The Temptations (and Dangers) of the Secret Knowledge Club

Not long after Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension, one of the first "Christian" conspiracy theories began to blossom. You can see the roots of it 1st Corinthians 15, watch it develop in 1st John, and then see how it really blossomed in the early church. It came to be known as Gnosticism, and it was a big problem that hasn't completely gone away even now. 

 

A group of people in the Corinthian church began to say that they had been blessed with "secret knowledge," about "the truth" of Jesus, that no one else could see. That truth was that there really wasn't really going to be a physical resurrection of the dead. They believed the body was evil, so there was no need for a physical resurrection. Paul powerfully refutes these ideas in 1st Corinthians 15:12-19:

 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?  But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead   are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope n this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Paul tells the church at Corinth that their "secret knowledge" is going to send them to Hell. If there is no resurrection, they are without hope, with Christ, without forgiveness, to be most pitied. But this little heresy continues to grow in the church, until a few decades later when it has developed even further - and some are now saying that Jesus never came in the flesh in the first place! See the progression - first, the body is evil. Because the body is evil, there is no physical resurrection. And because the body is evil - then Jesus could have never actually had a physical body! So, the Secret Knowledge Club has now rejected the humanity of Jesus! This is why John wrote in 1 John 4:2-3:

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already."

Two things are happening here: the "Secret Knowledge Club" was not satisfied to simply deny the resurrection of the dead. The longer they talked, the more secret knowledge they seemed to obtain. Now, they denied the humanity of Jesus. And not only are they hell-bound - John now identifies them with the anti-Christ himself.

 

Now, the Secret Knowledge Club did not end there. They continued to push and grow over the years and decades, and their heretical beliefs continued to grow. What might have been a mistaken understanding of the resurrection turned into a full-blown movement in complete contradiction to Christianity. The Gnostics twisted the sayings and teaching of Jesus in such a way that the apostles wouldn't have recognized them, all the while saying that only they had the secret and special understanding of the way the world worked. The Gnostics are still around today - read a Dan Brown novel to see it. They were convinced that there was a conspiracy to cover up the truth of the world - and only they had the real answers! 

Unfortunately, the "Secret Knowledge Club," is still around, and you don't have to read Dan Brown to find them. There are unfortunately far too many professing believers in Christ who invest far too much of their time into the latest conspiracy theories, all the while believing that they have found the truth! They find some web site in a back alley of the internet that uses a little bit of scripture, a few current events, a heaping dose of suspicion toward "the powers that be," and a sprinkle of out of context facts to create conspiracies that sound like they might just be true. And as outlandish as they are, they seem to make more sense of the world than what you're being told. 

 

It feels good to have that secret knowledge, to understand things when no one else seems to understand them. It is so tempting and alluring, and it especially so right now, when the world just seems to be upside down. If everyone else would just "get it." If they'd just stop being "sheeple." If only they could see what you could see. If only they would do their research the way you have done your research. Here's the problem. It never satisfied. There's always another conspiracy. There is always more secret knowledge to gain. And the longer you invest yourself in gaining it, the further and further you move away from God's truth.

 

Don't join the Secret Knowledge Club. Get into God's Word instead. It will help you navigate every situation in life. It will give you all of the knowledge that you need, and it is not for a special few. It's for everyone. God has not hidden the truth. It is not a riddle that needs deciphering. It's not a code that needs cracking. It's not a secret that needs researching. It's right there, in black and white, just like it has been for 2,000 years. The knowledge you need is "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone" (Ephesians 4:20). And it is enough. It will satisfy you. 

Bible Versions

I've had a couple of conversations with people lately on the subject of Bible translations, so I thought it might be profitable to share some of my thoughts on the different translations, and which I think are the best ones. I know this is a sticky subject, and I'm going to try to be as charitable to all sides as I possibly can. In my Sunday School class and church, we have probably a half dozen translations on an average Sunday. I don't see anything wrong at all with this; in fact, in some cases, I think it can be very good to help understand a passage better. So I'm going to lay out some of the issues I see with Bible translations, and some of the things that might be good for you to think about if you're considering buying another Bible.

There are two major issues to think about when you get ready to buy a new Bible: accuracy and readability. The best Bible translations are a combination of highly readable and highly accurate, and I think there are several translations that fit that bill.

There are several things to think about when you're looking for the most accurate translation of the Bible. One is how the Bible was translated, and the other is from which texts the Bible was translated. The King James Version and the New King James Versions of the Bible, along with most of the versions that are more than a couple of hundred years old, were translated mainly from the Latin Vulgate Bible. At the time of their translation, these were the best texts of the Bible we had, and they are still very good. But since that time, older versions of particular texts have been discovered. These newly discovered, older texts, are remarkably similar to the ones we had before, but here and there, you will find some textual differences. Most of them can be accounted for through transcription errors (we didn't have copying machines back then), but some of them appear to be things that might have actually been added later, after the apostles wrote them. In most of those cases, they appear to have been added to help add to the understanding of a particular passage.  Nevertheless, in some of the newer versions of the Bible, you will find verses or parts of verses missing that were in older versions like the KJV. That's because they just can't be found in the older manuscripts.

Now, before we go any further, understand that very few of these "missing verses," actually change the meaning of the particular texts. And none of them take away any major doctrines from the Bible itself. If they've been taken from one place, don't worry. You can find them somewhere else. Whether you read a King James or an NIV, all of the doctrines of the faith are in there.

So the first thing you need to decide when you're looking for a Bible is whether or not you would prefer something translated from the Vulgate Bible, or something that was translated from the more newly-discovered, older texts. I believe that is a question that is up to each particular person to answer, based on your comfort level. If you grew up on the King James, and feel comfortable with that, and are uncomfortable with some of those parts of the KJV being missing from newer translations, you probably want to stick with the KJV, or if you want something more readable, the New King James Version.

If however, you believe that the older texts probably provide the most accurate rendering of what the apostles originally wrote, then you can begin looking at some of the newer translations. But there are several things to think about when you begin to do that. Specifically, how were these newer versions actually translated? There are two ways to do it:

1 - Word for Word - in this situation, the translators did their very best to capture what the original Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew texts were saying, by being as literal as possible with their translations. The upside to this it is more likely to be an accurate rendering of what the originals actually said. The downside is that sometimes things get lost in the translation, because languages don't always translate perfectly word for word. Here's a non-biblical example. In French, the phrase "com ci, com ca," literally means "like this, like that." But if you took French, you know that it doesn't mean that at all. If you ask me how I am, and I say "com ci, com ca," I don't mean, "like this, like that." I mean, "I'm doing ok."
Word for word translations include the King James, New King James, New American Standard, English Standard Version, and Holman Christian Standard Bible.

2 - Thought for thought - in this situation, the translators do their best to capture exactly what the originals meant, even if it doesn't perfectly capture what they said. The upside is, generally speaking, these translations are much more readable. The downside is, depending on how far you go with this process, it can become highly interpretive, and instead of saying what the originals say, the translators say what they think the originals were trying to say. Thought for thought translations include the NIV and TNIV, the New Living Translation and Living Translation, and the Message. Now, the NIV is much more literal than is the Message, so there is some variation on just how "thought for thought" a translation can be. The NIV is true "thought for thought." The Message is basically a paraphrase, based on what the author thinks.

I’ve separated these Bibles into two categories, but it’s probably better to put them on a continuum, from most literal to least literal. Here’s a graphic from Zondervan that does just that! (click to enlarge)

So now you have to decide which of these ways of translating the Bible the best way is. I can see arguments for both sides, but at the end of the day, I choose what I believe is the accuracy of word-for-word translation over the readability of thought-for-though translations. But that doesn't mean I think you need to throw out your NIV Bibles. There is plenty of room for weighing all of the factors here and coming to a conclusion that one of any number of translations might be best for you. For example, based on all of the factors listed above, here are my favorites.

Group A - English Standard Version, New American Standard Bible, and Holman Christian Standard Bible

I personally use the ESV. I’ve been using it for several years now, and really like it. I find it to be the best combination of accuracy and readability that I’ve found. But I also really like the HCSB. If I hadn’t been using the ESV for several years, and was looking for a new Bible translation, I would seriously consider it. The NASB is also a very good, literal translation, that might be slightly more difficult than the ESV or the HCSB. The ESV and HCSB also have excellent study Bibles, the two best I’ve seen.

Group B - King James Version, New King James Version
I will go as far as saying that the King James might be the greatest Bible translation of all time. It’s stood the test of 400 years of time, and has been used greatly by God during that time. The text of the KJV is highly accurate, using the texts that it uses. I find it to be a very difficult read though, because it was written in the language of its time and place, which of course is 17^th century England. The New King James is much easier, but is still retains some of the clunkier King James sentence structure. I also believe there are some places where newly discovered, older manuscripts improve upon the KJV manuscripts. If you are looking for a new Bible, I wouldn’t recommend the King James, for those reasons. If you already own a King James, and like it, I also wouldn’t recommend changing, especially since that is what you will hear from the pulpit in our church. I know it helps some people to be able to keep up with the pastor that way.

Group C - NIV and New Living Translation

Both of these translations are very readable translations, but I have some concerns about the thought for thought translation process. Nevertheless, I think both can be highly profitable for study. I used the NIV for years, and it was very helpful to me. Reed's first Bible was a New Living Transation, and I found it to be very readable. Let me also note that the NIV was revised last year, and the translators used more “gender inclusive” language. Here’s an example: where the original texts say “brothers,” the NIV now says “brothers and sisters.” When “brothers” was referred to in this way during the time of the Bible, it included women too, so the purpose of this is to help people understand that. But there are a lot of concerns, which I share, about the idea of adding things to the original word. If you are looking for a new Bible, I might not recommend the NIV, but if you already have one, I don’t think it’s worth changing over, either.

Group D - The Message

You will find people who absolutely love The Message, because it is very readable and engaging, and in many places, brings out the meaning of passages very well. However, there are places where you have to understand that the translator, Eugene Peterson, is really giving his thoughts on what he believes the passage means. It's much more subjective than any of the other translations you would find. I would use it only as a supplemental Bible, as a help when you come upon more difficult passages in other versions.

In an average week, I will probably study out of 6 or 7 of these translations, comparing them to one another to try to get a better idea of what the passage is saying, and which of the translations gets it most right. I use the more literal translation for my primary study, and use the more thought for thought translations when I need to understand a passage better. A great place to do this is www.biblegateway.com.

This was not an attempt to cover every issue of Bible translation, so I'm sure there are something I left out. If you'd like to ask questions, feel free. Otherwise, take what you need from this, and discard the rest. I hope this helps you the next time you go to buy a Bible.

On Sunday School - Diversity

This is the latest in a multi-part series on Sunday School. For more, click on Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

There's a little sign as you walk into our classroom, put there by the church, to denote a bit about who we are. It simply says, "Co-Ed 30-40, Wade Phillips, The Loft." The sign is simply there to give us some simple identifying marks of the people who are in the class. We are both men and women, between the ages of 30 and 40, I'm the teacher, and we meet in this room, the loft above the kitchen. There's only one problem with it. It isn't really true.

I mean, most of it is. I'm the teacher. We meet in the loft. Men and women are both welcome. But there's one little problem. I have people who range from their early 20's, all the way up to their 50's in my class. So the 30-40 thing is really not true. They come in all ages. And frankly, despite the misnomer on our sign, I'm pretty pleased with this fact.

As long as we have been a class, we have really made strong efforts to have diversity in our class. Now, I know this is a word that brings up some strong connotations, some positive and some negative. But we have felt from the very beginning that the more different kinds of people we have in our class, the better. To that end, we have people, both black and white, married and single, single again and married with husbands who don't come to church, couples with "full quivers" of kids, and couples with no kids at all, people who have lived in our area all their lives, and others who just moved here. We have people who are well-off financially, and people who are struggling, and people in between. And all different kinds of ages. It's something that we feel very strongly about.

Now, if you are familiar with church growth strategies at all, you may look at this with some amount of concern; maybe even a bit of horror. For many years, a strategy called the "homogeneous unit principal," has held sway in many church circles. There are a lot of different ways to define that very large term, but the basic idea of it, I think, is that people like to be around people who are like them. People will naturally gather with other people who are like them, so we should just use that fact, and grow with it. Now, there are obviously some ways in which this almost has to be true; it's hard for people who speak different languages to worship and study together regularly. I can even see a need for some age segregation in a Sunday School class; it would be difficult for an 8-year old to get the things we are talking about (though we've seen a few of those in class over the years, too.) But the bottom line is this: I believe diversity is not only acceptable, but that it is good and should be encouraged.

Here's what I mean. The Bible has a lot to say about the right kind of diversity. Revelation 5 talks about how God "ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation . . ." God made a point, not just to save as many people as possible, but to make sure they represented all of these different kinds of people. God made the diversity, he likes it, and he wants to redeem all of it. We should embrace it too.

Maybe the most important verse when we talk about the subject of diversity is this one: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28) What's the point here? It's simply that the differences that we see on the outside, those differences in race and gender, social and economic status, marital status, and age, among others, aren't really that important as compared to the similarities we have as people ransomed by Jesus. We all unite under the Cross. We all possess the same Spirit. And those similarities are infinitely more important than any differences we might have.

Now, I don't think it's enough just to say this: we must believe it in a way that it actually makes a difference. We must welcome people who don't look like us or act like us, or think like us. We must make sure the people in our class know that this is not a class for one particular "people group." We must teach on the importance of this kind of diversity, when it comes up in the texts we are studying together.

And here is what might be the most important thing: when we study the Word, those barriers come down. God's people unite around God's Word. This is why our studies are centered on the Word. It applies to everyone. It pierces hearts and minds, and cuts through joints and marrow, and gets deep inside people. And it shows us our similarities, while helping us appreciate our differences.We are not perfect at this. We're still working on it. But it's important to us.

Let me end by making something clear: the sign on the wall doesn't bother me. I'm fine with it as a guide. I just hope it never becomes a fence. I hope the common theme of the Gospel continues to help unite all kinds of people in our classroom, and for that matter, in Sunday School classrooms everywhere.

On Sunday School - Bible Study

This is the second of a multi-part series. For previous post, see On Sunday School.

It was November 2005, a Sunday. It was a Sunday I had been looking forward to for several weeks. It was the Sunday we began our new Sunday School class. We had been birthed from what was, at the time, one of the largest classes in the church, and I was excited about the prospect of several of the couples in that class joining me for a new adventure. I'd already confirmed that two couples and another woman would be joining us. I was excited to see who else would do so.

My excitement was tempered by reality that morning. No one else decided to join us, and one of the couples who would be a part of us, could not be there that Sunday. So including Crystal and I, there were five of us. It let the air out of my balloon just a little bit, to be honest. But looking back on it, I believe it was exactly what should have happened. More on that later.

I tell this story to tell you what I told those four who joined me that Sunday.  We were few in number, and our church had been in a state of plateau/decline for several years, so there was no real guarantee that we would ever grow. For all I knew, it would be us seven and no more until they finally shut us down. But I had made a commitment then, and I told it to them on this day.

Here's what I said, (paraphrased): "We're going to be committed to studying the Bible. I believe it is our only hope and our only chance. The things we read here are the most important things in the world, and we will study them. If we never grow larger than we are right now, that's fine. We are going to grow spiritually, if not numerically, because studying the Word will do that."

I'm actually certain I wasn't nearly so eloquent at the time. But that was what I believed then, and it's what I believe, even more so now, because I've really seen it in action over the last five years. I have seen people grow spiritually, and God has also grown our class numerically, exponentially even. Let me be clear; I take no credit for that (well, in my lesser moments I might). But I believe the commitment to study the Bible, deeply and systematically and in an expository way, has been blessed by God.

Looking back five years, I see now how ignorant of what I was saying that I actually was. I had spent a fair amount of time in Bible study classes that were that in name only. In other words, though they (usually) opened their Bibles, the lesson and the conversation often veered off into personal feelings and opinions, and psychology instead of theology. I had been in one class that I thought had really been serious about studying the Word, and I had watched that class shrink, rather than grow, because people thought it was "too hard." So my experience had been that classes that grew were classes that were light on the Bible. I was convinced that it could be otherwise, and even if it wasn't, that I must try anyway.

So that was my commitment. I was very fortunate to have fellow members who were in agreement with me, and who wanted to study the Bible with real depth, and ask real questions about meaning and theology and how that applied to their lives. We didn't know what would happen, but we all wanted to find out.

So our first commitment was to study the Bible, every Sunday. We weren't going to take weeks off to do testimony time, or read books on marriage, or do Bible trivia games. (Let me be clear; I'd not only done these in classes before, but recommended and supporting doing them. But not this time.) The Bible was going to be our guide.

Here's what I've learned though, since that time. It's not enough to say you're going to study the Bible. There are right ways and wrong ways to do it. Over the last 5 years, I've learned a lot. Here are some of the things that we have tried to do as we study, every single week. Admittedly, I do better some weeks than others, and many of these things, I have learned over the years.

1 - We study the Bible systematically. I'm not one to skip around the Bible a lot from week to week. My preference is to go through the Word, book by book, one at a time. But I've actually found in recent years that using the Lifeway literature (as a loose guide) has helped a lot. Whether we are studying a particular book, or a particular topic, I'm able to help people keep common themes and thoughts in the minds of my class over a several week period.

2 - We study expositionally. I'm no Biblical scholar, and I have no degrees in theology. But I do believe the best way to study scripture is to study it verse-by-verse, with the goal of trying to figure out what the passages mean. All too often, we decide on a topic we want to teach on, and then try to throw all the verses together that support what we already think. There is no growth in this. There is growth in looking at themes, and interconnections between verse and passages. In short, when you study expositionally, you study in context, with the goal of finding what God is saying.

3 - We explore the tensions. In every passage you can study, there are going to be phrases and words and sentences that, at least on their face, don't seem to make sense. Maybe they don't seem to fit with the rest of the passage. Maybe they seem to contradict something else that we know, or think we know, about God and about the Word. Whatever they are, we don't ignore them. We embrace and we explore. And in doing that, we grow, because we find more meaning and deeper nuances and connections that we didn't previously realize existed.

4 - We look for Jesus. I have come to realize over the years, that Jesus is the main character in every story and every passage that we study. He's not always standing center stage, but he can always be found, if you search hard enough. And this searching is always fruitful. The finding is even better. I try to make Jesus appear in every single lesson, sometimes from the beginning, sometimes riding in on his white horse to save the day, sometimes bubbling up from the surface over the course of the class. But he is always there, and he is always the main character.

5 - We center on the Gospel - I wish I'd realized this sooner than I did. I guess I always knew it, but I'm not sure I always really "got it." If we don't look at every part of the Bible through the lens of God's redemptive plan to save his people through Jesus' death on the Cross, then we will fall into empty moralism and legalism. We will tell people what they must do, without helping them understand where they find the strength and ability to do it. This is what too much of our Bible study and preaching has become. And it does no good. Even if it does manage to change some actions, it never changes hearts. Only the Gospel of Jesus, which rips out hearts of stone, and replaces them with new hearts that love God, can cause us to be the kinds of people we must be.

So these are my goals, every Sunday. To reach them, I spend hours in Bible study every week. It's a long, difficult, but incredibly rewarding process. I'm certainly imperfect, and have to admit my imperfections, and confess my lack of knowledge often. But we ask the questions together, and grow through the process.

Thoughts on Dying

As many of you already know, my grandmother passed away Monday. We buried her yesterday. She was a great, Christian lady, a wonderful grandmother, one of my biggest cheerleaders, with a spitfire of a personality to go along with a heart and a smile as big as anyone I’ve ever known.

We watched her die. She had been sick for some time, but seemed to recovering, until early Monday morning, when she fell, and developed a large bleed on her brain. It was just a matter of time at that point. She died about nine hours after she fell. Most her family, daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren, and grand in-laws were there to wish her farewell. It was difficult, but not without it’s joys, as we all shared stories about her life, and her last days. I’ve spent the last couple of days thinking a lot about her, and also a lot about the subject of death itself. I guess times like this do that to a person.

It’s hard to know exactly how to feel at a time like this; you just lost someone you love, so you feel sad. But when it’s someone who has lived a long, full life, and has been sick for so long, there is also some relief, because you know they are no longer in any pain. I think both emotions are appropriate, especially in light of what the Bible says about death itself.

Let’s make this clear; despite our sometimes romantic ideas about death and dying well, it is our enemy. Death is a result of sin. If there were no sin, there would be no death. Paul described death as “the last enemy.” (1 Corinthians 15:26) So it is an enemy. It is not, as Forrest Gump’s mom said, “just another part of life.” It is terrible, and no amount of comforting words will change the fact. Neither should we want that fact to be changed. Death is bad and death is the enemy. End of story.

But that’s not really the end of the story, is it? Because the same Paul who described death as the enemy also said, “To live is Christ, to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21) He said that he was torn between wanting to go and be with Jesus, and to stick around and live for him. I think that is probably as appropriate a feeling about death as I can come up with.

The Bible really gives us a mixed view of death. Sometimes it may be hard to figure out how to think correctly of it, because we’re told both that for the Christian, death is an enemy and death is gain. I guess the only thing that is proper to do here is to embrace that tension. Death is terrible. It hurts. It should not be. But it is also the beginning of something much better.

The resolution to this tension is found, I think, as so many things are, at the Cross. Here is where the badness of death meets the goodness of eternity. Jesus’ death on the Cross was one of the worst, most tragic things, that ever happened. The perfect God-man, completely innocent, murdered for crimes he did not commit. It was the most tragic death in the history of the world. Yet, out of his death, great good comes, and through his resurrection, death is dealt a decisive blow. Though death is still around, it is badly wounded, and it’s defeat is assured.

That’s why I’ve imagined my grandmother this week, standing triumphantly at the gates of Heaven, echoing the words of Hosea and Paul: “O death where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:54,55) As terrible as death is, it’s sting and it’s victory are gone, because those who believe are forever triumphant over death, as they reign in Heaven with Jesus. And this is another important point. We spent the last few days making little jokes about what my grandmother was going to say to my also-departed grandfather when she arrived. And we often think that Heaven is this great place, because our loved ones are there, and because there is no more sickness and pain and sin. And that is true, as far as it goes. But that kind of Heaven will never be ultimately satisfying unless Jesus is there. The reason death’s sting doesn’t affect us is because of what Jesus did, and because we get to be with Him when death comes. All other pleasures are secondary. My grandmother is getting the greatest pleasure that a person can possibly know right now; real, lasting, eternal fellowship with the God of the universe, who redeemed her, bought her with a price, and has promised her great reward forever.

And so we mourn our loss, but “not as those without hope,” because we have hope, not only that we will see her again, but that will see Jesus with her. And that will make it all worthwhile.

Complementarianism or Chauvinism?

I've been thinking a lot over the last few days about the complementarianism; for those of you who don't know, it's basically the idea that men and women have specific, God-designed, complementary, gender roles in their marriages and in the church. Some will even take it as far as to say those roles should carry over into every other aspect of life: work and politics being two specific examples. The two most obvious ways this plays itself out in Christian life is that only men are allowed to be pastors, and the man is considered the head of the household. Those are two controversial topics in and of themselves, to say the very least.

But I am a complementarian. I'm a converted one, but I am a complementarian. I grew up in denomination that ordained women, and didn't see a problem with it, and I never really thought much about gender roles in marriage growing up. I've become convinced, that in those two particular situations, the Bible does prescribe different gender roles. The most all-time most popular posts on my blog are about just these subjects.

Nevertheless, I'm very nervous about much of what I see in in the complementarian community. I think it's led to excesses that subjugate women in ways the Bible never said. The Internet Monk has recently spoke about this topic a bit; I've also been thinking about it for my own personal reasons, in my marriage, and with the pending birth of my first daughter.

Let me give you an example from my own life: A couple of years ago, our church did the "Every Man's Battle" study, a look at how to best avoid the temptation of lust. Though I didn't like everything about the study, I found it generally pretty helpful, and still use some of the techniques I learned from it in my daily life.

My problem came, not as a part of the study, but at the end of it, when we had a guest speaker come in to talk to us about lust. He's a guy that I won't name, because I know him, and respect him and his thoughts in some areas. But the theme of his talk, basically, seemed to be that we shouldn't lust after women because we were sinning against their fathers or their husbands.

Here was the argument: When you lust after a woman, because they are under that authority of a man, then you primarily sin against that man. If that woman is married, you've sinned against her husband. If she is not married, you've sinned against her father. If she has neither father nor husband, then you've sinned against the church, who is the primary authority over her in the absence of the other two, according to this line of thinking.

Now, I just don't see the Biblical warrant for that. I think it's stretching the text, at best. And it does the very thing that critics of complementarianism say they do; subjugate women to a role of lesser person. Is a sin against a man greater than that against a woman? I think I can answer that with an unreserved no. The whole idea strikes of chauvinism disguised as complementarianism. I don't want to judge any one's heart, but that's the way this kind of think will certainly be perceived.

The complementarian position is supposed to be one that says men and women are equal but different. Any complementarian position that does not completely affirm the equality of women in the eyes of God is just plain wrong. Those who advocated complementarianism are going to get lots of slings and arrows anyway. We need to be more careful.

Guidelines for Thelogical Discussion in the SBC

I spent some time talking via e-mail with a friend today about theological discussions. So often, those discussions, even among friends and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, turn ugly, and nothing is ever accomplished. I think this is, in many ways, the current state of the Southern Baptist Convention. We've forgotten how to disagree in a Christlike way. I wrote a few things down for my friend about what I think the ground rules of theological discussions with friends should be, and reproduce them, with a few alterations, below.

Let me say before I go any further, that these are guidelines only for fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and specifically fellow Southern Baptists. I think they can be used on any issue, from Calvinism, to tongues, to millennial views. I don't think all of them would apply well to discussions with people outside our own SBC circle, though some of them certainly would. And I don't think they would apply well to people outside the framework of orthodox Christianity, though again, I believe some of them would. Either way, here they are.


1 - Rally around things you can agree on. Remember, there are more things that you do agree on than that you don't. In most theological arguments, the lines between the two camps are not as great as we often imagine them. We have more in common than we have different. In most of those arguments, fellow Christians have too much in common to spend a great deal of time dwelling on what you disagree on.

2 - Leave open room for the fact that you might be wrong and they might be right. Don't get me wrong: hold on to your convictions, but do so with the kind of humility that understands the depth of your depravity. Neither you, nor I, nor Al Mohler, nor Paige Patterson, nor Johnny Hunt, nor Jerry Vines, have all the answers. We can learn a great deal from those we disagree with.

3 - Choose to rather be wronged by your friends than have your voice heard. This is a hard one, but if your friends want to give their opinions on a particular matter, but don't want to hear yours, so be it. You don't have a right to be heard. Choose to love rather than demand your rights. That's the Jesus way.

4 - Show lots of grace. Sometimes in these arguments, it easy to forget that Christianity drips with the grace of God. God takes sinful people who don't love him, don't desire to be his friend, and are openly in rebellion against them, and gives them so much grace that they come to his side. We ought to be able to do the same, forgiving wrongs against us because God did the same for us. You might also want to think about how much grace the other person is having to give you just to put up with you.

5 - Remember that God changes hearts, and you don't. We can argue with someone until they're blue in the face, but as my pastor is known to say, "Anything you can talk someone into, someone else can talk him out of it."

6 - Pray. Pray that God will open their hearts to discuss the issue with charity, and pray that He might show you where you don't quite understand things. I've found my study of theology to be a journey, and I've continued to refine my beliefs as I've studied it. There are some ways where I've probably moved back more closely to what I believed at the beginning of the journey. Just remember God might change your mind on something one day.

7 - Remember that one day we'll laugh at how wrong we all were. We see through a glass darkly now, but one day we will see face to face, and our understanding of God will dwarf anything the greatest theologians in history have ever known. When we see that, I think we'll find rather silly some of our arguments now.

If you can think of any other ground rules, please feel free to leave them below. I'm sure I'm leaving out some good ones. But maybe, just maybe, these might be a good start toward charitable discussion within our circle.

Blessed Assurance

I don't think there is a Christian who at some point, for at least a little while, hasn't doubted whether or not he or she was actually saved. Some will tell you this is a bad thing, that Christians ought to never doubt, that they ought always be confident in their salvation. I'm not so sure I agree with that. I think sometimes a little bit of doubt about their eternal destination can cause Christians to reexamine themselves, to make sure that they are what the profess to be. I'd rather have a true Christian who isn't sure about his salvation than a fake Christian who has false assurance that he is saved. I'm afraid that on many of our church of rolls we have a lot of second category.

The Bible lays out a bit of a dichotomy on this issue. In 1st John 5:13, the apostle says, "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life." This gives us the impression that salvation is something we should have some assurance about, that we should know and feel confident about. But 1st Corinthians 13:5a says, "Examine yourselves, to see whether or not you are in the faith. Test yourselves." That seems to give a totally different impression, that we must constantly be looking at ourselves to make sure that which we first confessed is indeed true.

Now, I don't think these two verses are in conflict at all. I think they compliment, rather than contradict one another. When John writes that he wants those who believe in Jesus to know they have eternal life, he does so at the end of a long letter that spells out what real Christians look like. Those include things like loving one another, not loving the world, and believing in Jesus, among other things. So when he says, "I write these things . . . so that you may know you have eternal life," he's saying that you can know you have eternal life by whether or not you are doing the things that I've just written about. That perfectly dovetails with the command in 1 Corinthians to "Examine yourselves." The way we can be assured of our eternal life is by examining ourselves to see if we are living in a way that is in line with the way the Scriptures define Christianity.

Now, no one does this perfectly. None of us will be able to look at the commands of the Bible and say, "Yeah, that's me." Any of us who are honest will compare ourselves to that standard and find that we come up woefully short. That doesn't mean all hope is lost though. In his excellent book, "Systematic Theology," Wayne Grudem has three questions we can ask ourselves that will go a long way in giving us assurance of our salvation. Here are those questions, with my comments.

1- Do I have a present trust in Christ for salvation? It is important that we don't look to some decision we made however many years ago as proof of our salvation. We must look at our present lives to see if they're living like the decision we made. But the question is not, "Am I without sin," or even, "Do I feel like I'm saved," it's "Do I trust at this moment that Christ is my only hope of salvation, and am I currently in repentance over my failure to live up to that?"

2 - Is there evidence of a regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in my heart? In other words, can I see signs that tell me grace is at work inside me? Again, not "Am I perfect?" but "Are there signs of the Spirit in me?" This is a question that it might also be helpful is we ask other people. Sometimes, others can see evidences of grace in ourselves that we can never see.

3 - Do I see a long-term pattern of growth in my life? Look back at what you were like before you were a Christian. Are you that person now? Have things changed for the better since then? Have you found victory over some of the sins that beset you earlier in your life? That ought to give you a good feel for what you eternal state is.

Now, the question is: What if I do all of these things and still don't have assurance? I think it depends. Sometimes, assurance doesn't come for a long time, even for those who've really been saved. But I think the solution is the same whether you are saved or not: repent and count on Jesus to be your rock and your salvation. Treasure him as the most valuable thing in your life. Ask him to forgive you again and again and again. And pray for assurance that he is truly yours.

Here's a final point. No one can give you real assurance about your salvation except God himself. The same Holy Spirit that convicts and draws you to Christ can give you confidence that you have an ongoing relationship with him.