Paul

Are You Peter or Paul?

Holly Ordway — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:07:52 -0800

Saints Peter and Paul – the steady fisherman and the fiery Pharisee, the devoted disciple and the persecutor-turned-apostle. Every congregation is filled with Peters and Pauls – which one are you?

In Peter we see the Christian who has been raised in the church. Peter has no dramatic conversion experience, no abrupt shift from darkness to light; rather, he has spent a long time in the company of those who follow the Lord, and he has come to know that Jesus is the Messiah, the Anointed One of God. Peter’s faith is not dramatic, but it is solid – so much so that our Lord declares that the faith he shows, the acknowledgement that Jesus is the Christ, will be the rock upon which he will build the Church.

Not that the path has always been straight – definitely not! For only moments after he declares his faith, he tries to dissuade Jesus from the way of the Cross, only to be sternly rebuked. And though his protestations of eternal loyalty are loud, he fails Jesus in the end, and as our Lord goes to his death on the cross, Peter denies that he even knows him.

Peter follows, and stumbles, but he gets back up again, always with his eyes on our Lord. Better than any of the saints, perhaps, he knows the full experience of Christ’s forgiving grace.

I have friends who are almost wistful about not having a dramatic “conversion story.” Their journey seems almost boring: lots of ordinary faithfulness, mixed in with falling away and coming back, and carrying on. But wait! St Peter shows us that this “ordinary faithfulness” is anything but ordinary. It is to Peter that Jesus gives the great task of ministry: “Feed my sheep.”

In Paul we see those Christians who had a “Damascus Road” experience. Perhaps they were rebels against God, or contemptuous or hateful toward Christians (like me), embracing atheism with the zeal that Paul persecuted the early Christians. Or perhaps they were simply mired in indifference and apathy – until the season in their life when everything changed. Like Paul, headed to Damascus with other plans, until our Lord made an appearance and everything, absolutely everything changed.

Paul’s conversion is so sudden that the other Christians don’t even trust him at first; isn’t this the guy who was ordering us to be thrown into jail, or killed? But the same zeal that made him the greatest enemy of the faith also, when re-oriented by our Lord, made him its greatest missionary and theologian.

When it comes to the way that we came to our faith, each of us is either a Peter or a Paul... which makes me appreciate the wisdom of the Church in honoring these two saints equally. Their key moments of faith – the Confession of St Peter, and the Conversion of St Paul – are celebrated a week apart, on January 18 and January 25, respectively.

If we look ahead a little bit in the Church calendar, we are reminded of another great truth about these two aspects of the Christian life.

There is no separate day for St Peter and a different one for St Paul. Instead, June 29th is the combined Feast of St Peter and St Paul – always together, the two sides of the coin.

Because we are, all of us, both Peter and Paul.

Even a Peter, who has grown up in a Christian family and gone to church from the very beginning, must at some point make a conscious decision to accept Christ. No one inherits Christian faith; it is a personal choice. Do I follow Christ, or do I follow my own will? That moment is a Paul moment.

Even a Paul, who has made a clear, dramatic choice to follow Christ, must then learn what it means to actually live that out. The Damascus Road moment is just that – a moment. Following that is a lifetime of listening, learning, praying, obeying – making mistakes, repenting, being forgiven. Every Christian life is Peter’s life.

I am a Paul – learning how to be a Peter, with God’s help.

Principles and Preferences

Stan Jantz — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 16:27:50 -0800

While getting ready for church last Sunday morning, the first Sunday of 2011, I had the television tuned to Charles Stanley. Not Andy Stanley, Charles’ hip pastor son who is the envy of young ministry leaders everywhere, but the senior Stanley, with his ill-fitting hairpiece, and much-too-big suit.

You don’t get cool relevance from Charles. He’s strictly old school, which is to say he doesn’t coddle his audience by trying to make them feel like they’re at the center of the world. Like the apostle Paul, Charles Stanley is all about “Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

What caught my attention on this particular Sunday was Stanley’s insistence that the follower of Christ needs to be about principles, not preferences. This is very un-hip and very non-emergent, which is why it got my attention. Talking about principles is like talking about absolute truth, and everybody knows how irrelevant that is today. It just doesn’t fit with a culture that likes to have options and choices. In other words, preferences.

I have to admit that I like having options and choices as much as the next person. I don’t like to be boxed in and told what to believe. Well, that’s fine if I’m considering what movie to rent, what dinner to order or what candidate to vote for. Entertainment, food and politics are mostly about preferences. But when it comes to my life with God and how He wants me to live, Charles Stanley reminded me that it’s all about principles, but not just any principles. The principles we are to stand on are God’s principles, designed for our benefit and His glory.

I’ve been thinking about a theme or some kind of resolution for 2011, and I want to thank Charles Stanley for helping me to identify one. Rather than falling back on my feeble and imperfect preferences, I want to go through the year standing on the perfect principles of God as found in His Word. That doesn’t mean I can’t develop my gifts and enjoy my relationships with family and friends. In fact, everything I do and everyone I know will be better served if I focus on God’s principles first.

So where do I start? There are hundreds—maybe even thousands—of life-giving principles in Scripture. I could go crazy trying to find all of them and live by them. In fact, I guarantee you I would fail, and it wouldn’t take long. That’s why I’m going to emulate Charles Stanley and the apostle Paul before him and make “Jesus Christ and him crucified” the foundational principle of my life in 2011. This is going to be my resolution.

I want to be a better writer, a more loving husband and a more trustworthy friend. I want to read more and learn more about my community and the world. But none of these things matter when compared to focusing on and knowing Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I want to put Him at the center of my life. I want to get to know Jesus better through my daily encounter with the Word of God, through my prayer time, and through the convicting presence of the Holy Spirit in my life.

In the first chapter of his letter to the Colossians, Paul summed up the rational behind the Christ-centered life. Jesus is it, the one and only, the preeminent one who deserves nothing short of single-minded focus and attention:

He is the image of the invisible God,the firstborn of all creation. For byhim all things were created,in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whetherthrones ordominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. Andhe is before all things, and in him all thingshold together. Andhe is the head of the body, the church. He isthe beginning,the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. Forin him all thefullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven,making peace by the blood of his cross.

The Importance of Writing Stuff Down

Manuel Luz — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:49:33 -0700

It is less a contrast than it is a similarity. Two men, both highly educated Jews, both bold and passionate preachers of the message of the Gospel, both leaders in the first century Church. Paul and Apollos were both used by God to build His Kingdom in the precarious, turbulent infancy of the Christian faith. But only one of these men still has a ministry today. Indeed, Paul’s contribution to the New Testament is central to our understanding of the Gospel.

Why is Paul’s influence greater than that of Apollos? Spiritual calling aside, there seems a simple reason: He Wrote Stuff Down.

I’m a big Writer of Stuff. I have To-Do lists, archives of song lyrics, sermons and speeches, unpublished books and written meanderings. According to the stats counter, my personal blog site just hit 100 blog entries last week. I even have an archive of carefully documented calendars that stretches back to my freshman year in college, which I can’t bear to throw out. What if I suddenly need to know what I did during the summer of 1984?

Paul’s writings, obviously, have a more influential gravitas. But the point is, his passion and understanding of the heart and mind of Christ were documented in a way that move us two thousand years later. And we cannot say the same of Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew and bishop of the Corinthian church, who’s fingerprint on the first century church is no less deep.

I share this in part because I know there are a lot of frustrated writers out there. People hitting me up to find out how to get this Thing they’ve written published. And while I might be a helpful encouragement and a catalyst to them, the main thing I tell them is to just to keep writing. Not everyone is called to be a “published author” (whatever that means these days). That’s not the point of writing. Your audience may be only a hundred or a dozen or your spouse. In my experience, the act of writing is a creative and cathartic act that you do because you must do it. And of course, there is the vertical component—God is the audience for everything we do.

About fifteen years ago, after a decade of gentle but constant prodding, my father began work on his memoirs. He is among the first generation of Filipino American immigrants, and arrived in the US as a teenager, prior to the Great Depression. Poor but educated, his story is one of unsettling desperation, human perseverance, life-threatening bigotry, surprising romance, personal triumph. I know this in large part because he took the time to write his story. My cousins and I got together and self-published his modest book, Five Dollars in Change, and we’ve shared it with family and friends who were all grateful for the amazing stories previously untold.

Recently, I stumbled upon the semi-autobiographical novel of Filipino writer, Carlos Bulosan, entitled America is in the Heart. Moving, heartbreaking, revealing, it is The Grapes of Wrath for the Filipino American. As I read his account of life in the 1930s, I realized that Bulosan’s life mirrored my father’s in so many ways, from the incessant prejudice he experienced, to the overwhelming hopelessness felt by his people, to the enduring belief in his ideals. I realized that his book and my father’s dovetailed in many ways. It should be required reading for any Filipino American living today.

Dad passed away almost ten years ago now. And I am eternally grateful to him for many things. But one of his enduring legacies that I can pass down to my children and to their children is the story of his life. Ultimately, his book will help us understand him, and in the process, help us understand ourselves.

And all because he Wrote Stuff Down.

Quit Your PR Obsession, Christians

Brett McCracken — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:46:42 -0700

Last night I attended a screening of Dan Merchant’s new Michael Moore-esque documentary, Lord Save Us From Your Followers. It’s a film about how Christians have a huge PR problem and how “the culture wars” are exactly the opposite of what Christians should be battling in this world. The real war concerns things like poverty, injustice, and loving the unlovable, suggests Merchant. If Christians just loved better, befriended drag queens, and washed homeless people’s feet, our image crisis would go away.

But would it gain any new converts? That is the question (one of the questions) I kept asking myself.

After the film, there was a discussion involving four participants: Merchant, Everett Piper (President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University), Bill Lobdell (author of Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America and Found Unexpected Peace) and Michael Levine (CEO of Levine Communications and proudly secular).

Levine was the most vocal in the discussion, cynically asking the audience from the outset to “raise your hand high if you’re a Christian… Now raise your hand high if you think I am going to hell because I’m an atheist.” He then explained that a conversation is completely impossible when one of the parties believes in their heart that the other is hell-bound.

As unfair as that is, Levine did make a few interesting points. “Why would I believe in a religion or a God whose followers have no noticeable differences in their lifestyle?” asked Levine, making the point that he has a lot of close Christian friends but none of them live substantially better, more peaceful, more loving lives. And then he used this illustration:

“Imagine there is a gym and you have two groups. One group goes to the gym every day and one group never steps foot in the gym. But the group that goes to the gym is just as fat as the group that stays home. So what does that say about the gym? Why would I want to believe in that gym?”

Point well taken. It is very problematic that so many “Christians” look and act the exact same as anyone else.

But I think Piper made a good point in response when he said that one shouldn’t look first to Christians but rather to Christ in order to evaluate the appeal of the Gospel. He said something like, “Imagine you want to know what a fish is like. You go to a beach and what you see are a lot of dead, smelly, decaying fish. Should you then surmise from this that ALL fish are like this, or that this is how the “ideal” fish should be? Of course not! It’s dishonest to judge the truth of something by looking at the ways in which broken humans have distorted it.”

Yes, there are broken, corrupt, annoyingly off-base representations of Christianity. We are all very aware of that. But that doesn’t change the truth of the God Christians worship. I’m so tired of Christians falling all over themselves with apologies for the oppressive scourge that Christianity supposedly is. Sure, we should acknowledge and own up to the bad things we’ve done. The Crusades and the Inquisition DID happen. All sorts of other sordid things have been perpetrated by Christians throughout history. Guilty! We humans are broken, flawed, selfish, confused people who make mistakes. Even Christians.

But it’s not about us!

We won’t win ANY followers to Christ by focusing our case primarily around how great or loving or happy Christians are. We must focus our case around Christ himself; The gospel; What God has done, is doing, and will do for the world, regardless of how helpful or unhelpful we Christians are along the way. God will do what he will do. He invites us to participate in his work but none of it hinges on our abilities or fortitude (thanks be to God!) outside the power of the Holy Spirit.

We need to stop worrying so much about having a favorable image or being liked! The success of God’s work in the world is not dependent on how people in 2009 perceive Christians. If we believe God is sovereign we need to have confidence that he can overcome all the loudmouth bigots who go around saying idiotic things in the name of Christ (not that we shouldn’t chastise and discipline those loudmouth bigots among us).

We need to quit worrying about how the worst among us are ruining our reputation and instead focus on living Christ-like lives in accordance to scripture and God’s will. We need to worry about our own transformation first and foremost. Are we new creations?

We should love others and ease the suffering in the world not because it will be better for our PR, but because the Bible tells us to and because the Spirit inside us spurs us to outward action. We should exude charity and patience and peace in our dealings with others not because it will win us admirers but because it is the Christian thing to do.

We need to be humble, yes, but not tepid. We should have confidence in the God we serve, the gospel we believe, and the church that we are.

In the first chapter of Ephesians, Paul describes the “immeasurable greatness” (v. 19) of Christ and his “rule and authority and power and dominion” (v. 21) over all creation, but then he adds that God gives Christ—and Christ’s subsequent authority over all things—to the church (v. 22), which is Christ’s body, “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (v. 23). At Christ’s feet, the world cowers and all creation converges. And as the church—as the body of Christ—we share in this unique, cornerstone-of-creation destiny.

In light of this reality, how could any Christian lack the confidence to be the church in the world—a body constantly spreading itself outward and expanding the reach of the Gospel? How could we ever worry that the fate of Christianity rests on this generation and these immediate challenges, when we know that we are part of something that will outlast time? I like what C.S. Lewis says in his essay, “Membership”:

The structural position in the church which the humblest Christian occupies is eternal and even cosmic. The church will outlive the universe; in it the individual person will outlive the universe. Everything that is joined to the immortal Head will share his immortality… As mere biological entities, each with its separate will to live and to expand, we are apparently of no account; we are cross-fodder. But as organs in the Body of Christ, as stones and pillars in the temple, we are assured of our eternal self-identity and shall live to remember the galaxies as an old tale.

What an amazing thing! Christians need to wake up to the wonder and privilege and shocking power of what they believe and who they worship. We need to stop looking nervously to the world to define who we are and start looking to the Bible and praying for God’s wisdom. We should spend less time apologizing for all the ways we have failed and spend more time rejoicing and sharing with others the ways that Christ is victorious (chiefly: the resurrection!). And rather than pleading with the Lord to “save us from your followers,” we should simply pray, “Lord, save us.”

Because that’s what he does. And that’s why we should care.

Fundamentalism: The Serial Killer of Biblical Interpretation

John Barry — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 06:00:00 -0700

Many fundamentalists thrive on violently murdering honest biblical interpretation. I have seen it happen to others and myself: a sound scholastic reading of the Bible is presented and is denied because it doesn’t fit within religious parameters. Let’s talk about the fundamentalists, the serial killers of sound biblical interpretation, and see whose the real literalist: me or them?

First, let’s define fundamentalism:

1. A movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching
2. A movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary

Now, from Merriam-Webster’s definition, I could almost (not quite) classify myself as a Christian fundamentalist. However, I don’t think the fundamentalists I know really understand what it means to be a literalist. If we are literalists, then we need to realize a few things, like the fact that God has spoken in other ways besides for His written Word (the Bible is not our only source for knowing about our God). Most fundies I know would say, “No way! God's ultimate plan of redemption is in the Bible and therefore there is no need for Him to speak anywhere else.” Well, there is a few problems with this kind of strict Bible-only view of God’s revelation. Let’s use the Bible as our starting point to show why this view murders honest biblical interpretation.

In Rom 1:19–20, when Paul is convincing the Romans why idolatry and worshiping Graeco-Roman gods is wrong, he does not appeal to Scripture, but to creation: “For what can be known about God is plain … because God has shown it to [everyone]. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So [idolaters] are without excuse” (ESV). When anyone makes a choice to not follow the true God, Yahweh, as He is revealed through His Son, they are without excuse, not because He revealed Himself in the Bible, but because He revealed Himself in creation.

Oh, but the serial killing of this belief about how God speaks continues on—just look at how many times Acts 17 has been brushed over, or excused. Paul during his sermon at the Areopagus (commonly known as Mars Hill) quotes the Greek poet-philosophers Epimenides of Crete and Aratus (Acts 17:28) to explain the true God, Yahweh, and His plan of redemption through His Son. He also claims that the inscription to an unknown god on one of their altars is a reference to Yahweh (Acts 17:23). Paul synchronizes (on a very simple level) the religious beliefs of the Areopagus philosophers (and the Greeks in general) with Christianity. For Paul, God has revealed Himself in many different ways.

The above examples show that most fundies are actually not literalists. Because if they were, they would have a lot broader understanding of how God reveals Himself.

So, am I a biblical literalist? In the sense that I interpret the Bible based on what it actually says, Yes! But, am I a fundamentalist? Not in the sense of affirming a set of principles outside the Bible that deny things like God’s revelation happening in creation and other literature as well. But I am a fundamentalist in the sense that I affirm the basic set of principles God has commanded me in the Bible. The Bible is fundamental to Christian life and teaching, but as the above examples show, most fundies interpret the Bible within their set tradition and in doing so often don’t allow for it to be read literally. Please make the serial killing of honest biblical interpretation stop.

What type of fundamentalist are you? Will you let the Bible speak for itself? Any thoughts?

Culture & Natures

Nick Bogardus — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:44:15 -0800

I was reading the interestingly-titled and well-written "Why Are There Never Enough Parking Spaces at the Prostate Clinic" by Carl Trueman at Reformation 21 and a sentence in his last paragraph had an important conviction/reminder for me as a Christian who somewhat of a cultural commentator.

Trueman says, "Alternatively, I could try to move out of my own little world, start thinking less in cultural and more in biblical terms. I could become less obsessed with particularities and more concerned with universals. I could engage less with the accidents of culture and more with the substance of nature." [emphasis mine]

That is something I wanted to bring up, especially among all of the cultural conversation on this site. We can get so busy scanning our culture like iTunes' "cover view" feature or flippantly analyzing every cultural flash in the pan and completely miss the point as Christians. As Christians our lives are lived in view of eternity, in view of the one and only God who creates and sustains and who has revealed Himself to us in the Bible and continues to do so every day. These facts carry with it some fundamental truths that we, in all of our contextualizing bluster, can skim right over: God has a nature and we have a nature. That is exactly where the greatest Christian missiologist/apologist/evangelist started his Gospel presentation in the last half of the first chapter of Romans.

As we look at our culture, are our spirits provoked (ESV), distressed (NIV), or troubled (HCSB) as Paul's was (Acts 17:16) when we look at the idols that are created, bred, and worshipped all around us? When we offer insights or diagnosis, are they done so through the lens that Paul uses in Acts 17 and Romans 1 where he begins his analysis with a view of who God is and how we've looked to other gods, other saviors? I think that having that Biblical view of the world is our true north and keeps us looking to, thinking in light of, and living faithfully in the eternal framework we believe that we are in. More so, it keeps us directing the gaze of those who hear us upwards and outwards, instead of downwards and within as our Western culture demands.

If we miss that, we're just contributing to the noise. If we miss that, we won't understand our need for Jesus - and therefore others won't either - and our cultural analysis will be a dire misdiagnosis. If we miss that, all of our talk of culture and contextualization is about as consequential as Wayne's World.