Live your theology.

Andrew Fisher started a blog, Man’s Chief and Highest End.  If you know Andrew, you’ll want to check it out.  If not, you should get to know him.  Solid dude.

From his blog:

Every time we sin, we take a slash at our relationship with God, which is our life-line. Consider for a minute the affects of sin on our every day life. I think most Christians would agree that when sin comes into your life it has a tangible effect. I would argue that most people don’t even realize just how much their relationship with God matters until they sin. When sin cuts a wedge between ourselves and God its a divide that can be felt. I find myself having the worst days, and being the most discouraged when I have allowed sin to enter into my life, and put a gash in my relationship with God.

Just like a cutter isn’t trying to commit suicide, the Christian isn’t trying to sever their relationship with God (not that they can…Praise God) but they are doing damage to it.

You can tell that Andrew is more serious and scholarly than I am because he used the above image for his post, when I would have gone with this:

The point being, there are a whole lot of anti-Christs, not just THE anti-Christ.

My wife & I had been leaning towards homeschooling when we realized that we couldn’t afford a private school.  As we studied the ins and outs of homeschooling and investigated the advantages and (perceived) disadvantages, we came across a DVD by Voddie Baucham called the Children of Caesar.  It seems to have been out of stock for a while, but Monergism Books has it available again.

I think this DVD does the single best job of debunking a number of home school myths along with laying out the case for the superiority of home school as a model of education & development in general.

Here’s a helpful post by Justin Taylor that details the theological differences that spell out why Mormons are not considered part of Orthodox Christianity.  Their denial of the the Trinity & monotheism couples with an unbiblical view of eschatology (among other things) to create a theology that can be called many things, but ought not be deemed Christian.

The reason the issue gets muddle in the minds of many is because Mormons (like liberal mainline “Christians”) use orthodox and biblical terms, but completely change what the terms mean.   Sort of like what an SBC armenian does when he preaches a sermon on Calvinism.  So if a Mormon says “I believe in Jesus”, what they mean to say is “I believe in Jesus.”*

*By Jesus we mean the literal offspring of God the father, who also sired Satan, Jesus’ brother.  Jesus is a god, but not the only God.  He’s a member of the polytheistic godhead.  In the OT, Jesus & Jehovah are the same God, while God the Father is referred to as Elohim.

So that’s a problem.  If I promise you some ice cream, but then fill a waffle cone with Brussels sprouts, you’ve got good reason to consider me as a liar.

I might insist “No, no, no.  See ‘ice cream’ really is another word for Brussels sprouts, but people like Ben & Jerry corrupted the word so that it’s associated with a decidely un-Brussels sprout product & I just found out the truth last year.”  If you know anything about ice cream at all, you can call me on it and move on.

The problem today is too many people have at best a vague idea of who Jesus is, but don’t invest in reading what He has revealed about Himself.  So when Mormons talk about Jesus, they assume that we’re all on the same page.  They’re a big lot of folks who don’t actually know what ice cream is.  That’s why there’s even a conversation about whether or not Mormons (or any other Jesus denying group)  should be considered Christians.  They aren’t.

If you’re further interested, here’s an article written by one of my professors on how DNA evidence refutes central Mormon claims.

Fly Casual? Sure. Worship casual? Well...

Would you consider your worship casual?  Is the way in which you go about worshiping God relaxed?  Sort of a time to chill, not be too heavy.  Just have a good time, stuff like that?  Is the way you worship casual?  Is it, to take words from the Directory of Publick worship a ” grave and seemly manner”, or is it more chill?

Pastor GW Fisher’s sermon from Sunday evening has been in my this week.  The thing that has been sticking with me is a point he made about the nature of worship.  Specifically, he looks at the casual style of worship so popular today, and suggesting that while the kids might be all right, a casual worship of God isn’t.

Most folks that I know who employ a laid back style or worship (I’m thinking of corporate prayers that begin with “Hey God… “, sermons that are more stand up than worship, etc.) go to one or two similar proof texts.  They point out that God is a God of Mercy, and doesn’t desire that we sacrifice our personalities and they also point to the fact that the veil between God and Man has been torn (Matthew 27:51) – so the formality of OT worship is gone.  Another popular idea is that our relationship to God is altered in such a way that we approach him as we would our natural father “Hey Abba” (Galatians 4:6).

While I wouldn’t dispute any of those passages, do any of them actually provide license for a casual worship in the larger context of Scripture as a whole?  In the sermon, the argument that our intimate knowledge of God through Christ gives us license to worship in a casual manner is tested against instances against some of the Scriptures where God most intimately reveals Himself:

After God declares his mercy (for thousands) in Exodus 34 to Moses we read:

And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.  And he said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.” (Exodus 34:8-9 ESV)

Moses responds not by saying “Whew, well that’s great God.  Say, I wanted to talk to you about my people…”  and then continue to chit-chat with God in a common fashion, like a couple of guys sitting at a bar, but from a position of worship (the KJV paints him as lying down as one dead) he pleads with God.

But that’s Old Testament.  What about how we respond to God now that Jesus is in the picture (as though God changed his mind about His holiness after the Incarnation)?  Consider how the apostle John reacted to being with Christ in Revelation 1:17-19

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last,  and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.  Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this.

John personally knew Jesus.  He personally saw the love of Christ.  He witnessed Jesus’ death and resurrection.  He heard with his ears when Jesus called God Abba.   He meets Jesus in His glory & he doesn’t respond “Hey! Jesus!  Awesome.”

Rather, he falls down like one dead.

In these examples, we see the response from men who met God in a very near sense.  I’m not advocating that we fall down dead as soon as prayer starts, but if Christian worship is a gathering of the church, where God is to be worshiped with reverence and awe (Hebrews 12:28-29) then how do we move from Moses & John’s response on the one hand and get to a casual worship akin to a book club on the other?