The Value of a Person

You astute Christians: I know what you’re probably thinking. I’m guessing you think I’m going to talk about how we find our value only in Christ. You are partially correct. But have you thought about how that value is made evident to us?

It’s true that we can discern the truth of it in careful study of the Bible. It’s also true that we can be told about it by faithful teachers of the Bible who have done the study. But have you noticed that people don’t simply obey the Bible just because they have studied it? The teachings powerful for persuasion are given with testimonies by people who have experienced it in some practical way in their lives or who, in the process of discipling someone; lead them to put the teachings into practice themselves.

Among other things that Yancey Arrington wishes he had known about discipleship, one is that “it’s found in a network of relationships.” Discipleship gives the disciple a sense of value in the Church. Truly, God doesn’t need any one of us. He created the universe without our help. In fact, not only does God not need us, we need him. We have negative value as members of a fallen world. All of us deserve not only death, but eternal torture as punishment for our insolent sin. The only man who doesn’t deserve that kind of punishment is God himself who took on flesh and dwelled among us as the man, Jesus Christ. By the death of his body on the cross, he paid the price we deserve to pay. In that way, we were given value worthy of eternal life with God.

But we don’t apprehend that value by claiming ourselves worthy of it. We apprehend that value by understanding that we are not worthy of it. This seems contradictory and is often difficult for young believers, as well as many older ones, to balance.

Dave Miller at SBC Voices illustrates this in his recent article about Busy Pastors. Pastors often find some value in the amount of work they do. So even mature Christians can struggle with the contradistinction between lack of value in our sinfulness and value given by God outside of our actions.

God calls us to serve him. Our value is not in serving him, but in being served by Christ in salvation. Nevertheless, we give honor to people according to what they do in the Kingdom. That gives the illusion that we gain value by doing good things. Rather, we demonstrate God’s value when we do good things. But when we disciple each other in accordance with the Great Commission, we must often temporarily play to people’s need to feel valued.

Kate Mulvey is no Christian. She is a self-centered self-valued woman who has determined that men hate her for being smarter than them. So at age 50, Kate is still single. Kate’s problem is not that she is too smart. Her problem is that she hasn’t found a man that’s valuable to her. She is self-sufficient and there’s nothing a man can do to add positively to her identity. It’s the same reason why Hollywood movie stars jump from spouse to spouse and why many people in this culture anymore have trouble with commitment.

People will go where they are valued.

It’s the same thing in churches. People hop from church to church when they are looking for a sense of being valued. So churches try hard to be nice to new people. But there is a difference between being nice to each other and living in true Christian fellowship. Being nice to each other feels like you are valued for a short period of time. But true Christian fellowship is a lasting relationship between believers that gives each the sense of being valued. That sense might come from the relationship, but it’s lasting because it’s rooted in ongoing discipleship. So the value comes from Christ.

Do you want people to stick around? See their value in Christ and treat them accordingly. Don’t just be nice. Give your fellowship in good times and bad. Let people know how you need them, not just in general but in specific ways. This is how the gospel works through the Great Commission in the discipleship in the Church to hold churches together.

Understanding the Bible More Deeply: Reading As Though It Were True

None of us approaches the Bible as a blank slate. On one end of the spectrum, some of us have a set of beliefs that we are intent on holding as true no matter what evidence is given to us to the contrary. On the other end of the spectrum are those who are willing to ditch their beliefs for any new thought that comes their way.

There is a balance between these that we can term “cautiously open” to changing our thinking. The question is on what basis we are cautiously open:

We might be cautiously open because we want to believe anything that will make us the most comfortable. Some atheistic naturalists like to accuse theists of merely fulfilling some evolutionary need to believe in a higher power. The fact is that we all have some need to feel good about ourselves and our lives.

We might be cautiously open because we want to justify some lack of moral culpability. We just want to sin and we don’t like anything or anyone telling us that our particular sin is immoral. If anything tells us we can commit that sin, we are willing to believe it. If anything tells us that we cannot commit a particular sin we are willing to deny it.

We might be cautiously open because we want power over other people. Like or not, these kinds of people exist in this world. They are willing to propagate beliefs among others that will enslave them ideologically and are willing to stifle beliefs that will free them ideologically. Most people are not very good at this. Some people are exceptionally good at this.

Parenthetically, we proclaim a gospel that sets people free from sin without denying that things clearly are sinful. It’s no wonder that some oppose this message with both the contention that something is not a sin and the good news that we can be free from it.

But the way we are to be cautiously open to changing our beliefs is if we desire truth and are willing to accept that we might not currently know the truth as fully as we can. This begs the question that the Bible is an accurate source of truth. The key to knowing is if we are honest about our sinful motives. If we are, then even a cursory reading of the Bible is sufficient for demonstrating that it is more honest about our own motives than we are. Peter testifies as much when he answers Jesus in John 6:68, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” The Samaritan woman that Jesus met at the well testified in John 4:29, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did.” This is the same reaction that we find in ourselves when we read the Bible and are honest about our own sinful motives.

Therefore, we cannot understand the Bible accurately if we do not read it as though it were true.

Towers

Twelve years ago people climbed into real planes and crashed into real buildings. People lost their lives.

The purpose for this action was to provoke a response and illustrate the power of the God of Islam over the world. The belief of the perpetrators is that we flout unrighteous freedom. Their contention is that we are all subject to the commands of Allah.

That message doesn’t sound too far from the Christian message. Sin against God is indeed the unrighteous flouting of freedom from the commands of God. Many atheists have noted this similarity and have concluded that Christianity is as dangerous as Islam. Many point to the Crusades as evidence of the similarity in the danger of the message. That’s only evidence of a lack of sophisticated thought enough distinguish between historic political European Christendom and the true Body of Christ as it bears the gospel of peace.

But let us not make the same error. The American experiment was an attempt to build a nation free of the errors of Christendom by marrying a Christian worldview with a novel iteration of the Greco-Roman republic. Our success has been marginal, but the system is failing. It quickly morphed into just another kind of Christendom. Instead of self-sacrificing for each other, we sacrifice each other for our own benefit, and we wonder why we aren’t acting like a Christian nation anymore.

Our false towers of institutionalized morality have fallen. People are losing their lives spiritually because we have relied on government for a good country instead of relying on the proclamation of the gospel for changed lives.

Our towers were attacked precisely because we haven’t relied on the proclamation of the gospel. Those who are dead in their sins are angry with those of us who have trusted Christ for our lives and are dead to our sins. They have attacked our false political towers to demonstrate the power of their god of self-worth and self-determination over and against those of us who trust Christ.

Let us not forget the towers that fell twelve years ago. Let it serve as a reminder that we have a fallen world to serve, not to help them uphold the sins that separate them from Christ, but to shine the light into the darkness of their sin to highlight the need they have for Christ so that they might believe. It is the gospel that makes us free and not political victory.

Understanding the Bible More Deeply: Investigation

As I pointed out in the last article, the Bible wasn’t written in our cultural context. It was written by and to a people long ago with a different culture. They had different practices and routines, different political situations, and different popular philosophies. No doubt as we read the Bible we will encounter many references to things that are unfamiliar to us.

Also, as I pointed out in the previous article, reading the Bible over and over will result in noticing things we didn’t notice before. In early readings of the Bible, we will have a tendency to skip over things that we don’t recognize when they appear in the midst of things we do recognize. As we read through the Bible, it is likely that new things will strike us as something we need to investigate in order to understand the passage better.

Fortunately, we are blessed in these days to have rich resources for investigating these kinds of things. There are Bible handbooks, Bible dictionaries, commentaries, etc. I recommend checking more than one. Different aspects of information might be available in the work of different scholars.

Don’t be alarmed if you find that they don’t agree. You will be able to get a fuller view of uncertainty in scholarship that way. If the observation is related to a theological point of view, you will be able to see why something either supports or undermines your own point of view and you will be able to refine your thinking.

So you grow more deeply in your understanding as you gain more information on what you are reading. You also grow more deeply in your understanding as your own previous beliefs are challenged.

Hiding Place: Deliverance from Sin or a Prison

Linda

Years ago I was friends with an elderly lady who sang baritone with me in the choir at one of the base chapels at Camp Lejune, NC. Her name was Linda. She died over a decade ago.

Linda’s parents were German musicians who were killed in a train accident just before WWII. Linda spent the next few years in a Catholic school in Berlin during the war. She would take bread to the French prisoners of war.

She invited me to a thanksgiving dinner one year where she had some Austrian friends from the old country coming to visit. The dinner was lovely and I enjoyed the cultural experience. After her friends left, Linda sat down with me and told me of the old days. She told me how she saw the propaganda of the Third Reich and how deeply it influenced her thinking. She also told me how wrong it all was, but how hard she struggled against her indoctrination. She told me how she knew it was wrong to hate Jews, but that she wrestled with her training as a young child to hate them.

She told me other things as well about how brutal some of the Allies were, particularly the Russians. She told me how she came to America and took speech lessons to remove the German accent, How she married and remarried. How evil her second husband was and how he was spending time in Leavenworth prison. Even colonels with spotless records can commit crimes. She told me of her hidden son who lived, yet as little more than a spectre, after a serious automobile accident cause by his use of drugs.

In all of this, she left the Roman Catholic Church and found solace in the gospel of grace. A military wife, she stayed close to the base and the transient families she knew there.

Her story is an echo of many. I’ve been fascinated with how such deceit as what was propagated by the Nazis can affect entire populations of people. Last night I watched a documentary following the children and grandchildren of Hitler’s top men as they fought against the dark legacy of their infamous fathers. It reminds me of the warnings in Exodus where the iniquity of the fathers will be visited on their children and grandchildren. Although their descendents did not commit the crimes of their fathers, they bear the weight of guilt among those who survived their father’s sins.

I’ve also watched Lore recently. It’s a German movie about children of Nazi parents who fled across country to their grandmother’s house when their parents were taken prisoner in the Allies’ invasion of Germany. Many of the reviewers noted that the kids acted like brats. Frankly, they aren’t any worse than the kids Hollywood portrays. It’s odd that we are quick to judge Nazi kids while giving the kids on, say, Home Alone, a pass.

(Note: Being a foreign film, Lore isn’t rated. It should be rated R. There are adult themes and images. Beware if you plan to watch this.)

But I compare this also to the 2009 portrayal of the Diary of Anne Frank. My favorite portrayal was the 1980 version. After watching this one, I see how filtered the 1980 version was. The 2009 version showed a bit more the bratty side of Anne Frank. Are victims less sinful than their murderers?

On the one hand, we would note that a murderer committed a crime. It is no crime to be victimized. However, the nature that rises up to fuel a murderer is shared by all people. We are all products of a fallen world and subject to the dubious information that colors it darkly. It is perhaps more apparent to those with murderous parents, such as the offspring of Himmler, Goering and Goeth. They are more able to recognize the evil in their own hearts because of the astonishing sins of their fathers because of the difficulty in coming to terms with sins they did not commit. For that matter, think of the Jews born in captivity during the exile in Babylon and Persia. They didn’t commit the sins that sent their parents into exile, yet they must bear the burden of those sins.

For others, who have lived in relative peace by parents who are relatively decent people, sin seems to be more of an abstract thing. In this case, fairness becomes the arbiter of sin. It is easy to believe that which is fair is good and that which is unfair is evil. It is easy to arrive at the conclusion that being fair makes one a sinless person.

So it is hard for such people to understand that God is not fair. Jesus, the only truly innocent man, paid the price for the sins of evil people. That’s not fair. It can only be fully understood by people who truly see the depths of their own sin, whether that sin has resulted in action or harbored only in the mist of dark thoughts and desires.

Linda knew the sin she was capable of and fought against it while all around her swarmed the stench and decay of death in the sins of others. Let us not treat slavery to righteousness as a prison when we are hidden from our destruction as Anne Frank and her family was for a time. Let us regard our hideaway in Christ soberly and not despise it. Let us not be brats in the Body of Christ.

5. I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah

6. Therefore let everyone who is godly
offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
they shall not reach him.

7. You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah (Psalm 32:5-7, ESV)

Understanding the Bible More Deeply: Additive Reading

One key area where education practitioners test students to indicate development in verbal skills is reading comprehension and retention. If everyone were the same, they wouldn’t need to test students to see what their current abilities are. The fact is that none of us have perfect comprehension and retention. When we read something for the first time, we don’t fully apprehend its meaning. I have email replies from people asking questions that I answered in my original email. I know for a fact that they didn’t get it.

The Bible is no small tome. Its material is typically referentially anachronistic from our point of view. That is to say that it wasn’t written by or to people with our cultural sensibilities. It can be difficult reading and it can be easily misunderstood if care is not taken to understand what is written in the various contexts.

It is common for pastors who have been well trained and have already read the Bible through many times to read a passage over and over before they develop a sermon on it. If pastors have a need to do this, how much more do the rest of us need to read passages multiple times in order to understand the full import of the meaning?

The reason is because there is a principle where reading some over again allows us to notice things that we missed or don’t remember the first time. Unless we re-read the Bible many times we cannot claim to have much of an understanding of it. Some people may require fewer readings to understand it deeply. Others may need to read the Bible more in order to understand it more deeply. Regardless whether your comprehension and retention is better or worse than others, we all need to read the Bible over and over again to understand it more deeply.

“Not Everyone Agrees” – A Bad Argument

There’s an argument that I hear or read more often than not. It’s used typically by people who have a theological view that differs from the predominant view. A discussion will arise about some point regarding the predominant view and someone will step in with a view that disagrees with the predominant view. After a couple of arguments or explanations are bandied back and forth, if the person lobbying the opposing view senses that the argument is going badly for them, then they make this argument to give some sense of legitimacy to their position.

Now they don’t typically state the argument as a dry proposition.  Usually it will be worded something like this:

“All I’m trying to say is that there are people who disagree that this biblical passage means what you say that it means.”

Or:

“My point is that not everyone agrees on this theological issue.”

The argument that is insinuated is that the case for the legitimacy of a position is made by trading on the fact that people don’t agree. This argument assumes that the disagreement doesn’t include heresy. It also fails to make the observation that only one mutually exclusive truth is possible. Therefore, only one view can actually be true.

Now there are areas of theological disagreement that are legitimately subject to uncertainty based on different hermeneutical presuppositional structures. That’s a mouthful for most of you so I’ll break it down. Hermeneutics is the area of theological discovery that applies principles for understanding written text. This is where you investigate the writer and the audience, the sentence structures, the cultural context, figures of speech and idiomatic expressions, etc. When using these kinds of principles you often find a variety of possible meanings depending on how you apply the principles. Some passages are simply clearer than others. In order to understand more difficult passages, it helps to use facts learned in clearer passages to shed light on which meaning is most possible. As the Bible is studied and various facts understood, it helps to arrange these facts in logical associations to see the larger truth. Some facts depend on other facts and ultimately a small set of related facts will form that foundational truth for how you understand the rest of the Bible. This is your presuppositional structure.

Ideally, a presuppositional structure is formed by hermeneutical principles consistently applied to the scriptures. Unfortunately, most people will have a set of ideas already in place as their initial presuppositional structure and they will apply hermeneutical principles in such a way as to reinforce it rather than to change their presuppositional structure as consistently applied hermeneutical principles contradict their presuppositional structure. So where one presuppositional structure is suggested by the Bible, many people end up with different presuppositional structures.

Let me pick one of the less-controversial conflicts to use as an example. The Bible doesn’t say that the pets we have here in this world will be resurrected in the next. In fact, as far as the Bible is concerned only humans will be resurrected. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be animals of some sort in the hereafter. The Bible simply doesn’t focus on this. It’s not important. This is a consistent way of approaching the Bible. I’m looking at what the Bible views as important. I have pets that I enjoy as companions but I don’t expect to have them with me for all time and it’s not important to me because it’s not important in the Bible.

However, it is important to some people. They are particularly attached to their pets. Instead of letting the Bible guide their thinking on this, they import ideas that are foundational to understanding the Bible so that the Bible ends up meaning what the Bible never teaches. These ideas are things like, “God just wants me to be happy,” “Fluffy and Fido make me happy,” and “God gave me Fluffy and Fido to make me happy.” Therefore, they conclude, “God will give me Fluffy and Fido in heaven to make me happy.” So they read the Bible with this logic in mind as to how they should apply hermeneutical principles to understand the Bible. Since they don’t see a passage that specifically says that pets won’t be in heaven, they dismiss the passages that when taken together logically won’t allow that conclusion.

So let’s say there’s a discussion about animals in heaven. These passages are brought up. But the person who holds the pet-friendly hermeneutic is upset because people are saying that pets we have today like Fluffy and Fido won’t join us in the resurrection and be our companions for all time. They jump in with a contention against this. When the consistent hermeneutic is explained, they retreat to the argument I spelled out in the beginning of this article.

Believing that Fluffy and Fido will be resurrected isn’t specifically a heretical idea. It’s a bad one and an erroneous one, but we know that we have some church members who insist on these kinds of errors for their own reasons.

But there are people who espouse heresy who resort to that same argument. That’s why it’s important to point out that it’s a bad argument. Just because people disagree within the realm of orthodox Christianity doesn’t mean that both are true. Only one is true. The other is in error although not in a bad way. Dr. Al Mohler has developed his theological triage and wrote about it 8 years ago. It’s an extremely helpful tool for analyzing theological error.

Just because people can disagree on one level that carries some legitimate uncertainty doesn’t mean that people can disagree on another level with the same legitimate uncertainty. If the Bible is clear about a matter, it’s not open for debate within orthodox circles. It’s clear heresy. Today orthodox Christians have the sensibility that no one is going to be killed for being a heretic. That unfortunate historical approach in itself should be considered heretical. However, it is academically and pastorally necessary to point out mistaken beliefs among people who profess to be Christians. That includes pointing out the error in this kind of an argument.