Christianity

Don\’t blame the demon

Dave Farquhar Christianity

Dennis Rader, the confessed BTK serial killer, blamed the killings today on a demon inside him.

I don’t know if he was speaking literally or figuratively.

I believe in demons. I also believe in cop-outs.From the story:

“I just know it’s a dark side of me. It kind of controls me. I personally think it’s a — and I know it is not very Christian — but I actually think it’s a demon that’s within me. … At some point and time it entered me when I was very young,” said Rader, who was once president of his Lutheran church.

Rader, 60, said his problems began in grade school, with his sexual fantasies that were “just a little bit weirder” than other people’s.

“Somewhere along the line, someone had to pick something up from me somewhere that there was a problem,” he said. “They should have identified it.”

Let’s dig into this.

What a demon is. A demon is an evil spirit. It’s not a dead person; you don’t have to worry about the ghost of Hitler harrassing you. A demon by definition is a fallen angel. Unlike the Hollywood definition, angels aren’t dead humans. Angels were created before humans were, and although they can appear in human form, they are distinctively not human.

The Bible doesn’t talk a lot about demons; what we can infer from what it does say is that sometime before God created Adam, there was something of a civil war in heaven, led by Lucifer, who was the most powerful of the angels (this may have been a title he shared with the archangel Michael). Lucifer sinned, and a number of other angels–possibly as many as 1/3 of the total number–sinned with him. These are demons. Lucifer is known by a number of other names, among them Satan and the Devil.

Recognizing evil is very easy. Look at the motive. God loves you. Angels love you. They have your best interests at heart. Demons hate you. Their eternity is miserable and they want yours to be miserable too. The best way to recognize evil is to look for hate.

What a demon is not. While a demon can be a very influential force, it’s rare that a demon is a controlling force. The movie The Exorcist is a dramatized version of a true story (it happened in St. Louis) but this is the exception, not the rule.

Why are there more demons in the Bible than there seem to be today? I love this question, mostly because it took me more than 10 years to find the answer. Misdiagnosis is one possibility. In Biblical times, when you were nuts, demons were the only explanation they knew. Today we know about mental illnesses and can treat many of them.

And demons shouldn’t necessarily be the first thing that people blame. If a condition responds to medicine, it isn’t a demon. If the condition doesn’t respond to medicine, it could be a misdiagnosis. Or it could be a demon.

But another reason you don’t see as much demonic influence as Jesus did is sheer numbers. There are more than 6 billion people alive today. Roughly 6 billion people total lived from 4000 BC (the dawn of civilization) to 2000 AD. Humans probably have the demons outnumbered today. At best, the margin was much, much narrower in 30 AD.

Is demonic influence Christian? Yes. This probably surprises you. If you run down your list of the most evil men who ever lived, those men may or may not have been tormented by demons. But some may not have been. They may have been lost causes from the beginning. If you were a demon and your goal was to stir up mayhem, why would you waste your time messing with someone who’s stirring up plenty of mayhem without you?

A few years ago, I counselled someone who believed she was being tormented by demonic influences. I told her this was a good indication she was doing something right. A demon isn’t going to waste time with someone who’s evil. A demon is going to concentrate on somebody it sees as a threat.

She went on to help a lot of people once she shook that away. Now it’s easy to see what that demon was afraid of, and what it was trying to prevent.

So a demon is going to tend to look for someone with a lot of potential that it can knock out, or it’s going to look for someone it can steer to make mayhem.

Dennis Rader was a leader in his community and the president of a Lutheran church. He fits both descriptions. There is no doubt in my mind that he hears voices.

So when I’m tempted, is that the voice of a demon? Maybe. Of course, humans are pretty good at wanting to do the wrong thing anyway. If you see a $10 bill laying somewhere and you’re tempted to take it because no one would ever know, that’s probably you. If the temptation is bizarre and out of character, it’s less likely to be you.

So could a demon have entered Dennis Rader, like he says? Sure. It’s like catching a cold. You’re more susceptible to it if you sin a lot, just like you’re more susceptible to catch cold if you run outside without a coat and with wet hair in the winter. But sometimes these things happen in spite of all the precautions we take. And some people seem to never get affected even if they do all the wrong things.

So should someone have noticed his problem? Maybe. But Lutherans aren’t very comfortable talking about this stuff. It seems like Roman Catholics are more comfortable fixing it than talking about it. There’s a Christian author by the name of Neil Anderson who has done more than anyone else in recent decades to get evangelical Christians talking about this subject and doing something about it, but Anderson’s books were written after the BTK killings started.

Ultimately, it’s up to the affected individual to recognize there’s a problem and do something about it. That’s not easy when you don’t know what to look for.

Neil Anderson’s book The Bondage Breaker does a good job of explaining what to look for.

In my very limited experience, there are a couple of things to look for. First and foremost are bizarre and unshakable temptations that seem out of character. Second is the inner voice. We all have an inner voice. But if your inner voice is especially cruel to yourself, that could be an indication.

Can you get rid of these things? Yes. Neil Anderson has made a career of writing books that tell how. Each volume gets more and more specialized. The Bondage Breaker is usually sufficient enough to change someone’s life.

The prescription I was given involved specific scriptures and very specific prayer. Read Psalm 18 and 119 aloud. Psalm 18 is all about victory and deliverance; Psalm 119 is the longest Psalm and it seems to cover just about everything. Maybe it works because it’s all-encompassing, or maybe it just shows that you’re serious. Finally, if there’s another Christian present, read Matthew 18:18.

And after that, the affected person needs to renounce the thing, say Jesus’ name, and tell it to leave. And in my limited experience, this works.

Now, if the problem isn’t demonic in nature, this exercise probably won’t work. God gave us authority over demons; He did not give us authority over disease.

When my pastor’s daughters used to have nightmares, he used to renounce the nightmares and the fear in Jesus’ name. It worked.

Can a demon make a serial killer kill? Well, in theory it probably could. But we’re not puppets; we still have free will. I guess it depends on your definition of “control.” If the idea to do something dropped into his head, and then the demon tormented him until he did the deed and then relented for a while, is that control? But the demon didn’t actually commit the act.

Had the right person recognized something, could the BTK killings have been prevented? If what he is saying is true, yes. But the same thing is true for most things. One is not likely to be cured of this without wanting the help.

But if he had been Roman Catholic, or if he had been born, say, 30 or 40 years later when the subject of demons was a bit less taboo, yes, I believe someone could have helped him.

A journalist\’s take on how to eliminate snoring during sermons

Dave Farquhar Christianity , , ,

First things first: I am not a pastor. While I have nine years of Lutheran primary and secondary education, my degree came from the University of Missouri and I have exactly zero days of formal, master’s-level theological training.

But I am a published author, I spent four years and thousands of dollars (and thousands more of scholarship money) studying journalism. So hopefully what I lack in Bible knowledge, I make up for in writing knowledge. And if denominations are to grow, especially the more conservative ones, I think more of the latter is going to be a necessity.I am writing this because I heard a sermon today that was relatively good. It disappointed me mostly because it could have been one of those sermons that people remembered for the rest of their lives. So let’s get down to business.

Write on a sixth-grade reading level. Your morning paper is written on that reading level. Newspapers are publications for the masses, so they are unwilling to assume that the majority of people can digest anything more complex than that level. Jesus made a point of demonstrating that Christianity is simple enough that a child can understand it. Therefore, a child ought to be able to understand the pastor.

And I’ve got something else shocking for you. What about the more intellectual publications? They’re written on a 10th-grade level.

So how do you write on that kind of a level? I’ll give you some tools. Eventually it becomes automatic.

Lose the big words. Most Lutheran pastors are academics. When it takes four years to get your master’s degree, you have to be. And if you want anyone outside of your own congregation to listen to you, you almost have to go back and get your doctorate.

But the problem is that while pastors and their colleagues are academics, the overwhelming majority of the congregation is not. The people who most desperately need to be reached certainly are not. And while I firmly believe that the pastor can stand in front of the congregation and read recipes for 20 minutes and God will make sure the person who needs to hear Him will hear exactly what He wants, I also believe it’s better for God to work through the guy standing up front more than in spite of him.

If your English Composition teachers were anything like mine, they required you to use five words you’ve never used before in every piece. But your English Comp teacher isn’t in the audience. Good writers know the rules of writing. Great writers know when to break them. William F. Buckley Jr. isn’t the rule. He’s the one guy who can get away with breaking so many.

Lose the long sentences and paragraphs. Your English Comp teacher probably told you a paragraph is a minimum of three sentences. That should be the first rule you learn to break. Short, punchy paragraphs are fine, and so are short, simple sentences. There’s nothing wrong with an eight-word sentence.

Practice writing on a sixth-grade level. If you use Microsoft Word, you can easily turn it into a tool for checking your writing. Go to the Tools menu, select Options, click Spelling & Grammar tab 4, and tick the box next to “Show readability statistics.” Now run a spelling/grammar check, click ignore on anything it flags, and it’ll give you your reading scores.

Try shortening up on some words and simplifying some sentences to see how the changes affect your work.

Relevance. A single mother of two who has never had a healthy relationship with a male doesn’t care about the original Greek or Hebrew in any given Bible passage. That’s an extreme example, but virtually everyone who walks through the doors of a church comes in carrying some baggage. It’s usually the only way God can get them there. It’s when life becomes its least bearable that people are most willing to find out what the Creator of life has to say about it. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems like the place you’re least likely to hear what God has to say about life is church.

That’s unfortunate. When you read the four Gospels, it’s clear that part of the reason thousands of people followed Jesus instead of the Pharisees was because Jesus talked about the things that mattered to them, while the Pharisees did not. If that contemporary church down the street is growing and your conservative church is not, the reason might not necessarily be the guitars and drums. The reason might very well be that the pastor gives good advice every week on how to get through this life.

I know plenty of people who attend my church for exactly that reason. They have no great love for the electric guitars and distortion–but they put up with it so they can hear how to have a better life every week.

While you don’t want to single out anyone and talk about his or her problems to the whole congregation, speaking about issues in general terms is good. Does the Bible have anything to say about credit card debt? Diet? Spoiled children?

I’m no fan at all of daytime talk shows–I think they’re God’s curse on the unemployed and unemployable–but I do believe that this world would be a better place if pastors would tune in to them once in a while. It gives you an idea of what kinds of problems people think about and face–and may not be willing to talk to you about–and it gives you some idea of what the world is saying about them. Your job is to tell the congregation what God says about those problems.

Get out more. I used to know someone who was required by his congregation to spend some time hanging out in bars. Ostensibly his job was to win converts. But I think it accomplishes some other things too.

First, it gives you a good feel for how people talk. Since these are the people who most need to be reached, you need to sound like them (minus the four-letter words).

Second, it gives you an idea what these people care about. You’ll probably overhear more about women and money than anything else. Significance and security are two very basic needs; if you can manage to illustrate every Sunday how God is the ultimate source of these two things, the size of your church will probably double every five years.

Granted, you don’t have to hang around in bars to hear people talk, but bars are where the broken people are most likely to go, and if your goal is to do what Jesus did and reach broken people, I think it helps to know what one looks for and what a broken person looks like.

The end. Like I said before, I’m not a pastor. I’m just a writer of above-average intelligence. It’s rare that a sermon sails over my head, and that was nearly as true when I was in the 4th grade as it is now.

But I’m not everyone, and the college-level dissertations that are all too common in many denominations every Sunday don’t do much, in my experience, to strengthen the church. Yes, to a degree I am advocating the dumbing down of the Sunday sermon. Hebrews 5 is relevant. You can’t assume anymore, in this day and age, that the majority of the people in the congregation can handle spiritual solid food. The Sunday sermon is the place for milk. The place for solid food is in Bible study, whether it occurs on Sunday morning before or after the service, or on some weeknight. And even then, I believe a lot of studies need to be serving milk.

But if every church serves milk long enough, the general public’s knowledge of the things of God will progress to the point where it can handle solid food on a much more regular basis.

Who’s in hell?

Dave Farquhar Christianity

One of my coworkers told me today that on his way back from lunch, he heard a preacher say on the radio that Pope John Paul II was in hell right then.

I know for a fact that Pope John Paul II wasn’t in hell right then. He was in a bed in the Vatican, still alive. Some faux pas, huh?

Even still, no Christian has any business saying something like that. Never. Even after the person’s death actually is confirmed.Saying someone’s in hell when he or she has been confirmed to still be alive just makes you look like an idiot. No great harm done, I guess. But who’s in hell and who isn’t actually isn’t my decision, nor is it yours, nor is that radio preacher’s.

I grew up hearing poorly educated church workers tell my Dad that he was going to hell. They told others the same thing too, I’m sure. Dad wasn’t going to hell for the normal reasons people tell others that they’re going to hell–he wasn’t sleeping around, or cheating on his taxes, or stealing, or voting for the wrong political candidate. No, Dad was going to hell because he believed the wrong thing.

I’ll be the first to admit that Dad had an unusual combination of beliefs. But Dad had an unusual combination of degrees and life experiences too. But among those beliefs was the single sentence that will keep you out of hell: Jesus died to pay the price of my sins.

Believe that, and God doesn’t care if you believe the sky is orange and dogs say moo.

Don’t get me wrong. The Pope’s beliefs and mine differ in some very important ways. The Pope was wrong about a lot of things. That radio preacher’s beliefs and mine differ in some very important ways. He’s wrong about a lot of things too.

And I know God and I will someday have a very long conversation about where what I believed was wrong. I hope that conversation will be shorter than God’s conversation than that radio preacher, and His conversation with the Pope. But I’m not willing to bet the change in my pocket that it will be. Am I both smarter and less stubborn than either of them? Only God truly knows the answer to that question.

Is Pope John Paul II in hell? I can only answer that with another question. Did Pope John Paul II know why it was necessary for Jesus to come to earth and die? If he did, then he’s in heaven. End of argument. And only God truly knows the answer to that question.

So who’s in hell? To answer that question is to pass judgment. Is Adolf Hitler in hell? I can’t answer that. I wasn’t there during his final moments. Did he repent and accept Jesus before he pulled that trigger? Highly unlikely, yes. Impossible? No.

Is Judas Iscariot in hell? I think most people probably believe he is. But they probably believe it for the wrong reason. Judas’ mortal sin was not his direct role in Jesus’ death. Judas’ mortal sin wasn’t suicide, either. Nor was it his love of money. No, Judas is a good candidate for hell because he believed the wrong thing about Jesus. Judas seemed to expect a political savior, not a spiritual one. And Judas died before Jesus was fully revealed as that spiritual savior.

Of course, it was Jesus’ death and resurrection that changed the rules. Judas didn’t live under the same set of rules that you and I now do. Did Judas know that he was a sinner, and was Judas trusting that God would one day provide atonement for those sins?

It’s obvious from Judas’ actions that he realized he was a sinner, and even that he was penitent. And it appears that he knew about God–Judas cast out demons just like the rest of the disciples did. This tree had fruit. So the question becomes, did Judas die believing the right thing?

Were you there? I wasn’t. Only God was. And only God knows. Once again, I can say the likelihood that Judas made it to heaven is very low. But only God can say for certain, because only God knew Judas’ heart.

If I can’t say for certain that the greatest betrayer in human history and the man who Jesus Himself called "a devil" is in hell, then how can I say where anyone else is or isn’t?

The Bible is perfectly clear about where I’m going and why. And that’s a much more productive thing to talk about.

Love is patient, love is kind, love is not a license to say anything you want

Dave Farquhar Christianity , ,

Yep, I’ve got another pet peeve. Last weekend I wrote about passing “Christian” judgment.

This week I’d like to talk about another favorite tool of the fundamentalist: so-called “Christian Love,” which, when it has the qualifier, often is anything but.Many fundamentalists belive that Christian love is a license to rip someone a new one any time they feel like it. They justify it to themselves by saying it’s their duty to point out their Christian brothers’ and sisters’ faults.

No one has ever shown me the verse that gives us that right. And that idea isn’t exactly compatible with Jesus’ command to get the log out of your own eye before worrying about the speck in someone else’s (Luke 6:41-42), or that he who is without sin should cast the first stone (John 8:7). (Note that in John 8, He Who Was Without Sin refrained from throwing any stones. He told her to cut it out and go home. He didn’t even tell her what to cut out. She knew full well.)

Let me tell you why I think “Christian love” is often anything but. Let’s refer to 1 Corinthians 13. I know you heard it at the last wedding you went to. But this chapter has a whole lot more to do with interpersonal relationships than it does with weddings.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

My pastor is fond of personalizing this. “Dave is patient, Dave is kind. Dave doesn’t boast and isn’t envious, and he isn’t proud or rude.” And he interjects “Tell me when to stop,” in there frequently, because he knows none of us can measure up to this chapter. The fact is, too often we aren’t patient, we aren’t kind, we boast like crazy, we burn with jealousy, we try to make ourselves look good… Need I go on?

So the next time you get the urge to chastise your Christian brother or sister, and you feel the need to sign, “In Christian love…” drop your pen, grab your Bible (don’t rely on your memory; it’s selective) and turn to 1 Corinthians 13. If what you’re writing isn’t patient or kind, then don’t sign it like that. If it’s a record of wrongs, you could be in for a world of hurt. See Matthew 18. The part of Matthew 18 that everyone likes to forget about, that is (verses 32-35):

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

“This is how [God] will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

Christianity isn’t a race. We don’t get extra floors on our mansions in Heaven for each sin we point out. We have nothing to prove. Max Lucado once pointed out the futility of this with an illustration: What if God changed the rules and said forget all that stuff in the Bible; all you have to do in order to be saved is jump to the moon on your own power. So get to it.

Well, it doesn’t matter if you’re Michael Jordan or if you’re Christopher Reeve. Michael Jordan might be able to jump 15 feet in the air if he tried. Christopher Reeve can’t jump at all. But when the goal is the moon, which is a quarter of a million miles away, Michael Jordan’s 15 feet is a rounding error. Who cares? Someone standing on the moon wouldn’t be able to see it!

I like the illustration in Matthew 25:34-40.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

There seem to be several points to this verse, but one of them is that we won’t know all of our good deeds. I wonder sometimes if the truly righteous don’t know any of them, and I wonder if, when God counts our good deeds–which don’t get you into heaven; remember, Isaiah 64:6 calls our good deeds “filthy rags” in the nice translation, and in the not-as-nice translations, it uses words closer to “soiled undergarments”–maybe when God counts up our good deeds, maybe only the ones we don’t know about are the only ones that count.

Because it sure seems to me those are the only ones we do without some ulterior motive.

So tear up that note. Skip that conversation. Read 1 Corinthians 13 out loud, substituting your name for “love,” and then read Romans 2 for good measure.

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?

Kindness leads people to repentance. So what’s the best way to be kind? Start with love. How do you love? See 1 Corinthians 13.

It’s funny how the people who are best able to take those two passages to heart have the best, longest-lasting relationships. Non-Christians like those people too. It’s funny how non-Christians are impressed by kindness and forgiveness.

It must be because usually when they look for it in the places it’s supposed to be, they don’t find any.

My brother\’s speck and my log

Dave Farquhar Christianity

“I think if we were given the Scriptures, it was not so that we could prove that we were right about everything. If we were given the Scriptures, it was to humble us into realizing that God is right, and the rest of us are just guessing.” — Rich Mullins, famed Christian singer/songwriter

So, let’s say you decide another Christian might be subjecting his/her self to too much temptation. You don’t know that this someone else is sinning, mind you. You just suspect this other person’s actions might make this person tempted to sin. So you pull this person aside, forbid this person from doing whatever it is that might lead to temptation, justify yourself to yourself and this other person by saying you read the Bible, and then go on your merry way.
In 1997, I got fed up with Lutherans not talking about subjects that made them uncomfortable and started attending a non-denominational church that wasn’t scared of those questions. The fact that they weren’t scared of guitars and music written during my lifetime, and that the sermons were about real-life situations didn’t hurt either. That church changed my life.

The Sunday after Easter in 1998, I went back to being Lutheran again. Today, it’s been six and a half years, and I’ve hardly looked back.

What happened?

While in a lot of regards it was a great church, I didn’t feel like you could go there and get involved in anything without feeling like you were being watched. Anything I did or said was being watched by somebody. It might be by someone of the opposite sex who was sizing me up as a potential mate. It might be by someone of the same sex who was trying to hold me accountable. Considering I was 23, I needed a bit of that. But while some of the people’s motivations were clean, some of them seemed to be efforts to justify themselves.

And besides that, you were expected to act a certain way, have a certain set of interests, and to some degree even dress and carry yourself a certain way. It was justified as becoming more like Jesus. But we weren’t becoming more like Jesus. We were becoming more like the group. And Dave, 23 years in the making, was getting squeezed out.

Frankly, the weight was crushing me. I went into therapy in early 1998, where I met a member of a Lutheran church that he claimed offered what I was looking for. In the meantime, I’d read the Bible cover to cover and come to the conclusion that if Lutheran doctrine wasn’t the most correct doctrine I’d come across, it was at least less dangerous than any other I had seen.

So I left.

The other day, I heard a story very much like the second paragraph here. And it reminded me of why I left that fundamentalist church and never looked back.

This type of behavior is specifically prohibited in the Bible.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5)

And just in case we didn’t see it the first time, it’s also in Luke:

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Luke 6:41-42)

If you’re not perfect yet, then you don’t need to be worrying about the imperfections of the people around you. If you are perfect, then clearly you either aren’t reading the same Bible I am, or you need to go back and read it some more.

So what about 2 Timothy 3:16? All Scripture is Godbreathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.

This verse suggests authority. Before invoking it, we have to consider whether we have it, who gave it to us, and whether the words we are about to say are worthy of someone who has authority over someone else.

One thing that being a Lutheran has taught me is to let scripture interpret scripture. When you want to invoke 1 Timothy 3:16, you have to do it in light of those verses in Matthew and Luke. And since the warning in the Gospels appears twice and was said earlier by Jesus Himself, doesn’t that mean it might be just a little bit more important?

That’s where I think this confrontation breaks down. You see, the thing that bugs me even more about this situation is that the person being confronted isn’t being confronted about sin. The person is being confronted about temptation. But there’s a funny thing about temptation. You and I aren’t necessarily tempted by the same things. When faced with a gourmet cheesecake, you might be tempted to do more than overeat, and devour the whole thing. And if I were standing there, I’d let you, because I’d find the thing repulsive. My only temptation would be to throw the wretched thing in the trash.

St. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians, where he says twice that everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. (1 Cor. 6:12, 1 Cor. 10:23). In 6:12 he goes on to say, “But I will not be mastered by anything.”

The truth is, all of us are mastered by something. Much to the chagrin of marketers, however, we’re all mastered by different things.

Now, I don’t know what the person who confronted the other person was hoping to accomplish. But I do know what the confronter did accomplish: Looking like a Bible-thumper and alienating the other person.

I believe that if Christians took half the time they spend trying to figure out and fix what’s wrong with the people around them and instead spent that time looking instead deep inside themselves, we’d have a lot fewer people in this world who believe and trust in God but aren’t willing to set foot inside a church.

It\’s 2004, and that means a new presidency

Dave Farquhar Christianity , , , ,

I am Lutheran. Lutheran in both senses. Dad was Lutheran because his mother was Lutheran and she was Lutheran because her grandparents were Lutheran when they got off the boat in Philadelphia. But that’s not the end of my Lutheran background–my ancestry hits Baron Jost Hans Hite (Heydt) at least twice.

But I’m not a Lutheran just because my forefathers were Lutheran. I left the church, and at 22 found myself at another church that I sensed was teaching things that were wrong, but I wasn’t sure why. So I read the Bible cover to cover trying to find out why. And in the end, I realized the Lutheran explanation of all this stuff made more sense than anyone else’s.

So here’s my take on the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s much publicized convention.The semi-underground Christian News reported the following: “MAJORITY IN THE LCMS VOTES THAT LUTHERANISM IS NOT WHAT THEY WANT IN A CHURCH – KIESCHNICK IS RE-ELECTED; OKLAHOMA D.P. DIEKELMAN ELECTED AS 1ST V.P.”

I define “Lutheranism” as a discipline that teaches people to read and interpret the Bible and not necessarily take the clergy’s word for it because the clergy can be wrong and needs those checks and balances. That’s my Lutheranism.

In my Lutheranism, God chooses us, not the other way around.

In my Lutheranism, we believe that faith without works is dead, but we teach that it’s God who does those works through us. It’s by grace that we’re saved, not those works. Works are a symptom of that disease called faith. We don’t do it ourselves! That’s what Jesus came here for, because we spent 4,000 years proving that all we could do was mess it up! In my Lutheranism, we don’t compare works and beat each other up trying to prove who’s the better Christian.

In my Lutheranism, “grace” is a simple concept: God’s riches at Christ’s expense. And that’s Lutheranism’s greatest treasure.

I may have ruffled a few feathers by not saying anything about tradition. Funny thing about tradition. It explains things that were never officially written down, and that can be a good thing. But tradition can get in the way too. The Pharisees had tradition. In spades. Jesus had some problems with them.

And I wonder sometimes too if we Lutherans might be a bit too smug. The Lutheran stereotype is someone with a whole lot of education and a whole lot of money. We’re successful, and that makes us not too eager to try out something we never thought of before, because, well, look where my way has gotten us!

There’s room for tradition and excellence in my Lutheranism. But when tradition and excellence get in the way of that last thing Jesus said before the ascension (“Go to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”), then they become a problem.

When publications like the New York Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch call you “The Taliban of American Christianity,” I think we have a problem.

Now, I know I don’t have as much education as some people, but when I look at the election results, I don’t see it as a majority of delegates rejecting Lutheranism. I see it as a majority of delegates rejecting the power plays and the infighting that happened after an LCMS pastor offered up a prayer in mixed company at Yankee Stadium after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack.

Some believed that wasn’t a very Lutheran thing to do. And some believed it wasn’t a very Lutheran thing for our president to do, approving this despicable act of praying in mixed company. Now I’m not saying that this was the motivation, but what happened next appeared to be an attempt by the president’s political opponents to bring him up on charges so they could take the presidency, since the next person in line for the presidency was one of the president’s political opponents.

It left a bitter taste in some people’s mouths.

And I think that’s why Dr. Gerald Kieschnick won re-election by a reasonably comfortable margin on the first ballot this year, and why another person much like him won the #2 slot, and other like-minded people took three of the remaining four slots.

I have one question for those of you who are Lutheran like me.

If–without changing any of your fundamental beliefs, but simply losing a label–if giving up that “Lutheran” label would cause one–just one–person to be in heaven who otherwise wouldn’t, would you do it?

No one’s asking you to do that. I’m just trying to get you to decide where your priorities sit.

Today\’s focus on Christ\’s death is misplaced

Dave Farquhar Christianity

I’ve been thinking about Mel Gibson’s upcoming The Passion of Christ. It’s hard not to, with all the publicity drummed up about it, and my church bought two showings of it on opening week and me finding out today that we’ve already sold all of our tickets.

I believe the controversy is misplaced, but I don’t want to dissuade the people who are up in arms about the movie. Keep talking about it. Keep drawing attention to it. That only means that more people will talk about it, and more people will see it. And talking about it and seeing it is exactly what Mel Gibson wants. And talking about Him is exactly what Jesus wanted.

The rest of this post is for the rest of you.This movie is controversial because it deals with the execution of Jesus Christ, which for some reason is always a controversial topic. In the past, it has been used to drum up anti-Semitism for questionable purposes. Christianity is not about anti-Semitism. Need I point out that Jesus was as Jewish as they come? And so were the 12 guys he ran around with for 3 years? So was Paul, the most prolific of the early missionaries.

Christians should know (and I hope they do) that who killed Jesus is irrelevant. Jesus had to die, period. He had to die because that was what God sent Him to do.

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it is relevant. I’ll play the game.

Technically speaking, it wasn’t even the Jews of the day who killed Him. They couldn’t. By law, they didn’t have that right. They encouraged the Romans to kill Him, but it was Pilate, the Roman governor, who gave the order, because only Pilate had the right to order the death penalty. It’s no different from someone who hires a hit man to kill somebody. Both the hit man and the person who hired the hit man are guilty.

The Rome of Jesus’ day doesn’t exist anymore, politically speaking. But its tradition, its form of law, and its very philosophy of life lives on in modern Europeans. I’m of European descent, and if you’re reading this, chances are you are too. If the Jew down the street from you is responsible for Jesus’ death, then you are no less guilty.

And that leads us very nicely into where our focus should be. Our focus should not be on who killed Jesus, but rather, why did God send Him to die in the first place?

The reason is very simple. Sin.

Here’s an exercise that I’ve had people do from time to time. I want you to picture the person who has grieved you more than anyone else in life. Remember the pain that person caused you. Now, put that person on trial for what she or he did. The judge hands down the verdict: Death. A horrible death. Crucifixion, to be exact.

So that person who grieved you gets flogged 39 times (40 would kill you), then they strap a big piece of lumber to his/her back and begin the march up the hill. You go along, because you’re going to drive the first nail. About halfway there, the beaten and tired executionee falls. Someone grabs the closest man out of the crowd and makes him carry it the rest of the way. He does so willingly.

And once they get up that hill, just as the executionee is about to have an ugly face-to-face meeting with fate, that man from the crowd cries out, “Wait! I’ll go instead.” And pushing everyone out of the way, He lays down, willingly, on that cross.

That executionee, in some people’s minds I’m sure, is me. In someone else’s mind, that executionee is you. Or my neighbor. Or your neighbor. Because we’ve all hurt somebody, regardless of our intentions or anything else. We’re all guilty.

Jesus died so that you and I wouldn’t have to. And then He drove the point home by coming back from the dead three days later. And Jesus didn’t really focus on His death after coming back. Instead, He talked more about His life, and what His surviving followers were supposed to do next.

Our attitude about Jesus’ death should be like that of Joseph. See Genesis 45. Joseph was the son of Jacob who was sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt. The brothers faked his death and sold him as a slave to some traveling Arabs, who in turn sold Joseph in Egypt. Joseph gained favor through the years, and eventually found himself in a position of high power. There was a serious famine, but the shrewd Joseph had been stockpiling food, so during the famine, Egypt was the only country who had anything. Then one day, guess who shows up wanting to buy food from Joseph? His brothers. And guess what Joseph had to say to them?

“God sent me here to save your lives… So it wasn’t you who sent me here, but God.” (my paraphrase of Genesis 45:7-8.)

Just as God meant the horrible thing that happened to Joseph for good, God meant that horrible thing that happened to Jesus for good.

Specifically, for your good and mine.

The end of the world will be October 3, 2002! Make that Jan. 17, 2003! Er…

Dave Farquhar Christianity

A lot of Christians today are really wrapped up in the so-called “end times” issues. It’s a natural curiosity, and in a way, healthy. Jesus told us to be ready for it.
I’m amazed sometimes at what you hear in regards to the end times, however. I’m not just talking Left Behind here. One member of my church said to me, in all seriousness, back in September 2002 (I only remember because it was within a few days of when I bought my house) that none of us would be here in six months, so nothing really matters. She and her husband talk frequently about their upcoming retirement and moving to the Lake of the Ozarks, so I figured she was referring to that. She was not. She was referring to the end of the world.

This surprised me. One, it was coming from a Lutheran. Two, it was coming from a long-time Lutheran. Three, it was coming from a long-time Lutheran with a dizzying amount of church involvement (among other things, her husband has been an elder in our church). Four, it was coming from a highly intelligent woman with a PhD.

Let me talk about this first just from a purely historical perspective, since I’m an armchair historian of sorts. Jesus’ 11 surviving disciples believed they were living in the last days. Jesus had, after all, told them that some among them would not taste death before the arrival of the Kingdom of God. They thought He was talking about his second coming. St. Paul thought he would see the second coming.

Some people believe we are living in the Tributation today (the period of time described in Revelation). I count myself among that group. But I also believe that the tributation has been going on for more than 1,000 years. While Christians are being persecuted today, persecuting Christians was a national pastime in Rome. Killing Christians was literally a sport. Is the present day really more tribulating than the days of Rome?

Certainly, I believe the end of the world could come today. It might come before I finish writing this, or before you finish reading it. But it’s equally likely that we’ll go on for another 2,000 years.

Jesus said even He didn’t know when the end of the world would be. If Jesus didn’t know, then who are we to try to say we know?

We won’t. Think back to the Parable of the Ten Girls. Ten were waiting for the bridegroom (Christ) to come back. Five were prepared and five were not. That’s the lesson most people take from it. But read it more closely. When the time came, all ten were asleep. Not one of them saw it coming.

There are much more important things for us to concern ourselves with.

A worthwhile link for Christians wanting to stay in touch with the rest of the world

Dave Farquhar Christianity

One of the seminarians from my church pointed me to a Christian pop-culture magazine this past week: Relevant.
For a Christian Gen-X type like me, it seems like a good mag. Christians need to be different from the rest of the world, a point Pastor brought home in his sermon this morning, but if we totally cut ourselves off from it, we’re not doing what God told us to do. You can’t reach the world if you can’t relate at all to it. So you have to walk the line between understanding and immersion.

It talks about and reviews both contemporary Christian and secular music, and its recommended movies list hit home.

It’s no substitute for going to church or other resources for living the Christian life; I think of it as a Details-like magazine that’s more sensitive to my beliefs. But that’s certainly welcome.

God cares about our concerns, even when we’re not brave enough to talk about them

Dave Farquhar Christianity , ,

Tomorrow night in Bible study, I’m going to cover Mark 5:21-41. Since I actually put some work into preparing and actually wrote something halfway substantial for probably the first time this year, I thought I’d share it here.
Special thanks go to Jeff King for inspiring this largely derivative study, and to God for using Jeff and his talents and insight to answer two simple prayers from last night.

Let’s let Mark start the story:

21When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet 23and pleaded earnestly with him, "My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live."

Now remember, most of the religious leaders of the day didn’t have a whole lot of use for Jesus. And being a synagogue ruler in this day and age, he was in the upper crust. But on this day, He needed Jesus.

So this aristocrat comes up to Jesus and wants something from Him. Jesus had this big crowd around Him. Yet Jesus dropped that opportunity and went to help him. Even though Jesus had something else to do. And even though Jesus could have used this opportunity to teach the aristocrat a lesson.

The lesson for me: God does not have better things to do. God wants to hear my voice. Yours too.

And there’s a second lesson: God “teaching us a lesson” doesn’t necessarily have to be painful. Sometimes it is. But He prefers, as we’re about to find out, to be unbelievably kind and loving.

24So Jesus went with him. 25A large crowd followed and pressed around him.

The crowd expected something. I guess Jesus had a reputation. The hard question for me: Do I expect God to do something?

And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.

Anyone who made contact with this woman became ceremonially unclean. (See Leviticus 15-25-33.) She was an inconvenience. A nuissance. This woman lived in loneliness and isolation for 12 years. Not to mention the physical pain she must have suffered.

Now, I don’t know about anybody else, but I can handle pain. I deal a whole lot worse with loneliness. When I’m in pain and lonely, personally, it’s the loneliness that I want to go away. To me, 12 hours of it is more than enough, so I can’t even begin to imagine this poor woman’s plight.

27When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak,

What I want to know is why this woman that nobody wanted to have anything to do with knew about Jesus. And that raises a question: Is there anyone in my life or yours who nobody wants to have anything to do with who needs to know about Jesus?

28because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.”

This has always troubled me, because I’ve wondered whether this was faith or superstition. Faith is good. Superstition isn’t. But God knows faith when He sees it. Here’s a question: What had the power? The cloak, or Jesus? The answer is the difference between the two.

If you think I think there are a lot of superstitious Christians, you’re right. Take the Prayer of Jabez (please!): There is absolutely nothing special about the words, "enlarge my territory." Say that to me and I might give you a quarter if I have one and nobody else has asked me today. But if you say it to God, trusting in the power of God and not in some magic words, and it’s God’s will… then it’s something special. But wouldn’t God rather hear your own words?

Here’s something else that strikes me. She was afraid to just ask Him for what she wanted. Maybe she didn’t want to trouble Him. He was off to stop someone from dying, after all. He had something better to do, right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, a million times plus infinity wrong. God isn’t like your overburdened unapproachable boss. God isn’t bound by the constraints of time. God always has time for you.

Is there anything that you’re afraid to ask God for?

29Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

Jesus healed her. Period. End of story. Right?

30At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?"
31"You see the people crowding against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ "
32But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it.

I used to think Jesus was angry here. Maybe He was mad about her making Him physically unclean. Maybe He was mad about her being superstitious. Maybe He had some other reason. Now I believe differently. Of course Jesus knew who touched Him. He only asked because He wanted her to approach Him. Why? I don’t think Jesus was satisfied with healing just her physical ailment. We’ll see why in a second.

33Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth.

She thought the same thing I used to think. She’s a genius! She agrees with me!

34He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."

Look at what Jesus said. What word jumps out at you? The word that jumps out at me is "Daughter." "Daughter" is a loving word. It’s a special word. How special was it to Jesus? It’s the only recorded instance of Him using this word.

Now, if you’ll indulge my overanalysis for a minute: She’s in pain and she’s lonely. If she could get rid of her bleeding, then human contact suddenly becomes a possibility. Solve the root problem, and then she can see about finding some companionship. Maybe she had some relatives. Maybe she could make some friends. She didn’t dare ask Jesus to love her.

But what she wanted wasn’t nearly as important to Jesus as what she needed. Jesus didn’t dare keep on walking without telling her that He loved her.

The Eastern Orthodox church has a legend that this woman’s name was Veronica, and that she followed Him literally to His death. The legend says that when Jesus fell underneath the weight of the cross on His way to Calvary, Veronica reached out to Him and wiped the sweat, blood, and dirt off his face with a handkerchief as the soldiers seized Simon of Cyrene and made him carry Jesus’ cross the rest of the way. She was there for Him when His disciples had abandoned Him. It’s only a legend, but isn’t it a beautiful picture of a reaction to God’s love?

35While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. "Your daughter is dead," they said. "Why bother the teacher any more?"

If “trouble” wan’t Jesus’ least favorite word before He was incarnated, it was by the time He died. Remember what I said before about God not being bound by the constraints of time? You’re not any trouble for Him.

36Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, "Don’t be afraid; just believe."

Faith is enough. The amount of faith doesn’t matter. The smallest possible amount of faith in the right thing–God–is more than enough.

37He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James.

Peter, James and John were Jesus’ inner circle. This was one of many things they alone were priveliged to see.

38When they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39He went in and said to them, "Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep."

As far as God is concerned, death and sleep are the same thing. Jesus wasn’t lying.

40But they laughed at him. 41After he put them all out,

God isn’t mocked. But Jesus didn’t punish them; He just gave them the same fate as the other 9 disciples: They had to wait outside.

he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha koum!" (which means, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!" ).

Look at some of the words here. Gently. Taking her by the hand. “Talitha” is an endearing way to say “little girl.” Jesus loved that girl.

42Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Let’s look at the two halves of verse 43. First half: Jesus didn’t want to be famous. Jesus wanted to help people. Jesus was the very embodiment of humility. This raises a tough question for me: How many times have I boasted about something God did, hoping that someone would think more highly of me simply because I happened to be there? Don’t we sometimes seem to be preoccupied with appearing to be spiritual powerhouses? I hope I’m the only one.

Second half: Jeff King, a friend of a friend, brought this one up. Do you see the parallel with verse 34? Jesus raised this girl from the dead, and once again, He wasn’t satisfied. First He’s concerned that she’s sick and in pain. Then He’s concerned that she’s dead–a valid concern, possibly. Did she believe before He raised her from the dead? Not likely. I’m sure she did afterward. So now that He’s healed her ailment and saved her soul, what’s He concerned about? He didn’t want her to be hungry.

God derives no pleasure from your hunger or mine. None.

I’ve asked a lot of questions tonight, but I want to ask one more. What have you been afraid to talk to God about?

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®: NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Fair use statement: NIV quotations are permitted without express written permission provided they are fewer than 500 verses, do not amount to an entire book of the Bible, and do not constitute more than 25% of the total text of the work.