Last Sunday, Freedom Life Church pastor and bible teacher, Rohan Samuels covered the Lord’s Prayer. This was the second installment of FLC’s Teach Me How To Pray series where we study whether prayer is efficacious or not.
Some of us spend time on our knees doing nothing but mumbling unintelligible things to God and falling asleep where we are without realizing what happened until we wake up snoring and drooling all over the place.
Prayer sleep is some of the best sleep I’ve ever gotten and hey, listen, taking a nap before God is a great thing if that’s what we went there for. But if our initial pursuit was to seek God’s providential will for our lives in this humbling medium of communication and the result was our brain slipping into a catatonic state then something went wrong somewhere.
Prayer involves communication, not just monologues where we dispense our righteous anger, relay our seasonal depression to God, divulge our momentary anxieties and then wipe our tears, stand up or lay down from our one-sided FaceTime session with God and off we go with our lives or into oblivion to dream about other things.
Prayer is more than one-sided monologues and information dumpster fires we drop at God’s feet. If we’re not making time to stand or kneel or time to just ‘be’ in the presence of the All-Mighty then we’ll find it harder and harder to receive Guidance and Perspective from Someone we seldom stop and sit long enough to listen to and understands our destiny.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray, pastor at Transformation Church, Indian Land, South Carolina, defines prayer this way:
“Prayer is more than talking to God. Prayer is a sacred journey of becoming who you were meant to be.”
Pastor Rohan with the Lord’s Prayer in mind deciphers a better way for us to communicate with God and at the same time dispels the harmful ideas we’ve come to make tradition and doctrine over time regarding prayer that is not true and eventually turns out to be not biblical as well.
Here are just a few ideas from Last Sunday’s message I managed to jot down to add to my prayer life.
“Prayer is not about us even though it requires our participation.”
This is true. Biblically speaking, prayer is truly about us being conformed to the will of God.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2
Prayer is not just a means through which we communicate with God but also a place, an act, an action, a state of being in which we are molded into the person God has created us to be and also where we align our will to His will, which, thankfully, is always good for us. [Romans 8:28]
“You are not entitled to what you pray for.”
This point is critically important but emotionally damaging if our goal in prayer is to gain everything we want from God without knowing for sure if what we want is within His will.
When we bow a knee (which isn’t necessary) to pray we are again called by God to commune with Him and walk with Him. This intimate act calls for us to subjugate our will, which isn’t always in the right place, to His direction.
Us asking for that multi-million dollar residence in Texas, the three Mercedes -Benz Brabus rockets, and a multi-million dollar business to run without ever having taken a business management course, not knowing how to properly administer funds, and never having taken driving lessons, acquiring a driver’s license, having no auto insurance will only place us in a legally and financially compromising situation.
God sees the future as if it were the past. We must trust that when we ask for things or blessings we must first adhere our hearts and aspirations to the will of God and trust His best for our lives otherwise we’ll end up getting everything we want and not knowing how or what to do with these things.
Imagine someone asking for kids and once they’re blessed with them their kids are neglected, abused, and dismissed. We need to be in a state of peace and contentment with God over the things we get from God.
“Everyone should enter the school of prayer but no one graduates from the school of prayer.”
This is a given. No one is a prayer warrior as if there were a school somewhere where men and women go to train like samurai of yesteryear to kneel and stand for hours on end. Where they practice crying, on and off, and raising hands to strengthen their shoulders for lengthy intercessory prayer sessions. Where they carry on hours-long standing sessions to demonstrate their ability to withstand twelve-hour vigils. There isn’t a place where men and women go to train their speaking voice and then their praying voice.
No.
Prayer is a lifelong commitment to communicating with and listening to God. Understand also that God listens to you.
You won’t graduate from a prayer program the same way one graduates from a Ninja Warrior class on how to climb walls and free-run across the surface of a building.
Humility in the life of a believer is demonstrated in this way: he or she is always willing to seek God for guidance in all things instead of relying on their history, wisdom, know-how, etc.
We are all here to learn from God and learn more about how He guides us through His word and His Holy Spirit. The moment we step away from these and onto our wisdom, we have damned ourselves to our folly.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6
“Way to pray not the words to pray.”
Pastor Rohan recites the Lord’s Prayer, the one easily found in the sixth chapter of Matthew’s gospel.
7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
The beautiful message Jesus portrays in this passage is that we needn’t get caught up in the religiosity of prayer where performance and eloquence are the goals.
Jesus relays to his disciples then and us today the simplicity of prayer: we acknowledge our Creator and are also acknowledged by Him by the grace of being heard.
We are blessed with the grace of His will, which reminds us that we are not alone in this journey without a guide or direction.
We are blessed with the grace of honesty in our moment of need. When we lack or when sustenance is something we rely on, which we do, we can gladly ask of it of God. Pastor Rohan alludes to the reality of how a first-century Jew would read this prayer, one who did not have the convenience of supermarkets and logistics we do today to get food and bread. Back then, if harvest went sour or if war swept the land, there was a very high chance you or your neighbor would die from starvation and malnutrition. So understand that sometimes we go through thirst or hunger of sorts, which may or may not pertain to physical hunger, where we desperately need to present this need to the Lord.
It is comforting to know that God accepts these petitions and hears them.
Our relationship with God is measured also by our relationship with our neighbors. Vertical only faith is no faith at all. When we place an emphasis on relationships we need to be aware that we are earthly beings with heavenly blessings, meaning, we need to care for both. Meaning, we need to properly administer both.
We must not only forgive others, but we must also love them as well. Displaying a forgiving character toward all, as hard as it may be.
We are graced with the ability to seek refuge in our Heavenly Father from spiritual uncleanliness and filth. We seek refuge and protection from spiritually impure and tenebrous spirits whose sole purpose is to disrupt our relationship with our Divine Creator.
God listens to us. And because He listens to our heart and our words, we ought to then communicate our innermost workings with Him more freely.
There is nothing that you can say that’ll surprise Him nor anything you can say that will hurt Him.
This is liberating news.
So you don’t have to pray this exact prayer as if it is holier, brighter, better, more effective, and somehow a talisman against evil itself, because it is a way for us to pray, not THE WORDS we ought to pray.
Jesus set forth a foundation for us to approach God our Father, but you are free to express your heart before Him your way, without using someone else’s words.
Give it a go!
Praise Him. Trust Him. Walk with Him.
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. – Proverbs 31:8 NLT
If you know me well or if you’ve spent time on my blog, you’re aware that I spend a great deal of time dealing with and discussing reparations for black people in the Americas. Mind you, lest that introductory sentence seems vague and misleading, black people in the Americas have yet to receive reparations from their former enslavers, states, and the federal governing bodies that helped perpetuate this crime for hundreds of years.
The harm done to black people in general by the transatlantic slave trade to discriminatory laws and practices late on are at this point innumerable. But that is not an excuse that prevents us from quantifying or attempting to remunerate or recompense immediate victims of these horrors or their descendants who have experienced detriment as a result of them.
Typically, the excuses that are made about what happened, namely, slavery, happened so long ago that there are no slavers left to imprison and punish and no slaves left to redeem from bondage and assist with land, financial assistance, and social programs.
This argument is used by individuals who would rather see the Third Reich resurrected than witness minorities rise from poverty to find affordable housing in their racially homogenous communities.
Let’s Talk About Generational Wealth
The truth is that wealth is passed down from generation to generation. If you live in a house that was built in 1980, chances are your family has lived there since then or purchased it sometime after it was built. You grew up in that same neighborhood, your parents paid the house off by the time you were in college, perhaps, and now that you’ve graduated from school your parents can either sell their house to move to a smaller place; and bank on that resale, or pass the house title, which is already paid off, down to you. And this relieves you of the burden of having to apply for a mortgage for which you will be responsible come the next quarter of a century.
You are already financially ahead of many people in the country and your children are born into a home where mom and dad are both college graduates, they don’t have monthly mortgage payments deducted from their checking account. Trips to Florida, New York, California, and take place once every two to three years; and trips to Europe, are possible just as often as well. Your kids will have a college fund set up for them so that by the time they’re 18 or 19 years old, mom and dad have already saved up for them to go to school debt-free or with a very light financial burden to carry around.
Disposable income is a customary word in this home. Harley-Davidson motorcycles, boats, lifted trucks, hunting adventures with powerful and expensive bolt-action rifles take place once or twice every year. Fishing trips out of town, perhaps out of state are normal. Joining sports clubs is without a doubt a necessity because mom and dad have the disposable income to buy thousands of dollars worth of equipment for the two or three different sports each kid will join every year.
Field trips are accessible and asking for extra cash for the trip is never an embarrassment because mom and dad hand you a credit card and ask you to be mindful of your spending while abroad.
Holiday dinners are bountiful, never without a hefty turkey or ham. Your table seats eight comfortably and the room you dine in can accommodate even more people should that be the case because the family is, well, well to do, you know.
There’s never an incident of financial hiccups because the level of financial peace was passed down from one generation to the next. The ability for mom and dad to enjoy their lives is present and possible because they don’t have a mortgage to pay. Just property tax, once a year.
And the kids can focus on their schooling because they’re well fed, well entertained, well cared for, unbothered by financial disasters, their sporting events are financially covered, their field trip expenses are covered, and their every need is met by mom and dad without a bother or bump on the road.
This is just two to three generations of financial stability.
Now, consider the opposite.
Let’s Talk About Generational Poverty
Mom and dad attempt to purchase a home but they’re denied the opportunity of living in a particular community because that community does not accept certain groups of people so mom and dad have to live elsewhere, further from work.
Mom and dad are now stuck with paying for rent, which, as is always the case, is much higher than a mortgage. Mom and dad both apply for work closer to their apartment buildings but are given lower-paying jobs because the good jobs require higher education and a certain lighter complexion to qualify for. This isn’t in the job requisite write-up but the hiring manager and company president express it in conversation once mom or dad leaves the room.
So now mom and dad have to find work as administrators, custodians, handymen, or cleaners.
Once employed, mom and dad both work to support their family but their income is so low, inflation keeps rising, as does their rent every year, that they get behind on bills. This becomes a snowball effect and mom and dad end up having to get a second job, a part-time one, to supplement their full-time job income.
Mom and dad don’t have time with their kids now because mom and dad are working twelve-hour days. By the time they’re home the best they can do is purchase the simplest burger from the nearest burger joint for $5 just so their kids can eat at night.
Mom and dad do this because buy rice, beans, meat, and treats is too great a cost for them at this stage in their life.
This becomes their pattern of life for the next twenty to thirty years.
Their kids cannot participate in sporting events because the equipment necessary is too costly. The school they attend does not have the best possible educational programs because the school is underfunded because what subsidizes this school are the communities that surround it. Affluent communities invest in their schools and subsidize private and charter schools but poverty-stricken communities go neglected for decades. Teachers are few, underpaid, overworked, with too many students in their class, who, for lack of time with parents and lack of a proper meal and a financially stable home, cannot muster the energy to learn new things.
So mom and dad apply for loans and lines of credit with stratospheric interest rates just to cover a few more bills, get their kids a proper meal every day, sporting equipment for their sport of choice, and a new pair of shoes here or there for each kid.
The loan payments come around, bills accumulate, some bills are missed, loan repayments are missed, interest rates rise, and late-bill payment notices arrive with interest charges on them but mom and dad keep going.
Mom and dad’s boss, at each of their jobs, informed them that a raise is out of the question because of inflation and the salary cap on their position within the company cannot be adjusted. The boss, under a supercilious scowl, suggests they go back to school to earn a degree or a diploma by which they will earn better living wage and salary.
What the boss doesn’t know is that mom and dad have applied time and again for the opportunity to take technical classes at the nearest technical institute and also applied to college over the years but have been unable to fulfill the financial demands of these institutions and the demands of family time because they both work two jobs. Mind you, the scholastic institutions have continually raised their class fees over the years without explanation making it financially unfeasible to attend school.
The kids wrestle with aspirations of going to college but end up staying home and picking up summer jobs that transition into full-time jobs by the time they graduate school. Very low-paying jobs.
The kids are unable to get into school because their student loans would only pay for their classes but not their board. they would drive to school but they do not own a car. Mom and dad use the only car the family owns between them.
And also, mom and dad would love to drive them to college every day but mom and dad’s car just broke down and now they need to apply for another cash advance, payday loan just to fix their car, whilst being behind on bills, rent, loan repayments, and more.
Generational wealth versus generational struggle, poverty, and debt.
Therefore
What we fail to realize or perhaps what we don’t want to admit is that the first family in this made-up scenario is white and comes from a line of wealth that dates back at least two-to-three generations.
The second family is black or a different minority and they inherited nothing from their parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents because not only was material wealth and financial stability passed on to the first family but the only thing passed down to the second family was adversity to stall and halt their progress through life.
The truth of the western society we seldom think about is that white people have had generations of wealth, stability, education, and social capital over black, indigenous, Latino, and other minority groups. And this is not accidental as if white westerners just so happened upon an unclaimed body of land with treasures all about before anyone else. What happened is that the treasure belonged to someone else, it was taken, plundered, and exploited. And anyone who attempted to take it back was destroyed and later depicted as primitive savages in history books.
The truth is that western society has historically benefited one racial group whilst exploiting another.
As we have seen in the pseudo-albeit highly relatable and credible stories above is that poverty gets passed down the same way wealth does.
And much of the wealth America has accumulated over time has settled with a predominantly homogenous group; white or rather, Caucasian Americans of European descent.
What brings me back to this article is another article written by Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University.
In this article, she states that the reason why Japanese Americans were better suited to receive reparations or more likely to be repaid for crimes committed against them by their government was based on a tier system of qualifications created by the offending party, the United States government, and not the offended party, Japanese Americans.
“It is much easier to obtain reparations under the following conditions:
The number of victims is relatively small.
The victims are easily identifiable.
Many of the direct victims are still alive.
The injustice took place during a relatively short time period.
The perpetrator is known.
The injustice is easily identifiable.
The injustice offends values of equality, personal safety and/or the right to own property.
There is a symbolic victim around whom advocates for reparations can rally.
The amount of reparations asked for is not so large that the public will find it unreasonable.”
And I agree that it is much easier to quantify and calculate the immediate financial and property damage done to Japanese Americans because these crimes happened in 1945 whereas slavery as it occurred in what we now know as the United States of America began as early as 1619.
We have video footage of Japanese Americans being forcefully removed from their homes and bussed into internment camps. We have documentation of how many were moved, how many were displaced, how many lost their mode of income, job security, and livelihoods. We know these things and it makes for a case to repair the damages done because what was done was empirically wrong and evil; and quantifiable.
But Professor Rhoda lists these nine conditions by which to evaluate if one is deserving or not of reparations but she does not stop there on just how problematic these conditions can be to other victims who do not fall under this system.
“Slavery was abolished in 1865, but many injustices were perpetrated during the post-1865 Jim Crow period and beyond. These included continued violations of bodily safety, such as lynchings and police shootings. Segregation and discrimination violated the principle of equality. And even when African-Americans earn the same incomes as their white contemporaries, they own much less wealth because they do not inherit from generations of property owners.”
Japanese Americans perished in internment camps under American rule and this was enough to qualify them for reparations. Why then, is the same government so lazy and flaccid in repairing the hurt and damages done to black Americans for the last three centuries?
Mind you, the harm Japanese Americans suffered at the hands of racist and unnecessarily suspicious white Americans happened between 1942 and 1945. The second world war forced American racial exceptionalism to the limelight once again even though Japanese American citizens were willing to die for their fellow American countrymen were they to be asked.
But black Americans have been at the losing end of this war for centuries and they have been belittled, beaten, spit on, surveilled by the federal government agencies without cause, searched without a warrant, arrested without having committed a crime, deemed guilty by a biased jury, incarcerated albeit innocent of wrongdoing, and executed in gas chambers, electric chairs, or the noose, while still being innocent.
Black Americans have been lynched for hundreds of years. More so after the American Civil war when black Americans were granted their freedom from bondage, granted the right to American citizenship, and yes, the right to vote. But even then, they were terrorized by local governing bodies and policing divisions whilst the federal government turned a blind eye to it all.
Emmitt Till was lynched in 1955 for God’s sake.
Till was lynched nine years after the last Japanese American internment camp was shut down in March of 1946 and the Civil Liberties Act afforded Japanese Americans $20,000 as reparations for wrongs done to them.
Emmitt Till was murdered, his body brutalized and thrown into the Tallahatchie River and his assailants were set free after a speedy and biased trial.
Nine years.
Only nine years after Japanese Americans were granted their freedom from bondage in horrid internment camps and paid for being unlawfully imprisoned in their own country was Emmitt Till brutally lynched.
Nine years!
How long will it be before black Americans are recognized in the same light? Before they’re treated with the same decency and respect?
“No one is a slave anymore.” Was used immediately after the war.
What of their descendants who inherited their poverty? The ones who inherited generations of shame and displacement? The ones who are born into poverty-stricken neighborhoods that only exist because they were prevented from living elsewhere by white Americans of yesteryear.
Are we still under the intellectually vacuous mindset that the neighborhoods that exist today in say, Detroit, Brooklyn, Mobile, Beverly Hills, or Naples, Florida, just so happened to spring up the way are today? That affluence just naturally and gradually flowed to white Americans, over time?
Because white Americans just worked harder for what they have?
That black Americans are lazy? Consumed by a poor work ethic? That they’re unwilling to better themselves?
Perhaps I am asking more rhetorical questions than you are willing to accept the answers for but what I am getting at is that black Americans have and continue to experience injustices on the basis of race and have yet to receive a single dime for these injustices.
And this isn’t just about money. Listen, reparations supersede and transcend monetary recompense alone.
Reparations also include acknowledgment and change, cultural and societal change where power, authority, and influence are spread across the board and not relegated, maintained, controlled, and regulated by white hegemony.
Those Confederate symbols need to come down once and for all, all across the country, and the fetishized Confederate paraphernalia needs to be banned from federal and state properties and institutions immediately. Germany was able to outlaw Nazi symbols whilst preserving its history but America struggles to outlaw the symbols of a treasonous Confederate state.
Why?
We’ve taken many steps forward but for a nation whose wealth blossomed and bloomed because of the slave trade and whose wealth is only possible because of that initial sin, it is sad that it has yet to repay the descendants of its blessings for the curses it has passed down to others.
Professor Rhoda adds to this dilemma:
“It is easy to identify the perpetrators of these injustices. But there are so many that it might be difficult to persuade any one perpetrator willing to pay reparations. At minimum, perpetrators include the U.S. federal government and the governments of every state that ever permitted enslavement of African-Americans. More broadly, they include municipal governments, private businesses, educational institutions and churches.”
We know who benefited from these wrongs but they have yet to one, fully acknowledge the extent of their benefit from the slave trade, and two, repay the immediate victims of their descendants what is rightfully theirs.
The enlightened professor Rhoda concludes her informative article with a hopeful and yet dreadful thought.
“Some people who advocate for reparations also ask for such a large amount that the public would probably find it unreasonable. For example, in his 2004 debate with me, Rodney Coates asked for $12-15 trillion, which is 60 to 75 per cent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product of $20.5 trillion in 2018.
This doesn’t mean that it’s impossible for the movement for reparations to African-Americans to succeed. A social movement for businesses, universities and churches to acknowledge their roles in slavery and the Jim Crow era has already started. Georgetown University in Washington, for example, has offered reparations in the form of preferential admissions to the 4,000 descendants of the 272 slaves it sold in 1838.
There have also been reparations for some injustices during the Jim Crow period. In 1923, about 120 African-Americans were burned out of their homes in Rosewood, Fla., and several were murdered. In 2002, victims and victims’ descendants were awarded $2 million in compensation.
Thus, attaining reparations to African-Americans is not an impossible dream. But it is, and will continue to be, much harder than it was for Japanese-Americans.”
My final curiosity is this: are black Americans not American enough? Were Japanese Americans considered high class, or more racially pure, or socially clean and acceptable to receive and properly redistribute and use their funds than say black Americans?
I believe we know the answer but we are too afraid to say it out loud.
Hate for the black skin has been and continues to be an empirically undeniable aspect of American history and current society.
Professor Anthea Butler, Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought, and chair of the department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America when speaking about racism in the formation of American religious thought, specifically within white evangelical circles she said,
“Racism is a feature, not a bug, of American evangelicalism.”
If Professor Butler will allow, I will add that racism is a feature, not a bug, of the United States of America as it has routinely funneled money into international proxy wars, international ventures, middle-eastern governments, namely the formation of the state of Israel, it has accepted Nazi war criminals and Nazi high ranking scientists into its military and scientific research divisions to further promulgate worldwide white supremacy but it has yet to take steps to redeem itself in a national scale by repairing the wrongs it has committed against black Americans of yesteryear and yesterday.
The United States government will cross seas and venture into space but it continues to ignore the detriment it has caused and continues to cause to the black American community.
If someone wants to know why reparations have yet to be meted out on a federal scale to black Americans it is because racism continues to operate as the standard metric by which America blesses some and curses others. Japanese Americans endured three years of hard labor, discrimination, and internment camps and were liberated and remunerated for the injustices they suffered under white American oppression. Thank God they were treated well and cared for shortly after their release.
Their only crime was their ancestry.
But Black Americans endured centuries, yes, not just three years of harsh internment camps but centuries of brutal savagery at the hands of the American government and its many private partners and corporations, and have yet to see as resolutory a conclusion to their plight.
Racism is alive and well when it comes to who gets reparations or not and it shows.
Same old racism, new clothes, I guess.
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. – Proverbs 31:8 NLT
Professor Wade Mullen, Ph.D., wrote a book on deciphering the veiled tactics abusers and abusive institutions use to maintain power and deceive victims into submission and silence. This book opened my eyes to the sketchy behaviors corporations and their ilk of lawyers and suits use to deviate blame, shift shame, and avoid guilt at all costs, all while saving face in the face of evidence, wrongdoing, malpractice, and abuse.
“Abusers and abusive organizations may concede the basic reality of the wrong—“Yes, this happened”—but quickly add statements that either soften their responsibility or promote their integrity: “We value all people and only want what is best for everyone involved.” If these concessions do their job, the accused will stay in power, stay in favor with the community, and stay far from the shame their actions deserve.”
There’s always that ‘but’ in our apologies, is there not? I believe it’s a defensive mechanism to protect our ego from one, being exposed for what it is, two, admitting wrong, and three, having to deal with the consequences of that initial or sequential wrongdoing we’re responsible for.
I’m guilty of this as well. Many times over.
I’ve apologized to others with the intent of protecting my image for the sake of my ego. No one wants to be destroyed in the public sphere or the public marketplace. Nowadays, being denied social capital is at times worse than actual capital because of ostracism from people on social media which, if left unchallenged, can last years, if not decades; or a lifetime.
“I’m sorry I did that to you but you kind of asked for it.”
“I’m sorry you felt that way but that wasn’t my intention.”
“I’m sorry this happened, it did, and I’ll put it behind me. You do have to forgive me, you know.”
These are just a few of the facades and barriers we create and put up to defang the brunt of our consequences. We’re not only afraid of the ramifications of our wrongs but we’re resistant to any form of discipline, especially if that discipline is meted out by the victim of our wrongs.
And this is where I came across an interesting list this week called the Traits of Abusive Leaders. I found it on The Speaking Out on Sex Abuse Podcast where the hosts interview Jimmy Hinton and Christine Fox Parker on the subject of abusive leaders.
They pinpoint 23 identifiable traits abusive leaders can exhibit which, after a closer look, are patterns and behaviors we see in our own lives as well. I mean, I see a few of these in mine. It’s daunting.
Take a look:
Doublespeak—Language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts or reverses the meaning of
words using euphemisms, inflated language, jargon, or just plain nonsense
Unteachable Spirit—Claims to want to hear people’s opinions, yet talks down to and/or argue with the people who share them; pretends to listen, agree, and learn, yet makes no significant change
Corrective Theology—Use meetings or written messages to correct things that were said by others
Semantics—Distort and distract from what they and others say and/or mean by parsing every word
others say while refusing to allow their own language to be dissected
Blame-shifting—Refusal to take real responsibility; often directly blames other people and/or use
statements such as, “They just don’t understand my heart,” or “You are not listening”
Demand Loyalty/Respect/Trust—Often remind others of all the good they have done even as they
demand unconditional and blind loyalty/respect/trust
Sabotage—Ministries are secretly undone, content they can’t control is criticized, relationships are
undermined
Distorted Relationships—Heavy demands may be put on relationships, relationships tend not to be
reciprocal, they may speak well of you in-person while talking badly of you when you are not present
Demand Unity—Sincere sounding calls for unity turn out to be demands for conformity to the leader’s beliefs, ideas, and preferences
Gaslighting—Specific forms of manipulation intended to cause others to question their perception; may take the form of “remembering things differently,” withholding information, denying having said or done something, and/or lying
Credential Flashing—Degrees, position, titles used frequently to establish an air of authority
Paranoia—Concern that others are undermining their authority, talking behind their backs, or leaving them out
Image Obsession—Inflated concern about how others perceive them; often takes the form of public
name-dropping (though in private they may berate the very names they drop) and building a façade as a godly and/or deeply religious person
Blackmail—If challenged will used whatever he/she thinks he has on the challenger to quash the
challenge; may take the form of forcing a resignation, tying severance to NDAs
Public Admiration of Others—Publicly make highly positive comments about others (often fellow
leaders/co-workers) while privately tearing them down
Entitlement—Claim the right to the highest-ranking positions without having to do the actual work to achieve the position
Absence of Conflict Resolution—When approached about conflict swiftly and deftly to turn the conflict into the other person’s problem entirely
Distress is Highly Distressing—Often unable to handle the difficult emotions of others and will shut them down swiftly
Purposely Provocative—Will intentionally provoke distressing situations/emotions for/in others to
accomplish their own ends
Multiple Personas—Who they are in public, private, and specific ministry situations changes as if they are chameleons; when confronted about this lack of authenticity they will deny having multiple personas
Persistent—Above all, abusive leaders persist, don’t take no for an answer, overtly or covertly, passively or aggressively pressing themselves and their agendas on others
Best & Brightest—While not necessarily the best and brightest by training or ability, abusive leaders
work to be seen as the best and brightest in every room they enter
False Vulnerability—self-disclosures about past sin, attempts to evoke tears and emotionality in others
Now you may have noticed that the descriptions above reflect an array of leadership abuse traits within any structure but the authors focus primarily on leadership structures within faith communities. Namely, Christian church environments.
I believe it is critical to be aware of these deviations and character malformations because in the church we tend to value leaders based on their gifts instead of their character. If their performance and the results of their theatrics bring people to faith or balloons the attendance within our church circles, then, by all means, let us ignore their shouting bouts behind closed doors. It’s okay if the leader manipulates the board into giving him or her more executive and financial power without boundaries or accountability. It’s alright for the leader to exhibit multiple personas inasmuch as they visit the elderly, the imprisoned, and the orphan. It’s seen as a minor moral scruple when they sabotage relationships in the church, are obsessed with corrective theology; namely, his perspective of the ancient book is the only correct one, as long as the church stays full and tithes keep rolling in for years.
I mean, just look at the new church building we purchased! Isn’t just grand?
That is why it is so important to confront leadership abuse and abusers in every facet of society but more so within religious circles because leaders in this sphere are seen as intermediaries between us and God.
They’ve been given the keys to privileged access to the Divine. When they pray for guidance, Providence listens. When they preach the Word it seems as if the very Creator is present to reemphasize the gravity of the truth within the homiletical utterances of the minister behind the pulpit. When they counsel it is not the counsel of man but the very words of God.
And this isn’t a divinely ordained calling. These are positions, attitudes, and authority structures we create and honor and place men or women in the center of because we want palpable identifications of God here on earth.
Because our reliance on the supernatural is only efficacious if we can find a man or a woman of God to corroborate our faith. When that happens we then elevate them above the rest and call them Men of God or Prophetesses of God.
The problem with this spiritual sucking-up, if you will, is that the nefarious agents, namely, abusers who are talented, gifted, and amazing liars and chameleons of every form of good abuse their power every chance they get. They shape-shift their way through social tests of affirmation and acceptance, end up finding a way to lead the flock just by being performative.
Their results speak for them and in a results-driven society, they tend to rise to the top. Every. Single. Time.
It always ends up this way because church people are too gullible, conflict-avoiding, and kind-hearted to confront one another on these issues.
“Let us maintain the peace, please, brothers, let us have peace.”
And I am not innocent here. I have exhibited quite a few of these traits as a leader.
From unapologetic arrogance in being the corrective theologian in the room to being obsessed with how others viewed me in the church or para-church ministries. I’ve had my fair share of cringe-worthy public admiration of others moments, theologians and apologists I had never even met, who I would glorify and elevate to near-divine status. I avoided conflict because I didn’t want to confront the issues in me and less so in others, therefore so many issues would go without resolution in my circles.
I was only an authority over them as a teacher or youth leader but what the hell was I supposed to do about their personal lives? I’m not a guru!
The host and co-host of this podcast asked the authors of this list if these traits are mistakenly attributed to abusers alone because they have exhibited them from time to time as well.
The authors of the list stated that we humans tend to dip our fingers into selfish or self-preservative behaviors from time to time but these are just regular human mistakes we tend to make.
What they depict in this list of twenty-plus leadership character flaws are red flags that are persistent aspects of a person’s nature and how they deal with life and people on a daily basis.
The abusive traits we exhibit from time to time ought to be contradictory to our character, not complementary to it. There’s a difference.
In a moment of weakness or stress, we may lean on a certain practice because of a weakness or stress. We’re not naturally prone to sabotaging relationships, yelling at people who disagree with us, obsessed with correcting someone else’s theology, obsessive double-speak behaviors depending on the group we’re with. We’re not known for having multiple personas, one at home, one with a secretary, one with the board, one with the preaching team, one with this and that group. We’re one and the same all the time, just more professional in one sphere and more relaxed in another.
Our morality doesn’t change depending on who we’re with or around.
We’re not given to moral virtue signaling in front of the church in the morning and then off to rob banks, abuse kids, and cheat on our spouse in the afternoon.
We are all guilty of exhibiting one or more of these traits but out of a moment or a sequence of character weakness. We can find redemption from this by desisting from them immediately, confessing the wrongs, and rebounding within the community.
We’re here to restore people to fellowship, not power, remember that.
But if you find you are exhibiting these traits on a daily basis, that you are wholly reliant on them to control the narrative in your life and that of others, perhaps it is time to admit that you are an abusive leader. Or that you are obsessed or controlled by abusive traits.
And in that admittance, in that openness, it is time to seek help.
You can be helped but you must want it.
Again, we’re here to restore broken people to fellowship, not power. Fellowship helps build the individual. Power destroys the individual and their community.
So seek professional counseling today. Be it in the church or outside of it. Seek help to get your life and your character, back on track.
Because if you wait any longer your victim count will only increase with time. Eventually, you will lose the people you love and you will also lose yourself on this journey of life and faith.
Today marks five years since my wife and I (and our little Maya) moved to Canada. Who were we five years ago? What motivated the move? Do we regret leaving the sunshine state of Florida for the blizzardy winters and smoky summers of the far north?
Jasper, AB
So, we were broke five years ago. Not that we’re rich now but back then we were living with family, working two jobs, and barely making enough to pay our car and auto insurance every month. We struggled to have enough for diapers and formula. Yes. We saved a ton of cash by living with family but the alternative was to live in our spot, in abject poverty, under a bridge somewhere in the second wealthiest water-side city in the country.
Life was great in one sense. We lived no more than twenty minutes from the Naples Pier. Fifteen minutes from Coastland Center Mall. Twenty-five minutes away from Mercato and Waterside Shoppes.
We lived in the most beautiful city in all of Florida. Yes. My bias is kicking in here and I loved that city. We loved it. My wife still dreams about it too and would love to have a summer home there, just to escape the distasteful winters here, not that she’d move back though. But you know, have a place to go back to visit once in Naples. She loved it while it lasted. She has a thing for luxury. I mean, look at me.
My most prized friendships were formed in this city. Some of my most prized memories are from there as well.
But with such a life and city comes the cost of living there and we could live comfortably there. The industry I worked in, which didn’t pay me very well; and my wife not having the documentation to work in the US, would have eventually led us into poverty, without a doubt.
So we decided to move to the great white north to see if life could be more prosperous outside of the false American dream narrative.
Let me add, as a family of faith, we believed in following God’s voice to make this move when the opportunity presented itself. Long story short, as I received a prophetic word on two separate occasions to have my bags packed and be ready. We had peace amidst all the unknowns when the opportunity presented itself with the great family trip to Brazil, to make our move.
We spent a few weeks in Brazil after we left the US. We left nothing behind but a few furniture pieces and a ton of books that I miss dearly, but other than that we had no other earthly possessions to take with us. Our car loan was taken over by someone else. Like, we had nothing to our names so it was easy to leave. This was a bittersweet realization.
Leaving Ft. Lauderdale International Airport. Destination: Brazil.
And, while in Brazil we applied for my visa to go to Canada. We left the US without knowing for sure if I would be granted access to Canada, to begin with. We could have been living in Brazil right now, for all we know. Maybe Germany, if Canada had not granted me access.
Consulate restroom in Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Once I left the Canadian consulate in Sao Paulo I was both ecstatic and uncaring about the future. Never before had my life been in such uncertain circumstances and for some reason, I felt at peace. Granted, being a person of faith you must understand my ease of trust in God through these times of utmost anxiety and stress and I had no other alternative. I trusted God and well, whether we got into Canada or not, I knew God would keep watch over us.
The visa didn’t take long to arrive and I used its arrival as a way to scare my mom into thinking I got denied and that my wife, my daughter, and I would stay in Brazil. This idea frightened the life out of her. Thankfully, however, it was a prank.
My parents helped purchase our tickets from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Toronto, Canada and we left Brazil. My uncle and aunt drove us to Sao Paulo from my hometown of Campinas and dropped us off at the airport. We hugged everyone. Thanked everyone for their help, their care, their hospitality, their food, and love. All without charge. It was so good to be with family, surrounded by people who spoke the language you grew up with and a culture you had come to love so much.
It was great but we had to go. We were somehow divinely ushered into these next steps.
Once we arrived in Canada, after my wife got into a verbal skirmish with a customs officer about her permanent residency status and whatnot; I was scared something was going to kick off and we were going to get deported before we even left Toronto. But we were granted access into Canada once in Toronto. We left that lovely and massive airport and flew to Calgary, Alberta.
Maya was not excited about that 8-9 hour flight from Brazil to Canada.
And for you to understand just how delicate a situation we were in just check this out.
Once there, I realized it was very cold out. I didn’t like this because I left Brazil, in October, and it was warm out. We arrived in Calgary, in October, and it was cold. Ha. I hated it already.
But returning to the delicacy of our move. We set off to rent a car to drive from Calgary to Edmonton, where we would stay with my in-laws.
The car rental company accepted my payment for the car and whatnot but because I was using an American debit card and not a Canadian credit card they requested I place a damage deposit of something around 400 Canadian dollars or something.
I didn’t have that. I had little to no money left. No dollars to my name to buy my wife and my daughter a juice box, a sandwich, or a gumball. I had nothing to my name.
I walked outside as light snow began to fall. Tears welled up in my eyes as we were well over 200 kilometers away from our new home with my in-laws and there was a chance we would not be able to make it out of Calgary nor have a place to stay in that night because we were broke.
America has this sad mesmerizing power of making people very rich but the truth is that the American dream makes a lot of people rich but in the meantime, it makes millions more very very poor. We left America and charted north in a delicate financial situation.
I pulled my phone out and reached out to a friend to explain to him the delicacy of our situation, the cold, the snow, and the inability to rent the car. This friend, a gentle soul, wired me the money without question and suggested I never pay him back.
Moments after wiping tears from my eyes and getting to rent a car to drive from Calgary to Edmonton. It was cold.
Through tears, I thanked him and promised to pay him back, well knowing I had nothing left to my name to honor this statement. With time, however, I did pay him back.
We rented the car and then drove north through the cold Albertan plain.
We arrived at our in-laws, hugged each other, ate a hearty meal, rested, and then lived for a time, without worry. Like, a day or two, because my wife had to find work because our work situation had flipped.
In the US I could work but she could not. In Canada, she could but I couldn’t. We needed money to apply for my papers (work permit and permanent residency). So she applied in one place and then another. Applied here and then there. And she finally got a job at a car dealership. A fancy one at that.
Problem is that we didn’t live in Edmonton just yet. Well, my in-laws didn’t live in Edmonton. They lived in a country area 70 kilometers south of Edmonton. And her new job was on the northwest side of Edmonton which meant she would drive about 80 kilometers to get to work and then 80 kilometers to get back home. We borrowed enough money to buy a car, cash, off of some wealthy guy in town, and by this point, it had begun to snow outside.
Busted up Sonata. It worked, for a time.
I would wake up around 5 am, drive this dusty and rusty old Hyundai Sonata through the snow for ten to fifteen minutes and then come back so that once my wife got into the car, the engine was warm enough and the heat was blowing hot in it. And off to work, she went. And she would get home very late at night because her job was so far away.
Eventually, this car would break down. I kept hearing creaks and cranks, metal bending and twisting, and I would tell my wife about the noise, how the car would veer to one side more than the other, and how it would groan when we turned this way or that way. She said it was nothing to worry about because Edmonton roads are just full of holes and whatnot.
They were. They are. Roads up here are horrible.
And one day, while driving nearby her work, caring for chores and whatnot, the car began to make louder sounds and my wife suggested we pull into the nearest Canadian Tire car shop for an inspection. Once there, I pulled into the parking lot and when I put the transmission in reverse, the front end of the car dropped to the floor and the car would not budge.
My wife saw the car drop and saw the panicked and desperate look in my eyes, as she stood outside trying to help me with reverse parking it slowly and she began to laugh a kind of laugh I hadn’t heard before. Whether it was stress or panic or fear or just pure comedy, I don’t know, but she laughed so much. She could not control herself. It’s the kind of laugh that happens when you sit in church and something embarrassing happens and you know you shouldn’t be laughing, but you can’t help it and it bursts out. But times 10 in this case.
This happened late in the day and it was so cold out. I kept the car on so that Maya, our little one, could stay warm in the car. Our gas was running low and we didn’t have money for a cab back to Wetaskiwin, where we lived with our in-laws. We were in a rut. We were stuck. Literally. It was snowing out. There was ice on the sidewalks. Ice. That’s the strangest thing ever. You could die if you slipped on that stuff.
Anyways, my father-in-law, that gentle soul, who also worked in Edmonton was on his way home to Wetaskiwin when we called him to rescue us in Edmonton. He turned his car around and drove toward us, picked us up, and well, we went home.
That car experienced so many issues. We borrowed money from family and paid to have it towed from Canadian Tire to Wetaskiwin and then somewhere else and finally to a Hyundai dealership. We dropped it off at the Hyundai repair shop because a buddy of mine from Lehigh Acres diagnosed the issue after a brief conversation and determined the issue was a recall which placed the fault of the malfunction on the manufacturer. The repairs cost us nothing. The tow truck costs were eventually covered by Hyundai. The car was repaired. It broke down again and again but Hyundai covered those costs as well. At that point, we were allowed to trade that old junk in and get a newer car, which, we did on the spot.
Our red beetle. Hyundai beetle.
We ended up getting a tiny Hyundai Elantra that suited our family needs just fine… had we not been living in a polar vortex. Driving a tiny front-wheel-drive car in flat sun-scorched Florida is an amazing experience. But driving that four-cylinder baby up a hill through a blizzard is one of the most devilish things one can attempt. Many a time I thought the car would stall mid-climb and we would slide down an icy road to a wintery death in the Edmonton Saskatchewan River.
Thankfully that never happened. We got close, but never.
We eventually saved enough of my wife’s recent earnings, to the last penny, to move into Edmonton so that we could be closer to my wife’s work. We looked into one apartment after another and we found one where the owner was understanding of our delicate situation.
I mean I wasn’t working. My wife was and we barely made enough to cover our costs but he saw that we were honest folk struggling to get by. His life story in moving from India to Canada, he would later tell us once he invited us to his home for tea and cookies, was similar to ours. His heart in all this was a heart of gold.
We got the apartment, my wife was pregnant, and wait, yes, my wife got pregnant again. How? I don’t exactly know but here we were in Canada, newly moved into the country, a newer car, added costs, it’s winter, and while we moved from Wetaskiwin to Edmonton a blizzard descended upon our vehicles thus proclaiming to us that to get to Edmonton we would have to sacrifice our firstborn.
We didn’t, of course.
We moved into our two-bedroom apartment, without a bed frame, just a mattress. No table, just, linens, sheets, a couple of plates, and cutting utensils. No TV, no cable, no internet. My mother-in-law was kind enough to take my wife and Maya to the store to purchase our new home essentials for us. From towels to dishes and pots and whatnot.
We had barely enough food in the fridge because, again, we had borrowed so much cash just to cover things, borrowed money to apply for my residency and work permit, borrowed money for a damage deposit on the apartment, but only paid the owner half and promised him the other half in two weeks when my wife got paid. We couldn’t afford it and so we were behind on a lot of things. We survived on the graces and food of our in-laws and the random acts of kindness from a select few church people we had met along the way.
My wife revealed to her employer that she was pregnant and within two weeks they had dissolved her position in that company.
My wife comes home after that depressing revelation, jobless and pregnant with our second child. I was home with Maya, jobless and unable to work. Bills were looming over us. Stress. Hunger. Stress. Worry. And so on.
My mind was not in the best of places.
Anywho, a few days later, miraculously, my work permit arrived in the mail and the very next day I set off to apply for work everywhere. I set up a new bank account, updated all of my info to reflect my residency in Canada. And I applied everywhere. I applied in so many places that I lost count.
One place was willing to hire me on the spot and at another firm, the finance guy who would oversee my work wanted to have a sit-down and chat.
I was exasperated for work and this dude sees me and wants to just chat. Like… I don’t have other places to be, dude.
That guy would hire me the following week and would also become one of my friends.
Faizal, me, and Dan.
We worked at this construction association for just short of two years before this same guy helped me get a better paying job within a better work environment in a different company.
Last day of work at this torture chamber.
At this point, we had met a faith community that welcomed us in (we would later leave this community for many reasons) and we had made so many friends that we cherish to this very day.
As we worked, earned, paid back some people, borrowed here, lent there, helped here, were helped there, we moved to a bigger place, got a better car, and a better job, we kind of just kept moving forward.
Five years in and we’ve added three girls to our family. Four girls under our belt!
We’re not rich. Not even close. We’re not wealthy. Not even close either.
But compared to our life in sunny Naples, Florida, (aka, paradise) we are lightyears ahead in life. Like seriously, I’m not putting the US down but life and lifestyle up here are a thousand times better because, by God’s grace, we managed to accomplish in five short years in Canada what would have taken us ten-to-twenty years in Florida.
Life was a struggle there but it was an embarrassing life because all you saw around you was exuberant wealth.
Here, even though we struggled at first, and continue to do so (we are able to actually support ourselves and live in our own place now), we see that everyone is pushing and growing through something of their own. It feels more normal to work and strive and push and grow through things up here knowing that everyone is in the same boat.
Except for the Chinese-Canadians. They’re on another level of affluence that is equal to or greater than the wealth of Naples folk.
We still lend money to friends. Friends return the favor. Debts are canceled. People are helped. And whatnot.
That part of our lives is still a work in progress we hope to one day overcome.
But what I love about living up here is that the dream of actually making it is still very much possible and attainable. And I don’t mean Bezos or Musk kind of making it. I don’t mean Gates or Jobs either.
My wife keeps assuring me that we will make it one day, whatever that means. She has that Naples mindset.
No, what I mean is the opportunity at a normal life is attainable in Canada without sacrificing life and limb.
Plus, should that be the case, I can just rush to the nearest hospital or clinic where I will be attended to and cared for at no added cost because my taxes pay for my healthcare.
That’s unheard of in the US.
My kids visit their pediatrician and there’s no co-pay involved. Nothing like that. They go, get their check-up, get prescriptions for whatever, we pay cents on the dollar for their drugs because my work benefits… work.
I can get eye exams and dental check-ups for free. To an extent. New glasses and frames, covered.
I can fracture my knee into ten places and go in for surgery and come out without a single bill.
In Naples, when Maya was born, we spent three days in the hospital. Once we got back home we receive two bills from the hospital totaling up to $30K.
How…. how could we ever pay that off? We didn’t. We wouldn’t. We couldn’t. We never will. Trust me on that one.
We’ve had two babies here in Canada and the only bill we had to pay was the parking spot for our car at the hospital parking lot.
A third baby is on her way to be born here and we’re not worried about $30K bills coming in the mail.
Life is different up here. I’m not saying life is better for everyone but it has been better for us. We have struggled and we will continue to struggle and strive for sustainability so we can give our girls a better opportunity at life up here, the same way my family moved to the US to give us a better opportunity at life.
Every generation makes a sacrifice for their kids and not the other way around.
I thank my parents for going through what we went through but for decades when they moved from Brazil to the US. I can’t count the many jobs they worked, cleaning offices, laboratories, clinics, on top of their day jobs just to provide for us. Kept us in school and well-nourished, fed, loved, and cared for.
But when we, my wife and I, set off to start a life for ourselves, the US just wasn’t as profitable or as conducive a place for our wellbeing as Canada has been so far. I’m generalizing the US, and for that, I apologize, but the wealthiest country in the world also produces a hell of a lot of homeless people too.
Something’s wrong there.
Either way, Canada has been good to us in the sense that the opportunities promised to us by a meritocracy like the USA were only attainable and fulfilled outside of the USA.
I don’t know how many struggles we’ll face in the near future but we’re somewhat a bit more prepared, maybe, to tackle them now.
I’m older now. My wife got younger in the face but older in the heart because of my antics. We’re wiser. Four kids in. Fourth in the womb but still with us.
If someone were to ask us if we’re ready to leave Canada we’d say, no.
If someone were to ask if we’d be willing to move, say, to Germany. I mean, I love the place and I’ve never been. I’d say I would visit, first, and, this depending upon my immediate disdain or unabashed love for the country, I would pray about it.
I am not averse to the idea of moving to Europe someday or anywhere else.
It’s just I feel we’re not done doing what we’re meant to do here.
I don’t have that same agitation in my heart as I did when we were beckoned to leave Florida.
That utterance that pushed us enough to consider leaving the US.
My heart is at peace here.
And I’ve also played in a band!
Twice!
Anywho, do pay us a visit. Don’t just show up because we won’t open the door. Visit Jasper, Banff, Calgary, Edmonton, and well… yeah, that’s about it for Alberta. Ha. Visit Vancouver, Whistler (winter, preferably), and Toronto.
Canadians aren’t all nice, you know. Some of them have a nasty temper. They’re just like you and me with the exception of the moose riding fetish thing. It’s a cultural thing. Don’t try to understand it.
Other than that, give the Canadian way of life a chance. We did and it worked out… so far.
Side note from my wife; if anything, this season only strengthened and grew her faith and trust in God. You’d think a life filled with struggles, month after month would make a person bound to give up, to doubt. However, she reiterates, indeed it proves rather how every time we were close to breaking God came through. She sees his hand in everything. I mean the times we’d see no food in the fridge and $0.04 in the bank account and the confidence she would have by saying “God’s going to provide” and He sure did. Somehow, someway we saw him working where obstacles and struggles came yet He made a way for us to be here, right now.
Welp, that’s five years in Canada for us. Let’s see what happens in the next five!
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. – Proverbs 31:8 NLT
Someone needs to hear this: God is love and God loves you.
Some of you were taught otherwise and it shows. The myopic view of God as a spiteful, rage-filled deity has discouraged many from seeking God.
Many of us grew up in faith communities that spoke bounteously about God’s punitive justice (abatement of evil) and sparingly about God’s reparative justice (restoration of good(s) lost in the sinful state).
And God’s justice is not punitive alone as many of you have been taught to believe. (Hellfire and brimstone preaching, anyone?)
Here is Timothy Keller on Herman Bavinck’s interpretation of divine justice:
“In his magisterial work on God’s attributes, Herman Bavinck argues that in the Bible, God’s justice is both retributive and reparative. It not only punishes evildoing, but it restores those who are victims of injustice. Yet interestingly, “God’s remunerative [restorative] justice is far more prominent in Scripture than his retributive justice.” God stands against “perverting the justice due the poor… slaying the innocent and righteous… accepting bribes…. oppressing the alien, the widow, and the orphan…” God “raises them to a position of honor and well-being… Doing justice with an eye to the needy becomes an act [also] of grace and mercy.” And therefore, God’s restorative justice “is not, like his anger, opposed to his steadfast love but is closely akin and synonymous with it.” His justice is “simultaneously the manifestation of his grace (Psalm 97:11-12; 112:3-6; 116:5; 118:15-19).”
One of the reasons why some of us hold hostile notions toward organized religion and suspicious sentiments toward communities of faith is because our understanding of God’s love and justice was twisted by nescient individuals within these institutions whose goal was to enslave us, not liberate us with the gospel message.
Our receptivity of God’s love for us is either amplified by a healthy understanding of God and His word or crushed by men (and women) who improperly use that same word to control people.
God reassures us that justice is a great thing. Especially when that justice is meted out to thwart and abate evil. God’s justice is also reparative in the sense that it is necessary to restore dilapidated souls, relationships, families, and communities.
God is not only in the business of neutralizing evil in the human heart. It is just of Him to stop evil. We need God to stop evil ‘out there’ in the world, physical and metaphysical, and, His grace allowing, ‘in here’ in reference to our community and also to the human heart.
God is love and this love demands that justice must exist and that it must be effective in a fallen world. We’re taught that sin breeds evil and that sin is entrenched in every heart thus postulating that every person has the propensity for evil.
Justice demands that sin be excised and abolished because its ramifications if left unchecked, spreads in the heart of the individual and in his community thus producing sinful structures.
Sin is destructive to the self and it creates systemic evils.
God’s punitive justice demands the sin in us be abolished but that sin is so engraved in our nature that to destroy sin God would have to destroy us. That’s normally what many of us know about the gospel and about redemption. Outside of the substitution of the cross, we are left on this earth as the receptacles of the full weight of God’s punitive justice; deservedly so.
That’s all some of us know. That’s all some of us were ever taught.
Divine Justice = Punishment.
Divine Justice = Punishment.
Divine Justice = Punishment.
Learning about God must entail we learn as much as has been made available to us about God, meaning, learning more about divine justice being both retributive and reparative.
Meaning, God’s justice is set in motion not only to confront evil, which is actually an amazing thing, but also to restore that which was lost, stolen, hijacked, kidnapped, and ruined in us by sin.
Imagine a court is set in motion to hold criminals accountable for their crimes, which is a necessary aspect of a civilized society. But we must also remember that the judicial system exists to restore that which was stolen, pay back that which was sifted, repair that which was broken, remunerate where and when possible in accordance with the law.
Our earthly courts have demonstrated just how problematic it can be to only exhibit one form of justice whilst ignoring the other.
Take, for example, an innocent man wrongly convicted and forced to serve a twenty-year sentence for a crime he did not commit. Someone falsely accused him of something, his public defender was too over-encumbered with other cases to take him seriously, he was offered a plea deal to lighten the time spent behind bars, evidence was falsified against him by law enforcement, and the jury was biased against him because of the color of his skin.
Imagine fifteen years into his sentence he is exonerated. His name is cleared by his initial accuser, who still walks about free. The court does not apologize for its missteps. His public defender abandoned him years earlier. The police officers who falsified his confession have since retired with hearty pensions, without consequence. And this exonerated soul is set free into a different world from the one he left once he was incarcerated and he has no money or land to his name.
The courts did right by punishing evil (or at least it thought it did by punishing someone for a crime) but it failed to restore and repair that which was broken once the truth came out.
Justice must punish wrongdoing and at the same time, it must repair the breach the initial wrong caused.
Divine Justice is equally retributive and reparative.
What would make this case end on a brighter note is to imagine the man exonerated, his accusers jailed and tried for falsifying evidence, statements, perjury, and fraud. And also, that the court apologizes for its initial mistake and then repays the man the millions and millions of dollars owed to him for the harms he suffered behind bars all those years and as a means by which he can restart his life with something rather than nothing to his name.
The police officers involved must then lose their pensions for falsifying evidence. This seems extreme but perjury is a crime that deserves a consequence.
Justice is set in motion to hold wrongdoing accountable and deliver the victim of these wrongs into a place, a state of being, an identification of being restored by the systems set in place to restore righteousness to the land.
Justice is righteous, you know.
The cross is where punitive and reparative justice intersects to benefit us spiritually and physically.
Christ is punished for our sins and Christ is also the avenue by which we are restored not only to God but also to one another.
“Behold, I am making all things new.” Revelations 21:5 is not indicative of just the new heavens and the new earth, but of a new people, transformed into the likeness of Jesus, living, breathing, operating, and working to live as He did on earth.
So, in light of this renewal, this indwelling, this transformative Person guiding us through life, we must walk as He did, restoring, repairing, and restituting wherever possible.
This is hope-inspiring for victims of abuse, mistreatment, violence, terror, and all categories of wrongs. It is refreshing to know that God is bent toward justice and He seeks not only to obstruct evil but also the infrastructure created by sin on which evil travels.
God’s justice abates evil and repairs brokenness.
If you are a victim, a destitute soul who has been harmed by a sinful world, seek God’s justice, not just in this life but the next.
To rectify wrongs and heal wounds.
Thank God we can seek both.
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. – Proverbs 31:8 NLT
What am I to you, World, but a passing stranger? A vagabond hitchhiking through your darkest corridors, going about shining the light of my Master. What have I to offer you World? A corpse. That’s all. Have I brought gifts; absolutely. Invitations really, to the greatest of all festivities, the grandest of all banquets; yes, even the largest supper you’ve ever witnessed, dear World. But, the truth is you will not accept this invitation from above, no, you will willingly crumble under the sins of past and present; oh yes, even the sins yet to be committed. Tell you what, soon to be destroyed World, the Lord is gracious and has promised to make you new as well. Did you really think the Creator would only focus on us humans? Absolutely not! Yes, your hopes are up even though you endure intense pains. Despair not World, for as a flower is crushed a perfume is made. With your death and destruction, a new place will be made and you will be new just like in the beginning. I cannot wait to meet you then and enjoy your beauty.
I launched this blog one year ago today. It began as a medium by which to better understand a craft, understand how I think and how those thoughts come out on paper (or on-screen), to better develop my prose, and practice just enough to the point where I don’t feel miserable when writing my first book.
By the way, I’m almost halfway through that first book. More to come about that in the future.
Looking back I am so happy that I started this page. It helps me think and perhaps it confuses me even more. Tackling history, church history, theology, faith, and relationships often lead the inquirer to more questions than answers.
And from time to time, that’s okay.
We were never to have all the answers all to ourselves. We learn best in a community and we grow better in a healthy community. And this blog is one of many communities.
I hope to improve my craft not only for myself but for you, dear reader, as well. Stories shape us. Great stories encourage and inspire us. I hope to inspire not just you but my girls. So that one day, when they decide to read their dad’s shenanigans they can understand the man I am, the man I was, and the man I aspire to be, through my writings.
108 posts down. Here are some of my favorite ones since Olivet Theory officially launched one year ago today!
The “Gospel+” Movement: Why Simplicity Matters
“The simpler the gospel becomes the closer we are to it. Whenever we add an idea, belief systems, a depraved ideology or rules by which to attain that which Christ has already accomplished we are lightyears away from the truth.”
MTD vs Christianity Proper
“MTD isn’t a religion, like Islam or Judaism. It is more of a disintegration of one particular faith, namely Christianity, that melts into ideals that have been spiritualized and inculcated into American religious circles.”
Marital Advice for the Uninitiated
“Far too many problems arise in marriage because people want so much to live like, behave like, be empowered by, attain the same level of status like, promote a sense of stability like and be unimaginatively in love like power couples they see on social media or in their community.”
How “Policy Over Character” Destroys Our Christian Witness
“White evangelicals within the United States have lost their witness to the world by voting for a vile and abusive bully who paid a porn star hush money to keep his affair a secret.”
Avoiding Extremes: A Word of Caution From a Former Fundamentalist
“Therefore, an extreme effort was undertaken by the male-led authoritarian ministers’ caste to shame, denounce, vilify, and destroy people into submission to modes and methods to separate the church from the world.”
Giftedness vs Fruitfulness: The Hidden Dangers of Following Gifted Church Leaders
“Check and see if what you seek, who you follow, and what you promote is reflective of the biblical Christ or if it is but a dim and dreary shadow of our savior poorly illustrated by gifted leaders.”
My Top Ten Rules for Girl Dads
“Love, be patient, listen, play, and yes, mess up from time to time so that she can see that dad is human and that dad knows how to humble himself enough and apologize for his mistakes.”
Ravi Zacharias
“We cannot allow truth to die in darkness for fear of losing influence and money. That was lost the day we decided to trust in the influence and giftedness of man over the eternally restorative and transformative power of Christ.”
A Painful Rediscovery: A Look Into Where My Heart & Mind Are Today
“Mumbling some sort of prayer up to God, not sure if I asked for forgiveness for my feelings, my words, my rage, or if what I felt was a fear of these words making their way on to the screens of the very people who had hurt me. In my fear I wanted to avoid offending them, for having offended me.”
The Burden of History & The Curse of Heritage
“It is easier to remove a commandment from the law of God than it is to distance Southern Baptists from their southern heritage of racism, hate, and evil.”
Olivet Theory’s Bad Advice Series: Chapter 3 – How to Talk About Race and Racism
“Disregard those notions. Go ahead and say what you have to say however you want to say it. Interrupt their conversation and speak as loud as possible. Do it all without the slightest urge to listen to anything they might have to add to this discussion.”
I Am A Neo-Evangelical
“I am a neo-evangelical and God has rescued me from fundamentalism and delivered me from stagnant middle-stance, middle-class centric Christianity that accomplishes much while it accomplishes nothing in mainline evangelicalism.”
Here Is Why We Left Mill Creek Christian Assembly
“t would be foolish to think that racism was the sole reason behind my family leaving a white church. It was a lack of compassion that led me to an irrevocable decision. A decision that brought me angst.”
Here’s to another year of blogging, story-telling, craft-development, book reviewing, and trouble-making!
Note: 408 days have passed since we left Mill Creek Christian Assembly. Our last day as members of that community was July 26, 2020, I first wrote this post on February 7, 2021, and I am publishing it today. It grew like a balloon in my heart, swelling with time, and today is the day I set it free.
Why write about it if it ain’t pretty?
One: It’s the truth. We left in haste and without a word so as not to tarnish a fragile structure. Many wondered why, some assumed, others spread rumors, all, in ignorance, of course. The Truth sets us free and the truth with a lower case ‘t’ helps clear the air. So get your stories straight.
Two: Racism is still a big problem in the Church. Racism is still a problem at the MCCA church. If racism is not confronted and excised from a Christian community it tarnishes that community’s Christian witness. Now that the issue of racism has been raised it is my hope that this community will venture to rectify that which went wrong. Not with me but with its own history.
Three: Start more conversations about history. Not just white-washed history that you learned in grammar school but comprehensive history. Especially the history of how the Church helped destroy so much, kill so many, enslave so many more, and has now decided to remain silent about its participation in the horrors of the past. If we cannot discuss these issues with love, empathy, and lament in the church, then they will be discussed without love, empathy, and lament, outside the church.
We cherish the MCCA community. We love its youth community which we helped rebuild and reform by God’s grace. And please understand that we harbor no grudge against this community and its members; not even toward the ones whose behaviors and comments persuaded us to leave in the first place. This is why I have redacted snippets of information from this post to protect their identity and their safety.
Olivet Theory
Curiosity, Masked Suspicion, and Possible Animosity
It would be foolish to think that racism was the sole reason behind my family leaving a white church. It was a lack of compassion that led me to an irrevocable decision. A decision that brought me angst.
“We have the privilege of having a dark handsome brother with us today.”
Those were words the assistant pastor said from the pulpit my first time in attendance.
Oh my God! Did he single me out because of the color of my skin? In front of everyone?
I did what any black person in the same situation would have in a moment of unimaginable shame, I laughed it off. I mean, it’s funny to identify your visitors by the color of their skin, isn’t it? If they’re offended by this amicable jest then they’re snowflakes.
Service came to an end, we were glad to be on our way out when the same assistant pastor greeted us at the exit.
“It’s so nice to finally have some color in this church. We’re happy to have you here.”
He was so enthused by my presence that I couldn’t help but reciprocate the same energy. I’ve never met a white brother who seemed so excited to meet a black man.
What I presumed to be an anomaly turned out to be a precedent of dated buffoonery worthy of contempt. I would endure an intermittent barrage of racially insensitive comments and gestures like these for the next three and a half years.
Interactions
The Deflection
I sparked up a conversation with a member of the praise and worship team about race, politics, and life in Canada. Here we discussed the brokenness of the world we lived in. We unraveled the polarizing effect social media has on the masses. I shared a harmful experience from my past with him. A horrible situation where a county clerk told me to return to my country. The reason for my visit to the DMV that day was to inquire about why my driver’s license was taking so long to arrive. She advised me that it was better to wait for my documents while living in the United States of America. Or I could complain from the comfort of whatever country I was from.
This gentleman’s response to this event was as ignorant as they come.
“Well, I have friends of color who haven’t experienced any form of racism in Canada.”
His deflection from the topic we were discussing was so evident I blurred out his next few sentences. It’s as if the absence of racial injustice in one part thus erases its existence elsewhere.
Lazy. Dirty. Leeches.
“They’re lazy, dirty people who love to leech off of white people.”
Those were the words out of the mouth of another brother who had returned from the Bahamas. He was none too bothered by the comment. There was an air of pride under his statement. I wanted only to greet him, ask about his trip to the tropics, and welcome him back to the fold. My curiosity about his trip was innocent and hopeful. I’ve yet to have the privilege of visiting this Caribbean paradise so I wanted to hear from him, first hand, about it.
“It was good. We got a tan. Now I almost look like you.” Nervous laughter. These belittling comments were a customary form of conversation with this particular brother. I asked him about the locals, their warm and receptive character to which he replies.
“They’re lazy, dirty people who love to leech off of white people.”
This happened right after a Sunday morning service. We were waiting in line for complimentary snacks.
Conversations
George Floyd’s lynching rekindled the fight against police brutality. Later that same year, Breonna Taylor’s murder accentuated this first cause. It was impossible to avoid public demonstrations that took root around the world. Conversations about racial injustice were unavoidable. I took the initiative to share several links on my personal social media account. Links about police reform. Stories of racial profiling. Black history through the lens of black Americans. History stemming from 1619 through to 2020. These posts allowed for restorative conversations with friends across the world. We understood each other’s pain and vowed to honor this cause.
These interactions were all helpful. Refreshing. Discussing race and injustice with friends was so therapeutic. And then June 5th hit and I checked my Facebook messages.
“I’m pretty sure that black people would have treated white people the same way as white(s) treated black (people) had they been in a position to do so.” Said one church brother who I respected.
“I’ve always thought that in Canada racism is not that much of an issue.” He continued. “At least I’ve never encountered one (issue of racism) myself.”
“I’ve been enjoying your ministry in our predominantly white church.” At which point I knew where these comments had come from. “I’ve never heard once of a single issue with racism in our church in [redacted] years I’ve been there. I guess you have brought this race-based division to us now.”
Being one of two black attendees of that church I wasn’t shocked. And I was a member of this ministry whereas the other POC was comfortable as a recurring guest. The race issue had taken a backseat in monochromatic churches for centuries. For our church, it was never a topic because it hadn’t been integrated. But here we were. Two colored persons attending a “predominantly white” church and we have race-based division.
But none of this prepared me for the statement that would come next. Sentiments that brewed underneath the surface of this church community for decades went on seemingly untouched. Unmentioned. Words that I read again, again, and again with mouth agape. Unwilling to accept that I had survived so long within a body of believers that saw my people in such a dim light.
“As to [the] hair incident or other negative emotional encounters you’ve described, knowing [the] East European culture, I can hardly see them as manifestations of racism but rather a lack of manners and insensitivity. What if I walked in a predominantly black church? Wouldn’t people stare at me with curiosity, masked suspicion, and possible animosity?”
It is convenient to reduce my hurtful experiences to a lack of manners and insensitivity. To know that the elder who pawed my hair twice was being insensitive. How a brother told me that brown people migrating into Europe would be the end of European society. When asked to elaborate he walked away. How another brother told me Obama and Muslims are what’s wrong with the United States of America. When asked for his source of information he said, “Fox News, where else?” That Bahamians are lazy, dirty, and love to leech off of white people is but lack of manners?
His concluding thought was revelatory. I’ve been a member of diverse church communities for decades. Black, white, brown, yellow, and red. I’ve been a part of well-integrated communities from birth. I’ve never looked at a person from another race with ‘curiosity, masked suspicion, and possible animosity.’ I can speak for my many communities. Confidently so. His perspective of colored people was detrimental to my well-being. It shattered my peace within this community.
Another brother contacted me in hopes of broadening my perspective.
“Police have a lot less reason to profile you here [Canada] for the same reasons why police in the USA [has] a higher legitimate reason to profile you there.”
Reassuring for sure.
I watched as another brother interacted with a popular social media activist. He was responding to a public Instagram post.
“Disappointed with all the famous Christians, pastors and worship leaders who have no idea who #BlackLivesMatter is!”
And his response.
“I’ve traveled to [redacted African nation] [a] few months ago, to love, serve, help and pray for black people…. But not falling for this insanity today. Thank you for speaking up!!!”
This person was a prominent member of our church. A board member of our church. It’s sad that traveling across the world to love, serve, help, and pray for black people was enough to appease his conscience. Enough to discredit hundreds of years of injustice on a local, national, and global scale. Enough to dismiss the calls for racial equality. Enough to discredit our cause. Enough to silence the only two persons of color within his community who dared speak about racial injustice.
His response to this statement was in keeping with how our church thought. I would find this out the following week.
Board Meeting and Final Decision
Our province dealt with the Coronavirus pandemic in an adequate manner. We experienced shutdowns, closures, and canceled services like everyone else. Restrictions had prohibited indoor gatherings in March but were eased in mid-June. Our church leadership and board scheduled a meeting to discuss our safe return to church initiative. We were to discuss safety measures, attendance numbers, sanitation, and other health-related topics. I was not a member of the board but my pastor invited me to take part because I was the youth leader. Our meetings would return to normal as well so I thought it would be prudent to attend.
Our pastor began the meeting with prayer and went into his introduction.
“Brothers, thank you for being here. Before we start I want to advise our church members who are posting about Black Lives Matter on social media to desist. There are brothers complaining about it and we want to avoid unrest. Thank you. Now let’s discuss our return to church packet.”
You can imagine my shock. One of two black people in the church. The only black person in that meeting. The only person who was discussing racial justice on social media. And personally invited to take part in this board meeting. This was how the meeting began? These were the first words out of my leader’s mouth? Now?
This meeting is about how coronavirus has affected our church gatherings. It is about how we can protect our church members who opt for in-person services. A meeting to proactively protect our vulnerable and elderly members. How to best follow provincial and federal guidelines.
But the meeting becomes a point from which our church denounces Black Lives Matter. A podium from which we halt any discussion about race on our personal social media platforms. An institution that silences the only two black voices it has left. George Floyd’s death? Silence. Breonna Taylor’s murder? Silence. The cries of my fellow colored brothers and sisters? A leftist liberal plot to take over the world.
My mind was a blur for the next thirty minutes. I felt sick to my stomach. The way the meeting started to have an effect on the members of the board. Eyes hovered my way and sat over my presence. I cannot recall what was said about safety, cleaning, limited attendance, and other topics. I cannot recall what happened next. But for thirty minutes I sat and simmered.
I have to leave this place. I no longer feel welcome here. My peace is gone.
I excused myself, got up from my chair, and walked out. That day it was decided for me that I no longer belonged there. I agreed.
Exit
A month after this meeting I had the opportunity to preach, which I did, with all my heart. After service, I handed my pastor my letter of leave. I handed a similar letter to my fellow youth leaders. I hugged them goodbye and left.
My pastor then invited me for a sit-down where we discussed these interactions, private discussions, and his meeting opener. He was sad that my family decided to leave. Sad that we felt the way we did. He didn’t believe race was the issue. He even invited me to come back and hold an open forum on race which I declined.
“Pastor, the other black member of our church is a trained professional who knows how to discuss these issues professionally. Invite him to speak and teach the church.”
He shrugged. He didn’t believe the church would listen to that individual. Mind you, that individual is a university professor, holds a doctorate in sociology, and is a published author.
When I pressed him again about how our church had a race problem he again distanced himself from the idea. That the gospel should be the focus of our efforts, not social issues.
We finished our coffee. My mind was made. He again pressed for me to stay, “What about the youth?”
I knew tactics like these were used to guilt people into staying in environments where they continue to suffer abuse.
“Christ began the work. Christ will complete the work, pastor.”
I’ve witnessed four of the fifteen youth members I served walk down the waters of baptism. Two before my leave. Two after I left. Christ will guide their faith. I believe this to be so.
Once news of us leaving the church became public I received another Facebook message.
“News broke that you are leaving MCCA. I hope the reason you’re leaving is not rooted in the theme of our above conversation. Whatever it might be, it is always sad to see a member of [the] church leave, especially a valuable one. It’s been nice to have. Your ministry has been a blessing to my family and myself. May God bless you on your spiritual journey!”
This being the same brother I respect who also said:
“The biggest enemy of [the] black community is their victim mentality and bitterness, which does breed the culture of violence. […] In my opinion, the more you raise in [a] judgemental manner the topic of racism, the more ruin, and division you’ll bring to our community. It is as offensive to us, white people, to be branded racists, as for black people to be called slaves. People will go into defensive mode, they’ll become more distant and hostile. […] When you think we mistreat you in MCCA, think about the fact [of] how quickly you rose to [a] position of respect and leadership. You preach on Sundays, you lead and teach our youth, the doors of P&W [praise and worship] group are wide open to you too. Isn’t that the manifestation of the highest degree of trust and respect our predominantly white church has shown to you? Man, I’ve been in our congregation for [REDACTED] years and I haven’t achieved half of your success.”
Progress
Seven months have passed since this last meeting. My family has found a new church family that understands the wrongs of the world around it. It doesn’t distance itself from pain. It doesn’t hide behind the Bible. Behind gospel-onlyism. It confronts individual and collective sin. It loves expository preaching. It loves social efforts. It lives for Christ.
The other person of color within the church, the professor, had a conversation with the pastor. He was more than willing to start an open forum on race. He was willing to lead this restorative discussion in hopes of mending the racial gap within the church. He was then dismissed by the leadership. His efforts were not accepted. His intellectual expertise on the subject was dismissed. A professor, nonetheless, dismissed.
He phoned me after to share with me his many run-ins with members who suffer from a lack of manners and insensitivity. Members who suffer from diarrhea of the mouth. His words. We mourned. We felt ashamed. Pain. He said he would never set foot in that place again.
I don’t blame him.
“This church is struggling with a hardness [of heart] that might stem from past trauma. National trauma that was left unresolved. It has made it hard for them to empathize with our pain.”
To which I agreed, wholeheartedly. The world struggled with the coronavirus pandemic. Our church struggled with the endemic evil of racism. An evil ignored.
I feel like I can breathe, again. As if I can be myself, again. I no longer have to repress emotions because someone reaches for my hair. No one reaches for my hair anymore. We don’t have nativist sentiments. We don’t harbor a hidden hatred for immigrants. Especially those of brown skin. We don’t harbor hatred for Muslims. Or anyone of a different faith.
My wife isn’t approached by church members inquiring about when she got pregnant. When we got married. Members who are surprised that she and I share the same faith. She isn’t approached by church members who feign shock at how dark my girls look.
My wife is white. She was born in Germany. Yes, that white. My girls are mixed. To no one’s surprise wife is more comfortable in our new diverse church community than this previous one. She is a sister in Christ. Not a lab specimen. Where her private life is subject to scrutiny because she married a black man.
Here we see people. We acknowledge their trauma. We feel their pain. We walk with them to restore that which was taken. That which was lost. We are living the way Christ called us to live again. Preaching and living the gospel.
Whoever visits our new church; no matter their skin color or walk of life, will not be a victim of curiosity, masked suspicion, and possible animosity.
“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:6
Thank Christ.
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. – Proverbs 31:8 NLT
Growing up in a Brazilian offshoot of the Assemblies of God taught me so much about the Bible, Biblical characters, faith, prayer, church community, developed in me a fervency for social reform, the temperance movement (anti-alcohol consumption), the holiness movement (high ethical standards and separation from what is deemed sacrilegious), the pentecostal movement (continuationist belief of spiritual gifts such as, speaking in tongues [glossolalia], new revelation [prophecies], interpretation of tongues, healings, miracles, signs, wonders, gift of discernment and etc.).
I grew up in a church of diverse people groups, both wealthy and impoverished, white and black, mixed, even. Former drug and alcohol abusers and users. Former sex trafficking victims. Former wife beaters. Former battered wives. Abuse survivors, really. Former drug kingpins and cartel leaders (some from within my family). I grew up listening to the story of one of my family members exchanging gunfire with police officers, surviving the firefight, although not unscathed as some of them would show me bullet wounds. One family member still has bullets lodged in his body, deemed non removable by surgeons lest they risk his life mid-operation.
Petterson (older brother) and me, stunting. Brazil, ca. 1994-95.
Many of the drug users and criminals within my family became laypeople. Some went on to become clergy, holding pastoral roles after kicking the drugs and crime, the life of substance abuse and homicide (probably), to become emancipators and heralds of the gospel. Reaching their impoverished and crime-ridden communities for Christ. Feeding the poor and preaching a message of holiness, hope, and societal change.
JARDIM. CAMPOS ELISEOS (SEDE DO SETOR) 2.1.01. Google image capture of my church in Campina, Sao Paulo.
I witnessed various transformations in my family and it was a sure reminder that what we believed was what everyone believed. Or at least what everyone else should have believed. Who wouldn’t want drug addicts to kick drugs after attending Christian para-ministry-funded halfway homes and rehabilitation centers? Who wouldn’t want criminals to ditch the life of drug peddling and then take on honest work to support their families? Who wouldn’t want to see a community focused on caring for the poor, gifting children with toys, homes with food, and families with sustenance?
Same Assembly of God, ca. 2016. Youth Conference.
We were part of a movement that promoted pastors into politics and politicians to the pulpit. There was no divide. Pastor so-and-so would preach at our church on Sunday and after the sermon, we would give him an offering to help his political campaign. Next Sunday we would host a politician who had a Christian bark but an adulterous bite. Men who wanted votes would sweat on stage to deliver barely substantive Christian messages of hope, love, and political party lines, for the sake of political dominance in our municipality.
Honestly, it felt as if we had monopolized morality, politics, and social work. In a way, we had. At least in my mind, we had. We looked down at Baptist denominations as spiritually dead churches. We thought of the ‘Four Square’ denominations as culturally errant because they did not dress as modest as we did. We thought Presbyterians were theologically compromised because they sipped whiskey, drank beer by the barrel, and smoked Cuban cigars or any make of cigars they could get their hands on. Little mention was made of Methodist/Wesleyan and Episcopalian denominations because our beef was primarily with interdenominational Pentecostals and majority protestant groups, namely, Baptists and Presbies. Baptists because they called us heretics for speaking in tongues and beef with Presbies because they also called us heretics for speaking in tongues but they were drunk when they did so.
We chided Catholics, priests, and nuns as non-Christians because they hailed Mary, worshipped saints, and shunned the Holy Spirit’s spiritual gifts. Not just that, but because they were Catholic and were by definition a morally depraved collective for following every beck and call of the Pope and allowing the Papacy to exist for as long as it did.
We were at war with a culture that perhaps didn’t even know the church, our church, had declared war against it in the first place. Brazil at that time was predominantly religious, most adherents attributing their faith to Catholicism and later Pentecostalism, primarily to the Assemblies of God.
Hate was never named from the pulpit but it was definitely disseminated to anyone who failed to fall in line with our perception of Christianity and holiness standards.
Granted, what the Assemblies of God had in doctrinal prowess and social reform it lacked in clarity of theological thought, compassion, and common sense. I thank this denomination for existing and evangelizing Brazil at the start of the 1900s. White men coming from the North to preach Jesus to Catholics and disenfranchised addicts and impoverished blacks in the Americas. What could go wrong with a Eurocentric theology in a predominantly colored South America?
Anywho, the Assemblies of God espoused love for God, doctrine, holiness standards, and literature. Well, as long as the literature in question was not antithetical to the Bible. Our ministry, as part of the Assemblies of God, was called Assembleia de Deus, Ministerio Belém. Assembly of God, Bethlehem Ministry.
This is where I spent most of my church life. Where I studied scripture, I met pastors who wore the robes of politicians and politicians who covered themselves in sheeps wool to pass as pastors. This is where I developed a love for theology, unaware of what kind of theology it was I was falling in love with, but, nevertheless, a love for God. Here is where I met church friends who made up most if not all of my social circles for years to come.
‘Murica – We Ventured North
Once we immigrated to the United States and settled in Florida, we began to attend church six nights a week. It was community forming and community building. People helping each other out. We spoke Portuguese only because the community was made up of Brazilians with a few scattered Latinos and the rare white American soul who ventured into the building. These Anglophonic individuals came either out of curiosity produced from the loud music we played or because they were dating one of our church members.
Stunting in front of our church in Orlando. ca. 1997-98
Either way, Brazilians in America were opening up churches and ministries for Brazilians. And, the same assiduity that was so fervent in Brazil for doctrinal purity, denominational clarity, focus on spiritual gifts of glossolalia and prophecy, and holiness standards were present in the Brazilian Assemblies of God in the United States.
The small and budding community of the Brazilian Assembly of God, Bethlehem Ministry teams were spreading like wildfire in Florida, Massachusetts, California, and beyond. (As of today, there are Bethlehem Ministry churches in Dallas, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Charlotte, Pittsburg, Columbus, and more spread throughout the United States of America. In the Pacific, there are churches in Honolulu, Kanalui, Wahiawa, Christchurch, Queenstown, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Rockhampton. In the European continent they can be found in Madrid, Almeria, Barcelona, Paris, Orleans, Geneva, Lausanne, Bern, Zurich, Basel, Munich, Nuremberg, Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Rome, Bristol, Cardiff, and London. Just to name a few spots. And in the African continent, Mozambique.) Wherever Brazilian immigrants or tourists land, there, in that city, we would open a church and rotate ministers through them so as not to develop independent churches. But the pastor rotation rodeo situation a whole different post.
But in America, (North America), we did not see as many disenfranchised souls as we did in Brazil. In the US., everyone was hyper-individualistic, unlike the community-centric vibe found in the motherland. We could not see the impoverished because we rarely ventured out of the church to evangelize and minister to our communities. And ‘evangelism’ in America simply meant reaching Brazilians in America. Not white Americans. That wasn’t our focus just yet. We wanted nothing more than to grow the Bethlehem Ministry brand by finding and dragging (nicely) as many Brazilians in Orlando, Ft. Myers, Miami, Lighthouse Point, Ft. Lauderdale, Pompano, Vero Beach, Sarasota, Kissimmee, and beyond into our churches as possible.
And we did.
Churches blossomed and swelled from ten to twenty adherents in some parts and in the hundreds and hundreds of members, yes, not just attendees and participants, but members in other parts.
My family first moved to Orlando from Campinas, São Paulo. Well, my dad first moved to Boston with a pastor/politician guy to help the ministry start a church there. When the call to restart a ministry in Orlando, Florida was made, this pastor/politician fellow decided to take my multi-talented instrumentalist dad down to Florida with him. And it is here where we are to arrive to meet up with my dad. In Orlando, we partook in a ministry that grew well and because the ministry was fond of rotating pastors from one church to another they then opened another church in Naples, Florida and that’s where we went next.
The pastor/politician fella didn’t last long in this ministry and was later moved to another church, for reasons unknown or unmentioned, I don’t know because much of it was hush-hush, as is the status quo in churches these days. But my family settled in delightful old Naples, Florida and it is there where we spent most of our time in the US.
Again, evangelistic outreach was an attempt to reach Brazilians in America (North America) for Christ. English-speaking Americans were handed little pamphlets outside of bars, clubs, and large buffets where they would later use them to wipe their nose or just throw them away. We weren’t sure what to do with English speakers other than inviting them to sit through simultaneously translated sermons. Not many members of our church community were able to wield the English language well enough to bring English speakers into our community so we didn’t focus on them that much or at all. This would change but not yet. They would show up, hang out, watch our singers sing, then our worship bands worship, in Portuguese, of course. And towards the end of the service, they would sit through a poorly translated sermon where the minister half-spoke in tongues and half-ministered about hellfire and brimstone. After service, we would have our comes e bebes (coffee, tea, food, and treats; it was a fraternization period) where English speakers were adored, welcomed, and greeted, but few were the church members who actually spent time with them or time getting to know them because we barely spoke their language and they didn’t know a lick of Portuguese. There are Americans we’re talking about here. They barely spoke English well enough.
And remember, this was initially a Brazilian pentecostal ministry in America (North America) with the sole focus of evangelizing unchurched Brazilians and heresy plagued Brazilians who had run off to worship God in pagan centers like Baptist churches.
We wanted nothing but Brazilians and that’s what we got.
Again, in Brazil, evangelism was primarily focused on the poor, disenfranchised, destitute, addicts, and socially oppressed but in North America, we saw abundance, wealth, and lucre. Of course, impoverished families were everywhere but not as visibly so as in Brazil so we had to change our strategies.
As we adapted our youth (myself included) to the culture, assimilating and learning the language, the ministry began to build up new leaders to lead and pastor bilingual church services.
Our initial success paled in comparison with this second wave of evangelistic outreach as our predominantly Brazilian-led services took on Colombian, Venezuelan, Mexican, Argentine, Bolivian, Honduran, Costa Rican, Puerto Rican clergy to lead services in both Spanish and in Portuguese. Because we lived in Florida you can imagine how our Latin American ministry blew up.
The more we integrated with the surrounding culture the more people we managed to bring into the church.
But nowhere was there a higher shift in our evangelistic outreach and ministerial identity than when we focused on the American culture surrounding our churches.
It was here that the fundamentalist aspect of our ministry peaked its head high and above the rest.
You see, American Evangelicalism, in its matured stage in the 1990s and early 2000s had become hyper-political with the rise and prominence of the Moral Majority and the religious Right. Ronald Reagan, Billy Graham, Bob Jones University, Jerry Falwell Sr., Liberty University, Fox News, and a plethora of conservative white evangelicals led us to believe that as we reached out to English-speaking North Americans we ought also to join in the culture wars of the land.
Are you an American evangelical?
Mind you, we were already involved in political power struggles in Brazil, hosting and supporting political candidates from the pulpit. But in the US, in the land of the American Dream, culture wars were nefarious, dangerously close, impending doom was imminent, and the end of our Christian witness and religious liberty was on assault on the daily, causing us to battle Leftist Liberals and theological liberalism anywhere we could.
We weren’t just attacking Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Catholics, Baptists, drunk Presbies, and backsliding Pentecostals. No. Now were bent on explaining to our churches (which consisted of undocumented immigrants with lapsed visas, living in the country illegally, or having entered and remained in the country illegally) that we should fight the culture wars of America.
I can recall seeing three to four flags flailing from our pulpits every single Sunday. The star-spangled banner flag was almost always center stage. Some pastors joked that if immigration officers burst through the back doors with deportation orders in hand and saw our predominantly illegal immigrant group praising the American flag then they’d turn away and leave us alone. Besides that flag, we would have the evangelical flag-waving about freely. I would later see January 6 insurrectionists bull-rushing the US Capitol waving this same flag. Little did I know, that flag was more about Christian Nationalist ideals than Christian virtues and ethics. Either way, we also carried the flag of Israel with the star of David in the middle. Being a fundamentalist meant you loved everything about Israel and hated everything Arab or Muslim. And lastly, we had the Brazilian flag. We were a Brazilian ministry in the United States of America.
Our evangelistic outreach moved from the disenfranchised people groups to political culture wars.
My evangelical development began as a neo-fundamentalist evangelical. And I was oblivious to it.
You must understand that these religious movements operate in complete invisibility to their adherents and work in frameworks that make everything outside of them or opposed to them satanic, devilish, godless, pagan, spiritually oppressive, occultic, evil, and more. This mindset in its fundamentalist rage would later help elect Donald J. Trump to office in the United States of America because he promised evangelicals religious liberty and freedom, the destruction of abortion rights, exclusive privilege in the White House, and favor toward the nation of Israel against Arab nations and Palestine. He told them he loved and served God. It was near orgasmic for North American evangelicals when Trump actually won. And also a reason for suicidal ideations when he lost. Some still think he won the 2020 election.
This same neo-fundamentalist segment of our church mentality helped the far-right Trump of the tropics, Jair Bolsonario, become the president of Brazil. He ran on the same ticket as did Trump. Hate for left and left-leaning Brazilians, he loved evangelicals and even prayed in public, attended church services. His vitriol against political opponents was unhinged in parts, making Trump sound domesticated. The man was a military lifer turned politician turned religious right hero turned president of a 211 million inhabitants nation. His downfall came through his misogynistic tropes, his islamophobia in equating Arabs with ISIS, and his disdain for liberal politics, his vitriol, and yes, just as with Trump, Covid-19. Jair Bolsonario questioned the validity of vaccines and thought they altered human DNA/mRNA thus postponing Brazil’s access to life-saving vaccines. Now that Brazil has reached well over 400,000 covid complications-related deaths, his popularity, as did Trumps, has faltered.
But how did I come to understand that I was once part of neo-fundamentalist evangelicalism?
We spent a great deal of time with the Assembly of God, Bethlehem Ministry, but once we received a recalcitrant, malcontent failed former lawyer turned pastor as a pastor of our member bleeding church, something clicked and then broke in me when the man would not stop bashing other pastors from our very denomination. Remember, bashing outsiders and apostates was acceptable but our own? It was too much even for my pharisaical heart. He had a knack for calling them monges (monks) because monks, according to him, were religious hypocrites.
He did this so often that during one of his diatribes at one of our weeknight bible studies I stopped him mid-sentence to ask him to desist from such nonsense.
I don’t believe a man of his stature and prominence had ever been confronted by a church member before. Less so a black one who was not clergy but mere laity and part-time voluntary treasurer for the ministry.
The man lambasted me for being ignorant, young, foolish, and a dunce. This all happened in front of the church. I then called him morally corrupt, immature, disqualified from ministry until he could seek reparation and reconciliation with the people he hated.
His son was present and his son said his father, the then pastor, had trouble controlling his words and tone. This poor man, the pastor’s son, even admitted that he tried time and again to correct his father’s problematic ways for years but to no avail.
This waltz of verbal assault and abuse between me and this pastor went back and forth for weeks. Every interaction we had, in front of anyone and everyone, he would call me a pejorative name and I would reciprocate. Never. Never had I had more disdain for a religious leader than I had for that man. Not because of his conduct which is normal for an unrepentant and impenitent man, but for a pastor of a holiness movement, holiness standard church to behave that way was way off for me.
Eventually, my family decided to leave the Assembly of God, Bethlehem Ministry we helped found, build, and advance in Naples, Florida.
We then joined the Assembly of God, The Vine Ministry, just a few hundred meters down the road.
Our leaving that ministry went without issue. The pastor in question and I shook hands, hugged, and said our pleasantries before parting. Whether he saw me as just another monk or not I do not know but that’s not the case here. We left as Christian brothers who knew we could not serve God in the same building anymore.
After that, none of the ministers and leaders from the Bethlehem Ministry that we had come to love, adore, and they love us and adore us ever reached out to us again.
We simply disappeared from their radar. It took nearly ten years for some of us to visit my parents place and some of them had also left the ministry.
What you have to understand is that it’s just a natural thing within the neo-fundamentalist evangelical circle to ostracize anyone who abandons not Christianity or Pentecostalism, but those who dare leave our particular ministry. Outsiders and backsliders who venture out of this Bethlehem Ministry.
So outside of this, we met new friends with The Vine Ministry, rebuilt lost or broken friendships with other Brazilian friends who had also fled the Bethlehem Ministry years earlier. People who had been traumatized by our authoritarian structure and fled for their lives. They escaped years of spiritual abuse. God bless them.
It was great to worship God and serve one another at The Vine Ministry but then my wife and I moved to Canada in search of financial stability and a future for our family.
Canada – Land of Apologies and Snow
In Canada, we joined a Slavic-Canadian pentecostal church that was stuck between modernity and early 1900s Communist Ukraine.
Having recently joined the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada the church had to shift its services from their regular hybrid of Ukrainian-Russian speaking services to English-speaking services only. This was great because I wanted to understand what in the world they were singing about in their songs.
This church, being outside of the Brazilian paradigm of poverty and social issues and outside of North American hyper-capitalist, hyper-individualistic, and culture wars framework was primarily focused on religious consistency and discipleship, more than anything else. Minor struggles and disagreements surrounded what style of worship songs we should sing, whether we should stick to hymns or play to the tune of Hillsong, Planetshakers, Jesus Culture, or Elevation music. Some members dawned jeans and t-shirts while others, the Slavic grandmas in particular, dawned head coverings and skirts from their motherland.
Evangelism here was inner-centric. More about preaching Jesus to former communists and people who had survived communism as Christians but still struggled with legalist understanding of the gospel.
We wanted to teach the bad Christianity out of ignorant Christians. And it was working. Our community grew. Our youth group developed from a bunch of kids who were at first scared to ask tough questions to a group of Christianized hooligans willing to think for themselves. They went on to lead worship and lead services, participate in plays, mission trips (not on my part but still, awesome incentive on their part), pursue baptism, get married, and more.
Because this Slavic community was so removed from the neo-fundamentalist evangelicalism I was raised within in Brazil and in America (North America) I was able to see my faith a little clearer.
Categorizing Evangelicalism
But before we proceed on how I went from neo-fundamentalist evangelicalism to neo-evangelicalism I must define and categorize evangelicalism as understood through the North American perspective. And because I’m not a scholar I will allow a scholar named Michael Graham, a writer for As In Heaven and the executive pastor at Orlando Grace Church to explain these categories for you.
In writing for Mere Orthodoxy, Graham states that there are six iterations or rather categories of evangelicalism so far. Here is Graham:
“The 6 Categories
As I have surveyed the evangelical landscape and discussed with pastors all around the country, evangelicalism seems to be fracturing into at least 6 different subgroups. Three of those groups (#s1-3) still have at least some connectivity to evangelicalism and the other three have cut ties (#s 4-6):
Neo-Fundamentalist Evangelical– Neo-fundamentalists are those who have deep concerns about both political and theological liberalism. There is some overlap and co-belligerency with Christian Nationalism (a syncretism of right wing nationalism and Christianity) but neo-fundamentalists do so with more theological vocabulary and rationality. Concerning threats within the church, they have deep worries with the church’s drift towards liberalism and the ways secular ideologies are finding homes in the church. Outside the church, they are concerned by the culture’s increasing hostility to Christianity, most prominently from mass media, social media, and the government.
Mainstream Evangelical – Historically this term has been Protestants who hold to the Bebbington Quadrilateral of conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism. The emphasis for this group is on the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Concerning threats within the church, they share some concern for the secular right’s influence on Christinaity, including the destructive pull of Christian Nationalism, but are far more concerned by the secular left’s influence and the desire to assimilate since the world still remains so hostile. Outside the church, they are likely uncomfortable with the rhetoric Trump and other conservatives use but view this direction as the lesser of two evils.
Neo-Evangelical – People who would see themselves as “global evangelicals” and are doctrinally “Evangelicals” (w/ some philosophy of ministry differences) but no longer use the term “evangelical” in some circumstances in the American context as the term as an identifier has evolved to be more political than theological. Within the church, they are highly concerned by conservative Christianity’s acceptance of Trump and failure to engage on topics of race and sexuality in helpful ways, but they have not totally abandoned evangelical identification and likely still labor in churches with the broadest spectrum of these groups. Outside of the church, this group feels largely homeless in today’s world. There is equal concern, or slightly more either way depending on the person, at the threat the left and the right pose to Christians seeking to live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness.
Post-Evangelical – People who have fully left evangelicalism from a self-identification standpoint and reject the “evangelical” label yet are still churched and likely still agree with the Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed. They are more deconstructed than neo-evangelicals and they are more vocal in their critiques of 1s and 2s than 3s would be. Some remain firmly in Protestant circles and others have crossed over to mainline, catholic, or orthodox traditions while still holding to the basic creeds. Concerning threats within the church, they are focused on abuse, corruption, hypocrisy, Christian nationalism, and the secular right. Outside the church, they are primarily concerned with the matters of injustice, inequity, the secular right, and to a lesser extent the radical secular left. Many 4s are 4s also because their experiences with predominantly white evangelicalism have been so difficult and strained that physical distance seemed to be the only conclusion.
Note – there is likely a halfway point between 4 and 5 known as ex-vangelicals that don’t neatly fit either 4 or 5. This group is difficult to parse as the meaning that this group has taken on has evolved even this year. We did not want to exclude the group from this typology but given the evolving nature were hesitant to pin it down too precisely at this juncture. Some of these folks have actually dechurched, some have deconverted, yet some remain in the faith but are quite vocal on their critiques of the movement. In time this category might evolve and/or swallow up category 5 below or it might fizzle like other labels.
Dechurched (but with some Jesus) – People who have left the church but still hold to at least some orthodox Christian beliefs.
Dechurched and Deconverted – People who have left the church and are completely deconverted with no vestigial Christian beliefs.”
Therefore
I transitioned out of neo-fundamentalist evangelicalism in Brazil and later in the United States of America thanks to distance but I moved away from mainline evangelicalism in this Slavic community due to racism and anti-intellectualism. What do I mean? The racism I experienced in this church setting was new to me, because, remember, the Brazilian church was very racially diverse. It was ethnically one but racially, we had white ministers, black ministers, ministers with Japanese ancestry, and Latino ministers, ministers from the African continent, and so on. Racism wasn’t acceptable in our racially diverse neo-fundamentalist evangelical churches.
But racism in this mainline evangelical Slavic church? Well, what did you think would happen when a black man walked into a Euro-centric church ministry that operated in Canada… of all places?
Anywho. The racism part I am still writing about and discovering as I am still dealing with it to this day. My experiences with racism in America came from outside the church. My experience with racism in Canada came from within the church. But I’ll write more about that later.
But the anti-intellectual aspect here, and by anti-intellectual I refer to historian Mark A. Noll’s work, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind delves into a group that is hyper-aware of intellectual works concerning construction and other vocational works but when it comes to Christian intellectual works they are limited. Quite limited. The exploration of theology, expositional preaching, exegesis, Christian church history, doctrinal history, and social issues were all lacking. Knowledge surrounding biology, archeology, anthropology, anatomy, physiology, psychology, philosophy, psychiatry, and science, in general, was lacking. No wonder there is a hyper-resistance toward vaccines and virology in the Slavic-Germanic mainline evangelical community here in Canada. Much love for God and holiness standards but a hell of a lot of ignorance surrounding the world around them. The very world God created.
During my last few weeks in membership with this mainline evangelical church, I witnessed an uptick in members spewing their support for Donald Trump. I mean, we’re in Canada, people. Canadians are too nice to support an orange man like Donald Trump. But our Slavic community tossed all brain and heart out the window and promoted pro-Trump rhetoric against immigrants, racial justice, and any issues pertaining to brown people. The irony was there but the masks had come off. I saw some of them for what they were. Racist Christians. The Christian part of their identity was debatable but their racism consumed the air around them. Around me.
It was no wonder that whenever the Black Lives Matter movement took shape in the political sphere and some accused it of Marxist ideologies our Slavic church shut its doors down on the topic. Period. There was no talking about race, racism, or harms done against black people and people of color because the unresolved trauma of Marxism was looming high and mightily in their repressed subconscious. If BLM was Marxist then everything they talked about or fought for was atheistic and diabolic. They were unwilling to consider that the fight for black equity spanned back hundreds of years. But fear triumphs over reason and they capitulated their witness on the altar of ignorance.
And short of my exit I picked up this book by professor Noll and devoured it. Strange thing is that I pulled this book from the church’s library, which no one ever frequented. I could have stolen the book and I don’t believe anyone would have noticed. But I read it, made notes, made connections between the idiocy in evangelical history to the idiocy I witnessed in my church, yes, my church because I was part of it too. And I was broken. I left not long after when the racism became too painful to deal with and far too many higher-ups from the church were spewing it for me to confront it alone.
Being one of two black people in the church stymies one’s aspirations for change, you know.
A short conversation with the pastor, an honest one, revealed just how intellectually and socially limited this environment had become or perhaps had always been.
We left and what was left behind was in fact my mainline evangelical faith.
I was comfortable there until I realized that racism and religious-political syncretism was still very much alive and well there, just not as angry as that within the neo-fundamentalist evangelical circle of my earlier years but it was still there.
Progression
I’ve since progressed to a neo-evangelical landmark. I’ve reached the precipice of evangelicalism. Behind me is a horrid trail of trauma and a history of evangelical evils and issues. And before me lies a pit of tenebrous open-theistic worldviews that have robbed Christ of His Deity.
I’m comfortable as a neo-evangelical because I’ve realized that my faith supersedes denominational lines. I can learn so much more about different philosophies without being guilted into thinking I’m a heretic for simply studying different thinkers. I appreciate the social ramifications of liberation theology and I love the fine-tuned nature of big-God/near-God orthodox theology. I love my transcendent Lord but He is also an eminent God. He strengthens my heart out of religiosity that damns the intellect and He pushes me into a wholesome religion that loves God and neighbor. I’m hostile to the idea of marrying religion and political ideologies. I hate poor theology but I love and am patient with people who are ignorant of good theology. They’re teachable you know. My most biting words are reserved for my friends who are still stuck in neo-fundamentalist evangelicalism. I’m patient with my friends who are on the wall between mainline and fundamentalist evangelicalism. You shout too loud and they’ll become extremists and if you whisper too much they’ll forever stagnate in mainline circles.
I’m comfortable being labeled a ‘global evangelical’ as I worship and serve Christ wherever I go. I’m not limited to national superpowers like the United States of America or Israel. Today I’m comfortable condemning Israeli terrorism against Palestinians. Before I would have spat at the mention of these poor souls. Today I favor a democratic society that espouses a higher ethic that values the civil rights of all people, not just Christians.
My views about abortion are the same. I’m pro-life through and through, not just pro-birth. But even there, I fall and lean on pastor Skye Jethani’s idea, preferring a world where abortion is legal but morally wrong and unwanted than a world where we repress laws and allow for the fruition of back-alley abortions to persist. A world where people risk death to seek out an abortion because birthing the child will be the end of their lives and that of the baby.
I prefer to look to the root causes in society leading women to believe they need an abortion. What leads them to that state of mind? We’re so focused on the clinical procedure, which is horrific and barbaric, but seldom do we focus on the social, financial, and mental issues that precede this decision. I’m in favor of leading a whole nation to destroy the structures that make women think they have to end their pregnancies to work, pay rent, buy groceries, be financially stable, get a job and keep it, graduate from school, apply for school, and have medical care.
Like… why aren’t pro-lifers, mainly pro-birthers from neo-fundamentalist evangelicals tackling those issues as well? They’re more in favor of a big military instead of big health care. I’ve figured that it’s because the left and left-leaning churches and groups are focusing on these issues, therefore, by affiliation, these things are wrong to even consider.
As a neo-evangelical, I still believe in the Bebbington Quadrilateral definition of evangelicalism, namely, biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionsim, and activism by which to spread the first three.
But in my biblicism, I am no longer a biblical literalist. I read the Bible with wisdom, with new tools by which to help me investigate the text, the author’s meaning, his intent, his audience, the culture it was written within, the principles, laws, and religious rules and laws of the time of writing. I consider the geo-political struggles of the time of writing, surrounding nations and their writers and philosophers. I understand metaphors, historical narrative, prophetic literature, poetic literature, wisdom literature, apocalyptic or eschatological writings, pastoral epistles, and the gospels. I rely on the Holy Spirit for clarity and trust Him when I’m told to use the many tools of study available to me. Outside of these tools, I would be a literalist and an idiot. Like the idiot I was in neo-fundamentalist evangelicalism thinking America was at the top of the world and everything around us was the Mark of the Beast and the antichrist. Putin, Hussein, Osama, North Korean dictators, and whatnot. One of them was bound to be the antichrist, I guessed.
I cursed homosexuals and chided Muslims. I damned atheists to hell and mocked them. I understood little of the difference between theistic satanism and atheistic satanism and thought they were both one and the same. This ignorance and arrogance stunted my approachability.
I’ve condemned friends to hell. I’ve ostracized friends by referencing dreams of them wallowing in hell-fire and their immediate need to convert otherwise they would be doomed for eternity. This is how conversations about faith, Jesus, and the Bible went between teenage me and my teenage friends.
I was relentless in assuming everyone’s eternal condition after five minutes of debating them online or in person. Why would I leave any room for doubt when I knew more about them than God did?
Either way, the extremist ways of neo-fundamentalist evangelicalism destroyed my intellect, heightened my fear of non-Assembly of God Bethlehem Ministry Pentecostals, and ruined so many of my friendships thus tarnishing my witness of Christ.
Mainline evangelicalism taught me that so many believers can worship Jesus with their hearts, accept Him into their soul, worship Him and pray to Him in their quiet place, and then live morally duplicitous racist lives in the church and outside the church. Even the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke against moderate mainline believers who spoke so highly of Christ but turned a blind eye to Christ’s creation, namely, black people during the Civil Rights era.
But in neo-evangelicalism, I can seek Christ, preach about the cross, about death, about resurrection, about sin and redemption, and the next advent of my Lord. And in neo-evangelicalism, I can confront the plight of my neighbor, assist them in their troubles, challenge structures and systems that have been set up to oppress instead of emancipate. I can challenge local bodies, both religious and secular entities, to work together, ecumenically, to help everyone everywhere.
But if you think I’m naturally progressing through Graham’s stages of evangelicalism toward post-evangelicalism or apostasy, be assured, I am not.
I have escaped neo-fundamentalist evangelicalism and walked out of mainline evangelicalism, by God’s grace, but I am nowhere close nor am I attracted to post-evangelicalism.
I follow websites and threads written by exvangelicals, post-evangelicals, and former Christians, and depending on their motivation to deconstruct evangelicalism I have found that their results are bleak. They end up destroying their faith instead of deconstructing the cultural colonization of their Christianity. It’s sad to watch people punch holes in the boat that’ll carry them across the lake. They ought to fix their sails, not tear them to shreds. Their faith compass needs recalibration but many of them are shutting their airs and trusting fate to guide them to safer shores. Some have jumped ship altogether, having lost faith in the boat’s ability to keep them above water. And this without a safety vest.
At times I have found more people leaving evangelicalism out of hurt and trauma and in other instances because they prefer to live within an antinomian framework. A framework sapped of moral attitudes and ethics. They want Christ as God of the world but not as Lord of their lives. Meaning, everything goes as far as sinful patterns inasmuch as they can read their bibles to conform it to their momentary pleasures.
In that case, I’d say some of them have moved from monotheism in Christianity to therapeutic moralistic deism. It feels good, must be right, and God or gods is out there, in the ether, somewhere, maybe watching.
Post-evangelicalism can work if one deconstructs not from faith and Christ but from cultural Christianity. Namely, Brazilian-centric or United States of America-centric Christianity. White Christianity. Euro-centric Christianity. Pan-African Christianity. Etcetera.
But if you’re moving away from biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionsim, and activism, then what are you moving towards? I ask myself that same question from time to time. If I abandon the word, the cross, regeneration, and the work that goes into disseminating this message, then what am I moving into? What have I moved away from?
Is this not the gospel? Does the gospel supersede the Bebbington Quadrilateral of evangelicalism?
Absolutely.
But does the gospel have to be post-evangelical? It can be. It was before the term was even coined and its meaning as we understand it today solidified.
But I am comfortable utilizing my brain, my soul, God’s Holy Spirit, His Word, the beauty and horror of the cross, and my giving up of myself for my family and my community.
And listen, that community is not and does not have to be a believing community.
Loving God with all my heart, soul, and mind, and my neighbor as myself does not mean that my neighbor needs to be a conservative Right-leaning Christian for me to love, serve, and possibly even die in service for them.
I Am A…
I am a neo-evangelical and God has rescued me from fundamentalism and delivered me from stagnant middle-stance, middle-class centric Christianity that accomplishes much while it accomplishes nothing in mainline evangelicalism.
Bird watching, thinking of ways to kill them. Brazil, ca. 2016.
I am not out of the clear until I reach heaven and that’s why from time to time I converse with my pastor, interacting with him about ideas, what comes next for evangelicals, what ideas, good or bad, will be sucked into the vacuum created by the absence of evangelicalism in our cultural sphere.
What happens when we remove Eurocentric theology from our schools and vernacular? What happens when we burn slave-holding Christian theology to ash? What happens when we begin to listen to the voices that have taken a backseat in literature and theology for the last five hundred years? Who are these voices? Are they white, male, wealthy, and western? Are they French, German, English, Swedish, Scottish, Irish, Dutch, or Swiss?
Are these voices evangelical at all?
These thoughts and questions plague my mind every time I venture to read scripture for my personal development and the development of my church community.
I am comforted by the continual presence of this voice of inquiry because it was absent for most of my life. I thank God for the inquisitive pull in my heart. Not the cynic and skeptic. My faith is firm and sound on the Rock of Christ but the in-betweens that have dimmed my understanding for so long are still to be discovered and challenged.
I need these thoughts and questions to dominate my headspace otherwise I’ll recrudesce to fundamentalist fearmongering and that’ll be the death of my intellect.
This cannot happen.
I am too conservative for my liberal friends and too liberal for my conservative friends. I’m politically homeless. A political vagabond moving from one political railroad car to the next, exploring the goods, acknowledging them, sharing them, and then leaving it for the next. Wherever I find errors and wrongs I attempt to address them with Christic love and when that fails I’m booted forward or backward into another car. Whither this train travels I know not but that it travels forward is without question.
The final station is of less importance to me because no matter where this train of political ideology stops it is still flawed and filled with holes, carrying broken people from one place to another, ever full and ever empty.
I love my Lord, I love my wife, I love our girls, and I love the Church of Christ. The Catholic (universal) Church of Jesus is not held nor constrained by walls and windows and doors. Nor denominational lines.
I’ve seen so much of one but desire more of the other. I’m not sure we’ll get more of it this side of heaven.
But that’s okay. It’s okay if I don’t find these answers out because I am not the keeper of the Church.
Jesus is.
And no matter how much of a dunce I become in my pursuit of historical knowledge, movements, ideas, and whatnot, I know one thing, Christ will preserve His Church.
That’s why I am an evangelical, still, but more strictly defined, a neo-evangelical.
Because I still believe that Jesus is Christ and this Church, its genesis, and its end, are in His hands.
And I am too.
Questions to Consider:
Out of the six listed categories for evangelicalism, where do you land?
Were you even aware there were so many categories for evangelicalism?
Does your church community consist more or less of neo-fundamentalists, mainline, neo-evangelicals, or post-evangelicals?
Are you not sure where you fall on this spectrum and you want to take a quick quiz to find out, hit this link. Towards the end of the page you will find the Evangelical Assessment Tool. Share your findings!
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. – Proverbs 31:8 NLT
Because I’m in a relationship where love abounds. Now, don’t misunderstand me when I say that love abounds and nothing else. What I mean is that in this environment of love, kindness, care, appreciation, communication, and compromise, we also experience challenges induced by fatigue, lack of sleep, poor sleep, busyness, miscommunication on things as simple as: is this plate clean or where is the soundbar remote?
These trivialities are abundant within a healthy relationship. A couple that does not disagree or perhaps does not experience friction does not spend time together at all.
I am loved where I live and where I live I give love. Love can be demonstrated in various ways. It can be received and understood in many others. From gifts to affectionate gestures, time spent together, romantic or eros, philo and friendlike, paying attention to your spouse and whatnot. Too many ways and far more ways into which these methods intertwine and intersect.
Therefore, in expressing love and giving love, you must give it in as many ways as possible and be in sync with your spouse on how you best receive it. Also, how they would like to be loved.
Loveless Communion
Living in an environment where love is absent but commitment is present is a delicate and painful compromise.
What do I mean?
There are couples, married couples, who have lived together for ten, twenty, possibly, thirty years together in holy matrimony, with multiple kids (or no kids) and careers well behind them, friendships developed around them, and a community of known-ness between them and all who know them.
But… these couples lack love. What do I mean? Is not the longevity of their marriage a sign of lovingkindness and affectionate endurance?
No. But yes. But no. (Canadian expression).
It can be, but it isn’t always.
Longevity can be accomplished by simply enduring and repeating something without much thought given to it.
Also, a marriage that subsists in this environment does so out of duty. Consider religious cultures where shame rules their community and to divorce a spouse you do not love or are not compatible with is a sure sign that you will be ostracized by that community.
Shame culture is real and it is an ugly reality. If you live and move within a shame-based culture, please, for the love of your sanity, your spouse, your children, and your friends, leave it.
But people who endure their marriage, they perform certain aspects of it out of a sense of duty, almost, honorific duty so as to gloat or find pride in their suffering through this relationship.
Sorry, not a relationship, this exchange of bodily property for (x) number of years.
But living in this environment of duty and honor instead of an environment of love, commitment, and compromise can be destructive to a person’s well-being and emotional development.
The sensual aspect of this relationship is there. Granted. It doesn’t take much for a person to merely ‘enjoy’ an activity. The enjoyment is there. But the fruition from it, the connection and chemistry developed, not just on a physical level but an interpersonal and emotional level is tantamount to a healthy love-filled relationship. Couples who simply bond over this act to exchange pleasantries rather than continually build their relational affections are engaging in business matters rather than life matters.
It’s merely transactional behavior.
What I’m trying to say is that love is not a required factor for a couple to enjoy sex.
There are plenty of miserable couples out there that have better sexual encounters than we can surmise but their interpersonal connectivity and relational development are as poor as the glass cup from which Donald Trump had to use two hands to drink.
Yikes!
I know. It’s sad.
So, if you’re in a loveless relationship, be in a serious one that might lead to marriage or in a marriage that has sailed away from the docks of single-dome years ago, understand that you are not without hope.
It all starts with communication. First, communicate to yourself that you do not feel loved. Two, discover why you cannot give love. Three, you need to share these sentiments freely and fearlessly with your significant other.
If you’re afraid of being open with your significant other then by all means understand that there are more issues surrounding this love loss than anything else.
Ask yourself when it was that your love for them faded. Was there a stressful situation at work, home, in your social sphere that halted your emotional development? Are you overwhelmed by responsibilities or depressed by your unfulfilled dreams? Open up about these things. Journal about them so your thoughts are on paper and clear, clearer to you.
Ask yourself when it was that your loved one stopped or slowed in expressing their love to you. What happened in that season. Before that season. You’re not to blame unless you know 100% that you are responsible for something. Namely, cheating, gambling family funds away, cheating emotionally, lying, being emotionally repressive or oppressive, voting for Donald J. Trump, gaslighting, abuse; physical, verbal, emotional, and spiritual. But if the blame isn’t yours, don’t allow your brain to trick you into thinking it is because then you’ll both be stuck in an emotional stalemate. Discuss these things with your partner and allow them to open up to you gradually, understanding that they may not entirely understand their own feelings yet. And even if they do understand them they might have a tough time verbalizing them. So listen up to what IS said but pay attention to what is left UNSAID.
Think About It
If you are in a loveless relationship you do not have to stay in it.
But here’s the catch. I do not mean that you have to leave it either.
What I mean is that both of you can work together to make it a love-filled relationship again.
Make Relationships Love-Filled Again!
Maybe we should throw that on a hat and make it our war cry.
MTLFA!!!
Nah.
That won’t work.
But you get what I mean.
To leave a loveless relationship does not mean you leave your partner. In fact, you both leave the loveless environment together and explore what it means to love and be loved, together, again.
P.S.
This post is not meant for individuals who are in abusive relationships. If you are in an abusive relationship, please seek professional help immediately, for your safety and the safety of those in your household.
GoodTherapy. Hit that link. Click other links. Then delete your browsing history.
If your spouse or partner is abusive, contact law enforcement as soon as possible.
You are loved by a community you do not even yet know. You are more than your abuse and your hurt and your pain. You might only understand this once you leave and are free to heal, feel, and yes, be loved and love, again.
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. – Proverbs 31:8 NLT
I cannot emphasize this enough therefore I will allow the words of the King to re-emphasize it for me: “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31
Fox News opinion casters have been re-demonizing Muslims and Christians from Afghanistan because there’s an unfounded theory that undocumented brown refugees will begin to flood into the United States of America because of this Taliban crisis.
Listen.
Most of the people who watch Fox News adhere to some form of a Christian or Judeo-Christian moral framework where they believe that God exists, Jesus walked this earth, that we should live by high ethical standards, sexual standards, and respect our neighbors.
Something like that.
But at the same time, these same viewers will swallow a building-sized gnat of hatred that Fox News spews against, you named it, immigrants.
And the darker their complexion the spicier the vitriol gets.
Qorokh mountain hillsides in Kabul province of Afghanistan. (Photographer)
I don’t care if you watch Fox News to further numb the dead or dying heart inside of you. I don’t mind if your soul is so dark that the only thing that brings you warmth is watching millionaires discuss their hatred for the disenfranchised, poor, colored, and immigrants but if that’s the case I hope you’re not at the same time ascribing to a worldview that espouses love, kindness, redemption, and holiness.
The crisis in Afghanistan is so complicated and the United States of America’s participation in the formation and the financial backing of the Taliban in previous proxy wars has only made things worse. The United States does not walk out of this situation with clean hands.
I understand that this crisis is more complicated than we dare admit, collectively speaking. Some of us will blame Muslims for the bloodshed. Others will blame Russia. Others yet will blame Americans. And Americans will blame the Afghani people for not developing quickly enough to defend themselves against an insurgency like the Taliban.
The blame game works itself into a wheel spin that is hard to slow down once it’s in full steam. I’m concerned with the catalysts, yes, I’m concerned about the agencies that led this nation and its surrounding communities to such dire straits. Insurgents only become insurgents because every other way of life has been taken from them by bombs dropped by other insurgencies or government agencies.
American ones included.
It’s perfectly fine to feel overwhelmed by not knowing what to do or how to do what needs to be done in a situation as problematic as this.
We’re all on the same boat when it comes to this stalemate, this uncertainty surrounding Afghani lives still in Afghanistan, who, at any moment, might be massacred for whatever reason by Taliban foot soldiers.
We’re in agreement there! We’re all worried about these vulnerable people.
But what disturbs me greatly is the ever virulent diatribe that ebbs and flows from Fox News and like-minded news stations about these unfortunate souls.
If 30 million (the actual number is somewhere around 2.5 million) Americans watch Fox News every day and they believe half of the stuff that spews out of that channel then we have 30 million Americans who have little to no compassion for immigrants seeking refuge in America, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Turkey, and so on.
We begin to see people as animals and from there we then view them as insects. It isn’t far fetched to then believe that their decimation and massacre at the hands of Taliban terrorists is equal to that of cockroaches under our boots.
The rhetoric surrounding immigrants, especially brown immigrants coming out of Fox News, Newsmax and One America News pundits or whatever other hyper-nationalist news stations are is a rhetoric of hate.
Hate the immigrant. Say you’re sorry for their demise. Tell them they’re not welcome in your country and then smack their backside as they move on to another humanitarian crisis camp that you will call dirty, filthy, and deserving of the people who settle there.
And then go on about your life telling everyone how much your country needs Jesus because Jesus is love, kind, just, merciful, and holy.
Love the men who are fleeing for their lives so they don’t fall under gunfire or the sword. Love the women fleeing for their lives so they do not become breeders for a terrorist organization and their sex-deprived lunatic foot soldiers. Pray for the children, boys, and girls, who are petrified and will possibly be traumatized for life because of it.
Love them. Love them because they are people.
Instead of complaining about immigrants coming into your country to take your jobs look at them, not through them, as extended family members who need rescue and help.
Canada is a nation large enough to possibly fit the population of the planet in it twice over. Just don’t send people to the North West Territories because there’s nothing up there but land, bears, moose, and the occasional horror story stalker.
But fill Canada with people who need help. The United States of America, too.
Why we’ve come to think of them as undeserving of our resources because they were not born here is insane and cruel. I understand nations have national sovereignty and borders but we’re all on the same planet, sharing the same air, eating the same foods, and drinking the same water, albeit, cleaner water in some places than others.
We’re all one race stemming from one place. People with an intrinsic value whose worth supersedes international and national borders and laws.
We need to love our neighbors and help them in their time of need. Not because one day we’ll need them; because we might, but because it’s the right thing to do.
We cannot settle for news stations whose personas non grata proclaim faith, liberty, freedom, the pursuit of happiness, humanity, love, and yes, supposedly, a Christian faith, but then say and report everything contrary to it.
Love your neighbor.
Be on the side of compassion and empathy. Gun powder and sword are great at making soldiers of children but love and compassion are better at making people of character, principle, and morals.
If we want to see fewer insurgencies then we might try and start by extending a friendly hand to our neighbors.
Even when that love isn’t reciprocated, we love them. We love them well.
P.S.
I’ve placed a few photos of Afghanistan in this post. Bucolic settings, breathing taking ones, just to remind the reader that there’s more to a land when it is not constantly bombarded with terror attacks. More to it when it isn’t portrayed as a forgotten wasteland occupied by dirty brown immigrants who worship a different god. (I’m talking about you, Fox News).
Afghanistan is an extension of our land and our land an extension of theirs. Same planet, beautifully full and fully beautiful in all of its parts.
An argument can be made that there is an unhealthy level of hypocrisy in the pro-life movement concerning its response to the COVID-19 crisis.
Now, to our western mind the portmanteau pro-life means that the person values life from conception all the way through to the grave. Conception through birth, through life, and so on.
And there’s disagreement on why some of the most adamant pro-lifers fail to appreciate life as much once the person is struggling to pay bills, find lodging, facing eviction notices, in need of healthcare, education, unemployment assistance, and whatnot.
That’s not my argument here. That hypocrisy is evident in these areas and more before all. I needn’t argue the case there.
My beef is with pro-life American and Canadian Christians who use their faith and their freedoms during the COVID-19 pandemic to promote a lifestyle that is antithetical to a God and neighbor honoring ethic. They use their faith and rights to promote unwise habits which lead to the death of others.
“The Christian motive for hygiene and sanitation does not arise in self-preservation but in an ethic of service to our neighbor. We wish to care for the afflicted, which first and foremost means not infecting the healthy. Early Christians created the first hospitals in Europe as hygienic places to provide care during times of plague, on the understanding that negligence that spread disease further was, in fact, murder.”
Again, in his words, understanding that negligence that spread disease further was, in fact, murder.
I am shocked by every news article or tabloid post that informs the general public that another Covid denier, Anti-Vaxxer, and anti-establishment extremist with a Bible in one hand and the American constitution or the Canadian charter in the other has passed away from Covid related complications.
Stone, again, reminds us of just how far Christians and their Christ-centric ethics have come through the years whenever faced with moral or natural evil:
“During plague periods in the Roman Empire, Christians made a name for themselves. Historians have suggested that the terrible Antonine Plague of the 2nd century, which might have killed off a quarter of the Roman Empire, led to the spread of Christianity, as Christians cared for the sick and offered an spiritual model whereby plagues were not the work of angry and capricious deities but the product of a broken Creation in revolt against a loving God.
But the more famous epidemic is the Plague of Cyprian, named for a bishop who gave a colorful account of this disease in his sermons. Probably a disease related to Ebola, the Plague of Cyprian helped set off the Crisis of the Third Century in the Roman world. But it did something else, too: It triggered the explosive growth of Christianity. Cyprian’s sermons told Christians not to grieve for plague victims (who live in heaven), but to redouble efforts to care for the living. His fellow bishop Dionysius described how Christians, “Heedless of danger … took charge of the sick, attending to their every need.”
Christians have often been at the forefront of disaster without the push from government entities, without the assistance of political agencies, without funds from wealthy corporations and yet they ventured past the green zone and into the circle of death to assist those most vulnerable, motivated by nothing more than love of God and neighbor.
The history of altruism found within Christian communities is so imitable. Their love for the destitute, the sick, the broken, the diseased, without much care for their own well-being was quite the example to follow. This nonpareil altruistic movement is what attracted so many, to the faith to begin with.
The difference, however, is that something has shifted our Christian witness. We have gone from petitioning for the sanctity of life to petitioning for the rights and freedoms of selfish living, which, in turn, and as a direct consequence of, has caused the spread of the coronavirus in so many communities that could have gone without it if we had been more Christ-like to begin with.
In ancient Israel, in the book of Leviticus in particular, the Jews required anyone with an infectious disease to quarantine away from the camp for seven days or more. Some, having a very infectious disease, would live outside the camp indefinitely so as to preserve the wellbeing and life of both parties.
And somehow, somewhere along with the development of the western Christian mind, this altruistic selflessness has gone out the window, and with it, compassion and empathy for neighbors.
Modern medicine has shown us how diseases work, how they spread, how they affect the body, disrupt certain bodily functions, and from there, how some of them can lead to death. We now know chemists can develop antibodies in the form of a vaccine to counteract the spread of diseases or the damage these pathogens wreak on society.
And one of the mechanisms we have developed over time and learned how to use better is the victimless tool of quarantine; which helps reduce the rate a pathogen transfers from one person to another by isolating and caring for the sick. On top of that, we have been blessed with access to masks, which have also proven to reduce the transmissibility of infectious diseases.
Social distancing and masks.
These are the two crosses we have been asked to bear by our society and even these have become steps on which we tread to cause the death of others.
Distance and face coverings are too heavy a burden for us to carry.
How does that make any sense?
In the onset of Christian monasticism, in the era in which Christian converts would disappear into the desert to seek God, and once there they would form communities that would open their doors to assist and house outcasts. It was there that many relinquished so many rights and privileges just to help their neighbor.
They would give up wealth, give up status, give up work, and yes, even safety to wander through the unknown for days and nights to reach a place where trauma existed, where abused and bruised souls needed refuge, a place where so many had lost family and friends and found a new family and new friends.
Christians for years upon years had given so much from their lives and personal comfort even if it helped someone else just a little.
However, the tides have shifted and today we’re trying to take as much for ourselves and even the little that would have gone to our neighbor and their stability in life as possible.
Had we been asked to give blood, relinquish the rights to our bank accounts, leave our jobs, turn in our citizenship and residency, face deportation and exile for the sake of Christ and the betterment of life of our neighbor we would.
But a vaccine shot, social distancing, and masks are too many steps too far.
Why?
Our pro-life stance is only pro-life when it deals with the rights of the unborn but let us not be challenged to protect the life and well-being of our neighbors who are already here.
Apostle Paul asked the first-century church in Galatia a question that I ask of our generation today:
“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? […]” Galatians 3:1 NRSV
He confronted a church that began with the salvific gospel and ended up with traditional legalism. Paul was curious about where and who tricked them out of the gospel and seduced them into a religion of works.
I, too, ask the same question of our fellow western Christian minds today.
“You foolish Americans! You foolish Canadians! Who has bewitched you?”
Who has sapped your Christianity of empathy? Who has taught you to reduce your neighbor to a number on a board? Who has asked you to see dollar signs instead of the elderly? Who has robbed you of love for your neighbor and taught you to believe that minor inconveniences like social distancing and mask-wearing are persecutory aspects of a democratic society?
You’re living with a persecution complex in a hedonist society. You’re more in love with and entrapped by comfort and rights than you are with Christ’s character of selflessness.
If you’re asked to carry your brother’s burdens you not only refuse to lend him a hand but you castigate your brother for being in the predicament they’re in, to begin with. And, at times, you’re the direct cause of their troubles.
“Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2 NRSV
We see so many people pass away from Covid and much of that spread is due to our gross negligence of brotherly and sisterly love.
Christianity has thrived through thousands of years of strife, persecution, famine, war, social ostracism, pestilence, and plagues and we have shown outsiders time and again just how much love God has placed in our hearts as we care for our neighbors.
But something happened. Something went wrong somewhere and we’re too unbothered or too preoccupied or too distracted to stop and think about what and why went wrong.
Stone compares our gross negligence in spreading a pathogen we could have helped combat and stop a year ago, saving countless lives in the process, as gross negligence equal to murder!
And I agree!
There are pro-lifers committing murder. Either as direct agents of death or co-conspirators with it.
When we fail to help our world through a time like this… through a pandemic like this one… we help kill it.
This is one of the most difficult write-ups I’ve ever dared to compose because it involves the celebrated Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias. The man has influenced believers worldwide, myself included, to think critically about their faith and bridge the heart and mind in pursuit of truth.
His talks at university forums have shaped the way we engage one another, respectfully and candidly, even when grappling with some of life’s most troubling questions about meaning, purpose, and objective truth.
It is difficult to mention modern apologetics without mentioning Ravi. His work has covered Christian thought and had the reach of one of the world’s leading ministries, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM).
I recall the time where I would work as a cleaner and vacuum all day long listening to Ravi’s talks and sermons. His teachings on meaning and suffering. The purpose of Christ through emotion and rigorous thought. Of his many encounters with diplomats, governors, foreign ministers, and dangerous entities to share with them this great gospel message of hope, forgiveness, and redemption. His many talks kept my mind out of a gutter of fundamentalist flaws. Kept my soul from flailing miserably down the precipice of anti-intellectualism because through his ministry I sought to investigate other thinkers, predominantly so German philosopher and author Frederich Nietzche.
The fear of investigating other worldviews had dissipated with the firmness and gentleness with which Ravi spoke of revealed truth, reducing my prejudices about people to shreds and my uninformed nature to humble truth-seeking.
But then the allegations began.
First of his continued use of academic terms and titles that he did not study nor accomplish rightfully. He would call himself “Dr. Zacharias” when in reality his doctorate was honorary at best. He used this in talks, sermons, question and answer sessions, and went as far as to add such a title to his own name in a book.
This, as harmful as it is to the integrity of academia, isn’t as bad as what would come later.
News broke of an alleged plot to extort Ravi and the Zacharias family through a litany of salacious emails passed back and forth between Ravi and a married Canadian woman. There was a lawsuit to prevent his extortionists from doing more damage to his name, his reputation, the ministry and his family.
I recall thinking that it was very much possible for people to extort famous persons, more so religious ones who flew at the chance to silence any allegation of impropriety, however false, so as not to taint or tarnish their Christian witness.
For some time I allowed myself to believe Ravi’s narrative of this story. He and his wife, his family, and his ministry were but victims of a destructive and greedy force.
Until dozens of women who worked at massage parlors (two of which Ravi co-owned) alleged that he would solicit them for sexual favors in hopes of release from ministerial tensions. He suffered from chronic back pain and sought out every means to alleviate his debilitating pain and massage therapy seemed like the least invasive approach.
But looking back it sounded like the perfect cover-up, and evidence proved that it was, for his continued predation on financially and emotionally vulnerable women.
He used his position of prominence to create an atmosphere of acceptance when in fact his requests of sexual favors were in contrast to his Christian witness.
He would ask his therapists about their lives, their religious views, their family and friends, and financial stability or instability and become their de facto religious and financial father.
This is considered grooming. It’s the first step in hypnotizing your prey, your victim, so as to bring them into the fold of secrecy and continued abuse.
He would then walk into massage sessions nude because according to him it was accepted as a cultural norm. Other times he would disrobe, exposing his genitals to massage therapists, clearly aroused. Other times he would do all of this and request to be massaged inappropriately so as to attain sexual gratification from his therapists.
Most refused. Some submitted. Others felt they had no choice. Who would believe that the world’s leading apologist was running his hands up a massage therapist’s thighs or that his special requests meant sexual intercourse.
No one would believe them because our crippled evangelical industrial complex paved the highway for us to believe predators over victims ten out of ten times.
That is why Ravi did what he did, for decades, without getting caught or without ramifications.
He would always travel with a male ministry companion to claim that he never traveled alone but after meetings, he spent days, if not weeks, alone and without further supervision. In these shrouded moments of hidden acts, he would solicit the services of massage therapists and meet them at his hotel reception area. Other massage therapists would meet him in his room. One of them received a key to his room gracefully hidden within a book he gave her with a note inside that asked her to meet him in his room minutes later.
Ravi would travel to Bangkok where he owned two apartment spaces to write, he was a prolific writer and a voracious reader, therefore, according to him, he needed time for clarity and rest as he wrote. Uncluttered by the demands of day to day ministerial tasks and away from the weight of family responsibilities.
While there, he would meet several women, massage therapists, we know, who would spend time with him in his apartment. Alone. Away from the eyes of accountability partners, ministry partners, and his family.
His phones and laptop were turned over to technology specialists and in these were found hundreds of photos of women, most of them very young, with a few of them being suspiciously provocative. There were nude pictures of one of his victims, the one he bound to a non-disclosure agreement once she decided to come forward with their illicit and extra-marital affair.
Ravi was living like James Bond, womanizing and ravaging in between talks, whilst no one batted an eye.
Well, that’s the troubling part, I believe many people did but so few were willing to challenge the man’s conduct because of his position of prominence and his continued giftedness from the stage.
Hell. I was blessed by his giftedness and I owe much of my spiritual growth and inquisitive nature to him.
But, his level of compartmentalization and predatory behavior behind the scenes is but a reminder that we cannot give men or women power to govern and control with impunity. Without accountability. Without rigorous discipline and the threat of ouster should they fail to live up to the standard that has been set up for them.
Ravi is but the culmination of the evangelical industrial complex. We made him. We promoted him. We pushed him to stardom well knowing that we should not trust men or women so much but under the spell that he was so close to God.
Perhaps he was. Perhaps his walk with God was honest. But like an addict who struggles with his substance perhaps Ravi’s substance was an insatiable desire for sexual favors from and hidden extra-marital affairs with young married and unmarried women.
He used his power, his prominence, his money, his influence, his position of honor to woo dozens of women, seducing them into sin.
His intellect did not represent him in darkness. In fact, the truth he lived on stage was tarnished in a bed of adultery, multiple times, hundreds, perhaps.
His death might have been God’s coup de grace, mercy blow, to prevent his present and monumental disgrace in the eyes of the world. Cancer ruined his bones and took his life but his conduct while alive and healthy ruined his soul.
I hope Ravi made it to heaven. In fact, I believe he did if in his dying breath he sought forgiveness for his duplicitous lifestyle of predation.
One only attains heaven through a bridge that stands firm over the chasm of eternity, that bridge being Jesus Christ. There is no other way Ravi, or any of us for that matter, could enter God’s eternal rest.
But with that in mind, we cannot dismiss the fallout of his predatory behavior and sins that have stayed behind. The consequences of his actions are here and they are going to stick. They have to stick because we cannot stand idly by and allow this nefarious conduct to happen again.
His victims must be heard. His victims have to come forward with strength and in numbers. The woman bound by the NDA must be released by the Zacharias family so that we can hear, and learn, and listen, and repent, and lament, and reform.
We cannot allow truth to die in darkness for fear of losing influence and money. That was lost the day we decided to trust in the influence and giftedness of man over the eternally restorative and transformative power of Christ.
Now is a time of reckoning and Ravi’s name is going to face so much judgment.
For the sake of truth, it must.
The apologist, the intellectual, and the serial predator.
What could have been an exciting Sunday Review has become an exciting two-week late review, and you know what, I’m okay with that.
I wanted to share with you eight principles from FLC’s December 27 service that you can use as foundational stones in your faith to further advance your relationship with God, remind you of His love for you, His purpose and plan for your life because so many of us have lost sight of that this tumultuous year.
Pastor Rohan Samuels of Freedom Life Church dove deep off the cliff of monotony and stagnancy, which many Sunday preachers rely on and he preached as if it were his last sermon ever. There were thunder and lightning, per se, smoke, and fire rising from the pulpit this particular Sunday afternoon.
I likened the service to a person who, when walking down his community takes a whiff of barbecued meat. His curiosity leads him down one street, up a side street, past several homes and cars, where he is able to visualize smoke rising from someone’s back yard and in his hungry stupor he follows the trail of smoke in the air and the scent of mouthwatering meat that ultimately leads him to a neighbor’s back yard party. Upon reaching the location and not wanting to be seen he fails and his friendly neighbor invites him in for a bite. After a moment of false humility he accepts the offer and gracefully levitates to the grill where his appetite has driven him to on this day. To his dismay, what is found sizzling on the grill is not a brisket or chicken drumsticks or lamb chops but red peppers and kale.
In his want for food, he didn’t stop long enough to remember that he lived in a vegetarian community. He sat and ate his grilled kale with a false smile on his face dreaming of the ever succulent taste of smoked brisket meat.
This Sunday’s sermon was not like that. There was smoke, there was fire, there was spiritual meat, of the best cuts, and yes, there was salt as well.
God has blessed us with people who will, time and again, remind us of how great His love is for us in allowing us to be recipients of His wonderful grace which was imparted to us through the perfect life, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.
Please allow yourself to be strengthened by these short but efficacious principles that can lead us into greater depths in the knowledge, love, trust, and grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as we navigate through a purposeless generation.
Principle 1
“Your purpose, anointing, and gifting needs a covering.”
Pastor Rohan informs the church that when Christ was to be born into the world he was subjugated to two systems, one, the right people to nurture his growth, and two, the right people to protect him.
In this, it is the idea that Mary and Joseph were the appropriate couple chosen by God to stewart and usher this child into the world by teaching, admonishing, praying for, and directing Him in the path of righteousness. Not that Christ needed this but He subjected Himself to it.
Christ was prayed for and protected. Our lives ought to be the same. Our groups and circles ought to be made up of people who pray for us and who will lead us not in the path of unrighteousness but individuals we can trust to teach us and yes, even discipline us when the need arises. Without prayer and direction, we are orphaned individuals who know not what we seek nor where to seek it.
Principle 2
“Your gift doesn’t make you superior to those that are assigned to lead you.”
This one, as mentioned above, Jesus subjugated Himself to his earthly parents even though He created them and the world they lived in. Only later would they realize the magnitude of the person they had raised, played with, fed, and taught. Only later would they realize how grand and powerful this child really was and still did not abuse nor did He misuse His position, His status, His history as a means to control those who were placed above Him or those around Him.
It is said that if you give someone enough money or enough power, probably both, their true nature will be exposed.
How many ministers, pastors, teachers, and preachers once given control and authority over a pasture of sheep then become a wolves who devour God’s sheep.
In following Christ’s example we too, as Pastor Rohan explained, must adhere to our earthly authorities even if our intellect, our experience, our tenure, and our education exceeds that of our leaders.
This does not mean we bow down to anyone simply because they’re in a particular position. One must ask God for discernment on who is a Godly leader bent on bending to God’s will and serving God’s people and who is a leader willing to bend God’s will and subjugate His people to disastrous pursuits in the name of pleasure, money, and fame.
Listen to your leaders, your Godly leaders, people.
Principle 3
“God does not wait for you to be qualified to fulfill the call [for your life], His grace qualifies you for the call.”
This is another qualifier of one’s ministry. Most biblical characters were not called from positions of preparedness but more so embarrassing aloofness to God’s calling. We remember Abraham who was but a wealthy nomad when he was called to be the father of God’s people on earth. Gideon was in the wilderness and feared for his life when called to serve. Moses was tending sheep after having fled Egypt for murdering a man. Jeremiah thought himself incapable of speaking for God and Isaiah saw himself too impure and sullied to be a spokesperson for the Divine.
But God time and again reminds us that whenever it comes to accomplishing the divine it will take the Divine Himself to initiate, progress, and finish any project or purpose.
We are reminded that God is the one who calls us, qualifies us over time, and accomplishes His will for our lives without, say, our being qualified to do so.
So if you’re dreaming of building that orphanage but have zero knowledge of how construction works, if you’re dreaming of feeding the poor but find yourself unable to pay for your own food at times, dreaming of taking the message of salvation to a hyper-secular and postmodern society but can’t even verbalize the gospel properly without your knees giving out, rest assured, you’re the perfect candidate for all these things and more through God’s glorious grace that catapults you to places and positions and purposes that you could not even have dreamed of.
Rest in God and His grace to accomplish the impossible.
Principle 4
“Grace oftentimes has your purpose birthed into unexpected locations and situations.”
By this, Pastor Rohan signifies that Christ was born in one of the poorer communities of His day and into one of the poorer situations imaginable, without a place for him to be born, say, an inn or a palace, and still, and still, listen, and still, leaders from around the world sought Him out to welcome His advent into the world.
God’s grace will at times place us or our ministry into certain straits that have no hope or no pleasure in the current situation. Perhaps we start a church in a pandemic, perhaps we open a building while the market is dead, perhaps we are called to lead in an environment where distrust and abuse were rife and rampant and God calls us to help people heal and flourish throught that situation.
God’s grace provides us the position, it grants us the strength, it enlightens our darkened intellect, it pushes us to a place of discomfort, to situations of loss and pain where we can serve people we would have never been near to if our life had remained the same.
Christ was catapulted, one can say, from his Divine splendor and royal seat in heaven to the most ruthless kingdom and sub-kingdoms of the day.
Jesus was born into the middle-east that was under the power and control of the Roman empire, which was bent on destroying anyone who dared challenge its right to global primacy. Israel was surrounded by Romans, infiltrated by roman centurions and tetrarchs, leaders who cared very little for these Jewish people and their faith. Dangerous insurrectionists, which we would call modern-day terrorists and assassins ran through the nation stirring riots and instigating violence.
These were such perilous times that just short of forty years after Christ’s crucifixion Jerusalem, along with its temple and its walls, were all razed to the ground by the Roman empire and the Jews dispersed through the middle east, Africa, and Europe.
Jesus was born into this environment but it is in this environment that He saved the world.
Be not wary or fearful of the chaos you are birthed into because God can accomplish much when we rely on Him completely.
Principle 5
“When you are purposed, the enemy wants to kill what you can produce and your ability to produce [it].”
Pastor Rohan explains that it is only expected of the supernatural to instigate further chaos as an attempt to frustrate God’s plans for our life.
He explains that prior to Christ being born a local king became aware that a Messiah, an Anointed One, a Liberator was soon to be born to be king, superseding this man’s authority over Judah. This troubled him so greatly that he sought to kill every child born within a particular date to prevent his loss of power. Mary and Joseph were instructed to flee south to Egypt for refuge from this murderous king and after his death, they were instructed to return to Judah.
Pastor Rohan states that there are men and women within our churches today, persons in power, modern-day Herods and kings, who want nothing more than to kill the purpose of God in our life when they feel their positions are threatened.
In his words:
Modern Herods are those who occupy leadership positions or functions in leadership capacities, they believe they can keep these positions for however long they can. They believe that everything revolves around them. If it isn’t their idea they won’t support it. If they’re not leading the project and development they won’t want to be a part of it. What is true is that they do not take well to succession and transition.
Rohan K. Samuels
We must be aware of the agents and agencies that have lodged themselves within our faith communities with the goal of retaining power and nothing else. Once the mention of succession is made they fly at the handle of threats and brandish their teeth in rage.
Beware of these for their only intent is to destroy that which God has set out for you to accomplish through His grace.
Principle 6
“The enemy seeks to identify young, gifted, purposed people who are gifted but not fully developed [yet].”
It is said that applause ruins young leaders.
Many of us believe that an early streak of success at such an early stage of our ministry is a sign of ministerial health and stability but we must be sober-minded enough to acknowledge that no matter how many ministries we plant or how often we water them with our knowledge and prowess it is only God who gives the growth and success that ultimately directs our attention to Him.
In the same way, we would not trust an amateur pilot to land a plane or an amateur ship pilot to steer a cruiseliner through perilous seas we must not and cannot trust ourselves to leaders who have not experienced the waves of life and ministry and come out more spiritually mature.
Pride is a damnable sin and no one is above it therefore the enemy of our soul tends to use it to destroy leaders and ministries along with them with applause and unchecked ministries.
And the subtly of it all is what is even more worrisome. In this case, demise does not come with the trumpets of war nor does it come with the backbiting of jealous church members. Here, unfortunately, it comes with ingratiation, adulation, unquestioned servitude, and worship of an earthly leader, especially a young one who is blind to these attacks.
Without discernment and direction from a more mature leadership structure and community that holds its own accountable will have leaders who are susceptible to all forms of erroneous efforts that lead to their ultimate and usually public demise.
Principle 7
“Effective transition becomes relevant and effective only if it is influenced or instructed by the word.”
Pastor Rohan explains that the transition of power in the body of Christ is only effective when directed by the word of God.
We can compare the historical figure John the Baptist with King Herod when it came to passing the baton of power. John wanted nothing more than to shrink into anonymity so that Jesus could flourish whereas Herod wanted more glory and more fame. John fulfilled his ministerial duties by being the voice of one calling in the desert, calling the world to repentance, to change, pointing to the Messiah, whereas Herod wanted nothing more than to continue in his sins, ensuring infanticide was part of his legacy on earth. John the Baptist died as a hero whereas Herod died as a child-murdering coward.
When we follow the rules of engagement, per se, of God’s word we follow a rule that is passed on to us as divine and pure thus giving us stable ground to stand upon when selecting the next leader and group for a ministry.
Dismissing God’s word places people of ill repute and wanton desires over God’s people and we cannot allow this to happen.
You create narratives and realities that are illusions and because you are living in condemnation you see these illusions as realities. You live in an environment that negatively affects your perspective and your spiritual outlook. You make uncalculated and misguided decisions. You’re not able to recognize the difference between a friend and an enemy. You don’t see God as a Father, you see him as a mystic, cosmic, spiritual source. You can’t be happy for a long period of time because you allow your thoughts to pollute and alter your emotional disposition. Living in condemnation is so dangerous that you can be grown in age but deteriorated in spiritual maturity.
Rohan K. Samuels
Principle 8
“Your purpose must begin in the Scriptures and not on an opinion or thought. Your opinion will change based upon your circumstance and environment, but when your purpose is built on the Word it cannot be shaken.”
This last principle is self-explanatory.
Our purpose must be biblically sound otherwise it will be subject to change at the slightest change of wind. If our life is not structurally grounded on the biblical person of Jesus Christ then our faith and life will unravel at the first sight of danger, of loss, of pain, of questioning and inquisition because nothing else in this universe is capable of withstanding such a barrage from life other than Jesus and His promises to the faithful through Scripture.
Conclusion
Brothers and sisters,
We must be reminded, constantly so, that purpose outside of Christ is not purpose but folly. If our purpose is found in our career and we lose the ability to fulfill ourselves there we will go without purpose. If our purpose is found in our intellect and we find ourselves constantly wanting in that area we will become cynics and a purposeless people. If our purpose is found in a spouse and we go without one then our life will have little to no meaning at all.
But once we find or perhaps, once we are found by the grace of God in Christ Jesus there can be no agent or entity strong enough to remove our purpose in life.
I pray you receive this grace, this salvation, this innovation, this reinvigorating, life transforming, soul saving, purpose inducing grace of God without tarrying.
Because if you do you will never lack purpose in life again.
A window into my experience within Christian fundamentalism…
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” – John 8:32
“Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.” – 1 Peter 2:16
“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” – Galatians 5:13
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” – John 13:35
I have always been one to question authority. One to question why suits and ties were a requirement for Sunday night worship services. Why was there a need for women to wear such long skirts? We were allowed to grow a mustache, not me, of course, because I was a child. But the men in the church were allowed to grow a mustache, but the moment they displayed a scruff that hugged their once shiny cheeks they were considered unsuitable for service. An embarrassment, really to the local body of believers.
Women who wore too much makeup were likened to sex workers and if their skirts weren’t long enough they would be asked to step down from their ministerial position for the day and return once they acquire some form of self-respect.
I remember my father telling me that he was relegated to church disciplinary action because he played his trumpet bluesy passion and a jazz induced melody, thus making church music sound like worldly music. Jazz. Jazz or anything close to it was considered worldly.
At one time, drum sets were cylindrical instruments of devil worship where every tap or bang would incur the presence of Satan in the church. So no jazz or drums allowed.
Movie theaters were out of the question as well. If one were caught attending a movie screening, no matter how innocuous or informative the film was, that person would be added to the discipline log, removed from ministerial duties, benched; which was evident to all and quite the shameful practice, and castigated, albeit passive-aggressively, by the minister the following Sunday as an example of poor Christian living standards and witness.
These minor infractions, minor now, were tantamount then, and if one were to accumulate enough of them at the time or challenge the authenticity of their weight and purpose, the individual and challenger would face ex-communication from the body of believers.
For the uninitiated, I must advise, that once someone is excommunicated from the local church community they are then considered absolutely depraved, a lost cause, and socially deceased. Anyone caught interacting with them outside of the church, whilst their excommunicated status was active, would be chastised and possibly added to the disciplinary list as well.
There was no winning. The shunned and shamed individual who may have at one point in time challenged the authority, the “god-in-church” persona, the minister and his caste, would have to return to the church and face further public humiliation as one who had “come to their senses” and acknowledge their wasteful thinking and combative nature as counter-god and counter-church.
I can list the ways people were treated when they left our churches or denominations to join other ones. If they exited our particular denomination, a large Pentecostal denomination in the Brazilian south-east, they were considered lost. By lost, I mean that person had forfeited their salvation by leaving our particular denomination. If they joined a Baptist denomination they were guilty of abandoning the holy spirit. If they joined a Methodist movement, they were considered depraved. If they joined the Catholic church they had apostatized and abandoned their faith. If they joined another Pentecostal denomination they were ostracized as spiritists whose subservience landed at the feet of the devil. With us they served God but with another denomination, they served the devil.
With us, they spoke in tongues but with that other church, they spoke for evil spirits. With us they sang and worshiped but with that other church, they offered sacrifices to demons. With us, they tithed unto the kingdom of God, a mandatory requirement of church membership, by the way, but if tithes or offerings were given elsewhere, the person was a thief, a crook, an embezzler, and their accounting practices and endeavors would eventually be audited by the local clergy treasury.
And you would expect an hour-long sermon on the virtues of tithing for the glory of God; and the fattening of the minister and his wallet.
If one announced their intellectual prowess with us they were considered gifted, but if their vision was expounded in a reformed church then that person was considered illiterate and anti-intellectual. Cerebral was a pejorative term used to deride and reduce thinkers who had left us for other churches. Thinkers who had abandoned the heart of God for the mind of man. Thinkers were bad.
Any challenge made to these norms, or rather, these edicts pronounced and deified by the local body of believers, was considered an affront to God, and not the local leadership. These ministers and presbyters had, by unwritten rules and unchecked power, become gods.
This religious upbring had such an effect on me that I can recall visiting a local baptist church, later in life, after I had been baptized, etcetera, anyhow, I visited a Baptist church and once the Lord’s supper was going around I denied the wafer and the cup. I took pride in this denial. My friends, the ones who had invited me to attend this baptist church with them took notice of my dejection of the cup and bread. They noticed this because they knew, well enough, that I was a person of faith and very much interested in the things of the Bible. After this service one of them approached me, curious as to what my motivation was for rejecting the Lord’s supper among brothers and sisters of the same tradition, so to speak. My response came in almost supercilious bellicosity, “Our church doesn’t consider your church’s supper holy or right, so I’m willfully abstaining from it. I won’t partake in your spiritless worship practices.”
That was me. A young fundamentalist in the making. Matter of fact, possibly a fundamentalist in maturation. Fundamentalism had been instilled in me from birth, and in my parents before me from their birth and their grandparents, and so on. But what has changed?
Ha. Well, a lot. Like, a whole lot, thank God for these changes. But today I want to give you a perspective on what fundamentalism is, why it spread, where it spread fastest, and how dangerous it is to the body of Christ and the church.
I will outright condemn fundamentalism and say that I have grown more in faith, grace, and knowledge of my Lord Jesus Christ apart from fundamentalism than I could ever have in it.
Fundamentalism: Explained
Before progressing onto the breakdown of fundamentalism, I want to inform the readers on who coined the term or perhaps pushed it into the spotlight for further consideration. Understanding the fundamentals of something is actually a practical and possibly life-saving effort. Understanding the fundamentals of civil engineering, medicine, and physics is effective in helping us understand our world. But the moment something becomes an end in and of itself, it distorts the world around it. Adding an -ism to a word helps us understand the concept, but it changes the meaning of that word.
I’m a human being who promotes humanitarian efforts but I would not find comfort in humanism. I believe observational science is crucial to our understanding of biology and other sciences to better understand our world but I’m not a strident follower of Scientism. So, with fundamentals, general or specific, we can all agree that they’re essential to our understanding of concepts, basics, foundations, and well, fundamentals.
In 1920, Baptist minister Curtis Lee Laws’ “definition of fundamentalism was deliberately broad, not divisively narrow. It required neither inerrancy nor dispensationalism-the growing shibboleths of anti-modernists. Fundamentalism, for Laws, was essentially an attempt to reaffirm theological orthodoxy and promote biblical Christianity.”
In Themelios, an online journal for students of theology and bible studies, Kevin T. Bauder reviews the book, Fundamentalism, written by Fisher Humphrys and Philip Wise. In this book review, Kevin breaks down the catalysts for a fundamentalist origin in the United States of America. He states (emphasis and notes added by me):
Fundamentalism is a tradition that reacts against modernity
They believe their faith and community are (constantly) under attack
They demonize their opponents
Follow authoritarian males
Idealize (idolize also) the past (they’re staunch traditionalists)
They draw careful boundaries to separate insiders from outsiders
They seek to control their society
He further states the reasons for the amplification of fundamentalist sentiments within the evangelical world as a reaction to modernity and change. Their militancy was spawned by a set of cultural, societal, and religious shift, such as:
Lost of cultural hegemony, control, and influence
Secularization phenomenon
The Enlightenment
Biblical criticism
Evolution
Liberal Theology
And many prominent fundamentalist leaders ascended to power and influence over time. Kevin T. Bauder breaks this movement hyper-influential and vocal leaders into three phases:
Phase One
In phase one, according to Kevin T. Bauder, we find:
Cultural discontent in the 1920s allowed for J. Gresham Machen, Bob Jones, and John R. Rice to lead the battle cry against modernity.
Phase Two
In phase two:
Rebranding via Evangelistic Outreach in the 1940s introduced the world to the renowned evangelist, Billy Graham. (Graham would later split from fundamentalists and consider himself an evangelical, instead. The term neo-evangelical or neo-orthodox was used pejoratively against Graham by Bob Jones and his contemporaries because Graham preferred a more ecumenical approach to evangelism and activism, whereas fundamentalists thrived from schisms.)
Phase Three
In phase three, which began in the 1970s, we are introduced to Fundamentalism Empowered and Politicized under the likes of strident evangelicals, as fundamentalists adapted and diluted their public animosity to retain and maintain political power, in hopes of recapturing cultural hegemony. This third wave of fundamentalism has found ground and weight in American conservatism, where it has become the new Right, or say, the silent moral majority.
Justin Taylor, executive vice president of book publishing and publisher for Crossway, and blogger for The Gospel Coalition identified four stages of fundamentalism from the late 1890s to now. He separates fundamentalism into four phases.
Irenic Phase (1893 – 1919)
Militant Phase (1920 – 1936)
Divisive Phase (1941 – 1960)
Separatist Phase (1960 to present times)
Irenic Phase (1893 – 1919)
One can imagine a Christian collective of higher thought and critique coming together in publications to better understand the modernization of theology in the backdrop of German, Dutch, and French enlightenment periods. The church was aware of how modernity was seeping into theology, interpretation of biblical texts, and the understanding or perhaps misunderstanding of the supernatural, and here a body of believers saw it fit to challenge these ideas. There was a mutual understanding among believers of varied denominations that a modernist approach to biblical texts, without a hermeneutical context and a healthy philosophy regarding God and people, would lead the church to a broken understanding of revelation and humanity.
Hostility toward anything from Germany because of the war led believers to quiver and recoil from anything Germanic in nature, be it German theology, German philosophy, and even German citizens. Nativist arguments coiled with post-war sentiments led to an all high disenfranchisement from all things German, especially German liberal theology.
So what began as a peaceful group effort to counter changing winds of doctrine and interpretation scripture would lead to a more sinister and possibly hostile environment for thought in later times.
A fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something.
George Marsden
Militant Phase (1920 – 1936)
Where we found a collective and peaceful higher thought approach to the challenge of modernity in the irenic phase of fundamentalism, here, however, we find a militancy from clergy, a struggle of sorts, to combat the changing tides of theological and cultural acceptance. Open evangelical sentiments died at the birth of militant fundamentalism, Taylor states.
Fundamentalists went on the advance against modernity by forming organizations and associations through which they could voice their disfavor, per se, of cultural modernity. Finger-pointing, name-calling, and dissociative sentiments began to flourish in circles where at one point one could find healthy and wholesome fraternization and openness of thought.
Whoever did not outright oppose modernity, German, Dutch, and French liberal theology, were not only deemed unfit for leadership but were also threatened with denominational abandonment. The “us vs them” mindset gained traction under militant fundamentalism that is still very much seen and experienced today.
Antagonism was the conventional method fundamentalists used to distinguish themselves from their more peaceable forerunners and to this day the world takes notice of this behavioral shift and the embarrassing ramifications thereof.
Divisive Phase (1941 – 1960)
So we see fundamentalism progress from an ecumenical endeavor to a militant name-calling bellicose front, and into an ugly schismatic feudalistic entity. The American Council of Christian Churches (A.C.C.C.) is formed to counter and condemn the modernity of the National Association of Evangelicals (N.A.E.) and vice versa. Each condemned the other of being more neo-evangelical (pejorative used to diminish the zeal of less combative and antagonistic compromising fundamentalists who ‘capitulated to cultural modernity’).
Later, an international arm of the A.C.C.C. would concretize the fundamentals of fundamentalism so as not to be grouped with what they deemed liberal and sacrilegious denominations that had sold their souls to the pagan gods of the modern age. The agreed-upon tenets of this new and larger organization, the International Council of Christian Churches (I.C.C.C.) were:
A belief in the fundamentals of the faith (inerrancy of scripture, virgin birth, miracles, the deity of Christ, substitutionary atonement, and the second advent of Christ)
A separatist impulse
A commitment to soul-winning (or conversionism)
A militant attitude toward liberalism
I’ll tell you what an evangelical is: it’s someone who says to a liberal, ‘I’ll call you a Christian if you call me a scholar.’
Bob Jones Sr.
Neo-evangelicalism, later simplified as evangelicalism, would be adopted by the likes of Billy Graham and Charles Templeton as they prized the term to differentiate their branch of Christianity from fundamentalism.
The tenets of neo-evangelicalism were accepted and publicly shared like this:
Biblical authority
The holiness of God
A revealing God
A creating, supernatural God
Man, created in God’s image
The sinfulness of man
The love of God
The death of Christ (crucifixion)
The new birth (born again)
Social action (civil rights and economic equity)
Return of Christ
Fundamentalism under the Divisive Phaseshared all of these tenets with neo-evangelicalism, except, and unsurprisingly, the socially active arm of this lineage. Fundamentalists would later criticize Billy Graham and his contemporaries for joining forces with the likes of the minister and activist Martin Luther King Jr. because the evangelical effort lost its way by focusing on social efforts instead of gospel efforts. To them, the racial integration of the church and the zeal for justice through gospel preaching and local ecumenical work was a liberal and modernist ploy to disintegrate the church. Graham gladly dissociated himself from his fundamentalist roots to become the accepted American archetype of evangelicalism.
Separatist Phase (the 1960s to present day)
This last front of fundamentalism is where much of my church family rose to prominence within the community and is still very much at work in our time. It is here that we find the rise of the sexual revolution, second-wave feminism, and civil rights activism at the helm of popular culture. As we have seen the fundamentalist church, at first, peacefully critique these sudden cultural shifts, then take a militant stance towards modernity within, later create schisms within, and now, in its final form, it creates an ugly schism between the church, private life, and public life, outside the church. Fundamentalist leaders were not content in creating subgroups and sub-denominations within Christianity, they wanted to separate Christianity from the culture altogether.
It is under the power and influence of the Separatist Phase of fundamentalism that we find a drastic shift in how congregants are controlled, isolated, indoctrinated, and set off to radicalize the world with militant, jihad-like, preaching. Ever heard a “hell-fire and brimstone” sermon? You’ve got a fundamentalist to thank for them.
In this final phase, we see legalistic tendencies take deeper roots within the church so as to separate the church, in aesthetics, from the world. As Taylor states, anyone who wore sideburns, long hair, beards, flare-bottom pants, boots, wire-rimmed glasses, or silk skirts were considered liberals and modernists bent on destroying the fundamentals of the church. Therefore, an extreme effort was undertaken by the male-led authoritarian ministers’ caste to shame, denounce, vilify, and destroy people into submission to modes and methods to separate the church from the world.
Behavior codes, regulations, personal grooming, fashion, music sense, instrument choice, genre, and unwritten rules became doctrines.
What a nightmare.
Ecclesiastical institutions and agencies were built by, funded by, and run by charismatic evangelical tyrants who wanted to maintain the fabric of their dominance and hegemony over uneducated and at times frightened adherents by sending them to schools and colleges that mirrored their newer doctrines. Everything that would mirror curriculum, mannerisms, attitudes, and the teachings of fundamentalist churches.
Fundamentalists would send their children to institutions they deemed godly, orthodox, and anti-liberal like these:
Bob Jones University
Clearwater Christian College
Maranatha Baptist Bible College
Pillsbury Baptist Bible College
Shelton College
And would condemn any of their congregants who dared attend the modernist, liberal, and ungodly evangelical and accredited institutions listed below:
Asbury College
Biola University
Moody Bible Institute
Wheaton College
Columbia Bible College
The goal of Separatist Fundamentalists was to maintain control of their adherents’ sex lives, worship lives, family rules, dress codes, upbringing, denominational choices, or lack thereof, intellectual make-up, spousal and conjugal choices, and intellectual opportunities and intellectual affinity.
Fundamentalists wanted to control a person from birth through childhood, adolescence, youth, marriage, collegiate phase, ministry in adulthood, and death. Their effort was to separate the believer from the guiles and chains of modernism and theological liberalism at all costs.
Fundamentalism, the devil’s highway into the church.
A cult, really.
Justin Taylor informs us that fundamentalism is neither static nor monolithic. It has changed from the 1890s to this day and chances are it may change again. It progressed from irenic and honorable efforts to militancy, to schisms, and so far, it rests or perhaps is resting for a greater effort under the separatist banner to become something more sinister and domineering.
(Handmaid’s Tale, anyone?)
Today, fundamentalists take pride in their avid extremes, but what they fail to see is that their fanaticism is cultic and their understanding of Christ, the gospel, and Christianity is skewed. The lens through which they view reality is blurred, dirty, and only understood, rather, misconstrued by American exceptionalism.
Even though I grew up in a Brazilian watered-down version of fundamentalism, at least there, we were allowed to read, though it took time for this allowance, works of great thinkers we disagreed with.
This liberty along with my parents’ nagging that we should invest our minds into the arts, literature, diversity, and more, assisted us in breaking free from the fundamentalist mold.
Conclusion
One of the more pivotally enlightening works of history that I have managed to get my hands on and consume is Mark A. Noll’s book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (for more, read my review of Mark’s book here). Mark, a historian by trade, is a Christian leader who delved into the timeline of intellectual deterioration within the church. He found that in evangelical turned fundamentalist turned evangelical fanatical circles, the pursuit of reactionary militancy toward modernity instead of a wholesome understanding of theology with its sister studies, philosophy, and observational science, led the Christian church back into the dark ages of intellectual immaturity and superstition.
Little did I know I was in fact a slave to a disease called fundamentalism.
Olivet Theory
I was glad to find and pinpoint where exactly my ecclesiological upbringing went wrong and why. This brought me peace, not fear because I always knew there was more to Jesus than dress codes, condemnation of tattoos, shunning of theaters, alcohol, science fiction novels, soccer, games, sports, women in pants, men with facial hair, and underdressed church attendees.
I’m sure Jesus wore a long dress, as was the custom for men to wear in his time. He may have had long hair and possibly a beard. The bible tells us soldiers would beat him and rip his beard with their bare hands. Telling. Jesus reached out to sinners. He forgave them. He condemned legalists and authoritarian men who willed people into submission and positions that they could not live in themselves. Jesus was a thinker, a reader, and a genius. His disciples and apostles would later pen letters that would be paragons of revelatory literature for centuries. Styles and forms that many attempted to replicate but failed miserably.
Jesus was, is, and will continue to be God, whereas we are just men and women.
I look back to the ways I treated people who disagreed with me and my ecclesiological makeup; how I condemned them, brought them shame, and found pride in how I was able to dismantle their liberalism.
Little did I know I was in fact a slave to a disease called fundamentalism.
I believe Jesus has healed me of it. Remnants of it remain within me still, at times trying and failing to regain control of my ardent faith and pursuit of Christ. But thanks be to God who calls me to kill my flesh, daily, and to pick up my cross and carry it, daily.
I find more comfort in listening to people I disagree with. Not to say that I listen to anyone who has something to say just because they’re angry or want to pick a fight. These people want nothing more than to create discord and schisms.
I’m not looking for that. Not within the church anymore. And less so outside the church.
I’ve progressed, or at least I hope I am progressing from this elementary schoolyard bully tactics mentality of mob rule and us vs them methods. I understand the body of Christ is diverse, rich in its diversity, allowing for groups of all sorts to accomplish the great commission on earth in its varied ways. The gospel, I have come to understand and accept and share, is centered on Christ’s efficacious and salvific work on the cross, but if it stops with individual conversion, not allowing me to focus on the wellbeing of my neighbor because he or she is not, say, Christian, then my understanding of the gospel is marred.
I admit, however, that my theology is still very much conservative, more so, orthodox than anything.
I very much believe in the Five Solas of Protestantism. My faith is held together…
By Scripture alone
By Faith alone
By Grace alone
In Christ alone
And all Glory is to God alone
And according to historian David Bebbington, I am very much an evangelical, because according to his observation, I too believe in biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. My faith focuses on the revealed word of God, the focal point of the bible which is the cross of Christ, on the great commission given to us by Christ, and finally, on wholesome activism that feeds both the soul and the body. Activism that liberates and severs the chains of bondage. That challenges corrupt systems that were set up to disadvantage one race, one people, one entire continent for the benefit of another. I stand, by the grace of Christ, to deliver this beautiful message of salvation, forgiveness, redemption, and hope beyond the grave, but whilst here, I also preach to condemn the actions of a fallen government and stand to represent the voiceless and the vulnerable.
But that is the definition by which I am considered an evangelical. For if we compare the moniker with what evangelicalism represents in the United States today, which is nothing more than a more accepted version of fundamentalism turned into a political force for the conservative Right, then no, I despise that form of evangelicalism the same way I disdain the fundamentalism I was raised in.
Historian David Bebbington continues, explaining to us what evangelicalism becomes when it is removed from its healthy theological sphere and reduced to a mere arm of fundamentalist political force: Christian nationalism, Christian tribalism, political moralism, and anti-statism.
A horrifying state religion.
If there is any consolation, be made aware that Christ’s heart is gentle and lowly and He is a forgiving God who erases our mistakes, our pride, our stupidity, and arrogance. He removes from us a heart of stone, of fundamentalist stone, and replaces it with a heart of flesh in which His Spirit can find a dwelling.
What a beautiful Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.
I’ve made it out, by the grace of God, and I believe you can too if you’re still there. I believe you can, too.
Questions to consider
According to this blog post, do you believe you were raised in a fundamentalist church? If so, are you still there? If yes, why?
Has your belief separated and isolated you? Are you able to question local church authority when you notice their many moral failings?
What modes or unwritten rules were you subjected to in your church? Say, long skirts, suits, no alcohol, no theater or sports?
Does your faith leave you riddled by guilt, shame, and fear of the after-life? Could it be that you have yet to meet Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins?
The Cambridge dictionary defines the word attribute as a quality, characteristic, or feature of a person or thing, especially one that is an important part of its nature.
When we pause long enough to ponder on what sets us apart from those around us we begin to notice how we are different. Unique, even. It is not merely an aesthetic difference but a natural one in character, personality, and temperament. Some of us can withstand the galloping dance moves of our neighbors on the floor above our own while others cannot bear to listen to a birdsong first thing in the morning.
We’re all different and that’s fine. That’s good.
Depending on our upbringing, our socio-economic stability or instability, our body image awareness, or emotional intelligence quotient we see ourselves and the qualities we have as advantages or possibly as disadvantages in our society.
We know that in one culture it is acceptable for families to yell at each other across the dinner table as the discussion becomes a boisterous street-side shouting match where taking turns to speak and voicing one’s opinion is a war-like experience.
In another culture, speaking at the dinner table is discouraged. Some will allow the husband and wife to discuss minor happenings of the day and nothing beyond that. Children are reserved to utter silence out of respect for this dynamic tradition
This is why we can meet friends who will treat a restaurant waiter with utmost respect and decency while another friend will berate not just the waiter but their smile, their attire, the font size on the menu, the lack of light in the restaurant, the chef’s lack of variety in his seasoning choices, and ultimately the establishment as it stands.
We can road trip with friends who are considerate of their fellow passengers, their safety, who are considerate of their fellow passenger’s favorite fast food stop without trouble. And, perhaps, on the same road trip, we may have a friend who is ignited like a bomb to explode if someone cuts them off in traffic. They refuse to stop for restroom breaks because they’re bent on reaching their ultimate destination. This person will eat salmon in the car, chew gum like a cow chews grass, and light a cigarette with the windows shut without the slightest consideration for his fellow passengers.
One might consider this person a sociopath, but, he may, in his own mind and world, be doing that which he believes is right and normal.
These behaviors, these qualities, these mannerisms, and characteristics, good or bad, are present in all of us whether we know or not.
If your coworkers were asked to describe you, I’m sure some would say you’re amicable, approachable, helpful, funny, knowledgeable, expressive, and so. In another setting, say, in a social club where you refrain from interacting with community members, you’ll be described as aloof, rash, anti-social, and selfish.
We are vulnerable to the way those around us describe us, unless, that is, we introduce and explain to them who we really are and why we are that way.
The problem with us is that we’re constantly at risk of changing. This volatility creates in us a distrust of continuity of character because we are subject to our circumstances.
We change. In a blink of an eye.
Depending on our mood on a particular morning, we may be inclined to feel groggy and later mistreat a coworker or two. Bumper to bumper traffic can easily transport us from a state of peace to a state of resolute anxiety, especially if we’re running late to an important meeting. We are in one instance, the best of friends and in another, should the betrayal of trust, fraud, assault, thievery, slander or libel take place we then become the greatest of nemesis of that individual.
Our personal attributes, our characteristic qualities, and features are subject to our environment, our mental stability, our circumstances, and more. We are truly volatile creatures. Loving in one moment and hateful in another. Approachable and later, deceitful.
As created beings, it is quite our nature to be, say, mutable. But God is immutable. He does not change and as strange as that may seem I want to remind the reader that for us, it is a wonderful thing that there is at least one entity in our universe that is not subject to the environment around it. That being is God.
Therefore…
I want to list just six of God’s attributes that we can rely on for comfort when the world around us, and also the world within us, collapses and loses ground. We can look up and see that Someone is forever still, forever present, forever the same. I hope these attributes listed, which are so few, will bring you hope in your days of desperation, fear, loneliness, and uncertainty.
1. The Aseity of God
John M. Frame describes the aseity of God this way: “He is sufficient to himself, independent of anything outside himself. God’s eternality is his aseity with respect to time: Lord of time, existing above and apart from it, but free to enter it to accomplish his purposes. […] (1) he has no beginning or end, (2) he does not change, (3) he is equally conscious of past, present, and future, and (4) he is not limited by the passing of time in what he can accomplish.”
Comfort
This brings us peace in knowing God is not dependent on us to exist. He is ever-existent, self-sufficient, and eternal, we can rest assured that He will not dissolve or cease to exist one day, leaving us and the cosmos to fend for ourselves. God is not a deistic, distant, and uncaring God, He is a Creator who cares deeply for His creation.
“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:16-17
“But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.” Job 12-7-10
2. The Transcendence of God
“God’s transcendence is seen in that he is exalted in his royal dignity and exercises both control and authority in his creation. Divine transcendence does not mean that he is so far from and other than his creation that we are not able to understand his self-revelation in the Scripture or relate to him in any way.”
Comfort
There is no authority that us above God nor is there a dictator whose reach can subjugate God to subservience or obedience. God is the only God. He is of a different substance, a different material, different nature than us. What He is cannot be added to the periodic table for He exists outside of the created order of things.
Let us not misunderstand Him as being beyond the clouds, beyond the stars, beyond the cosmos as they stretch through time. God is God. We needn’t worry about any other cosmic or spiritual entity threatening our existence for He alone governs existence and will wield it to His will. And thankfully, His will for us is gracious. The King is gracious.
“I am the LORD, and there is no other; there is no God but me. I will strengthen you, though you do not know me,” Isaiah 45:5
3. The Immanence of God
“Divine transcendence and immanence are the related Christian doctrines that while God is exalted in his royal dignity and exercises both control and authority in his creation (transcendence), he is, by virtue of this control and authority, very present to his creation, especially his people, in a personal and intimate way (immanence).”
Comfort
It brings us joy to know that our Creator is self-sufficient, superior to all, and still, in His greatness, He approaches us and does not shun us. In many faiths, you see the distance a deity has between himself and his people. At times, God places certain barriers between people and His glory for their safety, not His. But, in time, He became flesh and walked among us, healing, strengthening, encouraging, hugging, smiling, and admonishing us. Truly, He understands our woes, our losses, struggles, our pains, and more. And He does not shun us.
“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Immanuel means God with us). Isaiah 7:14
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tested in every way as we are, yet without sin.” – Hebrews 4:15
“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” Hebrews 1:1-3
“Jesus wept.” John 11:35
4. The Immutability of God
“Immutability means God does not change in any way.”
Comfort
We can recall the betrayal of Julius Caesar by Brutus, one of his most loyal confidants. We remember the betrayal of Christ by one of his disciples. “You betray me with a kiss, Judas?” Asked Christ. Many of us would trade a blow for a blow, a stab for a stab, a curse for a curse but our God is benevolent and kind. In fact, He reminds us, that He is gentle and lowly in heart, slow to anger, longsuffering and merciful. Whereas we want nothing more than to retribute wrong for wrong, Christ shows us His unchanging love. Christ did not curse His enemies from the cross, in fact, He prayed that the Father forgive their sins for they knew not what they did. He is the archetype of integrity. He is whole and complete, unwavering for eternity past, present, and future. We needn’t worry about God betraying us when, we, many times, fail and betray Him.
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8
5. The Grace of God
English evangelist and founder of Methodism, John Wesley, defined grace as God’s “bounty, or favour: his free, undeserved favour, … man having no claim to the least of his mercies. It was free grace that ‘formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into him a living soul,’ and stamped on that soul the image of God, and ‘put all things under his feet.’ … For there is nothing we are, or have, or do, which can deserve the least thing at God’s hand.”
Comfort
We know God is loving enough to provide for our salvation by His grace. We know God is gracious enough to justify us in Christ Jesus; removing sin from us and imputing us with righteousness in His Son. God is gracious enough to sanctify us; change our desires, our attitudes, our minds, and intentions so that we reflect Him more and more with time, by His Spirit. We needn’t rely on our efforts to please God for He is pleased in His Son and we are hidden in Christ Jesus.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.“ Ephesians 2:8-9
“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:3
“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:16
He did not shy away from this attribute of God. His fierce, piercing, unstoppable, and conclusive wrath. God is holy and His holiness demands that anything that does not qualify as holy and pure be annihilated from His presence, and because His presence fills and reaches every molecule in space and time, everything touched by sin and imperfection is worthy of total destruction.
It would be unfair of Him to allow the many Hitler’s, Mussolini’s, Pol Pot’s, Ibi Amin’s, Joseph Stalin’s, and Kim Jung Uns of the world to go without punishment. Can you imagine a world where one can commit the worse of atrocities; can violate women and children; bomb hospitals; instigate famine and desolation; raze cities to the ground; atomize generations into thin air; pollute waterways so that the thirsty are poisoned as they drink, and escape any form of judgment at death? Any God who would allow injustice and sin to go unpunished is no God at all. God’s wrath is as much a part and necessity of His character, His very essence as is His aseity, His transcendence, His immanence, His immutability, and His grace. His Holy Wrath is not mixed with rage or back-biting spite. His wrath is pure and impartial.
Comfort
As frightening as God’s wrath may seem we must remember that God is not a raging bull with snot running down His nostrils onto his mauled victim. His eyes are not red with rage, his step is not a gallop of death, and His stance is not one of a creature who has lost control. He is like a Judge, who has reviewed the crimes and the cruelty with which an impenitent man has disgraced the lives of his wife and children by discarding them as one discards trash is led to sentence this man to life behind bars. There is no foaming at the mouth. There is no lust for sadism. No desire to mock and shame. Just pure, raw, unadulterated, unsullied, holy wrath.
And what is of greater comfort than knowing our God will not let evil win, in the end, is knowing that He has hidden us in His Son Jesus Christ. We know that our feet have slipped off of the Rock of Holy Standard ages ago but He catches us. He saves us, justifies us, and molds us into the image of His Son, Jesus. We need a God who is not shy, one who is not intimidated to throw a case, one who is willing to show us how evil, justice, love and forgiveness all met at one point in time: the cross.
Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias confirms these four absolutes in this way:
“On a hill called calvary where all the evil intents of the human heart are hurled upon the very son of God. Where God in his justice took upon himself that justice but he manifested his love for you and me in a way that is indescrible. And he offers you and me forgiveness.”
Conclusion
God has so many attributes that if we were to spend time putting them down on paper or webpage and spend trillions of years doing so we would not even touch the tip of who God really is.
From what He has revealed to us through divine revelation, through scripture, we accept and we praise Him for it.
In knowing more about the character and essence of God we know more about ourselves.
Whenever confronted with death know God is more powerful than death.
Whenever you are intimidated by authorities, principalities, and entities, know God is superior to them all.
Whenever you are lonely, afraid, without hope and destitute, know God is near. In fact, He is with you.
Whenever you feel as if your identity has been lost, your purpose, your traditions, your dreams, and aspirations, know that He will not change. He is influenced by none. He is your Rock.
Whenever sin crouches at your door, attempting to force its way in, crashing your notions of eternal assurances to the ground, understand God is gracious. Salvation, justification, and sanctification come from Him and Him alone. He is your Advocate, your Counselor who will not allow His grip on your soul to slip nor allow your crown in Christ to be sifted away.
Whenever evil reigns supreme in the world around you, its presence felt, its touch cold, its face hideous and bold, roaring like a lion chasing whom it will devour next, understand that evil will not win. God’s just and holy wrath will triumph over evil. He incarcerate it for eternity, and all those who served it wholeheartedly with it. We love and serve a Just God who will not allow evil to win.
The more we understand our God the more we understand ourselves.
Take this to heart and continually seek Him.
“You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” 2 Peter 3:17-18
Questions to Consider
Of the above-listed attributes of God, which do you struggle to understand most?
Does it bother you that “wrath” is one of God’s attributes? If so, why?
If God is gracious why do we treat each other with such cruelty and disgrace? Is there hope?
This afternoon we had the continued privilege of praising God with Freedom Life Church and to sit under the expository preaching of pastor Rohan K. Samuels.
We were thankful to revisit the topic of grace. In fact, the title of today’s message was The Gift of Grace, based solely on a passage from Ephesians that informed a church two millennia ago about the doctrine of salvation and continues to inform and nourish the church, worldwide, to this day about the concept and practice of grace.
Let us read the passage in full.
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” – Ephesians 2:1-7
Again, we cannot talk about God’s gift to mankind, this undeserved mercy, and unmerited favor without discussing grace. Jesus walked this earth, sinless and pure, fulfilling in his short life the requirements of a holy life and was eventually betrayed by his friends and the religious counsel of his day where from there he was tried by a kangaroo court and sentenced to death by crucifixion.
Christ endured this vilest and cruelest execution methods imaginable because of His love for us and His willingness to submit Himself to the Father, for our sake.
GRACE
Grace is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary in three ways.
Unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification
A virtue coming from God
A state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance
How beautiful, really, to know that this gift of salvation, regeneration, of redemption, justification, propitiation, and sanctification of sinners comes from God and God alone.
It is such a joy to know that God has accomplished the total work required for our salvation alone. He did not need our help, our strength, our effort, or our struggle to complete His redemptive story.
Rest assured, sinner, the work is done.
Pastor Rohan emphasizes the need for effective and continual theological training from the pulpit because far too many congregations and congregants have settled for a water-downed gospel which in turn leaves them with a particular teaching of Christ and His salvific mission that gives Christians and unbelievers an uneasy feeling of uncertainty regarding their own salvation.
He lists three categories that have led, at least in our western churches, to the crippling of the gospel.
Theological Illiteracy
Theology is but the study of God and God’s relation to His creation. When we fail to understand who God is, how He has communicated with His creation and why, then we resort to erroneous understandings of God, which leaves the student of scripture with a flawed perception of their Creator.
When we avoid theological training that builds our understanding of God then we are left with a man-made deity that best serves us as a butler and we are led to believe this is who God is.
We could not be further from the truth.
And what is essentially paradoxical about studying theology, or rather, studying the revealed personality of our Creator, is that the more we learn about Him the more in awe we are about Him. We actually come to know less about Him, the more we know about Him.
In trying to understand and decipher the infinite, the finite thus bows its head.
But too many church attendees find their comfort in theological illiteracy because they postulate that if it is impossible to know all of God or all about God, it is rather best to not know anything about Him at all, other than what He can give us.
Poor theology leads to poor anthropology.
Olivet Theory
This faulty understanding of our Creator and Perfector leads the congregant to a deistic understanding of God. A God who is there but too far away and too busy to care.
Theology, like understanding the basic laws of physics help an individual understand why jumping from a third-story window is a bad idea. Ignorance is only bliss when you’re freefalling but the ground eventually catches up with you.
Poor theology leads to poor anthropology.
Therapeutic Preaching
Therapeutic peaching is just that. Words and sermons delivered for the betterment of our feelings and emotions. You leave the church uplifted, emotionally, but spiritually unchanged.
There is no trace of sin, corruption of the soul, menacing thoughts, devilish influence, Satanic oppression, or perpetual damnation because these doctrinal points are too polemic to discuss in church.
Therapeutic preaching serves best in areas where people struggle with their understanding of God, their understanding of sin, their understanding of scripture, and their ultimate understanding of the gospel.
Here, people perish not just for lack of knowledge but for love of pleasure and comfort.
As you scratch their backs, in an elocutionary way, the better they feel about you and about God. But the moment you discuss or preach about sin and the need for spiritual reconciliation with God, the church has tuned you out.
This ought not to be.
Charismatic Speakers
This approach is self-explanatory.
There are far too many televangelists to list and it would be a disservice on my part to bore you or perhaps excite you with their names. I’m sure you can picture a few popular faces who have built empires of wealth around themselves under the guise of Christian living and teaching. However, these ministers of the self have done everything within their power to divert the focus away from Christ and toward themselves.
That is why, whenever one of these lucrative speakers is caught in an embarrassing scandal their church must struggle with the possibility of losing its financial stability and the followers that keep this industry moving.
Charismatic preachers do nothing for the gospel of Christ, nor do they express or explain the beauty of God’s grace demonstrated in scripture through the salvific work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
Their intention is to grow their following and amass wealth.
Healthy theology from the pulpit leads to a healthy community.
Orthodoxy leads to orthopraxy.
The Scrubs
Pastor Rohan donned dark grey scrubs this Sunday afternoon and for a moment, I thought he had either come from a shift in the emergency room or was on his way to one as soon as service came to an end.
But his intention was to demonstrate that like a physician diagnosing a condition or a disease, we, humans, have to diagnose the illness present in our hearts.
We understand that there are structures, systems, cultures, ideologies, and persons who behave in such villainous ways but we rarely pause to consider the cause of their behaviors.
Sin festers in the heart before an action is ever taken but far too often we’re combating the symptoms of sin, whereas we must address, first, the presence of sin and second, the remedy for it.
Olivet Theory
Pastor Rohan references one of these issues, namely, racism in our world. Specially how people have conducted themselves towards other people in such condemnable ways but we rarely pause to ask why they behave that way.
The human heart has a disease, a corruption inherent in the human essence and it is called sin.
Sin is the cancer that spreads from one generation to the next. Sin is the spark that ignites lust in man’s heart before he commits rape or adultery. It is the flame in a child’s heart before they set their home ablaze, killing everyone inside. It is sin that thirsts for more liquor even though the inebriate wants it not.
Sin festers in the heart before an action is ever taken but far too often we’re combating the symptoms of sin, whereas we must address, first, the presence of sin and second, the remedy for it.
We must diagnose the illness of the human heart before we can do away with the symptoms it produces.
That is why the gospel is called the Good News because before we ever receive the gospel we must inform, or, rather, remind the sinner that they have an insidious disease running through their veins; no, deeper, it lives in their soul.
Paul reminds the church of Ephesus that we were all children of wrath.
Pastor Rohan informs the church that mankind is born in this reprobate state of irreversible fallenness. He states:
The nature of the unbeliever is fallen
The unbeliever is unable to revive himself, spiritually and physically from the dead
We are all subjugated to the will of the devil
“Spiritual deadness finds its source in Satan.” Said Pastor Rohan. “Every unbeliever is spiritually dead, sons of the devil.”
Paul poetically informs us of our depraved and unregenerate state in the letter to the Romans this way:
“as it is written:
None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.
Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.
The venom of asps is under their lips.
Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood;
in their paths are ruin and misery,
and the way of peace they have not known.
There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Romans 3:10-18
And again:
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:23
And let the reader understand that sin is the diagnosis and the prognosis, the outcome of sin, is death.
But thanks be to God in heaven that through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the grace which was given to us through His efficacious work on the cross, we are saved by grace through faith!
But God
You can imagine a man on top of a horse on his way to the gallows for crimes unpardonable. You can imagine the same man facing the people who once trusted him, a people he once called friends now throwing rotten vegetables at him, yelling obscenities from the top of their throats at him. He listens to the gallop of the horse he is seated on and wonders how many more steps it will take before it reaches the gallows. He looks side to side and pictures the world but the unease of his execution prevents him from fixating on anything good.
He is dismounted from his mare, forced up a set of steps where a priest is reciting strange words to either him or the crowd, he is not sure. He captures the executioner, in clad black armor, face covered by a black hood. The crowd cheers when the noose is wrapped around his neck. He hears something coming from the priest about last rites or last words but shrugs and wants nothing more than to be done with this life, this world of illness and disease, this world of pillage and murder, of prostitution and abandoned bastards. He wants nothing more than that which he has earned from his way of life. His wants and desires have led him to the very noose that now hugs his throats so dearly. His wages have merited him a speedy and all too comforting death, comforting compared to the death he dealt his victims. This man is a killer, a cold-blooded murderer who deserves nothing but the tightening of a just and fair rope around his neck as his body struggles against itself. This man deserves death.
But short of the executioner pulling the trap door mechanism, a fine hairs’ distance away from sure and complete death a trumpet blasts in the distance. A sound the townspeople know all too well. It is sounded of the arrival of royalty. The crowd makes way for a man dressed in kingly attire but it isn’t the king, it is his son, the prince. This gallant figure approaches the gallows as the crowd stands in awe, in silence, in reverence of his eminence, awaiting, perhaps, for him to adulate the execution of the criminal but he does the opposite of that. He stands, makes eye contact with the spectators, and disrobes. His body, now exposed to the elements shivers. The cool air embraces his naked body as his servants turn in shame. He approaches the priest and demands he be silent. He approaches the executioner and orders him to remove the noose from around the neck of the convicted man. Everyone gasps as both priest and executioner obey without hesitance. What happens next is the most unexpected case of all time, the prince, the son of the king of the land places the noose around his own neck. The crowd shudders, they whimper, some scream in fear, and others grab on to whoever they can. No one dares interrupt the work of the king’s son, for that, they thought, would also merit a sure death on the gallows.
The prince looks at the murderer who moments ago was a dead man and whispers something to him about forgiveness, about go and sin no more, about your sins are forgiven you, and I will see you again.
The killer, unsure of how this is happening, unable to grasp the profundity of this act of selflessness from the royal son, is brought to tears, there, at the gallows but unsure why. The hate he once felt for the world begins to dissipate and he is unsure why. He attempts to explain to the royal prince that it is his neck that should be wrapped by the noose but the prince raises a hand and the crowd and the murderer are brought to silence. A sudden and complete silence.
The prince looks to the executioner, to the priest, and to the crowd at which point he explains to them that the crimes of the man before him are unpardonable and that death by hanging was the only way this killer would leave this world. But, the prince, loving the man and the crowd so much, said he would take on the crimes of the kingdom and the crimes committed in the past, and crimes yet to be committed by his servants on to himself. If anyone was to die, he would die for them all.
At this point, he gives the executioner the command only royalty could and down his body goes and with him the guilt, crimes, ills, killings, and sins of the man he saved. No one dared lay a hand on the forgiven man for the prince, the son of the king, had taken his place on the gallows, thus giving him another chance at life.
But God…
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.”
Saved. Raised. Seated.
“saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,”
God has activated, He has rekindled life in our soul. Not only washing us of our sins but sending His Son, Jesus, to die for our sins. He has raised us from the wallow of sin to life everlasting when He raised His Son from the grave. And now remains for us a brighter future beyond the grave, thanks be to Christ Jesus.
Pastor Rohan informs us that not only are we awakened from a deadly spiritual state but our position before God is another. We were once distant, desolate in the soul, reprobate, and deserving of wrath but because of God’s great mercy, because of God’s gift of GRACE, we are now children of God.
We can approach our heavenly Father as little children approach their parents and rest in their embrace.
Mind you, God’s embrace is not weak. His grip over our lives, our salvation, our future, and eternal state is not feeble. He who saved us is He who maintains us in Him and He will not relent. He will not loosen His hold of His children the same way a mother does not release her grip over her babes in light of imminent danger.
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The Creator of our universe can save you, raise you, and seat you by His feet for all eternity. His grace affords us this incomparable gift.
It’s His gift of grace to us all.
Why linger, why falter, why wander any longer, reader?
Accept His generous gift and be welcomed into the family of God with opened arms.
This morning we had the continued privilege to attend a church service with our friends at Grace Point Church. Pastor LuAnne Birkholz relayed a powerful message surrounding the passage from Apostle Paul to the church in Ephesus. The title of today’s message was My Life: God’s Masterpiece, from their Back to the Basics teaching series.
As you might have surmised, back to the basics is just that. The church is revisiting what makes Christianity Christian and unique. What they believe, what they do not, what they have progressed from, and what this faith has decided to leave behind.
And I love the title of pastor LuAnne’s sermon, My Life: God’s Masterpiece. Right there, at that exact moment, we believe the focus shifts from the Creator to the creation but in reality our worth, our intrinsic worth comes from Him. Though we are His masterpiece, in the sense that He laid out a plan to redeem us from our sins and set us apart for greater works in Christ Jesus we must understand where this idea comes from.
I want to relay the passage pastor LuAnne ministered from for context. She revisits Ephesians 2:1-10 and please, grant me your attention more so to the text in its entirety than my own words for these are words that transform lives and separate the Christian worldview from other worldviews. Polar opposites. Join me:
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”– Ephesians 2:1-10
Pastor LuAnne states that from this passage believers have an intimate relationship with their understanding of their own past, present, and future in Christ.
Mind you, this grace isn’t attained by wealth, by favor, by prominence, by eminence, by excellence, by good works or merit, it isn’t attained by consistency or perfection, it is not attained by good thoughts and prayers, it is impossible to place oneself in any position worthy or deserving of this grace. This grace is God’s gift!
Olivet Theory
I mean, come on, just look at the words Paul uses to describe our previous state, our PAST:
Dead, trespasses, following the course of the world, following the prince of the power of the air (Satan), the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience, lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying our the desires of the body and the mind, by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
She carries our attention to our current state, our PRESENT, praise God for this next step. She references Paul’s words from Ephesians, explaining to us how God acted in our benefit. I beg of you, reader, carefully see the choice of words Paul uses to describe God’s love for us:
But God, rich in mercy, great love, he loved us, we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace, saved, raised us up with him, seated us with him, heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
I mean, COME ON!
Such a beautiful faith we have and the God who made this faith available to us. We were ruled by dark forces bent on our destruction, worthy of such destruction, and without hope outside of God’s grace. Mind you, this grace isn’t attained by wealth, by favor, by prominence, by eminence, by excellence, by good works or merit, it isn’t attained by consistency or perfection, it is not attained by good thoughts and prayers, it is impossible to place oneself in any position worthy or deserving of this grace. This grace is God’s gift!
How precious a gift. How wonderful to know that our great God needn’t our help nor does He expect it. It’s His gift to us.
And finally, pastor Luanne reminds us of our FUTURE on this world with God and beyond the grave with God. Now that we are saved by grace through faith, not by actions or works, we have a future beyond wrath and judgment. Look at Paul’s choice of words:
So that in the coming ages, immeasurable, riches of his grace, kindness toward us, by grace, saved, through faith, not your own doing, the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, good works, God prepared beforehand, walk in them.
Past. Present. Future.
Those three words have a completly different meaning within the Christian worldview because they speak of a need for redemption, they speak of a price that was paid to set us free from bondage to sin, and now remains a future for those formers slaves to sin, turned slaves of righteousness for good works.
Pastor LuAnne reminds the church of a story she read about in a Tim Keller book about a woman, who, having grown in a legalist environment (a church that believes you must earn your way into heaven by works, obedience to local leaders, rigid community standards, and unearthly expectations. There’s a transformation from without but inside people are still dead in their sins) later came to understand the liberating and saving gospel of Jesus Christ. She explains, in a conversation with pastor Keller, how she felt after reading and understanding Ephesians chapter two.
Her response, now aware of the simplicity of the gospel, was awe and fear. She explains:
“If I was saved by my good works then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with ‘rights’ – I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if I am a sinner saved by grace- then there’s nothing He cannot ask of me.”
By this, pastor LuAnne explains, people believe that now that they are saved there’s nothing more for them to do. All is done. Christ died. Christ rose from the grave. I’m forgiven. I’m free. And now I don’t have to do anything else with my life.
In fact, now, as Paul reminds the church in Rome, we are slaves of Christ. We’re all emissaries set off to spread the news of this Great and Saving faith to the world. Not just that. We’re also called to serve, love, help, embolden, lift up, feed, visit, and be representatives of Jesus on earth until His return.
Thank God for this marvelous gospel.
For by grace you have been saved through faith… for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
How beautiful. How undeserved a gift. How thankful we are to receive it. Now, we must share it, too.
I’ll end today’s Sunday Review with one of the songs that were sung by the worship group at GPC. The lyrics are, well, gospel.
O Praise The Name (Anástasis) by Hillsong Worship
Note: Anastasis – Ancient Greek ἀνάστασις (anástasis, “resurrection”).
A recovery from a debilitating condition, especially irradiation of human tissue.
Rebirth.
(Christianity) Resurrection, especially the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I cast my mind to Calvary
Where Jesus bled and died for me.
I see His wounds, His hands, His feet.
My Savior on that cursed tree
His body bound and drenched in tears
They laid Him down in Joseph’s tomb.
The entrance sealed by heavy stone
Messiah still and all alone
Then on the third at break of dawn,
The Son of heaven rose again.
O trampled death where is your sting?
The angels roar for Christ the King
He shall return in robes of white,
The blazing Son shall pierce the night.
And I will rise among the saints,
My gaze transfixed on Jesus’ face
O praise the name of the Lord our God
O praise His name forever more
For endless days we will sing
Your praise Oh Lord, oh Lord our God
Questions worth considering
Have you ever read Ephesians 2:1-10? What were your thoughts?
Do you believe sin is real? That it’s genetic? Generational?
If you seek salvation from sin and judgment, will you rely on your own works or on God’s grace?
