Christianity…Self-Seeking or God-Glorifying

I was recently involved in an online discussion. Below is an excerpt from that discussion between me and another participant. This is actually found in a response to a few statements on my part:

Hello Jason:

You wrote:

I don’t worship/serve God because I’m looking for “fire insurance” or because I want to in some way better myself. I worship God because, simply, God has commanded me to.

But the spirit of the New Testament seems to propound the very “fire insurance” and self-benefit that you criticize. If you read the NT, the followers of Jesus appealed to people to accept their Gospel so as to be saved. Just take a look at the Acts of the Apostles: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” (4:12), “He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.’” (11:14), “We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved.” (15:11), They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” (16:31). All these and many other references is evidence that the Christian acceptance of God is strongly motivated by the desire for salvation – in other words, self-benefit.

Filed under: Apologetics, Bible Study, Christian Living, Christianity, Church, Evangelism, Ministry, Philosophy, Theology

What the Dutchajo People Taught me About Ministry

First, the question on everyone’s mind: “What the heck are the ‘Dutchajo people’?” Dutchajo is a term used in certain parts of the American SW (New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada) that designates someone who is half Dutch and half Navajo. The person I’m referencing here has a Dutch mother who married an Navajo man while working as a missionary nurse on a Navajo indian reservation in New Mexico. As the term implies, this “flavor” of ethnicity is not unheard in this part of the US.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Christianity, Church, Leadership, Ministry

Thoughts on Christian Leadership #4

At this point, I’ve made it a little over half way through Exodus on my “trip” through the Bible in a year and a half. I’m finding myself to resonate more and more with Moses. I know that’s lofty, but I can’t help but I can’t help but to see a number of similarities between my own leadership style and his.

In many of the leadership books and classes I’ve read, Moses is a key personality. They say, “Look at what Moses did here” or “See what Moses is doing at that moment…” The story of the Exodus is by no means new to me – I’ve heard since my earliest days; I’ve read it a number of times too. That is to say, I’m very familiar with his story and the context of the Isaeli exodus from Egypt.

Filed under: Bible Study, Church, Leadership, Ministry

My New Learning…

I’m currently on break between classes…I just finished Hebrew Exegesis.  Interesting stuff…

Specifically, we looked at Genesis 1 today (i.e. the Creation account).  The Hebrew text begins with the word bereshit.  Readers Digest version of Hebrew grammar is that the “reshit” part of the word means “beginning” while the “be” part is actualy the preposition “in.”

Now if by chance the word actually read “bareshit” (notice the “e” changed to an “a“) then that would indicate that the definite article (“the”) is also present.  But as it stands, there is no definite article.

What does this mean/suggest?

As controversial as this may be within the Christian community, the beginning that Genesis 1 speaks of is not definite; in other words, looking strictly at the Hebrew text, it is virtually impossible to determine a time frame for “the beginning” as found in our English translations.  The simplest way to translate this phrase is still “In the beginning,” but unlike what some Christian groups would have us believe, there is no way to determine when all of this began.  It may have been 6,000 years ago, or it could have just as easily been 6 million years ago.  The Hebrew leaves it open ended…

Filed under: Bible Study, Theology

The Role of Presuppositionalism

But word…I know.  A basic definition: Presuppositionalism is the belief that everyone bring a certain set of “assumptions” about life to the table for every conversation.  These “assumptions” are things/beliefs/realities that are considered philosophical givens – i.e. There is no God; science can explain everything; the Bible is authoritative.

Initially, this may not seem like much, but understanding this can assist everyone is the conversations they have with others…that is, assuming one has a desire to really understand an issue/conversation in its entirety.  I’ve seen this at work quite a bit lately in the discussions I’ve been participating in regarding science of faith.  I’ve noticed that often times, when a faith-based science question is raised, the first several “attacks” almost always revolved around accusations of faith being a bunch of crap.  To be honest, I’ve yet to find a good, well-thoughtout argument as to why faith is such.  Presuppositionalism at work…

This is not meant to be a post that says that presuppositionalism sucks…this is merely an observation of what lies beneath everyone’s statements.

Here’s the thing: as a possible church planter – even parish ministers should be paying attention – I want to get at people’s presuppositions; I want to know what makes them tick and why they maintain the assumptions that they do.  Most people are merely repeating what they have always been told.  There is some truth to the fact that people tend to mimic what they see growing up into adulthood.  Often times, we don’t have a good reason for believing/thinking it.  Those things need to be uncovered in order for meaningful dialog to take place.

Filed under: Church Planting, Evangelism, Leadership, Ministry, Philosophy