The New Bereans

I have come to the conclusion that no matter what denomination you find yourself in, the way you study God (theology) falls into one of two camps Equation Theology or Revelation Theology.

Equation Theology is a theology which attempts to flatten the revealed Word of God into a mathematical formula which can be proven true, all conflicting scriptures are usually explained away, contextualized away, or ignored. Let me emphasize that Equation Theology is not one particular branch of theology; rather, it is an approach to understanding the scriptures.

Revelation Theology is a theology which strictly adheres to all clear teaching of scripture without attempting to resolve every nuanced tension.  A theological structure which fights to the death for orthodox doctrine, but doesn’t quarrel over matters where the scripture is unclear.

I have spent time in both camps but I am joining the latter camp for good.

As I’ve considered these distinctions one thing has really struck me.  Men seem to fall the most easily into equation oriented thinking, yet if we were asked to create mathematical equation or algorithm which perfectly explains our wives, which would anticipate every action, and fully define them in every way; we would never attempt to undertake so foolish an endeavor.   Who are we, who cannot fully understand women, to think we can fully understand God?

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. Deuteronomy 29:29

James Cameron’s newest film Avatar is taking the world by storm literally.  It tells the story of a future corporation’s pillaging of a planet and the resistance they encounter from the pantheistic alien population (The Navi).

In considering the success of Avatar, one thing strikes me; it’s success illustrates man’s hunger for an authentic solid connection to a real and powerful God. This generation is not hungry for ethics, apologetics, or theories. They want spiritual reality, and they don’t expect to find any of that in church, so they look elsewhere. The Church, who’s job it is to display authentic spiritual reality to the world, has largely become a Christian country club.

The Church’s response to James Cameron’s jaw-dropping, breathtaking, and dauntless sci-fi epic will mainly fall into one of 2 camps.

1. Some will denounce it as evil, say it is opening people up to demon possession, or teaching them Gaia worship. 2. Others will try to put a Christian spin on it , making Angeltar comics, having “How to be an Avatar for Jesus” conferences, or some such nonsense. But neither of these addresses the real issue, the church has drifted far away from true spiritual communion with God.

I can almost guarantee that our response will not be the correct one. Which would be to return to authentic spirit filled Christianity. To stop imitating the world, or finding ways to increase attendance. Instead the church needs to pursue, seek, and serve God. To live lives of simplicity, humility, and prayer. To live a passionate life of love for God and our neighbor. Pouring ourselves out as an offering to God.

Here is the gauntlet that lays at the foot of the Church . . . The fake world and religion of the Navi appeals to people because of their passionate pursuit of, and relationship with their fake God. Which looks much more real and appealing than our fake pursuit of, and relationship to the true God.

“Whoever loves transgression loves strife.” -Proverbs 17:19 (ESV)

The tendency to want to argue, strive and debate with people about things is symptomatic of a direct linkage to the love of transgression.   All throughout the scriptures, the word transgression is linked to the idea of sin, but it is more specific.  Transgression is to purposefully rebel.  In other words, when we know something to be the right thing to do, but instead we rebel against that and do the opposite, we are transgressing.

So when Solomon says that those who love transgression, in turn love strife, what can we then say about our strife?  I love how the bible does not bandy about with words, or make excuses.  Instead it just simply says that if you love to strive and argue and wrangle with people, you love transgression.  Is there anything simpler to understand?

Love of Argument = Love of Transgression

It amazes me how people, Christians especially, can find all sorts of justification for arguing their pet doctrines in such a manner that they are only manifesting this exact problem.  It is no wonder John the Apostle spent so much time telling us to love one another.

I guarantee you, if God has not done a true changing of your heart through the power of his Spirit, and you are not changed from the inside out, you will find every justification you can possibly find in the bible to be a total jerk.  Jude admonishes us in his Plutonium-charged weapons-grade epistle that the false prophets are the kind of people who, “Speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.” (Jude 10) We know a tree by its fruit, and we are to discern that.  I am finding more and more that debating and wrangling over petty doctrinal issues it is a huge distraction.  The fundamental issue’s are a persons character, and the way they think they are representing Christ, far more than the specificity to which they adhere to every jot and tittle of correct doctrine.

If you have the love of Christ in you, by all means, correct, exhort, preach and certainly call a spade a spade.  But if you are false in your character, so also will your words be false.  Even a true word becomes wormwood in the mouth that is rotten . . . I have finally understood a false teacher for what a false teacher is.  He/She is simply a person who in themselves is false.   And you do not have to be a pulpiteer to be false in your representation of the true Messiah.   Look at Ananias and Sapphira, they never uttered a false doctrine that is recorded, but they were slashed from this life through their wicked falsehood.

One of the reasons that people will not inherit the Kingdom of God will be because they love “Emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, and heresies…” (Galatians 5:19-21) and I think the order there is important.  Oh we love to talk about how adultery is bad, how fornication is bad…but how many hate it when Christians strive and be seditious and cause division over things that are unimportant?

“Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever.”

-Psalm 125:1

A mountain is strong, and no mountain more strong than the mountain the Spirit says will abide forevermore.  Solid with the ancient rock and dust sifted through the movement of the creation.  If God cares deeply about the mount of Israel, the mount of Zion whose steeps David conquered, whose rocks housed the temple of Solomon, where many have called it the navel of all creation.  To this sturdy lasting edifice, one must look no further than see an illustration of what value trust in God has.

This mountain has been trampled by the feet of many men.  Its humble peak been redolent with the fragrance of crushing throughout the tests of weathers time.  Hammer upon her, pave her, build foundations upon her…she will not be moved.  Neither will those whom trust in God.

Oh but how the wicked one would desire to ascend above her, scale the sides of the north and exalt himself above the most high…The Lord shall prevail, he will cast down and annhilate all hope of such wicked imaginings.   By God’s grace we will be more than conquerors, through faith…be as a mountain, be sure, be steady.

Ohhhh the desire to live a crucified life…may God wake us up to this truth as if we were waking from a dream of death into a world of life and true color.  For the life uncrucified is not a life raised into true life, but only a paltry shadow of wraith-like existence.  May God grant his church more men and women of this life.  Thank you Bravehearted Gospel and Art Katz Ministries for this clip.  This is one sermon everyone needs to listen to.

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. . . I Corinthians 1:3

When talking about the Corinthians spiritual immaturity and their inability to handle the meat of the word, all Bible teachers seem to handle it the same way; The Corinthians couldn’t understand deep theology, or had no interest in it, therefore he couldn’t give it to them. I am starting to think that this interpretation may be missing Paul’s point completely.

What if his point was this, I cannot give you the meat scripturally because, you will become more inflated with pride and distort doctrine to your own ends. I have seen many of us theological types take doctrine and distort it by magnifying one truth and explaining away another A theologically astute fleshly Christian, can often do far more damage than an ignorant fleshly Christian.

Concerning the doctrines of Grace I like the way Spurgeon puts it.

“No man ever learns anything aright, unless he is taught of the Spirit. You may learn election, and you may know it so that you shall be damned by it, if you are not taught of the Holy Ghost; for I have known some who have learned election to their soul’s destruction; they have learned it so that they said they were of the elect, whereas, they had no marks, no evidences, and no works of the Holy Ghost in their souls. There is a way of learning truth in Satan’s college, and holding it in licentiousness; but if so, it shall be to your souls as poison to your veins and prove your everlasting ruin.”₁

I agree with him thoroughly, doctrine in the hands of a fleshly man can wreak havoc. I have a personal theory that divine sovereignty and election may have been the very doctrines Paul avoided with the Corinthians for this very reason. When we zealous young Calvinists believe it is our God given duty to explain TULIP to every carnal Christian, and heathen we can find, and insist on working it into every presentation of the gospel, we often do more harm than good.

1. A Sermon (No. 5) Delivered on Sabbath Evening, January 21, 1855, by the REV. C. H. Spurgeon at New Park Street Chapel, Southwark

This is just a portion of the sermon of  the century.  If you have not heard this yet…you need to listen to the whole thing.  However I though this was a great snippet from the sermon.  God save us from flesh ran ministries.  God save us from ourselves.  I have nothing to add to this message, I can only pass on what I think needs to be heard and heeded.

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. II Timothy 2:15

We live in a speedy shallow, superficial age. And I am beginning to realize much of our Christian conduct has been infected by our attitudes. If we are content to go to church only as long as the pastor doesn’t talk too long, or dig too deeply into our lives, we are in trouble. I see a parallel between us and the TV Guide channel. When I was young it was just a scrolling list of what was on TV. A few years later they added advertisements to the top half of the screen, and a few years after that they started playing their own mini shows in between the advertisements.

Now, these programs on the entertainment industry and its performers are brief and superficial, but bright and boisterous enough to occasionally keep your attention on them and prevent you from finding out what’s coming on after M.A.S.H. Sadly our Christianity is often as shiny, short, and shallow as these show’s. Most people watching a 5 minute bio on Gilbert Gottfried would never presume they know everything about him, yet we do this with doctrine constantly. Many of us Calvary Chapelers are guilty of thinking or saying “Chuck said it; I believe it, that settles it.”

Where past generations labored in the scriptures and doctrine to find the truth, we will accept offhand pastor’s comments as gospel truth, and feel no need to search the scriptures or study theology on our own. Until we begin to study the word, wait on the lord, and pray, we should expect little more than TV Guide channel fruit in our lives.

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” James 1:22

I love discussing doctrine as much as anyone I know, but there is an inherent danger therein; when we assume that by agreeing with a truth, we must be obeying it. Putting most of our energies into knowing and little into doing is dangerous indeed.  We are sometimes more zealous for being right than we are for being righteous. I will include an obligatory disclaimer here, we are not saved by doing good works, but we are called to conform to the image of Christ, and obey his commandments.

I have nothing against pouring over scriptures and theological writings, in order to rightly divide the word, it is one of my favorite activities; but we cannot stop with knowing, we must proceed to doing. Why? For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.1 Make no mistake, this is no mere thought of mine. James explicitly warns us of the danger of learning the truth but forgetting to obey it, forgetting to examine ourselves, and forgetting to do it.

When Jesus was ministering he never told anyone to merely understand the truth. He commanded them to act on the truth. His message was consistently “repent and believe”2. We need to take his warning seriously, for “blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”3

1. James 1:23-24

2. Mark 1: 15

3. Luke 11:28

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.  And God said,  ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.  And God saw that it was good.  And God separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light Day, and the darkness he called night.” -Genesis 1:1-5a

Why must the Spirit of God deem it noteworthy to tell us that light came out of darkness?  Is this a physic’s technicality?  Is this merely history? Should we even care?  It seems to me that light cannot be defined apart from darkness.  Light, from the first few verses of Genesis, was set in contradistinction to darkness.  God then separated the two into phases of night and day.  We can hardly understand light except by its absence.  Surely we also know now that darkness is really nothingness, for it is simply the lack of light.  This is a common way the bible defines words that are hard to understand.  The physics of light is amongst some of the most difficult concepts in nature to grasp, being both a particle and a wave, many physics students have groaned when trying to grasp this antimony, I know because I was one of them.  In its most simple terms however, darkness is the absence of light.

Peter used this same tool of contrast to define another complex word, “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it.  For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer.  But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”  I Peter 3:10-12.  Righteous here is defined through its contradistinction to, “those who do evil.”  In essence, they will be the opposite of this.  Do you do evil?  Then there may be a question as to whether or not you are among those to whom the Lord looks.  Is God’s face hidden behind a veil of mystery for you?  Is he lost amongst the conflagrations of your sins?  Surely saints do sin, we fail, but we are not defined by a life of sin.  The apostle John boiled these two concepts of light and righteousness together to present a wonderfully simple statement.  “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” I John 1:7

Remember, the next time you see the sun rise out of the darkness of the deepest night, the Son of God has commanded, by the life he lived, for you to come out of darkness and walk in the light.  May the Day Star arise in your hearts.