Paul's answer

We've been discussing a question that the Corinthian church had apparently asked Paul: “can we eat the meat after it’s been sacrificed to idols?” (See 1 Corinthians 8:1)

Some said that since idols were nothing, with no power, they were free to eat that meat. Others said eating the meat caused them to think back to their own idol worship and they didn’t want to eat the meat.

Who was right?

Paul gave them an answer they may not have expected. In verse 9, he asked that those who were free not becoming a stumbling block to the weak. He places some labels in the verses to follow: those who exercise freedom and those with weak consciences.

Maybe you think that Paul has now announced who is right in this controversy. But he hasn’t.

Instead, he admonished those in freedom to care for their weaker brothers. "When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ." (1 Cor 8:12)

Some in the church understood that gods are nothing. But when they were seen eating the meat, they put a temptation before their weaker church members. Those who did not know that gods are nothing could be drawn back into their idol worship.

Paul did not declare, in this chapter, which side of the controversy was correct. Instead, he urged each side to be considerate of the other side. The issue for Paul wasn’t the food, but the heart of the church.

Notice what he declared for himself: "Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall." (1 Cor 8:13)

In America, we believe in individual freedom. But Paul was urging the believers to set aside their individual freedom when it caused another to fall. That’s a challenge to Americans but we need to hear Paul’s words.

He was willing to give up that which could cause another to stumble. That’s love for others above love for self and that was his answer to the Corinthians’ question: love others above your own knowledge and rights.

On the other hand

Kerry cringed everytime she saw black leather. She’d once been part of a gang that wore black leather jackets while they held ugly satanic ceremonies.

After Kerry left the gang, she had been afraid for a long time and now she wanted nothing to do with black leather. It reminded her of the gang and their false gods.

When her sister mistakenly gave her a black leather purse for Christmas, Kerry threw it away.

“But it was a purse,” her sister protested. “And an expensive one, too. It had nothing to do with your old gang.”

“It makes me think of that old gang and I don’t want to,” Kerry said.

We can be sympathetic to Kerry.

Paul was faced with the problem of Kerry vs. Mtoto, so to speak, in Corinth. We've been discussing the dilemma this week.

There were those in Corinth who, when seeing the meat from the sacrifices to false gods, remembered their old gods and, like Kerry, wanted nothing to do with it.

There were those who, like Mtoto, knew the meat had not been tainted because the gods were nothing.

Paul made a fascinating statement in 1 Cor. 8:8: "But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do."

Were the Corinthian believers worse off if they avoided the sacrificed meat? Were they better off if they ate the meat? No, in both cases.

Isn’t this puzzling? The first time I read this chapter, I wanted to know which side Paul was on. But he reveals his answer to the Corinthians at the end of the chapter and we’ll look at that tomorrow.

They are nothing

When the little statue of the god fell from Mtoto’s shelf, he was terrified to see that the head snapped off as it hit the floor. Sick to his stomach, Mtoto knew he had cursed himself and his family.

Should he hide the statue? He knew his father would notice that it was missing.

Mtoto sat for a long while staring at the broken clay pieces and then a thought came to him. Surely if this god could protect his family’s crops, it could heal itself.

So Mtoto carefully picked up the two parts of the broken statue and put them back on the shelf, tenderly nestling the head back onto the body. He felt excited to think that the little god would soon mend itself.

But as the days went by, and no curse came upon the family, Mtoto noticed that the crack in the statue remained.

The little god had not healed itself. Mtoto came to learn what Paul told the church in Corinth: an idol is nothing at all. (1 Cor. 8: 4)

We opened a discussion this week about a question from the Corinthian church regarding eating meat sacrificed to idols. Paul opened the discussion of idols in 1 Cor. 8:4-6.

Paul, in verse 5, referred to idols as "so-called" gods but made it clear that there was only one true God.

Other gods had no power because they did not exist. There is no God but the true God and false gods are nothing, Paul said in verse 4.

That may appear to be Paul's response to the Corinthians' question about eating meat sacrificed to false gods, but there's more still to come. We'll discuss that tomorrow.

"Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live." (1 Cor 8:6)

The debate

I might have organized a debate if I’d been given the question that Paul was given.

It seems that the church in Corinth wanted to know what the right thing to do about meat that had been sacrificed to idols. (1 Cor 8:1-3)

In those days, the pagans would kill animals before the gods, to try to placate their unpredictable nature so they didn’t do something bad to the people. Then the meat was sold in the markets at a greatly-reduced price.

The question for Christians was this: could they buy and eat this meat? There had been debate within the church and so they asked Paul.

Those who said “No” argued that they wanted nothing to do with false gods and would not eat the meat. When they ate the meat, they thought about the false gods and felt defiled.

Those who said “yes” argued that false gods were just that: false. There was no god but the true God. Something that didn’t exist couldn’t defile the meat.

Who was right? That’s what the church wanted to know.

But while I’d be organizing the debate, Paul re-defined it. In verse 1, he revealed his viewpoint: “Love builds up.”

That might seem like an odd answer to the question. Paul started talking about knowledge and love instead of just answering the question.

Well, the Corinthians wanted knowledge all right. They wanted a straight answer: “yes” or “no” on the meat thing.

By verse 3, Paul had returned to his point: want to be known by God? Then love others.

Since that wasn’t even what the Corinthians had asked, his answer undoubtedly puzzled them. And us.

And we may wonder what meat in the first century has to do with us.

But we’ll look at this some more tomorrow, because it has a huge impact for us today.

Trespasser will be Baptized

Recollections by Preacher’s Kids (PKs) tend to be either angry or mushy, but Elizabeth Emerson Hancock has put together a coming-of-age memoir that is funny without being sugary, perceptive without being bitter.

Trespassers will be Baptized: The Unordained Memoirs of a Preacher’s Daughter recounts her memories of life in a southern church in the 1980’s.

What is unique is that Hancock brings insights to the traditions and expectations of church people who meant well. The book starts out with some hilarious tales of Sunday school mishaps and even a misguided lifting of some jeans from the missions box.

But Hancock is not content with a string of funny stories. Pearls of perception are threaded through the accounts. When her story closes, we feel encouraged in our faith without being submerged by tradition.

Hancock carves out the meaningful, leaving the fluff of church culture behind. It'd make a good Christmas gift or a fun read over Christmas break.

Today, Hancock practices law in Kentucky.

You can get more information on her book here.

And you can read her homepage and blog here.

What others are saying:

"This is as close as you can get to Southern church life without eating your weight in Velveeta. Trespassing through this book, you don't have to be Southern, Baptist, or even a Kentucky Wildcats fan to find your sense of humor and faith more than a little revived." --- David C. Barnette, author of The Official Guide to Christmas in the South

"As one who has done time in the fishbowl known as a parsonage, I can confirm that Elizabeth's voice is authentic. Poetic and passionate writing combined with honest and unvarnished storytelling makes this story of one girl's struggle to understand life in the stained-glass house a must-read." --- Brad Whittington, author of Welcome to Fred

Unity?

We were in that heady twenty-something time when we were proud of our spiritual humility and confident of our spiritual insights.

So when we sailed into the 12th chapter of 1 Corinthians, we knew Paul had crafted this text for one purpose: to give us the material to determine our spiritual gifts. Why else would he write? And, out of the 31 verses in that chapter, he'd dedicated nine verses to gifts. So we spent six weeks studying all the ramifications of those gifts, including analyzing our own giftings.

We came out of the study properly pigeon-holed.

The other 22 verses of 1 Cor 12 did get a quick glance. Pity.

What we missed in our youthful visions of personal grandeur now haunt me, for Paul was talking about unity within diversity - and he'd spent several chapters in his letter to Corinth building to that point. Paul didn't write about how to discover my true potential, but how to value unity while recognizing diversity. It's no easy theme, and our American churches have stumbled badly on this issue.

Paul acknowledged diversity. There are many parts of a body, he said. There are many gifts. But his point wasn't the parts but the whole.

"Look at how the body works together. Don't be thinking you don't need the unsightly parts or the weak parts."

Consider this amazing statement: those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. (1 Cor 12:22). Not many churches that I've known get that statement.

Whether the weaker parts are simply misguided or unable to participate or loudly resistant, they are indispensable, according to Paul. That has changed my thinking.

I have seen believers leave churches over length of the sermon, use of an overhead projector, and distribution of food to the poor. (They said there were no poor in the community and the church was being taken advantage of.)

Because of my early self-centered study of 1 Corinthians, I understand too well how we tend to read scripture to verify our own point of view and bolster our own position. We boast in our diversity.

Oddly, we trumpet just exactly what Paul was writing against. Too often, we champion our diversity while repelling unity as cookie-cutter mentality.

Paul was interested in unity. The unity that brings different parts together into a gracious relationship. As Paul said:

There should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
1 Cor 12:25-26

What's in a name?

What’s an evangelical? British historian David Bebbington identifies these four key points:

1. Emphasis on being born again

2. Emphasis on the ultimate authority of the Bible

3. Involvement in sharing the faith

4. Focus on the atoning and redeeming work of Christ on the cross.

But consider this: among folks who are outsiders to the Christian faith, the number that had a good impression of the word evangelicals was 3%. Not so impressive.

Take a look at John Ortberg’s article What is an Evangelical?

Frost-bitten

Sharon had gotten frost-bite once, on a snowmobiling trip with a short-term boyfriend. She hated the cold, that crunch of snow and the sting of ice crystals.

“I don’t go skiing,” she informed her friends. “I’ll sit by the fire and read a book in the lodge.” Well, it wasn’t long when she didn’t bother going to the lodge but stayed home with her book and her cozy quilt.

She found new friends, too, ones who weren’t so crazy about the cold. They could sit with her by the fire, reading books and drinking Earl Gray tea.

Before long, they formed a club and met weekly to sit with steaming tea, a favorite book, and a hot fire. She met a nice young man who didn’t like the cold either and eventually they married and started a family.

But their last-born was a strong-willed one who refused to stay by the fire. Julie had discovered snowballs and toboggan trips were exhilarating.

“Mom, Dad, listen, there some exciting people who play in the snow!”

“It’s too cold,” Sharon told her. “I will not get frost bite ever again!”

Julie was a loving daughter so she considered that for awhile. But the call of the adventure lured her. “I feel something spiritual out there,” she told her mother. “I feel more alive, almost like God is with me.”

Sharon never joined her. But Julie found a good coat and took the risk.

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

1 Peter 1:6-7

The church of the unaffiliated

Sixteen percent of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, making “unaffiliated” the fourth largest religious category.

That’s according to a survey from Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

They’re telling us what we may already know. For one thing, many people are moving between denominations freely. The denominational loyalty of the ‘50’s and ‘60’s is largely gone.

It’s not surprising, then, that among the fastest-growing groups is nondenominational Protestant Churches, which are largely evangelical. Megachurches are still growing fast, according to the survey, as are Pentecostals and the Holiness Church movement.

“The trend is towards more personal religion and evangelicals offer that,” commented Stephen Prothero of Boston University. He added that those offering impersonal religion are losing out. Even the megachurches succeed only when they offer smaller ministries within.

But many are simply leaving organized religion altogether.

People surveyed are not generally becoming atheistic or agnostic, but simply describe themselves as “nothing in particular.”

Some things we can learn:

• In general, Americans are not leaving religion, only organized religion.
• Americans crave personal religion.
• Denominations no long rule the religious horizon.

So how do we respond?

Jesus walked the earth during the heyday of organized religion. Remember how the Samaritan woman questioned why her people couldn’t worship on their own mountain? Meanwhile, the Pharisees tithed even the herbs from their garden.

Jesus didn’t even assemble his own church but he went out among the people with compassion, bringing the truth and offering the scent of life and freedom. His passion was for people, not religious props or church structures. He sought out the unclean and the unlovable.

That church of the unaffiliated needs the presence of Jesus. And he left us here to bring that to them.

He replied, "You give them something to eat."

Luke 9:13

Just in case?

This has to be a joke, right? On a day dedicated to love, you could also add in some religious cheesiness as well......I think it's another "just in case" product line.... as though God wants to know I honor him with my bubble bath choices, just in case that's important to him. It's not: he wants my heart instead.

Soldiers and the body

When I’m standing in the trenches with mortars flying over my head, I’d like to know the state of those standing beside me. The previous article tries to group Christians by their belief system. Why should we care?

One of the reasons is this spiritual battle. We strap on our armor but we don’t stand alone. Even the angels didn’t know about the mystery of the body of Christ, but now we stand together as one body, toes and feet linking with livers and lungs.

I don’t want to be a judge but it helps me to know that, for example, a cultural Christian stands beside me. I won’t expect what this person isn’t ready to deliver.

Another reason to be aware of Christian groups is that sometimes the mission field is in our own pews. For those who enter a church because of reasons other than Christ crucified, I have an opportunity to point them to Jesus.

Chambers argues for the centrality of the cross: “We lose power if we do not concentrate on the right thing. The effect of the Cross is salvation, sanctification, healing, etc., but we are not to preach any of these, we are to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”

This walk of faith is not about traditions or worship practices or comfort but about following him who gave up all for our freedom. So the grouping by Christianity Today is useful: to re-focus our attention on Jesus.

“I am the way, the truth and the life.” John 14:6

Kinds of Christians

Can you call yourself a Yankees fan and never watch baseball? Can you consider yourself an avid skier and never strap on heavy ski boots? Can you describe yourself as a reader but never open a book?

How do you define a Christian?

Christianity Today has identified five kinds of Christians. Here’s the link.

Their pool contains only self-described Christians. The five categories, with their characteristics, are:

Active Christians 19%

• · Believe salvation comes through Jesus Christ
• · Committed churchgoers
• · Bible readers
• · Accept leadership positions
• · Invest in personal faith development through the church
• · Feel obligated to share faith; 79% do so.

Professing Christians 20%

• · Believe salvation comes through Jesus Christ
• · Focus on personal relationship with God and Jesus
• · Similar beliefs to Active Christians, different actions
• · Less involved in church, both attending and serving
• · Less commitment to Bible reading or sharing faith

Liturgical Christians 16%

• · Predominantly Catholic and Lutheran
• · Regular churchgoers
• · High level of spiritual activity, mostly expressed by serving in church and/or community
• · Recognize authority of the church

Private Christians 24%

• 1. Largest and youngest segment
• 2. Believe in God and doing good things
• 3. Own a Bible, but don't read it
• 4. Spiritual interest, but not within church context
• 5. Only about a third attend church at all
• 6. Almost none are church leaders

Cultural Christians 21%

• · Little outward religious behavior or attitudes
• · God aware, but little personal involvement with God
• · Do not view Jesus as essential to salvation
• · Affirm many ways to God
• · Favor universality theology

The term “Christian” has lost some of its first-century flavor. Now we need to know what a person means when he takes on this label. Nearly 2/3 of those who identify themselves as Christians do not acknowledge Christ as central to their faith.

How do you define a Christian? What do you see as essential to your faith?

Guarding the temple

Jack’s background didn’t hinder him much anymore because he’d found God. Well, it wasn’t an awful background anyway because he’d found God as a boy and really hadn’t done much wrong before that. You know, kids will be kids.

He’d gone through the ranks at his church. He’d written a spiritual resume once, just out of curiosity. He had done nearly every job in the church and knew his spiritual gifts, because he’d done the questionnaire in Sunday school.

His witnessing plan was to let his light shine. He had no moral issues. His youthful longings were behind him now. He didn’t even speed, so that his values could witness to the state patrol as he drove by.

When the committee was formed to clarify worship rules, Jack was there. He did not want to sanctuary desecrated. The rules – er, guidelines – were printed in the bulletin so there would be no misunderstandings.

· No loud noises in the sanctuary.

· No food or drinks. (He scowled when his daughter Sarah asked whether communion counted or not.)

· No magazine reading during the sermon.

· Babies crying longer than 45 seconds needed to be taken out.

· No talking during the hymns.

· The offering must be in an envelope, to preserve privacy.

· Kids must not be in the sanctuary without an adult present.

· Adults were defined as over 21.

· Teenagers must not question their fathers on bulletin rules.

Actually, Jack didn’t put that last one in but Sarah kept pestering him about the biblical basis for his rules, er, guidelines - and he didn’t have time to look up any verses. He was busy crafting the rules – er, guidelines. Besides, he didn’t know where to look. What, Leviticus?

Jack was frustrated when attendance at church began to slide. What was with people’s priorities anyway? You have to make sacrifices. He had, after all.

Sarah had come back from a youth conference and asked him how close he felt to God. He e-mailed her his church resume to illustrate. When she asked him the last time he’d talked to an unbeliever, he sent her the bulletin rules – er, guidelines. She just didn’t get it. Neither did unbelievers, for that matter. Once they got their priorities right, they’d be in church and needed those rules – er, guidelines.

A Pharisee: devout, moral, value-centered, above and beyond the law.

John Newton said, “The closer you get to God, the harder you are on yourself and easy on other people. The farther you are from God, the easier you are on self and harder on others.”

Jesus told a parable about “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” (Luke 18:9)

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

Luke 18:14

Turning back

I once sat in a Sunday school class where one woman fretted. “What should I say to these teenagers who are wearing a cross when I know they aren’t believers?”

There was an uneasy rustling as the others worried. They should confront but didn’t want to.

You know what I think Jesus would have said to that teenager? I think he’d have said something like, “Tell me about that cross you’re wearing. Why do you wear it? What does it mean to you?”

And I think he’d have eventually turned the conversation around: “Let me tell you what it means to me.”

I think he’d have used that cross as a tool to interact with the person, hear their heart and show them truth, like he did with the Samaritan woman at the well and so many others. He loved them and interacted in ways they could understand.

Churchianity wants to protect the cross as a symbol of their pure beliefs. We need the cross on our churches, on our neck, on our cars. It is a symbol of our separateness.

If you don’t regularly read A Small Scribble, you need to read the last couple of posts. Kate is tackling a topic that gets me raving. I call it “churchianity.”

What’s being discussed at Kate’s site is how many in the church today disdain the arts unless images are in familiar, comfortable modes. Do you have a nightlight with an angel on it? Do you have your plastic nativity scene? Do you have a fish on your bumper?

The discussion at Kate’s site asks how we interact with art that doesn’t have a cross or a glowing angel but explores new ways to communicate God’s truths. While those in the church are polishing their church symbols, a world outside is dying without wrestling with God. The church looks irrelevant with its old-fashioned secret language and obscure signs.

What have we done? In our rush to protect our purity and our separateness, we have morphed into mediocrity. Christian movies are usually corny. Christian literature is usually predictable and patterned after the hot-selling secular stuff. Christian art usually has symbols, not ideas.

I tend to identify myself as a follower of Jesus because even the word “Christian” speaks of legalistic mediocrity to today’s culture. What have we done?

How do we turn back?

Kate has some wonderful links at her site. I’d like to compile those and more. If you know authors, artists, movies, whatever that rise above the modern day Christian fluff, would you get those to me? I want to put a list on the sidebar, a place where we can all check out artists going deeper.

E-mail me (see my link at the top of the right hand column) or leave a comment with names and/or links.

This is an important issue for us as followers of Jesus. We have been commanded to go into the world and we must speak a language the world can grasp.

Setting the belonging bar

On my latest incursion through the book of Romans, I found a mirror lurking in the second chapter. The first chapter of Romans flails the decadent element of the first century. You can stand in the checkout line of Wal-Mart and see the modern-day version of that on the covers of the magazines.

Ever get really satisfied seeing the wicked get theirs? The end of Romans 1 methodically dissects their lives and promises their end.

However, I turned the page: You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else. (Romans 2:1)

If you haven’t in a while, journey through Romans 2. Where Paul refers to the Jew, put “church-goer” in there. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it is me. Replace “Gentiles” with “nonbelievers.” That’s them.

Do I “rely on the law and brag about [my] relationship to God”? (Romans 2:17) What do I do that makes me special?

Ever heard this: “He’s such a nice person that he must be a Christian!” Or this: “She’s so good that if she’s not a Christian, she will be soon!”

A man's praise is not from men, but from God. (Romans 2:29)

Irony drips in many of our churches. We proclaim a “saved by grace” gospel while enabling our doorkeepers to identify the nice people for admittance. We read Romans 1 with vengeance, pointing out the failures of the world around us. Surely if the world only sees our love for one another (contrasted with their evil ways), they will rush into our buildings.

Here’s our philosophy: behave, then believe, then we’ll let you belong.

I have a friend who sends me regular e-mails about God’s protection and the need for prayer. I don’t know for sure if she follows Jesus although I tend to think not. However, I allow her to belong. I tell her about people who are praying for our family. I tell her about God’s work in our lives and how I’ve submitted my heart to Jesus. I tell her I’m praying for her.

My philosophy is this: let her belong, give her time to believe, and then let the Spirit teach her to behave.

When Jesus called Matthew, he didn’t ask the tax collector to quit swearing, stop smoking, skin off the tattoo, and buy a suit. He said, “Follow me,” and went to Matthew’s house for supper, earning the scorn of the religious leaders. He embraced Matthew as he was and Matthew was overwhelmed by his presence.

What rules do we have in place? Where have we set the bar for joining? What do we see in the mirror?

On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Mark 2:17

Eating the elephant

Remember the joke about the woman who, after procuring a delicious recipe from her neighbor, was hopping mad because it turned out awful when she mixed it up? Turned out she had been out of the ingredients and so substituted something “close enough.”

We as followers of Jesus often do the “close enough” shuffle ourselves. This weakness shish-kabobbed me this morning. I was searching for a quote by Pascal about the “God-shaped vacuum” in each of us. We all know that he or C.S. Lewis or Augustine or somebody said that. Close enough, right?

Well, Pascal didn’t say that quote. He wrote something similar but those words didn’t pop up in his Pensees. What I did learn, in my searching for the quote that doesn’t exist, is that a lot of atheists mock us for our laziness. We follow rumor and legend without investigating, and they assume that such is our faith in Jesus as well.

Want to get the Christians going? Send out an e-mail about Madeline Murray O’Hair and the believers get whipped up in a frenzy without ever checking to see if there’s an ounce of fact. We look like we believe anything.

We claim to revere God’s Word and yet we don’t memorize it accurately. We use the “close enough” shuffle to hand out holy advice and bend the text to fit either the situation or our personal bias. Do we read Scriptures enough to be accurate with them?

What we tell others, in our “close enough” stance, is that the Bible is not really worth being accurate about – certainly not important enough to sacrifice time over.

It is a tragedy that in America, where we have how many translations of the Bible sitting on our shelf, that we are bored with the Word of God, content with “close enough” quotes and hazy observations.

I’m not asking you to read Pascal today. But I am asking you to read Genesis or John or Ruth. Remember how to eat an elephant? One bite at a time. We need to start eating.

What language?

Latin may be considered a dead language today, but in its day it was the English of the empire. Through the muscle of the Romans, everyone spoke Latin. So as the early church developed, the liturgy was naturally done in Latin- the common tongue.

But then came a twist.

As the Roman Empire crumbled in the 400’s, people tossed aside their imposed Latin language and returned to their native tongues. But the church didn’t notice. For the next 1000 years, the church continued to worship in Latin even though most people didn’t know what was being said.

Today we might call that “lack of contextualization” or “stubborn narrowness.”

As you might predict, the church grew dustier and drier over the centuries. The freshness of the first few centuries faded into a predictable, irrelevant institution that eventually collapsed in a heap of corruption, triggering the Reformation.

Some scholars suggest that once the church became a formality rather than a doorway to a relationship to God, the door was opened in the 600’s for the rapid expansion of Islam across north Africa and even into Europe. The church was too weak and isolated from the people to respond to Islamic evangelism.

There’s the lesson for us today: is the church tuned to the needs of the people? Is the church aware of the language of the community? Or is the church logged onto a dusty expression that connects with only an elite few?

Jesus spoke the language of the people. Do we?

Broccoli and Ice Cream

When our son was a wise fourth grader, he developed a major sweet tooth. He wanted to eat ice cream, cake, cookies. When his complaints about balanced meals got out of hand, we invited him to a week of cookies only.

He picked out his own cookies from the grocery store aisle and settled in for 7 days of bliss. For breakfast, he balanced an Oreo in each hand. He carried his lunch to school: a bag of chocolate chip cookies. Supper was chocolate mints and marshmallow wafers.

By the third day, he had flunked his swimming test and was swimming in tears at school. He couldn’t concentrate in class and forgot to do his homework. We ended the bliss early.

I think churches sometimes long for the week of cookies as well. When we’ve been injured or stressed, isn’t it our nature to seek out healing and rest? Somehow, rest means indulgence.

We want ice cream when we need broccoli. We need the means to grow, the veggies of healing. Today, nurses don’t let surgery patients lie in bed for two weeks. The medical world has discovered light exercise from the start aids healing. A walk down the hall is worth a week’s worth of bedrest.

I met a pastor recently, new at his church, which was seeing tremendous growth and outreach. I asked him what the church had done in the two years they were waiting on a pastor. He said they stayed faithful to what God had given them to do. They kept on the broccoli and exercise.

Now think about a church that has endured a painful trauma. What is its instinct? To rest, to heal, to go into hibernation. What would the nurse have them do?

Take a walk down the hallway.

"No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."

Luke 9:62

Wild horses within

I thought about Jamie as I watched the pack of wild horses at the auction. A pack of 11 yearlings milled in a holding pen. The bay colt was obviously the herd leader, panicking at the slightest movement and bringing the entire herd crashing into the boundaries. When some hay was tossed into a feeder, he battled the others, teeth bared and hooves threatening, until he had the best place at the feed bunk. A timid little filly, her head down in desperate hunger and panic, tried to sneak a nibble. The colt bared his teeth and left a mark on her back. She retreated; he ate.

A filly perked up her head. I wanted to bring her out, to brush her white blaze and comb her golden mane. She held my gaze for a short moment. But the herd then crashed into her, sucking her into the middle. She lost sight of me and wandered within the churning legs.

This young pack of horses didn’t trust each other. But they were more afraid of being alone. They clung together even as they abused each other. They didn’t see anything bigger or better than the mob.

We met Jamie after she got out of jail. She had come out of the swirling cell, slammed by a churning band. She needed food, furniture and diapers for her baby. Our church gathered formula and soup, a couch, sheets, toothpaste.

She caught our eyes for a moment or two and we wanted to bring her out, to comfort her and support her. She held our gaze for a short moment but the herd crashed into her. She wanted to go to school, to get her GED, to find a decent job for herself and her baby. She’d already lost two children to social services and wanted to hold on. But the wild herd sucked her in. Last I heard, she was back in the churning cell, surrounded by a roiling band as confused as she was. I don’t know where her baby went.

Wild horses surround us. Do we care? What say you?

A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice

Isaiah 42:3

The state of opinions

Thomas Helwys said the king wasn’t God and it got him a prison term that ended in death. He could have changed his mind and said that maybe James was God, but Thomas refused.

When the Puritans came to American in the mid 1600’s, they were escaping religious persecution in England. In England they weren’t the state church but they eagerly accepted that title whenever they could after moving to the colonies. Nestling under the wing of the government had great perks.

Roger Williams, in 1641, claimed biblical basis for the right to hold church apart from the government: “It is the will and command of God that (since the coming of his Son the Lord Jesus) a permission of the most paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or antichristian consciences and worships, be granted to all men in all nations and countries.”

It was Isaac Backus in the 1700’s, as a Baptist, who pointed out that he had to pay taxes to the state church even though he wasn’t a member of that church. He lobbied for religious freedom, which to Isaac meant the right live by his own beliefs and worship at his own church without the government’s interference.

John Leland, a contemporary of Backus, argued that government had no right to rule on what he called principles of conscience. He claimed that religion established by law always damages the religion.

Governments of those days assumed they had the right and obligation to pass laws regarding religious conduct. The American Bill of Rights broke new ground in religious freedom. Part of the assumption of the Bill of Rights is that the government is the ultimate power and authority, that a government should have limitations. Leland contended that “... government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men, than it has with the principles of mathematics.”

Today we hear “separation of church and state” to mean the church must not meddle in state affairs. However, that phrase began as a long-shot attempt to disentangle the government from ruling churches. It meant the state must not meddle in church affairs.

It means believers have the right to live by our conscience.

Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

Matt 22:21