ask for money, either, which seems unusual for a charismatic these days.

Sometimes a tough preacher is what you need. In the past I’ve seen preachers make unrealistic promises (on God’s behalf) and then berate their congregations for failing to receive them. Your leg didn’t grow back? You must not be doing X, Y, or Z right. That’s fraud, pure and simple. But a preacher shouldn’t pander, either. Part of the job is telling people what they’re doing wrong. I thought Brodhagen made some good, useful points. I don’t know what denomination he is.

I listened to a sermon by a local pastor with a very nice church. Seems like a great guy, but I could not find the lesson in what he was saying. It’s strange; he’s an AG preacher, and usually, they’re very big on exegesis and so on. But his sermon almost sounded like a secular newspaper column. Not many scriptural references.

I found another local guy who talked about alcohol. He doesn’t drink, and he’s against drunkenness, but he won’t tell believers they have to be teetotalers. That seems reasonable and hard to fault. But he went off on an explanation of the water-to-wine miracle which was a little gross. He talked fast, so I may have misunderstood, but it sounded like he was saying drinking from the six jars, which were ordinarily used for ceremonial washing, was like drinking from a toilet. I must have gotten it wrong. It doesn’t make sense. I’m no zero-century Jew, but my guess is, they didn’t wash with dirty water. And Jesus wouldn’t serve someone from a dirty vessel.

I always thought that miracle was some sort of metaphor for filling people with the Holy Spirit.

I see the value a church website has. People like me are out there, thinking about going to church, and they’re reluctant to just drive around interrogating preachers. A church with an informative site and some sermon downloads is a lot more likely to get chosen for a visit.

I just can’t get over the power of the Internet as a tool for Christians. I’m so used to seeing filth and anger and depravity pour out of it. It’s amazing to see how wholesome it can be. You can read just about any Bible translation. You can listen to sermons. You can read Bible teaching. And you can shop for a church. Next time you find yourself caught up in obnoxious blogs and political feuds and other unhealthy Internet pursuits, look around for religious material. If you haven’t done it before, you’ll be shocked. And the best thing about it is that it’s habit-forming.

Six Hours of Silence

I appreciate all the comments and emails RE church choices. As you may have noticed, my server was down all day, so I haven’t responded yet. But I have not forgotten.

Eeny, Meeny…

I had a sad experience today.

I’ve been looking around online, trying to figure out which Christian denomination suits me best. I really need to start going to church.

I want a church that believes in the Holy Spirit, and that God is as active today as He ever was. And I can’t buy into the saints. That rules out a number of otherwise acceptable older churches. On the other hand, the heavy-duty faith-filled churches tend to get into craziness and greed. I want a church that accepts charismatics, but which doesn’t insist that everyone pray in tongues. And I’d like a church that has a sense of duty; a church that tells members you actually have to try to do the things Jesus told us to do, even if you are saved by grace.

While I was searching online, I came across a church started by a couple my mother knew. Back around 1980, they were teachers. They felt they had the calling, so they took off and went to Bible school in another state. My mother stayed in their house while they were gone. This was a tough time for her, so it was a real blessing to have the house. I remember staying there over spring break when I was in college.

They were charismatics. They studied under a well-known evangelist who used to appear on Trinity Broadcasting from time to time.

When they came home, they started a warehouse church. And it survived for quite some time. A few years back, I drove by the site, and I didn’t see the church. I assumed it had failed.

Today I found that the church had moved to a new, bigger site. Things appeared to be going great. I was so happy to see it. My mother thought the world of these people, and they were good to her, and she would have been pleased.

I wondered if I should go to the church and introduce myself; I’ve never met them. I wondered if it might be a good place to attend services. It would sort of complete a circle.

I took a look at an archived sermon. And the husband was at the front of the church, holding a notebook with a cover that looked like a giant banknote. A twenty or a hundred, maybe. As I understood it, they had printed notebooks like this up for church members, and they were studying from them. And he was talking about money. For the few minutes I listened, that was all I heard. Money, seed, tithe, offering, sowing, reaping. It was like taking a time machine, back to the days when I got so discouraged with the church, I couldn’t make myself go any more.

Maybe they know something I don’t. Maybe they’re right and I’m wrong. But it broke my heart to see that man waving that notebook. My mother admired him and his wife so much, and spoke so highly of them. And they were so brave, leaving their secure teaching jobs to become preachers. And after all these years of work, this is what it amounted to. I can’t believe this is a good result.

Yes, I believe we’re supposed to have prosperity. No, I don’t think we should wear hair shirts and live in huts. But like another preacher said in an article, God is not a vending machine. You give out of duty, and because you feel in your heart that it’s a privilege to give. You give to know the pleasure of being allowed to help people God cares about. I just can’t believe it’s right to go to church and donate money with wealth as one of your main goals.

That church is out.

I like Corrie ten Boom and Brother Andrew. I tried to see if I could find something resembling the Dutch Reformed Church, to which they belonged. But it has split over and over, and they expelled Brother Andrew for evangelizing. I can’t find out what denomination he belongs to now. He says he has no use for denominations. That’s fine, but where does he go every Sunday? I know he’s not sitting around the house.

It appears that the Assemblies of God has changed a lot. The church I used to belong to was somehow affiliated with them. At that time, they were too caught up in TBN-style money-and-miracles theology. But now they openly condemn prosperity preaching. This is the church to which Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker used to belong. Is it possible that they’ve reformed enough to be considered viable?

The Seventh-Day Adventists seem to be less scary than you would think. Most of their theology seems very reasonable, and I think they may be right about hell. But they’re a bit on the cultish side, and they tell you what to eat and so on. They seem like fine people, even though I don’t agree with their more-unusual ideas.

I took a look at the Foursquare website. This is Jack Hayford’s church. Seems pretty much okay, although somewhat inclined in the TBN direction. The thing I don’t like is that their website proudly features the biography of Aimee Semple MacPherson, while omitting the part where she pretended she had been kidnapped and was nearly indicted. You shouldn’t hide a thing like that. Makes you wonder what else they hide.

Someone mentioned the Reformed Church in America, which is somehow related to Dutch Reformed. This is Robert Schuller’s organization. A church with that much pomp scares me. If you can’t preach in a normal voice, and if Larry King actually likes you, it makes me uncomfortable. I’ll give Catholicism credit; the Pope wears some fancy outfits, but he doesn’t seem affected, and he doesn’t seek approval from people who don’t believe.

Some churches substitute theater and human effort for the active power of God; that’s the thing that worries me. A church the world accepts and praises seems unnatural. I’ve always thought that a church that demonstrates God’s power will provoke the god of this world and spark resistance and persecution. Going to a big, bland church that accepts everyone…well, to me, it seems like going to one of those churches the government of China approves. If people on the other side of the aisle like what you’re doing, maybe you should stop. It’s just an impression, though. I know virtually nothing about the Reformed Church.

It occurs to me that this is like any other kind of Internet shopping. You get so many choices, in the end, you become paralyzed.

I came across a couple of interesting concepts. They’re not churches, but they’re worth commenting on. One is the International House of Prayer, or “IHOP.” This is an outfit that keeps prayer services going at all times. If you walk in at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday, there they are. I really like that. Isn’t that a fantastic idea? Off the top of my head, I think prayer and Bible study are the things we neglect the most, and they’re the most powerful parts of a Christian life. What could be more powerful than constant prayer? The IHOP folks seem a little “out there,” though.

I found another group called Healing Rooms. They have offices where you can go and receive prayer for your illnesses. I’m not sick, but you can bet I’d want to go, if I had a real problem. Free prayer from total strangers who don’t owe you a thing? How can you turn that down? When I saw it, I thought it would be a great place to volunteer to help. But they probably don’t take walk-ins, and I’d feel a little funny, showing up and offering.

It seems like we don’t DO much, when it comes to prayer. Do most Christians even pray every day? I know there have been many days in my life, in years past, when I didn’t. And what percentage of Christians fast when they have problems? It’s pretty neat, having establishments whose sole purpose is providing a place for prayer. Prayer is powerful, right? If so, we should be doing it every day, with goals and direction. If not, why do it at all?

I checked out the Promise Keepers. Not a church, obviously. They seem okay, but they have offended people by letting gays show up at their events. They have an unusual policy. They say homosexuality is wrong, but that they will still allow gays to participate. I guess that’s a good approach. It’s a tough decision. Do you want to run people out of the church, when you believe they truly need help? On the other hand, you don’t want them becoming such a big part of the group, they start agitating to change the rules. You don’t want to have to celebrate Promise Keeper Fantasy Fest.

I think it’s pretty obvious that Catholicism is not in my future, but I did check out some Catholic TV, just so I could claim to be open-minded. The thing that struck me was that nobody on EWTN seems happy. They seem kind of worn out. Like a party that just lost an election.

When I used to go to church, I had a wonderful time. I went twice a week. I enjoyed the teaching. The music wasn’t that great, but I got through it. I enjoyed seeing people I knew. I loved the atmosphere; that relaxed sensation that God was present. I don’t get much of that flavor from Catholicism. I’m trying not to be critical. Don’t get out the comfy chair and the stuffed cushions. Catholics say it, too. Where do you think guitar masses came from? Priests were trying to compete with the wacky Protestants.

There used to be a charismatic priest down here who was considerably more upbeat than the EWTN crowd.

There has to be some healthy middle ground, between Robert Tilton and Mel Gibson. One thing I will never believe is that you have to belong to a certain denomination to be saved. God has given me a number of supernatural experiences. Surely He wouldn’t go to all that trouble without warning me I was on the way to hell for going to the wrong church. Surely there would have been a clue by now, with all my searching.

It seems like an odd thing is happening. Bible-believing Christians have more denominations than ever, yet we seem less inclined to be divisive. We tolerate each other better than we used to, I think. I sometimes wonder if the charismatic movement has brought people together. It started with Protestants, but some Catholics proudly insist one of their Popes got the ball rolling with a prayer. And now it seems to have penetrated many denominations to one extent or another.

I’ll figure this out eventually. I want a church, and I would also like to be of some use to God.

I used to believe you could measure a person’s goodness by what he didn’t do. Lately I’ve learned I was wrong. The Bible says your deeds will be measured in the afterlife. And you can’t get points just by naming all the sins you didn’t commit. You have to make some effort to improve the world. I would like to feel that I accomplished something of value on earth. Luckily–if that’s the right word–the opportunities are endless. The world is a smorgasbord of remediable suffering.

I suppose I should see this as a hopeful time for me.

Leah Improves

I heard from Leah Friedman this week. You may recall that she has a heart problem, and that she went into respiratory arrest and suffered oxygen deprivation to her brain. She has been recovering well, but she still has some language problems, and she has paralysis in her left arm and hand. Thankfully, she no longer walks with a cane.

She has been so upbeat in her communications that I didn’t realize she still had these lingering difficulties.

Leah credits prayer for her recovery, and so do I, and she seems especially grateful for the prayers volunteered by readers of this blog. I’m grateful, too. A lot of fine people show up here every day. Thanks for turning this blog into something that occasionally benefits humanity.

If anyone is still willing to offer a prayer, I feel sure she wouldn’t turn it down.

On the subject of changing things so they turn from harmful to beneficial, I have been trying to work a similar change in myself over the last couple of years, and I highly recommend it. I can’t explain it, but when you focus too much on doing things for yourself, it’s like lying on the couch all day, overeating and drinking beer. You start to feel sated but not satisfied. You start to become conscious that every additional thing you do for yourself adds weight to your burden. On the other hand, turning your efforts outward lightens your load and adds to your peace.

It’s easy to get the idea that all you have to do to make God happy is leave other people alone and accept salvation. But it’s not enough to avoid doing harm. If you’re not actively helping people, you’re missing out on half of the experience. So I’m always–okay, usually–grateful when I get a chance to do something for someone. You can’t help another person without helping yourself. And I have a lot of idle years for which to account. I tried to be good, as I understood “good,” but from my current perspective, I see that I missed opportunity after opportunity.

One of the things I have had on my prayer list for a couple of years (at least) is that I would become less critical and corrosive, and that I would become a person who affects others positively. I was getting sick of myself, to tell you the truth. To some degree, I still am, but I am enjoying the progress.

A reader complained that I seemed crabby since I started trying to improve my relationship with God. I was very surprised. I’ve gone back and looked at things I wrote three or four years ago, and “crabby” doesn’t begin to describe them. Sometimes I’m tempted to delete them, but I think they have a certain amount of value, because they show how things have improved.

Any time you draw closer to God, you’re going to encounter resistance and anger that don’t seem justified. I believe these are signs that you’re headed in the right direction. I think I should try not to take it personally when people react badly. They usually mean well, and they may be under influences they don’t understand.

Anyway, don’t forget Leah. She hasn’t forgotten you.