Prayer: Part One

I've been thinking about some things to keep this blog going even when I have nothing specific to respond to, so today I shall start a short series on Prayer. As of right now, I'm not sure how long it will be. That will probably depend on how much time I have and how many points I come up with.

Prayer is a topic of lots of debate and, in my opinion, a lot of wrong thinking. I've heard a great many people completely misunderstand a lot of things about prayer, and I'm going to try to hit on the ones that have stuck out most to me. Basically, it seems that people like to put God in a box with prayer, and that doesn't ever work out well - for the people.

I don't claim to have it all figured out, or to understand fully how prayer and God's sovereignty work together so beautifully, but there are some things of which I am convinced that they are Biblical and right.

One: We pray only to God; and specifically, we are to pray to the Father. (John 16:23-24)

This is an interesting thing, and a new thing for me, because for most of my formative years, I didn't distinguish between one Person of the Trinity and another. I knew that Jesus died, not the Holy Spirit, but I also thought that Jesus came to live within me (He doesn't; the Holy Spirit does). The roles of the different Persons of the Trinity were confused in my understanding, but God is gracious.

For about the past two years, my home church has been going through the gospel of John, and two weeks ago, we went over chapter 16 and the verses mentioned above jumped out at me. We pray in Jesus' name but we're supposed to be praying to the Father. I didn't realize when I was little and my mom taught me to begin my prayers addressing the Father that there was a good reason behind it. There is.

Something else about this struck me quite squarely. The reason we don't pray to Jesus (or anyone else) is because God the Father is the One Who answers (James 1:17). Jesus doesn't send every good and perfect gift; that's not His role. In fact, the ONLY good gift that I believe the Bible mentions Jesus sending to us, is the Holy Spirit. He's more than able, but that is something that the Father does. They each have their jobs and roles. It's God the Father Who answers prayer, and we don't pray to Jesus because the Father loves us enough to answer our prayers by virtue of us being His children. He answers us because He loves us!

The only reason that our prayers might not be answered the same way that God the Father answered Jesus' prayers is because we aren't praying like Jesus did - not because the Father doesn't love us enough to give it to us without someone else asking as well.

This flies in the face of Catholicism, which teaches it's practitioners to pray to Mary and other saints. Not only do they misunderstand that it's the Father Who gives all good gifts, and say that we should pray to Mary because Mary undoubtedly has the ear of Jesus (as if Jesus is the One answering our prayers); but they also misunderstand that the Father loves US enough to answer our prayers without anyone else praying for it, not even God the Son!

Part of the reason that Jesus died was so that we could have direct access to God the Father through prayer. There is no priest we need to go through now. Not only are we neglecting to make use of this great gift that we've been given if we pray to someone else, we are also distancing ourselves from God the Father by not speaking directly to Him! Think about always talking to your best friend through a messenger - that's a pretty blah relationship. If I could only talk to my husband or my mom (or anyone really) through someone else, that would be horrible! Good relationships are open; good relationships are communicative; good relationships are direct.

And we've been given the opportunity for a good relationship with GOD, if only we will make proper use of prayer.

Chick-fil-A

As you will notice, this post has no link. My friends over on Untwisting have been silent for a bit, so I thought I would take this opportunity to talk about something very recent and controversial.

First, let me be very clear. I don't think this is a Christian issue. "Family values" are not limited to Christianity. Mormons have lots of good family values - they're not Christians (don't even refer to themselves as such). I've heard/read things from Christians calling people to support CFA and I've heard that Christians shouldn't get involved. Honestly, I have a hard time saying that it's a "should" OR a "shouldn't" as far as Christianity is concerned. Do I support family values? Yes, but I don't go give my time, money, or vote to every person who says, "I support family values." So what's the difference? We'll get to that.

Second, I've been extremely (Extremely!!!) impressed and grateful for the responses I've read from multiple Christian sources regarding their take on this. There has not been name-calling, any kind of hate-speech (from the people I've read - I'm sure the bad stuff is out there), degrading of homosexuals, etc. It's been such a breath of fresh air to me, considering some of the things I've seen and blogged about recently. It really has been a wonderful source of encouragement.

On to the meat: Unfortunately, if you stand for "family values," you automatically get linked with Christianity, which is a highly dangerous thing for Christians. If you think that all those people who stood in line for so long the other day were ALL Christians, you have a VERY optimistic view of our country. They weren't. People who believe in "god" but don't do anything to try to follow in Christ's steps - those people don't know God. Those people showed up at CFA appreciation day, too.

Personally, if we'd had a CFA nearby (and not spent too much money this month already), I would have gone. But my reasons have much less to do with supporting family values, and much more to do with the fact that I don't like mayors of cities taking on more power than they have the right to. It's because the government started a boycott, and I would want to show my dissent with the GOVERNMENT - by supporting with my dollar what they have denounced with their words. I don't want to support CFA because I think their stance is right (although that's a danger, only supporting the ones that you agree with); I want to support CFA because I think they should be entitled to expressing their beliefs without it being called intolerant, without government officials declaring that they're going to try to shut them down or keep them out.

Honestly, CFA doesn't discriminate between the gay and the straight; they serve both alike. But government officials discriminated against people who support gay marriage and people who support traditional marriage. If you can't see who is really being intolerant here, you have a serious problem with logic.

THAT is why I would support CFA. And, I hope, that if such an issue comes up on the opposite side, if the government tries to shut someone down for their personal beliefs about something like, say abortion, I would again show my dissent with the government. So if the CEO of Nike (for example) said that he was pro-choice, the government absolutely should not try to shut them down, and I would want, again, to show my dissent with the government for such action.

People are allowed to believe what they want. God established that from the beginning. Our country has stood for the freedom to speak those beliefs, and I think that is a good and right freedom, and I will fight for it - when it means fighting for the rights of people who I agree with and for the rights of the people that I disagree with, even if they hate me.

For me, this is not about family values and my response is not dictated by my Christianity; this is about freedom and my response is dictated by my desire for our country to be the land of the free.

Fear-mongering vs. Warning

A link to the past! Also, to another blog. . . .

First things first. One, I totally agree that scare tactics and guilt-tripping are bad. They're usually mean, and overall, just harmful. Either it works and you've potentially damaged someone; or you just make people upset with you. Two, it's really, really, REALLY hard to get much context at all from a quote like that. I have no idea what the sermon was about, if the preacher even used strong/harsh words - honestly, we've got pretty much nothing but one person's take on one person's reaction.

And that take is worded very dramatically, which makes me question just how honest the whole thing is. Not that a boy didn't approach the writer with tears in his eyes and talking about his old school friends; more that I bet HE (and others who saw it) would relate it MUCH differently. I know people who are habitual exaggerators and this sounds a lot like that.

But putting all that aside, we'll get to the topic at hand. What is a warning? And what are scare tactics?

Is it using scare tactics to tell your child that if they put their fingers in the electrical socket that they will get hurt? Is it using scare tactics to tell them that if they touch the stove, they will get burnt? If they drink and drive they could kill someone and end up in prison for the next few decades? All those things, if they believe you, will scare them. But for what purpose?

There are things in the world that we ought to have a respectful fear of because it's healthy. The ocean is one. My uncle drowned in the ocean. The ocean can sweep you away. Fire is another. Having control of a vehicle. These are all things that are dangerous and require some kind of instruction. People aren't born knowing how to swim, how to handle fire, how to drive a car - they require teaching (or at least, experience).

So what's the difference? If fear is part of what keeps a child from touching the stove, how is it not classified as scare tactics? Well, parents usually don't tell their children not to touch the stove because they want the child to be afraid of the stove; it's because they don't want their child to get hurt. I don't want my daughter to burn herself, to drown, to kill someone with her car, etc. etc. I will warn her because there is danger, because I want her safe.

I think there are two major differences. One is the accuracy of the statement. Fire WILL hurt you. But a warning also has something else - a positive reason. People give warnings so that something bad doesn't happen. If you weren't worried about someone getting hurt, you probably wouldn't say anything about their dangerous activity.

Unless you had a more devious purpose in mind. Fear-mongering is exaggerated for the sadistic purpose of terrorizing people. For example, a warning about touching the stove might sound like this: "That's hot! Don't touch it. It will burn your hand and that will hurt a lot." Fear-mongering would sound like this (and I've heard things like this from parents): "If you touch the stove, your hand will start on fire and all your skin will melt right off! You'll be deformed for the rest of your life."

One is true; one is a gross exaggeration. (I know - I've touched a hot stove. I got a worse scar from my bunny.) One, the major purpose is protecting the child; the other, the major purpose is frightening the child. That fear-mongering goes on within Christianity is not something with which I would argue (although I've personally never heard it); but it's dangerous to assume because you don't believe in something (like Hell) that it can't hurt you.There are scores of people in prisons who didn't believe the warnings about driving drunk. They learned the hard way.

So did the pastor engage in fear-mongering? From that status, I think it's impossible to tell. Telling people that they are going to Hell can be a warning; it can also be scare tactics. THAT is why once Christians give the warning (all have sinned; sin requires Hell), we ought always to follow it up quickly with an offer of the Answer - Jesus saves. Fear-mongering would be preaching on an exaggerated description of Hell - or saying that everyone is going there and leaving it at that. There is no good that comes from either of those; the purpose is to simply frighten people. Everyone who believed it would live in terror and despair.

Quick aside: Some people are very sensitive and they will get very afraid from just a warning. That does not mean that warnings are bad. I had an irrational fear of lighting a match for a long time because my parents warned me not to play with fire; that doesn't mean that they were wrong for warning me.

The message of the Gospel is not one of fear or guilt. It's one of hope and the joy of reconciliation. But in order to be reconciled to someone, you have to be aware that there is a break in the relationship. In closing, why do you think that God tells us that we have sinned (Rm. 3:23) and that the wages of sin is death (Rm. 6:23)? It's a warning. He's not trying to just strike fear into us (there's a faster, easily way than using words); He's telling us what's coming if we don't change, if we don't trust Him. The Gospel is not that everyone is a sinner and on their way to Hell; the Good News is that Jesus SAVES us from our sin so we don't have to go to Hell.

Christianity

This is sort of a part two, so please check here for the "part one" along with the other links. :)

This one is going to focus on the quote in the third link. "I find it hard to believe that God created 7 billion humans if he intended to condemn 5 billion of them to hell."

I don't know who said it, if they claim to be a Christian, or anything else about it. But let's assume, since it appeared on a post about Christianity that it was, in fact, a professing Christian who said it. Within this post we see some very dangerous, non-Biblical thinking.

The first problem is this, "I find it hard to believe...." Don't get me wrong, you have to be able to actually believe the Bible for it to have any impact on you. However, if you DO believe the Bible, you can't go about putting restraints on it, and how you FEEL about something is not the test. The test is, does the Bible teach it? Either you believe it, all of it, or you don't. So if God SAYS that that's what He did, it doesn't matter if it's "hard to believe." Either you choose to believe it, or you choose to say, "Eh, that's too hard. That's too far." If you take that to the logical end, you will find you have a god that is partly like the God of the Bible and partly reflects your own take on things.

This kind of thinking (though I don't think most people take it to the logical end) is a major problem behind the disagreements about the doctrines of grace (also known as Calvinism). People don't LIKE certain things, and they think that because THEY are uncomfortable with it that GOD is uncomfortable with it. That's a silly assumption.

The second problem is that the author of this quote doesn't seem to take Biblical history into account. I kind of wonder if they've read Exodus. Why did Pharaoh not let the people of Israel go sooner? Because God wanted to show His power. It's also because Pharaoh was wicked and didn't want to lose his slave force and was too proud to yield; but the Bible says that Pharaoh didn't let them go so that God could exercise His might and show wonders in the land of Egypt.

It isn't God's wrath or lack of goodness that causes there to be so many people going to Hell; it's God's attribute of long-suffering, of patience. You can look and say, "Wow, God is mean to send all those people to Hell" or you can look at it from the other side and say, "Wow, God is so good to let those people live on His Earth for so long, even though they're ruining pretty much everything." Why were there so many people who died in the Flood? Because God gave them sooooo long to turn around and worship Him; but they didn't. They just kept getting worse.

Over and over we see this in the Bible. With the Flood, there was just Noah. With Sodom, there was just Lot. God doesn't deal out His judgment prematurely. He waits, He gives LOTS of "second chances." It's one thing to be patient with someone you know is going to come around; it's quite another to be patient with someone you know is never going to change. God is patient with the wicked every day; God is good to them every day by means of the natural order of the world He made. He sends HIS rain on the just and the unjust. Every day, God gives people a reason to turn and seek Him; and every day, they ignore Him. It's not cruel of God to eventually STOP exercising patience with them.

Christianity vs. The Bible

A One
A Two
And a Three

It's easy to see the common thread, I think. I put them all together because, the second one kind of explains the first one a little. And the third one just went with it. Rather than do them one at a time, I'm going to touch on certain things from the whole of it in a few different posts.

There's one thing that I don't really like about a lot of Christian jargon - and it's our usage of the words "true" and "real." It's not that they're used improperly or something - often they fit perfectly well. It's just that it seems there should be some better way of distinguishing between nominal Christianity and CHRISTianity. Sadly, I'm not sure what that way is.

Nominal Christians belong to a religion that is just like any other. It's works-based. It's man-centered. It's not Biblical. Christianity is supposed to be God-centered, grace-based, and Biblical. But the label of Christianity gets applied to a lot. And part of the problem is that even the real Christians aren't and won't be perfect (so long as this world continues). So, the active religion - the practiced part of it - can't be perfectly God-centered.

I suppose it's like music. You can get all the theory right, you can be able to name every note; that doesn't mean you're not going to make a mistake when it comes time to play the piece. So with Christianity - even if we KNOW everything correctly (which we don't), we still fail. We still mess up.

And this leads to trouble distinguishing between sincere Christianity and nominal Christianity, between the people who love God who slipped up this time and that time and the people who are just making use of a label. So we have an enormous umbrella known as Christianity that houses everything from Catholics to Amish, from Charismatics to Quakers. And then there's just that group who identify as being "Christian" simply because they believe in a god and were taught to respect the Bible. They don't go to church, don't partake in the foundational things like Baptism and Communion, know practically nothing about Jesus - but they somehow fall in the same category as David Brainerd and Jonathon Edwards.

Christianity as only a religion is just as harmful as any other, as Buddhism, Islam, cults, and that crazy thing about the lizard-people that was linked to a few posts back. The Pharisees had religion. But followers of Christ have Christ Himself.

In the end, what I really wanted to say on this part is that while Threnody is absolutely right that "Christianity" and the Bible are not the same thing - they should be. REAL Christianity follows Christ and the Bible is the greatest tool we have to help us do that.

And, of course, I disagree about the Bible being a flawed, human institution. Since I don't think you can prove (or disprove) the Bible though, that wraps this up for today.

The post.

There's not a lot to say about this. It's sad. It's angering. It's wrong. But it's not unexpected. It's not surprising. It's not special.

Every day, the world steps on the gift that God offered them. Every day, the world takes this view. Every day, they cheer because they proverbially threw away the Bible, because they got through another day of ignoring it. It's always sad; it's always upsetting; it's always wrong. It's also the way that it is, and Christians can't get stuck on it. It has to spur us forward, not debilitate us.

Not just in activity - I don't mean that we have to spend an extra hour every week handing out tracts or something. I mean internally. Because that's what love does. When love meets an obstacle, it doesn't shrink back; it works harder to move forward, to find a way through or around. Love feels the negative, but doesn't give up because of it. Love enjoys the positive, but doesn't get lazy from it.


A few side thoughts:
You know what's sad and somewhat weird to think about? People like Lalaith and Threnody - if God never saves them - who know so much in their heads about God, have condemned themselves by denying Him. And in being made to suffer for that decision when they die, they're going to be blaming Him the entire time for not doing more, and they still won't ever believe that God is Who He says. They will never call Him good; they will never acknowledge that they were wrong, that He is just, that they didn't know Him.

They'll call Him a liar, say that He didn't keep His Word. They'll make the same arguments to themselves that they've made here to us and it will just fuel them on to hate Him. And being in God's Hell, like He told them they would be, like He warned them so many times, they will STILL not see it. All the people in Hell? They're still evil and so they still curse Him, and the only one that it hurts is them.

That knowledge alone should give Christians all the energy they need to pray and witness. If we love God like we ought, it should be the most horrible thought that those people are cursing our God, our wonderful, glorious, matchless Savior, for eternity. If we love others as we ought, it should be the second most horrible thought that those people are condemned forever never to know God's love and goodness.

Perspective

The Link.

Every response to people, to circumstances, to ideas - you name it - EVERY response we make is determined by our perspective. If you believe the Bible is false or has errors, there's no reason for you to believe it over anyone or anything.

But if you believe that the Bible is perfect and true, then rather than seeing it as at odds with reality, you see how it and reality are bound together. If God is Creator and Sustainer of all, then God is the foundation of reality. Reality is whatever God wants it to be, and whatever God makes it to be.

Your perspective will determine what happens when you observe something that seems at odds with what God has said. If you really do believe that God is and that He said it, you'll either not worry about it because it's too small a thing to be bothered about, or you'll realize that you NEVER have a complete picture. If you don't believe that God is or that He said it, you'll come to the conclusion that the Bible is erroneous, that God is a liar, or that God doesn't exist at all.

In short, you can't be blinded by the Bible if you're actually going BY THE BIBLE. Observation and experience aren't enough because we're limited; only God is not bound by those confines.

And a funny ending note: My husband read that blog from Untwisting and said something like, "You'll be blinded? Then why are their eyes are sticking out?" It gave me many giggles; hope you get some, too. =D