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One of the things that always seem to come up when you’re preparing to do mission work, specifically in another country, is the idea of expectations. Often times, our expectations of a trip or service project can define our reaction to that trip or action played out in reality. We can find disappointment is reality didn’t meet or was different from our expectations. I’m not leaving the country… or even the city, but I’ve thought a lot about expectations as I’ve prepared to enter in this season of church planting here in Maryland. I know my propensity to define church based on my “to-date” experience of church. I have expectations of people and what ministry might look like with this church plant…I’ve thought a lot about what I think will be hard for me and what I’m excited to grow in. I’ve processed through a lot. I thought I was preparing for a lot. Now, two weeks into official core-team meetings, I’m realizing that perhaps one of the hardest things for me to digest was something that my expectations, my propensities, and my thinking completely missed. You see, I’m going through a major adjustment and feelings of withdrawal from my church…specifically the young adults ministry I’ve been a part of for several years now. My church plant, interestingly enough has placed me in the middle of many, many families. There are teens, there are young kids, there are toddlers, and there are babies that are growing in bellies. There is all this talk of being better parents, taking care of kids, what to do with kids…all of this very important, I recognize that. By the time I leave our 2.5 hr meeting, I’m really just wanting to be around other singles…less kids…something more relatable…something more comfortable. My issue isn’t with kids persay. My issue isn’t with family either. My issue is that I’m uncomfortable. I’ve been an orphan since I was 14. The family I do have is not very healthy. I don’t know what it’s like for a healthy relationship between husband and wife. I don’t know what it’s like to see parents raise their kids in a healthy environment…and especially not a home that’s committed to the Lord. Now, I’m with older couples and couples who are my age. All with kids. All with each other. And I’m fighting to swallow the fact that God’s put me in the middle of it all. When I step away from my discomfort and look at the situation, I praise God for putting me here. Not having siblings or parents or a spouse…I really have no idea how or what that is supposed to look like…and this allows me a glimpse…maybe an opportunity to grow - especially if, Lord willing, God gives me a family of my own one day. When I’m sitting in my discomfort I freak out because I have no siblings or parents or a spouse. I’m alone in that respect with the church plant and I’m surrounded by people who have one of the things I’ve always wanted - family. It’s hard and uncomfortable. I nearly hate it. And by the end of our meetings I long to find others like me - my single friends, my independent friends…I long to be back in my comfortable singles ministry where I can, to some extent, forget these things that have already started haunting me 2 weeks into the plant. It’s funny - the road God brings us down. This is hard, and I won’t sugar coat it and make it seem like I’m thrilled to be embracing this struggle right now. But I do trust in God’s sovereignty and I’m also convinced that it’s usually those things that make us the most internally uncomfortable that point to an area in our lives that needs God to gracefully start working. Unexpectedly, today…the place for me seems to lie somewhere in the middle of a bunch of young Christian families. I wasn’t expecting this struggle. But now that I’m in it…I can’t help but expect God to work in it… we’ll see what happens.
The Bible—its own worst enemy I believe that people convert to Christianity for emotional reasons—not logical ones. I also believe that people from Christianity for emotional reasons. Even though the explanations given often center around logical contradictions that deconverts found in Christianity, the actual reason they leave is that their negative emotions become a greater motivator than whatever positive motivations they got by having faith. Cognitive Dissonance is one of these negative emotions. Once I began engaging my brain, and applying it to my faith, I found myself in a cyclone of emotions, and kept arriving at a single conclusion: Christianity is Sophistry. No matter how I would applied apologetics to my faith, I could not determine how to apply a Biblical viewpoint to the modern world. These conclusions, of course, were not so clearly defined in my mind at the time. All I knew was one thing: I felt horrible. One primary source of confusion was due to my own doctrine. As a fundamentalist, I believed that the Bible was the inerrant word of God. Yet I could not escape the fact that the modern Christian church’s application of that Word of God is conveniently aligned with modern society. The intolerable parts of the Bible were excused away (sometimes with the very logical reason of well that was a different time) yet other parts of the Bible were clung to as if they were impervious to the changing of time. But there was no Biblical explanation to indicate why of those passages were still to be adhered to, and others weren’t. Why didn’t women leave town when they were on their periods? Why weren’t we stoning adulterers? These types of questions were answered by saying that Jesus ended Old Testament law by dying on the Cross. But Jesus himself contradicted this in his Sermon on the Mount when he said, Don’t think for a minute that I came to get rid of the Law: I came to fulfill the Law in every detail. (Matthew 5). Christians read this scripture and actually imply its total opposite—that Jesus really DID mean that he was abolishing the old law. OK, fair enough. I began operating as a Christian with the understanding that the Old Testament really wasn’t valid anymore. So then I started wondering … why do Christians consistently refer to the Old Testament for guidance? If Jesus established a new paradigm, then nothing in the Old Testament could be relied upon to represent God’s new covenant with Christians. But even the New Testament writers consistently referred to Old Testament Laws as if they were still to be obeyed. When Paul was called before a religious tribunal, he offered this defense for himself: (Acts 25:8) So if Paul believed that Christ abolished the Old Testament law (to which he was referring) he was denying it to this tribunal. Again, in Acts he said, (Acts 28:17). And later, Paul wrote this: (Romans 2:14–15) Here, Paul is clearly serving as an apologist for the Jewish law—the Law of Moses. He’s saying, Look how logical it is! Some of these laws are naturally performed by To say I became conflicted would be an understatement. It truly seemed to me as if Paul were merely trying to juxtapose his faith in Christ with the Law of Moses so he could make it work within his culture. If this were true, it meant that modern Christians got it Or, Paul was a tool, and that was wrong for trying to apply it to his culture—that Christ’s message transcended culture. If that were the case then modern Christians had it all wrong, and that Paul’s letters weren’t inerrant at all. Or, that Paul or Jesus never intended to negate the Law of Moses, and that we should still be sending women out of the village when they’re on their period, and that we should still be stoning disobedient children. The least tenable of resolutions was, in my mind, the one Christians chose. They abolished the Old Testament law but embraced the New Testament message of redemption. I could understand this only in regard to not needing to Sacrifice animals anymore, but there were wild inconsistencies in every other aspect. [Note: not all Christian sects followed Paul’s method. However, Paul’s method is the one that survived through two millenia into today.] This was the inerrant word of God, sent to me by a loving Lord to save my soul. And yet, I wore out my Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance trying to make sense of it all, and could not succeed. God might as well have been speaking to me in French. I continued to feel horrible …
Here’s my Thanksgiving gift to you: Shiba Inu puppies in real time! You probably know about these little celebrities by now…they’ve been in all the magazines and on all the major news networks. In case they’ve somehow escaped you, here’s a little background: A San Francisco couple (who wish to remain anonymous) put the live stream of their new litter on UStream, presumably for prospective adopters to view. UStream CEO John Ham said in a MSNBC interview that his employees discovered the stream when there were just a couple of viewers, thought it was engaging and adorable, and passed along to their friends and families. The appeal was clearly universal and the feed went viral almost overnight. Ham reports 4 million views in a single week, in fact! And nobody’s even making any money of of this! The good news is that all the puppies have found adoptive homes and UStream has arranged for each pup to go to their new home with their own webcam so they can be followed as they grow up! Because, let’s face it: If you’ve grown attached to these little cuties, you’re gonna feel it when that kennel is suddenly empty (about 2 weeks from now). In the meantime, enjoy them right here or on UStream! If they’re sleeping when you arrive, check back later! They’re so cool when they’re at play! Free Webcam Chat at Ustream
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