Tentpegs

We are taking a break from questions for tonight. This is something that’s been on my mind for awhile.

We got another survey/poll done recently that said that nearly 90% of Americans approved of national health care… until they were asked if they would be willing to pay more to get it (and make sure all Americans got it, too) that number dropped to the magical 40%. If you study polls, you will find that there is a steady 40-45% of Americans who say that they would pay more taxes, they would pay more in fees, they would approve higher fees on this or that, etc. Who are these people?

Government figures reveal their identity. Forty to forty five per cent of US adults pay no income tax. In fact, they are net beneficiaries of the system. Yes, they pay sales tax and other fees, but rather than send in a fat check on April 15th, they are waiting on a huge refund — a larger refund than anything taken out of their check for income tax. Yes, they still pay Social Security but even then, after all numbers are crunched, they get a lot more out of the government than they put in. So, of course, they say they would pay more taxes. They know they are immune from the whole thing.

We have a similar problem in churches. In most churches, twenty per cent of the members do the volunteering, teaching, and the bulk of the giving. The rest are in a kind of spiritual welfare fog. They are spiritual consumers. They shop for the most comfortable programs, sermons, and songs but they don’t carry any of the church’s weight. In fact, they will enthusiastically call for more youth programs, better lighting, new ministries, and a preacher overhaul… but they won’t volunteer to staff a ministry (or, if they do, they frequently forget or fall down on the job), raise their giving from a level that would embarrass an Ethiopian refugee, teach a class, or even budge during the meet and greet portion of the service.

And yet… they do the bulk of the complaining and are the first to quit giving their $5 when something happens that they don’t like. They are also the first to leave and go church shopping again.

I disapprove of those who do not sacrifice but insist that others do — whether they are doing so in politics or in the church. God did not tell Adam and Eve to shop ’til they dropped but, rather, to work and guard the Garden. We are each called to lay down our lives, sacrifice, give, and serve. And when we stand before God, we stand there alone to answer for the things done — and not done — in our body, the words we said, and the choice we made. While all of us who are saved are saved by grace, there are many warnings about failing to risk, give, and serve. It is immoral to bind more burdens on your neighbors and fellow citizens than you are willing to bear and it is immoral to sit and consume spiritual events once or twice a week, refusing to join your hands to the plow. God has a real problem with those who bury their talents. He admires and respects those who give their lives up for their friends and faith.

I am not going to try to edit down and print three emails I have received recently. Nor will I try to write down my memories of two phone calls. All had the same substance — three younger ministers facing a bad situation. They wondered if it was time to move on or if they were being sinful for thinking about leaving.

In each case, these were the kind of preachers I praise from the rooftops. They were young, smart, educated, and energetic… and they had chosen to work with smaller churches. Preachers for churches with less than 100 in attendance are the backbone of our religious tribe. They aren’t invited to speak at most lectureships or seminars and rarely will they even get a passing mention in our publications, but we couldn’t do without them. They keep the faith alive in remote or difficult places.

However, let’s not get all idyllic-eyed about this. Some of those small churches are small for a reason. Some of them are open for business as if tomorrow is the last Sunday in June 1956. They have successfully avoided change and driven off any of their children or ministers who tried to move things along. They often equate smallness with faithfulness and consider themselves the faithful remnant — the “few there be that find it.” They fail to recognize that God had no intention for us to remain small and that the word “few” is a comparative term. Being one of a group of a couple hundred thousand is not being one of the “few,” but one of the “minuscule.” We have had quite a few billion people on this planet in its history. We could have a billion people truly profess Christ and they would be “few” compared to the bulk of humanity. So let’s stop with all this “small is beautiful” stuff when it comes to church size. (and, yes, that means if you prefer small churches, you need to ask yourself why. Are you willing for them to remain small so that you will continue to feel comfortable? I helped a church grow from 130 to 300 years ago only to have an elder stand — every single time he was scheduled to lead a prayer or give announcements — and complain from the pulpit that he liked things better when the church was small enough to know everybody. I eventually left and he got his wish)

If you have a calling to reach a church and a community and it is going to take a few decades to get them to move along to where they should be — wonderful! I know two or three people with that gift. I do not possess it. If, however, you find yourself in a church that will not move, or a church that mistreats its ministers — we need to talk.

The average minister in my religious tribe stays in the ministry just under 7 years during which he will serve just over 2 churches. That is tragic. When asked why they left (and the majority of preacher school graduates leave the ministry after just a few years), they almost always report what can only be called ministerial abuse. Ministers are often told they must account for every hour they work — and every one they don’t. They are criticized constantly, not paid what they were promised, denied vacation time or time off, and blamed when things go wrong. The three ministers who wrote and called me told of demands that they work 50-55 hours a week, take no vacation time (because a trip home for a funeral was called ‘vacation’), not preach on certain subjects, not take their kids to certain youth events, have their wives work as unpaid staff members, do the work Biblically assigned to elders such as visitation and counseling, and do the work Biblically assigned to deacons.

The question all asked was: should I stay or should I go? Here is the hard to hear stuff: Jesus said not to cast your pearls before swine. Take that any way you want, but the fact is that Jesus said it and meant it. Don’t waste your life trying to make people do what they are not going to do. The second thing I need to say is that Jesus already died for these people; you don’t have to die for them, too. The third hard thing is to remind you that Jesus said when a city will not listen to you and accept you, you are to leave it, shake the dust off your feet, and move along. There is no question that Jesus loves the people in those cities — and loves them more than we ever could. Yet, since our lives are limited, we are to move on and find another place; a more receptive people.

Those people might reside in a different church, but they could also live in your community. We find some of the most receptive people to be those who have nothing — the broken, homeless, unemployed, and frightened. Maybe you should build a new church with them. Any town of any size could have a large church formed just out of those who have been mistreated by the local churches! Start one of those!

But don’t waste your life. Do as Jesus did and move along. You have pearls to distribute.

One cautionary note: if you have been burned by three or four churches, it might be you. Take a good look at yourself. You might be fine as a person and a minister, but you have a real need to have someone else help you craft your contract. Or maybe you need to find another line of work. Look at it like you would a man who has been married and divorced four times. The only common denominator is… If that is true of you and churches, don’t automatically stop serving God in a public manner. Get advice and counsel… and take it! Make the changes you need to make. If you aren’t willing to make the changes, it is time to move to a a different way of making your living and serving the Lord.

The flow of questions at tentpegsquestion@yahoo.com has nearly dribbled to a stop. We might need to consider doing something different here. That would be fine. I fully expected this question answering run to end around 50. Boy, was I surprised! Here is a question that comes in fairly regularly.

Can you explain how the canon of scripture came to be? How do we know that the books included are correct? Why is the Bible the Catholics use different with the addition of books? What about the other writings at the time? I have heard there is some doubt about the authorship of several nt books such as 2Peter and Revelation. If there is doubt, how did they get chosen?

How do we know that the Bible has been translated in a manner that gives us what was said in Greek, Hebrew? There seems to be controversy over the long ending of Mark 16. Many feel it is spurious and shouldn’t be included, what things point to it needing to be included? Many also feel the King James Version of the Bible to be the only version. I am wondering why this is so. Haven’t many discoveries been made in the dead sea since 1611?

There are a lot of questions in those two paragraphs. Let’s start the discussion. The myth that some like to circulate is that a group of men (women hating, homophobic, white, and power hungry) met in secret and banned a bunch of books. They then wrote, forged, or selected the 66 books that now make up our Bible and claimed that God made them do it.

Uh. No. To be fair, the other myth goes something like this: once upon a time, a large leather bound book dropped down from heaven with a note in it from the Holy Spirit that said “Good luck.” At the risk of repeating myself — uh, no.

The church did without a collection of 66 books for a few hundred years. That’s right. The apostles were dead and so were those who had received the laying on of hands from the apostles… and the Bible wasn’t around for a good long while. Individual books existed and those were passed around and copied when possible but I am not aware of any historical evidence that any one person or church had all 66 books — and only those books — in their possession before the year 300AD. Those who believe that the Bible is a legal text, a rule book, and a map that directs every single aspect of acceptable worship struggle to explain how the church functioned during that time. I believe it is because the Bible is a narrative with some commands, not a command book with some narrative. In other words, we have a LOT of grace and freedom in regards to how we organize and worship.

But that’s a different subject, isn’t it?

When the church was being persecuted, it was common for the death penalty to be demanded for anyone who had a copy of Christian scripture. That made it rather important to know what Christian scripture was! The churches had discussions from time to time to see what the consensus was about this or that book. Powerful church leaders had a lot to say about that and we have some of their correspondence, allowing us to see inside their heads and hearts. There is NO evidence that books were rejected because they would have taken control of the church away from these powerful men. That is a New Age myth.

Here are some of the things those church leaders and the people who read the books asked about the books they found (and this was important for, remember, Paul even warned that some books were already out there claiming to be from him when they weren’t).
1. Was this book written by a prophet of God? Remember that “prophet” didn’t mean someone who told the future, necessarily. It is a much broader word and means a preacher or public teacher of God’s Word. It can apply to women as well as men. If the book was written by a recognized spokesperson of God, it was accepted. (this didn’t mean that the book survived, though! Paul wrote four books to the Corinthians and yet we only have two. Not even fragments of the other two survived)

2. Was this spokesman confirmed as a spokesman of God by God Himself? Were there miracles to substantiate the message?

3. Does this book tell the truth about God? Does it fit with the picture of God given in other recognized scripture?

4. Does it have power? Is there something about this book that strengthens us, helps us grow in faith, repent of our sins, or change our lives in such a way as to show the presence of God in them?

5. What is the history of this book? This concerned its provenance as well as the history of its acceptance by the people of God. (if you remember my Three Arrows approach, the third arrow was how the church handled the issue throughout the centuries)

Some books are, indeed, questioned. Some Jews and Christians have questioned the inclusion of the Book of Esther because it doesn’t mention the name of God. Others were scandalized by the Song of Solomon. Some believed Ezekiel was absolutely given by a prophet of God but that its bizarre way of delivering that message was too dangerous to be read by the common people. Christians had a few more rules before a book was accepted (they accepted the Jewish canon as given, though we usually publish it in a different order and book count than they did. For example, they treat the books of Samuel and Kings as one book and the two Chronicles as one book).

1. Does the book help us preserve our faith?

2. Does it help address needs in the church?

They then decided that a general agreement about which books were scripture and which weren’t needed to be reached quickly because heretics were writing books, books were being translated into a large number of languages (and, therefore, which ones are worth the effort?), and books were showing up with the name of apostles or other holy people on them when it was obvious they didn’t write them. How could the Christians do as good a job as the Jews did with the Old Testament?

The earliest list of books that is exactly like our New Testament was given to us by Athanasius in 367AD. Surprised it is so late? I think most people would be. As early as 115 AD Polycarp referred to some books in our New Testament with the phrase “as it is said in these scriptures” so we know the books were revered as from the hand of God, but he didn’t quote all of them. Justin Martyr wrote around 155AD a description of a Christian worship service where “the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits.”

A gathering of religious leaders in 393AD confirmed that the 27 books we have in the New Testament were all in general use, revered in all the congregations. Since that time, there has been no serious questioning by Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, or Protestants about these books. At this council there was also a list of books that were useful, but not considered scripture. They included the Shepherd of Hermas or the Didache, both of which are available online today. Other books were considered spurious and worthless including the Apocalypse of Peter and the Gospel of Barnabas.

Because those books were considered spurious, they weren’t treasured or hidden from the authorities. Therefore, most rejected books have disappeared. That gives the conspiracy nuts a lot of ammo but those who know history aren’t troubled. From time to time, we find one of those spurious books such as the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Judas. There is great interest in them for they are windows into another time, but almost no one argues that they should be considered scripture.

As for versions and whether or not Second Peter should be included, we’ll have to wait for another blog.

Here is one that I think many of you will find you could have sent in…

I presently attend a very conservative church within our tribe (as you like to call it.) However, I grew up in a different tribe and was “converted” in 2004.

I have a few questions: First, to what extent can a person disagree with his/her congregation with out being spiritually/biblically forced to associate with a different group of believers? I love the people that I go to church with dearly, but if they knew some of my private beliefs they would likely consider me lost. Second, at what point (if any) does one become dishonest for holding his views to himself? Thirdly, I was hoping that you could weigh in on the situation I described above.

I don’t think there is anything dishonest about worshiping with people with whom you have profound disagreement. Jesus seemed to pull that off, didn’t he? Think of what it would be like to be God in human form, sitting in a synagogue with Pharisees or walking in the temple precinct with Sadduccees. We know that his disciples had some weird ideas, but Jesus worshiped with them. Romans 14 tells us that we do not need to share whatever we think about this or that issue — in fact, it seems to be telling us that sharing what we think about disputable matters is not a good thing!

My general rule is: if you are able to serve God and able to worship Him, there is no reason to leave your congregation. If you cannot grow or serve the Lord where you are, you need to move on. I sincerely believe that in the vast majority of cases there is no need to move on. Let’s set up a scenario. Let’s say you were asked to teach a class and, as you did so, you were peppered with people wanting you to say that everyone not in your section of your religious tribe is lost, religiously dishonest, etc. You can gently say that you may see some things differently without trying to bring them to your way of thinking. Arguments rarely move people, anyway. I think the most effective strategy is to out-love, out-serve, and out-live those with whom you disagree.

You describe yourself as a closet progressive by Church of Christ standards. I think that is an important point to emphasize — the most liberal person in the Church of Christ is still very much on the right of the religious world as a whole. Even the most liberal Church of Christ member I know believes in the authority of scripture, the deity of Christ, the need to be disciplined and faithful in their living, etc. Sadly, too many of our brothers believe that if we disagree with them about any point at all, we have abandoned all the law, prophets, Jesus, and probably even secretly kicked Peter’s dog (if he had one). That’s just sad — as well as being intellectually dishonest, slanderous, and silly.

As for once saved always saved and the necessity for baptism, we’ve covered both of those in Tentpegs before. That brings me to the issue that a few have written me about lately: why aren’t the columns categorized for easier searching? Simply put, that would take a few days of my time and I don’t have that kind of time right now. I agree it needs to be done.

Every so often, someone asks a question… and answers it!

I’ve been reading Kings and Chronicles lately, and I’ve been wondering about God’s purpose in telling us about all these events. Your response to #187 has helped me frame my question, I think. Is Israel’s repeatedly toying with other nations and idols against God’s will and repeatedly falling into chaos or captivity a parallel to our personal falls and fallen condition? Was part of God’s intent in choosing Israel meant to demonstrate through them how He works and the consequences of our rebellion and the necessity of His mercy? At the same time, were nations who lived in disregard of Him, like the Canaanite tribes, showing us the consequences of living without Him?

I guess the main question I’m trying to ask is, “What is the message to us from God’s dealings with Israel? ”

The questioner has really answered her own question. I love it when that happens (cuts down on my work load!). These stories are here for us because:

1. They are a history of a people.
2. We learn a great deal about the patience of God and the unfaithfulness of mankind.
3. We learn that we are NOT supreme beings and, in fact, have a lot to be ashamed of, for the faults we find in the OT are the ones we see in ourselves — to one degree or the other. It reminds us of our place in the universe. We are creators, not the Creator.
4. We see that people do NOT behave and believe just because miracles follow them around. It takes a lot more than miracles; it takes love and faith. Love and faith can live without miracles, but miracles will be useless without love and faith.
5. We see that we cannot keep the law, regardless of how many chances we get. We need a Savior.
6. We can see and contrast — easily — those people and nations who follow God with those who don’t. This leaves us no excuse if we choose to forget our God. We saw what that brings on a family or nation.

There are a lot of stories I would have left out of the Bible. Certainly, atheists love to read the nasty, violent, tragic bits and throw them at us — Abraham shopping his wife out twice, the rape of Tamar, prostitute visiting, slaughter of entire towns, etc. Still, that is part of our story and part of the reason why we need a savior. And we got him!

I can’t believe we are at 187! Oh well, there are still about a dozen questions sitting in tentpegsquestion@yahoo.com and some of them are growing whiskers as they wait to be answered. Here is an intriguing one…

When we ask why there is pain, sickness, and suffering in the world, Christians tell us that it is because Adam and Eve sinned and that brought “the fall” to the world. They say we live in a fallen world and that all of the billions and billions of people who have lived here had to suffer and die because of Adam and Eve’s sin. When I looked it up, all they did was eat some fruit they weren’t supposed to. For THAT everybody has to die, have pain in childbirth, and deal with mosquitoes and thorns?

The standard Sunday School way of telling the Adam and Eve story certainly makes it look like God overreacted… but the standard story doesn’t cover what really happened. Here is the real story.

God created the heavens and the earth. The first time we get a look at it, it is in chaos. Wild, deep, and dark waters cover earth. As we’ve noted before (”Your Own Personal Jordan”) the Old Testament uses waters to illustrate the work of evil, the coming on of depression, war, and pain. It is clear that something happened after God created the heavens and the earth. War had broken out between God and some rebellious angels and His creation was in danger of sinking beneath the waves of a cosmic conflagration.

God sends His Spirit down to clear an area, shoving back the darkness and bringing order. The waters were separated from the land — banished to their place. After God created a garden on the earth and filled the planet with creatures that He loved, He made creatures who shared in His own nature — in His own image — and put them in the garden. This is important: they weren’t tossed randomly onto the planet. They were placed in a very special place. They were given orders to tend the garden and guard it. Guard it??? Yes, most versions of the Bible will say something like “dress and keep it” but the word “keep” there is the same word used after the Fall when God placed cherubs down on earth and told them to “guard” the entrance to the garden.

What were Adam and Eve supposed to guard the garden against? Encroachment by God’s enemies, those angels who had rebelled. Over a period of time (we have no way of knowing how long), Adam failed in his duty to guard the sacred, safe place God had created in His cosmos for him. In fact, the leader of the rebellious angels was now a guest in the garden, free to carry on conversations with Adam and Eve about their needs and the veracity or adequacy of God!

When they decided to switch their allegiance to that Serpent, the leader of the rebellious angels, God needed to show them — and us — what that meant. He shoved them out into the devil’s territory and put incredibly powerful angels called cherubs into place to make sure man didn’t run back into the garden. If man wanted to be loyal to the rebellion, then he would have to live with the rebels. (NOTE: cherubs, in art, are little babies with rosy cheeks. In the Bible, they are terrifying creatures — armed to the teeth and full of fire, thunder, earthquakes, and power)

Man now had to live in the world Satan had planned. It was a chaotic, fallen place just as it was before God shoved all that aside to create the garden. He was allowed to maintain contact with God, but it would take sacrifice, time, and sweat to do so. Soon, and we might say predictably, all mankind was in allegiance with the Serpent except for Noah. God then sent a flood into the world — hitting the cosmic Reset button — to give man a better chance of escaping the clutches of the agents — the angels — of chaos.

Should mankind learn the lesson of Adam and Eve and refuse to repeat it, we would no longer be a fallen people. The problem is, we continually do what they did! (just as Stephen told the Sanhedrin in Acts 7) We are told to guard our hearts, our minds, our mouths, and our actions and, yet, we slowly allow the devil access until we start believing his lies — lies about God not adequately loving us, providing for us, and caring for us. We reach out and take what is not ours to take — another person’s wife or daughter, another woman’s man, a dollar that “won’t be missed”. We stop our sacrifices, refusing to give at church because of our obligations to the world or because we have decided we don’t like our church any more (but we’ll still attend). We let the Serpent worm his way in.

The reason the world is Fallen is because the people on it are Fallen continue to Fall. They make decisions that harm themselves and others and, as often as not, they blame God for the consequences of their own actions. God did not overreact. He had to show us what happens when we choose to walk outside the barriers He has placed there for our safety or when we invite in our enemy because he has convinced us he means us no harm. Until we learn this lesson, we will be doomed to repeat it in every single one of our lives.

This particularly painful email came in at tentpegsquestion@yahoo.com some time ago. I have tried to edit it down to remove all personal identifiers. While it doesn’t pose a single question, it lays a set of issues and questions in front of us. And, sadly, this writer is not alone.

I was raised in the church in an abusive home. We were taught verses like ‘children obey your parents, in the Lord’. Then the explanation part went like this, “What does in the Lord mean? It means if your parents are Christians. Since all you kids here are lucky enough to have Christian parents (meaning members of OUR church) you always need to obey them.” This teaching was compounded by my mom. (My dad’s a subject I don’t want to go into here.) I still struggle every day to fight in my mind to believe God loves me knowing that my parents condemn me. I will never forget the day I realized I was stronger than my mom and that I could have fought back or gotten away from her. I chose not to defend myself out of reverence for God.

Last June a boy I never met was killed by his parents in the name of Christian discipline (actually by his father and new step-mother, his mother had died of breast cancer). He was tied to a tree for disobedience. That night they let him go but the next day he was ‘disobedient’ again and they tied him to the tree again. He died of dehydration and hypothermia. He was 13 years old. He had previously told friends he was trying to be obedient to his parents but was ‘having trouble’. He had also gone to his youth minister for help but the youth minister went to his parents and his parents made him say that he had lied. Tyler’s story haunts me. What happened to him hits way too close to home for me because when I was a kid my parents were also out of control.

This writer went on to discuss the angst and pain her upbringing caused her and how she fantasizes about saving boys like the one who died in her example. As I read it, I remembered times that I have seen the church fail women and children. Sure, it fails men, too, but can we at least agree that women and children have less power in many homes and, therefore, failing them can more easily lead to tragic consequences? I have seen women told to go back home and submit to a husband who is beating them. Since he wasn’t “committing adultery” she wasn’t allowed to consider divorce. I have seen kids lose their personality bit by bit through constant verbal and physical abuse until they were permanently damaged. Sure, some of them could get a measure of healing through therapy and medications, but most wouldn’t avail themselves of that because they had been successfully convinced by their parents that they were worthless, that God didn’t love them, and that doctors couldn’t help “people like them.”

The church has to bear a great deal of scorn for the way it has treated families. It has taught that men have absolute rule in the family and that women who are beaten must have not been submitting properly (and, if their husband has sex with another woman, she must not have been “fulfilling her duty”). Here is good news: in most churches, this attitude is dying.

In our congregation, any hint of abuse of a child or adult would be addressed immediately. Elders and ministers would get involved. If a teen tells a minister or elder something, it is treated confidentially and, if required, professionals and authorities are alerted. Those parents involved in addictive behavior are encouraged to enter Celebrate Recovery (which we have on site) and they are actively mentored, cautioned, and warned. Many of them were, in their time, also victims and it requires an active, firm, disciplined hand to guide them out of their abusive, addictive behavior. If a parent commits what we deem to be a crime, they are reported.

At other times, men of the church will approach an abusive man (also a member) and tell him they know what is going on, they are staying in contact with the wife/child/elderly parent and they will hold him to a high standard of conduct. He will be offered help and love but should he refuse, we will become advocates and protectors for those he harms. We have gone so far as to arm some of our qualified, licensed men and stationed them in the area when a child was getting married under threats of violence by the father.

There is NO excuse for violence towards children or women. Yes, some women are violent towards their husbands (in fact, abused men account for more emergency room visits than abused women. True, but weird) and we don’t accept that, either. Some kids are violent, dangerous kids and we step in to help the family find appropriate professional help. And we have gone so far as to help a family place their teen into supervised care.

But what we do NOT do is excuse violence. I have helped put two men in jail for the “discipline” they put their children through. In both instances, the men were given every chance to repent and change (while the kids were being protected) and they refused. One judge sent one of these men to me as a last resort. When I tried to talk to him about the fact that these children belonged to God, he continually said “No, they are mine, and I can beat them if I want to.” He went further and said that he believed the Bible gave him the right and the duty to beat his kids. I called the judge back and the man was put in jail.

Any church that will not stand up for men, women, and children who are being abused is a religious social group, NOT a called out group of Christ followers. If you are in a religious social group, get out before your life crashes and you find no help among the hymns.

Greg England — one of my best blogging friends and a blogger you need to add to your daily reading list — made a comment on the first part of this two part series that really addresses it well. Go back and read that when you can. The lady who wrote that question went on to say this:

I also have another situation, I’m not sure I have a question but I will just let you know of the situation. Last week at the aforementioned Praise service there was a woman who told a story of one of her friends who was driving on the highway and she saw someone on the side of the road and she heard God say “Pick him up”. The woman was like, um, I don’t think so. So she kept on driving and as she passed him she heard God say “I told you to pick him up”. So she turned around and picked the guy up. While they were driving she got into a conversation with the guy about spiritual things and the man kept telling her that God sent him to tell people that He was getting ready to come back. The woman didn’t realize that she was speeding until a cop pulled up behind her, she looked down and saw that she was speeding. The cop came up and she started apologizing telling the cop that she just wasn’t paying attention because she was talking to the man that was with her and she looked over and the man was gone. She was like “Officer, I promise there was a man in here with me” and he said “ma’am don’t even worry about it. you are the 16th person I have pulled over in the last couple of weeks with that exact same story. Now, being the CoC raised girl that I am, I have a hard time believing this. Do you think things like this are possible? Should I open my mind to things like this. I do believe that there are things that happen that are beyond explanation, but are there also instances when things like this just aren’t true?

If you are asking if I think that particular incident occurred, the answer would be “no.” It reeks of “urban legend” to me. Does that mean that I am saying that particular lady lied? Sadly, yes. People lie all the time in order to make God look more active in their lives than He is or to make themselves appear to be special — one to whom God appears in marvelous ways. It gives them status and it makes people like God so… what’s the harm?

The harm is that it is still untrue, God doesn’t need the “help”, and it makes outsiders laugh at Christians. It also makes good hearted, sincere Christians question their worth to the Father or their place in the kingdom because God doesn’t sling phantom hitchhikers at them from time to time.

Now… if you are asking me if things like this are possible, the answer is absolutely YES. I once wrote — quite some time ago — about an incident in which my children and I saw and heard things that had no rational explanation. I have told that story once in print and twice from the pulpit. I don’t share it often. Why? Because I know that isn’t the way God usually works. He worked in that time and place in such a way as to help my children and me escape a wreck and get to medical treatment. He has no obligation to ever do that for us again. My faith in Him and my story of Him is not based on special, miraculous favors but on His wisdom, grace, power, and Son.

It is WAY to easy to get into a one-up battle with people when it comes to healing stories, stories of miracles, numbers of baptisms, success of missions, etc. I repeat — God doesn’t need the help and it makes outsiders laugh at us. I was in a discussion once where a pastor insisted that he defeated a demon and cast him out of a parishioner while the doctor (who actually treated the person) said that medicine brought the man around to his senses. Minirith and Meier (Christian psychiatrists who run a well known clinic) are famous for saying that demons seem to be allergic to Thorazine; their way of saying that many things pastors say are caused by demons are really caused by biology and can be treated by pharmacology).

I believe in demons, angels, healings, and miracles. I also believe that the curtain between our reality and Reality in the spiritual realm usually stays closed. Consider this as an example: I don’t think Daniel saw God every day even though he prayed to Him three times a day for over 70 years. We have records indicating that God showed up in Daniel’s life — pulled that curtain aside — a handful of times. Stephen, the great martyr, saw the curtain pulled back at the point of his death. Forgive me, but I am suspicious when I hear people speak as if God not only twitches the curtain far more often in their lives than He ever did for Daniel or Paul or Stephen, but has pulled it down and snuggled next to them on the couch.

Maybe. But maybe not.

This is actually a situation that raises questions — and does so in many people’s minds, not just that of this particular sister in Christ. I will be looking forward to your comments as we help each other understand one of the mysteries we face in our faith.

I attend a Praise service on Tuesday nights that is basically a time of Praise, testimony, and prayer requesting. Every week I hear stories of people who receive visions, pray over someone who gets healed, stops to help someone and something extraordinary happens. Things like that. Every week I hear these stories and every week I wonder why things like that never happen to me. I firmly believe that people have different spritual gifts and some people have the power to pray over someone for healing and it happen. But I have a hard time with accepting that it only happens if someone specific prays for them and not other people. Why can someone else pray for someone’s healing and lay their hands on them and them be better the next day, but not me. Is it because my faith isn’t strong enough? Because I don’t truly believe it’s going to happen? I guess I would just like to hear your take on different people having spritual gifts. If you have already addressed this, please direct me to where. I tried to look around but couldn’t find what I was looking for. I hope this made sense.

I can get in trouble with people on all sides of the spiritual fence with this answer, but I’m going to go ahead and answer it as sincerely and honestly as I can. Here goes…

I believe in healing. I don’t understand why God gives one person a healing and not another, but that isn’t new; He has always done that. Romans 9:15ff says “For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. “It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.”

This seems terribly harsh and arbitrary to us but God knows who we are, what we are here to do, and our record when it comes to following Him. First Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 (among other passages) tell us that each of us is born with a certain set of gifts. The cosmic rule is: everybody gets at least one gift, but no one gets them all. I certainly believe that some people are much better at praying and getting results than others. Why? Because God set things up that way, I guess.

A friend of mine died yesterday, sixteen hours after his family asked me to pray that he would die. He had been suffering with cancer for 12 years and was so very weary of the struggle. It was clear that God had spared his life long enough to see his kids marry and produce a few grandkids, but that God wasn’t going to take away the various cancers that plagued him. Out of energy at last, he just wanted to go home. God answered my prayer — when He hadn’t granted my petition to heal my friend I had repeatedly uttered over the years. Why? I’m not sure. I DO know this: death is not a defeat or a setback in God’s eyes. I asked God to keep my friend in a body that God wanted him released from. God waited until our prayers matched His will, and He acted quickly.

Perhaps that is the thing here: we have to wait until our prayers match His will. Some people have the gift of discernment. I have only a tiny portion of that gift so I rely on others to help me when I need to pray about big decisions (as I recently did and revealed in this blog). Also, when I need prayers for sickness or pain — mine or someone else’s — I go to certain prayer warriors who have a good record of moving God to action. In the Bible, we see that this is, indeed, possible. Hezekiah was told by God that he was going to die but he prayed for a delay and so God relented and gave him many more years. Not everyone gets that kind of response… but some do.

That said, I am often suspicious of the claims of religious people who say that they see wonderful acts of healing almost daily or weekly. I wonder if they aren’t overstating the results of their prayers. I don’t challenge them, though, for the truthfulness or falsity of their claims will manifest itself in time. And who am I to question another person’s faith anyway?

If you see someone else able to pray and get results and you don’t see that same level of power in your own life, it is only natural to ask if there is something wrong with you. The answer is almost always — in my experience — “No. That is just not the gift God has given you.” However, it does nothing but good to do a self examination. The way I run my “check up” is to read James. He tells me about faith, works, how prayer fails or succeeds, and how to gain better wisdom as I live my life. I suggest that book to you, too. But remember this: if you are a child of God, He wants to hear from you. He is not a cosmic vending machine (put in two prayers, get one healing dropped from on high), but a Father. He knows best how to dole out gifts, healing, and when to withhold the same.

And remember that sickness and death are not signs that we have sinned, but reminders that we live in a fallen world and that our lives here are temporary at best. We are going to a better place. My friend beat me there at 2:30 this morning. Phil, I will see you soon. I am thrilled that you are no longer in pain.

A man asked me to help him deal with an argument tossed at him on a message board. That’s what we’ll do for question 184. Remember to send in questions to tentpegsquestion@yahoo.com and I’ll get to them when I can… unless I have already addressed them. I really need to go through and categorize and index each reply but I have a few other things to do!

The atheist said this “We are all atheists. I just believe in one less god than you do. You don’t believe in Zeus, Lodi, Thor, Venus, Vishnu or any of the other - literally - millions of gods out there. We don’t either. We just go one god further than you do. If you were intellectually honest, you would, too.”

This argument shows up in the works of all of the New Atheists including Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and the like. It is the kind of argument that makes sense as long as you aren’t thinking much. Or at all.

Is someone who only uses one brand of soap — rejecting all others — doing so cavalierly or might they have reasons? When you want to buy a car, you do your research and check for prices, reliability, dealer network, and style. Eventually, you reject all but one car. When we look at all those gods we, too, do our research. THAT is why we reject the gods we do. If there had been evidence for the existence of those gods, we would have climbed on board… but there wasn’t.

When we read our Bible, we see checkable facts on almost every page. Some of them deal with science, linguistics, sociology, psychology, history, anthropology, or geography. If the Bible says it is “up” from this place to that… it is “up.” If it says Pontus Pilate was the governor of Judea… he was (even though that was disputed until the 1950s when decisive evidence came to light that the Bible was correct). If it said there was a guy named David… there was (and evidence for his life is just coming to light from archaeology). When it says a man named Cyrus would arise and overthrow one kingdom and replace it with another… it happened.

When the Bible makes statements about science, they don’t contradict facts we know about science. They often go against theories, but theories constantly change and are sometimes discarded so that doesn’t concern us. Facts is Facts as Pogo used to say, and the Bible doesn’t make scientific errors.

The more we know about quantum physics, the more creation makes sense. It doesn’t make myths about suns being produced from dragons make sense. Other scriptures are full of absurdities or are just devoid of checkable data. The Bible checks out.

Atheists often refuse to check out the evidence. While we read their books, they don’t read ours (or, if they do, they read only the books written by fringe Christians). When I speak to atheists, I often list the books I’ve read over the last few months. They are astonished at the amount (I read a lot) and the fact that almost all of them are authored by atheists or agnostics. Then, I ask them what books written by believers they have read in the last few months. In over twenty years of asking that question, I have had about five people (out of thousands) who had read a book that disagreed with them. (NOTE: I didn’t let them use the Bible because I found that most of them haven’t really read it since they were a kid and were forced to go to church. Since they discarded their faith, they only dip into it to get salacious bits they can ridicule. That isn’t the same as “reading” in my view)

I have been to the British Museum, the Smithsonian, the Carnegie, the Cleveland Museum, etc. I ask them if they have ever been to a creation seminar or museum. I have never gotten a raised hand.

The reason we have discarded all those other gods is because we looked at the evidence and those gods just didn’t measure up. The reason we didn’t reject Jehovah is because the evidence for Him and His book is quite impressive. We are honest and will look at all evidence. Sadly, that is not true for most atheists — though there are exceptions. The late Stephen Jay Gould was an avowed atheist but, refreshingly, he was very open about his biases. He openly said that should he find evidence for God and creation, he would discard it because it wasn’t “science” regardless of how compelling it might be. I respect that level of honesty, but I am appalled by that level of bigotry.