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Absolute Essentials – Part IV

I am sure there are people reading my most recent postings and thinking I am buying into a modern easy-believism. Just believe in Jesus. That is all there is to being saved, to being a Christian. Easy-believism or not, I firmly believe it.

One day riding a long distance bus between Missouri and North Carolina, I sat next to this fellow teenager. We got to talking. I shared that I was a Christian and he said he was, too. He pulled out a cigarette – this was back before antismoking campaigns. I probed him a bit on his response, not because he was smoking, but because I wanted to make sure he understood what it meant to be a follower of Jesus.

An older woman sitting across the aisle from us suddenly went ballistic (this was the Bible Belt). A stranger to both of us, she challenged the boy: “You’ve gone down the aisle at church, right? You’ve been baptized, right?” Both to which he quickly agreed, either because he really had done so or because he was afraid to answer any other way.

“Well, then,” she said, “that settles it. You’re a Christian.” End of discussion.

This kind of thinking is what people fear in what they call easy-believism. I know, because I’ve preached against it and used this very story as Example Number 1. And I still believe that something WAS very wrong with that woman’s response.

According to James in the New Testament, even the demons believe – and tremble. Even the demons believe there is one God, he wrote. He was talking about how you can’t have faith without deeds to prove it. The demons believe and are not saved. So what do they believe? They believe that there is one God. They believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God. But this is not saving faith. It is intellectual ascent, to the extent that it can be said that demons have intellects.

So don’t we run the risk of folks getting off easy if we tell them that there’s nothing more to being saved than believing in Jesus? No, because that is the heart of our very powerful Gospel. One of my favorite expressions during the Cold War years was “Just because Communists brush their teeth is no reason for us to stop (brushing our teeth).” Now having close friends who are members of the Communist Party (is McCarthy still around?), I can honestly say that they DO brush their teeth.

Just because someone else who we don’t like or who is wrong on other things also believes or acts as we do on certain things is no reason to abandon what we know to be true.

Once while listening to my car radio, I heard a very agitated discussion going on among callers who all also happened to be fellow Believers, at least as far as I knew. The animated debate was over what is known as the doctrine of “eternal security”. Opinions ranged from being able to fall out of grace like falling out of bed to being eternally secure no matter what you said or did or believed after you got saved, period. As I listened to the discussion, mostly to stay awake on a long trip, I wondered why no one posed this as the question to ask, “How is your relationship with Jesus right now?”

In China, a close friend and I would get together regularly to drink hot chocolate (on cold mornings) and act as “iron sharpens iron” with each other. Regularly he would ask me how I was doing at loving my wife. He wasn’t asking whether or not I was married or would I ever contemplate divorce. He was just asking me how I was treating my wife at that point in time.

Someone who can talk about their relationship with Jesus in the now doesn’t need to be asked if they’ve ever been saved or what they are doing to stay saved or whether they could ever become unsaved. If you don’t have a relationship with Jesus, it is as easy as believing in him. And if you do already, then how are you relating to him right now?

Absolute Essentials – Part III

We’ve been talking about the idea that there is not much to faith – simply believing one step at a time that Jesus will save me and keep me. I may have doubts, but those doubts are not the same as unbelief. Having doubts simply means I am continuing to ask questions which implies I am seeking the truth. Unbelief is when I stop asking questions and no longer seek the truth. So becoming a Christian is believing that Jesus will save or rescue me, simply putting my trust in him.

But there are those who will say that being a Christian involves much more. What about going to church? What about doing God’s will? What about discipleship and growing in spirituality and becoming more like Christ?

Let me ask you a question. Say this friend believes in Jesus today. We say she is saved when she believes. If she starts going to church, reaching her lost friends, reading her Bible, praying, helping the poor, does she become more saved? No. She will never be more saved than she is the moment she believes. A missionary in the most remote corner of the earth is not more of a Christian than an old man who has just said yes to Jesus and then dies and goes straight to heaven.

It’s like a boy who is drowning in a lake and a lifeguard goes out to rescue him. Once the lifeguard has rescued him he is saved from drowning. Does he become more saved because later on he thanks the lifeguard or takes swimming lessons or writes a book about the experience? No. There aren’t degrees to being saved from drowning. You either are or you are not. And there are not degrees to being a Christian. The difference is whether or not you believe in Jesus.

Some people say you can’t sin and be a Christian. I don’t know any Christians who no longer sin. In fact, anyone who say they no longer sin is committing the sin of pride.

Okay then what about those who sin worse kinds of sin. What does that mean? Are you more likely to go to hell if you kill someone than if you think in your heart, “I wish that person were dead”? Jesus says one is the same as the other. What kind of sin will separate you from God? Any sin, no matter what kind or degree or how much you do it. Doesn’t matter. Any and all sin separates us from God, meaning we are lost and in need of a savior.

What about a Christian who struggles with sin? Try as they might they are still tempted. First of all, no matter how much temptation you have, that is still not sin. Sin is not the desire or temptation to do something you shouldn’t do. Jesus himself was tempted – and tempted as we are. Sin is dwelling on that desire or temptation and following through with it – either in thought or action. So temptation is not a sign that you are less spiritual, let alone less saved.

But what about the person who keeps sinning even after they are saved. They keeping failing and falling, try as they might. Sounds like an addiction. Our faith says that Jesus frees us from addictions. If I believe in Jesus and still am addicted to nicotine, for example, a very hard addiction to break, does this make me less saved than if I did break that habit or never had it in the first place? No. Believing in Jesus is not the same as achieving perfection.

Try as we might, we cannot put any more conditions on becoming a follower of Jesus than Jesus does. A Christian means so many different things these days, I prefer the appellation "Believer", though I guess some could quibble with me and say “Believer” doesn’t specify in what. Originally the word “Christian” meant someone who believes in or follows the teachings of Jesus. Such a belief does not have any direct connection with whether they are American or Thai, whether they are politically liberal or conservative, whether they smoke or don’t smoke.

The only factor is whether or not they believe in Jesus. Jesus makes it so simple, it is hard for us to accept.

Absolute Essentials – Part II

If all we need to do to be saved is to believe in Jesus, what happens after we are saved and we start to have doubts? Do we stop being saved as soon as that happens. I’m not just talking about the doubts that often come right after you believe, kind of like buying a car and having immediate second thoughts.

I’m talking about someone who has known Jesus for a long time and they start to struggle in their faith. Maybe they don’t doubt God exists, but they doubt God’s ability to rescue them even while they are still trusting God. In other words, they struggle with God, but they don’t give up on God. They are filled with doubt if not unbelief. Or maybe they struggle even worse.

What happens after we are saved and we fail miserably? I mean really blow it big time? What happens if we keep blowing it, even after we are supposed to know better?

As I said in the last posting, when a person first believes in or trusts Jesus, they don’t know everything there is to know about God. They don’t even believe everything the Bible or the Church teaches. But they believe enough to know that Jesus will save them, in spite of all their own doubts and fears.

The same is true 5 weeks or 5 years or 5 decades later. We are not more “saved” because we believe more of the Bible or know more about God. So when doubts or worries start to flood in like a tsunami, we don’t suddenly get to the point where we are unsaved. Faith is not like some quota that you have to keep from dipping below a certain level.

That’s why Jesus uses that famous comparison with faith being the size of a mustard seed. A seed which is so miniscule – you’ve probably seen one hanging around someone’s neck in a glass ball – seems hardly worth anything at all. It is such “worthless” faith that is all that is needed to save us and to keep us saved. And such faith God’s Spirit provides – in fact, only God’s Spirit can provide and provide He does through revelation, meaning we can’t try to get it through our own efforts.

Even when I doubt. Even when I fail. Even when I am tempted by unbelief. As the great old hymn, “Our Great Savior” concludes, “I am his and he is mine.”

So when Peter denies Jesus and Judas betrays Jesus on the night before Jesus is crucified, are they both lost at that point? In short, no. When later Jesus talks with Peter, the question Jesus phrases is, “Peter, do you love me?” It is not a question of whether Jesus loves Peter – that is never in doubt as a fact. Jesus never gives up on Peter. All that Jesus wants Peter to admit is that he (Peter) has not given up on Jesus. Not that Jesus has any doubts, but he wants Peter to face up to his own faith, that he still has faith.

Judas never gives Jesus that chance. He takes his own life, robbing himself of any opportunity to hear Jesus ask, “Judas, do you love me?” What? After all that Judas has done? What Judas did was no different than what Peter did. Except that Judas then gave in to unbelief and denied himself the opportunity to be restored by Jesus.

Saving grace is a truly amazing thing. We don’t earn it. We don’t walk in and out of it like the children’s song, “Go in and out the window.” We can’t get more of it, like accumulating brownie points. It is a gift to us that we receive by faith and by faith keep, moving ahead in life one step at a time.

Absolute Essentials – Part I

I started this series by talking about doubts that are wrestle worthy, but I’ve decided I want to change the title and talk about absolute essentials of faith. This makes sense, especially because I’ve already said that everything is wrestle-worthy. Surprisingly, when it comes to faith, there are very few absolute essentials.

What do I mean by absolute essentials? When people talk about theological doctrines, they often call such doctrines “essentials” or “fundamentals” or some such name by which they identify a certain set of truths as bottom line when it comes to being a part of their particular community of faith. Generally they teach that you have to believe all of their doctrines in order to become a member of their church. But most evangelical Christians, at least, have a lot lower threshold when it comes to understanding what it means to become a Believer. What is it that the Bible says? “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.”

It is a very interesting verse, this one in Acts 16:31. Surely Luke is being cryptic in describing what Paul and Silas were saying to the jailer in this story. Or is he? Because when the jailer, who has just had his jail shaken by an earthquake, asks Paul and Silas, his prisoners, what he has to do to be saved, all that Luke records is this one sentence. Luke does go on to say that these two prisoners expounded the word of the Lord to the jailer right then and there.

But it couldn’t have been very long, not like the time that other guy fell asleep and fell out of a window because Paul preached so long. No, for Luke says that it wasn’t long before the jailer and his entire household were being baptized in water, meaning they had already come to believe in Jesus, just by what little Paul and Silas had already shared with them.

I have a feeling that whatever else Paul and Silas said that night, most of it was a blur to these new believers. Like the guy who was healed by Jesus and some religious leaders tried to mess with his head and the guy finally said, “Look all I know is that I was blind and now I see.” Here’s the jailer saying, “I believe Jesus has the ability to help me out tonight.”

Some people point to other passages where it says that we are to believe and be baptized and then we will be saved. So which is it? Just believe or believe and be baptized? Taking Paul and Silas at their word here, the only thing needed to be saved is believing. Believing what? Believing in Jesus. Believing what about Jesus? That he can save you. What do we need saving from? Apparently the jailer knew, because that is how he phrased his question.

An earthquake had just torn apart his jail. If any prisoners escaped he was in a heap of trouble, so he might as well take his own life right then and there. But Paul and Silas stopped him and said that everything was all right as no one had escaped. So the question the jailer asked wasn’t necessarily related to “how can I get to heaven” or have eternal life. It really had to do with “how do I get out of this mess I am in right now.” Nothing more. And Paul and Silas said that all he had to do was believe in Jesus, that Jesus would get him out of this mess.

So what is saving faith? If we take an honest look at this jailer’s experience, all that matters is that the man trust that Jesus has the ability to get him out of the mess he is in. And after he believes that much, more things will start to make sense.

When it comes to absolute essentials, there aren’t very many.

Wrestle-Worthy Doubts – Part II

This present series of musings was inspired by a reader who asked me to describe some of my wrestle-worthy doubts. I’m not inclined to bear my deepest and darkest secrets to the unseen masses – be they one or a million – who read this blog. But I will not hide my doubts or struggles either. The truth be told, all doubts are wrestle-worthy.

Doubts do play a role in moving us away from our presuppositions about God and toward a point of truly examining the Scriptures. Yet some Believers grow uneasy with doubts that linger or reoccur. In their understanding, doubts (about God in particular) should be settled once and for all. If that were the case, we’d have only one Psalm written by David that questions God and His actions. Instead we have many, for David wrestled with God all his life, as did all the Bible greats.

Even post-Pentecost pillars of the faith such as Peter and Paul. You see this in Peter’s wavering in Antioch. He has heard clearly from God that, contrary to everything he understood about Mosaic law, there is nothing “unclean” when it comes to eating, including with whom you eat. And yet he struggles to eat with Gentiles with whom he ate before the Judaizers arrived from Jerusalem. This struggle on Peter’s part may be dismissed as a lower-level cultural dilemma rather than an issue of faith. But Paul makes it clear that such “cultural” waverings strike at the heart of the Faith.

As I’ve written in another weekly blog, “Ethics in the 21st Century,” ethics is living out what you believe. Show me your behavior, the New Testament writer James claims, and I’ll show you what you believe. The implication in all this is that when our behavior deviates from what we profess to believe about God, it is a reflection of some internal questioning or confusion about what we believe about God.

E. Stanley Jones, a Methodist missionary in India and a great writer, was a close friend of Gandhi’s. Apart from the rare faith he found in Jones, Gandhi was deeply distressed by Christians. It is said that he greatly admired Jesus, but had little time for Jesus’ followers. There is a significant reason for this response on Gandhi’s part. As a law student in South Africa, Gandhi thought to visit a church to learn more about Christianity until he was stopped at the church door by a sign which read “No dogs or Indians allowed.” And, of course, his treatment as a native of India at the hands of a “Christian” colonial power did little to correct this lesson in the ways of the Christian faith.

As believers, we tend to scoff at the idea that “hypocrites in the church” are valid excuses for doubt. And yet, both the Bible and common experience do not take such hypocrites or hypocritical behavior lightly. Our behavior as followers of Jesus is our strongest witness. Contrary to common thinking however, inconsistent behavior is not the real offense. Pretending we have no struggles or inconsistencies is.

The world (as with God) will take any imperfection over the claim of perfection. While the Scriptures do not teach a hierarchy of sins, the sins of pride that block us from receiving God’s grace may be seen as far more deadly than “mere” sensual sins.

The sin that is least understood is what is called the “unpardonable” sin, what Jesus refers to as blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. In a short answer, I favor the interpretation that sees Matthew 12:32 as referring to the work of the Holy Spirit of convicting men and women of sin. If, in pride, we shut out this Voice of God and “harden our hearts” in unresponsiveness, we remove ourselves from God’s grace. Interesting how Jesus reserves his strongest words for those who lead others away from that same Voice.

So, as with most people who are honest about their doubts, I think my doubts about God start with what I see in the inconsistencies of faith in us human beings, including myself. The occasional acts of God that arbitrarily kill innocent babies aside, God is easy to believe in. It is when we get to people that faith runs into trouble.

Wrestle-Worthy Doubts - Part I

In recent months, word has come that a friend of many years has died. I don’t know the circumstance of her “passing,” as we say, but I do know that she suffered much in this life and wrestled in a very authentic way with what the next life offers. Not all may have found her answers acceptable, but what concerned me more were those who questioned her right to wrestle.

Nancy Arnold Eiesland suffered much in this life, particularly physically, but it was the wounds of fellow Believers which pained her – and me – most. I recall her telling me how when she was in Bible college her teacher grew tired of her questions and told her she could no longer ask them in class, lest they confuse her fellow students. She thought this odd, as do I to this day. Those students were preparing to minister to multitudes of Believers and unbelievers in our society and in cultures around the world and yet the teacher was afraid to let them wrestle with the very questions those multitudes wrestle with every day. Where better to wrestle than in a school devoted to the study of the Bible?

After graduating with honors from that very school (in spite of or because of her questions, I do not know), she went on to continue to ask questions, questions which led her to fall out of favor with her circle of fellow Believers who, like that teacher, chose to discredit her questioning rather than wrestle beside her. She was no longer welcome in the midst of the “Faithful” because her questions made her appear unfaithful to them.

I have my own doubts, but one thing I do not doubt: the Master does not disparage my or anyone else’s doubts. Doubt is not the enemy of faith. Unbelief is. Unbelief says don’t ask questions, don’t think, don’t wrestle. Any such wrangling is useless. As if God or faith were not up to the challenges. Doubt says there must be something worth striving for, something worth investigating. What we already know is not the sum of God. So doubt leads us away from unbelief toward faith.

At the same time, grace makes ample room for doubt. Grace understands that doubt is not the enemy, but is a part of the process through which we embrace faith. The Apostle Thomas is Example Number One. People often label him “Doubting Thomas” as if he is a bad model. Thomas’s moment in the Gospel limelight shouts to the world that those who doubt, those who question are very much welcome into the inner circle of Jesus. In fact, who is the only disciple not present the day Thomas posed his questions? The one who had stopped asking questions, the one known as Judas Iscariot.

Questions and doubts and wrestlings are a sign of God’s presence. As we used to say to our team in China, a mind that begins to ask questions is taking its first step toward the Cross. God welcomes the child who probes, who questions, who wrestles, who thinks, who engages, who challenges. On the other hand, a nonquestioning mind is asleep, comatose, dead – even lost.

At a moment of deepest despair in my own life, a close observer noted that though I was full of questions and anger and challenges for God, I had not given up on faith in God. Apparently at that dark moment in my life, I had not let go of life – or God Himself. Rather than flee God’s presence, I chose like Jacob to wrestle with God until I found his blessing (or favor). Jacob, who wrestled with God until God blessed him had his name changed to Israel, which means “struggles or wrestles with God.” He, who could find no favor on earth, found favor in heaven because he refused to quit wrestling.

Though I haven’t seen Nancy in years, she remains a beacon of faith to me, of a faith that is not afraid of the dark or of doubts, but a faith that embraces all that God places in our lives and says that though there is something of God very difficult for me, I will not let God go until He favors me. Nancy, like Jacob, suffered severely in her hip. That suffering was caught up in all her questions. But all her questions led her toward and not away from God. And that is the profound secret of wrestle-worthy doubts.